PS 4 Review

PLAY STATION 4 : Review

The Console

Jet black with sharp, angular edges and a blend of matte and high-gloss plastic, the PS4 distances itself from the curved lines found on the PS3, and instead follows the design language found on Sony’s broader range of smartphones, tablets, and home entertainment products. The result is a distinctly more mature, high-end look and feel. The thin LED illuminated strip that pierces through the topmost panel offers a burst of color and light, but also serves a practical purpose by indicating the various states of the system’s operation — orange while on standby, pulsing blue when powering up or shutting down, and a steady white while in use. On the front, two thin, semi-metallic capacitive buttons align with the light strip — one for toggling the system power, the other for ejecting discs from the slot-loading drive.

Better, Faster, Stronger. 

Video game consoles have always struggled to keep up with rapid pace of innovation set forth by PCs, and more recently, mobile devices. In the last generation, the PlayStation 3 in particular was bound by proprietary processing technology and a rigid operating system that made software and new features arduous and costly to produce.

The PlayStation 4 is the antithesis of the PS3.

With powerful yet familiar processing architecture, a more open approach to software, and an impressive set of day-one features, the PS4 not only brings the PlayStation platform into a more

Scott Lowe Says

Scott's Must-Have PS4 Games

modern era, but establishes a strong foundation for long-term evolution.

 

It’s the most elegant console design in PlayStation history and one of the best looking products Sony has ever produced. But the PS4’s form is sometimes at odds with its function.

A cutaway wraps around the front and sides of the system, which breaks up the top and bottom panels and prevents the design from taking on too much of a nondescript brick-like trapezoid appearance. The gap houses the front-facing USB ports and slot-loading disc drive, with air intakes on the sides, which draws cool air through the system. Though a clever way to mask the ports and vents, the gap can create issues with certain types of USB storage. While average-sized USB cables or thin thumbdrives fit the slots, thicker devices may not work without an extension cable. What’s more, the thin touch-enabled buttons on the front are extremely narrow and tough to identify, and the choice to put the sole thermal exhaust at the back of the system will centralize heat where ventilation will be most limited in entertainment centers.

Ultimately, each decision is in service of the PS4’s unbelievably compact form factor. Measuring at roughly 2” thick, 10.8” wide, and 12” deep, the PS4 is 35% thinner and takes up considerably less surface area than the Xbox One. It’s even slightly thinner than the PS3 Super Slim. In other words, the PS4 is entering the new generation with a form factor smaller than what had previously taken six years to reach with the PS3.

Even more impressive is how quiet and relatively cool the PS4 remains throughout hours of use. Although by no means silent, the PS4’s noise profile never seems to exceed a gentle hum, even when running the most GPU-taxing titles. When placed on the entertainment center eight feet from my couch, it was hard to even notice.

Under the hood, there’s the much touted AMD-based APU and 8GBs of GDDR5 memory, which is evidenced by the fast, fluid performance of the OS and various apps, and of course, the substantial leap in graphics. Sony has severed all ties with non-digital I/O, offering only HDMI video/audio output, optical digital for surround sound audio, a ethernet port, and an AUX jack for the new PlayStation Camera. There are also two USB 3.0 ports on the front, though as of launch, the PS4 lacks support for external storage devices that would take advantage of the increased data transfer speeds. However, each system ships with 500GBs of storage that’s upgradable using off-the-shelf parts — a notable edge over the Xbox One.

In face of the PS4’s other performance-focused features, it’s unusual that Sony has outfitted the PS4 with a 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi chip instead of the latest standard, 802.11ac, which offers significant gains in range and signal strength. It would have added to the cost of the system and market penetration for 802.11ac products is still burgeoning, but Sony’s aspirations for Gaikai cloud streaming and remote play would have reaped the benefits in the long-term.

Still, the PS4 remains an achievement in console design.

The camera also listens for certain voice commands, which can be used to launch a game or app, power down the system, take screenshots, or swap users. For the most part, the system detects vocal cues rapidly and accurately, but environments with louder ambient noise can throw it off. What’s worse, the camera can take commands from anyone within range of its microphones, making it easy for unscrupulous housemates to disrupt the experience. The camera is inherently useful for motion-based games like Just Dance 2014, and in that use case it performs well, but the number of games that make use of or require it is still a small fraction of those available.

The camera’s lone killer app, however, is providing a picture-in-picture video feed while streaming gameplay to Twitch TV or Ustream. With the camera connected, you can add a personal spin to your livestream by offering a windowed view of yourself as you play. That alone may not be enough to warrant the $60 price of admission, though.

The PlayStation Camera could become a larger part of the software ecosystem and PS4 experience, but at the moment, a Kinect killer it is not.

The OS: XMB Reborn

The PS4’s operating system is gorgeous, straightforward, and fast, improving and expanding upon the PS3’s XMB interface with a greater focus on social interaction and content. All of the core functions, such as the PSN Store, your profile, and Trophies, are all presented in a linear horizontal row using much of the same iconography found on the PS3 and PS Vita. Rather than burying content under categories, Sony has crafted a new subsection of shortcuts to all of your installed apps and games, organized by most recently launched. Although far more visually appealing with its high-resolution thumbnails, the view can become unwieldy as your collection grows. At launch, there’s no way to group or pin your favorite content, which seems like an odd, obvious oversight.

The opportunity to interact with PSN friends permeates every corner of the OS, which stands in stark contrast to the sterile, isolated social experience of the PS3. There’s a new consolidated activity feed called What’s New, which lists out all of your friends’ recent activity, ranging from what games they’re playing to Trophies they’ve earned, friends they’ve added, screenshots they’ve posted, or videos they’ve captured. In concept, it’s a great method for getting a comprehensive look at what’s happening within your network, but finding new shared content or learning what new games your friends are playing can often be buried amidst the minutiae of recently added friends or new Trophies. For a more targeted view, you can hover over a game and see all activity pertaining to that particular title.

The widespread surfacing of trophies, as well as new Trophy rarity metric, not only gives the system more value, but encourages greater competition amongst your friends. In addition to the bronze, silver, gold, and platinum valuations, each Trophy earned is assigned a rarity value based on what percentage of the community has earned it. It may seem like a small feature addition, but it inspired me to care and value the Trophies I’ve earned, and to seek out some of the more prestigious ones I’ve yet to obtain.

While PSN still won’t allow us to change our usernames, you can now choose to make your real name visible to certain friends via a separate authorization request. If approved, both players will be presented to each other by their real name, and if the system is synced with Facebook, can use their default photo as their avatar.

It’s small additions like these that make the PS4 feel far more like a living, breathing community.

The PS4 also heralds the arrival of long-absent features like cross-game party chat and unified, multi-user messaging. Parties offer the ability to have voice and text communication with up to seven other players. Within the party interface, you can choose to boost chat audio over in-game audio or even swap between talking to your party or chatting with your in-game team on the fly. Oddly, however, neither group is muted regardless of which you choose, which depending on how you look at it, can be an annoyance or a useful tool. On the one hand, it’s helpful for preserving awareness of strategic information provided by your in-game team, but on the other, it can conflict with your party members.

The messages function supports persistent peer-to-peer or multi-user communication across PS4, PS Vita, and mobile, and includes text, image, and 15-second voice messages. What the PS4 severely lacks at launch, however, is any form of video conferencing or messaging.

Although player communication leaves some things to be desired, sharing gameplay experiences both inside PSN and with third-party services like Twitter or Facebook is seamless. At any point during a game, you can tap the share button on the DualShock 4 to save a screenshot or video clip, or broadcast live over

The PlayStation Camera

Like the DualShock 4’s lightbar, the PlayStation Camera is clearly part of a long-term vision not yet fully realized. The optional $59.99 add-on can be used to log in to the system using visual recognition, issue voice commands, motion detection for select games, and video broadcasting, but at launch, software support and the effectiveness of each function is so limited that it’s hard to recommend the purchase.

Users can calibrate the camera to recognize them once the system boots up, but rather than just recognizing a player and logging in, the PS4 requires you to raise a DualShock 4 into view as an added authentication step. Although reasonably precise and responsive, the process is less intuitive and effective than just using the gamepad to begin with.

Twitch or Ustream.

With the previous generation of hardware, streaming gameplay requires additional hardware and software, but now you can get up and running within seconds. The ability to see comments on-screen in real time makes interaction with viewers simple and fun, and the aforementioned picture-in-picture view offered by the add-on camera brings a personal touch. There are a few disappointing limitations currently, however. For one, the software lacks the ability to dictate compression levels and resolutions outside of generic presets like  “good,” “great,” and “best.” There’s also no ability to archive broadcasts, which eliminates replay value for anyone who missed the initial stream. What’s worse, stored video clips or broadcasts can’t be exported to external media at present.

Most important of all, the PS4’s social and game-sharing tools are accessible at any time thanks to multitasking. Jumping in and out of games to view a message or check the status of a PSN download is almost instantaneous. The only time I’ve experienced any slowdown at all is when my connection quality dropped or I was disconnected entirely, at which point the OS struggles to retrieve social data.

The other unfortunate side effect of PSN outages or connection issues is the inability to access content purchased digitally. Without a connection to verify your license for a game at system boot-up, the app or game becomes locked — even if it’s an offline single-player game. Disc-based games, on the other hand, can be played at any time, so those considering going all-digital should weigh that into their decision.

Remote Play

On the PS3, Remote Play turned out to be an empty promise, but on the PS4, it could be a system seller. With a Wi-Fi connection, you can access your PS4 and play games remotely from your PS Vita. After a one-time pairing, your PS Vita can wake your PS4 from standby mode anywhere in your house. Though the Vita lacks the triggers and thumbstick buttons of the DualShock 4, most games will map those functions to sections of the rear touchpad. In cases like Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag, you can even navigate the in-game map using the touchscreen.

Remote Play performance will hinge entirely upon your wireless network. In my home, I was able to get stable performance across multiple rooms and up to 40 feet from my base station, though due to the makeup of my building, dead zones are common – you may experience greater or shorter range. Regardless of whether a connection is dropped or you activate Remote Play mid-session, you never have to restart a game or your system.

Remote Play is also accessible outside of a local Wi-Fi connection, though at present, I’ve yet to make a successful pairing.

The DualShock 4

The DualShock 4 resolves just about every common criticism of the DualShock 3, and in my view, ranks alongside the exceptional Xbox 360 gamepad. It’s bigger, more ergonomic, and at long last, has concave thumbsticks and triggers. Whereas the DualShock 3’s handles were small and its convex triggers were counterintuitive, the DualShock 4 feels substantial and conforms to your hands with ridged indented thumbsticks and flat triggers that wrap around the pads of your fingers.

The handles are approximately half an inch longer and have a wider, more rounded shape that rests comfortably in your palms. The thumbsticks are shorter with more resistance, creating a better sense of precision and responsiveness. The buttons of the D-pad are slightly larger and pivot inward for better tactile differentiation, while the X, square, triangle, and circle buttons are largely the same.

What’s most striking about the DualShock 4 is how everything from the D-pad to the action buttons — and even the center trackpad — are within effortless reach. I’ve never had to arch my thumbs or index fingers to reach the shoulders or home button, which now falls between the two analog sticks. Simply put, the DualShock 4 feels fantastic.

In addition to the significant ergonomic leap, the DualShock 4 also adds new functionality, most notably wireless game audio. Using the standard headphone jack built into the base of the controller, you can plug in any standard headset or earbuds and access in-game audio, as well as chat. While it lacks the surround-sound processing found on the mixamps of third-party gaming headsets, the audio quality is surprisingly good (even if the included single-earbud set is not). I’ve noticed odd feedback issues with certain headsets, like Apple’s earpods, while most work just fine. It’s by no means a replacement for high-end Astros or Turtle Beach headphones, but it’s more than sufficient for general use and cuts down on wire clutter considerably.

There’s also the new integrated speaker, but usage at launch is sparse. Of the games that do take advantage, very few make a compelling case for its inclusion. The controller speaker will most often just mimic an in-game effect, but in a diminished, tinny tone.

Support for the built-in trackpad is even rarer, and most of the time it’s simply used as just a large button to replace the Select button or, in the case of Killzone: Shadow Fall, as an additional D-pad. What’s worse, it’s not even used in applications where it would make the most sense, like the web browser. Instead of using the trackpad to control the cursor, the function is mapped to the left thumbstick.

But no feature is more underutilized and seemingly superfluous than the lightbar. The next-generation manifestation of the PS3’s PS Move controllers, the lightbar was clearly designed to work alongside the PlayStation Camera and help identify players for motion-based games. But with plans to bundle the sensor in with every system scrapped prior to launch, its utility is now largely aesthetic unless you buy the add-on. While the lightbar can be used to assign players to specific controllers or react to the beat in Sound Shapes, it’s good for little more than novelty. After all, it’s hard to notice small glowing effects when your focus is largely on your TV, let alone a light that’s not even facing you.

We’re likely to see greater adoption and subsequently more alluring uses for the DualShock 4’s unique features as the platform ages, but for now, there’s not much use for them.

In terms of battery life, the DualShock 4 can run for anywhere from eight to nine hours on a single charge, which is considerably less than the DualShock 3’s advertised 30-hour lifespan. Still, it’s more than ample charge time for even the most enthusiastic players, and now that the PS4 can recharge controllers while in standby mode, it’s fairly easy to keep your DualShock 4 juiced up.

The Verdict

Like any launch console, the PS4 isn’t perfect. The software is lacking some key functionality, the DualShock 4’s more distinctive features are underutilized, and remote play is still rough around the edges. But in spite of these issues, the PS4 is an exceptionally well-crafted console. It's impressively small and attractive design sets a new bar for the industry, and its powerful hardware offers not only stunning visuals, but higher player counts, constantly connected experiences, and larger, more detailed worlds.

And did I mention how great the DualShock 4 is? It’s pretty amazing.

NFS: Rivals Game review

Need for Speed: Rivals review

Like any good racer, the Need for Speed franchise never stops moving. They've come a long way since the early '90s, though the last few years' releases have been more about refinement of the formula than anything else, moving more towards an open world structure.

The latest in the franchise, Need for Speed: Rivals, takes a big step by going all-in on one mode that combines a single-player campaign with online multiplayer. The rest -- including the cops, the cars, and the crashing -- stay the same. In a sense, they've made it so players can jump in and go fast without having to worry about the details.

And it's all the better for it.

Need for Speed: Rivals (PS4 [reviewed], PS3, Xbox One, Xbox 360, PC)
Developer: Ghost Games
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Release: November 15, 2013 for PS4, November 19 for Xbox 360,  PS3

Need for Speed: Rivals is an open-world racing sandbox that you're free to do whatever you'd like in. Sure, there's a single-player progression and a light story to follow, but that stuff really doesn't matter in the long run. It's all about going fast and doing what you want as either a racer or a cop, speeding around in a big, crazy racing world.

When you boil this game's structure down, it's a series of checklists to complete. While that might not sound exciting, it works pretty well as a way to keep players engaged. Since Rivals lets you play as either a cop or a racer, there are branching paths to follow to work your way up through the progression. Along the way you're free to take on any of the branches, called Speed Lists, picking the objectives you'd prefer to tackle, or the ones that suit your racing style best. Completing items from these Speed Lists will earn you Speed Points, which can be used to buy and upgrade your cars, while completing the Speed Lists themselves will unlock more cars.

Rivals goes light on the customization. Beyond the basic paint job and trim customization, progressions that add to a car's speed, acceleration, control, and durability are also available. The only true customization comes from Rivals' Pursuit Tech, which lets you add offensive abilities to your cars. Shockwaves, EMP blasts, jammers and more can be equipped in the two available slots of each car. Each of the Pursuit Tech types also has an upgrade progression. 

For the racer side of the game, the Speed Lists focus on either racing, driving, or messing with the cops. For the most part, by picking carefully, I found that I could avoid the challenges I didn't care for -- like the interceptor cop chases -- sticking to the fun ones that had me jumping off ramps for distance, or bashing other cars off the road. There are points where the progression forces one objective on all of the paths, though these cases are rare. For the most part, the constantly evolving stream of challenges keeps things fresh, though I found that after I had tried most of the challenge types, it started to feel more like a grind.

It works the same way on the cop side, giving the choice to patrol or enforce with challenge types that are more in line with what a cop with a super-fast sports car might do to uphold traffic laws. While taking down racers with sirens screaming is always fun, some of the challenges, like the "go-fast-but-don't-mess-up" Rapid Response mission are somewhat boring in comparison. 

Need for Speed: Rivals' AllDrive mode has you playing your races alongside the rest of the world, effectively mixing single-player and multiplayer experiences together. Every time the game is loaded, you're logged into EA's servers. Other players will show up in your game, and you're free to challenge them in races. Through Autolog, friends' race times and other records are also tracked and compared as you race, adding another competitive layer.

Between the story progression, the speed lists, and AllDrive, you're never at a loss for what to do next. You can keep your head down and keep to yourself if you'd like, but I found that openly engaging other racers makes for a much better time. As nicely done as Rivals' open world is, it wouldn't be nearly as exciting without real racers zipping around you as you try to run from the cops. For the most part, it gets rid of its predecessors' scripted races and messy multiplayer, giving you action that feels more real. AllDrive is the real deal, and it makes for some pretty lively gameplay.

As great as the open world and its always-online connectivity are, there are a few speed bumps inRivals' game balance. While the cop campaign is mostly problem free, racers' patience will be tried with some supremely frustrating design choices. While both cops and racers earn Speed Points for completing challenges, racers are always at risk of losing their earnings at any time. Cop busts or full wrecks will drain all of a racer's earnings; the only way to ensure keeping these points is to race to a hideout to 'bank' earnings before being busted.

There are multiple issues here. First off, the more Speed Points a racer earns, the higher their point multiplier goes, letting them increase earnings exponentially if they're daring enough. But, with this multiplier increase comes a heat level increase, which means that the cops are more likely to attack. And, with faster cars, the heat level starts out higher.

By the middle of the racer campaign, you're certain to have cops on you at all times, and there is no break or breathing room. Even if you're flying at over 200 miles per hour with nitrous flaming out the back of your car, the cops are on you, coming from all directions, plowing at you at any given opportunity. Chances are you will be busted, and you will lose all of your Speed Points. Since Speed Points earnings are tied directly to the acquisition of new cars and their upgrades, you're essentially losing your progress with each bust. 

There were sessions of play where I was being busted six times an hour, which means that aside from Speed List challenge checkmarks, I was literally spinning my wheels, going nowhere. In the later levels cops are so aggressive that the game's open-world sense of freedom is completely drained. Cars can be pulled over for not moving at all, first off -- that's ridiculous.

I had points where I had pulled my car near hideout after barely breaking free from multiple attacks, mashing L1 to make sure I'd be able to bank my Speed Points, only to find the cops flying at me from every angle, coming out of nowhere to bust me before the game even registered my button presses. I streamed a couple of these sessions via PS4 last week, and my viewers got a kick out of me losing my mind over Speed Point losses. I didn't think it was funny at all.

There are a couple of other design holdouts from Most Wanted that they still need to fix. When you need to set a waypoint most -- during a pursuit where you're in danger of losing all of your Speed Points -- Rivals' conveniences no longer feel convenient. You can use either the EasyDrive mini menu by tapping the d-pad, or the overworld map, by pushing the Option button. Either has you taking your eyes off the road when you should be going full speed. With no way to stop and look, you're going to either crash or get busted. There's nothing even close to a pause button.

The mini-map is pathetically small, poorly placed, and barely usable. Just like with Most Wanted, it's too far away from the action in the bottom left corner to look at, which means you'll have to take your eyes off the road to know where to go. Doing so at 200 miles per hour never ends well -- and with that kind of speed you're actually out-driving the map! The colored path lines are slow to appear anyway, but at that speed they appear far too late. Worst of all, the range the map displays is too restricted, leaving you unsure of what's ahead until its too late. Ghost Games have added street-level graphical indicators to help guide you in the right direction, but they're hard to see, and they still don't give enough of a clear view of where you need to be going.

That all said, I want to thank Ghost Games for dialing back the crash animations. In Most Wanted, they lasted so long that it felt like the game was making fun of you for losing, and were sometimes so disorienting that I had to look away. In Rivals, they're big and flashy, but not drawn out. 

Need for Speed: Rivals looks great on the PS4, though there's nothing inherently next-gen about it. It 

looks like a souped up current-gen title with added areas of polish. All of the cars are shiny and highly detailed, and the day-night cycles and weather changes are impressive. Ghost Games' California-inspired world, Redvies, is particularly lovely in its desert areas. Again, no complaints, but I can't wait to see what a ground-up built, next-gen Need for Speed will look like.  

My only gripes on Rivals' presentation are the story elements and their narration. The tutorial narrator sounds bored or annoyed, which does little to get you excited about the race. The story itself is nonsensical, and the cutscenes are so silly that you'll likely end up skipping them. But the voice bits assigned to each level's Speed List are so bad that you might get some enjoyment out of them in that unintentionally funny kind of way. It sounds like some dope with a nose cold trying to mock designer cologne commercial one-liners. "Fate is out there. Somewhere," one says.

Rivals crashed on me a few times, with one crash so bad that the PS4 asked me to send a crash report. Twice, when trying to use the PS4's Share button to upload clips, the game crashed and closed out on its own, losing my progress. Another time, in checking the map during a race, I was kicked out of the game. A few graphical glitches also popped up in the distance, though they were nothing major.

Even with the balance issues and design missteps, Need for Speed: Rivals is a blast. Literally. Plowing into cops to watch them explode off the side of the road as you zip by is never not fun. So is blasting them with EMP to watch them flip in the air. And through AllDrive's connectivity, I loved being able to race up alongside someone and mash L1 to instantly challenge them to a head-to-head showdown. Ramping jumps, drift contests, dodging speed traps -- it's all a blast. There's simply too much fun to be had here to get hung up on the gripes.

Just be sure to take breaks when playing the racer campaign, as the grind, and the suicidal cops can wear on you.

Review ratings:

9/10

Batman: Arkham Origins Review 

Warner Bros obviously wants to turn the Batman Arkham franchise into a regular series, much like Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed. However, after the massively successful Arkham Asylum and Arkham City, WB decided to take Rocksteady Studios off the franchise and opted to give the reins over to an in-house studio—WB Montreal—for Batman: Arkham Origins. We took the game for a spin to see if the new studio was able to do justice to the franchise. Hypothetically, all WB had to do was to copy-paste the gameplay from Arkham City and give it a new story. Did they succeed? Well…

Graphically, not much has changed. Arkham Origins still runs on Unreal Engine, so we get the same beefy Batman we got back in Arkham City and Asylum. The game takes place during Christmas Eve, which gives us a hand-wave excuse for why there aren’t more civilians around Gotham (Arkham City didn’t have many civilians because it was a walled-off area where prisoners were detained). What has changed, however, is that Origins is a prequel. Not, as the name might imply, an Origin story for the Caped Crusader, mind you. It is an origin story for the events that take place in Asylum and City.

Batman's pretty raw and unrefined in Origins

Here goes the plot: despite it being just a couple of years after donning the cowl, the Bat Man is still a mystery to most of the denizens of Gotham City. Everyone hates him; the criminals he has a hand in putting behind bars as well as the police who don’t want someone else doing their job for them. Amidst the chaos, Roman “Black Mask” Sionis has called a bounty on the Bat’s head. This leads to a bunch of baddies from the Batman rogues gallery going toe-to-toe with our superhero. It’s not exactly award-winning stuff, but it does more for the game than most videogame plots do.

Since this is much earlier in Batman’s career, it is quite evident that Batman isn’t at his complete crazy prime. Bats is still quite raw, and it shows in the great work the developers put in the animations. His attacks are wild and he doesn’t care where he hits baddies and how many bones he breaks, as long as it knocks them out or keeps them conscious long enough to be interrogated. This is in contrast to the cold, calculating and much more mature Batman we saw in Arkham City and Asylum, who could blindly throw a punch and give you a complete report on how many bones he broke with it.

The game's plot... isn't very good

We also hear Roger Craig Smith being the new voice of Batman, as opposed to the series (and overall Batman franchise) veteran Kevin Conroy. Smith does a convincing job as a rawer and younger version of Conroy’s Batman, and you’ll find no complaints from us in the voice acting department. Troy Baker also seems to be quickly making a name for himself for appearing in every other game being released, and this time, he’s the Joker. While not exactly Mark Hamill, Baker plays the psychopathic clown quite well. Sadly enough, his laugh still pales in comparison to Hamill’s.

The gameplay is the same that it’s ever been. Regular combat sessions follow the same satisfying rhythm-based system that first made its appearance in Arkham Asylum, but it carries forward all of the upgrades from Arkham City, such as the ability to counter more than one mook at a time or even the ability to use gadgets mid-combo. The combo system itself has been slightly tweaked, but nothing largely noticeable. The same goes for the Predator sequences, which, again, have come through largely unchanged.

The Bat Man is seen as an urban legend in Gotham

What has changed, in terms of gameplay, is the new ability of Detective Vision. It can now recreate scenes from crimes based on evidence you might find lying around. This is a great addition, and WB seems to have remembered that Batman is often known as the “world’s greatest detective”. However, these sequences are rigidly scripted, and you will often be hand-held through them, showing you exactly where evidence might be. The game even helpfully tells you when you should rewind or fast-forward through the crime scene recreations to find more evidence. These minor niggles prevent what could have been a great mechanic from reaching its full potential.

The world is now much bigger than it was in Arkham City, which essentially makes it much more painful to travel through. Perhaps noticing it themselves, the developers decided to add a fast travel system into the game which involves “flying the Batwing,” but ends up being a glorified loading screen. Before you can fast-travel to anywhere in Gotham, however, you have to first take over some radio jamming towers set up by the Riddler, known in this game as Enigma since Batman doesn’t really know him yet. This, again, seems like missed opportunity to have some vehicle segments. Imagine flying the Batwing around Gotham, finding enemies, diving out and glide-kicking the nearest foe.

Troy Baker can do a pretty good Joker

Sound design is as good as it’s ever been. The orchestral score is reminiscent of the Batman Animated Series, and it flows from area-to-area. The meaty sounds of Batman’s fist making contact with an enemy’s face sound much more painful than they actually should, and because of the sound, I often caught myself thinking: “I don’t care how much Batman pretends he doesn’t kill people. Those guys are NOT getting back up.”

The problem with Arkham Origins is that WB has decided to play it safe. Instead of giving us a big step forward, like Arkham City was to Arkham Asylum, we instead have something that is too iterative. If you absolutely can’t bear the thought of not owning something that has Batman’s face on it, we’d recommend it. Otherwise, however, we’d recommend replaying Arkham City and saving your money for some of the better games from this year. Maybe check out Rayman Legends instead? We hear it's pretty good.

Platforms: PC, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 (tested)

Company of Heroes 2 Review 

 

The real-time strategy genre is very under-represented these days, with three of its biggest players being Blizzard with the Warcraft and StarCraft series', Creative Assembly with the Total War series and Relic Entertainment with... let's just say that Relic has been making strategy games for a really long time. All of them have their own specific take on it too, with Blizz opting for the traditional base-building and army-building gameplay and Creative Assembly going for massive scale.

World War 2? In my strategy games?

On the other hand, Relic's strategy games, ever since the first Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, have always had the same distinct style to them: less resource management and more focus on the combat. The RTS veteran continues this tradition with its latest outing—Company of Heroes 2. First, however, a quick primer: Company of Heroes 2 is a real-time strategy game set during World War 2, much like the first CoH. When the first game was launched, it made a giant wave in the strategy genre because of how much it truly refined the systems that Relic had set in place with Dawn of War. Now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's move on to the actual review.

The single player of the game is divided in three parts—the campaign mode, versus AI skirmishes and the single player missions in Theatre of War. The campaign focuses on the story of a single soldier of the Red Army—Lev Abramovich Isakovich (we'll call him Lev for purposes of brevity)—with the rather interesting "interrogation" framing device that we've seen in other war games such as Battlefield 3. Lev is languishing in a Siberian labour camp because of the contents of his journals, which have deemed to be worthy of treason charges because of his negative protrayal and questioning of the Soviet Union during World War 2. Each mission is Lev explaining his side of the things in events that take place during the war. Despite it being the same old World War 2 story that we've heard countless times, it feels fresh because of the framing device.

The campaign attempts to ease players into Company of Heroes 2 mechanics, but doesn't manage to be graceful or elegant about it. New gameplay mechanics are constantly added into missions and you are forced to use them, but most of the information is lost in the chaos that generally takes place in and around a battlefield. Often, it is left to the players themselves to figure things out. The first few missions are quite simple and linear as a result of this. However, once you get deeper into the campaign, things do start opening up; maps become more expansive and missions get challenging. There is even a bit of room for creativity when taking on certain objectives, letting you flex your inner Armchair General.

The campaign eventually opens up to allow more creativity and tactics

For the history buffs, there's the Theatre of War, which has a bunch of scenarios from 1941 for both German and Russian armies. There are separate scenarios for single-player and co-op, and each are challenging in their own way. They essentially put you in situations based on real-life events during World War 2. Single-player is fun, but co-op is definitely the best way to experience the Theatre. Rounding up the list of single-player modes is the versus AI skirmish mode, which can also be played co-op. Simply put, it pits you against the AI in multiplayer maps and lets you get some practice before you hit the Find Match button in multiplayer. Again, co-op is the most entertaining way to play, but if you're into 1v1 battles, those are available too.

But, let's face it... real-time strategy games aren't exactly popular for their single-player, since there's only so much enjoyment to be had from beating predictable AI. No... what you want is something more challenging. You want to play against actual people who can see your strategies and plan around them, forcing you to improvise. For this, Company of Heroes 2, like any good RTS, has multiplayer. The game's got a simple automatch interface that lets you set options like player count (divided in 1v1, 2v2, 3v3 and 4v4 matchups) and other matchmaking options, for instance, whether you want to play with players in the same skill range or those better than you.

Gameplay itself revolves around capturing points that automatically keep giving you resources such as man power and gasoline. There are two types of games—Victory Points and Annihilation. Victory Points revolves around players scrambling around to capture the titular victory points and hold them for a certain amount of time. There are always three victory points in any given map, and the player who holds at least two of them for a certain amount of time wins. Annihilation is pretty self-explanatory—fight to the death where the last man standing wins. Depending on the game mode, you'll have to make many tactical decisions that mostly have to do with keeping your soldiers alive while you scramble for resources to get reinforcements.

Snow... snow and death...

Speaking of keeping soldiers alive, Company of Heroes 2 has a new gameplay mechanic that makes doing just that even more challenging. As if an average soldier's lifespan in an RTS wasn't already short enough, Relic went ahead and added a new temperature system to the game. Players have to keep a track of their soldiers' temperatures and make sure that they don't freeze to death. To make this even harder, every once in a while, a map is hit by a blizzard. Apart from the obvious problems to visibility, the blizzard also starts the slow and painful-looking process of freezing your soldiers to death. You have to either garrison them into some kind of building, recall them to base, or have them stand near a camp fire to ward off the cold.

The snow, and everything around it, looks quite gorgeous thanks to the new Essence 3.0 engine that Relic has been talking about leading up to the release of the game. The engine is quite adept at capturing the chaos that would generally ensue when one tries to manoeuvre six of his rifleman squads so that they can try to take out a tank with nothing but grenades. The foliage looks beautiful and raining down artillery on a shack brings it down as realistically as one would expect. Even the sound in the game is great. Gunshots sound realistic and the random things that soldiers sometimes say are a nice touch, even funny sometimes. You get a different perspective on war when you see a soldier respond to his comrade's death with the line, “Damn! He owed me money!”

With all the good, however, there is one major point against this game. It has DLC that blocks off some of the abilities that you can use in the game. Sure, you have a lot of abilities to choose from by default, but a lot of players have been complaining that the DLC abilities are overpowered. Unless Relic rebalances them, this remains a point against the game. Despite my hatred for launch-day DLC, however, I am willing to let this slide, since the game on its own is so filled with content. I just hope that Relic gets around to patching the imbalances out before people start shouting “pay-2-win” at the company.

The tank doesn't know that the people running behind it aren't looking for a hug

Company of Heroes 2 is an oasis in a genre that is akin to a barren wasteland. It has compelling gameplay as well as great depth. The concepts in the game are easy enough to understand, but pulling them off while trying to manage not dying is a different thing entirely. The game's focus on offense and tactics rather than resource-gathering and base-building also come as a breath of fresh air. After further refining the gameplay system in this game, we can only imagine what Relic might have in store for us further down the line, maybe even with a new Dawn of War game.

Platform: PC

GTA V Review

Grand Theft Auto V Review    It's a very simple mission: steal all of the jewelry from a high-class jewelry store. There are a number of ways Michael and Franklin can go through with this—going in smart or going in loud. Michael decides that going in smart would be the better approach, and thus starts arranging for some knockout gas to pass through the store's ventilation. Once everyone's knocked out, they have a couple of minutes to clean out the store before an alarm triggers. This is just the first of the epic missions you will get to play through in Rockstar’s latest offering—Grand Theft Auto 5. After the somewhat-disappointing GTA 4 which was salvaged by its amazing story and stellar expansion packs, Rockstar seems to have returned to form with GTA 5. The game takes us back to the city of Los Santos and the area surrounding it, named Blaine County. While it isn’t exactly the biggest world we’ve seen in gaming, it’s far from the emptiest. There are a ton of things to do with any of the characters. Not only are there story and side missions, GTA 5 also has random events that happen whenever you drive past areas. These are some simple events that give you a chance to be the good guy (a rarity in these games) by, for example, helping a woman who has just been mugged. The three psychopathic musketeers The world is huge, though, and quite pretty. The decadence and urban decay of Los Angeles has been perfectly captured and caricaturised in Los Santos. It’s also much better than the (amazing) rendition of New York we saw in GTA 4’s Liberty City. It isn’t just a mess of buildings and roads anymore. The areas in Los Santos are quite varied, from the hilly and posh Vinewood to the downtrodden ports. There is also a great reference to the earlier San Andreas with a whole mission taking place on Grove Street (right outside CJ’s house in San Andreas). The outskirts, countryside and desert-like areas of Blaine County aren’t slouches in the variety department either. It’s got everything from costal towns to serial killer hideouts in forests to a desert town comprised almost entirely of trailers. These areas are brimming with things to do. You can buy the sonar company in the sea-side town of Paleto Bay and help them clean out the surrounding waters of nuclear waste, or as Trevor, you can pick up random people and deliver them to a mysterious cult in the mountains. For more traditional sources of fun, you can take part in triathlons, dirt bike races and some spelunking if you like. While hardly anyone really plays Grand Theft Auto games for their plots, the stories have been of considerably high quality since the Grand Theft Auto: Vice City days. GTA 5, however, may just have the best plot in the franchise. All three characters have their own backstories and motivations—Michael is a retired criminal who is pushed back into a life of crime because of some mistakes he makes in his fits of rage, Trevor is Michael’s old and psychotic friend who holds quite a grudge and Franklin is a typical gangster who is tired of the life and wants to move up the food chain. All of their stories have been believably pulled off, and you can't help but empathise with at least one of these characters. Los Santos looks gorgeous from any angle Rockstar may have had a stroke of genius when it decided to have three protagonists in lieu of just one. The three characters—Michael, Franklin and Trevor—all represent GTA-specific character tropes. Michael, for instance, is the typical GTA protagonist who has retired after a successful run at crimes. Franklin is like a GTA character that has just started out in the world. Trevor is the most interesting of the lot. He symbolises the type of player who just plays GTA games to kill as many people as he can. This is well-explored; the game shows us exactly what kind of people these players would be if GTA was the real world. The narrative itself has taken a much lighter turn, especially when compared to GTA 4 its Lost and the Damned DLC. Los Santos isn’t nearly as dreary and depressing as Liberty City was. Instead, it’s bright and colourful. It has vibrant beaches and neon-lit strip clubs. The characters are much happier with where they are in their lives than Niko Bellic was even by the end of his epic saga. The story doesn’t really have an over-arching plotline except for some missions with the FIB (GTA’s FBI). Most of the game consists of internal squabbles between the trio and self-contained heists. The believable world, backstories, motivations and emotions of the characters are further compounded by the ability to quickly switch between them at any time when not on a mission. The animation for switching is a bit short (even shorter if they’re in the same area), and you’re immediately thrust into the life of a different character. Whenever you switch, you catch these characters as they are doing something they would usually do if they were real people. All the characters live their lives when you're not playing them You’ll randomly catch Michael in his existential hellhole where his son and daughter don’t respect him as he gets into a screaming match with his wife. Trevor, more often than not, is lying drunk in some corner of the world, and curiously, lacks his clothes and is surrounded by fresh corpses. Franklin will contemplate his old life in his house in the hills or will be walking out of a medical store smoking medical marijuana. Not only does character switching add more character to the world, it also makes travelling across the vast Blaine County or Los Santos much easier. Bored of driving in the desert as Trevor? Just switch to Michael as he drinks his morning coffee in a Bean Machine in Downtown Los Santos. Character switching has also been pulled off masterfully in missions. Each of the three characters has a different job to do in missions. For example, Michael mans a high-powered sniper rifle with which he has to take down the engine of a plane flying by. Once this is done, the game quickly switches to Trevor who has to chase the plane down as it crashes on his dirt bike through the deserts of Blaine County. Not only does it add more variety to the mission, it also improves the pacing by a fair bit. The game also gives you the option to switch characters at will at specific points. The much-referenced mission where the trio has to kidnap a person from the IAA (the GTA universe’s equivalent of the CIA) comes to mind. Trevor pilots a helicopter as Michael rappels down the side of the building to kidnap the person. Once he breaks in, there’s a short gunfight. At this point, you can either continue killing people as Michael or switch to Franklin, who stands on the roof of a nearby building and gives Michael covering fire with a sniper rifle. Mission structure in GTA games have never been this good, and it comes mostly thanks to Rockstar’s insane decision to have three protagonists instead of one. Yes, you can go underwater, and yes, there are sharks The driving has been improved by a ton. Gone are the sluggish and slow controlling-vehicles of Grand Theft Auto 4. Rockstar has instead taken hints from its own Midnight Club series as well as its competitor—Saints Row. Cars handle fluidly, and even if it’s a big and heavy vehicle, you won’t have the same trouble driving as you did in GTA 4. Vehicles control snappily and pick up speed quite well. This is compounded thanks to the modification system where players can upgrade any vehicle they pick up off the street. Planes make a comeback too, after making a brief appearance in San Andreas and going into hiatus for the entirety of GTA 4. The other side of GTA’s gameplay—the shooting—has also undergone an overhaul. Gunfights aren’t a chore in the game anymore. Weapons feel good to fire and the targeting and cover system have been improved considerably. With the presence of Michael’s special ability (slow motion on foot), GTA 5’s gunplay has more in common with the Max Payne series than any other game. Speaking of guns, all of them can be modified in a number of ways—by adding flashlights, extra grips, suppressors and extended magazines. GTA 5 also brings back stealth, which was earlier present in a rudimentary form in San Andreas and was all but missing in GTA 4. Players can sneak around missions and knock out or kill guards with suppressed weapons. The system, while not as good as Metal Gear Solid or Splinter Cell, has been done as well as one would expect. The UI helps too. Characters making noises show up on in the mini-map, and enemies and cops have Metal Gear Solid-styled vision cones that help you plan out paths to avoid them. Visually, we’d be hard-pressed to believe this was a current-gen game if we didn’t know any better. The cityscape looks amazing, especially when you catch it during a sunset from a high-enough vantage point. Blaine County, with all of its desolation and hillbillies, also manages to look gorgeous. Characters look better too, with none of them looking as ugly as they did in GTA 4. It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to say that GTA 5 represents the true power of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. We love bikes As is usual for Rockstar, music choice is amazing. The in-vehicle radio has stations for almost every genre imaginable, with quite a few songs from some amazing artists. For example, start Los Santos Rock Radio and you’ll hear Queen’s Radio Ga Ga. Switch to the Hip Hop station West Coast Classics and you’ll hear You Know How We Do It by Ice Cube. Talk radio is just as funny as before, but still not as loony as it was in the Vice City and San Andreas days. Grand Theft Auto 5 seems to be Rockstar’s final goodbye to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Sure we’ll be seeing games after the PS4 and Xbox One hit it, but we doubt they’ll be technologically superior to Grand Theft Auto 5. With this, Rockstar has released what many will consider to be the best game in the long-running franchise. It might even convince some people to let go of Vice City and San Andreas, and instead pick GTA 5 as their favourites. Despite the lack of any compelling or halfway-tolerable female characters, the heists, characters and the world all come together to prove why Rockstar is still one of the best at making open-world games, if not the best. Grand Theft Auto 5 is Rockstar at its best. Platform: PlayStation 3