Fallout 3

Bethesda's Fallout 3 not only outshone the studio's previous game, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, in just about every way, it accomplished the impressive task of satisfying most non-extremist-level fans of Black Isle's venerable Fallout series. Creating a vast world that is a convincing representation of a dismal, post-nuclear wasteland while also being consistently compelling is no mean feat, but here it is. The sheer amount of content in Fallout 3 is extremely impressive, considering what a consistent level of quality it maintains - and how much of it a player is likely to completely miss, based on the choices made, the NPCs killed, the...

Read more »

Left 4 Dead

There may be no other game released this year that can promise as consistently a thrilling and hilarious multiplayer experience as this. Out of Valve's ongoing attempts to bridge the gap between its highly-tuned single-player titles and the necessarily chaotic nature of multiplayer gaming comes Left 4 Dead, whose AI director and tight four-player cooperative play create a team-based atmosphere that is both coherent and unpredictable, even upon multiple playthings of the same campaign. Hitting the right notes between necessary player-to-player interaction and the independence demanded by a first-person shooter, Left 4 Dead is possibly the most...

Read more »

Far Cry 2

Few games of 2008 have been as polarizing on the online forums as Far Cry 2 - it has been understandably criticized for a repetitive mission structure and sometimes aggravatingly frequently-re-spawning enemies. But it is also one of the most progressive shooters this year, and for those with whom it hit home, it has been a rare joy. Ubisoft Montreal took an admirably systemic approach with Far Cry 2 in a genre increasingly defined by scripted experiences. It doesn't ease the player into a difficulty curve so much as it drops the player headfirst into a brutal war-zone where scavenged weapons fall apart and everyone is hostile, save the arms...

Read more »

Far Cry

"Looks aren't everything". These supposedly comforting words are usually reserved for the geeky teenage loner on a downer. The quiet one with the dodgy hair and the wonky teeth that has trouble looking anyone in the eye without burning up with embarrassment that anyone's even looking in their direction. But try telling yourself that looks aren't everything when you fire up Far Cry. Try not to feel a ripple of excitement run through you when the Cry engine starts showing off how much better a PC game can look than anything else now. Far Cry is the new girl in class. A real head turner, and destined to break hearts. But for all her perfectly...

Read more »

Sins of a Solar Empire

One of the year's great success stories was this space strategy title from Vancouver-based Ironclad Games, which put the small developer on the map and scored another hit for its increasingly influential publisher Stardock. Ostensibly a member of the "4X" genre of domination-oriented titles, Sins of a Solar Empire, with its explicit focus on battles and its real-time nature, is more like an RTS with 4X scale. A game of Sins methodically unfolds, blossoming into an epic galactic conflict where tiny fighters zip around huge capital ships, which sail between massive planets -- all of which is dwarfed by the size of the overall battlefield, which...

Read more »

Crysis Warhead

Sometimes derided as nothing more than tech demos, Crytek's Crysis games indeed demand capable rigs and generate some of the most impressive real-time rendering in the medium -- but they are much more than that simplistic characterization suggests. Few non-simulation shooters have been as uncompromising in their willingness to let the player explore the world at will and carve out a particular tactical approach (with one exception in Far Cry 2, below). Even Crysis Warhead, which consciously takes a few steps back from last year's sometimes overwhelmingly wide-open Crysis, offers leagues more freedom than the rest of today's on-rails shooter...

Read more »