| Remember when you used to approach the beginning of July with excitement because it marked the end of school for the summer? Even though you’ve been out of school for years, you can still recapture that energy with one of these games, for mature players only.
REVIEWS
· Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth (publisher: Bethesda Softworks; platform: PC, Xbox).
Cthulhu (pronounced "kuh-thoo-loo") is an Old One, a race of beings created by American fantasy/horror writer H.P. Lovecraft. Since Lovecraft’s death in 1937, the Cthulhu mythos has garnered a huge cult following, with devout fans tending to be purists. Which is to say that deciding to tackle the mythology in a video game was somewhat of a risk. Lovecraft’s idea is that the world is a much older and stranger place than we realize, and that we lowly humans don’t have the capacity to comprehend what true reality is.
In most Cthulhu-related games, the objective is simple: don’t go insane. At times while playing Dark Corners of the Earth, which is a creepy experience, you’ll notice your character, Jack Walters, cracking up when he witnesses something bad. The trick is to keep him from committing suicide, which he’ll do if you’re not careful. And because of some clever design, you’ll know when Jack’s grip is slipping, because the audio and visuals get strange and slippery and the controls don’t respond properly. The game is not without its glitches, but I had no problem ignoring them because the overall experience is so perfectly Cthulhu. Among the statistics provided when you’ve finished play are mental condition (I was clinically insane) and drug abuse (I managed to come through clean). Dark Corners of the Earth is weird, wild and worthy of Lovecraft.
· Condemned: Criminal Origins (publisher: Sega; platform: 360)
Condemned tries hard to be more than the average survival horror game. As Ethan Thomas, an FBI agent with the Serial Crimes Unit, you get caught up in a bizarre case where serial killers are being murdered using their own M.O. The game makes great use of the 360’s visual and audio capabilities; the dark, gritty environments and the soft, whispering sound design perfectly suit the weird, horrific storyline. The problem with this game is not the concept or design, but that once you get past how it looks and sounds, actually playing this game is boring. The levels are repetitive, the enemies are the same throughout, and there just isn’t enough story to get this game past being interesting to look at. Shame about the game.
· Quake 4 (publisher: Activision; platform: 360, PC)
There’s something about conflict between humans and alien menaces that appeals to creators of first-person shooter video games. In the Quake mythology we are fighting the Stroggs, and the storyline here is of Earth’s marines attacking the alien homeworld. For those who know that the first Quake game changed first-person shooting games forever (the developers, id Software, also created Doom), note that Quake 4 picks up the story where Quake II left off (which is included here as an extra). This is a long, intricate game that creates an interesting dynamic, making you feel like you’re a troop deployed on another planet, and the firefights are fierce and plentiful.
· The Godfather: The Game (publisher: EA; platform: 360, PC, PS2, Xbox)
With clever writing and top-notch voice acting – including, before his death, the talents of Don Corleone himself, Marlon Brando – you play as a young man who starts out in organized crime by working for the Corleone family. Where you go after that, however, depends entirely on your ambitions. The open-ended gameplay gives you the flexibility to range throughout Midtown, Little Italy, Brooklyn, and other areas, but there is too much cookie-cutter creation here, from the simple and overused building floor plans to the generic-looking people that populate the streets. While the geography of Depression-era New York seems accurately represented in muted greys and browns, there is a feeling of sameness to it all.
The story integrates nicely into the storyline made famous by the Puzo book and the Coppola films. You will be participating in some familiar events, such as defending Don Corleone in the hospital after his shooting. Play long enough, and you’ll be the one making offers others can’t refuse. |
Copyright ©2006 FFWD. All rights reserved.