Alright, so here’s the deal: Before the jump, I’m not going to spoil anything. After the jump, I will try to avoid direct story spoilers but discuss what Arrival means in terms of Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3. It’s a hard topic to avoid when talking about this DLC pack, and needs to be addressed. Capiche? Capiche.

At Silicon Sasquatch, we love ourselves some Mass Effect. I’ve played through Mass Effect 1 and 2 twice each, bought and played through all of the ME2 DLC, and earned almost all the achievements in both…and I’m the person on staff who is the least hardcore about the game! Put simply, we enjoy the game’s mechanics and universe so much that the opportunity to dive back into ME2 one last time and get a nice bridge between it and the highly anticipated Mass Effect 3 is very, very hard to avoid.

That said, I enjoyed it but as a DLC package for Mass Effect 2, I find it hard to put Arrival ahead of some other extra missions Commander Shepard has gone on. It’s not quite as interesting from a gameplay standpoint as the Overlord or Kasumi: Stolen Memory missions were, and I don’t think the storyline was handled as well as The Lair of the Shadow Broker. There are times in Arrival where I felt like the level design was a touch convoluted. I think Arrival also relies a bit too much on combat — one of the new achievements in this DLC is tied directly to a specific combat sequence, and I can’t for the life of me think how you could get it the first time around. Hell, the second half of the mission has an almost-bewildering amount of shooting dudes given the context of the situation.

That said, Arrival does tell the story that bridges Mass Effect 2 and 3. And it does provide additional context and, above all, gets you excited for Mass Effect 3 to get here NOW. So, it has that going for it. Lastly, it provides you another chance to go back into the game — and even with some issues, more Mass Effect 2 is always a good thing. It may be a bit fanboy-ish, but when the topic of ME comes up, it’s hard to be completely subjective. The game series has proved itself to be that good.

So dig in. Whether now, to avoid as many spoilers as possible, or as an appetizer to get back into the mood for Mass Effect 3, this deserves to be played, for better or worse. It’s a shame that the hook of being the gap between Mass Effect 2 and 3 can be used to get fans to struggle through an average experience.

The break-in sequence in ME2: Arrival is actually pretty fun, but the level design is a little janky.

So let’s discuss the impact of this DLC on the storyline of the game. I don’t think it really adds much to the game that we didn’t already know — and if you’ve played through Arrival, I think you’d agree. The conclusion it provides isn’t terribly interesting or, really, all that new; what is, however, is the context it provides. To put things vaguely, we knew what would happen, but not when, and Arrival answers that second question. It’s not something I was expecting to happen so quickly within the Mass Effect universe, but it does make sense; what you have to do in the DLC also leaves a believable impact.

The other storyline facet Arrival provides relates to the consequences of that event and its impact. That Commander Shepard may have to go explain his actions back on Earth, and that players may have the chance to role play these choices, is going to tumble around in my mind for a good, long time leading up to ME3.

Otherwise, though, the frustrating part of Arrival for me is how the combat curve snaps the tension built by the setting and circumstances. There is a time and place for lots ‘o combat, but what should be a time-sensitive instance in a laboratory is NOT one of those for me. Why the hell is a laboratory that well-staffed with security flunkies, anyways? Especially when this is supposedly an unbelievably top secret operation — hell, you have to play the DLC without teammates because Admiral Hackett wants you to go it alone. That said, the ability to play the first segment of Arrival in a stealthy way was interesting, as were a couple things in the second half of the pack. One little moment in particular was really cool, if a bit throwaway.

I am going to be very interested to see how BioWare resolves storyline consistency issues now, too. There are now a lot of permutations of how to play and what content to tackle in ME2 — between the different endings, the resolving of Lair of the Shadow Broker, and whether or not you played Arrival, that’s a LOT of different things to try and explain. I’m sure BioWare can handle the problem, but they can’t bring Commander Shepard back from the dead again, so seeing how this happens will be an intriguing aspect of Mass Effect 3.

Frankly, again, I feel that the Lair of the Shadow Broker, Overlord, and even the Kasumi DLC packs were more fun to play; however, only Shadow Broker can even come close in terms of story importance in the Mass Effect universe. The gameplay may leave a little to be desired, but as a prologue to Mass Effect 3, it’s a requirement.

Recommended for:

• Its impact on the Mass Effect universe — as the bridge between ME2 and ME3, it is vital for fans
• Providing context to the events to come in Mass Effect 3

Arrival is a downloadable add-on for Mass Effect 2, available on Xbox Live Marketplace for $6.99/560Microsoft Points and PC and PlayStation 3 for $6.99. The reviewer purchased the downloadable content and completed it on the normal difficulty setting, earning one of three achievements.

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Child Labor Laws, Matryoshka Dolls and Fart Jokes: A Review of Double Fine’s Stacking

Stacking is an adventure-puzzle game about the youngest child of a family of Industrial Revolution-era chimney sweeps fighting against the upper class. What separates this from other period pieces is every man, woman, child and beast is portrayed by a Russian stacking doll. How that design document was successfully pitched I may never know, but what resulted is one of the most original, entertaining and charming games I’ve ever played — possibly the best yet from developer Double Fine.

The protagonist is Charlie Blackmore, smallest of all dolls and considered unfit for even the most menial of labor. His objective is to rescue his family from a tyrannical industrialist, the Baron, and along the way aid others hurt by the Baron’s exploitative policies. The manner in which this plays out is far more entertaining than any historical sociology thesis would otherwise suggest. Charlie has a unique advantage: as the world’s smallest doll, he can stack into any other doll, thereby using whatever unique ability they possess. The abilities can range from single use (opening a door) to multi-purpose (flatulence).

The art style in Stacking is unique and polished — fitting, as it was one of Double Fine's art directors who led the project.

Stacking is exceptionally clever in its themes and story. There is no voice acting, and cutscenes play out like a silent movie. Though none of the dolls have any appendages and facial expressions are minimal, the animation is so superbly realized that it’s never a question of how a character is behaving or feels. Likewise, each doll is so meticulously detailed it’s easy to pick one apart from another even without distinctive silhouettes or physical cues. What is truly exceptional about the experience is how Double Fine takes such serious subject matter, including the plight of the working class and child labor, and handles it in a way that is both humorous and touching. It’s a testament to the design that Charlie can stack into a child doll whose ability is “Black Lung Cough” and an adult with the ability to “Fart,” yet the game never feels depressing or crass. More importantly, these abilities are useful in their own right.

The primary flaw in most adventure games is linearity. The stories and quests are designed in a storybook-style progression, never deviating from the narrative plotted out from the start. Stacking partially avoids this dilemma. Every quest has multiple solutions, every level has several optional quests (called “Hi-Jinks”) and a set of unique dolls for Charlie to find and stack into, some of which are required for quests and some not. For completionists, finishing the game with a ‘100%’ rating requires finding all of the above; finishing the narrative requires just a fraction. Early puzzles may only require one ability to solve but there are more complex ones later on requiring combinations. Despite a couple of the solutions seeming a bit obtuse, moving through the game never became a chore.

In a medium entrenched in annualized sequels and third-person cover-based shooters, Stacking is a game that is truly original — both in the story it tells and the way it tells it. Double Fine deserves praise not only for the creativity on display but how well constructed a display it is. Every stage oozes charm with a well defined art style and musical presence that creates a sense of place better than other titles featuring real locales and more human characters. Stacking is absolutely a game that deserves to be experienced, and may even inspire it’s own uprising against the gaming bourgeoise.

Recommended for:

• Adventure gamers and Double Fine fans who swoon for Tim Schafer
• An inspired, unique and evocative art style
• Marrying an interesting and underused period in gaming (Industrial Revolution) with a cheeky take on the plight of the proletariat

Stacking is published by THQ and developed by Double Fine Productions and is on sale now. It is available on Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network. The version reviewed was on PSN, but the views from this review are relevant for the XBLA edition. It is available on XBLA for 1200 MS Points and PSN for $15.

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The PSP Mini is a concept that has been lost on me. I don’t own a PSP, and as a result I’ve never bothered to browse for, let alone purchase, what I assume are cheaply made Flash games developed for people without iPhones. Hell, I didn’t know until two months ago that Minis are playable on the PS3. So perhaps, like me, you assumed that Minis don’t have a snowball’s chance in the marketplace. doomed to stand in the shadows cast by incessantly advertised blockbusters and buzz-worthy independent games.

Who’s That Flying?!  is exactly the sort of game I never expected to come from the Minis platform. It’s a polished homage to the shoot-’em-up genre and a fun variation on twitch-based gameplay. This is a quirky and lovable game that is also superbly designed and ends before it wears out its welcome. In a few hours WTF?! managed to reverse the many misconceptions and ignorant thoughts I had about PSP Minis, which is a testament to the developer’s ability to find inspiration in such a limited format.

My ego is going to become obese if I keep eating my words, which really sucks.

Earth defends Earth, which is quite meta when you think about it.

All you need to know about the story of Who’s That Flying?! is that the defender of Earth, appropriately named Earth, is on trial for the destruction that befell our planet during an attack by blob-like creatures called ravagers. The game is played in reverse chronology as Earth testifies to the Galactic Council to clear his good name, while interjecting the monologues of his fellow defenders of the galaxy with sarcastic comments and a general sense of overblown self-importance. Earth certainly loves himself, and the developers make a sly statement by characterizing the guardian of our planet as a vain show-off.

Mediatonic is known for its odd sense of humor in its numerous games for Adult Swim and Must Eat Birds on iPhone/Android, and the team continues to bring a lot of laughs in WTF?! The title’s acronym alone makes me chuckle every time I read it. My favorite line of dialogue from the game is childish: the Guardian of Uranus antagonizes Earth throughout the trial, and at one point Earth cuts him off by saying, “Hello Uranus…decided to ‘BUTT in?’” The writers play to their strengths in WTF?!, and as a result the game is, for my tastes, much better than typical Japanese shmup (short form for shoot-’em-up) titles, which are generally devoid of personality and insistent upon rapid and relentless gameplay.

The massive number of enemies on-screen can be pleasantly overwhelming.

WTF?! is very easy, which means those looking for a challenging campaign won’t be happy. The one caveat to the general simplicity of the game is the oddly balanced levels. Specifically the Mexico level is much more difficult than the world after it. As each new area should be harder than the last, I was very confused about the incongruent levels of difficulty. Furthermore, the final boss is a pushover, and for games of this style it’s detrimental to the overall experience. Yet WTF?! isn’t entirely devoid of trials, and the ample challenge mode makes up for any shortcomings. Aimed at hardcore players, the challenge mode is sort of ridiculous. Each challenge is unique, but only the best players and shmup veterans will get past the first few challenges. Persistence doesn’t seem to matter. I’m not very good at these games, so I tried my best but died far too often to stick with it.

Each location has four stages, the last of which pits Earth against a very large boss unique to the region. WTF?! mixes things up by sending Earth to Mexico, Russia, Tokyo and the Big Apple itself, and even though the background animation and color palette for each stage is noticeably repetitive, it’s a forgivable oversight for a Minis title. And truthfully it’s quite hard to pay attention to the backdrops when hundreds of ravagers are doing their best to eat the planet’s entire population.

In a clever twist on typical shmup gimmicks, WTF?! has no traditional health or shield bar. Because Earth himself is more or less invincible, the game instead tracks the health of a city. If too many ravagers get by your beams, blasts and punches, the game will end. Medals are awarded based on performance; good news for the obsessive compulsive gamers out there.

Bosses are massive and fairly tough; so big, in fact, that the camera zooms out significantly. However, this guy is a wuss.

It’s a good thing that Mediatonic is applying its Flash title roots and mastery of bite-sized gaming experiences to a new, and monetarily viable platform — outside of mobile phones, of course. If I hadn’t had a chance to play Who’s That Flying?! I’d still be scoffing at all the other PSP Minis. The quality of this particular title makes it impossible for me to ignore Minis in the future.

Be it the toilet humor or the crisp visuals, WTF?! is a well-written and uncomplicated salute to fans of shoot-’em-up games.

Recommended for:

• The hilarious writing
• Short but sweet stick-flicking action
• Gorgeous and crisp art style
• Because it’s a shmup that’s not really a shmup…but sort of is anyway — let’s support developers that think outside of the box
• PSP users in need of a simple on-the-go gaming fix

Not Recommended for:

• $5.99 is asking a bit much for the short campaign
• Challenge mode is relevant for a select few
• If you don’t have a PSP, the allure of a game meant primarily for portable play will be lost on you

Who’s That Flying?! is a PSP Minis title developed by independent UK developer Mediatonic. The game is available on the PlayStation Network marketplace for $5.99. A copy was provided to the reviewer by the developer. The reviewer completed the core game and tried his luck in the Infinite Mode. He died very fast. The reviewer also sampled the Challenge Mode, and in doing so he realized he’s not very good at shoot-’em-up titles.

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I feel like I can summarize NBA 2K11 well with one thing. A few days ago, Silicon Sasquatch editor Nick said this while watching me play a game between my beloved Portland Trail Blazers and the Oklahoma City Thunder: “Man, Kevin Durant is going to light you up.”

First, some context. NBA 2K11 is, as the title would suggest, this year’s version of 2K Sports’ long-running NBA basketball sim game series. Almost since the series’ inception on the Dreamcast, NBA 2K has lorded over other NBA games. That’s why, before its cancellation, EA Sports was planning on rebooting its NBA Live series into NBA Elite to try to surpass NBA 2K.

Combating NBA 2K is definitely a mighty task: Beyond being a good-looking title with well-developed controls, this is a sports game with a long feature list. Along with exhibition mode and online multiplayer, there are three primary single-player modes: Association, where you manage and play games with your chosen NBA team; My Player, where you create a rookie and lead them to fame and glory in the NBA; and then the Jordan Challenge, where you’re tasked with recreating 10 great games and moments in cover star Michael Jordan’s legendary career. Each of these modes would make for a complete experience on its own, but combined together, it’s easy to imagine getting 100 hours or more of NBA goodness from 2K11.

Each of these modes provides a slightly different twist to the staid basketball formula. The Association career mode is pretty standard — you control a team, play through games, try to make the playoffs and the Finals and hopefully take home the NBA title at the end of it all. It’s the stock multi-year franchise mode. However, 2K Sports has done a great job providing a ton of customization and features into the Association mode; instead of just trying trades, you can put a player (or players) on the block and see what every other team in the league would offer you in return. The depth available is a step up from many (if not all) other contemporary sports sims. It’s built upon previous titles, obviously, but the trade features and the incredible presentation in Association mode set it apart from previous 2K basketball games and from other sports sims.

My Player is almost a basketball RPG, where you take your created player through their own career and improve stats by playing well in games and in practice drills. This mode has become pretty standard in most other sports sim games, but what sets 2K11′s version apart is the near-instantaneous response it provides to how well you are playing. You are graded not just on points, assists, and other statistics, but for making the right play, making good passes, and forcing mistakes while on defense. There’s a meter called the Teammate Grade, and it’s updated almost to the point of being real-time. Reaching a specific Teammate Grade (just like school grades, from F to A) is needed each game in My Player mode, and things like shot selection, passing selection, defensive plays, and drawing fouls will affect the grade. Play smartly, take good shots, and make free throws, and the grade goes up; be a ball-hog on offense and dumb on defense and the grade goes down.

Michael Jordan's physical appearance and stats differ throughout his career in the Jordan Challenge — he'll dunk all day as a young player, but becomes an all-around god by the time you win his sixth ring.

Lastly, there’s the Jordan Challenge. This mode has you trying to recreate some of the legendary moments that made Michael Jordan into the greatest player of his generation and, arguably, the greatest player of all time. Featuring both single games and multiple-game series, the player is tasked with attaining a number of tasks during the game — from scoring 35 points in the first half against the Blazers in the 1992 Finals (triggering The Shrug) to The Flu Game and the game-winning shot against the Jazz to win his sixth title with Chicago. One of the challenges from early in Michael Jordan’s career is to score 69 points in a playoff game against Cleveland, but it’s never that simple; not only do you have to drop a ton of points on the Cavs, you also need to shoot 50%+ on field goal percentage, get 6 assists and win the game. Reaching all of these tasks in one single game can be herculean, and really puts Jordan’s greatness into view.

What sets 2K11 apart from other basketball games — and, really, from most every other sports game — is how much attention to detail the presentation receives in every game. Not only are the menus well-designed and clear to follow, but the presentation of a game is the closest I’ve yet seen to a real game on TV. Nick and Aaron are only casual basketball fans, but were convinced I’d switched from my Xbox 360 back to the cable input and turned an NBA game on when the game started. Almost every detail you see in a real NBA on TNT or ESPN game is there: broadcasters hyping star players for the game’s matchups; players walking to the arena in suits pre-game; dynamic broadcasters who weave stories about teams and players in and around the action on the court; some of the best crowd effects in any sports game; and more. Hell, if you’re playing against one of the team’s bottom-dwellers, your arena will be empty; if you’re playing the Heat or Lakers, it’ll fill up with a raucous crowd.

Not only does the game do a good job showing the emotion of basketball — seen here by the reaction of Portland's Marcus Camby to a foul — but it has excellent integration with an in-game image uploader. The images in this review were made by Doug, or automatically crafted by NBA 2K11 in what it calls the Pressbook, which can feature upwards of 40 images.

2K11 features two great commentators, Kevin Harlan and Clark Kellogg (who are commentary partners for TNT’s NBA coverage) and I don’t know how much dialogue they recorded, but it’s been put together incredibly well. It flows together much better than in other games, that much is sure. The way the commentary has been recorded and crafted leads it to be incredibly flexible; a pet peeve of sports games is how quickly the commentary gets stale. There’s a ton of dialogue recorded specifically for the Jordan mode, too, and it’s both high-quality and also discusses the storylines surrounding those periods in His Airness’ career. I hate to lean on the word “dynamic,” but the presentation in the game demands it. After I got off to a slow 1-4 start with the Blazers in my Association game, the commentators mentioned before tip-off that I had a talented group who had started slow and were playing disjointedly. A lot of that great presentation surrounding the game can be crafted in the game on the fly, and it shows.

Of course the action on the court stands up to the litany of great features in 2K11. NBA 2K has always played well, but there’s been some good refinements and added depth since I last played a game in the series. Controls are simple to pick up, but there are more advanced ball-handling controls available for the advanced player, and if you really want to explore the game’s depths you can start making shots with the right stick, which opens up a great deal of flexibility. However, even turned down to “Casual” gameplay mode, it’s fast and fun basketball action; change the sliders up to Simulation mode, though, and it’ll be a hoops-head’s fantasy come true. The animations are great but never feel like they’re driving what you do on the court. With some minor tweaks (8 minute quarters, slight nudges of the sliders) I’ve got my Trail Blazers Association providing very realistic game stats.

NBA 2K11 does a better job of having its players feel like their real-life counterparts. NBA stars play like to their real-life strengths, and superstars can take control in ways that straddle senses of fear and overpowering properly.

On-court behavior from players is also very true-to-life. Back to Kevin Durant for a moment — he’s become one of the best players in the league, even leading the NBA in points scoring last year. So Nick’s warning about him preparing to light up the Blazers was well-founded…and it came true.  In a 15-point loss for my Blazers to the Thunder, Durant scored 33 points, and had 4 rebounds and 5 steals. But what was most impressive wasn’t the stat-line, but how powerful a player like Durant felt; not cheap, just incredibly good and frightening. In that way, 2K11 is an absolute success: the best players in the league feel like they’re very hard to stop, and they’re all good in the way they’re supposed to be. Giant Chinese center Yao Ming will abuse you in the paint, Kevin Durant can shoot and drive at will, LeBron James is like a powerful bulldozer that can impart his will on a game, and so on. Brandon Roy is a great jump-shooter and driver of the basketball, and having him heat up feels just as exciting in the game as it does watching in real life.

NBA 2K11 is an incredibly well-made, feature-rich game with an amazing presentation, and above all else, it’s great fun. 2K Sports has outdone itself with NBA 2K11, creating what is easily the best sports game of the year and what may be the best current-gen sports game, period. Give it a shot; you might be pleasantly surprised.

Recommended for:

• Diehard sports fans, who probably already bought the game
• Casual basketball fans who know LeBron, Michael Jordan and (if you’re in Portland) Brandon Roy or Clyde Drexler
• Features, features, features — a variety of deep game modes provide lots of ways to play a long time
• Amazing presentation; playing every game is like watching the best NBA TV production you can imagine

NBA 2k11 is published by 2K Sports and developed by Visual Concepts and 2K Sports and is on sale now. It is available on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, and Wii. The version reviewed was on Xbox 360, but the views from this review are relevant for the PS3 and PC editions. It is available for Xbox 360 and PS3 from $59.99 new, but retailers like Amazon have had it on sale around time of review.

Read our policy on reviews here.

Billed as a digital palate cleanser of sorts, The UnderGarden is designed to be the anti-Call of Duty. With its rich colors, methodical pacing and mellow music, it’s clear that developer Artech Studios was trying to deliver something more along the lines of Flow or Zen Bound, where patience and relaxation are at the crux of the experience.

But unfortunately for The UnderGarden, that experience just ends up feeling like a one-sided exchange with the player coming up short. For a game that’s supposed to be about mellowing out and enjoying the ride, there were just too many technical, communicative and design-related problems for me to derive any enjoyment from playing the game. Despite its good intentions and lovely aesthetics, The UnderGarden is unfortunately more trouble than it’s probably worth.

While exploring the UnderGarden, you’ll bring flora to life and manipulate fruit and fauna to progress. But there’s a catch to all of this: The more objects that you’re actively moving, the slower your character moves. And because as you progress further into the game you’ll need to be manipulating more and more objects, the going gets slower and slower. This is ameliorated by a drag-and-release dash move, which the game fails to mention to the player in any way. Still, it’s rare that you’ll be moving in a straight line for very long, and the speed boost you get is comparable to what you’ll get from repeatedly clicking to swim around, so it ends up feeling a bit out of place.

The game’s use of color is pleasant, with a subdued, cool palette that springs to life in rich, neon tones. There’s a problem that arises from that, though: Because everything lights up when you pollinate it, it’s difficult sometimes to discern which plants are fruit-bearing and which ones aren’t. Because manipulating fruit is critical to solving puzzles, that created quite a few frustrating moments for me where I’d be circling through the level, trying to hunt down the one plant that produced the fruit I needed for the switch I was required to activate. An inconsistent camera compounds that frustration; viewing angles and zoom levels are sometimes problematic. Either the game will zoom out so far that you can’t see objects on the tops or bottoms of terrain or it’ll zoom in so close that you get disoriented.

The UnderGarden features dynamic music that generally works well, but it’s not seamless. When you encounter musicians — little creatures you carry and use to progress — they’ll each play accompaniment to the background music on their specific instruments. However, there are noticeable stutter points where their loops repeat, interrupting the flow of the experience. It’s nothing game-breaking, but it’s a shame that something as minor as a music loop couldn’t have been fixed for a game that’s so significantly focused on its ambience.

It’s possible some of these problems are hardware-related. In fact, this was originally going to be Aaron’s review, but he was unable to play the game more than a few minutes before it would crash. After corresponding with the developer, it emerged that there’s a known incompatibility with computers that have X-Fi sound cards. Because I’ve always been too cheap to pick up a sound card, I’ve been playing through the game without any crashes. But as I played more, I noticed the sound would cut out altogether for longer periods of time — nearly a full second at times. On the second level, the music died completely about halfway through, and nothing I did would bring it back.

The characters look cute at first glance, but they’re bland and even a little creepy. The musicians — monkey-like, infantile creatures — all have the same basic animation cycle. You’re able to customize your own avatar (a strange little spotted thing that looks like a cross between a scaly dolphin and a human baby) with unlockable colors, features, and so forth, but they don’t change the fact that the player character is largely devoid of expression. It smiles constantly and its tongue lolls about, and that’s cute, but that expression is unchanging. It’s the sort of thing that sticks out like a sore thumb when a bomb explodes next to it or it’s struck by an orb that siphons off its pollen. No matter what happens, it doesn’t change expression. It makes it really difficult to become attached to your character.

At its heart, it seems like The UnderGarden is trying to be a smooth, seamless experience that wants to evoke a mood rather than bark orders at the player. It’s a philosophy that resonates with me, and I think it’s a good concept in modern game design. However, The UnderGarden stumbles in attempting to build that sort of seamless experience of mood and feeling by failing to communicate exactly what’s expected of the player and what the player is capable of doing.

For example, the central hub world tracks your completion rating for each level, but it never explicitly states whether there’s a reward for blooming every single plant — a task that seems potentially very tedious. Without any indication of whether that’ll amount to any sort of explicit, tangible reward, what’s there to motivate the player to hug every wall and double-check every plant before moving on? That’s not to mention the other vague categories for completion. What happens if you find every special flower on a level? How do you unlock whatever the music note icon means? And try as I might, I just couldn’t figure out what I was supposed to do with musicians. Was I supposed to carry them all to the end of the level? Can I bring them together at a specific point to make something happen? It wasn’t clear, and thanks to the game’s largely unhelpful built-in manual, I never figured it out.

As frustrating as the sparse in-game manual was, the lack of a full explanation of controls for PC players is just unacceptable. When the game first asked me to push the “boost” key, I had no idea what it was asking me. I checked the options screen and, as it turns out, the game doesn’t tell the player how to boost.  The only place you’ll see a “boost” button is on the Xbox 360 controller layout. Well, that’s helpful.

It’s probably pretty clear that I was kind of miffed with this game for the majority of the time I spent with it. However, I think it’s worth noting that once I plugged in a wired Xbox 360 controller, the game took on a significantly different feel. Rather than clicking repeatedly to gain momentum like I was playing a Diablo game — a control scheme that’s just baffling when paired with a game that’s supposed to be relaxing — I could simply tilt the left analog stick and press and release the A button to move around effortlessly. Of course, it didn’t do anything to assuage the grievances I have with the game’s structure and flow, but it certainly made the experience less frustrating to control.

What makes relatively wordless games like Braid, Flower and Limbo so successful is that they feature a subtle but clear means of informing the player of the game’s goals, boundaries and expectations. The UnderGarden is an example of a game that tries to sweep all those things under the rug and deliver a pure, immersive experience, but it just ends up throwing  the baby out with the bathwater. The result is a game that’s far more confusing to understand and frustrating to play than it needs to be.

The UnderGarden isn’t a bad game as a whole, nor is it a collection of bad ideas. It’s just an underdeveloped concept that fails to draw in the player with meaningful objectives or a compelling environment, and because of its fundamental problems it’s not something I feel comfortable recommending. Based on the time I spent using an Xbox 360 controller instead of a keyboard and mouse, it’s probable that the game could be more enjoyable on a console; regardless, the PC-specific problems were too serious and frustrating to deal with for me to be able to recommend this game to anyone.

Not Recommended for:

• Bland, monotonous gameplay that fails to immerse the player or build upon itself
• A general lack of polish, ranging from audio and art issues to an incomplete help and options section

The UnderGarden is published by Atari and developed by Artech Studios. It is available on PC and Xbox Live Arcade for $9.99/800  Microsoft Points. The publisher provided Silicon Sasquatch with a review copy.

Read our policy on reviews here.

The truest measure of how addictive a video game is comes from how much time you’ve unknowingly lost because of it. It’s one thing to comprehend the passage of time but still stay glued to the screen; it’s another to look up and go, “holy shit, I’ve been playing for 12 hours?”

Certain few games fall into the latter category. I’m here to tell you that Game Dev Story, the recently released iOS game from Kairosoft, is definitely one of them. A devilishly well-balanced RPG-slash-video game development sim, Game Dev Story is one of the few games I’ve played until my iPhone’s battery is almost gone — and then plugged it in to play some more.

Work, my minions, work! Catching fire is, much like in NBA Jam, a good thing in Game Dev Story. As your studio grows, you can expand to new offices that are nicer and allow for more staff.

The actual gameplay in Game Dev Story is simple: You manage a video game studio, including everything from hiring and firing employees and deciding the genre and theme of your next game to advertising the game before and after it’s released. You can also take contract jobs such as designing a new mascot for a town, producing sound for movies or building a game engine. Early in the game there is a balance between contracts and games as you build up your staff’s capabilities, buy new game console development licenses and become more and more profitable. Eventually, your staff will be churning out Game of the Year candidates, working on sequels to top-rated games, selling millions of copies, and even developing your own consoles.

“Well, that’s great,” you’re saying. “But how is that addictive?” Game Dev Story grabs hold and sucks your life away because deciding on a new game to develop and managing its development process takes maybe 5 minutes or so of real time — and, it so turns out, this is the perfect amount to move the game into that scary “just-one-more-round” level of addiction.

The graphics, sound and writing are all pitch-perfect for the title. The 16-bit sprites strike a balance between detail and simplicity, the sound effects act as good cues for development, and the writing…oh, the writing. Kairosoft is a Japanese developer, but whomever they hired to translate the game’s text did so perfectly. There are witty quips about each of the employees you can hire, the parody names of consoles and other video games are spot on, and the review quotes for every game you publish are exactly what you’d expect. There’s something about seeing one of your staff pop up a word bubble that says “Fight!” when each game development cycle starts that is downright charming. I know “charm” gets thrown around liberally in describing video games, but for hardcore gamers who remember consoles like the TurboGrafx, Neo-Geo, Nintendo Virtual Boy and know the history of gaming, there are plenty of references that will catch your eye — like the name of Intendro’s motion-based console, the Whoops. Employees go the same way, too — you can hire people whose names are clear parodies of Steve Jobs, Walt Disney, Shigeru Miyamoto, Bill Gates, and more.

The reviewers were impressed with my motion-mini skirt game, We Skirt. The combinations you can make in this game range from obvious to downright hilarious.

There’s also a certain wackiness in the kinds of games you can create. Games are made by mixing genres and types, and while this can lead to some fairly straightforward ideas — golf simulators, ninja action games, and reversi puzzle games are all good, straightforward combinations — you can also get creative. As you level up and train your staff, you can unlock genres and types, which is where things get weird. Dating sims are as popular as you’d expect from a Japanese developer, but poncho? Swimsuit? Mushroom? Time travel? Some of the types are a bit weird, but once you’ve developed your game studio into a juggernaut, there’s little harm in trying some combinations out.

The depth of the game is also seen in the RPG elements. You can level staff up, and move them through a job system to unlock new roles that also bring new skills and expertise. As genres and types level up, you can add points to your game studio’s expertise in different aspects of game development, like the game world, polish, cuteness and niche appeal. Moreover, those direction points and genre and type levels are saved if you start a new game+ after finishing the initial 20-year career, allowing you to make the second time through that much easier and more successful.

A game about making games could have ended absolutely horribly. Despite there being a bunch of work simulating games available (everything from city planning in Sim City to the various Tycoon games), the only other game where you run a studio I can remember is Segagaga, a Japanese Sega Dreamcast game that tasked you with…running Sega and the Dreamcast. Really, this is uncharted territory. But with its addictiveness, catchy writing, and quick tempo, this is a game that I will keep coming back to for a while.

Recommended for:

• Hardcore gamers, who are guaranteed to love the various industry references spread throughout the game
• RPG fans who can appreciate a game where you can level up your game genres and types, and turn Shigeru Miyamoto into an awesome hacker
• People who want to sell 10 million poncho racing games
• Oh my god I’m still shaking this thing is addictive why can’t I quit you

Game Dev Story is available on iOS devices for $3.99. The reviewer purchased a copy for himself. He completed the game through its 20-year storyline twice, winning Game of the Year just once. His best-selling game, adventure game Sorrowwind 5, sold more than 39 million copies.

Recently, I’ve been making a push in my life to go vegetarian. There are a lot of reasons that I think it’s the right decision for me: I feel healthier, nothing has to die just so I can have a snack, and it lowers my environmental impact.

But nothing has driven me to despise meat as much as Super Meat Boy. I spent the better part of eight hours running a sprawling gauntlet stacked to the brim with deadly traps and implements of destruction, leaving a meat-stain behind with every step, jump, and gruesome death. Under my guidance, Meat Boy has been splattered, slashed, shredded, and vivisected a grand total of 1,431 times. It was pretty disgusting.

But that’s not to say it wasn’t fun; in fact, that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Thanks to its perfectly tuned controls, broad range of diverse levels and undeniable charm, Super Meat Boy is also one of the best platform games I’ve ever played.

Meat Boy leaves a permanent trail wherever he goes (or on whatever dismembers him) that serves a vital purpose: it shows the player everywhere they've been and helps emphasize dangers to avoid based on previous attempts

The game follows Meat Boy through more than 300 levels of finely tuned, run-and-jump action as he attempts to save his girlfriend, Bandage Girl, from Dr. Fetus, who is a fetus in a tuxedo-clad robot suit. So, uh, yeah.

These levels are split across eight worlds, six of which comprise the main game. Each level was designed to be brief and highly intuitive, and in that regard Team Meat succeeded admirably. A level is completed when Meat Boy reaches Bandage Girl by avoiding obstacles and solving relatively straightforward puzzles. Of course, just as Meat Boy is about to save her, Dr. Fetus whisks her away in classic Donkey Kong fashion.

What you’ve got here is some of the most well-designed platforming action this side of Super Mario, and there’s plenty of it to go around. In addition to a lengthy single-player mode, there are tougher versions of each level in what’s called the Dark World. However, Dark World versions are only unlocked when you beat a par time for each level. Most levels also have collectable bandages that are used to unlock additional characters. These characters — an ensemble cast from many of the best new indie games out there, including Commander Video from the Bit.Trip series, Alien Hominid and Tim from Braid — each control in a unique fashion and are generally fun to use. And the icing on the cake is an unlockable world dubbed “Teh Internets,” which is a repository for free new downloadable levels that Team Meat is committed to releasing on a regular basis. There’s already a pack of 20 levels available as of this writing, and they present a different sort of challenge from the rest of the game.

It’s impossible to overstate just how great of a job Super Meat Boy does at keeping the game flowing along. When your game is so fiendishly difficult that, on certain stages, dying hundreds of times isn’t unusual, you need to do everything in your power to keep the player from feeling frustrated and quitting. Fortunately, Meat Boy has an indomitable sense of progress that emerges from lots of little nuances and smart design choices.

First, there’s no penalty for dying: within moments of death, Meat Boy pops back into existence, meaning there’s only a fraction of a second between lives where the player’s not in control. This means less time wallowing over your mistakes and more emphasis on doing a better job. And the music, by Canabalt composer Danny Baranowsky, is up-tempo and well-suited to repeat listens. And although worlds have 20 standard stages, not every one needs to be completed to unlock the boss stage for the world. So even if you end up stuck on a particularly difficult level, it’s no problem to just move on to the next.

Essentially, Team Meat did just about everything conceivable to make a tough-as-nails video game accessible to as many people as possible, and they succeeded.

Super Meat Boy's warp zones are charming pastiches of old-school gaming that transport the player to 4- and 8-bit renditions of the game

If there’s one thing the average consumer has plucked from press releases and blog chatter, it’s that Super Meat Boy is a hard game. That’s an understatement. Yet for being so unflinchingly difficult — for example, the last level alone took me almost an hour — I never once got angry. (This is because Nick is a robot — Ed.) That’s because I was constantly reminded of two facts: The game was never at fault when I died, and each death taught me enough to remind me that I can do this. It might sound silly to talk about a game as an exercise in self-affirmation, but Super Meat Boy does a bang-up job at converting even the biggest slouch into a twitchy, speed-running platforming savant.

I can guess what sort of image just popped into your mind, but trust me, you want that to happen. It’s a good thing.

When I compare that to my experience with Ninja Gaiden (screaming and cursing), N+ (screaming and cursing at my co-op partners), or I Wanna Be the Guy (screaming and cursing at everything, because everything kills you in IWBTG), the difference is clear. Super Meat Boy does for the hardcore platformer what Mass Effect did for the American RPG: it refines it, streamlines it, and opens its doors to a massive new audience.

Yeah, Super Meat Boy is hard. When I think about it, it’s probably the most difficult game I’ve ever managed to finish. But with its clever sense of humor, impeccably designed levels and excellent pacing, it’s also a game that just about anybody ought to have a blast with. Just bear in mind that you’re gonna have to work a bit to make it through to the end — but as they say, nothing that’s worth doing is ever easy.

Recommended for:

• Fans of classic platform-based games like Super Mario Bros. — Super Meat Boy is tougher, but it’s a deeply rewarding experience
• Those battle-scarred, sequence-breaking platformer fanatics who thrive under the pressure of a ruthless challenge; the Dark World was designed to give your masochistic tendencies a run for their money
• Its massive suite of levels, winning charm, numerous clever nods to NES classics, and everything else that makes this game shine

Super Meat Boy is available on Xbox Live Arcade for $9.99/800 Microsoft Points for a limited time; after November 1, the price will rise to $14.99/1200 Microsoft Points. The reviewer purchased a copy for himself. He completed the regular world and about half of the dark world levels, earning seven of a possible 12 achievements.

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Captain Smiley has lost his touch. The superhero — a muscular, caped crime-fighter with a smiley face for a head and a talking, smart-ass, star-shaped sidekick named Star embedded in his chest — finds his comic being canceled after degenerating into an embarrassing commercial flop. In order to regain his former glory and pay his debts to the Twisted Pixel guys, who bust down the fourth wall with aplomb by bailing out Smiley’s debts, Captain Smiley is forced to guest-star in other comics to build up enough of a reputation and a financial base to relaunch his comic series.

Comic Jumper features a rich, vibrant presentation that’s bizarre, outlandish, hilarious, and wonderfully innovative. But unfortunately, actually playing the game is a whole other story.

Comic Jumper's levels are designed around frantic fight sequences with enemies approaching from all angles

As a reviewer, I try to avoid analyzing a game’s merits by breaking it down into its constituent parts: sound, graphics, etc. But Comic Jumper isn’t a typical game experience because it takes a pretty disappointing platformer/twin-stick shooter hybrid and dresses it up with piles of wit, personality and hilarity. And when all’s said and done, it does come out as a net positive — but not without some significant reservations.

Comic Jumper functions primarily as a platformer/shooter hybrid that takes place from a few distinct perspectives. Most of the game has the player controlling Captain Smiley in a two-dimensional plane, running from left to right while shooting countless swarms of enemies. In practice, it’s a little reminiscent of Contra in terms of the stop-start pacing, but there’s a bit of Geometry Wars-like strategy to how you’ll have to train your eyes both to follow your target to make sure your shots land while also moving Smiley to avoid danger. This sort of keen observation method becomes almost excruciatingly difficult to pull off in the manga-themed levels, where everything — including the background, characters, and bullets — is rendered in black and white. It’s a difficult skill to pick up for the post-arcade generation, and it’s certainly not something that anyone under 20 is going to be familiar with, but by the end of the game I finally got the hang of it.

Occasionally the game will zoom in a bit and Smiley will be relegated to melee attacks only. These are amusingly animated, but they play in an entirely one-dimensional fashion: you’ll either land a three-hit combo with the X button to knock an enemy out or press the A button to knock them back. In practice, each one of these encounters is indistinguishable from the rest, which seems like a missed opportunity.

Over-the-shoulder shooting sequences help break up the pace of the traditional side-scrolling elements, but they're also host to their own share of frustrations

There are also a few sequences where the action shifts to an over-the-shoulder perspective where you’ll sidestep and jump to avoid enemies while Smiley marches forward from encounter to encounter — again, similar to those base-invasion sequences from the NES version of Contra. While all of these modes function adequately well enough, they have a distinctly unsatisfying feel. For example: enemies generally seem like they should take fewer shots to kill, some enemy movement patterns are unforgivingly difficult to avoid, and the inability to restore Smiley’s health can lead to a sense of hopelessness, particularly because checkpoints are so uncommon.

I don’t want to blame a game for my own shortcomings as a gamer, but considering that I didn’t truly feel in control until I’d reached the six-hour mark, I think it’s fair to say that Comic Jumper could have benefited from an easier default difficulty or more checkpoints or weaker enemies, and ideally it would have included all three.

In all the time I’ve been playing games, I’ve never been as conflicted about recommending a game as I am with Comic Jumper. The starry eyed idealist in me wants to urge everyone reading this review to fork over their fifteen bucks without a moment’s hesitation to support a developer that has consistently taken huge risks and delivered games bursting with personality and originality. But when I look back at the majority of my time spent actually playing through Comic Jumper, most of the action was adequate at best and utterly maddening at worst. But when you weigh the good with the bad, Comic Jumper’s ribald attitude and the perfectly-paced banter between Captain Smiley and Star combine to make it worth the effort of actually playing through the game.

Each of the game's comic art styles is distinct, convincing, and bursting with inspiration — not to mention a healthy smattering of demented, wonderfully fucked-up humor

I think Twisted Pixel deserves to be commended for having the ambition to produce a game as substantial and varied as Comic Jumper; it’s a shame, then, that the core gameplay didn’t come together nearly as well as its sound design, art direction, writing, mission hub, full-motion video integration, unlockable bonus content, and even its stats screen.

If you’ll indulge me in a really terrible metaphor, Comic Jumper is like a sluggish, big-ass whale held aloft by a million tiny, dedicated birds. Despite the frustrating, sluggish, monotonous action at the core of Comic Jumper, it somehow keeps going thanks to the countless little careful touches that imbue the experience with genuine heart and laugh-out-loud humor — two essential qualities that are almost impossible to find in the average game.

Twisted Pixel has heart and intellect that any other world-class developer could only dream of. Once they figure out how to combine those qualities with a game that is just as enjoyable to play, they’ll be unstoppable. But at this point, Comic Jumper exists only as a moderate success — a mere glimpse at the substantial potential of one of the most inspired teams making games today.

Recommended for:

• Those who recognize just how rare and important it is when a game can actually make a player burst out laughing at regular intervals
• Excellent characterization and inspired interpretations of various comic worlds, all of which are as compelling as they are bizarre
• Fantastic production values, especially with regard to art and sound design, and plenty of Twisted Pixel’s trademark goofball full-motion video

Not Recommended for:

• Frustrating progression: each of the game modes feels underdeveloped and unwieldy, a problem exacerbated by an infrequent checkpoint system
• Gamers concerned first and foremost with the playability of a game; if you’re not digging the flavor of Comic Jumper’s presentation, you’re not going to find much redeeming value in how it plays, either

Comic Jumper is available on Xbox Live Arcade for 1200  ($15). A copy was provided for review by Twisted Pixel. The reviewer completed the game, earned 8 of a possible 12 achievements, played most of the challenge missions, unlocked most of the unlockables, and punched Star a grand total of 28 times.

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I have incredibly mixed feelings about Formula 1 2010. On the one hand, this is the first Formula 1-based game on next-gen platforms since Sony’s F1 Championship Edition in 2006. As well, the game does an amazing job painting a portrait of the Formula 1 circus, from the glitz and glamor in the paddock to the thunder and thrills on the track. However, the game has a facade that is too easily broken; compounding the problem is that it feels unfinished in spots.

Reviewer’s Note: We will run an amendment article at a later date, once F1 2010 is patched to address the numerous issues with the game. As it stands right now, it feels unfinished and has numerous frustrating bugs, including one that corrupts save data; when, and how, these are addressed is a major issue surrounding the game right now.

F1 2010 uses interactive menus, placing various game mode options into the "real world" you would see as a Formula 1 driver.

Formula 1 racing is, much like soccer, a sport incredibly well known and followed outside of the United States; 400 million viewers tune in for each of the rounds of the championship, and the series has been run every year since 1950. I’ve watched almost every race since 1997, and know a ton about the history of F1. Considering my love of racing games too, I’m undoubtedly the game’s target audience. Each round in the championship is a carnival, as the racing series’ own video edits of races prove. Codemasters has thus provided a rich tapestry on which to build a virtual world and something of a storyline. Unlike a Forza Motorsport or a Gran Turismo game, each race acts as a piece in a greater narrative, instead of focusing solely on what happens on-track and what car you unlock.

Codemasters has tried to do something very different and innovative with the game’s structure. You’re launched directly into defining your career mode in the form of a press conference, including details like your driver’s name, nationality and how long a career you’re planning. Accessing the other menu options, like single-races, multiplayer modes and other options are done in the paddock next to your career teams’ transporters. If you played Codemasters’ DiRT games this may sound familiar — the large, popped-out text on screen is a style Codies has made their own, but it also helps to make the game feel more like a sports game instead of a Gran Turismo clone. Everything is laid out to make you become a Formula 1 driver, and immerse you in a virtual re-creation of something only 24 people on the planet each year get to experience.

Driving a Formula 1 car is hard enough; driving an F1 car in the rain? Exciting, to say the least.

As a driving game, F1 2010 is very solid. The game engine is an evolution of Codemasters’ previous racers, but with some serious tuning to suit the rigors of Formula 1 — like having 24 cars on the track at once. Driving an F1 car is incredibly difficult in real life, but similar to Forza Motorsport 3, the game tailors each difficulty level with a series of driving aids; these can also be adjusted individually. As a Formula 1 fan, the game manages to capture everything about F1 racing I’d expect — from your team engineer providing information updates and support, to the screaming V8 engines, to the incredible handling and stopping power. As I spend more and more time on the track, I find myself getting quicker because I’m able to push the limits of the car, and that is exactly how a Formula 1 game should behave. It may not be as one-to-one accurate as some PC racing simulators, but F1 2010′s on-track racing strikes an excellent balance — providing the right amount of fear and speed while remaining accessible but not punishing.

The worst of F1 2010's bugs corrupts your save data — and thus your single-player progress — if you advance through the menus wrong after certain circumstances. This has happened to me twice.

However, the game is far from flawless. It could have used another two or three months of development time before it was released; surely Codemasters must have been trying to meet a deadline to release the game in September, with a few rounds of the actual Formula 1 series left to run. I say this for two reasons: One, there are numerous bugs found when playing the game; and two, there is also a real issue of difficulty balance that could use tuning.

First, the bugs. The list of bugs both confirmed and unconfirmed in the game is lengthy. These range from the mildly annoying (AI cars not pitting or pitting too often in races) to the aggravating (the player’s car being unfairly held in the pit lane if you pit on the same lap as the AI) to the soul-crushing (corrupting save data, forcing the player to re-start their career; this has happened twice since I bought the game). While Codemasters is aware of the problems and working on a patch, there’s not a target release date, and many diehard racers I know are avoiding the career mode until the game is patched. While some bugs are only mildly annoying, their sheer abundance points to a title that looks undercooked.

The difficulty curve can be a bit off in the game; a Lotus shouldn't be leading the pack, regardless what's happened behind you.

More grating to me, personally, is the uneven difficulty curve. On the hardest two difficulty levels the AI is brutally fast, your starting car can feel terribly slow (especially the Lotus, Virgin and HRT, though this lack of speed is true to life) and the in-race penalties can feel overly punitive, especially if you’re trying to get to grips with the game’s physics. It’s hard not to be anything but a moving obstacle; moreover, it’s easy to ruin your race. This may be true to life — Formula 1 racing is far from easy — but it feels punishing and masochistic. Aaron and Nick can attest to the level of attention and focus completing a 17-lap race took from me…and that was in an effort where I finished 18th out of 24 cars. Punishment isn’t the only problem; by switching to the mid-pack Sauber-Ferrari and applying setups from this online forum, I can now routinely outpace the AI and win races by 30 seconds.

In short, Formula 1 2010 is long on ideas but falls short in the execution. As a diehard Formula 1 fan who remembers when Williams were good and Ferrari were lovable traditionalists who used V12s, I love the attention to detail that Codemasters has given the game, down to the grid girls in the paddock. However, it feels rushed. I have no doubt that F1 2011 will have solutions to many of the bugs and difficulty issues, but I’m not certain what a patch will be able to fix and when that will happen. When it works, it’s absolutely brilliant and is the Formula 1 game I always wanted, yet too often it stumbles into another bug or issue. I would love to be able to recommend this game to everyone, but without a demo and with so many issues, I can’t do that right now.

Recommended for:

• Console-centric racing game fans looking for a fix ahead of Gran Turismo 5
• Formula 1 fans yearning for a good, modern, accessible F1 game
• Graphics junkies — the in-game graphics are incredible, and the menus are very well done

Not Recommended for:

• Anyone who expects the game to be bug-free as of right now
• Hardcore racing simulator fans who are masters of iRacing or Grand Prix Legends — F1 2010 will not be enough of a simulator for the super-hardcore if you expect it to equate to those games

Formula 1 2010 was developed and published by Codemasters. It is available on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 for $59.99, and on Windows for $39.99 via retail and Steam. The reviewer played the game on multiple difficulty levels in career mode, single-race Grand Prix, Time Trial, and online for approximately 20 hours.

Extra special thanks to Something Awful goons for supplying PC screenshots of bugs and the F1 2010 menu system.

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Bungie and Halo: the story of a studio defined by its most popular product. Because of the series’ success, few could have guessed that another company would ever be in a position to make Halo games. But Bungie has formally stepped away from its massive franchise after a decade and billions of dollars in sales, finally realizing a 2007 announcement that it would become an independent company free of Microsoft’s yoke.

Halo: Reach is the studio’s magnum opus, and it unexpectedly recaptures the feeling of cleverness and ingenuity of Halo: Combat Evolved, when Master Chief was a fresh face in the crowd of first-person shooters.

Noble Six and Jun ponder for a moment in the darkness

The Halo series is seen as having a unique fan base – one that’s easy to joke about. The general perception of a Halo player is of a pimple-faced “he,” a male who’s no older than 13 and speaks with a racist and homophobic world view.

That’s how I’ve regarded Halo up until now: ironically defined by stereotyping a unnamed mass of tween and teenaged bigots. In finishing Reach I’ve had to face the realization that, for the past six years, – since Halo 2 and the original Xbox Live platform allowed gamers to go head-to-head online in anonymity – I’ve been judging the series by its largely made-up audience, a demographic that exists but certainly doesn’t define every player of Halo. The events of Halo 2 and 3 also contributed to my indifference toward the series, a pair of games that did little more than dilute Master Chief into fighting uglier aliens for duty’s sake, making friends with the Elites and saving Cortana from an ancient and psychic Flood-king. It’s all been absolute science fiction schlock.

Not until Reach have I ever respected a Halo title. Bungie has crafted an experience that fills in the gaping holes of all the non-ODST Halo titles up until now by writing a mature and subtle story depicting the fall of the planet Reach.

More games need to look like this — sweepingly epic, and colorful

The reason Reach is a mature Halo adventure is its use of undercurrents. I’m referring to the use of plot threads and scene-setting techniques that show rather than tell. Sweeping vistas fill the screen throughout the different regions of Reach; each one is unexpectedly gorgeous, distinct and painterly. The use of such complex skyboxes ingrains a sense of tension for Noble Team. When you witness the burning skyline of Reach’s capital city you will rightfully feel as though you’re fighting on an alien world against a well-organized invading force that’s winning the war, battle by battle in the manner of a film documentary. Halo: Reach is cinéma vérité with plasma cannons.

And while Bungie hasn’t penned a complex plot for Reach, what’s there is charming in its simplicity and affecting in its somber tone. After hidden Covenant invasion forces are discovered on Reach by Noble Team, an all-encompassing attempt to defend, then evacuate, humanity’s second home ensues. In the end the UNSC forces fail, which shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who’s played the other Halo games. Yet what makes Reach great is its expertly paced progression toward such a bleak outcome, and how Noble Team directly influences the outcome of the entire Halo universe.

By the end of the game I was convinced that Noble Team would succeed and save the day, despite knowing the opposite was true. Bungie presents its missions in a way that engenders slivers of optimism – that if I pulled off this last-ditch objective, Noble Team could rescue enough humans before Reach is blasted into a wasteland. Whether I was dog fighting with Banshees in space or piloting an attack helicopter high above the streets in the best sequence of the entire game, Halo: Reach almost always made me feel like I was having fun. In these moments the game transcends a typical Halo affair and offers glimpses into what Bungie is capable of creating in its future endeavors.

The faces of Noble Team: Dependable, but forgettable

For such a well-scripted experience, it’s unfortunate that the characters of Noble Team aren’t noteworthy. They’re presented as bland pastiches of other film and game heroes. There’s the silent sniper, the brooding brute, the reticent rookie and the consummate commander. Kat, the first prevalent female Spartan to my knowledge, is a mighty-tough member of Noble Team, and perhaps the best archetype introduced to the Halo universe since Cortana. She doesn’t say much but she loves taking control, which speaks volumes to her character. And that’s Reach, simply put: It doesn’t have to be vocal to say a lot about itself. A fantastic game in its own right and the best Halo game I’ve ever played, it never tries too hard to be anything more than an appropriate goodbye to millions of fans worldwide.

Despite its change in attitude, Reach is still Halo. Elites will still fly.

If comments from Microsoft are to be believed, new Halo titles will be on store shelves faster than ever. I’d be surprised if any Halo players unversed in the industry’s politics will notice a difference between a Bungie Halo and a Halo from 343 Industries, the development team exclusively formed to develop the future of the brand.

However, this game is not a melancholy passing-of-the-torch affair. Halo: Reach manages to, as the culmination of dedication to a single idea for so many years, surpass all the previous incarnations of Halo. I had the best Halo experience imaginable with Reach despite attempts to remain skeptical throughout the campaign.

How bittersweet is it for Bungie, a developer that has come a long way since Marathon and Myth, to create its greatest game ever at the end an important era for video games?

Recommended for:

• Halo fans, obviously
• Gamers who have shied away from previous Halo games; Reach has more in common with BioShock than Call of Duty
• More mature players who recognize the importance of atmosphere over trite plot and gameplay gimmicks

Not Recommended for:

• Those (very few but loud) 13-year-old bigots — go away, please

Halo: Reach was developed by Bungie and published by Microsoft. The game retails for $59.99, and is exclusive to the Xbox 360. The reviewer purchased the game himself, and played through the campaign in its entirety in co-op on normal difficulty, and also completed numerous missions on legendary difficulty. He played a lot of Firefight and didn’t do too bad in Matchmaking Multiplayer. His Spartan is colored turquoise and brown, which he thinks is an awesome (and overlooked) color combination.

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