Resident Evil 6 - Jake Campaign (Capcom, 2012)

Newcomer Jake Muller's campaign in Resident Evil 6 is, at least in the marketing, distinguished by two gimmicks: 1) a persistent antagonist that pursues players throughout the game, and 2) Jake's penchant for hand-to-hand combat, powered by his superhuman abilities. In practice, neither of these ideas is very well-realized, but Jake's mode still manages to be the most interesting and varied experience in Resident Evil 6.

Much as the Leon campaign was meant to evoke the classic survival horror gameplay of the original Resident Evil, Jake's campaign frequently channels Resident Evil 3: Nemesis in its inclusion of a recurring and seemingly unstoppable enemy that hunts the players relentlessly. And, much as the Leon campaign actually felt almost nothing like the game it was meant to evoke, the chase segments throughout Jake's campaign never really resemble the experience of running from Nemesis in Resident Evil 3. What made Nemesis so effective a feature in Resident Evil 3 was very much tied into the core survival horror design of the early games, where, instead of progressing mission-to-mission in a one-way linear fashion, you would explore a single maze-like environment for the entire story, with only limited direction on what path to take. The emphasis was more on adventure than on action, but the added twist in Resident Evil 3 was that, as you made your own way through the environment, there was a chance that the fearsome Nemesis might arrive in pursuit without warning, instilling panic to interrupt the normally mild pace of your exploration, perhaps even at locations you had already passed by previously without incident, subverting old assumptions about when an area could be designated clear and safe.

In Resident Evil 6, the action, no matter the campaign, always abides by mission-based shooter conventions. You always know once a room is clear and you are safe, and you'll usually have a pretty good idea when the next action sequence will commence—most likely, it will be triggered by opening a door or stepping forward into a space that appears conspicuously staged for something to go down. The scripted chase sequences in the Jake campaign are no different. The triggers are the same as for any other action sequence, so you always know when one might be coming. It's never startling or unexpected, as crossing paths with Nemesis in Resident Evil 3 could be. And, when it happens in Resident Evil 6, the arrival of the "Ustanak" (sort of a "Nemesis 2.0") is always further punctuated by some attention-grabbing cut scene, allowing you ample time to brace yourself for what you know you'll have to do next, which is run like hell. Furthermore, in the context of a mission-based campaign, the chase sequences in Resident Evil 6 can't change how you approach the entire game in the way the inclusion of Nemesis did in Resident Evil 3. Sure, running from Ustanak is a different experience from exchanging fire with a squad of grunts in the Chris campaign, but the game also includes vehicular stages and other on-rails segments. Like those other novelty stages, the finite chase sequences, rather than being transformative like the ever-present Nemesis, just offer the occasional change of pace between stretches of more conventional action gameplay. It's also stupid that, during the chase sequences, the characters will insist that they must not be caught by the Ustanak (and, indeed, failure to outrun it results in an instant death and game over), but then there will be other times when the characters will decide to stand and fight the Ustanak, and, during these boss battles, it will be far less deadly, no longer able to perform one-hit kills. No explanation is ever given for why it might be holding back at times; it's just the game arbitrarily deciding that Ustanak will be sometimes invincible and other times merely tough.

The other signature feature of the Jake campaign is Jake's superhuman prowess in hand-to-hand combat. Cut scenes show him taking out groups of enemies with just punches and kicks, but, once into gameplay, Resident Evil 6 remains very far from being a competent brawler. Jake possesses more and better melee moves than the characters in the other campaigns (Jake's partner, Sherry Birkin, meanwhile, wields a stun rod, which is functionally equivalent to, albeit more limited than, his advanced hand-to-hand), but the experience is no more sophisticated than the melee combat in the Chris and Leon campaigns. There is little finesse involved; you just mash away and rely on the crude auto-targeting to clear crowds. Against most of the same enemy types as faced in the Chris campaign, I did find myself going hand-to-hand far more frequently in the Jake campaign, but I don't know that that was exactly a wise choice on my part, as I also died a lot more while playing as Jake.

Despite its failures, I still found the Jake campaign the most interesting in Resident Evil 6. Not as tedious as the Leon campaign, and not as monotonous as the Chris, Jake's game features the most variety. The largest portion of the action resembles the shooter gameplay of the Chris campaign, but there are also the aforementioned chase sequences, some vehicular stages, and a lengthy stage where Jake is unarmed but for his fists. There's even a pretty great stealth stage, where you must sneak around and hide in dumpsters to avoid being found by the Ustanak. Scrambling toward that dumpster after tripping an alarm, then peeking out through the crack beneath the lid, to watch as the Ustanak hovers seemingly interminably about your hiding place, before finally it moves on, evidently unaware of your location—for me, that ranks among the tensest moments in the series.

But, above all else, what makes the Jake campaign more engaging than Chris and Leon's is, surprisingly, the characters. In the other modes, Piers and Helena come across as underdeveloped sidekicks to Chris and Leon. Helena has some sob story involving her sister, and then afterward becomes this uncomfortable third wheel, while Leon chases after/flirts with Ada Wong. Piers is just some generic white guy soldier, about whom we never really learn anything. Sherry Birkin, however, is Jake's legitimate equal and co-protagonist. Their relationship is the driving force in the story, and the two of them, perhaps because they are much younger than Chris and Leon, seem more vital, more invested, more conflicted, and overall more multi-dimensional. They're not classic characters, by any means, and the story is still incomprehensible nonsense. But at least these characters give you something more to latch on to than just Chris's muscles or Leon's hair.

Having already played through two full-length campaigns of Resident Evil 6, I wasn't sure, going into Jake's story, whether I'd be able to stomach any more. Surprisingly, this third trip was the most enjoyable for me. Part of it may be that, 10+ hours with the Resident Evil 6 mechanics later, something just finally clicked. There was more recycled content this time around. Whereas Chris and Leon's campaigns only briefly intersect at one point, Jake crosses paths with both of them. Yet even those sections I found more enjoyable this time, at least partly because I knew better what I was doing. I still feel the action is on the sloppy and shallow side, and the game is unequivocally the worst of the modern (post-Resident Evil 4) installments in the series. But, on the strength of the Jake campaign, I'm happy to upgrade Resident Evil 6 from a game I might before have actively advised against playing to one that I would now rate as "pretty decent."

Resident Evil 6 - Chris Campaign (Capcom, 2012)

Whereas the Leon campaign in Resident Evil 6 was intended to evoke the series' 32-bit survival horror roots, the Chris campaign reflects the shift, ever since Resident Evil 4, toward action as the prime element. Chris's campaign, in fact, doesn't actually feel very much like even Resident Evil 4 or 5, as it carries the series considerably deeper into full-blown shooter territory. Well, maybe more like half-blown, as the end result is quite the trade down from Resident Evil 5's unique, albeit quirky, identity within the action game landscape to now the mediocre and generic third-person shooter that Resident Evil 6 offers in its Chris campaign.

Mechanically, Resident Evil 6 adds to the series several standard shooter functions, which were also available in the Leon campaign, but which are vastly more relevant in the Chris campaign. You can move while shooting now, roll to evade attacks, take cover, and also perform a Gears of War-style "roadie run." These are all important in the Chris campaign, because, unlike in Leon's game, where the most prevalent enemy was the classic lurching zombie, Chris Redfield and his partner, Piers Nivans, face foes that are, more often than not, packing firearms, which includes automatics and sniper rifles. Players encountered the occasional gun-toting B.O.W. (Bio Organic Weapon) in previous games, but here at last we arrive at the point where Resident Evil becomes an experience primarily composed of firefights.

That doesn't have to be a bad thing. I'm not one of those people who cries "betrayal" simply because a property I've enjoyed ventures into a different direction from what it used to be that I enjoyed. I liked the earlier survival horror games (really a subset of the adventure genre), and I also liked the more recent action installments. The only things they had in common that Resident Evil 6 lacks was the level of quality. Resident Evil 6 is not, unfortunately, a very good shooter. It's not the worst thing ever, but, keeping in mind I don't wade too deeply into the obscure recesses of the genre, it does rank closer to the bottom than to the top among those I've personally played. In some ways, it reminds me of Square Enix's Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII (2006) for the PS2, which was similarly a mercenary attempt by a Japanese developer to appeal to the larger Western market with an ultimately asinine take on a genre that they understood was successful here but which they themselves had no palate for. It feels like a shooter developed by people who don't even play many shooters, let alone make them.

The Chris campaign consists of a lot of repetitive room-clearing gameplay, where enemies, either already waiting in place for you or emerging seemingly out of nowhere, mostly stand there and soak up the bullets you unload into them. Eventually, after I don't know how many bullets (gone are the days of having to count and conserve your number of shots, but it feels like a lot), your target will go down, either to disintegrate into ash or annoyingly reemerge as a stronger, mutated form, which, again, mostly just stands and shoots or advances toward you in a linear fashion while absorbing bullets. On the normal difficulty, the game is not especially hard or especially easy, but it's always more frustrating than challenging. Chris and Piers hit the ground hard any time they get shot, which feels not only annoying but also unfair when you find yourself targeted by multiple deadeye snipers while simultaneously getting swarmed by guys on the ground distracting you from getting a bead on the snipers. Getting through most firefights, however, doesn't take a lot of skill or tactics, just a lot of patience and bullets. One oddity, I suppose, of Resident Evil 6 is that, whereas, in other shooters, your sidearm is typically a last resort, the handgun remains, even in the Chris campaign, your primary weapon. This is especially so when you play as Piers, who never even gets an automatic weapon. This doesn't mean much in practice, because there's not a lot of precision aiming in this game.

It's hard to quantify, but, regarding the feel of this game, the action just doesn't "make sense" in the way that Resident Evil 5 did. When I consider the 2-D action games of my childhood, the well-made ones always had responsive controls and felt very tight and consistent. An enemy might surprise you the first time you faced it, but, once you familiarized yourself with all its moves, winning the game became simply a matter of reading patterns, maintaining focus, and honing your manual skill. When you lost, you understood why. It was because your reflexes were a touch slow, or because you lost track of the pattern and responded incorrectly. The old games "made sense" in that way, and I felt that Resident Evil 5 had a lot of that same arcade DNA in its design. Its pace was measured and deliberate. Enemies always behaved in a consistent manner, and, once you learned to read and react to their animations, they would never betray your expectations. Resident Evil 6, on the other hand, feels like most shooters today, in that the action feels much more nebulous. There probably are patterns you can learn (although a lot of the better modern shooters purposely eschew arcade-style pattern-based gameplay as too simplistic or unrealistic), but the game never requires or encourages you to do so. It's much more efficient to just spray your way through the roughly 5-10 hours that the campaign lasts, all the while never looking back. The gameplay consequently never feels very rewarding, because it almost never evolves beyond you performing the bare minimum action of any shooter, which is to aim at the body and pull the trigger.

Well, actually, one other quirk of the Chris campaign is that the player characters' melee attacks, already super-juiced in the Leon campaign, are even more so here. The more evolved B.O.W.s that Chris and Piers face are more resilient than the zombies in Leon's game, but they also tend to be less numerous, which means that Chris and Piers can more often clear an entire room with just melee attacks without running out of stamina. Since the shooting action is so clumsy in this game, it is often more effective just to melee everything. It is not any more fun that way, however, since you're just spamming the melee button.

I'll say that one thing this campaign has over most other shooters is that it's actually kind of empowering taking on the roles of two admittedly conventional yet charmingly guileless, never crude or amoral action heroes as Chris and Piers. The stars of Resident Evil have never been the most outstanding in the pantheon of video game characters, and newcomer Piers is maybe the most blandly generic player character in series history (until a cheap yet memorable twist late in the story), but at least they have more personality than the average point-of-view character in a shooter. Soap MacTavish, star of Activision's Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007) eventually becomes a cool character, but not until the sequels, when he becomes the player character's AI-controlled commanding officer. In the first game, where you actually spend most of your time playing as Soap, he's just your typical faceless, voiceless first-person shooter protagonist. Chris and Piers, meanwhile, bring not just skills but also their convictions and badass attitudes to the story, and this rare male-male partnership (I believe the only other times this has happened in series history have been short sections in Resident Evil: Revelations (2012)) makes for an extra testosterone-heavy play session.

Compared to the Leon campaign, the Chris campaign feels more generic. On the other hand, if you're playing cooperatively with another person, it's a more streamlined and therefore better co-op experience than the Leon campaign can offer. Also, despite the whole game's many failures, it is nonetheless worth admiring once again just how much Capcom put into this project. The Chris and Leon campaigns converge for only one brief section. Disappointingly, that means Chris and Leon never actually meet in any playable segment, but it's also impressive that, within a single release, here are two full-length campaigns with virtually no recycled content. Quantity does not make up for lack of quality, but it's not that Capcom wasn't trying or that it spread itself too thin. The game is just held back by some rotten mechanics at its core.

The Chris campaign is, as I said, a generic and mediocre third-person shooter. It's serviceable, not terrible, but, for a franchise with such a strong history, that's disappointing enough. Remove the name and the incomprehensibly zany story, and there wouldn't be anything to distinguish this from any among dozens of other forgettable second-rate shooters.

Resident Evil 6 - Leon Campaign (Capcom, 2012)

Resident Evil 6 is, if nothing else, gargantuan by action game standards, comprising three full-length campaigns (plus an unlockable fourth) with very little overlap in content, and each distinguished by some unique gameplay mechanics and design philosophies.

I started with Leon's campaign, which is clearly intended to be evocative of the classic PS1-era survival horror games, although it's not ultimately very much like them at all. The early proceedings do present the illusion of a more deliberately paced adventure. Starting out indoors in a mansion-esque environment, you're trudging through the building, searching for the way forward or for anything useful to pick up. It's actually quite a long stretch before there's any action, and you're more just exploring the area. It is all an illusion, however, because, whereas the classic mansions were fully realized environments that allowed you some leeway in your exploration, only nudging you (via locked doors limiting your possible paths) in certain directions, RE6 always progresses along effectively a straight line, with only the occasional side room along the way toward triggering the next event or objective. You can scavenge around for items, but there aren't any documents to pick up. If you just want to get to the next cut scene, you can even call up arrows (on top of the already busier-than-ever on-screen display) to point you in the right direction.

When the action does commence, Leon's campaign again tries to channel the classics by bringing back zombies as the primary enemy type. They're more mindless than the infested of the last two numbered installments—not as organized or dexterous at handling weapons, they just lurch toward you—but, honestly, it's not that pronounced a departure from the recent games. Combat is similar but, in my opinion, inferior to RE4 and 5. You can move while shooting now, there's finally analog walk/run control, and melee attacks can be performed at will, but it all feels very imprecise, not nearly as methodical and strategic as previous games. The old RE4 mechanics, though sluggish compared to modern shooters, were very thoughtfully engineered, involving care and consideration on the player's part, every time you took aim at a particular body part on a target, either to line up the head shot or to set them up for a contextual melee attack. With RE6, on the other hand, it feels like the designers just looked at what shooters were popular on the market and then responded by putting out a generically average one. The action is faster and the enemies more reckless, so you end up spraying fire or, at least early on, spamming the obscenely juiced new melee attacks.

It's rather ridiculous that the heroes' kicks and pro wrestling maneuvers can crush zombies far more efficiently than bullets can put them down, but what's even more ridiculous perhaps is the arbitrary stamina meter, which regulates how much you can use your melee attacks. Spam that melee button, and watch as your character tears through a crowd of zombies as though a god of war . . . until your stamina runs out, at which point your melee transforms into a pained and pathetic limp slap. The meter will automatically refill after a bit of time, and I suppose this is meant to encourage strategic management of your resources—not just bullets anymore but also your stamina—but it just feels so unusually contrived to have this arbitrary limit to the number of kicks you can perform.

Elsewhere on the gameplay front, the menu system has been overhauled, and there are new dodge/roll maneuvers. The problem with all this is that the controls, while theoretically simpler and faster than the dated and clunky systems of RE5, are still not exactly intuitive, and if, like me, you only play games once a week at most, there's a good chance you won't remember each time how to quickly use these systems to your advantage—assuming you even remember that they exist!

The camera was also an issue for me. It was positioned way too close in on the player character, leaving me with huge blind spots that led to me constantly getting ambushed by unseen enemies. I understand that Capcom actually patched the game specifically to add options for adjusting the camera angle, which is commendable, although I haven't yet tried out the post-patch camera to see if the options actually fix the issues.

As for the experience of Leon's campaign specifically, after those first twenty-or-so minutes of pretending to be classic Resident Evil, the game settles into frantic action, big set pieces, and over-the-top cut scenes. The first chapter ends in spectacular fashion with a sequence echoing the barricade cabin from RE4. The cabin, the first time I played it, was probably one of my top 5 experiences in gaming, and this sequence, wherein the player characters and a few AI allies in a gun shop try to hold the fort against a zombie siege, comes as close to replicating that "Battle of the Alamo" experience as anything I've played. It's not as well-paced, and it doesn't have that cool bit of pushing the shelves in front of the windows, but, on the other hand, you can play it co-op this time, and it ends in much more satisfying fashion, with your party actually having to make a desperate escape, instead of the enemies just relenting after you kill enough of them.

Alas, there are four more chapters after that, and it's all downhill from there. It's a lot of stumbling through generic and dimly lit caverns, the only other notable sequence being a chase through a Chinese street market, where you're pursued by a uniquely freaky enemy that can split itself into multiple parts and is determined to literally cram itself down your throat to burst you from the inside-out.

The story crosses over at points with the other campaigns, but the long-awaited in-game meeting between Leon and Chris Redfield is only a non-playable cut scene. Also, the way Capcom has chosen to present the story results in each campaign basically spoiling what happens in the others, even when they don't seem to have a lot to do with one another. For example, sometimes a thread will move from one campaign to another, but you won't be able to follow along, and when it eventually rejoins your campaign, they'll explain what happened but, in the process, rob you of the chance to actually experience the events firsthand without foreknowledge of their outcome. I wish they had opted more for a Suikoden III-style system, whereby you could switch between characters' perspectives after each chapter, instead of having to play through each entire campaign one at a time. Oh well. The story's pretty terrible anyway, and, once I play the other campaigns, maybe I'll find I didn't miss out on much at all.

What I've Been Playing #5: Batman: Arkham Asylum

I just started Batman: Arkham Asylum and, so far, have been enjoying it quite a bit. The game manages to capture most of the various facets of the Batman character that collectively make him such a geek fantasy to roleplay.

Physically, he's a beast and, on the normal difficulty, easily capable of taking apart a whole gang of muscled (unarmed) goons with a variety of punches, kicks, and a near-uncanny ability to sense and counter oncoming attacks. And this decimation is always highlighted in spectacular fashion with a cinematic slow-mo zoom-in on the finishing blow. Very satisfying.

It's a different story when the baddies are packing heat. Batman can't withstand bullets, alas, but Arkham Asylum conveniently transforms into a stealth game in these situations, encouraging you to take foes out from the shadows. So far, these segments remind me of the first Metal Gear Solid more than anything else; they're essentially puzzle rooms, where you observe and then exploit simple enemy patterns. What distinguishes Arkham Asylum is, not so much the mechanics, but the minor narrative details that make you feel like you really are the Dark Knight. As you silently pick off enemies one at a time, you get to watch their remaining comrades progressively lose their heads in panic. Seeing how terrified they are of you is perhaps even more empowering than when you get to pummel them with Batman's martial arts.

Less empowering, however, is Batman's telling silence whenever some friendly NPC remarks that the Joker and other rogues should simply be "fried." This comes up with alarming regularity, which is perhaps understandable, since you're usually running into these NPCs only after some buddies of theirs have just been murdered by one of Batman's lunatic foes. Also, why would they stop making this point, considering Batman never has a response?

The no-kill policy maintained by Batman and most other comics superheroes has long fascinated me. As a kid, I was quite often frustrated by heroes refusing to end the lives of villains who were clearly irredeemable and almost certain to strike again in subsequent stories. I wondered at times if that made me a bad person, but I know I wasn't alone in my feelings. Indeed, Hollywood, unlike comics and cartoons, seemed to consistently agree with me that bad guys should be ended with extreme prejudice. And it's nothing so simple an issue as superhero comics merely aspiring to higher moral standards than Hollywood. After decades of stories of the Joker somehow breaking out of Arkham repeatedly to commit many murders, Batman becomes hard to take seriously as a moral paragon, as his refusal to do what must be done starts to sound more like just a selfish or even neurotic impulse to preserve some kind of personal purity above serving the greater good.

Mind you, I'm not even taking the "if this were real life" tack; I'm saying that, internal to the comics world, Batman's no-kill philosophy must be challenged. If it be evil to take the one life of the Joker, nevertheless it must surely be the greater evil to let him live and inevitably take dozens more lives. That is, unless Batman and the Gotham authorities sincerely believe, every time they apprehend the Joker, that it really will be the last time they have to deal with him. But, in that case, I better see Batman looking truly shocked and disappointed every time the Joker breaks out. But I don't see that.

Clearly, many of the comics writers too have recognized the mounting absurdity of Batman's high horse moralizing (although, in fairness, what doesn't become absurd when a story spans 70+ years with the same cast of ageless heroes and villains?). Otherwise, these NPCs wouldn't be saying these things. Yet how I wish Batman would respond! Because I don't even know that he's wrong; I just know that it's a challenging topic. And when these guys make these challenging statements against everything Batman stands for, and he just stands there silent, I can't help thinking, Batman, you're taking a beating here! These are the moments that demand a response! Where is the "lecture, philosophize, or browbeat" button prompt? Instead, he passively allows these random NPCs to make him look foolish.

Well, it's early yet. Maybe Batman is seriously meditating upon their words, and this is all building toward a climactic quick time event, when the player will have to take all arguments presented into consideration before deciding whether or not Batman will end the Joker. Now that would be empowering.

So ready to go digital

So Resident Evil 6 is getting totally savaged on Metacritic--critics and users alike. I myself played the demo and didn't like it. Even so, I picked it up at retail day-one because . . . well, let's be honest, I'll buy crap just to have it, so long as it has "Resident Evil" on the cover.

To be specific, I even paid the $30 premium for the "Archives" edition for 360, which bundles in Resident Evil Code: Veronica X HD, Resident Evil 4 HD, Resident Evil 5 Gold Edition, and the Resident Evil Degeneration movie. Degeneration is dreadful and, on its own, not worth paying for at any price; you can just consider it a bonus in this package. But each of those games normally goes for around $20 (about $10 too much for CVX), so if you don't already have more than one of them, then the bundle is not a bad deal (that is, provided you still want and intend to play RE6 itself sooner rather than later).

That said, Resident Evil 6 Archives is surprisingly quite the opposite of a conventional "collector's edition"--probably not the sort of item you'd be happy with if you're buying things just to have them. If it proves to be rare, then I suppose that in itself will make it a collectible. But it's a very unattractive and cheaply put-together package. RE6 already has some of the more boring box art in recent memory, and the Archives cover is a possibly even less inspiring grayscale version of the same, only with the words "Archives" and "Includes" above a list of all the titles included. At least it has a slipcover, though it's the same and just as tacky as the front of the case.

Among collectors, the bigger gripe (or at least equally bad) is that CVX, 4, and 5 are all strictly digital; the box just includes download codes for the approximately 13 gigs' worth of content. Degeneration is a standard-def DVD, which may well be the greater offense. So, basically, Capcom pressed an extra batch of RE6 discs, generated a bunch of download codes, and tossed in leftover Degeneration DVDs (of which they probably have thousands lying around), all thrown together in a package with a cover that looks like a placeholder image. There's not even an instruction manual included! What total crap! (The standard edition of RE6 reportedly doesn't come with a manual either.)

So, yeah, it all sounds pretty disgusting, doesn't it?

Well, the package makes for an unquestionably lame collectible. On the other hand, I'm lately starting to feel that, price being equal, the digital versions of games in many ways hold more practical value for me than physical media. The convenience of being able to load games right off the hard drive, instead of popping discs in and out of the tray every time you want to switch games, is not to be underestimated. Yes, essentially, not only am I a wasteful spender, but I'm also lazy. But the reality is that the majority of the games I've played on the 360 over the last year have been off the hard drive, and that comfort is certainly something I've come to appreciate. Also--and I'm being completely serious here--I've had multiple occasions when, on a whim, I would load up a game on my already-on 360. Meanwhile, walking over to my games shelf, picking out a game, and then inserting it into the console is not something that I would ever do on a whim. And, as I am these days an increasingly more casual player, my gaming almost depends primarily on whims to initiate.

I'm actually glad that the included RE4 and CVX are digital rather than physical copies. Knowing myself as I do, I know that I would never pop in disc versions of either of those games into my 360. On the other hand, there's a chance, however slim, that I might one day, on a whim, load RE4 off the hard drive. That possibility also makes my spending seem less wasteful than if I were paying only for a disc to gratify my sense of collector's vanity. And, since I already have RE5 on disc, it's nice to also have a digital copy now. (Of course, it would be even better if, when I bought the physical copy, they would just include the downloadable version free, but that's obviously a pipe dream.)

In fact, I honestly wish that the included RE6 were a download as well. Certainly, the overall cheapness of this bundle makes me wish they had simply gone all the way and made it nothing but codes on a sheet inside that crappy box. Even setting aside the underwhelming physical component to this specific release, however, going all-digital is something that, more and more, I feel I can really get behind. It's convenient, saves shelf space, and is more secure in a way, since you can usually re-download even if your hard drive fails, whereas if something happens to your disc, you're screwed. Sony made a big deal recently of its being able to offer downloadable versions of RE6 and other major titles simultaneous with their retail releases. Had that been an option on the 360, I would seriously have considered it for RE6. Aside from my collector's mentality, which is largely mooted here by the lame cover art and lack of manual, the only real argument for the physical version is that Archives is the better value and, ironically, only available at retail.

On that note, it's worth mentioning that, for the same price as Archives, you can get its PS3 counterpart, Resident Evil 6 Anthology, which swaps out CVX and Degeneration (the weaker parts of Archives) for downloadable PS1 versions of RE Director's Cut, RE2, and RE3. Outside of this bundle, those games would collectively cost you about the same as CVX + Degeneration, but they're probably more worth your time.

What I've Been Playing #4

I don't usually like to play online with strangers, but Microsoft had switched on Xbox Live Gold for free for all users over the past weekend, and, since the service is ordinarily $60/year, I figured it behooved me to take advantage and get as much out of the weekend as I could. As it happened, the only 360 game that my brother and I both owned and could play online together was Red Dead Redemption, which I coincidentally had only started playing in single-player a few days earlier.

Red Dead Redemption is a two-year-old game at this point, and, even at the peak of its popularity, I don't imagine it was ever a title to sell on the merit of its multiplayer. Meanwhile, I hadn't done any competitive online gaming since I last tried out one of those military shooter games, which I left after one session with a (perhaps too hasty?) negative opinion of. Alas, although I may have hoped for a different and better experience, Red Dead Redemption's online was, right off the bat, exactly what I expected.

In the past, I've broadly compared all online shooters to "the wild wild West" (not the Will Smith movie, nor the earlier TV series), a lawless frontier that brings out its denizens' most vile and destructive tendencies. You might think that an especially apt analogy in the case of Red Dead Redemption, but actually "wild wild West" has never come close to capturing the untamable savagery of the online arena. That said, Red Dead Redemption is indeed worse in some ways than even a typical round of FPS team deathmatch. In the default "Free Roam" mode, less a gameplay type in and of itself than what this game offers in place of a lobby--the central hub where players can connect to form teams and match up with other players--you're tossed, without any directives or guidance, into a severely depopulated version of the complete open world of the single-player game. You'll see other players running around, and you can propose a match or posse up and roam the land together. But it's more likely that the first person you approach will just try to shoot you. You see, even though Free Roam contains no real scoring system or victory conditions of its own, in practice it nevertheless manages to become just a never-ending battle royale of everybody shooting everybody, even though nobody stays dead and none of it gains anybody anything. Basically, people don't even need to be incentivized to start shooting without prejudice; it's just their instinctive go-to. No AI game master governing with rules, calling time and declaring winners, the only law is the gun and a fight everybody loses. You can try to avoid this by choosing to enter a "friendly" version of Free Roam, where player-killing is turned off. But, guess what, even that doesn't make people any friendlier; instead, if they can't shoot you, they'll shoot and kill your horse instead. Seriously, it's an incessant stream of notifications that some guy killed so-and-so's mount, etc. I wonder why these horse-killers don't just stay in the non-friendly rooms, or why they don't go into actual versus games, instead of attacking people in the lobby.

I thought I'd have better luck in the cooperative mission mode, "Outlaws to the End," consisting of a handful of four-player stages, which mostly involve exterminating groups of AI bad guys while getting from point A to B. The action is usually so hairy in these stages as to be almost unmanageable without a full team of four working together. So, not only are you not supposed to attack the other players, but, for very practical reasons, you're strongly encouraged against it if you want to survive. Why was I shocked and appalled when people still didn't play along?

The very first group of players I was matched up with was tasked with laying siege to a fort, retrieving the kidnapped girl within, then escaping together via four-horse coach. This was maybe the third mission I'd taken on with this group, and, although we had yet to complete a mission together, nothing too crazy had happened; the enemies had just overwhelmed us. This time, after we cleared the fort of enemies, three of us waited by the coach while the fourth player went to escort the girl over. While we waited, one of my teammates started shooting the horses harnessed to the coach. At first, it didn't even register to me what he was doing, because a civilized human being's mind isn't rigged to understand that kind of sociopathy, which goes against all sense and sensibility. I mean, I've seen some sick stuff in games, but I can honestly say that I never expected to see this. Folks, you can't script this stuff.

Thus, three of the horses were already dead or dying by the time my brother thought to try to stop him. I don't know if this guy was crazy or what, because there was never any communication, but, whatever the case, with one horse left living by the time the last player and kidnapped girl joined us, this maniac relented and took the driver's seat. I said hell no and pulled him off, then started whipping that last horse to carry us as far from that creep and toward our objective as possible. We got pretty far, but it was really quite hopeless. With enemy riders harassing us the whole way, that one-horse coach never stood a chance. Once that last horse inevitably went down, it was automatic game over.

After that fiasco, my brother and I were resolved that, as soon as the next mission started, we were going to shoot that horse-killer dead before he could sabotage us again. It was his turn to be shocked as we both started opening fire on him from behind. By the time he realized we were serious, it was too late for him to do anything but die. I don't know what was going through the mind of the fourth player as all this was happening, but clearly it was time for him to pick a side. Unfortunately, when my brother and I were shortly thereafter felled by AI enemies, the fourth guy chose to revive the horse-killer, whereupon they both left us for dead.

Now, if only this horse-killer had been a singular lunatic, a good time might still have been had, but, no, nearly every team I played with featured at least one asshole. At one point, as we were sharing a raft and fighting against enemies standing on the shore, the guy behind me just shot me in the head for no reason. On another occasion, same stage and well into it, a different guy decided to start hurling firebombs on the raft, knowing that it was too cramped for us, his teammates and the only ones aboard, to avoid getting set on fire. Then there was the guy who, shortly into a mission, decided to blow up everyone with dynamite before logging himself off, as if that had been the only thing he had wanted out of the game all along. This kind of rampant team-killing--the lowest of the low--is usually indicative of a game gone completely to hell. As offensive as some Call of Duty players may be, at least you don't generally have to go into a match worrying that your own teammates might stab you in the back.

As easy as it is to blame cretinous jerks for ruining everybody's fun, I do have to say that the game itself doesn't exactly help matters. On more than one occasion, when it was time for our four-man team to get on the coach together, I would get up along the side of the carriage and press the button to try to get in through one of the doors, but instead I would end up accidentally pulling the coachman off and taking his seat a la Grand Theft Auto. It was completely unintentional, but, since we weren't sharing a line on voice chat, I had no way of telling the other player that. And so, over an honest mistake, the trust would be broken, and all hell would break loose as it became every man for himself. A part of me wonders if that's how it all began, if the first shot fired wasn't actually an accident, but thereafter nobody could stop shooting anymore and trying to take back what they thought was theirs. Or maybe it's just that I was playing on a Thursday with a bunch of twelve-year-olds at a time of day when any responsible adult would be at work instead of playing Xbox Live. Maybe.

What I've Been Playing #2: Guardian Heroes

Guardian Heroes for Xbox Live Arcade

After having heard for years that Treasure's Guardian Heroes for Sega Saturn was perhaps the greatest side-scrolling brawler of all time, I was quite excited to learn that it was being remastered for Xbox Live Arcade. This beat 'em all par excellence for a tragically doomed system would at last be getting a second chance on an actually viable platform, and I could not wait to give it a try.

Alas, the game is junk.

To its credit, the game had some ambition. It distinguished itself from previous beat 'em ups by including 1) an expansive, dialogue-heavy story mode with branching paths, 2) a Fatal Fury-style multi-plane field of play, 3) Street Fighter-style special moves, and 4) RPG-style level-up and character attribute customization systems.

The first thing you're likely to notice (well, besides the crap character designs from the same guy who did Radiant Silvergun) is that there's an awful lot of talk in this game. As the game begins, before you can commence whaling on guys, you must endure interminable screens of dialogue. Such breaks in gameplay recur with regularity as you progress further. As far as I could tell, the story was some cheesy and completely generic fantasy fare. Between the lame characters and the fact that I don't play beat 'em ups in order to read, I quickly ran out of patience for this. Mercifully, you can fast-forward through the story sequences, although I wish they had included an option to exclude them altogether.

Once you get into the actual gameplay, the next aggravating feature of Guardian Heroes is the multi-plane system. The battlefield is rigidly divided into three Fatal Fury-style planes, and there are buttons specifically assigned to shifting between planes. Presumably, the game was designed this way in order to help it play more like a 2-D fighting game. Pressing the up directional causes your character to jump, and you can perform special move motions (e.g. quarter-circle-forward (AKA "Hadouken")) without your character's feet sliding downward as you input the command.

Alas, I think the cost may outweigh the benefit. Personally, I found the planes system to be the most frustrating mechanic I'd encountered since the "turn around" button in Guilty Gear Isuka, itself perhaps this game's spiritual other half--a 2-D fighting game that wanted to be a beat 'em up. In both cases, players are asked to unlearn one of the most ingrained fundamentals of the genre, having now instead to handle with conscious intention what before had been easy as breathing. At least in Guilty Gear Isuka, I could try to keep my opponents on one side of me, so that I wouldn't have to turn around to face them. In Guardian Heroes, there's really no way to keep enemies from hopping off to a different plane, at which point I lose precious split-seconds before remembering that I must press the appropriate "shift to plane" button to go after them.

And what do we get in return for this cumbersome design? Some fireballs and uppercuts? Other 2-D beat 'em ups, such as Capcom's Final Fight 3, have managed to implement special moves without having to constrain the battlefield in such a manner. Admittedly, no other beat 'em up has implemented 2-D fighting game mechanics to anywhere near the same extent as Guardian Heroes (unless you count the Boost mode in Guilty Gear Isuka), and probably no other beat 'em up's combat involves as much finesse.

The last unique feature of Guardian Heroes is its inclusion of limited RPG elements. Characters have different stats that you can raise by gaining experience from defeating enemies. Having to take breaks between stages to assign these attribute points further encumbers an experience that is already frequently stalled by the story sequences. This is especially unacceptable when playing with a second player, as the time you spend deciding how to allocate your points may leave the other player waiting impatiently.

That is probably the most serious flaw of Guardian Heroes--that it is not very conducive to a fun co-op experience. For one thing, it only supports two players. But, worse, the story mode seems to have been designed really more as a single-player experience. The constant lulls in the action make this much more of a ponderous and therefore solitary experience than one would expect from a game of this genre. Treasure did include a versus mode for up to 12 players, and this may actually be what Guardian Heroes is best known for. But, for all its Street Fighter-isms, it remains far too simplistic to ever work as a competitive fighting game, and so this arena mode is only fun for the occasional party.

As far as I'm concerned, this is Skies of Arcadia all over again--just another case of a truly mediocre game with a fan-manufactured reputation as a hidden gem. I attribute this to a mix of post-purchase rationalization--adopters of a total bust of a game system feeling the need to justify their purchase by desperately propping up one of that system's rare exclusives--and a will to elitism--the need for snobs to make themselves feel special by developing a cult around a game that was never actually remarkable, but only so hard to come by that nobody on the outside could try it for themselves to verify that the game was unremarkable. Well, I think perhaps that cult finally voiced its praise a little too loudly and proudly, encouraging Treasure to release the game to wider audience, whereupon both the game itself and its champions have at last been exposed for the frauds they have always been. Now excuse me while I sign some petition for Sega to never ever port Panzer Dragoon Saga to any viable platform.

What I've Been Playing #1: Radiant Silvergun

Radiant Silvergun for Xbox Live Arcade

It's good, but it's not the Holy Grail of vertical shmups by any means.

The hook here is that, instead of having to collect weapon upgrades and power-ups, you're equipped with seven different guns--standard, homing, wide-angle bombs, rear spread, lock-on missiles, remote electric charge, and close-range sword--at all times, which you level up simply by using them. A veritable Swiss Army knife, your ship theoretically has a tool for every situation, although it will take a while to figure out the right weapon for each job, and some guns are definitely more useful than others. Eventually, along with memorizing the stage layouts, you'll learn when to use which gun, and you should become quite automatic switching between them. When I recently went back to play Ikaruga, I actually felt really weak, limited as I was to only a standard forward cannon, after having grown accustomed to the more versatile load-out in Radiant Silvergun.

Otherwise, the game is a shmup--better than most, but nothing revolutionary. The stages are never random but very meticulously constructed, and they demand that you be likewise meticulous and precise as you shoot and dodge your way through. It's difficult, but never overwhelming, except perhaps in its length, approaching an hour. The game progresses at a somewhat slow pace, and boss encounters are frequent. Unfortunately, many of the earlier bosses are not so inspired; some are little more than stationary bullet sponges. It gets better as you get further in, but the front-loading of tedious battles hurts replayability. It is kind of exhausting, especially compared to the incredibly brisk twenty-minute experience of Ikaruga.

The game is also kind of ugly. It's a few years older (1998) than Ikaruga (2001) or Gradius V (2004), so it understandably doesn't look as sharp as those later Treasure-developed shooters. But, more than anything else, it's the art direction, the game's marked lack of any visual personality, that really lets it down, especially compared to those other classics. The game is just really drab throughout, with undistinguished space backgrounds. Regular enemies are red, blue, or yellow shapes--mostly unassuming circular or rectangular sprites. It's nowhere near as striking as the black-and-white look of Ikaruga. Ugliest of all are the generically cartoony hand-drawn characters in the story mode, though thankfully you don't have to deal with them in arcade mode.

The music, composed by Hitoshi Sakimoto at his Final Fantasy Tactics-era best, holds up better. It's nothing like his really surprising electronica stuff from Gradius V, but rather sounds almost like leftover material from Final Fantasy Tactics. In fact, although it's good, the fact that it sounds so much like Final Fantasy Tactics yet again reinforces the feeling that the game has no artistic identity of its own, much in contrast to the thematically unified Ikaruga, where the music was handled by Hiroshi Iuchi, who also did the backgrounds and served as director. Also, the Radiant Silvergun soundtrack, being in that trademark martial style of Sakimoto, can become somewhat repetitive and, within an already exhausting gameplay experience, witheringly relentless in its own right, especially as the game has almost no hard breaks between levels, and so the score just keeps pounding away without ever letting up.

At this point, you might be wondering what makes the game good, as I claimed at the beginning of this post. Well, it's a shmup, one of the simplest forms in gaming, and I think what's fun about a good shmup is properly basic, thus hard to explain or break down any further in words. But I will say that I've been playing Radiant Silvergun every day for the last two weeks, and, through a bleak and senseless season, it has been a daily comfort that I keep coming back to.

Part of this may be on account of the story mode. Although the story itself is stupid, and the subtitles (no English voice track, alas) impossible to read while taking enemy fire, the story mode is unusual for a shmup in that it keeps a cumulative score for every time you play. As mentioned before, your weapons in Radiant Silvergun grow more powerful as you level them up through usage (basically, through scoring with them), and this is also cumulative, so, although you technically still have to beat story mode in a single session, you can save your weapon level progression, so that you'll start every session more powerful than your last. So, even for a player of my meager shmup skills, there's a real tangible sense that, with each attempt at this once seemingly unwinnable game, I'm getting stronger and ever closer to reaching the end. Even more important than the weapon levels, the game also rewards you for each hour of play by starting you with an extra life on your next attempt, and this too is cumulative, apparently up to a total of 99 lives, which should be far more than even a terrible player would need.

As I said, the game can be kind of exhausting, so I can only play it about once a day, and I still haven't beaten it. And yet, in a weird way, there's a hopefulness when playing Radiant Silvergun, and, despite all the hundreds of deaths I've already died in this game, it never seems mean or unfair in the way that, well, real life can be. It isn't random, it doesn't cheat, it always gives you a chance, even if you can't always see it, and, even at its most cluttered, it's still more manageable and makes a heck of a lot more sense than real life. And, no matter how many times I fail, I can keep coming back, and there is always that promise that, if I stick with it, eventually I will succeed. But, in the meantime, even dying in the game is a kind of catharsis. Life and death in the fake world of a video game has no real meaning or consequence, so they say, but sometimes reality doesn't seem to have any meaning. At least with a game, since it's all pretend anyway, I can pretend that there's something at stake, that I'm actually living and dying for something.

In fact, a part of me is terrified at what will happen when I finally do beat the game. I can't imagine I will continue to play once having achieved that objective. Then will hollow reality kick back in? I guess I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

Bayonetta

Bayonetta is like "Ultraviolet: The Video Game," only not quite as cool as that sounds.  But Bayonetta's eponymous heroine does have Violet's inhuman fighting abilities that test even the camera's capacity to keep up, her proficiency with the blade, her wicked gravity powers that allow her to walk on walls and ceilings, an outfit of comparably temperamental fabric, a motorcycle, and a somewhat annoying and unwelcome child tagging along.  I'm pretty sure there's even an amateur "Gun Kata" moment in there.  And Hideki Kamiya's latest game is even more frenetic and nonsensical than Kurt Wimmer's 2006 film.

Bayonetta is, of course, the latest work by Hideki Kamiya, the creator of Capcom's Devil May Cry, which in 2001 established a new standard and mechanical vocabulary for 3-D third-person action games.  The seminal game was a critical and commercial success, but Capcom then shockingly handed development on the sequel to a different team.  Kamiya was disappointed with the decision, players were disappointed with the new team's product, but then the series rebounded as the DMC2 team found its way with DMC3, after which most of us moved past the fiasco, and so too seemingly did Kamiya, as he went on pouring his passion into Viewtiful Joe and Okami instead.  By the time DMC4 came out in 2008, this was all ancient history to most fans.  But then came the unveiling of Bayonetta, Kamiya's first project since leaving Capcom.  The similarities to Devil May Cry were impossible to ignore, and players were once more intrigued by the idea of what could have been, had Kamiya been allowed to make the sequel to his game.  Now that we may finally have the answer, was it worth the wait and the heartache?

Kamiya's spiritual successor to Devil May Cry is leagues better than DMC2.  Put it next to the original Devil May Cry, stellar in its own time, and you'll find Kamiya's new game to be a more robust, vastly more refined experience.  Indeed, had we gotten Bayonetta back in 2003 instead of DMC2, I'm sure it would have been amazing.  But that's not reality.  The reality is that this is 2010--nine years and three Devil May Cry sequels since Kamiya's PS2 hit.

The near-flawless DMC3, which I consider the peak of the genre, captured most of what made the original great, then made significant tweaks and additions--most notably, the chapter select system encouraging replay--to produce an overall more solid, more playable game.  Bayonetta is a very good action game, as was DMC4, but its only substantial evolutions upon the original Devil May Cry are features that were already implemented in DMC3.  Technological advancements allow for some flashy new set pieces, but the gameplay feels fundamentally just like DMC, now a somewhat tired, distinctly last-generation game.

Even taking these games out of their respective historical contexts, I think Bayonetta would be merely on a par with DMC3 and DMC4, but not necessarily better.  The real-time weapon switching is nowhere near as tight as in DMC3, and without DMC4's handy Devil Bringer to reel enemies in, it is again sometimes cumbersome having to chase enemies down.  Despite possessing a ton of weapons, each with accompanying massive move lists, Bayonetta also doesn't seem to have as many impressive or obviously useful special attacks as Dante or Nero.  Devil May Cry is similar to a 2-D fighting game in that respect, outfitting its characters with big utility maneuvers--the lunging Stinger, for example, or the enemy-launching High Time--whereas Bayonetta, despite feeling very similar, is more like a 3-D fighter such as Tekken, where instead of having special moves, the player is supposed to string together regular punches and kicks in different sequences to different effects.  It's not that one approach is necessarily better than the other, but just as I will always take Street Fighter over Tekken, so too do I prefer Devil May Cry to Bayonetta in this respect.

As in Devil May Cry, there are additional moves to be purchased in Bayonetta, but whereas Dante never felt "complete" until he had his full arsenal, somehow I never felt, in Bayonetta, like I needed to exert myself even so far as to utilize all of the weapons I found incidentally.  I beat Bayonetta on normal difficulty--the highest default setting--never spending a dime except on the air dodge maneuver.  I did not buy any other items or abilities, nor did I go out of my way to search for hidden items or optional challenges.  Even with my Bayonetta at less than half of her maximum potential health, I never felt greatly challenged.  I must credit this to the game's very generous checkpointing, which will sometimes even restart the player in the middle of a multi-phase boss fight.  There was only one boss--the second fight with the giant infant whip-head--that somewhat confounded me, but instead of slowing down to figure it out, I just used a single healing item--the only one I would use during my entire playthrough--and powered my way through.  I know that's not how these games are meant to be enjoyed, and I'm sure I did miss a few things by not shopping, but the game itself didn't really encourage that.

The most significant point of divergence from DMC is in how Bayonetta stresses defensive play.  The DMC sequels were all offense except in boss battles, but Bayonetta requires a more attentive, defensive mindset even against regular enemies.  It's nothing as severe as Ninja Gaiden, but the central mechanic of Bayonetta is the dodge maneuver.  Nearly all enemies have attacks that cannot be interrupted and will, in fact, deflect any attack of yours.  The goal is to sidestep these attacks, and if the dodge is performed just before an attack is supposed to hit, Bayonetta will activate "Witch Time," completely freezing all enemies for a short period, during which you can assail them without reprisal.  The timing required to activate Witch Time is much more generous than for similar mechanics in other games, such as DMC3's Royal Guard block ability, so even mediocre players should be able to pick it up within a few minutes of play.  Pay attention instead of mashing buttons, and you'll find yourself stopping time with regularity against even imposing boss enemies.  When you do manage to thus neuter a boss, it's uniquely empowering, but that feeling comes at a great cost.  In requiring that you make such specific use of the dodge against even basic enemies, the game forces you to play a certain way, meanwhile discouraging the sort of experimentation and improvisation that are so much the heart of Devil May Cry's combat.  That's probably why I didn't bother shopping for moves or exploring the combo system more deeply, instead mostly just relying on dodging and the basic punch-kick-punch combo throughout the entire game.

I did mess briefly with the one-handed Easy Automatic mode.  It's pretty cool and does genuinely allow even the feeblest of players to make it through the game, so that they can, ahem, just enjoy the story.  DMC3 and 4 may not have been sophisticated literature, but they were pure narratives that presented their themes cleanly and effectively.  Bayonetta's story is complete bunk.  Neither is the plot ever even vaguely comprehensible, nor the cinematics sufficiently impressive, outside of maybe two or three noteworthy action cut scenes.  Most annoyingly, for a story so devoid of sense, there are some surprisingly lengthy and dialogue-heavy scenes to be had.

Another area in which Bayonetta differs from DMC is the camera.  Kamiya has traded the fixed camera locations of the DMC games for a user-controlled, character-centric camera.  This has a subtle effect, more so on level design than on gameplay.  With the fixed cameras, DMC was often constricted to filling its maps with lots of corridors.  Many of the more open environments, meanwhile, were just three-layer constructs, with a clear background and foreground, while the audience formed the fourth layer viewing from beyond the performance area.  Bayonetta doesn't have to thus take the audience's limited viewing angle into consideration, so its stages can be more fully three-dimensional.  So that fountain, for example, can form a more organic piece of an interactive environment, rather than being strategically placed for best eye-catching effect.  What this camera really exists for, however, is the "Witch Walk," Bayonetta's single coolest mechanic, which allows you, at specific points in the game, to defy gravity and walk on walls and ceilings.  As you transition from one surface to a perpendicular surface, it is the world itself that appears to rotate around your character.  The game's highlights are the battles with Bayonetta's rival Jeanne, during which both characters Witch Walk from surface to surface as they trade blows.

The anti-gravity business contributes to a perhaps deliberate softness in Bayonetta that, along with its vivacious new heroine, gives the game a personality subtly distinct from the harder-edged Devil May Cry.  This can be felt in the jumping, which is floatier, ironically closer to DMC2.  In the rest of the DMC titles, Dante could buy a second jump, but with or without it, he still had to rely heavily on his handguns to give him some extra hang time against ground threats.  It made for one of the coolest effects in DMC, the idea being that it was only the recoil from his pistol fire that kept him afloat against ever-present gravity.  DMC2 Dante's double-jump, on the other hand, involved some kind of magical float ability, as though he were conjuring wind beneath him, and Bayonetta similarly is able to sprout wings to gently glide short distances.  As for Bayonetta's handguns--functionally closer to machine guns--they deal more damage than Dante's, but they don't integrate very naturally into melee combos and are hardly necessary for combat, which makes them hardly necessary at all, since they aren't needed to augment Bayonetta's jumping.  Witch Time, meanwhile, is functionally similar to Viewtiful Joe's VFX Slow ability, though also somewhat the opposite.  Joe used his ability to slow down time in order so that he could dodge bullets and other fast attacks.  For Bayonetta, time slows as a result of dodging.  In the former case, Joe is having to make the most of his powers in order just to survive.  Bayonetta, meanwhile, is practically baiting attacks so that she can dodge them and activate Witch Time as a reward.  Whereas Dante and Joe seemed to always be walking a razor's edge, Bayonetta seems more out on a casual stroll.  (It also feels counterintuitive, to me, for time to slow after you've already dodged that (figurative) bullet, although I'm obviously nitpicking to call the game out on that.)

Finally, if you're one of those Devil May Cry fans who loved the first game but wondered where all the really zany stuff went in the sequels, then Bayonetta may be the game you've been waiting for.  What Kamiya offers that the DMC sequels have not is the completely random gameplay non sequiturs--points where the game will suddenly depart from the regular action gameplay and instead switch to some extended mini-game.  There's a motorcycle stage, a rail shooter stage, and other wackier sequences.  When Devil May Cry pulled this in critical, even climactic, moments, it was shocking, but a part of me had to smile and tip my hat at the sheer nerve of Kamiya to simply discard all the deep combat mechanics that the rest of the game had spent hours drilling into the player.  The rail shooter stage in Bayonetta is unfortunately much longer and more full of distracting special effects than Devil May Cry's, however, and whatever novelty there is to it wears off well before it's over, leaving the player just a pretty shallow and annoying shoot 'em up segment to endure.

If all you've been waiting for is an action game as good as the original Devil May Cry, then you've been waiting needlessly, because Devil May Cry 3 already was that game.  Bayonetta, like DMC4, is just more of the same, and the amount of enjoyment you derive from the experience will depend on your appetite for that kind of comfort food.  But if you are a hardcore fan of this hardcore genre, then the emergence of a worthy new contender in Bayonetta--much more a direct Devil May Cry competitor than Ninja Gaiden or God of War--is surely welcome, even if it doesn't revolutionize the formula.

Super Street Fighter IV

What should be the definitive version of Street Fighter IV is surprisingly lacking a lot of the polish and production that went into the original release.  This is apparent right from the box art.

When Capcom first unveiled the North American Street Fighter IV cover, that crappy, pasted-together clip art looked like it would be the one disappointing piece of a monumental game launch.  It was typical of Capcom USA, which had given us, among other things, the Okami box art sporting an IGN watermark.  I just thought that maybe an event as big as Street Fighter's long-awaited return warranted something better.  Miraculously, reason prevailed when the fan community actually managed to change Capcom's mind and convince it to simply stick with the Japanese artwork for all regions.  Alas, there was no eleventh-hour rescue this time, and although the North American Super Street Fighter IV cover is decent, for being a lazy Photoshop assemblage of clip art, it is markedly inferior to the original piece used for the Japanese box art.

While the quality of the North American box art may seem an insignificant element, which is counterbalanced by the thick full-color manual, the laziness unfortunately creeps into the in-game presentation.  On boot, a brand new opening cinematic follows the usual legal screens, and it is excellent, if not as comprehensive as SFIV's.  But what's missing is Exile's awesome "Indestructible" theme song, which is gone without a trace, and I can only guess that it was cut to save on licensing fees.  In its place is an instrumental medley that, while good, doesn't get me nearly as pumped as "Indestructible."  Again, small stuff in the grand scheme, but that's not the end of it.  Remember those slick in-game move lists that were modeled after the panel art on the old coin-op machines?  Well, they've been replaced with boring traditional scrolling screens of just move names and button inputs.  Is it a big deal? No, but it all factors into the presentation score, and it begins to remind me of the lack of effort or pride that, before Street Fighter's glorious relaunch, produced things like Capcom Fighting Evolution.

Capcom has inexplicably cut out even some gameplay modes and options.  I won't miss the Survival and Time Attack challenges, but where is the Gallery for viewing unlocked art and videos?  Perhaps Capcom realized that nobody would ever want to relive the game's wretched endings, especially considering that SSFIV's brand new anime cut scenes are just as awful and poorly animated as before, if not worse.  In fact, the opening cut scenes for individual characters are now nothing more than still figures on barely animated backgrounds set to voice-over narration.  On the bright side, Capcom did implement my most wanted feature, the option to set the music to character themes during versus play.

In the long run, of course none of this stuff matters one bit.  This is a fighting game, after all.  More specifically, this is Street Fighter IV, and if you've played it before, there is nothing that is going to surprise you in this new edition.  It is still the best fighting game on the market, and if SSFIV doesn't fundamentally alter the core game, it at least adds a lot more of what was already there.

A fighting game is its characters, and SSFIV adds ten, which is frankly a massive leap.  That brings the total number of characters to thirty-five, making for the largest cast of Street Fighters ever assembled (unless you count Street Fighter Alpha 3 MAX for the PSP).  It's also the most comprehensive roster ever, bringing together the best from Street Fighter Alpha and Street Fighter III, on top of the complete Super Street Fighter II cast.  I would have liked to have seen Alex from SFIII, but I don't know that I would have traded any of the three SFIII representatives in this game for him.  Maybe I would have traded jailbird Cody, but I suppose, considering the guy's place in the Street Fighter/Final Fight canon, he deserved a second chance.  As for the brand new characters, Juri and Hakan are definitely a step up from the initial set of SFIV originals.  Juri represents a fighting style and nationality that many players have been asking for in SF.  I just wish she weren't so overtly evil and perverse, which seems more out of SNK's bag (e.g. Vice and Mature); Capcom has traditionally been all about the fight, with minimal or no focus on characters' alignments.  On the opposite end of the spectrum, Hakan feels more like a vintage design, albeit a freakish one in the vein of Blanka or Dhalsim.  Like all of the SFII classics, his character rests in his visual design and fighting style, instead of a tiresome personality.  Although I originally thought Abel and El Fuerte were the more normal SFIV characters, I ended up hating them both because of their obnoxious voices and dialogue.

So, yeah, in one respect, probably the most important one, SSFIV is a pretty huge update.  Personally, the only new character that I'll probably be using with any regularity is Dee Jay.  And although I am obviously no expert, the only other new character that I can see shaking things up at the competitive level is Dudley.  Meanwhile, there are no meaningful system-wide changes instituted in SSFIV, and it overall feels like an engine-refining middle installment, a la Street Fighter II' - Hyper Fighting or Street Fighter III: 2nd Impact, as opposed to Super Street Fighter II Turbo, Street Fighter Alpha 3, or even Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike, each of which was the last in its sequence and also the most experimental iteration.

A year later, my problems with SFIV's systems remain.  Giving players now a choice between two Ultra Combos for each character makes little difference, since it is pretty clear in most cases that one option is simply better.  Powering those Ultras, the Revenge meter, which seemed questionable to me a year ago, has since become my greatest frustration in the game.  It makes no sense to reward a player just for taking damage.  Capcom should have learned its lesson with Capcom vs. SNK 2's similarly criticized K-Groove (AKA the "Scrub Groove").  At least in CvS2, players didn't have to use K-Groove, and the other Grooves had advantages of their own that made them at least as effective.

The Focus Attack meanwhile remains mostly an expert's maneuver that is unlike anything else in Street Fighter.  I don't actually have much time to practice the game, so I still often forget that the Focus Attack exists, and I end up just playing as though this is SFII.  That leads to a lot of beatings because this is definitely not SFII, and the Focus Attack makes a huge difference.  If you don't know your character's specific Armor-Breaking attack, you'll end up taking a lot of Focus Attacks to the face.  On the offensive end, Focus Attack-canceling and Dash-canceling introduce crazy possibilities that experts can use to run rings around casual players who won't even comprehend why they are losing.

If these terms mean nothing to you, that's okay, because they don't mean much to me either.  These elements foreign to my SFII-informed experience are not necessarily worse than Parrying or Custom Combos, but SFII had none of those things and endures to this day as the cleanest, most fundamentally sound 2-D fighting game.  Frankly, things like Focus Attacks, Parrying, Custom Combos, etc. are gimmicks, albeit game-altering ones, which is precisely the problem.  A good game shouldn't be distinguished from its peers and predecessors by its unique gimmicks.  They don't evolve the game in any way, they just make it different and harder to understand.

You might wonder, if I had it my way, wouldn't we just be playing Street Fighter II over and over again for eternity?  Well, people do still play SFII for a reason, and it's the same reason that people still play chess, or tennis, or any competitive game that has been around for generations.  If the rules of the competition are sound, the fun comes in what an endless supply of competitors can bring to it.  That said, there are improvements that can and have been made to SFII, mostly in the areas of control and game speed.  And games have been able to add interesting things without taking away from the core of SFII.  Dashing and EX Specials, for example, do not alter the basic dynamic of a match, but they create a few extra possibilities here and there to make newer games fresher without breaking them.

Even with all its flaws, however, Super Street Fighter IV is the biggest Street Fighter ever and, I say again, the best.  Even with its Focus Attacks, it is less complicated than Alpha 3.  Even with its Ultra Combos, it is less backward than 3rd Strike.  And even with all that crap, it simply feels better than Super Street Fighter II Turbo, which I now find way too fast and jerky.  The online options are also vastly improved, although I still don't find much satisfaction in playing against passing strangers.

Oh, the bonus stages?  Totally lame.  They are something that you miss after they are taken away, but then, once you have them, you never want to play them, because they are and have always been stupid and pointless.

Resident Evil 5: Gold Edition

I played through Resident Evil 5 four times, which is the most time I've spent on any single Resident Evil. This surprises even me, because I very rarely play through games more than once. I don't think I've ever encountered a game that is so deliberately user-unfriendly in its controls and basic mechanics while also being so addictive and replayable by its mission design. I know it's not to everyone's taste, but I do love that game. And yes, I did play through it in both co-op and single-player (the latter on Veteran difficulty, in fact). That was all months ago, of course, but I was able to enjoy one last hurrah with the game recently in the form of the new Gold Edition content.

The first piece of new content, "Lost in Nightmares," is a prequel scenario starring Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine. Set in a mansion environment that is completely new to and unlike anything else in RE5, it is a lovingly packaged homage to the classic pre-RE4 survival horror games. You spend most of it reading documents, solving simple puzzles, collecting limited supplies, and fetching keys and turning cranks, before confronting a boss enemy that cannot be defeated through direct means. "Lost in Nightmares" also included the one moment in all of RE5 that genuinely scared me (although I wonder how scary it would have been if I had remembered to turn on the RE5 mini-map). There is even a nifty trick to switch the perspective to the classic fixed camera mode, so you can remind yourself where the series came from and see just how far it has come. Alas, it does not restore auto-aiming, rendering the perspective highly impractical (well, more so than usual) once the shooting starts.

With tons more nods and references, "Lost in Nightmares" is wonderful fanservice for veterans, but its brevity makes it more of a nostalgia-driven novelty than an independently rewarding experience. Lasting one short sitting (you cannot save your game in the extra missions), as opposed to several nightly sessions scheduled before bedtime, it's missing the rewarding narrative arc, from hopeless nightmare gradually to hopeful dawn, that was so essential to old-school Resident Evil. It also makes apparent just how poorly suited cooperative multiplayer is to the old survival horror design. I've discussed this before, but the more intimate adventure style of Resident Evil is not something that gets better with more players. When it is just you and your player character journeying through that mansion, it is easy to become immersed in the exploration and bond with the game itself. When you add another live human being to the mix, you become anchored in the real world, unable to drift into the fiction. Without that immersion, all this scanning of objects and flipping through pages in lengthy files becomes just a tiresome exercise.

On the other hand, when I collected a key item that I had no idea how to utilize, it occurred to me that maybe I was never very good at these games. As I read aloud the clue, however, my partner was able to recall an important detail that led us in the right direction. Had I been on my own, I'm sure I would have just wasted several minutes rechecking every object in the environment. Unfortunately, the presence of another player could not help me to make sense of the cryptic documents, some of which seem barely relevant to either RE5 or past games. Perhaps they are the first clues to the story of the next game.

The other new chapter is "Desperate Escape," which is set during the events of RE5. The name evokes "Last Escape," the Japanese subtitle for Biohazard 3, which was the last game chronologically to feature Jill Valentine as the main player character. Jill is back as the player one character here, but "Desperate Escape" is more of a distillation of the action elements of RE4 and 5. It is probably the most intense chapter in all of RE5, constantly tossing overwhelming numbers at you and forcing you to keep on the move. Of course, you still can't move while shooting, so the resulting action is maybe the finest example in RE5 of the series's trademark engineered panic. For reference, the hairiest chapters in the main game require taking out as many as 60 enemies to earn an S rank for the stage. At the end of "Desperate Escape," my partner and I finished with over 150 enemies routed. Each.

The highlight for me was a sequence that, more than anything else in the game, truly reminded me of Black Hawk Down. Armed with a sniper rifle, I was forced to take shelter in a crumbling shed. With three walls and only one window, it was the most fortified position available. I quickly found myself against the back wall and essentially prone as I covered the two entry points. As packs of enemies stormed both sides, I was pretty much locked in scope mode any time I wasn't frantically reloading. Occasionally my partner, packing a puny automatic, would charge out to collect ammo. Certain that I would not survive long out in the open with a sniper rifle, I had to remain behind and watch him shrink in the distance and wander off screen, perhaps never to return.

Both chapters are well worth experiencing if you are a fan of the game or series. "Lost in Nightmares" is a very novel experience that shows how the old survival horror formula could still work with the newer camera. "Desperate Escape" is an action-packed scenario that serves as a short encore for the experience of RE5 as a whole. They are not entirely satisfying, but I don't see how post-game downloadable content of this sort can be. Although both chapters are comparable in length to those found in RE5's campaign, as standalone chapters they don't carry the feelings of consequence that come with progressing through a full game. "Lost in Nightmares" feels especially insubstantial and "Desperate Escape," even as hectic as it is, feels a tad anticlimactic. Like the Wizards Jordan, it lasts just long enough to remind you of the great times you had before, but it's over all too soon and the payoff isn't quite there this time. Even so, I'm glad to have had this one last dance.

The final piece of Gold Edition is Mercenaries Reunion, which is a huge disappointment. It is just the regular Mercenaries mode with barely reworked stages and eight new characters to play as. Unfortunately, instead of simply plugging the new characters into the existing mode, Capcom decided to include Mercenaries Reunion as a completely separate mode, despite the fact that it is obviously 99% the same code. Thus, none of the original Mercenaries characters are playable in Mercenaries Reunion, nor are any of the new characters playable in plain Mercenaries. This only really matters when playing co-op, but it means that you cannot, for example, team up Wesker with Barry Burton. Less significant but still annoying, your old scores and progress also do not carry over to the "new" mode. I can speculate as to the reasons, but there really can be no good excuse for this.

Earth Defense Force 2017

To date, Japanese developer Sandlot has made nine games released by six publishers. That just covers their Japanese releases, although it so happens that very little of their output has made it out of Japan. Far from being hired muscle, they really only develop games in a very peculiar genre that they themselves created on the PS1 with Remote Control Dandy. Remote Control Dandy cast players in the role of a human character who would have to defend the city by remotely controlling a giant robot. That design was expanded upon in Robot Alchemic Drive, Sandlot's first North American release and also my favorite PS2 game. More fully realized in its ambitious design than any other game I've played, RAD pit giant mechs against giant aliens in colossal clashes that always left the urban environment utterly devastated. It went largely unnoticed in America, but Japan would get a few more remote-controlled city-destroying robot games out of Sandlot. Perhaps the developer's most successful games, however, have been the Chikyuu Boueigun or "Earth Defense Force" titles, which basically took the RAD engine and removed the robots. The first two installments quietly posted up some decent figures as budget-priced releases in Japan and Europe, but only the third Chikyuu Boueigun title made it to North America, where it again became a sort of sleeper hit budget title as Earth Defense Force 2017 for the Xbox 360.

So, how does Sandlot's signature design work in a game that is missing the one element--the giant robots--that it was built around in the first place? Well, although the remote-controlled robots are gone in EDF 2017, you can definitely trace the game's lineage back to RAD and Sandlot's other robot games. The game's most notable aspect is its sense of scale--not just the size of the enemies but the extent of the destruction that enemies and players alike can wreak. As players battle as human soldiers on foot against giant ants, as well as sinister robots that tower forty stories tall, the real delight is in seeing how much of the city you can level within a stage (before it is all miraculously rebuilt for the next level). Even small arms tear into skyscrapers as though ripping through paper, and city blocks collapse like houses of cards into smoke and rubble which you can then walk triumphantly over. Yeah, the game's flimsy, almost nonexistent story tasks you with defending the earth from alien invaders, but, unlike in RAD, nobody keeps a tally of the collateral damage, and when the robots start dropping from those UFOs right into the middle of the city and begin unleashing their rapid-fire laser cannons, the urgency of the situation does not afford us the luxury of choosing where we bring them down. They fall where they fall, and if that happens to be on top of the residential district, then we can't really be held accountable for the losses of life and property. Or if a shopping complex gets between you and your target, you're not seriously going to waste time making that long walk around, are you?

For sure, it's an impressive game for its budget, and the spectacle of Gort's big brothers laying waste to the city during actual gameplay consistently inspires awe as perhaps no other game does. Even without great production values, Sandlot has no equal when it comes to depicting outlandish sci-fi titans enacting over-the-top violence upon a startlingly realistic setting. But let there be no delusions that this is more than a budget release. EDF 2017 boasts a similar commitment to its gameplay premise as RAD, but that premise in this case is far simpler. This is a game about the purity of blasting alien bugs that go flying on impact and explode into massive clouds of green goo. With nothing else to distract from the arcade-style experience, the game promises a sort of primal satisfaction but is overly shallow. Whereas RAD stood out because of its ludicrously convoluted yet incomparably brilliant control scheme, EDF 2017 is about as simple as it gets (which is probably appropriate, given that the series is part of D3 Publisher's "Simple" line in Japan). It's an exceedingly spartan third-person shooter, where you run around a city and wield some clumsy but explosive firearms against hordes of bugs and robots. Against these enemies with little AI but great numbers and/or health, you just fire away as rapidly as you can in their general direction. It's ultimately an even more mindless version of Dynasty Warriors, with bigger effects and better draw distance but fewer meaningful characters or objectives. With over fifty levels and five difficulty settings, it's a value package with a lot of content to keep players busy for a long time, but most of the missions offer exactly the same experience. In nearly every stage, the only goal is to eliminate all enemies, which doesn't require any great skill or strategy. Knocking down buildings is fun at first, but the lack of any related score, even a negative one as in RAD, makes it all kind of pointless pretty quickly.

As disappointing as the lack of depth to the gameplay is the absence of any zany anime-inspired story as found in RAD. It starts out promising with a quaint cinematic of some alien spacecraft ominously descending upon the city. Before any alien life forms are even visible, the government dubs them "Ravagers" while wondering if they might be friendly. They're not, of course, and first contact is made with missiles. That's the extent of the story, however, and from there it's just mission after mission of the nameless "Earth Defense Force" troops dispatched to intercept the alien invaders with little in the way of exposition. Frequent hammy background chatter from unspecified EDF comrades ("They're huge!" "We can win this!" "Now let's go kick some alien butt!") adds charm and completes the cheesy presentation, but the incessant explosion and gunfire noises wear on the ears.

Backed by Enix's money, Sandlot showed that it could do great things with RAD. EDF 2017 exhibits flashes of brilliance that you wouldn't expect in the budget range, but it feels like a minor project to keep the developer going between its "real" releases, much in the way that Square Enix keeps the Kingdom Hearts series active via portable side story games between major console titles. Sandlot's latest game is Nintendo's Zangeki no Reginleiv, notable as the first game to be packaged in Japan with the new black Wii case for releases rated at CERO C (15+) or over. By all accounts, the game is Chikyuu Boueigun with Wii MotionPlus controls and a vaguely Norse mythological theme. It's a decidedly Sandlot game, which doesn't give it very good chances for a North American release, but, after playing EDF 2017, I'm not planning to start any petitions. Of course I'll play it if Nintendo does decide to bring it over, but I'd be much more interested in seeing Sandlot going back to its more complex and experimental robot games.

Army of Two

Somalia. 1993. What the hell were we doing there?

Oh, right--our government had hired Philip Clyde, top contractor with the SSC private military company, to "take down" a local warlord. I, Tyson Rios, and my fellow US Army Ranger, Elliot Salem, were there to make sure Clyde fulfilled his contract. Things got complicated, as they usually do in Somalia.

Seriously, what the hell were we doing there?

Clyde turned out to be nothing more than a well-trained, well-paid thug. As we walked right into the warlord's trap, this "best of the best" mercenary just parkoured away across rooftops, leaving Salem and I to carry out the assassination ourselves. Only the dreaded back-to-back formation that had earned us our reputation as a "two-man army" kept us alive as the enemy surrounded us from all sides. But this mission was a tall order even for us. We were still only two, and this was Somalia. The hostile locals made up in numbers and suicidal fearlessness for any deficiencies of training or equipment.

Following another hectic gunfight, I found myself pinned between a wrecked car and a stone wall. After interminable minutes of my partner and I struggling in vain to get me loose, we both knew what had to be done.

"Finish the mission," I told him. "Just don't leave me for these animals."

He was not going to be able to free me. I could not self-terminate. Delaying the grim inevitable would only increase the likelihood of us both getting killed there.

As my partner gripped his gun, his finger hovering intensely over the trigger for what felt like forever, I don't know whose agony was worse.

It might have been the gutsiest, most brutal co-op gaming moment since the ending to the original arcade Double Dragon.

Too bad it was actually the product of a heinous bug, rather than any design of the developer.

What had actually happened was that my character had become hopelessly snagged on or in a tile of wonky collision. The area was clear, and I was merely searching for ammo. I had slipped into a narrow space between a car and a wall, and when I tried to turn back after finding nothing, I found that my character was stuck and would only move in place, even as my partner ran back and forth across the same strip of map several times without difficulty. After I gave him a turn at my controller to prove that I really was caught, we concluded that there was absolutely no prying me loose. The game would not allow my partner to progress to the next area without me, however, so it looked like we were screwed. It was then that I had an idea.

I suggested that my partner shoot my character. Although I could not be moved while standing, perhaps once I ran out of health and collapsed to a downed state, my partner would be able to drag me out and then revive me. It was perverse, but it was our only option.

For the live human player controlling my partner, there was no pained hesitation. Rather, it was too good an opportunity for him to act like a jerk and know that the other guy had literally asked for it. After wasting several rounds on my crotch instead of simply aiming for my head, there was actual fear on my part that he would run out of ammo before I died, thereby really locking us in that awful situation. Fortunately he had barely enough, and from there my plan worked just as I had hoped.

Despite that outrageous bug experienced during the Xbox 360 demo for EA's Army of Two (which would not be the last time the game broke itself with a progression-halting glitch), the game still showed promise, and I was looking for another good co-op campaign after having completed both Gears of War titles.

The full game did not turn out to be the great Gears of War clone that I might originally have hoped for, but it is a surprisingly decent title that actually distinguishes itself quite admirably from the other cover-based shooters on the market. Simply put, Army of Two is the most co-op game I have ever played.

Contrary to my fictionalized account, the real Army of Two is insistent that under no circumstances do you ever leave a man behind, because if you can't make it through together, then you won't make it through at all. From Contra to Gears of War, most co-op modes merely double the destruction by adding a second gun to a game that could be played and beaten with just one. Some games may include short sections where two players must split up, or where both must activate buttons simultaneously, but for the most part, there is little actual teamwork required, and even in co-op there is often the sense that a single player could do it on their own. In contrast, I don't think there is a single battle in Army of Two that can be won without both characters working together.

The basic shooting and cover mechanics are merely passable, but the core of the game is the "Aggro" system. An "Aggrometer" measures the player characters' aggressiveness, swinging back and forth between the two according to who is dealing more damage or carrying the flashier weapon. When the Aggrometer is solidly on one character's side, he will turn red and attract most of the enemy's attention, allowing the other player enough breathing room to line up clean shots or get into flanking position. Aggro is much more than a gimmick; nearly every battle in the game takes place in a wide-open space where eagle-eyed foes can approach and fire from all sides, so the only way for one character to get anywhere is for the other to momentarily draw the enemy's focus by going Aggro. The game's easiest difficulty level allows a bit more leeway in strategy, but there is still a great deal of tactical interdependency to the ebb and flow of the Aggro, with both players constantly alternating roles to systematically dismantle enemy formations. You can even feign death when low on health, at which point all the Aggro will transfer to the other player, leaving them to survive on their own for as long as possible while you slowly recover your health on the ground.

Army of Two is serious about providing a two-man experience, and it includes several other novel co-op mechanics, although most are not ultimately very successful.

In Gears of War, when a character runs out of health, he becomes just a helpless lump, which an ally can then revive with a simple tap on the shoulder. Army of Two favors a far more visceral system, leaving a wounded character unable to move but still able to shoot. Meanwhile it is up to their partner to dash into the fray and drag them to relative safety before administering first aid. It should have been the most thrilling mechanic of the game, but it's totally busted in practice. For the downed player, the very partner that you need to cover as he drags or heals you usually ends up completely obscuring your camera view, leaving you more likely to shoot him than any enemy gunmen. The back-to-back sequences are similarly flawed, as your screen is regularly obstructed by the massive sparks emitting from your partner's gun barrel.

Co-op snipe is a nifty idea in theory, but as its own dedicated mechanic it is kind of pointless. Activating it switches both players to scope view and starts a countdown, allowing you to snipe two targets at the same time. For example, you might need to stealthily take out two guards in unison, so that neither's death alerts the other. I suspect that it exists only to allow you to coordinate with the AI partner in single-player. In two-player, there's no reason, aside from the dearth of sniper rounds, that you couldn't both manually equip your sniper rifles and count it down out loud.

The less said about the back-to-front tandem parachute sequences, the better.

Honestly, the most successful co-op maneuver is actually giving kudos. When standing next to your partner, you can press a button to gimme five or duo air guitar. This is accompanied always by a funny audio clip. It may not have a lot of practical purpose, but at least it does what it's supposed to by easing the tension. The best part is that you can continue to do it even while characters are receiving orders or having grim scripted conversations.

The campaign's six missions are loosely tied together with some vague conspiracy plot. Far from playing out like an episode of 24, however, the game spans years. Following the first Somalia mission, Salem and Rios follow their CO in becoming contractors with SSC. The next mission takes place eight years later in Afghanistan, mere hours after the attacks on 9/11. Then, from when Rios first voices his suspicions about his PMC higher-ups, it takes another eight years before he and Salem actually get around to doing anything about it, with the game concluding in the then future of 2009.

As it skips years at a time, what little story there is is hard to follow, and I repeatedly found myself wondering what we were even fighting for. Then a pop-up upon reaching a checkpoint would display the funds in my virtual bank account, and I would realize that perhaps that was the point, because Salem and Rios are, after all, soldiers of fortune. Rios at least occasionally shares the player's ethical concerns, but when you stop and pay attention to his partner's whining about credit card debt, you realize that there is virtually nothing separating the materialistic Salem from the completely amoral villains of the piece. Salem and Rios aren't heroes, and it is only our predisposition to identify ourselves as the good guys in these games that might blind us to this reality. Perhaps Big Boss had some things to say about mercenaries, but I think Army of Two gets closer to the truth of it. Neither romanticizing nor entirely condemning PMCs, the game rather soberly captures that, for these contractors, war is just a job, and that's what's scary. Ultimately the game finishes with mercs engaging mercs in true warfare sans ideology.

Weaving its story across historic events, the campaign, not only includes stages set in Somalia and Afghanistan, but also sends Salem and Rios to Iraq and even references Hurricane Katrina. It doesn't dwell in polemics at the expense of playability, but it is at least a little more relevant than the sci-fi of Gears of War. As much as those may have been superior games that I greatly enjoyed, it was refreshing to find an experience that more closely resembled the real world.

On the other hand, while the campaign features some of the hairiest scenarios in any shooter I've played, there are no epic boss fights and few spectacles to be had, and that overall lack of variety is really what hurts the game most. Unless you count the occasional suicide bomber or rocket launcher guy, the only non-standard enemy type is the heavily armored soldier. Completely invincible from the front, and with enough awareness and artillery to stop dead any direct approach, these mini-bosses are ostensibly the ultimate test of your mastery of the co-op gameplay, as they can only be felled by somehow slipping behind them to deliver a kill shot to the back. Later on, we learned that a big enough gun could knock them to the ground, after which one player could simply run behind them and shoot them in the back as they got up. In fact, that was how the game ended, as the final battle is nothing more than a series of three of these nameless, faceless, identical-looking heavy armor dudes. Meanwhile the story's two name antagonists are both taken out in consecutive non-interactive cut scenes that last about two minutes total.

I suspect that EA received quite a bit of warranted negative feedback about that ending, because a free, post-release DLC pack included an alternate ending that, sure enough, allowed players to have that showdown with the main villain. Of course, his appearance--the entire scenario, in fact--is so aggressively clownish that, as you play, you can almost hear the developer saying, "Here's your damn boss fight, since nobody got what we were going for in the original ending!"

The horrible ending, mediocre gunplay, and poorly balanced and repetitive levels keep Army of Two from being a great game, but its unique mechanics make it still one of the better co-op shooters out there, especially if you have a PS3 instead of a 360. I am happy to see it getting a sequel, which will hopefully refine some of those ideas into a more functional and well-rounded experience.