Fallout 4 – Pt2

A SECOND WIND REVIEW

Part two of FBT’s special edition Wasteland wander through Fallout 3. I mean 4.

*Spoilers. Not that it matters, it’s fricking obvious*

So, having been thawed out of a Vault, my suburban housewife character has not even remotely bothered to look for her son, the main plot of Fallout 4. Instead the domestic goddess blazed through the wasteland like a grizzled survivalist. Likely because she’d played Fallout 3.

While most of Fallout 4 is Fallout 3 Redux, one new addition is the ability to create a settlement; amazingly this isn’t a Bethesda money-grubbing DLC element like Skyrim’s Hearthfire, it’s part of the main game and a key element, the idea of carving out a place to call your own, of rebuilding the home you glimpsed pre-war, or building somewhere new, away from the memories of our recently lost other-half – it’s great; well, a great idea but impossibly frustrating and boring. Speaking of our beloved, the tragic parent of our child, the man I shared domesticity with only moments ago, I should look for someone new to share it with. Well, that was a long mourning period, sixty years as an ice-cube; a girl’s got needs. Companions are back and largely the same as FO3 in that they can carry stuff for you and get killed easily. I don’t need to find my kid when I’m spending so much time saving, finding, reviving and shouting at my companion. There’s a relationship angle added that’s somewhere between Mass Effect’s romance process and CJ’s girl in every city. Each companion has a selection of actions they find Hot or Not. Take Piper the spunky journalist; she’ll have the hots for you quick-sharp as she gets turned on every time you pull out a bobby pin.

It seems like a good idea and a way for you to find your true love – a companion who matches your character’s personality. In reality, it’s a real pain because many actions are necessary within the game – for example Cait hates it if you’re generous and likes you being selfish (She loves you walking around naked too, that girl’s got issues) so it becomes a question of do you alter your style to please them because you like them, or will your actions tear the two of you apart? I might be giving Bethesda too much credit for this concept, I’m not convinced that’s their intention but it’s an interesting dynamic. And oddly I had to sleep with a woman at one point to get info out of her, and my fully-confirmed partner was with me. I’m not sure what happened that night but we’re still together, yet she gets well pissy if I flirt off-script with someone. Plus, the whole idea is undermined by the perk system; each companion provides a bump in some form or other, so you just keep around whoever has a perk most useful at the time and put up with their grumbles when you do something they don’t like. The majority of the companions are quite interesting with different takes on the wasteland, and the perfect partner angle (if that’s what Bethesda were actually going for) is interesting – but the perk system removes who they are and turns them into a power-up.

Of course, the wasteland isn’t completely empty. Aside from the faction missions and the main storyline, there’s tons of mini-missions, events and radiant quests to keep you schlepping back and forth. Most are standard clear this out, find that, uncover what that is, kill that, rescue this. It can’t really go any other way, but after games like Mass Effect 3, which for all it’s faults made sure every mini-mission counted, you kinda want to see more impact. It would tie in nicely with the opening scenes of blissful suburbia if every side mission or encounter added to your settlement, either by more refugees helping or providing services; it would have been nice to return on a whim and see how it’s flourishing, and encourage you to go out and adventure more so by the end, you’ve provided and created a community, a nod to the past. But, missions are all standard and you do it for the xp. Eventually I get badass enough that a Deathclaw doesn’t terrify me, and give up questing, bored. Plus the settlement looks like a dump and everyone in it moans. Washed out of the wasteland, I might as well get this done. Why am I here again? Oh yeah, the kid.

So I follow fairly typical plotlines that lead me eventually to the dreaded Institute. Throughout, I heard stories of those guys, that they were creating androids to replace people in preparation for invading and forcing everyone out of the area. ‘Cos it’s just prime real-estate n’all. I kept thinking, why would they waste such resource and effort? I don’t know. And that’s not my infamous lack of patience, that’s the game’s muddled and unfocused plotting. The Institute itself is spotless and futuristic, why’d they want to move above-ground at all? The institute, for all their brilliance – not to mention the fact that they invented a transporter – doesn’t seem to have a clear mission statement and they have more than a passing similarity to FO4’s Steel Brotherhood; there’s a slightly distasteful fascism to both factions yet they hate each other. Still, turns out the wasteland tales are true. They are building ‘synths’ which are roaming about insinuating themselves into the colonies and townships of the wasteland. Still don’t really know why. But anyway, turns out my bundle of joy was taken for his DNA to help build human-androids for … reasons. And here he is!

My boy is all growed up and become the Father of the Institute (‘Father’ – Wow. Mom meet Son called Father. That’s deep, right? I shall call him Fatson) I feel nothing when we meet; this should be a huge moment finally finding him only to discover my boy is old, indifferent to me and has a very different world view to the one I’ve formed while out in the wilderness, but it doesn’t gel because I’ve not shared any of my pain or feelings during my trip. The game doesn’t seem to know what to do with us once we’re together. After some wooden dialogue that doesn’t explore anything, the game shuffles me off on quests with a neat little ‘We’ll talk later’. And we never do, not really, not in a way that’s rewarding given this has been Jack’s focus. All conversations are carefully manipulated to avoid any plot-spoiling or emotion; he’s in his sixties and not had a parent so his feelings towards me should be curious at best whereas I should be staggered but their scenes together are little more than standard dialogue found elsewhere in the game. My chat with the Mr Handy was more emotive than this. When a machine is happier to see me than my own son you’ve got problems.

Reuniting with Fatson is a complete let down but not an unexpected one; I don’t feel cheated because it could only ever have gone this way; I never thought the game would have the guts to kill the kid; he could have died, that would be interesting – a mid-game emotional wallop that leaves me wondering my place in this world without the focus; we could have found our descendants, imagine grandma Jack and the kids rebuilding a settlement or me eventually sacrificing myself, too far removed from this world to settle but providing something to ensure Jack Junior’s kids had a chance – Nope, standard plotting only please. Hell, it didn’t even go wide of the mark and say he’s gone but everyone in the institute is a clone of him intended to repopulate the earth and I was a clonemother. What would I do then, kill potentially hundreds of cloned grandkids I could spoil at Christmas? It just doesn’t do anything brave with what it has and I think that inevitability played a part in my reluctance to go looking for him. I didn’t want to be disappointed by a FO game. But it did it anyway, then compounded it; just before meeting Fatson, FO4 grins like it pulled a Keyser Soze-sized rug by revealing my son is the antagonist. Of course he is. You’re expecting this to create an emotional struggle, a difficult choice? Nope. Worse, that reveal is the second rug-pull in a row. In a scene ripped from a Spanish telenovela, I’d been led to believe my kid was a child still and sure enough, in the Institute, I find the child! *Cries in Spanish* But as we talk something weird happens; he … shuts down. It was a robot! *Cries in frustration* Cue Fatson briefly pretending not to be the boy before we ‘realise’. Piss off. I wasn’t shocked I was disappointed and filled with suspicion this wouldn’t be the last I’d see of the robokid. Don’t you do it FO4 …

Anyway, having been sent packing by Fatson, I wander the institute. Every scientist I meet is a bit of a prick and they’re misinformed about the surface – if only the Institute had someone available with an intimate knowledge of life in the wasteland. But they don’t just dismiss me, they don’t even have the option to ask (It’s like Bethesda realised ‘oh crap, if she tells them it’s not that bad out there, our main storyline is shot / Just don’t have the dialogue option? / Great save! Lunch?’). Their attitude towards Jack also rankles me. I’m a badass wilderness survivor, they should at least be a little nervous having someone this dangerous leaving dirt everywhere. I have a nuclear weapon strapped to my back and they’re rude? Fine that they have an ingrained dislike of surface-dwellers but I can’t change their mind and I’m really not convinced those are the guys to side with. But I go off doing the side missions to see where this takes me. And I’m surprised; it takes me right into Fatson’s chair!

More ridiculous than the whole Fatson reveal episode, within 3 or 4 missions I’m offered the big chair; that’s just unbelievable. Plus, I’ve not learnt anything new, been swayed towards their world-view or even offered a view. An entire institution of scientists capable of building robots – including robot gorillas I noticed, why? – and a transporter beam and various other brilliant technologies and the person best suited to taking over Apple is the mud-covered luddite who’s been here a day? Okay so two scientists rebel against the notion, and do so by brilliantly locking themselves in the room with the gorillas. But everyone else just comes around to the idea, especially after that whole gorilla incident. Okay so if I’m in charge now I get to change their views toward the surface – Oh, no I can’t. More ‘don’t break the storyline’ control. I can’t influence the Institute at all. FO4 has jumped the gorilla. Even if I accepted that, and I can’t, this whole event should have come early on, to give me time to warm to their ideas and ideals, but now I’ve done most of the other factions’ missions and get where they’re coming from, I don’t care about the Institute.

It also turns out my little man is the one who let me out of the vault. Why? I dunno really, he mumbles some plot-papering about knowing I’d find my way to him. How, why, what? You’ve expressed nothing but contempt for the wasteland and had the power to let me out decades ago, but you think the best idea is let your Mother wander with no direction or inkling about your status and just figured I’d rock up? And then when I do, I’d automatically side with you and – oh forget it I’m disowning you, I’ve had enough, I’m gonna go hang out with those fifties throwbacks with the shark decals on their power armour.

Like happens in the real world, this family reunion has been a disaster. Fatson and the Institute should have been introduced from the outset, especially after the revelation he let me out – It would have been a wicked game-changer to find a grown man at the house, explaining he released me and he’s about to unleash synth Armageddon on the commonwealth and wanted to rescue me first, revealing his identity. But something prevents us from returning so instead we go exploring for a way back to the Institute and along the way we both learn something; based on my actions, he sees hope or despair in the wastes, compassion or brutality – my actions are his reactions; it informs his plan once back at the Institute. Maybe he becomes compassionate and I become hardened and it’s up to him to change me. Anything but this. So much potential squandered, the generic nothingness of it makes me so angry I launch a mini-nuke and murder-suicide the two of us. This game drove me to infanticide. Or patricide I’m not sure. Had the two of us wandered together I would really have the fate of the wasteland in my hands, side missions would benefit the main quest by swaying his opinion and I’d be able to shape it as I see fit. But no, I’m caught between the usual factions and go with whichever ones I personally prefer/finished the missions for. Just like FO3, just like NV, just like most of Bethesda’s games nowadays; they’re not just reskinning the world, they’re copy/pasting the plots and missions.

This time around factions include the Steel Brotherhood, who somehow – despite the presumed world-wide shortage of everything – manage to maintain a huge airship dreadnaught (admittedly that thing arriving in the sky was a high point as was blowing it up later), or the Railway who are dedicated to freeing sentient synths (The Railway? Seriously? Let’s leave alone the grade-school level commentary on slavery). Oh and those Minutemen. I forgot about them. Literally forgot them; someone in the Steel Bros mentioned the Minutemen and I was like ‘oh yeah!’ And then there’s the Institute with their plan to do make everyone upgrade their iPhone or something. They all hate each other. I can’t unite them. Why not?! We don’t even explore the hatred which in some cases, particularly the Steel Bros vs Minutemen, doesn’t make sense.

On top of it all, Jack is the worst kind of hero – a passive one. She’s happiest wiring plugs. I play her as an absolute badass and the game makes the character a complete meh.

Another option could have been to build your own faction. FO4 would have had the capability to do that. Your settlements could have become a force in the wasteland, a new power rising with your actions dictating how it’s perceived, become the major power battling the others; Nation of Jack. That would make me more inclined to build more than a rickety shed for my settlers. Anything! Damnit!

So I go through the motions and the missions, none of which stand out and eventually I destroy the institute. It’s telling that I forget to go see my son after all that. Had I followed his storyline, more would be revealed about the Institute and it’s intent and that’s annoying; to be cheated out of a resolution because I don’t follow his ideals despite being made the Father is a further insult and eventually I forgot him as if he was a Minuteman. I guess I assumed he’d appear at the last second begging me not to do whatever I’d done, but instead, little robo-son rocks up. Now believing Jack is its Mother, robo-kid asks to be taken with. I agree, although I’d rather take a Gorilla. It would be cool if robo-kid actually turned out to be a homicidal mini-me terminator but no, it’s just that kid from A.I and a hackneyed way to give Jack her son after everything.

Once we’d escaped the explosion of the institute – which took out most of the buildings folks were living in – I wonder was there really no way to take it over and move in? That’s the only way to resolve this? In the middle of an irradiated wasteland, atomically blowing up the only safe haven for miles? And what about the poor robo-gorillas?! The Institute has exploded (helpful), the Commonwealth’s scientists are dead (helpful) and all their technology is gone (helpful), and my replacement son was nowhere to be found (helpful). I think he might have fallen off the roof we watched the explosion from. Finally, a Bethesda bug I can get behind. I’m certainly not going to look for him, one missing kid was enough and I was already aggravated the game would try to tie everything up so simply by giving me an iBoy. A happy ending? That’s not what the wasteland is, and it was never what Fallout was about. The best you could hope for was a better wasteland.

For some, the familiarity of FO4’s retread is more than enough. If you loved FO3, FO4 is just more of it and the settlement element allows you to bring some civility to the wasteland. It is beautifully detailed, involving and does what it says on the tin. For me though, FO4 was tame, safe and bland – I wanted to make more of a mark than a blast radius. As I prepare to fast-travel to the exit menu, I take a look at the landscape one last time. It’s an incredibly compelling world Bethesda created and it’s a testament to their dedication that we eventually call the wasteland home and want to better it. From up here that is. Down there in the ruins, we’ve seen it all before.

War. War never changes. Neither does Fallout it seems.

2015 | Developer Bethesda Game Studios | Publisher Bethesda Softworks

platforms; Win | PS4 | X0

Agents of Mayhem

A SECOND WIND REVIEW

A Saints Row game that isn’t a Saints Row game that wants to be a Saints Row game that FBT wishes was a Saints Row game too. Saints Row.

Agents of Mayhem is a spin-off, side-quel, alternate universe, continuation, whateva of Volition’s mighty Saint Row series. Following the ‘good’ ending to Gat out of Hell, the earth has been rebuilt only to be attacked again; it’s not the Saints behind the mayhem though, it’s super-villains L.E.G.I.O.N who destroyed every major city and government in preparation for something even more nefarious. M.A.Y.H.E.M, a group dedicated to disrupting LEGION’s plans arrive in Seoul to … disrupt their plans.

In the eighties, someone in marketing realised just because kids couldn’t see R-rated movies that doesn’t mean they couldn’t sell to them; Rambo had an animated tv show and toy-line, as did Robocop, The Toxic Avenger, even Police Academy; Alien had a toy as well (Complete with spring-action jaws) and was followed by a (Flying) Alien Queen, now with Spitting Action; Aliens even had a kids show but it never made it to air. I bet it included a baby Alien that made friends with the kid character, just like Uni in D&D and Godzooky. Man, the 80s were amorally great. Nowadays it’s different, they target the toys at adults. Sorry, collectable figurines. And that, in a beautiful tangent, is AoM; a Saturday morning cartoon version of Saints Row. Not in look – it’s clearly is intended to emulate that Filmation meets Toei style we all grew up with – but in style. It’s the bounciest, most bloodless, shiniest, inoffensive game to ever let you murder people. Apart from the occasional ‘motherfucker’ there’s no reason why an AoM playthrough couldn’t air on a Saturday morning straight after Mr.T’s tv series where he pitied the fool who took drugs.

A little like The Avengers, MAYHEM is the brainchild of Persephone. Originally one of the LEGION Supervillains, she defected and took the ‘Ark’ with her, a floating fortress where she assembled a group of mercs to end LEGION’s plans. As an Agent of Mayhem, you’re actually twelve to fifteen agents of Mayhem, including Saints Row stalwarts Pierce and Oleg and Saints Row superstars Johnny Gat and Kinzie (sold separately). The agents operate in groups of three but once in the world there’s only one active and it becomes basically the same as scrolling through weapon choices. If you’re in close-quarters swap to the tank with the shotgun; long distance enemies? Scroll to the one with the sniper-like weaponry and so on. Later groups specialise but often it’s not until you’re deep into a mission that you realise what you need now is a Roller-Derby chick with a mini-gun. Shame you brought the spunky hacker with a peashooter.

They’re all cool and have distinct personalities and one-liners, but they’re completely redundant as characters in-game, it’s purely about their weapons and powerups; once you settle on your preferred loadout, the rest never see the light of day and it’s frustrating if you take a liking to one but can’t stand their compatriots or their loadout isn’t to your playing style. If they can each ‘beam-in’ on a whim, why can’t an entire team? Why is the safety of the world hinging on three heroes out of fifteen? Not actually having one to call your own also removes you from the struggle, further making AoM feel like something you watch not play and you realise how well Mass Effect’s dirty dozen balanced it; squad-mates were cool but they were the support act; you were the hero. In AoM, everyone’s the sidekick, including you.

The agents can alter and upgrade to improve their chances via xp unlocking level-ups, or in-game objects that unlock further improvements and each has a special ability which itself can be honed, and chaining events unlocks another show-stopper ability. Problem is, with this much choice across this many characters it gets messy and confusing. We also get our very own car, which can be called whenever it suits. While you can nick cars pootling around Seoul, they’re horrible and slow compared to our own K.I.T.T car and it’s one of the best things in the game. Not just for the always positive AI who doesn’t seem to mind you constantly wrecking it, or that it’s the only cool thing on the roads, but because it’s one of the few times in AoM where you get to really cut lose and not feel like you’re playing Saints Row The Fisher Price edition.

As you scally about in Seoul, there’s standard mini missions; drive out LEGIONs troops, retake bases, claim areas. Mostly those entail Saints Row 4 reskin events – LEGION troops warp in, you smack them silly for xp, money and health drops and the more mayhem you cause the more dangerous the opponents until you reach the big mini-boss and reset your wanted level. It just feels so pleasantly familiar, a daytime version of a late-night show where you keep noticing they cut out the good bits – but fatally, when you’re not distracted by fond memories of SR, you realise there’s not a lot to Seoul. Instead of carrying on the cartoon look of the cut-scenes, the future looks like an Apple Store, all shiny and neat with no real depth or involvement and you never get stuck in, which is key to an open world game –you never get tempted to ignore the missions and have a muck about, and since there’s another twelve agents to unlock, most of the first third is finding them so you lose momentum; LEGION’s looking to rule the world, if the Agents are that cool can’t they find their own way to the Ark? Just look up, it’s big enough.

The thing is, it doesn’t seem sporting to knock AoM. It’s only here for shit and giggles, and there are a lot of giggles. It’s a solid world and everything you expect is present, Gat is an absolute highlight and clearly shows that’s where Volition’s heart is, especially in his personal mission where he takes out a squad of AI Bots all imbued with his personality, not to mention his John Woo-tacular special skill, while early Agent ‘Hollywood’ is SR3’s Josh Birk turned up to 11; he’s a lot of fun before he gets side-lined by better agents – his special move is firing grenades from his groin, how can that not be fun – and all of them are up there in terms of cool. The problem is, SR had that level of fun from the get-go and then kept layering it with jokes, set-pieces and increasingly insane behaviour from a narcissistic, anarchistic, psychopathic hero – AoM starts as a light muckabout with interchangeable playables, and never progresses. When you’re putting yourself in harms’ way by constantly playing as Kinzie and Gat instead of better suited teams, your core game is clearly not bringing it, but the biggest miss-step of AoM is there’s no Co-Op, let alone followers. How can you have fifteen agents and force you to play them one by one, not even as an on-screen team? AoM’s high-point is its characters and there’s not a dud amongst them but they’re criminally underused so to ignore a co-op/follower situation where they all get an airing is a huge misstep. I get that they’re tools to be used when necessary, but we’re MAYHEM not ORDERLY QUEUE.

In the end, you never shake the feeling this is another nutso Volition Saints Row DLC – it would have worked awesomely alongside Gat Out of Hell or Enter the Dominatrix with the Saints crew trapped in a Saturday morning cartoon. It feels like a holding game while Volition and latest step-parents Deep Silver get a grip on what to do next. What happened next is Agents of Mayhem tanked and DS laid off a ton of staff. That’s a shame, cos Volition were the only ones capable of knocking the smug smile off GTA’s face; hopefully they’ll return to 3rd Street and bring it like only the Saints know how. I miss Mayor Burt -edit- Reynolds.

2017 | Developer, Volition | Publisher, Deep Silver
Platforms; Win | PS4 | XO

Mass Effect 1 vs 2

An Agree To Disagree review

FBT & TheMorty fall out over who has the best Mass Effect

Mass Effect – FBT

This seems like a tough one, but it isn’t. Mass Effect is better than Mass Effect 2. ME3 we’ll leave alone for now, it’s suffered enough but ME2 is a Michael Bay remake of David Fincher’s Mass Effect; it’s all shouty and sexy, missing the subtlety and sinister tone of ME1. In ME2, when we’re not fighting robots (never, ever exciting) it’s oversized midges. When we’re not ignoring the fact that Shep’s thrown in with terrorists, we’re helping our squad get over their daddy issues. ME1 is a slow burn spin through a galaxy that just gets bigger, grander, a true role-playing experience. ME2 is a bombastic, set-piece-driven shooter with too much filler, it’s Independence Day to ME1’s Close Encounters; instead of delving deeper it’s just louder, bigger, shoutier … and it opens with your hero dying but then getting better…

And who are we fighting in ME2? Saren was a complex character aptly supported by the Matriarch, and then there’s the Geth; self-aware machines searching for their God? Brilliant. There was the Thorian and the Rachni, Sci-Fi characters at their purest. ME2 has roaches. We even had a much cooler Reaper; Sovereign. Epic and arrogant whereas ME2’s Harbinger is all off-screen ‘puny humans’ speeches; Sovereign makes good on his threat and rocks up to kick ass, unlike Harbinger, hiding behind a gnat.

And Shep’s taking orders from a bloke called TIM (The Illusive Man’s initials are Tim? Tim?!). We all know Tim’s a villain but what does Shep do about it? Just contemptuously folds his arms at him. Did they forget to clone his balls? This is why I play as Femshep. Cerberus were ultra-evil in ME1, now they’re just misunderstood? Did he forget what they did to General thingie, the experiments? ME1 Shep woulda nicked the new Normandy and hightailed it back to Anderson. And what’s with the Alliance anyway? Shep; ‘yeah, I was dead, I’m not now. I am working with a supremacist group who tortured my own squad’ / Alliance; ‘Oh okay, here’s some side missions’. Shep basically signed up with Britain First ‘cos they gave him a new ship. And Joker too, the voice of sarcastic reason throws in with Cerberus cos he was grounded while Doc Chakwas joined a terrorist group cos she missed serving on a spaceship? There’s a few others knocking about in the Alliance. And Liara sells Shep’s body to them. It’s because I chose Ash isn’t it.

There’s no Ash in ME2! She has one scene before grumping off – it’s great that she refuses to join Cerberus because of the Commander’s influence; She had pro-human leanings, perfect for Cerberus but the cap inspires her to see beyond it and yet here he is; without Ash – Miranda is no substitute for being called Skipper. I can’t even be swayed by her catsuits. I can’t. Totally not swayed at all. Oh, hey Miranda, just stopping by again … so are we flirting yet, cos if not Jack’s looking kinda hot. As is Tali, Kelly, Samara… ME1 is intimate, personal; with six companions, you spend time with them whereas ME2’s frat-party means most get completely sidelined – they’re all great and that makes it worse. You end up going ‘Oh I’d better take Grunt, he’s not been out for a while’. The closeness of ME1’s crew lends itself to the story, this small band taking on the universe – and the relationships that develop feel more natural. In ME2 everyone’s getting jiggy; that place is like Porky’s.

And how does Shep chose to fill his spare time in ME2 when he’s not skulking around Miranda’s office? Scanning planets. He has a ship full of people and an AI onboard, can’t anyone else fire the probes?! Even EDI sounds fed up with it. And what the hell is Joker doing? Why am I piloting the ship about?! ME1 made it all about your command decisions; surprised Shep’s not on latrine duty in ME2. And there’s Mako-time. Granted, most of the time you’re just rolling back down the mountain again and the planets are sparse, but it’s a change of scene and an occasional Thresher. Admittedly, Shep needing to do a hack on a lump of gold you found makes no sense though.

ME2, flying ants aside, is a great thrill-ride but it’s a game trying to be a movie whereas ME1 is a great game, period. Some serious shit goes down in ME1 – you earnt that determined hero-walks-offscreen final shot. ME2 is just padding until a final boss reveal. Okay, I’m not even convincing myself; I’m arguing my Ferrari is better than TheMorty’s Lambo. ME2 is pretty darn close to perfect. But ME1 does get a little closer.

Mass Effect 2 – TheMorty
ME2…or as I like to call it, The Magnificent Seven in Space. Good ol’ Commander Shepard strolls into Dodge to take on the seemingly impossible task of preventing a vicious band of outlaws from enslaving the townsfolk. Of course, he can’t do it alone and immediately sets out to recruit his own band of expendable misfits. His McQueen, Coburn and Bronson are Turian, Asari and Krogan but pack an equally weighted, heavyweight punch in an incredible final mission where one wrong move and it’s more like you’re playing Massacre Effect.

How anyone could dispute that ME2 is by far and away not only the best of the trilogy but also one of the all-time greatest games ever is baffling. Firstly, your squad is over double the size, meaning you can tailor your arsenal to suit the mission – unlike ME1 where you’re pretty much just going into every fight with Wrex and *insert love interest here*. Having the same conversation no matter who you choose and going into cut scenes knowing that they’ll repeat the same Renegade/Paragon drivel like the classic angel and devil on your shoulder. Give me ME2 any day where you have to think carefully about who you take so that Jack doesn’t kick off in the Cerberus base or that two girls you want to sleep with aren’t going to get wise to your polygamous plan.

When you’re not doing very linear missions that are pretty much just a copy and paste job of the last mission you did, you’re travelling in the Mako – the most pointless and boring vehicle in gaming history. I mean, it’s the year 2183, we’ve discovered faster than light travel, have fully aware synthetic AI and can scan an entire planet using a fancy holographic wrist watch. So why in this age are we riding around in a 6-wheeled, saloon version of the 60s moon-landing buggy? It’s so dull but not as dull as the planets you’re driving round at snail pace. I preferred wasting 20 minutes of valuable gaming time trying to take a shortcut over a mountain because it was infinitely more interesting than the unattractive, soulless journey around it – even if that trip would have taken half the time. Never have I played a game where driving felt more slow and painful than the M25 at rush hour. ME2 though, blew that boring piece of scrap out of the water when it gave us the Hammerhead. A hovering jet that was faster, quicker and more agile and manoeuvred with a distinct panache.

Don’t even get me started on the antagonists. A firefight with Saren on Virmire has him running for the hills like Bowser at the end of every Mario level ever – hardly putting the fear of God into the gamer. The Matriarch battle has the most pointless of endings where she dies no matter what choice you make and as for the Rachnii… it just reminded me of fighting radroaches in Fallout. In ME2 you take down a half-human half-reaper. yep REAPER. I mean, beats a bloke possessed. When you take down Sovereign, it’s pretty much just a mind-controlled husk…hardly comparable.

Thank God there’s no Ash in ME2. How on Earth are you supposed to save the universe with a nagging wife over your shoulder… imagine every time you pick Miranda or Jack having her moan “oh, you’re going out with HER again are you?” and making you feel guilty just because you need someone with the Shockwave biotic skill. No thanks. That’s all she did in ME1, whine. About how she got Kaiden killed, about how her father always wanted a boy about how she’s not good enough for you. Have some self-respect woman. I’m the first human spectre, lack of confidence isn’t exactly a turn-on. In ME2 though, you have to work for it as everyone plays hard to get. Much better than fishing in a very small pond where you pretty much have the choice – white or blue…?

Having this argument is like saying Alien is better than Aliens or Judgement Day is better than Terminator. In reality you couldn’t have the action-packed sequel without the taut, suspenseful original that sets the mood. Maybe ME2 is better but even if it is, and it’s a BIG if, it’s only because it had an almost perfect game to pick apart and try it’s best to improve on. At least there’s one thing FBT and I agree on – both are a million times better than ME3.

Mass Effect 1, 2007 | Mass Effect 2, 2010

Developer BioWare | Publisher Electronic Arts

platforms; win, PS3, XBox360

Quantum Break

A SECOND WIND REVIEW

Time may be going to end, but is there any more sand in the Remedy hourglass or has their experimental, multimedia thriller shown the once visionary company are now nothing more than the Michael Bay of gaming?

I’d like to think that by now, I know absolutely everything there is to know about time travel. I’ve seen all things Terminator, adore 12 Monkeys and I own the Back to the Future trilogy on VHS, DVD and on Blu-ray twice (one for upstairs, one for down). So when it comes to the subject, you’d have to find the nearest San Dimas Phone Booth and travel back to my birth to pull the wool over my eyes. While TV, movies and books have all had numerous stabs at the topic (some way worse than others – I’m looking at you Butterfly Effect) one question has always plagued me, why when time travel is the most popular sub-genre of science fiction has there not been a software developer bold enough to throw themselves feet first into the world of space/time manipulation? Sure, many games have flirted with the concept of time travel over the years but they’ve never really been able to capture the essence. It’s always been an afterthought. A comedic subplot. Games like ‘Day of the Tentacle’ purposely subverted time travel and ignored the minutiae in preference of being daft and throwaway. Others, like Bioshock Infinite, have explored it as a secondary twist. It has never been at the forefront of a major VG title until now as finally… in Remedy’s ‘Quantum Break’ we have a game willing to ask the question; What would happen if we distorted time as we know it?

I was impressed with the game years before it was released, when a tantalizing trailer was shown at E3 ’13. It showed Quantum Break as a fascinatingly unique action game, showcasing an impressive physics engine. It promised a fast paced-narrative that was tailored to the choices you made and I remembered reading a one-line review describing it as the bastard lovechild of ‘Heavy Rain’ and ‘Stranglehold’ – where cinematic storytelling and slow-motion action combine. I mean, it was the most anticipated game in decades! Despite the increased levels of excitement, I must admit, I wasn’t sure this game would be for me. Rarely do heavily publicized games live up to the hype. For that reason I waited a year, eventually waiting for the patches to be released, the price to drop and the irritating day-one pod-casters verdicts to be removed from memory. Treating it with a level of gaming equality, I soon learned that it’s so much more than all it had promised. Like it or not, it’s an incomparable experiment into multimedia gaming that thinks outside the sandbox and happily confines itself to a linear landscape to achieve it’s goal. It stays true to it’s Max Payne heritage whilst also proving itself to be a mature, standalone title in it’s own right.

While it doesn’t get off to the best of starts, kicking off in the most irritating of styles of cinematic storytelling – showing the very end of the game in a painful recap. Now, I’m a fan of non-linear narratives, but in gaming there’s nothing more irritating than knowing that eventually, I’m going to end up in custody speaking to an annoying woman who wants to know my inner most thoughts and secrets. Kind of takes any fear out of the countless situations I’m about to be thrust into – knowing that no matter what I do, I’m getting caught and that’s that. My other irritation of the intro is trying to work out who the hell Jack Joyce is and where you’ve seen him before… it took me around 3 Acts before I finally clicked he played the ice dude in the X-Men franchise. Anyway… There’s one moment of refreshment in the intro that actually filled me full of excitement. The first time we see Shawn Ashmore’s face close up, you realise the impressive capabilities of Remedy’s NorthLight engine. The facial recognition is astounding and by far the most realistic I’ve seen in a VG title. Rather than forcing itself to the forefront of the gameplay, like LA Noire’s then-famous MotionScan technology, and make you try to figure out the depth of the character’s sincerity, the facial expressions in Quantum Break only exist to compliment the gaming experience. They smartly and subtly add to the cinematic and multimedia experience that Remedy have aimed to achieve.

Moving on to the first ‘Act’ and we’re placed into that Half-life world of waiting, patiently preparing for the equilibrium to be distorted and a point set of no return. Walking around, scanning items of seeming insignificance to earn XP and a semblance of backstory while knowing that no matter what we do, all hell will ultimately break loose and we’ll be back in an inverted version of this world by the time the cutscene ends, the cigarette’s smoked and the kettle’s boiled. While this doesn’t disappoint, It’s exactly as you would expect. While games like Half-life got this perfect, QB struggles with the narrative to the point where you almost feel like you’re sitting through a timeshare presentation just to get the free gift at the end. In fact, that’s almost literally what you’re made you do at one point when your old pal Paul “Littlefinger” Serene calls you out of the blue, invites you to his building and makes you watch a full, unskippable presentation on his life-changing invention. Now it’s easy to be critical of Remedy, it’s their first foray into a serious story with a recognisable cast and while the opening level may begin painfully dull, delaying the inevitable actually adds something to the game. It establishes a tension between pro and antagonist that will force a rivalry throughout time. So I’ll happily let this minor inconvenience go for the sake of the greater gaming good.

Skipping forward, past a painful West Wing-style walk through the soulless, corporate corridors, we finally discover the time machine. It seems Serene needs your help to conduct his first ever experiment for reasons revealed later. Right now, I’m expecting a future Serene/Joyce to rock up and remind him to set his watch, but instead we’re treated to another familiar face. Joyce’s brother William appears and its part time Hobbit, full time irritator Dominic Monaghan. He arrives with some eerily prophetic warnings but in spite of them, the Time Travelling experiment goes both ahead and terribly awry. The machine has caused Serene to be thrust back in time and has caused a fracture which is slowly imploding everything around the “ground zero” in which we’re stood. As the world around us begins to spiral on a one-way trip to the destruction of time as we know it, explosions start and the screen begins to flare. However, we quickly notice something’s happened which we weren’t expecting – the noise has stopped. Time is slowing down (a-la Max Payne) and in places even freezing (a-la Zack Morris, Saved by the Bell). Okay… now it’s getting interesting – but not before we must be spoon fed that pressing up makes you go up, down makes you go down and trigger fires. At this point we’ve sat through a painful 12-hour install, 90-minutes of story set-up and a half dozen cut scenes and we’re all desperate just to get stuck into the gameplay. In no way do I neither want or need a painfully samey tutorial highlighting the basics of character movement and again I am made to wait a little longer before being thrown into the action that the trailer had so heavily promised.

As we play through the remainder of the opening Act, there’s a familiarity to the game. It handles like a generic 3PS and doesn’t have any real fluidity. It’s also an extremely linear level that gives you the illusion of choice while leading you exactly where it wants you to go. For instance, while trying to escape the campus you’re given a choice of 6 doors in a corridor to choose from – only drawback being 5 are locked and only one actually opens… you catch my drift. Time is slowing down around us, but that doesn’t lessen the haste. We must escape as quickly as we can before the whole building erupts. That said, the game doesn’t give you the sense of urgency it should, instead, it reminds you that the first level has 16 different collectibles and by blindly running away from it, you’re missing out. This isn’t an open world game where you can go back at a later date, miss collectibles and you’ll have no chance to return and pick them up – something profoundly irritating, particularly for achievement hunters and wannabe 100%-ers. What I did like was that the collectibles here are akin to ‘Fallout’ or ‘Half-life’, where we find ourselves scanning computers and reading random e-mails to discover pieces of a backstory jigsaw. It’s not spoon-fed, the onus is wholly on the player to unlock more of the story.

As we waste time trophy hunting before finally getting to the exit, we’re met with a game-defining moment, Serene shows up and kills your brother – who you weren’t particularly fond of anyway but are now understandably devastated at his death. Cue your new mission – to go back in time, stop Serene, save your brother and save the world. The problem with this plan is that we all know there’s no changing the past. This isn’t some wacky, ‘Hot Tub Time Machine’ style comedy where Joyce can go back with a sports almanac, get super-rich and re-invent Google, we know very early that this is a set in stone timeline and no-matter what you try to do, there’s always going to be an explanation as to why it’s impossible to achieve. Joyce’s reluctance to understand and accept this interpretation of time travel is actually quite a useful mechanic as it gives the narrative ample chance to lecture the gamer via the protagonist.

I have to say, it seems that Sam Lake and his team of writers have managed the time travel paradox incredibly well. The level of detail is equally as scientific as it is vague to make the gamer feel that it could be plausible without making them think too hard. In this age of gaming, you really have to make sure that you’re coherent in your storytelling and all elements of it must be perfect. There can’t be any flaws in your logic, there can’t be any mistakes in your theory and you must be aware that every action has a consequence. Assassins Creed got around this quite well with the theory that you’re playing memories so you could never affect the future with your actions in the past and if you tried, you’d just be disconnected from the Animus. However, as sequel after sequel was produced and the AC franchise got better, the plot just got more and more confusing. Particularly by the time we came to Black Flag with the whole John/Sage subplot boiling over into the real world. First playthrough, this went completely over my head and made me think, is this time travel? Is it re-incarnation? The reason I struggled to comprehend this was because it’s largely explained as re-incarnation within the present day stuff, which I tended to either skip or drift off to sleep while playing. I mean, who thought it would be a good idea to take me out of plundering the seven seas as a bad-ass pirate to instead wander round an empty office block, hacking computers to unlock concept art?! Anyway, you get my point and while Quantum Break didn’t exactly fall into the same trap, there’s a definite feeling that you’re running through the game with your shoelaces tied together, trying desperately not to trip up. While Lake & co. always manage to keep you on your feet, we only just cross the finish line without falling on our arse … just.

Once we finally end the first Act, we encounter our first episode. Great Scott! Something new and unseen in gaming. The gameplay Acts weave in and out of a 4-part live action miniseries that effectively exists to fill in the gaps between levels. Wondering what series you and the other half are going to sit and binge on Netflix next? Well, this certainly isn’t it as, unless your partner wants to sit and watch you play for 3 hours between episodes, it’s not strong enough to stand alone. It’s a failed experiment because the seasoned gamer who has only just got a taste of the action will want to keep playing and most won’t have the patience for a half-hour cut scene. While it’s well acted with a recognisable TV cast, It just makes me think the publishers really don’t know who they’re catering for. It’s almost as if it’s for a sub-category of media consumers and the more you watch and play, the more you feel like this is the result of a meeting room round-table gone horrible wrong – where blokes in suits are shouting words like “synergy”, “second screen” and “cross-platform” at a team of bewildered writers and interns, hoping they’ll deliver a profitable return for Q4. It’s a nice idea, but it feels like a tactic to prolong what’s essentially an 8-hour game into more than a weekend’s worth of play. It’s told entirely from the perspective of Monarch employees, meaning it’s almost Joyce-less and it has that under-budgeted feel you’d expect to see at 10pm on Syfy as the bridge between ‘Defiance’ and ‘Sharknado’. They are skippable, but be warned – if you do leap past them, prepare to complete the game very quickly.

The first game I can remember doing something like this was “Enter the Matrix”, when Jada Pinkett-Smith and co. signed on to do the cut scenes at the same time as they filmed ‘The Matrix Reloaded’. That game is probably the best comparison I can draw to Quantum Break, as it too weaved in and out of a live action story, had slow motion game mechanics with surprisingly stiff controls. Like ‘Enter the Matrix’, QB needs that sequel, it’s ‘Path of Neo’, to really straighten out the awkwardness we feel when playing the game. Given it’s (supposedly) an action-packed, story-driven hybrid of a 3PS meets hack-n-slash – I should love this game, however, I can’t help feeling I’m replaying ‘Watchdogs’ where the anticipation and expectation was too high to deliver against. The idea is good but the execution falls short of other games who have mastered similar and simple mechanics. In fact, I’d maybe go as far as saying that even ‘Max Payne 3’ did a better job on the bullet-time… okay, maybe that’s a bit too harsh… but it’s certainly not too dissimilar.

Every fight scene is an arena battle. An inescapable bowl or bubble where you must defeat all enemies to move forward to the next platform. At first we think, “this is a piece of cake – I’ll stop time and go and knock them out…hold my beer…” While that’s true for Act I, the rest of the game isn’t that easy and with the increase of each level there’s a counter introduced for your superpowers. Potentially the toughest of which are the ‘Stutter Soldiers’. Yep, Monarch has created suits to make certain bad guys immune to the time cracks and if that’s not bad enough, they’ve also armed them with an obscene amount of machine guns, grenades and a health bar of a mid-level boss. These soldiers can slow down time and move just as quickly as you so, if you’re not in focus, they can get close to you in the blink of an eye – meaning it essentially becomes a slow motion cat-and-mouse chase until you can get a clean shot on their packs and make them explode. It’s kind of an obvious move really, I mean, even Sonic the Hedgehog’s most feared enemy was a robot version of himself, but while I wasn’t expecting it to be easy, it just doesn’t feel very inventive.

As the game progresses, I do begin to really get sucked in. The story is immersive and the combat becomes increasingly more strategic. There’s ‘Tomb Raider’ style platform-puzzles to solve which uses Time in an inventive way, such as finding a broken elevator and rewinding time to when it was functional. There’s a few tough fight sequences too that made playing on a hard difficulty setting really good fun, I died a lot more than I was expecting and when it came to the end of Act choices – I felt like it really mattered. I deliberated over my actions a lot more than I would have done in other story-based thrillers, or in a Mass Effect. These choice junctions were nicely juxtaposed too – as you flipped to Serene to make the choice. There was no need to follow your moral compass, because you’re making the decisions as the bad guy, so hey – go nuts, kill people, what does it matter to Joyce? It also added a level of replay value as it affected the mini-series, making them more than just half hour cutscenes.

What I really like about the choice junctions are that they actually show you the consequences to the actions. So there’s no trickery into making you think you’re doing right by doing wrong. Each path is uniquely as beneficial as it is troublesome and it’s up to you on the flip side to make that choice. Very nicely done…

It was great being back in the ‘Max Payne’ style world too, albeit it with a non-noire, futuristic twist and, while it’s reluctance to follow it’s lineage would irritate most, it was a actually a welcome break from the fallen hero narrative we’re used to to. It was also good to go back to a very straightforward game which I could blitz through entirely in a weekend. The marketplace is flooded with 50hr sandbox games and it was a light relief to finish something definitively in a short space of time.

The game is fast paced in places, but falls short of hitting the magical 88mph mark that would have really set this game apart from others on the market and give it that instant replay value that so many actioners have. What saddens me most is that it was a really good attempt that just doesn’t quite hit the heights the hype promised. Well written, smart and visually stunning, no-one can deny that it’s undoubtedly enjoyable, but I get the feeling their experiment has failed and I doubt we’ll see another foray into this genre for the next 7-8 years. Those pesky suits will no-doubt be dismayed with the mediocre game sales which saw the high-budget title shoot straight into the £20 bargain bucket just 2 months after release. I’d expect less Quantum Break’s and more Alan Wake’s over the next decade as Remedy will no doubt look back to it’s steady, noire hand in the next few years.

In fact, Quantum Break stirs up the memory and the nostalgia of Alan Wake in two ways. Firstly, the Xbox One version gifts you Alan Wake as a backwards compatible 360 game as part of your purchase so you can dive in for another playthrough but also contains a number of hints references and Easter Eggs throughout the game that makes you long to play the catalogue. This wonderfully dissected analysis of the game’s plot on a chalkboard in one of the classrooms on campus shows how much fun the designers had in making this title – but also how much they must be longing to produce a sequel.

(Hmm… a new Alan Wake… perhaps a Blast from the Past of the original is in order…)

As we learn from Quantum Break, we can’t change the past but time certainly changes everything. I waited a year to play this as a second wind and I’m glad I did because I get the feeling that the real victory for this title will be how well it ages. Like Max Payne way back in ’01, Quantum Break could be a silent game changer. A memorable gaming anecdote or a pub quiz question about which title was the forerunner to the highest grossing game of all time. I’m sure other developers will take Remedy’s idea and push it further but say I’m wrong and they don’t, Quantum Break certainly has the potential to be the game that we’ll look back on with real fondness in 10 years’ time that’ll make you dust the cobwebs off the old, Xbox One and set aside an afternoon with a few beers and nostalgically revisit with a grin….a grin of a winner…

April 2016 | Developer Remedy Entertainment | Publisher Microsoft Studios

platforms Wins, XO

Batman Arkham Knight

A Rage Quit review

Batman Arkham City was one of FBT’s favourite games. Will the Knight ruin it for him?

Rocksteady’s Arkham Asylum finally allowed us to say ‘I’m Batman’ and mean it. Bats was largely grounded and faced appalling boss battles but AA was brilliant – gaming’s Batman Begins. And then Rocksteady gave us The Dark Knight as a follow up; Arkham City. Freed of the boxed-in Asylum, it was Escape from New York and you were Snake in a Cape. With the exception of yet more infuriating watch-and-learn-with-Bats boss battles, AC was one of the best games of all time, a towering achievement of gaming and story-telling worthy of any graphic novel. And now, Arkham Knight – Dark Knight Rises or Batman and Robin? I’ll give you a clue; Robin’s in it. Oh yeah. I’ll give you another clue – this review is filed under Rage Quit.

After the ending of AC, Gotham is bracing itself after the power-vacuum left by Bats and Joker’s epic battle. This time it’s Scarecrow, who was roundly beaten by Bats in the previous games – well, beaten, inhaled his own fear toxin and chewed on by Killer-Croc – Understandably pissed off, Scares unleashes a toxin causing Gothamites to go murderously insane. Everyone except the law-breakers scarper. And Bats.

The city is extraordinary to look at, like it was designed by a fan of The Crow having a fever-dream after reading a book about Art Deco while watching Metropolis and listening to the Bladerunner soundtrack. Its twisting labyrinth streets, uneven rooftops, modern-on-gothic look makes for a rainy, gritty, dirty maze of crime and grime. It’s perfect. It’s perhaps the most beautiful and detailed game world I’ve ever seen, decay and misery included. Never mind you had to own a Sunway to run it (Ok Google, what’s the world’s most powerful supercomputer?) – this is worth upgrading for. Gothman is sheer rotting beauty.

From a lithe and leafy Poison Ivy, Bats learns that Scares’ toxin is only the start; he clubbed the Rogues Gallery together to support him in destroying Gotham. Before Bats can even grimace at the idea of Gotham dying, a militia force rolls in, tanks and tech’ed to the teeth and starts pulling the town apart looking for him, commanded by the mysterious Arkham Knight, who has the kind of hatred for Bats that borders on the fanatical, becoming fantastical, eventually farcical. Time and time again he has the chance to kill Bats but doesn’t take it, conveniently says it’s not time for him to die, or leaves him alone to escape; “I’m going to place him in an easily escapable situation involving an overly elaborate and exotic death” – Arkham Knight is Dr Evil. But for now, we’re only concerned about the tanks rolling in. Of course, this Bat doesn’t take things lying upside down.

Bats in AC was fear gliding over the city. In AK he’s a bus driver with a grudge, the one that waits till you nearly reach it then shuts the doors. Once you get control of the beast-like Batmobile, it’s the only way to travel. It’s a monster and better than the Tumbler – It is. It’s a terrifying joy just to look at, Bats’ mood rendered in cold dead steel. It looks like the kind of thing Death would drive – talking of Death, there’s no way Bats’ no-kill policy extends to the Batmobile, without doubt that thing kills people. Aside from that, the sheer destruction you cause just turning a corner is doing Scarecrow’s work for him. It has two settings, pursuit and battle mode. Battle mode works yet doesn’t. The BM basically becomes a crab, able to sidle side to side, spin around, but why turn into a merry-go-round when under attack? Bats has always been about Arrive, Express how much he hates crime, Leave. Why is stationary is the best defence? Is it because the tanks stay still once they see the BM? That’s lucky. The pursuit mode lets you fire disabling rockets at vehicles but it handles like a caravan and goes like a rocket so it’s all so fraught and crashy until you activate battle-mode and it turns into a ballerina. It’s just not the assured, dominant pose you expect from Bats; the thugs are more scared of Bats behind the wheel than the wheel itself.

It’s great to drive once you get used to it, assuming you have enough fingers to operate all the options, but within the game it’s a gimmick. Rather than a complement to his crime-fighting ways there’s convoluted reasons to use it, and everything is solved by either gliding or driving – not both, you don’t get to choose how to approach a problem. You’re also confined to close-quarter chases when it should be GTA Gotham; you never really open it up, let lose. You can remote control it too, but that’s irritatingly underused or forced in as a problem-solver.

So, apart from Knight and his boo-hissing, Scarecrow’s open-season means we also tangle with Azrael, who’s interesting appearances in AC are completely undermined, mockney Penguin doing something or other, Two-Face for padding, and then there’s helium-voiced Harley Quinn; she should be a loose-cannon threat given Mr J’s fate but she’s got nothing to do and only there because we’d complain if she wasn’t. There’s a ton of filler-villains too; zeroes like Man-Bat, Professor Pyg and Firefly are crammed in (Can’t we find something better to do than chase a fly? You don’t even get to smoosh him on the BM’s grill). But the real rager is Riddler. Taking convenient advantage of the Batmobile, he sets a route of time-based chases around Gotham’s sewer system for Bats to conquer. There’s a city filling with poison, do you really have time to play Mario Kart, Bats? Yes, because Riddler has kidnapped Catwoman. She’s not key to the poison plot or anything, but we’re all a sucker for Rocksteady’s Catwoman. The issue is though, Bats always out-thinks his opponents – sure he’s got the gadgets, the cash and the bod, but his mind was his super-power. Yet in AK he just goes along with Riddler’s demands, jumps through his hoops to save Catwoman. He doesn’t outwit him, figure ways around the problems, he just solves them. Boring. And reducing Catwoman to a damsel in distress is a huge disservice to one of the more interesting female characters in Batman. In AC she was hot and formidable, Bats’ equal. Riddler may be helping Scarecrow to distract Bats, but he would have known that – plus Catwoman is imprisoned, not in danger so from our perspective it’s filler and annoying for it. I get so bored with Rids’ games I leave Catwoman chained up.

While the thugs are largely the same, the Knight’s men are anti-Bat trained; electrified fields, the ability to revive fallen comrades, armed with mini-guns, tasers, blades, they can also counter Bats’ moves and scan to spot where he is. The best thing about AC brawling was Bats had the tactical and technical superiority; they just had numbers. Now they have both and the fights turn into button-mashing scraps. It was fun to fight in AC, test Bats’ mettle; now it’s an annoyance. I once played AC for so long the entire city was silenced. I’d offed every thug in Arkham. There’s so much locked down arena fighting in AK it’s more Tekken than Taken; Bats should be brutal and efficient, not hopping around in the background like Pumaman. Bats can be accompanied by Catwoman, Robin or Nightwing and reaching a certain streak-count allows you to body swap; sounds cool but it’s a bit gimmicky and who cares, I’m Batman; just make fighting more satisfying.

We’re also supported by Gordon and his daughter Oracle as well as the occasional dry comment from Alfred. We even get to use the police precinct to doss about in, pick up crimes in progress and drop off the side-villains we take down. AK has some RPG DNA in it, and you wish Knight and Scarecrow would naff off and let us tidy up the city in the Batmobile instead of all this ominous stuff. There is one ominous element that almost saves AK though.

Bats has another side-kick … The Joker. This is a brilliant dynamic. Bats and Joker have always had a complicated relationship, so to have Joker in his mind, reminding him of his failures and his guilt is proper stuff. It’s the best thing in the game as Joker corrodes Bats’ mind and looks set to take over completely, intertwining with the main plot (until Knight’s histrionics make everything daft again) and its really good when Bats conveniently needs to get a little crazy (It’s a shame it’s scripted though, would have been great to get Joker-time as an option like bullet-time). They have some great moments together.

The plot of AK is huge, epic and a fitting end to the trilogy; everything that is happening is Bats’ fault – Scarecrow’s revenge has been a thread throughout the series and more and more people get pulled into – or pay for – Scarecrow’s obsession and Bat’s actions. The game asks if Bats is really doing the right thing, or just making things worse. And it’s played out in the most beautiful environment, by a Bats at his most grizzled and agitated, with all the usual suspects, and the Batmobile – and we’ve even got the Joker doing a Tyler Durden. AK is pure class, and I’m still giving up on this gem? Hell yes.

AK has a lot of annoyances – the fights aren’t fun, the Batmobile has a puncture, Riddler is an idiot and Knight is Widow Twanky with a painfully obvious secret identity. But the real rage-quit is AK’s habit of rug-pulling. The plotting is like one of those old 30’s serials where each episode ends with certain death then the next tells us Rocketman or Flash actually escaped in time. There’s some real mouth-hits-the-floor, eyes-wide, ‘holy shit’ moments where you really think Bats can’t come back from this. Game-changing, narrative-impacting, how-you-play and how you feel moments. And … then it undoes the moment. This happens at least three times – as far as I got anyway, who knows if there’s more.

At the risk of a spoiler, a perfect example is the fate of the Batmobile. After a huge (and daft) fight with Knight in the sewers the Batmobile is destroyed. DESTROYED?! No! OMB. Now what? I feel naked, worried about how I’ll get about town, the toxin everywhere, the tanks, this is real hell-no, game-changing stuff. I’m terrified and excited, and we’re stuck trying to rescue someone, surrounded by tanks and … wait, Bats isn’t worried … oh yeah, just call Alfred and get Batmobile Mk2 delivered. Which is actually a meatier and better version. What?! Fine that Bats has a spare, but games always put you in extreme situations and you go along with it because that’s the world you’ve been told exists – it was Bats, trapped in the city, alone. If Bats can just call in backup, if Alfred can pilot a replacement then the world changes; roll everything out – get the Batwing to take out the militia, have Nightwing rescue Catwoman, Robin can chase Firefly; let me and Joker go get a beer. It sounds like a whinge but it changes the reality we trusted the game to maintain. The other twists are even more of a betrayal because they undercut emotional reactions. They’re soap-opera twists. In AK it turns out J.R shot himself.

Another example of the game’s treachery; when the militia’s commander-in-chief is run off, what happens? Another Merc rocks up and takes over. Where did he come from, why didn’t he get involved earlier? What, he was just sitting in the super-villain waiting room?! You kept a spare henchman, Scarecrow? It’s exactly the same, just different voice goading you. The game can’t let things change too much because there’s so much non-linear stuff going on it would impact – Bats needs the BM outside the main mission, so it has to reappear and that’s a cheat, like Skyrim had Dragons that don’t damage anything and a civil war you never see, AK gives you show-stoppers then restarts the show rather than having the guts to let it stay changed. Each time you think this is the boldest, bleakest, bravest Bats ever and then it double-crosses you. I can’t believe AK became a let-down, especially after how AC played out. That game stuck to its shocks. I’ve had enough. To the Bat-Exit.

Arkham Knight opens with the line ‘this is how the Batman died’. This game pranked me so many times I suspect Bats doesn’t die either. AK gets so much right; it can make you gasp in shock, at it’s beauty, the story, but eventually you’re gasping in annoyance.

2015 | Developer Rocksteady Studios | Publisher WB Interactive

platforms; Win | PS4 | XO

Kane & Lynch Dead Men | Dog Days

A SECOND WIND SPECIAL

Kane & Lynch Dead Men | Kane & Lynch Dog Days

FBT takes a walk on the wild, bloody, morally shaky side with this Kane and Lynch double-bill special review

The Kane & Lynch series was polarizing; critics either applauded it or were appalled by it, and for the same reasons; morally ambiguous, ultra-violence, glorification of criminals, bad hair dos. But both sides agreed that beneath the Heat-inspired set-pieces were formulaic shooters and that while Dead Men’s ambitious reach exceeded its graphical grasp, Dog Days was just seedy and unnecessarily brutal. Meh, I wanna play Heat the Video Game.

In Dead Men, we meet grizzled mercenary Kane, composing a letter to estranged daughter Jenny while in a prison van headed for death row. He’s promptly broken out by Lynch, channeling Heat’s Waingro and taken to a warehouse, via an extended tutorial/shootout in which more cops than you can shake a donut at are shot. Kane was on death row because a job went drastically wrong and he lost a ton of money for ‘The7’, a collection of high-end mercs who’ve kidnapped his ex-wife and daughter; get the money back and they live. Kane’s dead either way. Lynch, a low-level thug with some serious psychological issues is looking to get into The7’s crew. If he can babysit Kane and bring the money, they’ll have him aboard.

After another mini tutorial and more cops shot, we infiltrate a bank for Kane’s dirty money, leaving Lynch to control the bank customers. Instead, Lynch panics and suddenly kills most of the hostages; I’ve not even finished the first mission and I reckon the death count is reaching triple figures. I killed two or three security guards just walking in the place. After shooting a ton more, we fight our way out of the bank and along the freeway, eventually escaping on the subway where we fill time waiting for a train by killing more cops.

Dead Men feels pretty good so far; everyone’s a bad guy, the situation is bad, the solution is going to be bad and the ending doesn’t look good either. It feels stripped back like Heat, focused and driven; there’s nothing in this game that we can’t drop in thirty seconds flat and Kane & Lynch are a good, if dysfunctional team. Kane knows how to shoot, he’s Heat’s Coffee House scene come to digital life – He’s boxed in and he’s not hesitating. He isn’t like Tarantino’s cool killers, sporting a Gittes-style nose bandage after getting pistol whipped and a scar across a white eye, we’d never see him jiving in the Jack Rabbit. He’s coolly efficient and pissed at Lynch not for opening up on the hostages but for the police interest it draws. We did just bankrupt the Police Department’s Widows and Orphans fund.

Apparently unhindered by what would be by now the biggest manhunt in US history, K&L pop over to Japan to kidnap the daughter of Japan’s biggest mobster. Kane intends to ransom her for the rest of the money, but first we have to shoot our way out of the nightclub we found her in. Cue innocent lives lost as we try to cut through the panicking crowd in the dark strobe-lit club picking out mobsters scanning the crowds for us. Unfortunately, once clear, Lynch misunderstands Kane’s deal with the mobster and causes the situation to … escalate. Lynch, with his Mr Kidd meets 70s porn-star look is, unlike Kane’s precise coldness, really well balanced considering how unbalanced he is. He’s noted in the game as being a self-medicating psychopath, but he’s more complex than that. He’s quite needy and naive despite his brutality and pessimism and you get the sense there’s a lot more to him. He’s the most interesting thing in the game and it’s a shame we don’t explore Lynch further. He’s apologetic about the hostages and explains he blacks out when stressed, adding a complication and turning Kane into the babysitter instead as Lynch occasionally just races off to murder and when he comes too he often assumes Kane was responsible for the bloodshed. As a follower, Lynch can be directed about (He does get amusingly snippy if you order him about too much or demand he swap out his favourite weapon) and you can revive him – he’ll do the same for you as will other followers, although if it happens too often Kane will die of an overdose. Even health can kill you in DM. Lynch tries to bond with Kane telling him his wife was murdered (it’s implied that he might have done it during a blackout); Kane, of course, stays resolutely distant and grimly points out The7 will kill his family which Lynch didn’t seem to realise. He also sarcastically warns Lynch there’s no way The7 would have a loose cannon like him aboard; they’re just using him.

Sure enough, once they return from Japan (empty handed even after having killed most of Japan) it’s double-cross time and Kane decides the only thing left to do is off The7, while Lynch just wants revenge. The7 being somewhat powerful means K&L first establish a crew of their own, the Dead Men by freeing several other ex-The7s from a high-security prison. And then it’s a simple task of returning to Japan for the money, then Havana for some Che Guevara nonsense and finally Venezuela where The7, who have reached Bond levels of supervillainy, have a hide-out. It’s when we reach Havana that DM takes a dip it never really surfaces from. Away from the intensity and focus of the streets, running around in camo and a beret helping the Cuban army and assaulting a hidden fortress just seems daft – we’re now in Dirty Dozen meets Commando. It’s practically The Expendables.

Believability is a problem in Dead Men. Games are escapism and the key element of a shooter is you’re not required to worry about repercussions – As a Heat homage, DM is missing the Heat – cops have no impact other than bullet impacts. There’s no Vincent closing in and they get away with the most extraordinary crimes; the cops might as well be imps. DM is closer to the infamous North Hollywood Shootout; look how that ended for the robbers. It would have been better to emulate that, make it a death run, stay head of the cops just long enough, not kill enough to trigger the freedom of a cut-scene; it is unforgiving, react or die mayhem within the game, but the plot is draggy drama and catching red-eyes all over the globe at the drop of a clip slows the intensity, loses the fight-or-die tone. Another problem with DM is the environment, or lack of it. The game world feels bare – this was 2007, the year games got immersive but this looks like 2004; blocky cars and buildings, no layers of clutter. There’s a lack of depth and atmosphere – when the screen isn’t turning red from bullets – which undoes some clever level design.

Of the seven hours game play, you only really get about five hours before it gets silly and that’s a shame. DM is nowhere near as slick as it thinks it is and it’s incredibly narcissistic – there’s no one in it doing anything for anyone except themselves. That is until a sudden moral choice near the end which makes zero sense; you expect me to slay hundreds of innocents then pause and make a moral call? Even if Kane catches the feels at the end, why suddenly force me to decide? Kane’s been in control all this time, including more than a few moments I’ve thought “are you sure Kane?” – Now he needs a second opinion? It’s like playing Renegade the entire time then opting for a Paragon ending. What game would offer that choice? You’re not even party to his thinking until after making the call. Ultimately what makes Dead Men interesting is Kane and Lynch themselves. They are refreshingly unapologetic; for all the controversy about Dead Men glamorising violence, it’s not as glamorous as we thought. It’s actually pretty awful being lawless.

Regardless of the ending you chose, Kane & Lynch Dog Days ignores it. It turns out Dog Days means unbearable heat so maybe this time it’ll be a little more Heat-like; but, it also means back luck…

Opening on brief flashes of Kane & Lynch being tortured with box-cutters, it’s pretty clear Dog Days isn’t a watered down, consumer-tested sequel. This is a harsh way to get reacquainted with our ‘heroes’. Rewinding to before the boxcutters, we learn Lynch escaped to Shanghai, settling down with a local girl, Xiu to become a bagman for an ex-pat / Guy Ritchie-extra called Glazer. He needs some muscle to help shift guns to Africa and Lynch has a certain muscle in mind.

But before we get to bless the rains down in Africa, Lynch needs to strong-arm a mob rival on the way to Kane’s hotel. Naturally, it goes pear-shaped and we’re chasing through gang-controlled Shanghai as the mobster uses a naked woman as a shield. Eventually we catch up with him and the girl catches a stray bullet. The guy, realising she’s dead calmly cuts his own throat. Oh-ho.

The first thing that strikes you about Dog Days, aside from the torture, naked chick and throat slitting is we’re in the psychotic shoes of Lynch this time. Fine except Kane takes over as the story-driver in the cut scenes, yet is a mute follower in the game. I’m leading the game but a follower in the cut scenes? Lynch isn’t even unhinged anymore; you’d assume some kind of clichéd psycho bullettime at least, but there’s nothing to differentiate him from every other character you’ve shot as; none of that unpredictability or subtle threat that made him interesting in Dead Men. Lynch was something different, someone you could trust yet not turn your back on but now he’s just the back of a head.

Also, in some sort of comment that doesn’t say anything, the game is presented as found footage. It’s interesting and different at first; when Lynch runs the image wobbles and loses focus, nudity is pixelated as are any head shots and the auto-save is Time Code popping up but you keep asking ‘who’s footage is this?’ The key to found footage is it’s the opposite of a voyeur; they’re part of the event. It really wouldn’t have been that big a leap to add someone – Jenny for example; Kane intending for them to fly to Africa for a new life. It would make sense since all this started during a routine chore; have her mucking about with the camera filming Shanghai while dad goes to deal with something, hears a sound, investigates, throat slitting. Things escalate and it’s too dangerous to leave her alone so have to bring her along. Then Kane would be invested, and he and Lynch would be looking to us, protecting us, drawing us into their violence beyond the usual gamer experience – and we’d be wondering who is reviewing the content, who’s censoring it, what happened to everyone. That would be interesting and a comment on user generated content especially in those increasingly uncomfortable Facebook Live and personal videos-as-news times, and a sly one on gaming violence. Dog Days could have been prophetic now and compellingly original then. But no, there’s no one behind the camera and it’s just a gimmick.

It transpires the girl we shot was the daughter of a rather powerful chap in the government – considering her BF would rather slit his own throat than tell dad the bad news I’m guessing he’s trouble. They agree to go through with the deal but that means killing a lot of everyone to keep the truth hidden from Glazer long enough to reach the shipment. How well does that go? Well this is Kane & Lynch; eventually we have the army after us.

The shootouts are quick and clean, an early fight through traffic protecting Glazer’s limo is a standout, as is a run through a Shanghai slum protecting Xiu as thugs try to reach her on the other side. Cops are fair game again of course, slightly more justified as being described as in the pocket of that government bigwig who’s daughter someone recently shot.

Weaponry is typical; two weapon choices and you’ll use them a lot. The ‘bad guys’ are aggressive and tenacious, they’ll sweep around, react and they’ve got the numbers. As to where you fight them, the neon rundown streets of Shanghai is a step up from Dead Men’s plain environments and sticking to one location keeps the pressure on. There is an air of claustrophobia fighting in such close quarters but eventually it feels repetitive; most of the fights take place in back alleys and seeing variations on the same location makes it seem like they’re running around in circles and fighting their way out of self-contained episodes – If Dead Men took its inspiration from Heat, Dog Days should have been a homage to The Warriors; stuck in an unfamiliar and dangerous place, a cut off and exposed Kane & Lynch are on a relentless run across town – They’re are perfect for that kind of experience; their intensity would have worked so well.

Eventually we catch up with the torture scene, which is horrible and unintentionally (or perhaps intentionally) amusing, because they’re both naked and their bits are pixelated. We escape, catching little pixelated flashes of Lynch’s impressive undercarriage as he runs. The scene seems gratuitous, there to court controversy and live up to the original’s undeserved reputation for being ultra-violent. It wasn’t and we never sympathised with Kane & Lynch so how are we supposed to react to their suffering? It is nice to note though that Kane & Lynch aren’t ripped heroes. Under the blood and cuts there’s love-handles and a paunch.

Kane & Lynch, the tubby little scrappers that they are push on through the set-pieces until they hijack a helicopter and attack the government man’s building. It’s intense but shooting RPGs out of the air and taking down enemy choppers, while not quite on the same scale as Dead Men’s government toppling (we just topple their building this time) is overblown. Of course, once the scene is over they just walk out. Guess there’s no cops left in Shanghai. Kane & Lynch work best down and dirty in the streets, laying down so much gunfire the cops yell “there’s nothing we have that can stop them” not stuff more at home in CoD.

At a generous five hours gameplay (I mean I’m being generous giving it five hours) Dog Days is a fast, lean experience that demands that you play with nothing to lose. Instead of an unexpected and unwelcome moral choice, this ending is bleakly truthful to the characters, but is then followed by a needless escape epilogue that plays like a ‘next episode on Kane & Lynch’ teaser that never happened and seems to be some final Heat nod for old-times sake. It would have been better to end in the building, what they’ve done sinking in. Why did IO Interactive keep fudging the last third of the Kane & Lynch games? Why that insistence that they need to step up rather than double-down? Both games could have been elevated had they stuck to their bleakly fatalistic guns rather than attempted some genre-pleasing final sequence.

The biggest let down in Dog Days is the huge disservice to Lynch. He’s lost almost everything that made him interesting in Dead Men; a heart-breaking scene makes you feel for the guy and you think ‘oh crap, he’s going to kick offffffff’ but he doesn’t. Meanwhile Kane is completely emasculated (and not during the torture); he does have a manipulative moment, when he convinces a distraught Lynch to head for the deal even when it has to be suicidal, but it’s too little too late. At least Lynch finally behaves like himself at the government man meeting. By making things worse.

Ever since Max Payne, memorable shooters are the ones where we care about who’s doing the shooting; the standout element of the Kane & Lynch games is Kane and Lynch. They may be dangerous, unlikable and, well, murderers, but Kane and Lynch are great characters – Dead Men and Dog Days, while having their moments, weren’t the games for those two reprobates. Dog Days looks and plays nicely while Dead Men has more drive and interesting set-pieces, the club and prison breakout are standouts but overall they’re nothing special; standard shooters. I’d like to play Kane and Lynch again, but not in Dog Days or Dead Men. There is a game out there for them, but IO Interactive left them on a mother of a cliff-hanger then ran back to the safety of their other morally ambiguous creation, Hitman. There was talk of a movie but it’s still in development hell. Let’s hope it stays there. Kane & Lynch have suffered enough.

Dead Men 2007 | Dog Days 2010

Developer IO Interactive | Publisher Eidos / Square Enix

Platforms Win, PS3, X360