Dead Island

Dead Island had, what many consider, the roughest launch in gaming history.  From the accidental Xbox 360 developer build release on Steam to the “Feminist Wh*re” code to the PS3 trophy bug, Dead Island has had quite the rocky start.
Looking beyond that, Dead Island is still a fun play.  Dead Island strands you on a “small” vacation island off the coast of Papua New Guinea during the midst of a zombie outbreak.  Though labeled “small”, the island is actually quite large, featuring lavish environments filled with side-quests and hordes of zombies.  The game begins with you selecting one of four characters, each equipped with a unique skill-set that takes advantage of the types of weapons you’ll find scattered around the island.
Though Dead Island borrows features from other successful zombie games, like Dead Rising’s weapon creation and Left 4 Deads first-person, co-op action gameplay, Dead Island really is a totally different beast.  Though it’s a zombie game, the primary focus isn’t about the blood and gore.  At its core, Dead Island is a game about survival.  From the strategies you’ll use when playing to the side-quests you’ll pick up in your journey, the main goal is survival.
In most zombie games, you survive by shredding through the hordes of zombies.  Not in this game.  You survive by using what you find, and what you find is scarce and with limited durability.
You must pick and choose your fights carefully.  Strategy is a key element in this game; and sometimes, it’s smarter to just run from the wave of zombies than trying to bash your way through them resulting in a broken weapon.  These constant decisions you are forced to make is what sets Dead Island apart from other zombie games.

Check out the Dead Island Launch Trailer
Dead Island does a great job of making you feel like you are in the midst of a zombie outbreak.  The constant worry about lack of weapons, few med kits, and a limited stamina bar leave you with an unsettling feeling.  It’s a zombie game;  you should be scared.  You should be worrying about zombies lurking around the corner.  You should be worried about scavenging for weapons.  You should be worried about finding a workbench to keep your weapons repaired.
Unfortunately, the fear of dying is somewhat diminished by the lack of real punishment.  When you die, you must wait five seconds before resspawning in another location with slightly less money.  Any zombies you killed and the damage you inflicted before dying remain.  If you’re like me, and rush into fights resulting in death, you’ll appreciate the leniency.
The strength of Dead Island lies within the environment created and the open world RPG-element that results from it.  As you explore every nook and cranny of the massive world, you will run into plenty of survivors begging for your help.  There were so many side-quests that I actually found myself getting annoyed and asking why I’m the only person who could help them.  While you don’t have to, helping these survivors will result in rewards that will only make your main objective easier to achieve.
The great thing about Dead Island is you really become the character.  As you complete quests and kill zombies, you’ll be rewarded experience which you can use to level your character.  As you level, you unlock different skills by investing your XP points into them.  All of the characters each have unique skills that take advantage of the various weapons you’ll find.  There are three skill trees for each character so even if you’re playing with a friend who is the same character, you might have different specialties.

An extended, 20-minute gameplay clip
Speaking of multiplayer, Dead Island plays better when you have a buddy with you watching your back.  Not only does it give you a sense of camaraderie in a game where you’re constantly alone, but they can help with the more difficult quests.  Even if playing alone, you are given the option to join a player who is close to you via a pop-up message notification.
Dead Island is not without flaws though.  The combat is entertaining, though somewhat hindered by poor collision detection.  There are times when you can be aimed right at the zombie, swing, and still miss.  Though it isn’t game-breaking, it takes away from the enjoyment of zombie skull-bashing.  Don’t fret, there are plenty opportunities to make blood spurt out the top of a headless zombie in the game with the game’s dismemberment system.  The story, which offers 20-30 hours of gameplay, is pretty flat and filled with bland acting.
Dead Island may be a little rough around the edges, but it offers enough good things to make up for some of the more unpolished gameplay you’ll experience.  It does have some replay value when playing with friends and the announcement of DLC should add additional hours of gameplay.  It’s not a perfect game, but it’s a fun game.

Capsized Review

The Good

• Richly detailed environments are captivating   
• A lot of fun ways to move around  
• Physics allow for creativity.

The Bad

• Problematic cooperative play   
• No online leaderboards.

The thrill of exploration and the desire to experience new things are two of the driving motivations that have fueled humanity's endeavors for thousands of years. For ages, this involved such dangerous acts as going to sea or tasting a new food described only as "Trust me," but nowadays all you need is the right machine and some money in your pocket. For the reasonable price of $9.99, Capsized takes you to a fertile alien world bursting with eye-catching vegetation and populated by a diverse range of unusual creatures, many of which want to kill you. To survive, you must fend off your assailants with powerful firearms, as well as master the mechanics of moving through this strange two-dimensional landscape. The locomotion tools encourage experimentation, and it's a joy to jump, fly, swing, and rocket your way through each level. Getting a feel for how to manipulate objects in order to solve puzzles and kill enemies is also a blast, and by the end of the campaign, you'll be eager to jump back into earlier levels and get even more creative with your hard-earned skills. The physics system behind this fun is prone to occasional hiccups, and there are other minor issues that crop up in the arcade modes (co-op is a bit wonky), but these are small matters compared to the immense satisfaction of adventuring through this beautiful and deadly world.

Shoot them, squish them, or fling a boulder at them.

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The situation is straightforward: your spaceship has crashed on an alien planet, and as one of the few survivors, you must locate crew members, call for help, and get yourself rescued. To accomplish all this, you must set off into the jungles of this lush world, which are an absolute treat for the eyes. The ground you walk across is a detailed mosaic of rocks and plants that come in many shapes and sizes. Small fungal bulbs, long dangling vines, and a rich variety of growths that wouldn't look out of place in a coral reef cover the landscape. There are also harmless creatures that stalk through the near background, grazing in the undergrowth or fluttering through the air. Faded scenery in the deep background creates a nice sense of depth, and the quality of sunlight changes to reflect how deep below the canopy you are. Eerie, atmospheric music adds a wonderful dimension to the alien ambience, and this artfully realized world continues to reveal lovely details even after hours of playing, making it a pleasure to explore these exotic environments.

To traverse these beautiful yet treacherous lands, you must make good use of your varied skill set. You walk at a moderate pace and jump many times your own height, thanks to the relatively low gravitational pull. This also means that when you jump into a wall, you can hang there indefinitely by holding the directional key toward the surface. You can use this trick to jump up walls as well, and this vertical mobility makes you feel nimbler than the average spaceman. The jetpack is another way to reach high places and gives you the freedom of flight as long as you can find the supplies to fuel it. Your gun plays a role in locomotion too. It's equipped with a gravity ram that shoots a short burst of force that violently propels you away from any surface, object, or enemy that you are close to. Point it at the ground, and it flings you into the air much higher than you can jump. Point it at a wall, and you can jet across a chasm to a far ledge. Shoot an object, and depending on its properties, it might zip forward (small rock), shoot you backward (big rock), or possibly even crumble to pieces (boxes and wood structures). Some enemies can be killed outright with the gravity ram, while others are too tough, and blasting them can send you rocketing backward like an inkless squid.

Your final movement tool is a hook that you can shoot in any direction. This hook is attached to your body by a kind of laser elastic and when it hits a surface or an object, it latches on and the elastic begins to contract. You can use it to drag yourself up to a platform or onto a wall. You can also swing through the air like Tarzan and use the elasticity to slingshot yourself to great heights. Furthermore, this tool lets you interact with enemies and objects in some neat ways. Hook an enemy, and you zip together for some close-quarters combat (protip: equip the flamethrower). Latch onto a large object, and you can drag it around, maybe removing a barrier or triggering a button. Snag a smaller object, and a force field encircles it. This means that not only can you carry it with you and move it around at will, but once you disengage the hook, you gravity-ram the object in whatever direction you aim. Quick-moving objects have destructive potential, and you can use them to damage enemies or break barriers.

Even gloomy corridors hide colorful surprises.

Between the hook, the gravity ram, the jetpack, and your clinging jump ability, Capsized gives you an impressively diverse array of locomotion tools. It's possible to make it through the game relying on only some of them, but you'd be missing out on so many delightful possibilities. Sure, you could burn a bunch of jetpack fuel to reach a high platform, but you could also climb a nearby wall and then gravity-ram yourself into space, deploy your hook to the ceiling, and gracefully swing up there. You can cling to a wall to avoid falling a long distance, but if you stay in the dive and shoot your hook once you've got a good head of steam, you can launch far beyond where you initially fell from. Finding out new ways to take advantage of your abilities makes exploring levels that much more exploratory, and the different sensations of movement combine in gratifying and invigorating ways.

Men of War: Assault Squad Review

The authentic Men of War: Assault Squad packs plenty of challenge for real-time strategy enthusiasts.

The Good

• Tough battle scenarios that force you to use all of your units in combat   
• Brilliant, aggressive enemy AI   
• Mission maps so intricately designed that they play like devious puzzles   
• Co-op multiplayer mode of play.

The Bad

• Too challenging in spots   
• Some missions drag on for too long.

Serious challenge is what Men of War: Assault Squad is all about. This tactical real-time game from Digitalmindsoft is something of a crueler version of similar games such as Company of Heroes and Codename: Panzers. Like the original Men of War that became a cult hit in 2009, this take-no-prisoners sequel boasts a rigorous attention to realism geared toward confounding tank rushers with no understanding of combined-arms tactics. In other words, you really have to know what you're doing to avoid the fate of having your name carved on a cenotaph back home in 1945. If you're up for a grueling yet satisfying slog through Tom Brokaw's war, this is a great way to kill some more Nazis on your nights off.

Even though battles play out a little like battlefield games of chess, you still get to blow things up on a regular basis.

The basics of Assault Squad fit in with the likes of its WWII real-time strategy predecessors. The structure of the game is simple, and the interface is so intuitive that you don't need to refer to the manual or go through a tutorial (which you don't get anyway). Scenarios are tackled by starting at the south end of the map and blitzkrieging your way to the north, blowing apart progressively tougher enemy troop emplacements and fortifications as you go. If you capture flag-bedecked strategic points on the battlefields, you're rewarded with unit points that you can use to order up new troops, tanks, mortars, and naval bombardments.

And that's pretty much it. There are no bases to build or resources to manage other than the points needed for reinforcements. Battles are available in two flavors. Skirmish features 15 huge one-off scenarios where you lead the troops of the USA, Commonwealth, Soviet Union, Germany, or Japan against their respective enemies. Settings range from wartorn France in the wake of the Normandy invasion, to the bleached-out deserts of North Africa, to the jungles of Southeast Asia. You can also take the fight online. There are three versus battle modes pitting as many as 16 players against one another on massive maps, along with a new cooperative mode where you work together with up to three friends on missions against the AI. The latter is Men of War at its best, since you wage joint warfare that emphasizes the combined-arms teamwork design of the entire game.

And the game doesn't pull any punches with its combined-arms focus. You cannot win battles in Assault Squad by simply band-selecting a bunch of tanks or troops and hurling them at the enemy lines while the generic RTS martial music stomps away in the background and your soldiers holler battle cries like "That one's for Uncle Sam!" While you might roll Stuarts over the odd little guy, opposing infantry comes with antitank grenades and rocket launchers that can shred your supposedly mighty armor columns in mere moments. So you have to use all of your resources, switching from basic infantry to antitank specialists to tanks to mortars to snipers to elite nation-specific units like the Rangers and the Red Guards as the occasion fits. Strategic planning is also vital. Using every scrap of scrub, broken wall, and flaming half-track for cover is crucial to keep your lads alive and fighting for God and country. It's easy to duck and cover, too, because the interface automatically shows you ghost positions of troops behind the selected terrain before you issue any orders. Do this smartly and keep one move ahead of the bad guys with flanking maneuvers, and you just might live long enough to get a Dear John letter from back home.

Battles play out a bit like addictive rock-paper-scissors puzzles where you're always searching for the right tactics to use in the right situations. You aren't locked into solitary solutions, however. The sheer variety of units that you can deploy, along with the amazingly detailed layout of the destructible maps, means that every enemy position can be taken out in almost limitless ways. Vehicles can be repaired, enemies can be looted for hardware, buildings can be occupied for firing positions or destroyed to clear a shooting angle, and so on. Enemy AI is fantastic as well. While you have to take a few moments to think about your next steps, you can't spend too much time sitting around because aggressive enemy forces quickly zero in on your location and obliterate it. Some of the moves that the enemy can pull off are nothing short of astounding. Enemy forces are ruthless and not above resorting to desperate measures in desperate situations. For instance, Nazis might send armored cars on suicide missions that roll over mortars to destroy them before being blown apart by the SAS. So when you do win a scenario, you get a great flush of accomplishment found more often in cerebral wargames than in blow-'em-up RTS affairs.

Smart use of all of your units--like this very handy mortar--is crucial if you are to emerge victorious from any of Assault Squad's battle scenarios.

At times, however, battles have to be fought a little too meticulously, and micromanagement is often necessary. You need to place single troops on captured guns, split squads up to repair vehicles, and even call out the odd unfortunate grunt to make a suicide run toward enemy pillboxes or armor that you can't take out in any other fashion. This results in some fantastic moments, but it also drags missions out. Enemy aggressiveness can be over the top. Tanks and troops flow into the fray from offscreen so often in some missions that you find yourself refighting battles for strategic points over and over again. It's a somewhat realistic setup that forces you to station troops at vital locations or lose them to the enemy, but it also means some tedium because you have to take a cautious approach to every move you make. Instant enemy reinforcements also seem like a cheat. You finally get a sector of the map pacified and turn your attentions elsewhere, and whammo! Here come a couple of panzers and some pals in army boots from beyond the fog of war at the edge of the screen. This can be an annoyance in the single-player skirmishes because the maps are huge and the action typically takes place on at least two or three fronts simultaneously. In some ways, the missions here are geared more for the co-op mode than for going it solo because at times you really need a buddy to watch your back.

When you get right down to it, Men of War: Assault Squad is a tactical WWII RTS game for those who have mastered the somewhat easier-to-handle Company of Heroes. This is a challenging battlefield experience somewhat closer to a wargame than to a traditional RTS game and as such is geared to more of a hardcore crowd. It isn't such a great option for tank rushers who don't have a lot of time to spare to learn combined-arms intricacies. Be aware of these demands going in, and you will have a great time refighting this war.

By Brett Todd, GameSpot