FEAR 2: Project Origin - Reborn Review

F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin's creepy-little-telekinetic-girl story raised more questions than it answered, due to a shocking final image likely to leave your head spinning. Reborn, the latest downloadable scenario for this horror-themed first-person shooter, occurs alongside the events of the main game and adds a cliff-hanger of its own rather than shedding much light on the events of Project Origin. F.E.A.R. 2: Reborn's apparent purpose is to further set the stage for the inevitable sequel, and to this end, this new content succeeds. Nevertheless, 800 Microsoft points ($10) is a bit much to ask for 90 minutes of the same solid but unspectacular gunplay.

In Reborn, you play as Replicant soldier Foxtrot 813, fighting alongside your cloned squadmates--until a mental intrusion causes you to go rogue. It seems that the stringy-haired Alma isn't the only one with nefarious plans, though sharing too much about the source and purpose of this telepathic mutiny would risk spoiling important plot points. Suffice it to say that considering the DLC's short length, Reborn's storytelling is surprisingly effective; even the mission descriptions are eerily vague, which is a small but poignant way of furthering the creepy atmosphere for which the series is known. The plot itself is straightforward and doesn't provide any real creep-outs, but Reborn delivers a tense final battle and a true climax that will have you pining for a sequel, which is in pleasant contrast to F.E.A.R. 2's final "huh?" moment, which probably left you more confused than fulfilled.

The action itself is far from ambitious, relying on the same weapons and enemies as in the original release but stuffing them into a tight package that focuses on giving each foe a few minutes of face time. Facing off against most of the usual suspects makes for varied combat, but this kitchen-sink approach leads to a stilted pace that doesn't suit the slow-burn atmosphere draped around it. F.E.A.R. 2's best battles pitted you against multiple enemies, letting you use your slow-motion skills to fill the air with splatters of blood and flesh. Reborn offers a few such enjoyable sequences, along with a fun armored-suit opening scenario and some splendid encounters with lanky-limbed abominations. But by retreading so much ground in such a short time, there's too much emphasis on less thrilling aspects. Escaping a claustrophobic office maze while under assault from multiple armored units isn't much fun, and a moment when jumping down to a platform beneath may result in death one time and success another makes what should be a haunting jaunt through a topsy-turvy building unnecessarily frustrating.

In spite of its inconsistency, the action is held together by F.E.A.R. 2's competent arsenal of weapons; you'll certainly make good use of your missile launcher in this go-round. Yet while the story provides a more gratifying bridge to the all-but-certain sequel, Reborn fits comfortably into the franchise but doesn't reenergize it. F.E.A.R. 2: Reborn is a pleasant way to extend your Project Origin experience, but it's not a must-play, which makes the price tag a tough pill to swallow.

Guitar Hero 5 Review

The Guitar Hero franchise took a big leap last year with World Tour, incorporating vocals and drums and making a bid for Rock Band's multiplayer music game crown. While World Tour was a great debut, Guitar Hero 5 is a more refined, more accessible game that better fulfills the promise of a full band experience with the Guitar Hero name. A number of enhancements make the game more enjoyable across the board, and the new Party Play mode sets the standard for relaxed, social gameplay in the genre. The freestyle jam mode provides a fun creative outlet, and folks interested in recording their creations will have a much easier time thanks to the significantly improved music studio interface. While none of Guitar Hero 5's improvements are groundbreaking, they all contribute to this very entertaining, very well put-together package that is sure to please both aspiring and established Guitar Heroes.

The most significant new feature in Guitar Hero 5 is Party Play mode. When you start up the game, you see a brief intro animation, and then the game starts up a random song and a video of Guitar Hero characters performing. You can press the start button to call up the main menu, or you can press the yellow button to jump right into the song being performed. Your note highway appears, and after selecting a few options, you're playing the Guitar Hero you know and love. Up to four players can join this way, using whatever combination of instruments they want. Two vocalists, a drummer, and a bass player? Yes. Four guitarists? By all means. You can't fail in this mode, and changing difficulty, skipping the song, and dropping out are all easily accomplished through a little menu that only obscures your own note highway. The result is a casual play environment that is accessible, welcoming, and delightfully low key. You can jump in and out as you like, rotating in other players or just taking a break. The music keeps playing, and you can tailor your experience on the fly without any abrupt pauses or song restarts. It's a great way to entice shy friends to join in the fun, and it makes firing up Guitar Hero 5 at a party a more informal prospect. A way to exclude certain songs from the random play rotation would have been welcome, but you can temporarily interrupt a song to create a set list and then jump right back into the music. Party Play strips away anything that might impede your enjoyment of the game, and as a result, Guitar Hero 5 shines as an example of how to make music games accessible and fun for a wide range of players.

If you prefer more deliberate and finite sets, then Quickplay is a great place to go. Here you can construct a set list and play with up to four players, again using whatever instrument combinations you see fit. Quickplay also makes accommodations for more casual players, allowing only those playing on hard or expert difficulty to fail out. Previously, you could save failed bandmates only by using the star power you earned by nailing glowing notes. You can still use this method, but Guitar Hero 5 gives you another option. When a bandmate fails, a crowd meter pops up. If the rest of the band plays well enough for long enough, the failed bandmate is revived and the band keeps on rocking. There is no limit to how many times you can revive a bandmate, though it does seem to get harder as the fails pile up. The crowd meter makes your band less dependent on star power opportunities that may or may not appear in time and also means you don't necessarily have to save your star power for a flagging fellow rocker. Quickplay is also a good place to make a bid for a spot on the extensive leaderboards. There are high-score categories for each song, each instrument, and each difficulty, so score-seekers of all levels can participate.

If earning rewards for your skills is your thing, Career mode once again provides a place where you progress through different venues, playing songs and unlocking new gigs. In Guitar Hero 5, you earn up to five stars for each performance, and the more stars you collect, the more gigs you unlock. This mode will feel very familiar to Guitar Hero veterans, but there's one new element that helps keep it from going stale. Each song has a bonus challenge associated with it that allows you to earn up to eight stars per song instead of the usual five. These three-tiered challenges (one extra star per tier) can be either instrument specific (whammy for a certain amount of time as the guitarist) or band-wide (maintain a 4x multiplier for a certain amount of time). This variety encourages you to mix up the instruments you use or to play with a few friends, and there's a handy onscreen meter that tracks your progress throughout the song. Some of these challenges will be easy for confident players, while others are so difficult that only experts will have a shot. Earning a few extra stars is nice, but completing challenges can also earn you bonus unlockables, including new outfits, sponsored equipment sets, cheats, and new playable characters.

In addition to franchise standbys like Axel Steel and Judy Nails, Guitar Hero 5 features the likenesses of a handful of real rock stars. You unlock many of these stars just by playing through their songs successfully in Career mode (no boss battles here), while other stars become available only after you complete one of the aforementioned bonus challenges. Once unlocked, these stars can join Guitar Hero characters, your user-created rockers, and your Xbox 360 avatar onstage. This gives rise to some truly bizarre band lineups. Seeing Kurt Cobain perform onstage with three avatars is like watching a bizarre segment from Sesame Street, while watching four Johnny Cashes sing a song by Public Enemy is just ridiculous. Regardless of whether you find these strange pairings hilarious or utterly stupid, Guitar Hero 5 delivers improved visuals that you'll easily notice when you get a chance to look away from your note highway. Character animations are more fluid, and lip synching looks good, even on the avatars that are just cycling between a few different mouth icons. The crowds still look like a patterned mass of clones, but the lively performance camera angles ensure that you'll notice them only at the beginning and end of your song.

One of the most improved aspects of Guitar Hero 5 is the music studio. The overhauled interface makes it much easier to lay down tracks, and you can learn more about the different options simply by holding down the fret button you would use to select them. It still requires patience and skill to make a decent song, but the barrier of entry has been significantly lowered. If you're not at the composition stage yet, you can flex your music muscle in the new jam session mode, which allows you to choose a background loop and play over it to your heart's content. This feature makes it much easier to experiment with playing music with your not-actually-musical instrument, and noodling around with some cooperative friends can be fun.

There's an extensive set list on the disc, and players can once again download user-created tunes as well as official downloadable content tracks. However, if you're looking to import songs from your copy of Guitar Hero World Tour, you're in for some disappointment. After entering the 20-digit Unique Owner ID from the back of your World Tour manual, you have to pay 280 Microsoft points to download digital copies of the World Tour songs to your hard drive. Worse, you get only 35 of the 80-plus tracks from World Tour. Though the 35 tracks have been updated to include stuff like band moments (a bonus for playing in unison) and expert plus drumming (with adaptor-enabled double foot pedal action), it's disappointing that a higher percentage of tracks aren't available.

There are a number of other sundry tweaks in Guitar Hero 5, but the core gameplay remains largely the same as World Tour. The new Rockfest multiplayer mode eschews item-based battles for more natural challenges, like nailing the longest streak of notes. Oddly, vocal star power can no longer be activated by tapping the mic, so singers have to keep a controller on hand if they want to use star power. Other than this change, and the disappointing song import options, Guitar Hero 5 improves upon its predecessor in almost every category. It's an easy buy for folks who bought World Tour, and it is a great option for those looking to see what this plastic video game rock craze is all about. It won't blow the roof off, but Guitar Hero 5 will definitely get your party rockin'.

SoulCalibur: Broken Destiny Review

When you start playing SoulCalibur: Broken Destiny's single-player Gauntlet mode, a warning pops up on the screen to let you know that its bizarre story is "based on obscure fables and does not accurately represent SoulCalibur history." Fortunately, just about everything else in Broken Destiny feels very much like it belongs in the long-running fighting series. The weapon-based combat is as accessible and as deep as ever, the arenas are ripped right out of SoulCalibur IV, and the two new fighters introduced in this game are definitely a better fit than the Star Wars characters that graced the aforementioned Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 game. There's not enough compelling single-player content here to make Broken Destiny a must-have if you're planning on going solo, but add a friend with a second copy of the game to the equation, and good times are guaranteed.

All 28 of the fighters on Broken Destiny's roster are available from the outset. You can also create your own fighters from scratch using limited customization tools to determine their physical appearance and then dress them up in gear chosen from a massive wardrobe, much of which has to be unlocked. There are no performance bonuses associated with clothing and weapons this time around, which is unfortunate if you really enjoyed that aspect of SoulCalibur IV, but great if you want to wear all of the matching pieces of the Santa costume without feeling like your fashion choices are compromising your effectiveness. Regardless of which fighter you choose to play as and what he or she is wearing, Broken Destiny, like previous SoulCalibur offerings, is easy to pick up and grasp the basics of. You can move in eight directions using the D pad or the analog nub, and face buttons are used to guard and to perform basic horizontal attacks, vertical attacks, and kicks. That's really all you need to know to get started, though you'll find that there are plenty of more advanced techniques to master if you check out the character-specific move lists in the useful Training mode.

Oddly, Broken Destiny doesn't feature an Arcade mode in which to pit your chosen combatant against a number of opponents en route to a matchup with a boss. In its place is Trials mode, which incorporates three distinct score-based challenges in Attack, Defense, and Endless flavors. In the Trial of Attack you're pitted against five opponents and earn score bonuses for playing aggressively and for landing combos. The Trial of Defense is a little longer and culminates in a boss battle against Algol from SoulCalibur IV, so in that respect it's a lot like that game's Arcade mode. The main difference here is that you score points and earn bonuses for guarding against your opponent's attacks and retaliating quickly. Endless Trial is a survival mode of sorts, except that your fighter regains all of his health between rounds. Seeing how many of the increasingly tough opponents you can make it past without ever losing is a lot of fun, but your score isn't based on that. Rather, every time you land a blow you earn points, and there's a score multiplier that goes up when you hit your opponent but falls back down when you get hit. The scoring system in the trials means there's some fun to be had replaying them to beat your best performances, but it's unfortunate that there's no way for you to compare your high scores with those of other players online.

Outside of quick one-on-one matches against the AI that you choose from a pseudo online lobby complete with win/loss records for different players, Broken Destiny's only other single-player content is the story-driven Gauntlet mode. Spanning more than 30 chapters each composed of multiple challenges, this mode is really just a lengthy tutorial that trains you to defend against every character in the game. Learning to effectively evade and guard against your opponent's attacks is important, and if you take the time to play through all of the 80-plus Gauntlet challenges, you'll almost certainly emerge a better player than you were when you went into it. You're not necessarily going to have much fun along the way though.

Save for a boss fight at the very end, Gauntlet mode is comprised almost entirely of challenges that last just a few seconds, and in that time you have to complete a number of very specific objectives to progress. For the most part, that means starting with very little health, avoiding an enemy's attacks, and then landing an attack of your own. You're set up to fail most of these the first time, because unless you're a seasoned SoulCalibur veteran, you're not going to know if the attacks coming at you in rapid succession are going to be high or low, vertical or horizontal, or even unblockable. Fail once, and you're given feedback from other characters that, more often than not, includes a breakdown of exactly what you need to do. That's good, because hearing the announcer say "mission failed" over and over again in a short space of time when you get stuck on a challenge can be infuriating.

As you progress through Gauntlet mode, you're introduced to throw escapes, stun recoveries, guard impacts, aerial controls, interrupts, and a number of other features that leave you in no doubt as to how deep the fighting system is. You're also exposed to facets of the fighters' personalities that you've never seen before and that, frankly, you probably won't want to see again. Yun-seong believes he's receiving messages from aliens, Zasalamel is an interdimensional peeping tom, Nightmare cries a lot, and moonwalking newcomer Dampierre has a penchant for young girls that's second only to his feelings about facial hair. In short, by the time you reach the end of the Gauntlet mode you're left in no doubt as to why the story isn't considered SoulCalibur canon. The only character who makes it through the mode with his reputation intact is Kratos, the antihero of Sony's God of War series.

In fact, Kratos makes it through all of Broken Destiny's modes without losing face. Not only does he have a formidable arsenal of moves that make him feel quite different from anyone else on the roster, but in Creation mode, the only option you have for customizing him is to equip him with very slightly different chain-blade weapons. Leather loafers, short slops, goddess gauntlets, and elf ears are available elsewhere on the roster, but the only options available to Kratos are the same outfit he wears in the God of War games and the suit of armor he can be seen wearing at the start of God of War II. Regardless, he's a good addition to the roster, and with unusual abilities that include launching himself into the air using Icarus wings and swinging from the chains attached to his blades, he poses a challenge whether you're going up against him or attempting to master his moves yourself. The same can be said of Dampierre, who employs concealed weapons and an unorthodox fighting style that frequently causes him to lose his balance.


The best way to put your skills with either of the SoulCalibur newcomers to the test, of course, is to use them not against the admittedly impressive AI but against another player in Versus mode. Unfortunately, there's no online play, but the option to play against friends locally in an ad hoc party is well implemented at least. Connecting is quick and easy, the gameplay is lag-free, and your win/loss records with different opponents are remembered across multiple sessions. Also deserving of a mention is an option to install a portion of the game data to your memory stick, which almost completely cuts out any load times between matchups, not just in Versus mode, but across the entire game.

SoulCalibur: Broken Destiny's presentation is impressive in almost every regard. Fighters are detailed and animate smoothly, the varied arenas they do battle in are nicely lit, and the accompanying sound effects make attacks feel even more powerful than they look. The orchestral soundtrack is a great fit and, in conjunction with the over-the-top fight announcer and some ostentatious one-liners from the characters themselves, it makes every battle feel like an epic encounter.

Because the bulk of its single-player content is best suited to players who already have some SoulCalibur experience, Broken Destiny isn't quite as easy to recommend to newcomers as other games in the series. However, if you're already comfortable with SoulCalibur or with similar 3D fighting systems and can live with the lack of online play, there's really no reason you shouldn't pick this one up posthaste.

Need for Speed: Shift Updated Hands-On

The centerpiece of the Shift experience is your driver profile, and practically everything you do in the game feeds into that profile. The profile measures what kind of driver you are--more on that in a bit--and also keeps track of your driver level, which you can improve by earning points in race events. You can reach up to level 50 in the game, and each new level you earn will unlock cool stuff like new vinyls and accessories for your car, cash rewards, new cars, and additional garage slots for your ever-growing collection of sweet rides. In a nice touch, you can earn points for your driver level anywhere in the game--whether you're grinding away in the five tiers of Career mode events or simply playing a quick match, any points or cash you earn will feed directly into your driver profile.

Shift's car roster is impressive, with authentic rides from manufacturers such as Audi, Nissan, Honda, Ford, and many more. Still, thanks to the persistent driver profile, how you drive is just as important as what you drive. Practically anything you do on the track will earn you points, and these different maneuvers are split up between "precision" racing and "aggressive" racing. Precision driving moves include things like making clean passes of opponent cars or following the correct driving line, while aggressive moves include hitting opponent cars, drafting closely behind cars, and even spinning an opponent off the track completely.

It's worth noting that the game doesn't punish you for "aggressive" driving; instead, it's merely classifying the way you drive and noting it on your profile. When you decide to race online, your profile will be visible to other folks online and is used for matchmaking purposes. If you prefer to race cleanly, for instance, you'll likely want to avoid racers noted as "aggressive" in their profile, and vice verse.

You earn stars in racing events that can be used to unlock new events throughout your career. Stars are earned for finishing on the podium, but that's not the only way to earn them. In some races, for instance, you might gain an extra star for racing a clean lap. Also, during most races, you'll have objectives you can complete that will earn you additional stars--examples include earning a certain number of driver profile points in a race or beating a set lap time before the race ends. There are also a bunch of badges available in the game, which you can earn over the course of your career. They act as milestones of sorts, such as badges for mastering all the tracks in the game or badges for simply racking up a certain number of miles on the different cars in your garage.

You'll be working your way through a ton of race events in Career mode--including traditional circuit races, point-to-point sprints, time trials, and specialized racing events like drifting and make-specific races. The way Career mode is set up, if you earn enough stars in one series, you'll be able to skip events you might not be fond of and still make your way to the next tier of events. Of course, you can always go back and replay a race to get the maximum number of stars from every event.

From a gameplay standpoint, Shift's driving model feels quite a bit different from previous NFS incarnations. The cockpit view alone improves the experience--every bump and jostle on the track is felt as your driver's vision goes temporarily blurry or, for harder shunts, as the screen turns black and white. In terms of handling, there's a decent variety in handling style, from the gripper front-wheel-drive cars to the rear-wheel models that feel like you're skating on ice when running in the game's many drift races. Overall the driving model seems to be tuned to allow a lot of sliding around the course no matter which car you're driving and even with handling assists like stability control and traction control engaged.

The game has a pretty decent damage model in place, which can be toggled between "full" and "visual only" depending on your preference. There are also three AI settings (easy, medium, and hard) as well as four general handling settings (casual, normal, experienced, and pro). You'll also be able to individually customize your handling tuning--on the pro level, for instance, you can choose toggle assists like ABS, traction control, and stability management.