You play as Ashley, one of many individuals frozen in a cryogenic stupor after environmental contamination rendered Earth’s surface uninhabitable. The time has come for the slumbering residents of the underground cryostation to reanimate and head back to the surface, but for some reason, you’re the only person the station’s AI can revive, which makes you humankind’s last hope. Well, you and your artificial guide, O.S.C.A.R., whose stale, droning monotone guides you through the facility’s dreary innards and provides you with occasional updates. If Portal’s GlaDOS is puzzle gaming’s charmingly sociopathic matron, O.S.C.A.R. is her boring second cousin. He’s voiced with all the appeal and adeptness of a fourth grader reciting his paper on what he did over summer vacation, and he wears out his welcome just as quickly. Ashley is faintly more interesting, though the actress’s attempts at occasional exasperation and fear are amateurish. To be fair, however, few actors could break out of a yawn over Twin Sector’s plain dialogue, which does just the bare minimum to keep the plot moving forward.

If you came for the puzzles and not for the story, you’ll at least like the concept behind the gameplay. Ashley wears two special telekinetic gloves: one that pushes and one that pulls. Using the pulling glove, you can yank objects like barrels and boxes toward you, or pull yourself toward walls and walkways. With the pushing glove, you can fling those same barrels away from you, or even propel yourself off the ground. You can perform a number of different feats using these gloves, such as leaping across wide chasms, throwing barrels to hit unreachable buttons, and breaking through busted doors by throwing flaming canisters at them or rolling big balls of trash into them. A few multistage puzzles are complex enough to seem clever, such as one in which you must maneuver a garbage ball through a number of corridors, up and down ramps, and through an antigravity room. Brief moments like this showcase Twin Sector’s notable potential.

Unfortunately, Twin Sector is characterized more by its lifeless production values and irritating design flaws. The physics are frustratingly uneven, so a simple leap onto a pipe above you may not work as you intended. Or you might try to set one barrel on top of another, only to topple the tiny tower when you attempt to carefully set the barrel in place and instead fling it forward. The presence of seekers–aggressive, hovering balls buzzing with lethal electricity–make certain levels even more exasperating, because you must overcome the imprecise physics while under pressure. In other cases, basic defects can bring the game to a dead halt. For example, the inexact physics may cause you to extinguish your limited supply of exploding canisters or insanely fragile water cylinders before you’ve accomplished the task you needed them for. This leads to a stalemate in which you cannot progress and the game does not fail you–a fundamental design flaw. In another case, a dispenser will eternally provide an additional canister if you should use up the last one (it somehow magically knows), but in this circumstance, it’s possible to lose a canister without causing it to explode. No explosion means no newly dispensed canister. This could have been avoided had Twin Sector allowed you to summon a canister of your own accord, but the game lacks this kind of common sense design.

Twin Sector also lacks a strong sense of place. The cryogenic facility is an aimless maze of gray hallways and large empty rooms inexplicably protected by lasers and turrets. Any object you encounter is meant to help you solve a puzzle or to hinder your progression; otherwise, the environments are flat and empty. Every room looks more or less the same, with few changes in color palette, lighting, or architecture. There are no creepy crevasses, no flickering bulbs, no looming shadows–no sense of tension, or joy, or sorrow, or anything at all. The sound design is even more dismally sparse, which becomes more noticeable when the musical score goes silent. You hear Ashley’s footsteps as you trod down the endless hallways, but she makes no sound whatsoever when she jumps. Industrial fans spin behind grates, but they don’t hum or whir–they make no sound at all. The effects that do exist, such as the miserable crackle of fire, sound as if they were pilfered from a public domain database. You’d expect that breaking open a huge metal door would result in a raucous din of clinging and clanging, not a simple dreary thump.

Twin Sector has an interesting idea that deserved a better game to bring it to life. A few competent puzzles hint at what could have been, but the game has no character and no drive; like that poor door punctured by rolling rubbish, it makes a dull thud rather than a raucous roar. Some games feel like labors of love. Twin Sector is pure labor.

Divinity II makes a good first impression. The initial areas are sunny and bright, and the first major town you visit has a nice fantasy ambience that’s just off-kilter enough to avoid looking generic. This is Rivellon, the same world in which the first two games in the series–Divine Divinity and Beyond Divinity–took place, though you don’t need to be familiar with them to follow along here. You play a dragon slayer recruit, still in the process of the initiation stages, when you stumble upon a dragon knight in her final death throes. She transfers her powers to you, you meet a bearded sorcerer wearing a big floppy hat covered with stars, and before you know it, you’re a dragon knight yourself. It seems that dragons are not the real enemy; rather, the scowling, monologue-loving, bald-headed Damian has returned to the realm and is gathering a powerful army. But Zandalor, the aforementioned wizard stereotype, has a plan: infiltrate the Hall of Echoes, where the dead slumber, and revive Damian’s lover, Ygerna. Due to the powerful magic that connects their souls, doing so will in turn trigger Damian’s death.

It’s a good premise, but the game does a poor job of making you feel connected to the events that unfold. The transformation from slayer to knight could have made an impact, but scant character development and minimalist dialogue siphon away any potential dramatic tension. Some talented voice actors give their lines energy and enthusiasm, but they’re rarely given anything interesting to say, and key characters are simple cliches without much personality of their own. And even should you somehow become caught up in the struggle against Damian and his allies, the disappointing ending will let the wind out of your sails. Nevertheless, there are some clever delights scattered about Rivellon, and Divinity II is best when its tongue is planted firmly in cheek. A quest to stop a troll infestation eventually leads you to a roomful of clucking chickens; you solve a riddle filled with enough silly sexual double entendre to make even the most jaded player titter; and the creature you summon to your side stops from time to time to lift his leg and empty his bladder.

In the first hour you’ll be asked to choose one of three classes, but don’t give this decision too much consideration: Divinity II features a classless skill progression system and provides a good number of different skills to learn in multiple categories. Weapons and magic skills are what you’d expect to see in a fantasy game. Whether you prefer bows or axes, fireballs or magic missiles, you’ll find something to your liking, and the steady flow of new goodies will keep loot lovers happy. The early hours, in which you seek out the objects and knowledge that allow you to take your dragon form, send you across sun-drenched fields and into a looming tower. In time you explore goblin-infested caves, mysterious mines, a beach littered with whale carcasses, and a zeppelin port, among other locales. The technology powering Divinity II is not cutting edge; animations are clumsy, textures are bland, and oddities like boulders that aren’t flush to the ground and buildings that disappear when you move the camera betray a certain awkwardness. Yet there are some attractive vistas to ogle, and there is a nice amount of visual variety to the dungeons. The art design is familiar but lovely, masking the technical flaws with flourishes of ivy, the deep red glow of molten lava, and shafts of golden light.

It takes a few too many hours before you can take to the skies as a dragon. Once you reach that point, however, you’ll appreciate how freeing it is to fly about the oft-unfriendly skies. You can’t soar everywhere, mind you. There are plenty of mountains and invisible walls to hem you in, and certain areas are protected by force fields that will quickly fry you if you try to penetrate them. As a dragon you have access to a separate set of skills and armor, though these options are much more limited than those you get on the ground. Nevertheless, it’s a hoot to unleash scorching fury on enemy wyrms and anti-dragon towers, particularly in areas containing flying fortresses. These regions have a nice pace to them, requiring you to switch back and forth between forms, moving quickly from aerial lizard fights to ground-based skirmishes. Oddly, however, you can’t see ground-based enemies from the air, so you might exit dragon form only to land in the middle of a bunch of Black Ring troops eager to crush you to a pulp. On the flipside, airborne fiends will ignore you once you’re on terra firma. Your dragon form is not the only grand reward awaiting you once you’ve slashed your way through the first third of the game. You also gain access to your very own battle tower, which functions as a home base where you can store excess items and ask your private dancer to perform perhaps the unsexiest jig you ever did see. The tower is more than just a safe haven, however: it also provides you with a number of helpful non-player characters who make potions, enchant weapons and accessories, and extend your skill levels–all for a fee, of course. Enchantments make loot collection even more interesting, particularly since you can also improve your stats and skills by adding charms to many of your items. Your most intriguing employee, however, is the necromancer, who will sew a creature together out of various limbs you find or purchase. It all seems a bit creepy, but playing Dr. Frankenstein is fun, and the creature is a great help in battle.

Not all of Divinity II’s more original facets require you to wait so long before you can enjoy them. In the first hour or so, you earn the ability to read minds, and during most conversations, you can choose the mind-reading option to discover what kinds of secrets characters might be hiding. A few quests, such as a very early one involving an unfaithful wife and her not-so-innocent husband, use this option to some effect and let you use the information you discover to solve the quest in a few different ways. However, most mind-reading attempts of significance lead to treasure chest passwords, hidden loot stashes, lower vendor prices, or additional skill points. These benefits are nice, but rarely does the option lead to quest flexibility or greater insight into a character’s psyche. What mind reading essentially does is to turn experience points (which you must spend in order to read minds) into a form of currency: you spend XP for the chance to gain other types of rewards. Divinity II hints at the potential flexibility mind reading could have provided but never explores it, which is a shame considering the game’s linear nature. There are plenty of side quests, and you can tackle many of them in more or less any order. But don’t expect the kind of elasticity that games like Fallout 3, Dragon Age, or even Risen provide. In most conversations, it doesn’t matter whether you choose the line that makes you sound like a jerk or the line that makes you sound like a paragon of virtue. With very few exceptions, such as a fascinating sequence in which your moral choices determine which reward you receive, the result is always the same.

While not all of these creative elements work as well as others, the ideas are mostly sound. Unfortunately, developer Larian Studios botched too many game design basics, which all too often makes you wish that these inventive ideas were used in a better, cleaner game. Enemy encounters are often a big problem for many reasons. This is a challenging game even on medium difficulty, though the challenge too often results from unbalanced skirmishes and poor pacing and is further exacerbated by the imprecise combat. Enemies don’t respawn, so there aren’t many chances to grind if you enter an area that seems out of your league. You’ll die frequently as you make your way through the hordes of skeletons and dragon elves, but the game doesn’t offer the precise combat needed to make for fair fights. Most boss fights are more easily won by exploiting the game’s poor AI (hide behind a pillar so the bad guys don’t see you) or poor pathfinding (get the enemy stuck running in place, and then fill him with arrows) than with clever battle tactics. As it is, these tactics involve a lot of jumping, rolling, and hit-and-run attacks, which is erratic but not very strategic–and not much fun.

Other quirks and flaws will also get in your way. Platforming sequences provide a nice change of pace, but floaty, inexact jumping make some of these sections more exasperating than enjoyable. If you pull a foe too far from its home area, it will regenerate its health and be all but invincible until it runs back to its starting location. In one dungeon, enemies regenerate indefinitely but (like many creatures summoned by your enemies) don’t reward you with experience points, even though they can very certainly murder you. And we ran into a number of bugs on multiple systems. Exiting the game may cause the process to hang and force you to use the Windows task manager to close the program, and never-ending loading screens might also lead to a similar shutdown. In one case, we got stuck in an inescapable conversation and therefore could not complete a side quest. Divinity II is clumsy, from its poorly designed minimap to the thin quest log. As a result, it feels as if it were designed from the top down, rather than from the ground up.

Divinity II may draw you in despite its foibles. Flying about as a dragon, summoning your custom-made beast to your side, messing around with enchantments and charms–these elements are thoughtfully designed and inventive enough to be entertaining. But the disappointing story, glitchy AI, and all sorts of minor frustrations bog it down. If you’re a forgiving RPG fanatic, you may be able to overlook the faults and see this sequel for what it might have been. But great ideas don’t always make a great game, and Divinity II isn’t as slick and addictive as its predecessors, or as gripping and replayable as its modern competition.

Most of the plot of Armored Princess is a straightforward extension of the original King’s Bounty. The demons that you fought as the champion of the fantasy realm Endoria are back for round two, and only the armored princess of the title stands in their way. Princess Amelie is the hero you play as here, a maid in mail who winds up being sent to the alternate reality of Teana on a hunt for her mentor, the knight Bill Gilbert, and eight magical stones that can save the world. This basically turns into an tropical getaway because Teana is kind of a Caribbean world divided into a succession of fairly small islands, each with distinct personalities. One is full of pirates, for instance, another loaded with barbarians, and so on. This adds an energetic atmosphere to the new game and breaks up your adventure into easily digestible chunks. This structure also bluntly lets you know how you’re doing because you can tell pretty much immediately whether or not you have enough levels under your belt to take on an island. Running into a bunch of invincible barbarians on a new island is a pretty good cue that you should kick your sailboat into reverse. New islands generally have to be accessed with maps that must be taken from tough enemies, too, which also keeps you from getting ahead of yourself for the most part.

Plot and basic structure are identical to that in both its predecessor and tons of other Heroes of Might & Magic-inspired sagas. You guide Amelie across intricate maps of fairly traditional fantasy lands (enemies generally come with claws, swords, and shields, although you do run into the odd robot) with a horde of units in tow that serve as shock troops for battles. Whenever you take on some bad guys, these grunts do the fighting for you, although you give them their marching orders on turn-based hexagonal battlefields. Amelie starts off as a first-level wuss of a paladin, mage, or warrior (your choice) that can recruit only basic bowmen, clerics, and pitchfork-wielding peasants into her army. But with time, levels, and increases in her leadership stat, she will be able to field troops like giant snakes, giant spiders, ancient bears, sneaky buccaneers, creepy vampires, and many other D&D refugees. The goal is, of course, to explore the nooks and crannies of the islands, as well as slay evildoers and monsters. You’ll also solve quests; buff Amelie by leveling up and tweaking her many might, mind, or magic abilities via an extensive skill tree; and progress to the final showdown. One significant addition is a pet dragon that levels up and has special abilities that can be used in combat. The beast’s role isn’t well defined, though, so it seems less like a traveling buddy than a way to cast extra spells during battles.

So there are no stop-the-presses moments here. The only real difference between the first King’s Bounty and its follow-up is how quickly the difficulty scales up. Armored Princess assumes that you have played the original, which means that it gets right to the point. Battles turn tough as soon as you reach the second island, forcing you to really learn the ins and outs of the game’s hero skill progression tree, as well as how to best recruit and employ troops in battle. You will have a rough time of it here unless you have either played the first game or have some previous experience with strategy RPGs. Still, it’s not an unfair progression. The difficulty increases quickly but not suddenly. If you’re paying attention at all, you won’t get caught by impossible opposition. It’s not as if you go directly from whomping spiders and pirates to getting scorched by invincible demons. And even when you’re in tough against serious opposition, the incredibly detailed maps provide entertainment all on their own. Exploration is even more of an entertaining diversion than combat because your speed on horseback allows you to gallop away from impossible-to-defeat baddies and even occasionally snipe a big reward or reach a castle where you can recruit powerful units without fighting. Maps have goodies crammed into every nook and cranny, including buried chests full of gold, magical doodads, and the mystic runes that power Amelie’s skills. Quests can be found all over the place, and they are typically offered up along with reams of colorful text that develop Amelie’s personality and build up Teana as a real place through the collection of oddballs handing out these jobs. You can safely skip all this verbiage, of course, but taking the time to read it all is rewarding if you’re seriously into role playing.

With all that said, Armored Princess feels dated at times. The graphics engine is really showing its age now but the art style is more cartoony than realistic, so the game can get away with broad caricatures, chunky monster models, and whiz-bang spell effects. These consist of fireworks and cheesy animations like spooky faces indicating units being scared. Islands and battle arenas are stocked with lots of added details as well, including cobwebby corners and overgrown graveyards. But there are also some performance issues here, most notably how you get stuck on scenery when guiding Amelie around the islands. Clicking on inaccessible areas–which is easy to do because the islands are veritable mazes of narrow paths and greenery–causes her to simply stop and wait for a new order. This is both annoying and life threatening because these inopportune pauses can get you caught by pursuing enemies. Audio is also archaic. Unit sound effects in battle are almost nonexistent and never memorable even when you can hear them. Music is also a generic blat of horns that you’ll forget moments after shutting down the game.

Even though it may be a slave to its genre, King’s Bounty: Armored Princess is still an impressive representation of the modern strategy RPG. Story, exploration, combat, and character development come together in a great, addictive game that will keep you hooked for many, many hours.

At least most of the included events are well done, even if they do veer on the shallow side. The last Olympic video game, Beijing 2008, was plagued by an overload of events that forced players to frantically tap buttons–an activity that is the polar opposite of fun. That mindless control method is used only sparingly in Vancouver 2010, resulting in a much more enjoyable experience. The controls change little between skiing and snowboarding down a mountain, but they are responsive, so it can be fun to fly down an icy hill a few times. The problem is that there are only a few different courses (which change depending on the event), so you’re forced to wind your way down the same path every time you replay the event. You only have to go down the hill a few times to memorize the layout, and after you know the exact route to take, there is little incentive to improve your time or play again.

The bobsledding events are even more repetitive. Two-man bobsled, skeleton, and luge are all represented here, but they all control in almost exactly the same way and all take place on the same frozen water slide. It is certainly fun to careen down that slippery track the first few times–making sure you don’t slam into the walls that hover dangerously close to your sled while zooming up as high on the banked curves as possible without flipping over–but once you’ve done it a couple times, there isn’t any reason to go back. And that is the biggest problem with Vancouver 2010. Skiing, snowboarding, and bobsledding events all control well and are pretty fun at first, but there are only a few different courses to go through, which severely limits the replay value. With a whopping 10 out of the included 14 events essentially boiled down into two unique activities, the entire package ends up being skimpy and forgettable.

The other four included events do inject a dose of variety, but they lack the fun of the racing activities. Ski Jump and Aerials, for instance, require players to tap a specific button at the right moment, but it takes only two or three practice runs before you master this technique. The 500-meter speed skating event forces players to frantically mash a button to maintain top speed, and though it requires a bit of skill to take corners at top speed, it’s too tiring and repetitive to entertain for long. The 1,500-meter variety introduces a rhythm game mechanic for most of the race, but is too simple to make repeat runs entertaining. And that is the entirety of the included events. There is no score-based snowboarding competition, biathlon, or even the crazy mixed doubles luge. Even considering the reduced price of this game ($50), there is a dearth of content.

The Olympic mode continues the theme of a stripped winter sports experience by offering a very bare-bones take on the spectacle. You compete in a series of one-off events–without any commentary or special visual touches to make the events mirror the television broadcasts–and are then thrust on a podium afterward to receive your medal. There are only 24 countries to choose from (compared to the more than 80 that will compete in the real games), and you can’t even customize the appearance of your competitors. Furthermore, the events themselves are lacking in presentation, diminishing the thrill of striving for a gold medal. Weirdly enough, many events blast rock music while you’re trying to focus, which clashes severely with the otherwise serene, wintry atmosphere. There is little incentive to play these events more than one time in Olympic mode, which is awfully strange. One would think that the Olympic mode would be a key aspect of an Olympic game, but it feels like an afterthought in Vancouver 2010.

Thankfully, there is one mode in which to take solace in Vancouver 2010. Challenges let you take part in a variety of objective-based events that are the most interesting aspect of this game. Most of your goals involve tearing through an event as if you were a real life competitor, keeping your speed above a certain average in downhill skiing or taking corners perfectly in the luge, which forces you to master the intricacies of the courses and controls. However, there are a few objectives that seem flat-out game-y, sucking you out of the otherwise simulation atmosphere offered in the rest of the game. For instance, during one downhill skiing event, you must slam into snowmen to earn time bonuses, and in a snowboarding event, your controls are inexplicably reversed. Nevertheless, every one of these 30 challenges are fun, and it’s rewarding trying to shave off a second or land a particularly difficult jump. It’s a shame the rest of the game doesn’t have the same care found in the Challenge mode because there is good deal of entertainment in these winter events.

Because of the lack of variety among the events, the multiplayer mode has only a little bit more appeal than the standard single-player competitions. You can play online or off, with up to four players, and it is fun striving for the best time against your buddies. But like every other element of Vancouver 2010, the fun doesn’t last long. With only a few unique events and even fewer courses to choose from, everything becomes stale soon after you start playing. Only the difficult Challenge mode is really interesting, but with only 30 challenges to take part in that too is only fun for so long. Although Vancouver 2010 is vastly improved from Beijing 2008, it is ultimately lacking in many key areas. It’s still more fun to watch the real lugers do their thing than take part in this shallow digital representation.

The eponymous army is made up of Salem and Rios, two mercenaries reprising their roles from The 40th Day’s predecessor, Army of Two. The game is meant to be played cooperatively, and you can do so locally (via split-screen) or online. You and your teammate travel through the besieged city of Shanghai, shooting your way through a mercenary army and having a grand old time, despite not really knowing what is going on. The core shooting mechanics are sharp and satisfying, and moving around the varied environments is generally easy. However, some awkwardness arises from the fact that sprinting, rolling, sliding into cover, hurdling over cover, and entering a mounted gun position are all mapped to one button. Triggering the wrong action can put you in some tight (read: deadly) spots. You also have to be careful when maneuvering into cover, because though you automatically lean into it, cover isn’t sticky. Yet once you start to get the hang of the controls, you’ll find that there is a certain fluidity to the way you can move around the battlefield. And as an added bonus, you can take out a regular enemy just by running into him at a dead sprint, which is both fun and funny.

If you choose to roll solo, you’ll be left with an AI teammate who generally does a good job of staying out of trouble. That is, unless you want him to get into trouble, in which case you can use the easily issued tactical commands to influence his behavior. Solo or co-op, you should keep an eye on the aggro meter, a slider that indicates which of you the enemy is concentrating its fire on. If one teammate draws all the aggro, the other can slip about virtually unnoticed, picking off distracted foes or moving into a better position. Playing with this mechanic can be fun, and it is strategically relevant enough that a timely aggro grab can save your buddy’s skin. There are also a few other tactical tricks you can pull, like mock surrendering to the enemy, that help add some unique cooperative flavor to the action.

In both friendly and enemy AI, there is a slight tendency toward extremes, whether it is your AI teammate downing four baddies with superhuman speed in order to rescue you, or the enemy AI being so focused on your aggro-happy partner that it ignores the fact that you just put a few bullets in his back from a few yards away. Sometimes it feels like the game is erring on the side of letting the player have his fun, but there are some situations that seem more like AI stupidity. You can up the difficulty if you choose, but no matter how you play it, the campaign won’t last much longer than six hours. To The 40th Day’s credit, it doesn’t feel particularly short, and there are two elements that provide some measure of replayability.

The first is weapon customization, which you will engage in throughout the campaign. As you progress, you can unlock new guns and gear for purchase, as well as find upgrade parts throughout each level. You and your partner can initiate weapon customization anytime you aren’t in combat, though the other human player must stand near you and accept the prompt in order to actually bring up the store. You can buy guns (SMGs, shotguns, sniper rifles, and so on), weapon upgrades (silencers, clips, stocks, sights, and so on), and a few other augmentations, like increased grenade capacity. You earn a lot of money throughout the game, and many of the upgrades can be applied to multiple weapons, so customization is encouraged. There’s an array of upgrades that range from brutal (shotgun bayonet) to bizarre (bulky barrel-mounted shields) to do-it-yourself hilarity (soda can silencer). It’s surprisingly entertaining to change your loadout, experiment with different weapons, and tweak high and low aggro guns. And once you’ve finished the campaign, you can revisit any chapter with your persistent weapon locker and try even more loadouts on for size.

The second element that adds replayability is the interaction you have with noncombatants. There are civilians in this warscape, and most of the ones you encounter are being taken hostage or threatened. Saving them presents an intriguing tactical challenge. Do you blast away and hope to kill the enemies before they kill the hostages? Or do you sneak up and grab the officer, forcing his unit to surrender? (Army of Two features a tactical GPS mode, which is a handy, if distracting, visual overlay that displays relevant battlefield information and allows you to spot ranking officers.) Some characters you encounter will trigger marquee morality choices. Once you choose between the two options, you’ll be treated to a cutscene that shows the impact of your decision hours or even days later. The comic-book-style scenes are unpredictable and often very strange. A choice that seems good (like trying to keep a child alive), may end up with grim results. These choices are essentially minigames: small, tangential encounters that offer a small bonus but are otherwise frivolous. If you’re looking to derive some sort of clear or consistent message, you’re out of luck. Army of Two: The 40th Day tries its hand at moralizing, but the results range from cliche to overbearing to bizarre. Fortunately, these sections are quickly drowned out by a cacophony of gunfire and explosions.

For further action free of any noncombatants, head online and do battle against other armies of two. The Co-op Deathmatch mode is essentially team deathmatch with teams of two, and it’s a neat twist on the cooperative action from the campaign. There’s also Control, a capture-and-hold mode, and Warzone, a mode that features a fun variety of changing mission objectives. Online action is tuned to be more fast-paced: you can revive your teammates more quickly, and everyone is limited to choosing from the same gun loadouts. While it’s a bummer to have the customization stripped out, you can still add your own flair by designing a logo on the game’s official Web site, sending it to the game, and putting it on your mask or shoulder armor (this also works in campaign mode). There’s a fourth multiplayer mode that is set to be unlocked after those who preordered the game enjoy a month of exclusive play, but as it is, Army of Two’s online multiplayer is an engaging complement to its campaign. Unfortunately, many matches are plagued by lag, so unless you specifically select a match with a low ping, you may end up suffering.

Army of Two: The 40th Day is a very appealing shooter, and it looks great to boot. Diverse, ruined environments, cool enemy equipment designs, and nice animation touches make the action that much more lively. It has its fair share of issues,and you’ll spend most of the game not knowing why buildings are falling and men are shooting at you. But there’s a lot of fun to be had in both the campaign and the online multiplayer. With entertaining action, great visuals, surprising replay value, and the ability to play rock-paper-scissors while standing over the corpses of your enemies, The 40th Day is a fun way for shooter fans to start off 2010.

As War, the red rider of the Four Horsemen, your job is pretty simple. An enforcer of the Charred Council, a neutral body that maintains the balance between the forces of heaven and hell, you apply pressure to make sure that both sides play fair in their endless bickering. Perhaps the Four Horsemen’s most important duty, however, is to heed the call of the Endwar and punish anyone unlucky enough to be found on Earth. When you’re somehow prematurely summoned to Earth, which begins a chain of events that ends with the unfortunate extinction of humankind and the victory of the armies of The Destroyer, it’s time for vengeance. You are charged with the crime of upsetting the balance and are sent back to Earth to find answers, or die trying. Though it’s a grand setup, once the first hour or so of gameplay passes, the plot quickly runs out of steam and devolves into absurdity. None of the characters you’re introduced to are fleshed out beyond weak stereotypes and one-dimensional cliches, and the various plot twists and turns are predictable and unsatisfying.

While wandering through the great wasteland that was once civilization, War takes out his boundless rage on both the legions of The Destroyer and the armies of heaven in fun and brutal combat. Slow-paced and methodical, battles typically pit you against large numbers of foes, which the wide, sweeping strikes of War’s weapons allow you to hit en masse. Once beaten to within an inch of their lives, enemies can be brutally executed with the press of a single button (indicated by a floating button icon above their heads), though some of the weaker enemies can be similarly dispatched from the get-go. Besides his massive sword, War can have a secondary weapon equipped (such as his brother Death’s scythe), and it’s simple to switch between the two even during a furious assault. With a quick sliding move that can be activated at almost any time to dodge an attack or break off a combo and switch targets, War is surprisingly nimble for such a bulky guy. This freedom, when coupled with your ability to transition instantly into an execution, makes fights feel extremely fluid, even when their generally slow pace is taken into consideration. But while it’s incredibly satisfying to eviscerate an enormous horned devil or cut the wings off an armored angel, battle is, surprisingly enough for a guy named War, only one half of the equation.

When you’re not on the warpath, there’s an enormous world waiting to be explored and dozens of intriguing puzzles to solve along the way. Traversing from one area to the next isn’t always straightforward, for your progress is often hindered by your gear, or at least by your lack of it. As you proceed through the many dungeons on your journey through Darksiders, you find that each one includes a useful new item, such as a bladed boomerang, a grappling hook, or an armored gauntlet, each of which opens up new paths for you to travel and is used in often creative ways to solve puzzles and defeat bosses from then on out. Puzzle complexity ramps up nicely, and each new variation encountered is a fair step up from the previous one. Though some can initially look overwhelming–such as a series of puzzles near the end of the game in which you must redirect a beam of energy from its source using mirrors, moving platforms, and interdimensional portals–they never feel impossible and are extremely gratifying to complete. At the end of each dungeon is a large-scale boss battle that puts what you’ve learned solving these puzzles to the test. These impressive, multifaceted fights are sometimes a bit on the easy side, but not so much that it makes them any less fun.

Throughout the game, you are constantly rewarded with new pieces of equipment, weapons, and abilities–every hour of gameplay yields something new, which keeps you wanting to play to see what’s next. The unfortunate downside of this is that there are so many different things to keep track of that it can get confusing sometimes. Unfortunately, the complex controls don’t do much to curb this confusion. Every single face button on the controller is used (sometimes for more than one thing), and some moves require combinations of buttons to be pressed. Certain actions, such as throwing a charged boomerang at several targets, require a dizzying array of inputs to be made: in this case, you have to tap the right analog stick to enter aiming mode, hold the left trigger down, paint your targets with the cursor, and hold then release the right trigger to finally charge the boomerang and toss it. Because only so many pieces of gear can be instantly accessible through the D pad, in the latter parts of the game you’ll find yourself frequenting the cumbersome inventory menu to swap out items for easy access, which can be annoying. Finally, the controls aren’t always as responsive as they need to be, which can cause you to flub a jump, miss a dodge, or inexplicably fall while hanging off a wall or ceiling when you meant to do something entirely different. This doesn’t happen often, but it’s always troubling when it does.

Though the world of Darksiders is one of decay and neglect following the premature apocalypse, it is still one of visual splendor. From the lush vegetation of the Drowned Pass to the barren desert of The Ashlands, a refreshingly bright and colorful palette is always on display. Varied and imaginative, the open world and dungeons look great, though there are some unfortunate graphical issues in the Xbox 360 version. Screen tearing is a huge problem that surfaces almost any time the camera is rotated, and it’s bad enough to distract you even when you’re just exploring. In addition, battles that get too big make the frame rate suffer, causing graphical slowdown. The PlayStation 3 version suffers neither of these issues. Action in Darksiders is punctuated by an appropriately moody and atmospheric soundtrack, and the vocal cast does a good job bringing the characters to life, considering how meagerly they’re fleshed out. Mark Hamill in particular seems to relish his role as the Watcher, a sadistic demon tasked with keeping an eye on War (though it’s a bit odd to hear him recycle his Joker voice so soon after Batman: Arkham Asylum).

Darksiders unapologetically borrows gameplay ideas and mechanics from all over the spectrum and is constantly cramming new ones in all the way up to the very end. While it’s not innovative by any stretch of the imagination, neither is it entirely derivative, as these myriad features not only gel together surprisingly well, but when put together even feel fresh again. Though it’s hobbled by a disappointing story and excessively complex controls (as well as some technical issues on the Xbox 360), Darksiders is a fun and entertaining adventure with a host of fair but challenging puzzles, a lengthy single-player campaign, and an engaging combat system.

Five hundred years is long enough for an entire world to change, which is what the woman known as Bayonetta discovers after awakening from her slumber in a tomb at the bottom of a lake. With her memory understandably hazy, Bayonetta remembers little more than that she is an Umbran Witch and looking for something called The Eyes of the World. On a tip from her informant, she heads to the isolated city of Vigrid where she begins to piece together her missing memories and learn about the downfall of her clan and its counterparts: the Lumen Sages. What ensues is a series of hilariously over-the-top moments–each of which somehow surpasses the previous–that loosely form a narrative amidst a plethora of sight gags, sexual innuendos, and gratuitously violent angelic deaths. Amidst all the absurdity is a coherent plot with some surprisingly sweet moments, but the main attraction is the combat, not the storytelling.

Having contracted with the demons of Inferno, who serve as a source of her power, Bayonetta is a mortal enemy of the angels of Paradiso who seem to emerge at every corner in Vigrid spoiling for a fight. Armed from the get-go with a unique set of four guns (two of which are attached to her high heels), Bayonetta punches, kicks, and shoots her way through the heavenly aggressors that hound her every step. Apart from the basics, she can also perform a number of stylish special attacks to punish her enemies in often mind-boggling ways. Bullet climax attacks can strike out at all nearby attackers with most or all of Bayonetta’s creatively wielded guns; wicked weave attacks summon monstrous, demonic appendages in her hair for a magical sucker punch or heel stomp; and torture attacks that conjure pain- and humiliation-inducing contraptions out of thin air. You’re able to dish out an incredible amount of hurt in Bayonetta, and it’s hard not to be hooked after experiencing the sheer pleasure of performing your first outrageous combo which may or may not involve break dancing, ensorcelled guillotines, and dozens of bullets to bridge together your myriad punches and kicks. As you fight through the angelic choirs, a variety of new weapons, such as a cursed katana or an enchanted pair of ice skates, are unlocked through trade with the demonic barkeep/smith Rodin, enhancing your already impressive arsenal even further. Because both Bayonetta’s hands and feet are her weapons, you equip both with your instruments of heavenly destruction and can even have two entirely different sets ready for action with the tap of a button. These two arsenals can be swapped midcombo, which offers a great deal of flexibility (particularly when fighting several different types of angels at once) and makes battle feel free-form and pleasing. Truly, angels will cry before you’re finished with them.

From the very beginning of the game, dozens of different combo attacks can be performed with the right recipe of button presses and timing, but even more advanced techniques are available for purchase from Rodin as well. In an ingenious move, the between-level loading screens also double as a practice mode of sorts where you can play around with each of Bayonetta’s attacks. Complete with a handy onscreen move list, this feature is invaluable for learning the differences between the many different combos and finding the ones that work best for you, and you can even turn it into a full-fledged practice mode at the touch of a button. Even with this helpful mode, though, it can be tricky to grasp the subtle nuances of combat. If complex combos or elaborate attack dances aren’t your thing, Bayonetta’s easy and very easy difficulties equip everyone with the means for performing even the most impressive of attacks almost effortlessly. But for those clamoring for a challenge, Bayonetta does not disappoint–on normal difficulty, even lesser angels can prove to be fatal, and there are two harder levels to unlock for the most skillful of players to brave. The core mechanic that fuels Bayonetta’s combat complexity is your ability to dodge enemy assaults: Pulling the right trigger at almost any time–including midcombo–will instantly cause Bayonetta to pirouette out of harm’s way. Enemies hit hard and rarely drop bonus health, so it is in your best interest to exploit your dodging prowess as often as possible. Indeed, the combat system is not only built around the concept of avoiding damage altogether, but it also rewards you for doing so in more ways than one. If you dodge an attack at the last possible moment, Bayonetta activates a powerful ability known as witch time, which temporarily slows time down to a crawl for everyone else and allows her to thrash her foes and circumvent their sometimes considerable defenses. By making dodging so accessible and utilitarian, developer Platinum Games has transformed each battle into a fluid, continuous dance, with your performance graded and compared against other players via online leaderboards. This grading system judges your angel-slaying aptitude based on time spent in combat, combo damage dealt, and damage taken for each battle and stage. Obtaining the coveted “pure platinum” grade in a complete level or even a single encounter for your speed and skill is both challenging and rewarding. Going for them all is a great reason to replay and drive your scores higher and higher.

Each of the 16 chapters in Bayonetta is broken down into a series of self-contained enemy encounters called verses. When not actively killing the agents of heaven, you maneuver your witch through Vigrid, as well as its surrounding areas, solving simple environmental puzzles, finding ingredients to concoct health and support items (all lollipops, naturally), searching for hidden challenge rooms, and watching as the pleasantly preposterous story unfolds one cutscene at a time. When the moon is full and visible–which happens more often than you might think–Bayonetta is able to witch walk on walls and ceilings to move about or fight. These situations are among the most memorable moments in Bayonetta, and being able to run across a collapsing wall to avoid an incoming wave of molten lava or leap from floor to wall to ceiling to continue a furious assault is not only freeing, but it also adds a new dimension to the genre. Action peaks when the most powerful of angels–the personifications of the cardinal virtues–appear and try to stop Bayonetta, and you’ll need every one of the powers at your disposal to defeat these titans of heaven in awesome multipart battles. Each boss fight ends with an aptly named climax attack that summons one of the many infernal demons Bayonetta has contracted with (and seems to keep in her hair) to brutally finish them off and drag them down to hell.

With each moment spent in the world of Bayonetta, it becomes more and more evident that an incredible amount of effort was spent in making everything look as stylish as possible. The frame rate is crisp and smooth, with each of Bayonetta’s ridiculous, hypersexualized poses expertly animated. Watching as she suplexes a dozen angels at once, defeats herself in a dance off, or jumpstarts a motorcycle by using her middle finger as a key is delightful, and the arena for each boss battle is a sight to behold. Even the more mundane actions are carefully detailed–Bayonetta doesn’t so much bleed as she blooms roses, double jumps are assisted by the butterfly wings that sprout from her back, and so on. Angels have a fantastic yet grotesque art direction that blends together elements from classically beautiful Greco-Roman statues with avian, insect, or even technological bases to form unique designs. Some of them, such as the virtue Fortitudo–a twin-headed dragon whose central body is itself yet another inverted head–stand out more than others, but all are memorable. Though the dynamic camera generally does a fine job of ensuring that the action is front and center–particularly during witch walk sequences–there are a few enclosed areas where it seems unsure as to what to do. This is a rare occurrence, however, and overall, it’s a minor annoyance at worst.

Matching the over-the-top action of Bayonetta is a suitably ridiculous soundtrack that is equal parts annoyingly catchy pop, epic chorus, and retro arcade synth. Like the rest of Bayonetta, the soundtrack is very tongue-in-cheek, particularly an upbeat remix of “Fly Me to the Moon” that is used throughout the entire game, and most often as you gleefully dispatch angelic foes in a whirling dance of death and display. Accompanying the soundtrack is an all-star voice cast, the real star of which is, of course, Bayonetta herself, who is voiced with just the right combination of sultry, sass, and self-confidence to bring her to life and keep her from devolving into the realm of stereotype and cliche. With nearly every ridiculous stunt, she delivers a double entendre in her feisty British accent (all the time with a wink in her eye), the complete spectacle of which brings a smile to your face.

With the fluidity and flexibility of its fighting engine, innovative use of bullet time and wall-walking mechanics, and the competitive online scoring system that is weaved into its very fabric, Bayonetta isn’t so much a sister to other combat-oriented action games as it is an evolution of them. Its battle controls are silky smooth from the very first moment you experience them, and the magic remains throughout the entire journey; whether you’re throwing a bus at a boss or hitching a ride on a ballistic missile. Chock-full of often silly but always memorable moments, Bayonetta is hard to get out of your mind even after you’ve stopped playing it. More than anything else, almost everything about Bayonetta feels just right. Its host of hidden items and secrets, multiple difficulties, competitively balanced scoring system, and charismatic heroine make it a game that will be revisited time and time again. This is one action game that you absolutely must not miss.

]]> http://www.geope.com/2010/01/19/bayonetta-review/feed/ 0 http://www.geope.com/2010/01/19/academy-of-champions-soccer-review/ http://www.geope.com/2010/01/19/academy-of-champions-soccer-review/#comments Tue, 19 Jan 2010 14:17:48 +0000 admin http://www.geope.com/?p=2177 Academy of Champions: Soccer is aimed directly at the preteen set and has a focus almost evenly split between soccer-school social life and booting a ball around on the pitch. But even though it’s more of a shallow role-playing game based on the beautiful game than a full-fledged arcade sports game, it does a good job of playing to the Harry Potter fan base with a fantastic world that replaces magic with soccer. An enchanting atmosphere and varied challenges and minigames come together to keep a young player’s interest for quite a few hours.

Story mode thoroughly rips off J.K. Rowling. You take the role of a new pupil at Brightfield Academy, a mystical soccer school in a golden castle run by the legendary, very youthful-looking Pele (with occasional help from Mia Hamm). Brightfield is a stand-in for Hogwarts, with soccer players running around in the pictures on the walls, Pele playing a beardless Dumbledore, your team the Mighty Five acting like good-guy Gryffindor, and the rival Scythemore Academy assuming the villainous function of Slytherin. Soccer feels a lot like quidditch, too. Games are played on a wide variety of otherworldly pitches with huge placards, giant soccer balls, and surreal art floating in the backgrounds. Weird on-field scenery denotes where your match is taking place, such as the goals that look like the mouths of giant Mayan idol heads when you’re playing against a Mexican squad. Some of your opponents even come from other Ubisoft properties. One team is made up of Raving Rabbids from the Rayman series, for instance, and you can unlock Altair from Assassin’s Creed and Sam Fisher from Splinter Cell as special players. The Prince of Persia even shows up as a ringer brought in to support one of your early rivals.

Everything about the presentation is eccentric and whimsical. Characters are exaggerated cartoons, including strikers who sport huge flip hairdos reminiscent of Sonic the Hedgehog, mouselike little girls who start at midfield, and heavyset keepers who have huge guts plummeting over the tops of their shorts. Music is a bouncy Saturday-morning confection, and conversations with fellow students and Pele sound a lot like the mwah-mwah-mwah language spoken by Charlie Brown’s teachers. It’s all pretty twee, but it’s fanciful enough to capture the imagination of the preteen crowd that plays soccer and reads Harry Potter.

The gameplay isn’t as memorable as the style and setting. Story mode, which is the main way to play Academy of Champions: Soccer (the only other options are plain one-off matches and minigames), takes you through terms at Brightfield with day-by-day calendars. Every day you run through a series of three activities, ranging from on-field minigames where you pass, shoot at targets, dribble, and so forth, to RPG-lite pastimes like talking to schoolmates, scrounging up dirt on opponents, recruiting players for your squad, dealing out experience points to teammates to buff stats like speed and shooting, and buying better equipment. Full-blown five-on-five matches are a regular occurrence, although the big games take place only every week or so and have to be won in order for you to proceed further.

Everything is quick and breezy. On-field drills deal with accomplishing a simple objective, such as hitting a set number of targets in a goal in two minutes. The only offbeat minigame is a special freestyle dribbling competition that makes use of the Wii Balance Board. Chatting involves basic dialogue trees where you pick from just a couple of options. Recruiting is straightforward, since you generally have no more than a couple of choices, and you always pick up the player that you want. Upgrading teammates is a little more involved, but there are still just a handful of stat and equipment categories to deal with for each player. Every so often you top up your striker’s speed by moving him from C+ to B, nudge a keeper’s reaction from F to D, or buy somebody some new football boots, but you really don’t need to put much thinking into roster management. And matches are speedy, three-minute affairs loaded with shots and players executing crazy moves. It’s fast-paced, but not hyper-accelerated or some kind of soccer on steroids. Sure, you can make nutty dodges and pull off superhero special moves such as cartoon banana kicks when you max out a talent bar. But the enemy AI is sharp, the goalies are top-notch, and the final scores are generally comparable to those in real soccer. The schedule moves so quickly and shuffles up challenges so much that it’s tough to get tired of the repetition…even though there are only so many things you can do with a soccer ball.

Oddly, though, the game makes little use of some core Wii characteristics. Motion controls are barely used. Most of the game relies on the control stick and the buttons on the nunchuk, with the Wii Remote being used largely for its A and B buttons to shoot and pass, and to take on button-clicking timed challenges in isolated duels for possession of the ball or to make a header. There is support for the Wii MotionPlus, but only to angle the ball for shots and to activate special abilities (via shaking). Multiplayer is another area where the game comes up a little short. Although you can call over a single buddy for quick-play matches on the same system, there is no way to get a few friends in on the action like in many other Wii sports games, and there is no option to go online. So this isn’t much of a party game.

Even though Academy of Champions: Soccer isn’t a serious arcade soccer simulation, it meets its goal of providing a diversion for kids attracted to the idea of both kicking around a ball and taking part in the extracurricular activities at a magical soccer school. It won’t hold the interest of older teens or adults for very long, but then again, the game isn’t aimed at them. Soccer moms looking for a way to get their kids through the winter should take a look at this one.

The tiny webcam included with all copies of Your Shape is actually what most stands out about the game. Instead of swinging around the Wii Remote and Nunchuk, and dealing with those cumbersome resistance bands and leg straps as in rivals like the Wii Fit and the EA Sports Active franchises, you do your thing solo in the middle of your living room floor and let the USB camera track your movements. It’s easy to set up. The camera comes with a base that allows it to easily be attached to the top of a TV, or even to your Wii sensor bar, so you can get set to sweat in a few minutes. You do need a fair bit of room to use it, however, because the camera needs to be able to see your entire body to properly track if you’re lifting your legs and reaching for the sky correctly. If you don’t have a good 10 feet or more to work with in front of your TV, you’re going to have to consider relocating your Wii to more spacious quarters or switching to another workout game. Still, if you’ve got the room, the camera works great. It does an excellent job of tracking your movements when it can see your entire body. And there is really something to be said for being able to ditch the controllers and the beyond-annoying leg strap. The only problem with the camera is that it shows you on the screen as you’re working out, which can be off-putting.

Additionally, you have to sacrifice a lot for the freedom of movement that the camera provides. Not being tied down to a remote, resistance bands, and the like restricts your options and essentially prevents the game from simulating weight lifting, boxing, and many other entertaining activities in the rival Wii fitness games. So the exercises here are almost entirely aerobics-based. You’re stuck with standard aerobics moves involving high steps, jumping jacks, lunges, and so forth, along with walking, running, and swimming motions. It gets old fast. If you love aerobics, you’ve done this stuff a million times before in classes and with various DVDs and videos going back to the days when Jane Fonda donned her leg warmers. The only way to rev the game up is by including exercise equipment of your own, since the game supports free weights, balance balls, and steps. Throw some of that gear into the mix, and you are rewarded with a more wide-ranging and fulfilling workout, although doing so kind of puts paid to the notion that you’re getting a full exercise program in a box here.

Without these added instruments of self-punishment, Your Shape workouts are deadly dull. Exercise options themselves are limited. To do a one-off workout, you go to the body representation of yourself as scanned by the camera during the initial setup. You then select the body part that you want to focus on, such as shoulders, legs, and glutes, or hit the base of the graphic to go for that holy grail of fitness games: weight loss. This alone is a little daunting, because the image capture displayed is about as flattering as pics taken by those nude airport scanners. Going through this process doesn’t lead to anything fulfilling, either, since you go straight into a set regimen led by the abominably perky McCarthy immediately after picking your poison. There is no way to alter this routine, or even to tell in advance what the aerobicized former Playboy centerfold has in store for you. You just have to go through with the exercises and hope that the result is a tighter behind, less World of Warcrafty abs, or whatever your goal may be. Lengthier workout programs don’t offer anything spicy, either. The measly four special challenges are geared pretty much entirely for women, with offerings such as Get Bikini Ready, Active Mom Routine, and New Year’s Resolution. You can also access a calendar of workouts that puts you through almost-daily routines that focus on different parts of your body and then tracks the overall results. Again, though, there are no real options. Nothing can be customized, so it’s Jenny’s way or the highway.

Most of the game lacks the frills found in both EA Sports Active and Wii Fit. The screen is taken up entirely with a digitized McCarthy on the left and the image of you as related by the webcam on the right. There are no interesting themes, no colorful backdrops, no beach games on tropical islands, or anything else to keep your interest. Just you and Jenny and fuchsia backgrounds. Oh, and a very small selection of repetitive, generic disco tunes that serve as the soundtrack for your sweating. At least in a real aerobics class you can look around at the other participants, or maybe out a window, and you get to listen to a more varied music playlist from recognizable artists.

Although you’ve got to appreciate McCarthy’s peppy attitude, there isn’t much in Your Shape that will get you off the couch. The game feels really stripped in comparison to its competition. You can probably firm some things up here, but the exercises are too female-focused for guys and so bland that they give aerobicizing wannabes an excuse to drift back to their couches. That camera idea, however, is a keeper that needs to be fine-tuned for use in future exercise games.

The Crystal Bearers may be set in the same universe as earlier Crystal Chronicles games, but no knowledge of those is necessary to dive into this one. It has been a thousand years since the events of the original game, and the world has changed drastically. Technology is the dominant force, with magic the domain of only a handful of outcasts called crystal bearers. You play as Layle, a brash young bearer who rents out his abilities of telekinesis to the highest bidder. The game gets off to a thrilling start when the flying luxury ship that Layle has been hired to protect is besieged by monsters summoned by a member of the ostensibly extinct Yuke tribe. Layle launches himself into a hot pursuit of the enigmatic Yuke and into an adventure in which the fate of the world is at stake. The story is a good one, packed with memorable characters, rich with themes of discrimination and a sense of history, and told via frequently exciting cutscenes. The most compelling reason to play this game is to experience the tale it tells and the richly detailed, magical world in which it takes place.

Experiencing that tale means putting up with a whole lot of disappointing gameplay, though. The Crystal Bearers makes a strong first impression, with a bold opening that makes it clear right off the bat that this is an action game, altogether different from the earlier, more role-playing-oriented Crystal Chronicles titles. When the ship is attacked, Layle literally leaps into action, and as he plummets through the sky, you use the Wii remote to target and fire at the flying monsters. It’s a brisk and fun opening sequence that sets a tone the game sadly fails to maintain. Other minigame sequences pop up frequently throughout the story, including an on-rails chocobo chase sequence and a simple rhythm game when Layle must dance at a high-class ball, but while these are pleasant little diversions from the core action, they aren’t enough to save it.

Although the plot tries to create a sense of tension as Layle pursues the mysterious Yuke from one location to another in the early stages, the dull gameplay kills any sense of pacing. When you run from area to area, you’ll occasionally come across groups of monsters to fight. But the combat is shallow and tedious. You can target an environmental object or an enemy with the remote, grab it using Layle’s powers, and toss it through the air with a quick flick or a tap of the B button. You can also swing the remote to have Layle roll, avoiding any incoming attacks. This is how all combat works in the game. You target things, grab them, and toss them, over and over again. There’s a small amount of experimentation involved, since it may prove to be more effective to toss certain objects at certain enemies, but the mechanics of combat never become any more elaborate or rewarding. Even the final boss battle, which to its credit has a grand sense of scale and drama to it, is as frustrating and dull as the battles that precede it.

The dullness of combat is compounded by the camera, which, rather than smartly following the pointer when you’re trying to target a monster at the edge of the screen, must be slowly rotated with the control pad. And it’s made more frustrating by an imposed time limit. If you vanquish all the monsters in an area, you’re rewarded with a myrrh fragment, which increases your maximum life. However, if you take too long to defeat the monsters, they all vanish, and you must wait for all of them to reappear for another shot at the precious myrrh fragment. What’s particularly maddening about the time limit is that there’s no countdown displayed onscreen, so you never know how much time you have remaining. If you could see the clock ticking down, you’d at least be able to cut your losses and move on when it became clear that things weren’t going to go your way, but as it is, you can waste minutes trying to defeat all the monsters, only to hear a bell toll as you fail and the monsters vanish, leaving you with nothing to show for your efforts.

Of course, you’re not always fighting. Much of your time is spent just traversing the world, running or riding a chocobo from one key location to the next, and this process is also marred by a glaring issue. The game has no proper map to help you get from one place to another. As a result, it’s very easy to get lost and to waste long periods of time running around until you stumble on the path to where you’re going.

One thing you probably won’t spend much time doing is customizing Layle. Character customization may be a significant part of most games that bear the Final Fantasy name, but it’s a very minor component here. As you travel and fight monsters, you’ll gather materials that can be crafted into various accessories that Layle can equip to enhance certain attributes, increase the size of your target cursor, or convey other bonuses. But the overall impact of these accessories on the gameplay is generally small, and you can progress through the entire game without bothering with accessories at all.

The Crystal Bearers looks impressive. The locations you visit are designed with an imaginative flair and are imbued with a level of detail that makes them truly captivating. There’s a remarkable variety to the locations as well. The architecture, fashion, and technology of each area lend believability to the rich history and diverse cultures that the game’s story hints at. From the futuristic elegance of the Lilty capital to the rusty oppressiveness of an aerial prison, the world of this game will stay with you. So will its characters, thanks to smart writing and mostly solid voice acting, though Layle’s lines are listlessly delivered. The various melodies that play as you travel the world provide appropriate accompaniment to the look of each region, and the sound effects suit the action just fine.

The amount of time it takes to reach the conclusion of The Crystal Bearers can vary wildly depending on how much combat you decide to bother with and how much time you spend trying to figure out how to get where you’re going, but regardless of whether it takes you eight hours or 15, you won’t enjoy most of that time. A game this beautiful, with an exciting, well-told story like this one, should have gameplay that makes you want to spend time in its world. But as dazzling as the characters and locations are, they can’t hide the fact that the game just isn’t fun to play.