Fallout New Vegas Honest Hearts – PC Game

In the Fallout universe, nuclear war has ravaged the country, but religious faith abides. In Fallout: New Vegas – Honest Hearts, men of God struggle to find peace in a land where strife is inescapable–a powerful theme for a downloadable add-on. The story in Honest Hearts doesn’t take advantage of this fertile premise, but that premise still enriches this formulaic yet enjoyable adventure into Utah’s Zion National Park. As its name would suggest, some see this region as a promised land, and it’s here that two religious leaders struggle to maintain control in the face of a warring tribe that would drive them out. Zion is a big and atmospheric setting for a new adventure, and there’s enough new content here to keep you busy for four or five hours as you shoot up charging geckos and get to know the local tribes. That said, Honest Hearts doesn’t make a lasting impression; none of its characters, places, or events stand up to those of the main game or even those of Fallout 3′s better content packs. Yet, this enjoyable excursion gives you several welcome chances to exercise the power of choice, and it rewards you with new perks, new weapons, and an increased level cap.

The two men at the center of Honest Hearts are good, sincere blokes that nonetheless don’t see eye to eye on how to deal with the White Legs, a violent tribe of nomads eager to scalp anyone that dares oppose them. One of these men is Daniel, a Mormon missionary with close ties to a tribe called The Sorrows. The other is Joshua Graham, otherwise known as The Burned Man. Joshua favors an aggressive approach toward the White Legs, which is no surprise given his violent past with Caesar’s Legion. He is beloved by the Dead Horses tribe and preaches that mankind should shun the greed of the outside world. You stumble upon both men after the trading caravan you join falls victim to the White Legs, though neither makes a very strong impression. Joshua needs supplies like lunch boxes and walkie-talkies; Daniel sends you to find maps and disarm traps. These are nice men that nonetheless make you wonder how they managed to inspire the devotion of the locals. Joshua tells you that he was put on Earth to show people how to fight, yet he speaks in even tones, without an ounce of passion. For someone called The Burned Man, his personality lacks fire, and the tasks he needs performed are hardly extraordinary.

 
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Fahrenheit – PC Game

The term “cinematic gameplay” gets tossed around an awful lot these days. And it’s often tossed around by game makers who simply throw in a few letterboxed cutscenes and minimalist heads-up displays and then just call it a day. Developer Quantic Dream’s Indigo Prophecy is a game that actually gives cinematic gameplay some context, as well as some real heartfelt meaning. More movie with an interactive progression than video game pretending to be a movie, Indigo Prophecy eschews practically any modern gameplay convention in favor of a significantly more subtle mechanical interface. You take part in every action in Indigo Prophecy–from the biggest fight sequence, to the most minor of day-to-day tasks–and you do it all with simple movements of the analog sticks on your controller, or with some quick button presses that are more akin to a rhythm game than a typical third-person adventure. But where Indigo Prophecy truly shines is in its story, which is a deep, captivating, and sometimes disturbing tale of one average man’s journey to solve a murder that he himself committed.

The average man in question is Lucas Kane, a handsome but worn gentleman who lives his life as any IT professional in the great city of New York would. Kane’s life takes a decidedly dark turn one night, however, when he decides to visit a local diner. In the very opening scene of the game we find Lucas sitting in a bathroom stall, convulsing and carving bizarre symbols into his forearms. An unlucky schmo happens into the bathroom during this period, and Lucas, seemingly unable to control his actions, attacks him, stabbing him multiple times. Moments after the killing, Lucas returns to his senses, only to be equal parts horrified and stupefied by his actions. From here you take control of Lucas, and it’s up to you to get him the hell out of there.

This opening sequence gives you an excellent glimpse into how thoroughly intertwined Indigo Prophecy’s plot and gameplay are. Presented with a corpse, a murder weapon, and one of NYPD’s finest sitting out in the restaurant, it’s up to you to decide how to proceed. Should you take the time to hide the body, ditch the weapon, clean yourself up, and try to casually make your way out of there? Or will you simply make a run for it as quickly as possible? You can do any or all of these things, and the outcomes will vary from a very quick game over screen to you getting Kane the hell out of dodge. And first and foremost, that’s what Indigo Prophecy is about: choice. Every decision made and every question asked takes the story in a slightly different direction. Of course, in most cases these changes are merely cosmetic, simply letting the core scene play out marginally differently while ultimately pushing you toward the same goal. But in more than a few cases, your choices will drastically change the flow of the story.

 
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Age of Conan Rise of the Godslayer – PC Game

Its 2008 launch was plagued with various fits and starts, but the grimly gorgeous Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures was a brutal and atmospheric dark pearl among fantasy online role-playing games. In the years since, developer Funcom has plugged in most of its gaps, giving the game’s first expansion, Rise of the Godslayer, room to shine in its own right. Players between levels 40 and 80 may feel left out in the Frost Swamp, but newer players–and veterans looking to reroll a new character–will enjoy the scenic new lands in the Gateway to Khitai. And if you’ve reached Age of Conan’s level cap and don’t mind some tedious grinding, there are plenty of violent pleasures waiting in the new high-level areas. If you’ve strayed from Age of Conan’s blood-smeared trail, Rise of the Godslayer is the reason to return to the service of the Aquilonian king.

Expansions of online RPGs typically add a couple of new classes and, perhaps, an increase to the level cap. Age of Conan: Rise of the Godslayer adds neither, though it does feature a new race: the Khitan. Playing the new race doesn’t significantly change how the initial 20 levels in Tortage play out, but it does mean once your initial travails on the volcanic isle are over, you start questing in your homeland: Khitai. If you’d rather visit this level 20 to 40 zone–the Gateway to Khitai–with an existing character, you can pay a caravan master to transport you there unharmed. However, unless you’re in a hurry, you should offer your services to this needy chap, as you will then perform one of multiple quests as way of payment. Some of these are conventional scenarios, but others tap into the savage beauty that make Conan an explorer’s paradise. In one enjoyable scenario, you fend off a besieging kraken from aboard a rocking ship. In a dreamy underwater sequence, undulating visuals give a simple fetch quest a surreal aura. These quests also serve as great introductions to the Gateway’s wilds.

The Far East is Khitai’s visual and temperamental inspiration. Provided your system is beefy enough to render these lands in their full glory (and, indeed, the game requires a beefy PC), you’ll be awed by the scenery. Red poppylike flowers dot the grasslands, and the autumnal hues of certain trees provide a lovely contrast to the craggy mountains in the distance. Once you reach level 80 and can further explore Rise of the Godslayer’s new zones, your appreciation will only grow. Somber ambient music (all of it uniformly superb) and deep lighting make Chosain Province’s charred villages seem so grim you can practically smell the blood. Sparkling creeks ripple through the northern grasslands, where creatures battle each other when you haven’t engaged them in combat yourself. The vistas are vastly different from those you see in Cimmeria and Stygia, but they still capture that special Age of Conan vibe, where pastoral grace competes with the ghastly sight of murdered corpses hanging from gnarledbranches.

 
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Age of Conan Hyborian Adventures – PC

As imagined by developer Funcom, the land of Cimmeria’s lush green landscapes are dotted with impaled corpses upon which crows roost and flap their wings, apparently pleased with both the height of their perch and the scent of death. Thus the stage is set for one of the finestonline role-playing games in years, one in which fertile fields and arid deserts contrast with the blood spilled by hundreds of sharp-toothed warthogs and hulking mantises. Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures is an explorer’s paradise, offering rich, grisly surprises in the crevasses of its bustling cities and green meadows. Whether it’s a looming pyramid hiding deadly secrets or a spider’s lair nestled within the rocky hills, the sights are impressive and striking, and the vivid backstory that supports this sprawling paradise is mature and, appropriately enough, barbaric.

But this is a flawed paradise. Funcom has been quick to handle the most egregious blemishes since the launch of its massively multiplayer online game, but a number of frustrating bugs remain. The most minor ones have little to no impact on the game proper, like placeholder text and a minimap that occasionally goes blank (among other interface glitches). Others are more significant, such as broken quests and memory leaks that lead to the occasional crash. Launch imperfections are common enough in the genre, but while Age of Conan’s release was hardly disastrous, it has been less stable than we should expect. Many bugs have already been fixed, but the game’s edges are still somewhat jagged, and the software can buckle under the sheer weight of its own ambition.

You’d do well to look past these imperfections, though, because Age of Conan is the most brutal and immediately satisfying MMOG on the market, thanks to its unique slant on combat, resonant quest writing, and uncompromising maturity. It’s also paced much differently than its competition, ushering you into Hyboria slowly by juxtaposing a story-driven, single-player questagainst the more standard team-oriented exploration and traditional questing. During your time in Tortage, the initial lower-level city, missions are bestowed with in-engine scenes and full voice acting, which draw you into the world and weave narrative threads that continue even after you’ve left the pirate port for the wild beyond. It’s unfortunate that most post-Tortage quests lack the voice-over, but the tasks themselves are superbly written. While it’s true that the majority of them are genre standards–kill these enemies, collect these items, and so on–they’re assigned by interesting characters with stories to tell. You’ll meet a young woman hiding her pregnancy (and the unsavory circumstance behind it) from her overbearing father, rescue a princess that turns out to be a bit different than expected, and interrogate murder suspects. Don’t skip past quest intros without reading them in Age of Conan; if you do, you’ll be missing some of the game’s finest moments.

 
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Street Fighter X Tekken – PC Game

Capcom loves crossovers. Its world warriors have faced down the X-Men, the Avengers, the King of Fighters, and many others. With Street Fighter X Tekken, the stylish cast of Tekken fighters is next in line to go blow for blow with Ryu and company. It’s an interesting transition for the Tekken members, who are leaving their native 3D arena for a 2D battlefield. But their adaptation is just one of the many surprises waiting in this complex fighter. With a host of newmechanics and modes, Street Fighter X Tekken has a lot to offer fighting fans of all skill levels.

Street Fighter X Tekken is a 2D fighter with two-on-two combat. Each side is in control of two fighters and can swap between them on the fly. Players can even team up cooperatively andfight on the same team, just like in last year’s Mortal Kombat. This means up to four players can take part in a fight. However, when one fighter on a team is knocked out, that team loses the round–regardless of how much health the remaining fighter has. Therefore, you must treat your two fighters as one unit. There are numerous ways to switch between your fighters, and mastering good synergy between them is the key to building devastating combos and winning matches.

The game includes many of the fighting mechanics seen in Super Street Fighter IV, with severalnew additions. It has a six-button layout, with three punches and three kicks, and a three-section energy meter with numerous functions. This meter is earned quickly and spent quickly on devastating super arts, EX special moves, and more. But one of its most important functions is cross-canceling. For one block of meter you can tag in your partner mid-combo to continuethe assault. At first this “two-as-one” style can be difficult to put into practice. It’s much easier to fight with one character until his or her health gets low, switch characters, and repeat. However, in doing so, you lose a lot of what makes this game unique, as well as sacrifice an edge in combat.

 
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Street Fighter X Tekken – PC Game

Capcom loves crossovers. Its world warriors have faced down the X-Men, the Avengers, the King of Fighters, and many others. With Street Fighter X Tekken, the stylish cast of Tekken fighters is next in line to go blow for blow with Ryu and company. It’s an interesting transition for the Tekken members, who are leaving their native 3D arena for a 2D battlefield. But their adaptation is just one of the many surprises waiting in this complex fighter. With a host of newmechanics and modes, Street Fighter X Tekken has a lot to offer fighting fans of all skill levels.

Street Fighter X Tekken is a 2D fighter with two-on-two combat. Each side is in control of two fighters and can swap between them on the fly. Players can even team up cooperatively andfight on the same team, just like in last year’s Mortal Kombat. This means up to four players can take part in a fight. However, when one fighter on a team is knocked out, that team loses the round–regardless of how much health the remaining fighter has. Therefore, you must treat your two fighters as one unit. There are numerous ways to switch between your fighters, and mastering good synergy between them is the key to building devastating combos and winning matches.

The game includes many of the fighting mechanics seen in Super Street Fighter IV, with severalnew additions. It has a six-button layout, with three punches and three kicks, and a three-section energy meter with numerous functions. This meter is earned quickly and spent quickly on devastating super arts, EX special moves, and more. But one of its most important functions is cross-canceling. For one block of meter you can tag in your partner mid-combo to continuethe assault. At first this “two-as-one” style can be difficult to put into practice. It’s much easier to fight with one character until his or her health gets low, switch characters, and repeat. However, in doing so, you lose a lot of what makes this game unique, as well as sacrifice an edge in combat.

 
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Rocksmith – XBOX 360 Game

With the oversaturated and ailing rhythm game genre in a state of decline, it seems ill-timed to launch a new guitar-focused music franchise. But Ubisoft has pulled one out of left field with Rocksmith–a guitar game that successfully bridges the gap between musical gaming and actual rocking. It’s advanced enough to give seasoned guitar players a more realistic challenge than Rock Band or Guitar Hero, yet accessible enough to teach inexperienced guitarists the ropes of rock and roll.

There are a few minor hurdles to get through before you get rocking. Rocksmith requires you to own an actual six-string electric guitar and won’t work with any old plastic peripherals you have lying around. It’s a great excuse to dust off the old axe if you have one, but the high cost of picking up the Epiphone bundle or a separate guitar will be prohibitive for some players. That said, wielding an honest-to-goodness instrument of rock is what makes this game so fun. Once you have the requisite guitar in hand, you plug it into your system using the included 1/4-inch adapter cable, but it takes some fiddling to get a comfortable response time between the visual and audio lag. Running the sound out via analog audio cables into a stereo offers the best performance, though there are a few different options to explore. Once you get that mess sorted out, it’s time to melt faces. Well, eventually.

Rocksmith’s light campaign mode eases you into tunes by having you practice small groups of songs to get a feel for them before playing the more advanced versions back-to-back in concert at packed venues. It starts you off at the ground floor with simple licks, single notes, and slow pacing to get you accustomed to the basics of guitar playing and how to decipher the elaborate note runway. Each guitar string is associated with a different color, and the numbered fretboard onscreen indicates the corresponding location you’re supposed to play on the guitar. The gameplay is reasonably lenient, since you can’t “fail” mid-song for performing poorly. You may have to replay a tune if you don’t reach a certain minimum point score by the end, but repetition is required for learning, and it’s a common theme across much of Rocksmith. You’re good to go as long as you hit the right notes or chords when prompted when they come down the runway. What’s awesome is that you’re not docked points for noodling. For folks who already have some level of guitar skill, this is one element that Rock Band and Guitar Herosorely lacked. Even better: the game scales to your playing ability automatically. If you start nailing power chords instead of single notes, you’ll level up the phrasing and soon start seeing chords coming down the screen at you. The reverse happens if you mess up too much, giving you a chance to recover if things get too busy for you. It’s a very cool, dynamic system that’s forgiving without gutting the challenge.

 
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