Gears of War 2 (Xbox360)

The original Gears of War became an action genre classic thanks to its incredible graphics, cinematic presentation, and solid cover system. The sequel repeats this formula, and though it introduces new weapons, enemies, and environments, it remains an incredible yet familiar experience. The 10-hour campaign is rambunctiously entertaining, with clever set pieces and epic confrontations that punctuate the exhilarating stop-and-pop gunplay. The multiplayer offers more significant upgrades, with four new modes, 10 new maps, and support for up to 10 players instead of eight. These things make for a package with significant longevity, and though Gears of War 2 ultimately refines more than it innovates, it still deserves a place in any action fan's collection.

Gears of War 2 picks up the story six months after the end of the first game. The Locust are so powerful that they can sink entire cities from below, whereas the humans are becoming even more desperate thanks to the spread of a disease called rust lung. With fears that the last city of Jacinto might fall, it's down to Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago to take the fight to the Locust in a desperate last stand against their alien foes. Survival is at the centre of Gears 2, but there's also personal drama, with themes such as family, death, and even love interwoven into the grand plot. This sheds some light on the characters and the universe, and though it ultimately uncovers more questions than it answers, the game has a much grander premise than its predecessor.

In terms of gameplay, Gears 2 is fundamentally the same as the original game, but fans of the series should be able to spot some key refinements. The cover system has been honed so that you cling more accurately to surfaces, and the weapons have received subtle alterations to make them even more balanced than before. The revival system has also been tweaked considerably. Not only can your AI teammates heal you if you're injured, but now you can also tap A to crawl toward them more quickly when you're injured. This makes the game a lot fairer in terms of difficulty and allows for some heart-pounding moments as you race to your teammates to avoid a fatal curb-stomping from the opposition.

Although the assault rifle is still the go-to firearm for the duration of the campaign, there are plenty of other weapons to play with. New to the Gears universe is the flamethrower, which doesn't have a great range but is excellent for dealing with groups of enemies that get a little too close for comfort. Then there are the heavy weapons, which stop you from being able to roadie run but make up for this with their immense power. The mulcher is a high-calibre chain gun that can cut through even the biggest enemies in a single burst, whereas the mortar rains down a shower of explosives from afar. Grenades have also seen improvements; you can stick them to surfaces so they become proximity mines, there's a new model that gives off noxious gas, and the smoke grenade delivers a concussive blast that knocks surrounding players off of their feet. All of these new weapons are great fun to use, and crucially, they're well balanced for use in multiplayer.

The first Gears of War was brutally over-the-top in its violence, and the sequel manages to take this even further. You now have four ways of executing your enemies, all of which are mapped onto the face buttons of the joypad. X performs the standard curb-stomp, B delivers a quicker blow to the back of the head, and Y flips your foe over for repeated punches to the face. Finally, the A button lets you grab the wounded enemy to use as a meat shield, affording you some protection until you decide to finish it off with a neck-break. The signature chainsaw move has been adapted so you cut upward from the crotch if you approach from the rear, and if two players ready their saws, they enter a duel that's won by whoever taps the B button the fastest. These new additions improve on the already gritty and satisfying melee combat of the original Gears of War and make close-quarters combat even more gruesomely rewarding.

Gears of War 2 has a considerably different look from its predecessor. Whereas the first game was characterised by derelict cities and crumbling monuments, a good portion of the sequel takes place in huge outdoor spaces and underground caverns. You'll see fluorescent lights, snow-capped mountains, and enemies so big you'll actually need to get inside them to destroy them. There are also more vehicle sections, and though they can be a bit fiddly to use, these segments are thankfully short and infrequent. The traditional stop-and-pop gunplay still makes up the majority of the campaign, and it's a raucously enjoyable ride that you'll want to play again and again.

Gears of War 2 is best when played with friends, and the entire campaign now features drop-in support and independent difficulty levels for two players. The competitive multiplayer has also been substantially improved and now offers more players, maps, and game modes to select. Warzone, Execution, Assassination, and Annex modes all make a return, along with King of the Hill, which was introduced in the PC version of the game. There are also three new standard multiplayer modes called Submission, Guardian, and Wingman. Submission is a variation on Capture the Flag, but here the flag is a civilian who you carry to the checkpoint using the meat-shield technique. The hostage also carries a gun and is hostile to anyone who comes close, making for a really great twist on the traditional CTF game mode. Guardian is a team-based game with a designated leader; keep the leader alive and everyone else can respawn, but if the leader dies then that privilege is over. Finally, Wingman splits players into teams of two, with the emphasis on working together to kill and revive. You've probably seen these game modes before in other games, but they fit perfectly into Gears of War 2 and add even more variety and longevity to online play. Thankfully, the benefits of being the host online have also been lessened, making the online experience much fairer across the board.

The final multiplayer mode is called Horde, and it's the most addictive and challenging take on Gears yet. It could be described as a cross between single- and multiplayer, in which a team of five COGs take on wave after wave of Locust enemies. As long as one player stays alive at the end of each round, the entire team respawns and the game keeps going, with progressively bigger and more difficult enemies. It's an incredibly tense and exciting game mode, and despite the steep difficulty curve, it's highly rewarding to play with friends. Gears 2 is also accommodating to new players and those without Internet connections, with five training missions and bot support for every multiplayer mode except Horde. The bots are surprisingly good at replicating human players, and they make great practice for people who have never played the game online.

Gears of War 2 includes a total of 10 new multiplayer maps, plus a code to download five remastered maps from the original game. The new maps take inspiration from the locations in the campaign, whereas new environmental effects change some of the maps as you're playing. For example, Hail features razor-sharp rain that gradually kills anyone out in the open. Furthermore, Day One has a huge emergence hole in which a beast can take swipes at any surrounding players. Finally, Avalanche is completely transformed when a snowstorm hits, turning it from a multitiered level into one flat plane. These environmental effects don't feature in every map and game mode, but they definitely liven up standard deathmatch-style multiplayer game types such as Warzone.

The original Gears of War was a spectacular-looking game, and the sequel maintains this high technical and artistic quality. Instead of pushing for increased visual fidelity, the graphics engine adds a couple of other dimensions to the presentation, with walls that crumble under gunfire and dozens of enemies onscreen at once. These new features don't necessarily affect the gameplay, but they look good and help add to the dramatic scale that the designers have chosen. The new organic capabilities of the Unreal Engine make for one particularly memorable level in which you literally have to kill a giant enemy from the inside. Gears of War 2 also has impeccable sound design, with terrific voice acting, meatier weapon effects, and another beautiful cinematic score.

Gears of War 2 has a lot in common with its predecessor, but the new environments, darker storyline, and epic scale certainly have a lot to offer fans. The new weapons, melee attacks, and co-op options make for a campaign that you'll want to complete a number of times, and the new multiplayer modes give the game variety and longevity. Simply put, Gears of War 2 is a superior shooter that no action fan will want to miss out on.

Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom (Xbox360)

The Kingdom Under Fire series experienced a renaissance with the release of the excellent Crusaders on the Xbox in 2004, and Circle of Doom takes even more chances with the franchise. Unlike its predecessors, though, the game eschews strategy elements in favor of a pure action role-playing experience, albeit with uneven results. The action devolves into tedium, the story has no obvious bearing on the gameplay proper, and a number of unnecessary hindrances break up the rhythm of the gameplay. If you take things online with friends, the pace picks up, but not enough to overlook some noticeable and annoying drawbacks.

Like much of Circle of Doom, the story guns for sophistication but ends up being relatively inconsequential, simply because there's no strong narrative thread to tie the action together. You'll start the game controlling one of five characters that fall into the usual hack-and-slash archetypes (a sixth can also be unlocked), and each experiences a slightly different story, though the manner of storytelling is the same for all of them. Within dungeons, you will find idols (which also function as vendors and, occasionally, quest givers) that provide a safe place for sleeping and dreaming. Once asleep, you enter a dreamworld where you can talk with characters that provide quests and serve up bits of cryptic dialogue that may lead fans of previous Kingdom Under Fire games to nod their heads with understanding, but will confuse most anyone else. There are no cutscenes within the gameplay proper, and none of the action seemingly relates to the tale that so slowly and quixotically unfolds in the reveries of sleep. The resulting disconnection between the game and its fragmented parables keeps you from getting engaged, because you're never quite sure why, exactly, you need to be fighting legions of skeletons and lava monsters.

Luckily, you'll hack and slash your way through crowds of far more enticing enemies than those action-RPG standards. Circle of Doom has no shortage of monsters, often tossing many dozens of them at you at a given time. Many of the enemy designs are remarkably imaginative. Grunting, crawling zombies called flesh men swarm around you; invisible lizardmen will attack you without warning; and giant statues and their sculptors clog passageways, waiting for your sword and bow to wreak havoc. When the game is running on all cylinders, slicing your way through the hordes is as compelling as you would expect from the genre--not because the game is anything special, but because the formula on which it's based is a proven one.

In fact, the same formula that provides the majority of the game's entertaining moments is what ultimately drags Circle of Doom down--at times because the game is nothing but formula, and at others because the basic ingredients of the familiar recipe lack depth and refinement. Even with a good number of melee and ranged weaponry, the action gets incredibly repetitive, particularly because to accomplish certain quests and get the most out of the magic system (more on this subject later), you'll revisit the same six dungeons over and over again. One quest that required us to collect pure gold called for multiple visits to the same area, while another forced us to randomly fight through dungeons until the quest giver felt enough time had elapsed. While some of the dungeon aspects generate randomly, the basic elements of the dungeons rarely change, and as creative as some of the monster designs are, it gets tiring to mash your button through the same ones ad nauseam. To make things even more monotonous, while dungeons are broken up into multiple levels separated by loading times, should you need to return to one, you have to fight your way through the entire dungeon, since the game won't let you travel directly to the level you need to visit.

The pacing problems brought about by the vague, disengaged story and constant repetition are further exacerbated by other issues that break up any forward momentum you'll begin to feel. While many enemies don't seem to be trying very hard to strike you, their attacks will frequently (if not usually) knock you back, stun you, or cause a confusion effect that inverts your control scheme until the effect has worn off. At times, particularly in the frustratingly confined dungeon called the Hall of Arrogance, these effects can string together into a horrible, infuriating cycle of inescapable damage, as stone statues knock you down or stun you while drillers spew fire at you and hovering spirits electrocute you. It also doesn't help that the environments, as interesting as some of them look, are constricted and highly linear, which is at odds with the huge number of fiendish foes that rush you. The aforementioned "damage loop" wouldn't be an issue if there were room to move about, but it's relatively easy to be cornered. Additionally, if you string together a number of combo attacks, your character will have to finish a long animation sequence that you can't escape from. The result of these and other prevalent issues give the action a halting and awkward feel that never hits the smooth, quick stride that exemplifies the best games of the genre.

The game's inexcusably jittery camera is also a guilty accomplice to these crimes, because it never seems to know how to arrange itself. Its usual position is a little awkward, since it feels too low to the ground and too close to your character, but it's workable provided there is enough room to move. Alas, the cramped levels confuse the camera, causing it to get stuck behind every object it can find, change angles at inopportune times, or even zoom in so close, all you can see is a jumble of geometry. The camera has been an issue in the prior strategy-action games in the series, so it's disheartening to see that the camera control here is actually a step backward.

You can also perform special attacks, though the method of earning them is certainly an interesting and unusual one. When you visit the dreamworld, you can take quests that open up new skills to you when completed. Learning a new skill or spell generally involves killing a certain number of particular monsters, at which point you can turn in the quest and add the spell to your repertoire. The system sounds nifty, but in actuality, it's highly problematic. Until you choose which spell you want to acquire, you aren't even sure what monsters you will need to defeat, so you can't choose missions that fit in with your current main quest progress. In some cases, it means returning to a dungeon you've already slogged through a number of times, while in others, you may need to visit an area you haven't been to yet. In the end, earning new spells can often be more trouble than it's worth, and many of them are so ineffective, it's not worth the extra 30 minutes of repeated dungeon-crawling it takes to earn them. Furthermore, you can take on only two skill quests at a time, which means you may go many hours without learning a single skill at all. It simply isn't worth it, unless you have returned to the game to play on a higher difficulty level. On the standard difficulty, however, you could reasonably play the entire game without ever needing a single special skill at all.

Outside of the action proper, there are some interesting ideas at play, but again, they sound cleverer on paper than they are in practice. When you level up, you can spend attribute points in one of three areas: hit points, skill points, and luck. Hit points are the only straightforward aspect of the three, and spending points in this area increases the size of your health bar. Skill points contribute to your stamina bar, which is possibly the game's most interesting feature. In Circle of Doom, just the act of swinging or firing your weapon diminishes your stamina bar, and each weapon diminishes it in various degrees. It's fairly quick to fill up, but a weapon that uses a lot of stamina will deplete the bar relatively quickly, which means you need to either wait for enough stamina to swing again, or use a white potion to completely replenish your meter. It's another aspect of the action that can often contribute to even more awkward pacing--but it's also relatively strategic, because you can't just rely on the speed and attack prowess of the weapon to determine how effective it will be in battle. A relatively weak weapon that doesn't deplete your stamina can actually be more effective than a stronger weapon that diminishes it quickly, because you can't swing it continuously and will need to frequently wait for your stamina to recharge.

Luck is the third attribute on which you can spend points, though it is the vaguest of the three. According to the game manual, spending points in luck increases the frequency and quality of item drops, and we can certainly attest to finding better loot after spending attribute points in that area. Luck also increases your chances of success at synthesis. You can enhance weapons, armor, and accessories by visiting an idol and using an item and/or special ability to increase their effectiveness. The result isn't always an improvement, and guaranteeing 100 percent success on the synthesis attempt can be tough on your in-game wallet, but it's a perfectly reasonable method of item enhancement that benefits from some trial and error.

Circle of Doom can be played offline, or you can join up to three other others cooperatively; and like many similar games, the gameplay benefits from the addition of others. This is most apparent with some of the wearisome, often torturous boss characters, which aren't all that challenging but are certainly time consuming if you're on your own. Because some of them are obviously tailored toward certain characters over others (the first boss, which requires a ranged weapon, is an obvious example), a well-rounded party of four can increase the entertainment value significantly. Sadly, co-op play isn't available offline, so you'll need to play online via Xbox Live to use this feature. We didn't any experience any major lag or other glitches, so you should expect online play to be a relatively problem-free experience.

There is some occasional eye candy to check out, and Circle of Doom's art direction is consistently attractive, if not exactly stupendous. This isn't as obvious in some dungeons as in others--after all, ice caverns can only be so interesting. However, some levels are nice to look at, featuring colorful foliage, appropriately arid-looking deserts, and library corridors filled with bookcases and wardrobes. The game engine isn't a technical powerhouse, and you'll notice plenty of pop-in and a few frame rate jitters here and there. Yet slaughtering your enemies results in a nice spattering of blood and some nice, subtle visual effects. The sound design is also subtle, but to a fault. Many sound effects are oddly muted, while the soundtrack mixes orchestral swoons with metal grinding for varied but forgettable results.

In short spurts, Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom can be reasonably amusing, though even the most resolute hack-and-slash enthusiasts will likely grow tired of the nebulous story and monotonous battles before reaching the final boss. Considering the number of character-specific quests and multiple story threads, the campaign is obviously meant to benefit from multiple play-throughs. The problem is that the actual act of playing it isn't very rewarding, so while there are some good ideas at work, these erudite ideas are overshadowed by a good number of design flaws that keep Circle of Doom from delivering any dependable sense of fun.

Mass Effect (Xbox360)

Developer BioWare has always been at the forefront of progressive storytelling in games, so it's no surprise that Mass Effect's story is one of its best yet. It's got a unique take on the chase-the-bad-guy-across-the-universe plot, and just when you think you've got everything figured out, the game throws you yet another surprise. BioWare has created a politically charged universe with an exhaustive backstory and filled it with a bunch of interesting, multifaceted characters. Combined with an exciting and unique combat mechanic, it makes for a fun and absorbing experience that you'll want to see through to the end, just to see how everything turns out--even if the game isn't perfect by any means. In fact, it's surprising that so many small annoyances and glitches made their way into a game of such general high quality. Still, most players will be able to look past them and enjoy Mass Effect for what it is: A terrific role-playing game with great production values and fun, exciting action.

As in most role-playing games of this nature, you begin by customizing an avatar. You play as Commander Shepard, potential savior of the galaxy, but there's plenty of room to mold him or her as you see fit. Physical customization isn't as deep as you'll find in something like last year's Oblivion, but the system is relatively robust, letting you choose from a variety of preset features, and even letting you round everything off with a scar. Shouldn't every badass commander have one? Of course, you'll also choose a class. In this case, you've got six to choose from, each with various strengths in combat, tech, and biotics (Mass Effect's sci-fi equivalent of magic). More impressively, you will select a few autobiographical tidbits--and these choices aren't just for show. Through the course of the game, characters will refer to your past, and your resulting dialogue options will allow you to react to their comments with various degrees of humility, wistfulness, and scorn.

The narrative is pure space opera, yet there's no denying that BioWare has created a tale of surprising depth and appeal. Surprise number one: Humanity is not the political center of the universe. We don't have a seat on the galactic council, or even a representative on the Spectre squad, an elite group of special forces whose members are given wide berth to solve political and military challenges as they see fit. In the meantime, a Spectre has gone rogue, ransacking ancient artifacts and unleashing the violent, robotic Geth race on an unsuspecting galaxy. As Shepard, you pursue him across the Milky Way, visiting one alien world after another and discovering the fallen Spectre's intentions along the way. He isn't the best villain ever created: He disappears for the bulk of the game, which makes finding him feel less urgent than it should. Still, the journey to the game's exciting end is one worth taking.

In true BioWare fashion, you'll be navigating through loads of dialogue trees throughout the game, and how you respond can have life-or-death consequences--though you shouldn't take that to mean that you need to brood over every decision. Oftentimes, multiple choices have the same result, a somewhat transparent trick that makes it seem as though you have a lot more impact on the conversation than you really do. At important junctures, however, your decisions can affect how missions play out. You can turn friend to foe, console (or devastate) a suicide-attack victim, or exploit evil corporate executives for fun and profit. And it all plays out amid an intricate melodrama of political intrigue and racial prejudice, and in a galaxy populated by fascinating, complex characters. There are pages ripped from the Star Wars and Star Trek playbooks, certainly, but quirks such as the interesting speech patterns of the overly-formal Hanar alien race, or the nomadic structure of the Quarian flotilla--a galactic government that's always on the move--make Mass Effect's version of the Milky Way a unique one.

When navigating dialogue, you'll also be earning paragon or renegade points, which is the usual light-versus-dark system we've come to expect from the developer. Unlike in Knights of the Old Republic, however, your decisions here will not affect any abilities you have. However, the intricate relationship between the story and the game proper means that these decisions still affect gameplay--though that effect is usually an indirect one. More interestingly, your paragon and renegade meters are separate, rather than being at opposite sides of a single spectrum. It's a subtle but effective choice that lends itself to Mass Effect's shades-of-gray fiction, where light and dark aren't mutually exclusive.

The main quest starts you on a huge space station called the Citadel, but takes you across a small series of planets before reaching the game's exciting final moments. Not that you're stuck with the main story, since you can pick up a good number of side quests along the way. Some of them are simple and relatively self-contained, while others will send you across the galaxy to uncivilized planets and derelict spaceships. This involves bringing up your galactic map, selecting a destination system, and going planetside to kick some alien butt. There are multiple regions to choose from, and often multiple solar systems within them, but while that sounds intimidating, it's not nearly as mind-bogglingly huge as you would expect. In any given system, you can usually only land on one planet--and on each of these planets, there are usually only a few things to do before you get to your destination. More surprisingly, once you've finished the mission, there's never a reason to return. Aside from the annoying thresher maws (more on these later), there aren't any hostile indigenous creatures, so once you've dispatched your foes and scavenged for loot, it's time to move on.

When you first land on a planet, you drive around in a rover called the Mako. The thing's possibly the most resilient vehicle ever created in a game. You get dropped onto the surface from hundreds of feet in the air and drive up impossibly steep mountains without much difficulty. Too bad that the driving portions are undoubtedly the weakest of the game. The weird bouncy nature of the rover and the fact that gravity is the same on every world (even Earth's own moon) are both suspect issues, though they don't really affect gameplay.

The rocky planetary design and Mako combat mechanics can really be a downer when combined together. You can spray machine gun fire or launch shells at your foes, and it works fine, provided you are on the same level as your enemies. However, the Mako's turret, for whatever reason, can't move up or down. The result is that bullets don't necessarily land where your crosshair is, so if you're on higher terrain or your target is too close, those endless clips you're unloading are useless (though you can hit enemies above you without difficulty). It's sometimes maddening, since in many situations, the enemy base is nestled below you in a crevasse, and you're forced to either get in closer (often a death sentence in an area swarming with tough foes like the robotic Geth colossi), or get out and try to take on the toughest foes of the game on foot. Be careful if you get out of the Mako in areas like these though, since your adventuring party can slide into a deep valley and get stuck very easily, which forces you to either return to the Normandy (your ship) and return to the planet, or reload a saved game.

The other issue here is with the aforementioned thresher maws, which are sandworm-like beings that burst from the ground, spew deadly goo at you, submerge, and emerge elsewhere. These encounters can be really exciting, since the things are tough to take down and keep you on the move. The problem is that the game doesn't check on the Mako's position before respawning the thresher maw. Multiple times, we had the creature emerge from directly underneath us, which either resulted in an unavoidable insta-kill or getting stuck in the thresher's geometry while the camera jittered madly. That's just not fun, and you will find yourself avoiding flat expanses on planets just to avoid these problems.

Thankfully, on-foot combat is a lot of fun. You'll accumulate six total teammates, two of whom can accompany you on missions at any given time. They have a variety of talents, and each of them is special in his or her own way. There's a variety of guns to choose from, from pistols to shotguns to assault rifles, and each weapon can be outfitted with various upgrades that may increase stability, add scanners that bypass disrupted enemy radar, and more. You can also outfit special ammunition, though you always have unlimited ammo.

On top of that, some characters have magic-like powers called biotics to mess with. It's worth noting, however, that these powers are focused on manipulation rather than direct offense. You can push enemies back with the throw power (awesome to behold at higher levels), lift them in the air, or create a vortex that sucks enemies toward it (another great use of Mass Effect's fun combat physics). Engineers have some nice abilities as well, such as the ability to sabotage weapons from a distance, which makes your enemy's weapon explode, or the power to turn robotic enemies against your own foes. As a rule, your teammates aren't a liability, though they aren't governed by the most advanced artificial intelligence we've ever seen. But provided you micromanage them as described below, you'll not only be getting the most out of the experience, you won't be apt to notice any drawbacks to the AI.

The combat feels like it belongs in a third-person shooter at first, but if you continually approach it this way, you'll die. A lot. Like in many previous BioWare RPGs, you're meant to pause, survey the situation, and perform your actions. As long as you stick to that method, you'll find combat to be a lot easier than it first appears. You can set your party members to automate their actions, simply perform defensive powers on their own (the better choice), or only perform powers on your command. Holding the right bumper brings up the command wheel, which lets you assign orders to your companions, as well as perform your own abilities. You can also take cover behind walls or other objects, though this mechanic isn't all that helpful. Once you get into the groove, battles are rather enjoyable, with a flurry of bullets and biotic powers flying around. The joy of flinging the Geth around, filling them with shotgun shells, and watching them drop from the ceiling after lifting them in the air is a joy few RPGs can approximate.

The spoils of battle are always a fun reward for a job well done, and loot ramps up pretty well. You can also open up various lockers and containers for more loot, though it's best to level one of your party members in the decryption skill for the more difficult-to-open ones. To open locked containers, you have two equally odd choices: Either perform a minigame that resembles the overdone contextual button presses we've seen in far too many games of late, or smear omnigel on the container, which is an all-purpose goo that opens cabinets, repairs the Mako, and, we suspect, may also eliminate ring-around-the-collar. It sounds like a silly mechanic, but all things considered, it's a perfectly legitimate way of keeping the user engaged in the looting process, and it makes you feel like you earned the resulting spoils.

As you can imagine, you'll be doing a lot of fiddling with your inventory, what with all these weapons, upgrades, and party members to deal with, but this is another stumbling block that could have used some streamlining. The menu interface isn't terrible, though on its own, it's a bit clunky. But it's the little things that add up in a game that requires you to spend so much time in menu screens. First annoyance: In some menu screens, you can't hit a button simply to escape to the previous menu. For example, in the weapons upgrade menu, if you decide you don't want to make any changes, you can't just leave the menu--you have to choose something, even if it means scrolling to the top of the list and selecting the same upgrade you already had equipped. In other cases, such as when you convert an item to omnigel, the menu jumps back to the top of the list, which is vexing. You can't even deselect a power from the ability wheel in combat once you've chosen one. You can change the skill, but on the frequent occasion where you will want to change your mind after selection and not cast one at all, you're stuck wasting a skill and waiting for it to recharge.

Other problems rear their heads as well, such as the occasions when you or your party members get trapped on level geometry, which forces you to reload your last save. But you'll be apt to forgive them in light of the depth and variety to be found here. It's fun to get to know your crew, conduct a clandestine romance, or turn Shepard into a hard-line exclusionary (or a racially sensitive diplomat). You could finish a fairly complete play-through in 40 hours--standard for a role-playing game--but there's enough contextual content to make it worth a second play, if only to explore your renegade side, try out other romance options, or see another of the multiple endings. On the other hand, if you ignored the side quests and stuck with just the main storyline, you could be done in 15 hours or less.

Mass Effect's visuals are excellent. Facial animations are among the best in gaming: Characters move their lips believably with the dialogue, further expressing themselves with subtle tilts of the head or with a slight raise of the eyebrows. Character models are beautifully detailed, such as with your Krogan teammate Wrex, whose every wrinkle and ridge is carefully textured and molded. There are some technical hitches, however. The framerate can dramatically dip at the worst possible times, and there is a lot of texture pop-in. There are also frequent load times--some of them hidden by elevator rides, others popping up in the midst of exploration. Nevertheless, Mass Effect looks wonderful. From an artistic perspective, the game looks great, if not quite original. Planet outposts tend to use only one of two interior layouts, and environments owe a lot to games and films of the past (much of the game's look wouldn't be out of place in a Halo title). But even with the obvious inspirations, Mass Effect still conveys its vision clearly, thanks to meticulous character designs and dramatic set pieces, such as the Citadel itself.

It's also one of the best-acted games in recent memory. An all-star cast including such well-known actors as Fred Tatasciore and Seth Green bring Mass Effect's characters to brilliant life. Not once will a drab line delivery or overzealous histrionics get in the way of your immersion. The soundtrack is evocative, with just the right amount of sci-fi shimmering to round out the occasional symphonic swelling. Sound effects are great across the board, from the robotic yammering of the Geth to the din of a planetary blizzard filling the room with its high-powered whooshing.

All told, Mass Effect is a great game with moments of brilliance and a number of small but significant obstacles that hold it back from reaching its true potential. But in the end, if you like RPGs and want to spend some time in an absorbing sci-world populated with a bunch of unique inhabitants, you'll definitely have plenty of fun with this one.

Project Gotham Racing 4 (Xbox360)

With 2005's Project Gotham Racing 3, Bizarre Creations ushered in a new era of racing on the Xbox 360 with a game that continued the long-standing quality of its Project Gotham series with amazing graphics and extensive online options. Here we are, two years later, and Bizarre has turned in the fourth game in the PGR series, one that opens up the vehicles list a bit and adds to the online fun, yet still follows the tried-and-true PGR formula. In short, Project Gotham Racing 4 continues the series' tradition of brilliant visuals and fun gameplay, and adds to the list with new rides and weather effects that must be driven to be believed.

Weather abounds in Project Gotham Racing 4. In fact, along with motorcycles (more on them in a bit), weather is one of the biggest additions to PGR 4's gameplay. Dense fog, ice and snow, and, of course, lots and lots of rain are examples of the variety of weather conditions you find yourself driving through, and each affects your vehicle in a different way. The most successful weather implementation in the game is the rain effects.

Visually, it's stunning; rain droplets bounce off the hood of your car, or your windshield when driving in first person view, and they'll collect into pools of standing water that become a hydroplaning nightmare for your car or motorbike. In fact, pools of water strategically placed in the optimum braking zones are part and parcel of the tracks the Bizarre crew has carved from real-life locales such as Tokyo, Shanghai, and New York City. Find a way to brake early, or deal with the consequences of slamming your car into a wall after surfing across the water. The water effects in PGR 4 are entirely convincing, while the snow and ice effects are slightly less so--only in a video game would you attempt a lap of the ice-laden Nürburgring in an Enzo Ferrari and make it across the finish line in one piece--and typically pose a serious challenge for your throttle control skills.

While the game's weather effects are often simlike, PGR 4's car handling still treads the fine line between arcade approachability and simulation depth. You can hop into a car right away in the game and begin turning laps without fear of spinning out or locking your brakes in a tight turn. It also helps that the car list is more varied than the "all exotics, all the time" roster of PGR 3. This time around, the list has opened up a bit more to include everything from the pokey Mini Cooper S to F1 replicas, and even a pickup truck. Certainly at the highest classification, PGR 4's car list is as exotic as it comes; it's nice, however, that the roster includes a more representative sample of low-end models this time around. As in the past, the game doesn't feature vehicular damage beyond the merely cosmetic.

Then there are the motorcycles, which make their series debut here. As with the car list, the two-wheeled choices include everything from the relatively modest Buell RR 1200 to the frighteningly powerful MV Augusta F4 Senna. When it comes to handling, the motorcycles in PGR 4 have their ups and downs. Bikes are extremely easy to drive--there's no split between front and rear brakes to worry about--and it's tougher than you might think to get yourself thrown from the saddle. Toss in the fact that bikes are extremely quick off the starting line (due to their power/weight ratio) and that kudos--the in-game currency you earn as a result of stylish driving in the PGR series--are typically easier to rack up on a bike than in a car (thanks to endos, wheelies, and a responsive drift model), and motorcycles seem almost overpowered.

True, the fastest cars in the game will typically be quicker than the bikes but, in our experience, if you can grab an early lead in PGR 4 on two wheels and can maintain some consistency in your laps, you'll be awfully tough to beat. Bikes have their control quirks; for instance, when coming out of a turn, you'll want to let go of the analog stick in order to bring yourself back up smoothly, as manually bringing your rider upright can result in serious overcorrection errors. But for the most part bikes aren't much of a challenge and, as a result, aren't really as fun as we were hoping.

Regardless of your vehicular predilection, you will have plenty of road to drive on in this game. In addition to earning medals for beating challenges in the arcade mode or turning laps in the time attack mode, you'll have plenty to do in Gotham career, the anchor of the single-player mode. The goal here is to become the number one driver in the world by progressing through championships and invitational events strewn throughout the PGR world. The events are based around a calendar, so you'll have access to only a handful of races at any given time.

These races comprise of a variety of the challenges--including hot lap, cone challenges, eliminator, gate challenges, kudos vs. time, and standard street races. Kudos determine your overall position within a particular challenge; in addition to earning a bonus for finishing well within a race, any additional kudos you earn are added to your overall score. At the end of a championship series, you're awarded championship points based on your result and move up the ladder accordingly. In addition, you can buy items such as new tracks and cars, and even a custom Xbox Live gamer picture, with the kudos you've earned in races.

On the default difficulty level, we were able to win the Gotham career mode in just over three calendar years (or between 10 and 15 hours in real time); at the hardcore level--where the competition is significantly tougher--it will likely take a good deal longer. In addition to standard championship events, you can also try out the occasional invitational, optional race challenges based around a single vehicle; win the challenge, and you'll add that vehicle to your ever-growing garages. Interestingly, the cars available to you for certain events can vary in total performance--and there's really no reason other than personal preference for you not to choose the most powerful vehicle available to for an event.

While zipping your way through career mode won't take that long, the game's online play is just as compelling as in the past. You can race in single and team events through a variety of race types such as elimination, street race, cat and mouse, and the new bulldog mode. In our experience, online performance was slick and mostly lag-free, with the game's frame rate dipping only in the sharpest of corners with multiple vehicles piling up. While you're online you can even check out the new PGR On Demand service, which lets you upload photos and race replays for others to watch and rate. With some simple paint tools, you can even customize your cars a bit. It's not nearly as extensive as the customization options in a game like Forza 2, but at least it gives you the chance to give your online ride a unique flair.

Beyond being a fun racing series, the PGR series has come to be known as a standard-bearer for visual style, and that continues in spades in Project Gotham Racing 4. New locales such as Shanghai, Macau, and Quebec are all lovingly reproduced in the game. Blast your way down a neon-soaked night track in Shanghai with the Oriental Pearl Tower looming in the background, and you'll be hard-pressed to think of a game that has done as much with urban landscapes as Project Gotham Racing 4. That level of visual quality doesn't come at the expense of performance, either; again, for the most part, the game runs at a rock-steady frame rate. Certainly, it's one of the most impressive-looking games of the year on the Xbox 360. The soundtrack for this game is just as varied as PGR 3, featuring a healthy heaping of world, rock, hip hop, jazz, and classical tunes, though the quality of the individual tracks doesn't seem to be as strong as in the previous game. However, the only music gearheads will care about is the roar of the engines, and thankfully PGR 4 delivers here as well, with a huge variety of authentic-sounding engine sounds that change in tone and quality depending on the driving viewpoint you prefer.

With such an intense level of focus trained on the weather effects in PGR 4, it makes you wonder what the team at Bizarre Creations could do if they threw their hat into the simulation ring and took on the Forzas and Gran Turismos of the world at their own game. Still, that doesn't take away from what Project Gotham Racing 4 is: a worthy successor to the previous games in the series and a game that will create entirely new calluses on the hands of racing fans.

Halo 3 (Xbox360)

Regardless of how you felt about its cliffhanger ending, there's no denying that Halo 2 was a gigantic success that raised the bar for what we, as a game-playing society, expect out of a good console-based first-person shooter. In the years that followed, plenty of games attempted to duplicate the Halo formula, with varying degrees of success. But there's still nothing quite like the genuine item. Luckily for all involved, Halo 3 is a positively amazing package that offers extreme satisfaction across all of its different parts. Maybe now you can finally retire your Halo 2 disc and really move into the next generation of games.

Halo 3 is an interesting mix of established protocol and intriguing new stuff. For example, the gameplay doesn't stray too far from Halo 2, which, in turn, didn't exactly reinvent the original Halo. Don't take that as a negative, because it means that Halo 3 plays extremely well, with the same types of light tactical considerations that have made the series stand apart from other, faster-paced shooters. The balance between your guns, your grenades, and your melee attack has always given Halo a unique feel in the genre, and those same considerations apply today, both in the campaign mode and in multiplayer. You'll also have new weapons and items to consider, such as a host of Brute weapons. One example is the spiker, which is an exciting automatic pistol that fires quickly and decimates opponents, especially if you're holding a pair of them. Another is the mauler, which is a one-handed shotgun that can level enemies up close. You'll even find weapons so huge that your movement speed slows when you carry them. When you use these weapons, the camera pulls out to a third-person perspective so you can see your missile pod, plasma cannon, or flamethrower as it fires. And then there's the gravity hammer. Originally shown in Halo 2 (where it wasn't usable by the player), the gravity hammer is a large melee weapon that will wipe out most regular enemies in one swipe. Needless to say, it can be especially fun in multiplayer settings. The end result is gameplay that feels wholly familiar without retreading the same ground too heavily.

The campaign is structured in much the same way as past Halo games, with multiple chapters and effective streaming that ensures you'll see load times only between chapters. There are also lengthy vehicle sequences to break up the on-foot action. You'll pilot the classic Halo vehicles, such as the Ghost, a hovering one-person craft that's fast and deadly, and the Warthog, a dune buggy with a turret mounted in the back. You'll also see new vehicles, such as the Brute Prowler, which is a two-person vehicle with turrets. Like in previous games, the vehicles are fun to use. Also similar to previous games, the artificial intelligence can't drive very well, so if you're playing alone, you'll usually want to grab the steering wheel rather than the weapons.

The concept of "equipment" is new to the series. These deployable special items have a variety of effects. The most obvious example is the bubble shield: You (and your enemies) can walk through it, but bullets and explosions bounce right off. It's especially entertaining when your enemies use it, given that you can just walk through and bash them with the butt of your gun. You'll also find items that make your shields regenerate more quickly, and others that drain enemy shields and stop their vehicles dead in their tracks. These items also show up in multiplayer, where they're a little more interesting.

Halo 2's ending was widely criticized for being too much of a cliffhanger and leaving you with no sense of progress or resolution whatsoever. It's good news, then, that Halo 3's story doesn't suffer from that problem at all. It opens immediately following the events of Halo 2: The Covenant is on its way to Earth, continuing its religious zealotry and attempting to activate the floating space weapons known as Halos, which could destroy civilization as we know it. The Master Chief and the other Earth forces of the UNSC are in hot pursuit to stop them, with newfound allies such as the Arbiter coming along for the ride. We'll spare you the specifics because they're quite compelling and should be seen firsthand. All you really need to know if you're on the fence about Halo 3's campaign is that it's a delicate balancing act that manages to provide satisfying closure for the trilogy, make perfect sense of all the cryptic events in Halo 2, and leave you filled with anticipation for more adventures set in the Halo universe. Not bad for a game that will take most players between 10 and 15 hours to finish on one of four difficulty settings.

But you'll probably go through the campaign more than once, thanks to the inclusion of a strong co-op mode. Previous Halo games have let two players go through the campaign; Halo 3 ups that number to four players and lets you do the whole thing over Xbox Live, if you so choose. This is a really fun way to experience the campaign's nine chapters, and you can choose to go through them in any order, provided you've already played through it alone. Furthermore, this method of play (which you can also do alone) lets you turn on scoring in campaign mode, in which you earn points for kills and lose them for dying. This adds a sense of competition to the co-op, and there are also achievements associated with finishing chapters with high point totals. You can also customize the experience a bit by turning on a series of unlockable modifiers that open up as you collect hidden skulls. The skulls are stashed around the game, and some of them do things such as increase the amount of damage you'll need to deal to take an enemy down, remove the heads-up display and make your weapon invisible, and so on. This gives the story-driven section of the game some more replay value, although it doesn't get significantly more difficult as you scale up the number of players. Consequently, finishing the game on legendary difficulty is a breeze if you're rolling through with three experienced fellow triggermen.

In addition to the four-player co-op action, you can also play competitive solo and team-based multiplayer matches with up to 16 players on 11 different maps. There's a lot of depth to the multiplayer modes, ranging from simple stuff such as deathmatch and team deathmatch (still referred to as slayer and team slayer here), to more objective-based gameplay such as capture the flag. Another similar mode is called territories, in which the two teams fight to defend or attack various control points around the map. You'll also find a mode called infection, where a percentage of the players start as sword-wielding zombies and must convert the members of the other team by killing them, until only one non-zombie remains. Each of the maps can handle any of these game modes.

Like in Halo 2, you can customize these game types, and there's more to customize this time around. You can change things like starting weapons, the weapons that appear on the map, whether the motion sensor is active, the force of gravity, the game speed, whether the players all have active camouflage or not, and much, much more. The multiplayer is as strong as it has ever been thanks to the addition of new weapons and tweaks to old ones. Swords have been made much more interesting this time around: If two players run at one another with energy swords and attack at the same time, the swords clash and the players bounce off one another. This makes all-swords matches totally wild. The gravity hammer is also big fun in multiplayer matches, both because it crushes enemies that are foolish enough to get too close, and because you can smack incoming rockets to bat them away, which makes for an interesting game of baseball.

The weird thing about this last concept is that, with the addition of the Forge, you'll actually be able to build some sort of crude baseball variant if you want. Forge mode is a map editor, but not in the 3D modeling sense that you're used to seeing in PC shooters. You can't edit level geometry with Forge, but you can spawn, remove, and move objects and items around the level. All of the editing is done in real time, and you can pop in and out of edit mode by pushing up on the D pad. You can also play this mode with other players, letting everyone run around in edit mode to spawn Warthogs, rocket launchers, and whatever else is already on the map. On the surface, that doesn't sound so exciting. But in practice, it's a weird and potential-rich addition to the game because there are a ton of little secrets and tricks you can use to manipulate the objects in ways the developers may not have intended.

For example, take the fusion core. It's Halo's version of the exploding barrel, and by default, it blows up when you shoot it or drop it from a significant height. It also takes 30 seconds to respawn. You can modify it to respawn every 10 seconds and, with help from another player's rifle fire, you can coax it into respawning in midair, where it tumbles to the ground and explodes every 10 seconds. Naturally, if you surround that spot with more stuff that explodes, you'll have a fun little physics-based bomb that respawns and explodes every 10 seconds. If you've ever messed around with Garry's Mod, a similar physics-based toolbox for Half-Life 2, then you'll recognize this as a simplified take on that idea when you start using it for more than simply adding a few weapons to a map or moving spawn points around. Though many players probably won't get hooked on Forge tinkering, it's an extremely powerful addition that may just take over your life.

You'll be able to easily share your Forge creations with other players via a handy file-sharing system that lets you quickly send map configurations and gameplay types to your friends. You can also set a certain number of items as publicly shared, and users can go to Bungie's Web site to browse and rate the shared items. Additionally, you can flag items for download on that Web page, and the next time you fire up Halo 3, it'll download the items you've marked. It's a very slick interface that makes moving stuff around very easy.

You can also use the file-sharing options to send screenshots and saved films. Saved films are replays of action from any of the modes in the game, from campaign to multiplayer to Forge sessions. The game automatically stores the last 25 or so sessions, and you can choose to save them more permanently from there. Once you've got them, you can edit them down to key kills, weird single-player behavior, or the strangest Forge stuff you can come up with, and then save them for sharing, just as you would with a map or game mode. Much like Forge, the saved-films feature doesn't really sound like much, but Halo 3 is a very replay-worthy game, and you'll probably run into plenty of little moments that you'll want to save for posterity. Another nice touch is that the films aren't locked to one perspective. You can detach the camera from your player and fly anywhere on the map, or change it to any other player's view, as well. The only real issue is that rewinding and fast-forwarding are a little clunky. So if you've got something you want to save that's at the end of a 45-minute session, you'll have to hold down the fast-forward button for a long time to get to that moment, and if you miss it, rewinding can be a real pain, too. Once you've figured out the little idiosyncrasies of footage manipulation, it's not so bad.

Halo has always had a very strong artistic vision, and the graphics have always been just good enough to convey the necessary imagery without becoming huge technical powerhouses. That's not to say that the game isn't technically impressive, because it maintains a smooth frame rate throughout, and looks very sharp overall with plenty of great lighting and other nice effects. But the visual design overpowers its technical side and really stands out. Given that the game takes place in a wider range of locales than the previous two games, you'll see a lot of different, colorful environments, including deserts, snow, jungle settings, great-looking building interiors, and more. The enemies, many of which are returning from past games, also look great.

The sound in Halo 3 is a good mix of old and new, much like the rest of the game. You'll hear the familiar Halo theme music and variants thereof. You'll also hear plenty of great new music, including one suspenseful track with a heartbeat-like sound that manages to get your heart pounding as well. Most of the voice cast from Halo 2 returns to voice their respective characters, and they again turn in terrific and believable performances. You'll also hear a ton of combat dialogue, both from the marines that fight by your side as well as the enemies you're fighting, who don't seem to appreciate it when you kill one of their comrades. Our favorite line from the Covenant was probably "You've killed my brother for the last time," which is pretty hilarious.

As games start to consider user-generated content, it's becoming clear that more and more games will be ready to give you back just as much as you're willing to put into them. On the surface, Halo 3 is every bit the sequel you would expect it to be, in that it delivers meaningful upgrades to both the story-driven and competitive sides of the package. However, it's the addition of the Forge level editor and the saved films that give the game an even longer set of legs, legs that will probably keep you running at full speed until Bungie figures out where, exactly, to go from here.

Blue Dragon (Xbox360)

Blue Dragon is not a game that is going to elicit a strong reaction from you. It's not terrible, or particularly great or memorable, so the most remarkable thing about it is how unremarkable it is. It's big: three DVDs big, thanks to loads of cutscenes and voice clips. But it isn't grand and sweeping, and it isn't particularly charming, either. Blue Dragon is simply "there." If you wanted to play a Japanese role-playing game on your Xbox 360, this will get the job done. If you wanted to play something that makes an impact, you'll need to keep waiting.

The game is held back foremost by the story. Main characters Shu, Kluke, and Jiro have had their village destroyed by a land shark. Oh, not the one from Saturday Night Live. This one's mechanical, and it sets into play the main story, which consists mostly of chasing hypervillain Nene across one of the blandest, most unexciting fantasy worlds in recent memory. The narrative is 50 hours of lukewarm plot development that meanders sleepily along until the third disc. The conclusion packs some excitement, but not enough to justify the preceding hours of boring build up.

As if the poor pace of the story isn't enough, the lead characters are barely worthy of bit parts in better RPGs. Shu mostly pumps his fist and proclaims with a raspy whine that he will never give up, which will at least make you thankful that someone cares about the whole affair. Kluke just widens her eyes and looks sweet, and Jiro's most interesting idiosyncrasy is how he waves his hand dismissively when he casts a spell. The two additions to the party, Zola and Marumaro, manage to make things a little less bland. Zola tries, anyway, with her sultry voice and cool demeanor. As for Marumaro, well, he's an annoying, screechy-voiced feline whelp who will make you appreciate the more boring characters. There are occasional attempts at humor, and you may chuckle in spite of yourself: Marumaro's crush on Zola is an occasional source of amusement, for example. Yet most attempts to establish character are simply forced, so the few quiet moments your party members share have no emotional resonance whatsoever.

Everything else just feels like a struggle to rise above the story, and there are some mild successes in this regard. To start with, there aren't any weapons. Instead, your party members have shadows in the form of--you guessed it--blue dragons, and they do all the fighting and spellcasting on your behalf. It's like having constant summons, and it's fun to watch your shadows pummel the enemy, whether by standard attack or spell. The battles themselves aren't anything special and don't do much with the usual turn-based formula, but there is a decent variety of skills to mess with during encounters.

Blue Dragon tries to stand out from the pack in a few other ways. First you have the class system, liberally borrowed from the similar mechanics of Final Fantasy V. Each character starts with a set of available classes, and as he or she levels, so does the equipped class. Over time, you open up more classes, and you can switch from one to the other at any time, as long as you aren't in battle. It's a flexible system because most spells and skills you earn for one class can be transferred to others. The biggest problem is that your characters, who are already lacking personalities, lose even more individuality; they can be anything you want at any time, and the chances are that they'll be effective in every area. In fact, to earn better abilities and unlock some of the insanely difficult achievements, you're forced to switch out classes all the time. Flexibility is a good thing, but the way it's done in Blue Dragon makes every already-predictable character become an even more generic jack-of-all-trades.

Despite the weirdly generic way your characters turn out, the game also has an "attack circle" battle system, which is where you'll get the most satisfaction from Blue Dragon. You'll never run into any random battles, given that you can pick and choose your fights. However, when you are ready to jump into the fray, you can string encounters together in a chain. You do so by getting close to multiple enemies, pulling a trigger, and choosing to battle everyone in your attack radius. It's a great system that offers a reward, such as increased agility or physical defense, between successive battles. Furthermore, depending on the class and skills you have equipped, some attacks can be charged up by holding the A button, though doing so will likely change the turn order. That's another nifty system, because you will always need to weigh the potential benefit of the stronger charged attack versus handing your foe an earlier turn.

But don't get too excited about the minimal random-battle grind, because instead, you have random item inspection. You can walk up to almost anything and find gold, items, and other things. It's not just a matter of opening the scattered chests or checking out the occasional random barrel; everything is a potential hiding place. It has the double effect of encouraging you to check every single thing you pass in the hope that something is in there (surely it makes sense that gold would be hidden inside a stuffed turkey), as well as giving you plenty of potions and money. It's obviously helpful to have a bunch of stuff, but it's also part of another minor shortcoming: Blue Dragon is super easy. Potions and spells are really cheap, it's easy to get gold, and you'll outlevel the artificial intelligence with a minimum of arbitrary battles. The final disc ramps up the challenge a bit, but you should still be able to get through it without any major difficulties. Thankfully, there are a few minigames scattered around to break things up, which makes for a nice change of pace. You'll attack other spaceships with your own vessel, guard a traveling caravan of wagons, and perform contextual button presses here and there.

The visuals are polished and colorful, but they also lack character. Akira Toriyama's character design isn't nearly as interesting as the awesome, detailed work he did in Dragon Quest VIII. Admittedly, the shadows are pretty cool to look at, as are many of the enemy designs, such as the awesome mural monsters. The battle camera is also well done, and it zooms and swoops cinematically during critical hits and other pivotal attacks. But in keeping with Blue Dragon's nothing-special sensibilities, free-roam environments are endlessly boring and often striking in their emptiness. There are also a lot of blurry depth-of-field effects that make objects in the distance appear all fuzzy when the camera focuses on the foreground. It's overdone and feels like a trick to make the graphics look better than they really are. It's also worth noting that battles often result in a notable amount of sluggishness, which doesn't make a lot of sense, considering that nothing appears to be pushing the limits of the hardware. Nobuo Uematsu's score fares better, mostly because it stays out of the way. His battle rock music is fine, but its repeated so often, it loses its impact.

Blue Dragon may be the first Japanese RPG we've seen in a while on the Xbox 360, but it's also totally forgettable, telling a story that didn't beg to be told in a game that doesn't do much to stand out. If you're into role-playing games, you'll find that Blue Dragon is long and mostly serviceable, but it doesn't give you much back for all the time you'll spend on it. Let's hope there's another RPG for the platform soon that gives us more to sink our teeth into.

Marathon: Durandal (Xbox360)

A lot of people have never heard of Marathon, and there's a reason for that. Long described as the Mac's answer to Doom, Marathon was released in 1994 and featured excellent single-player and multiplayer gameplay. Not many noticed, though, since the series was almost exclusive to Apple's Macintosh platform. But the release of Marathon: Durandal for Xbox Live Arcade is sure to be of interest to more than just a few middle-aged Marathon fans, because arguably, without Marathon there would have never been a Halo. That's because Marathon was the breakout game that put a tiny Mac developer called Bungie on the map.

It's a bit strange that Durandal was the Marathon game ported to Xbox Live Arcade. Its original title was Marathon 2: Durandal, as it was the middle chapter of Bungie's trilogy, so you'll jump into the middle of the overarching story, though some text-only narrative will get you up to speed quickly. While the series has no official ties to the Halo universe, it's hard not to play Durandal without seeing the kernel of many of the ideas that would later go into Bungie's most famous franchise. For instance, you play as a lone human security officer who, aided by an artificial intelligence construct, must battle an incredibly powerful alien menace that's looking to invade Earth.

If you jump into Durandal, keep in mind that it was originally released in 1995, and it is a first-person shooter that is very much a product of its times. This is a game from the cusp of the shooter era, so it uses a blend of 3D environments and 2D bitmaps for enemies and objects. Be careful, though, as the motion and swaying while you're running around the game might make you nauseous. The Xbox Live Arcade version of Durandal at least offers high-resolution textures, which is good news if you've tried to play the original game on a modern system and got migraines from the incredibly pixelated look. At the same time, though, the new art has boosted the size of the game to 135MB, which is absolutely huge for an Xbox Live Arcade game, and a magnitude larger than the original Mac version.

The gameplay itself hasn't changed a bit, which is both good and bad. If you're an old-school Marathon fan looking for a nostalgic ride, then you'll probably feel quickly at home. But if you've never played an early first-person shooter, you might be turned off by the relative crudeness of the graphics and the gameplay. Sure, Durandal was a good game when it was released in 1995, but the standard for shooters has evolved considerably since then. The story is also more than a bit dense. It's told mainly through cryptic computer-terminal entries, and in many ways it's hard to figure out what you're doing. For instance, there's not a lot of handholding or structure to the levels, so you'll run around trying to figure out what to do. It gets a bit more confusing when you realize that some doors won't activate until you step on the right spot, so a seemingly dead end will have you running around in circles, and then, suddenly, the way is open. The controls are also a bit clumsy, as actions such as swimming involve the clicking of the joysticks, and there's no way to jump or reload.

Durandal had some of the best multiplayer for its era, but it feels small and constrained today. The levels aren't very large, and the level design itself is fairly rudimentary. At least there's no shortage of modes, including cooperative and competitive ones. "Kill the guy with the ball" features a skull for the ball, which is a forebear of the Halo mode oddball. You can do up to four-player split-screen on a single Xbox 360, as well as System Link and Xbox Live, with support for up to eight players. Unfortunately, we couldn't find a single public or ranked match over the course of two days, which seems to indicate that there isn't a large multiplayer following.

Marathon: Durandal's value is mainly that of a cultural artifact of an earlier age--one that comes in at 800 points ($10). At the same time, it's also a bit startling to realize just how little the genre has evolved since the days of the original Marathon. The advancements introduced by Marathon are numerous. It was the first shooter to feature dual-wielding weapons as well as a real-time map; and, of course, it was the spiritual predecessor to Halo. As a game, though, it really shows its age, and it proves to be an interesting, though not exactly engaging, experience.