Little Big Planet (PS3)

Although Little Big Planet could be described as a platforming game, its dedication to creativity in every area takes it far beyond the confines of the genre. Everything from your character to the environment is geared towards user creation and adaptation, via stickers and costumes right up to a full-blown level creator. Each level of the story mode is an unforgettable trip through the wild imagination of the designers, and it would be difficult to find a game that's as much fun to play with friends co-operatively. It's a little disheartening that the Story mode is over so quickly, and although there's some longevity to be had from finding all the hidden extras, you can still see everything the story has to offer in six hours. Then there's the level creator--an astoundingly powerful toolset that theoretically allows you to recreate anything you see in the included levels and much more. However, it still requires a great deal of time and skill to develop something that people will actually want to play, and despite the best intentions of the developer, it's a feature that not everyone will be able to take full advantage of. The overall result is a game that's incredibly fun while it lasts, and one that has the potential to be taken further by its community.

The titular Little Big Planet is the place where all human imagination collects--the planet above the cosmos where our untapped creativity escapes when we're asleep or daydreaming. That's the background, anyway, and though characters occasionally refer to each other in the game, this fantastical journey has little in the way of exposition or backstory. There are eight themed worlds in total, and they vary in style from places such as the African savannah to the Mexican desert and ninja-obsessed Japan. Each world has either three or four individual levels, most of which can be completed in less than 10 minutes, and each level also has a bonus challenge or race if you can find the key hidden within. These bonus levels offer some of the most fun and imaginative experiences in the game, with an homage to Line Rider, skipping contests, and even drag racing competitions.

Little Big Planet's emphasis on creativity is completely embodied by its mascot, Sackboy. This endearingly cute rag doll acts as a blank slate for your creativity, and as you collect new materials and clothing in the story mode, you can constantly try out new looks. You can dress him up in costumes, add accessories such as hats and glasses, and even change his covering from that familiar brown to a particularly gaudy pink. Sackboy is also highly expressive, and you can use the controller's triggers and analog stick to move his arms and even smack unruly players. The D pad controls his facial expressions: up for happy, down for sad, left for scared, and right for angry, and repeatedly tapping in that direction further emphasises these emotions. You can also use the motion sensor to move Sackboy's head and hips, nodding knowingly if you win a level, at least until someone inevitably smacks you in the face for being so smug. With so much control over your character, you often end up spending a good deal of time just changing clothes, pulling faces, and maybe even sticking a "LOLZ" sticker on your buddy's forehead.

Although the character customisation may be in-depth, the platforming itself is not. There are only two action buttons: X to jump, and R1 to grab hold of swings and move objects. Sackboy doesn't use any special powers, and he doesn't become any faster or stronger throughout the course of the game. This is platforming in its purest form: jumping from platform to platform, dodging obstacles such as fire and electricity, and collecting blue orbs to score points along the way. What makes Little Big Planet unique is that it frequently goes way beyond platforming into something else entirely, seemingly for no other reason than to satisfy the designer's rampant imagination. With scenarios such as hot-air balloon riding, animal prison breaks, and ninja henchmen battles, every level of Little Big Planet demonstrates incredible imagination.

The main story mode follows a sequential progression, so you open up new levels by completing them in order. However, even when you've finished a level, you'll want to return to collect the hidden items, keys, and point bubbles that you likely missed the first time around. Collecting items allows you more creative freedom in the form of stickers and costumes, whereas music and materials can be used in the creation mode afterward. You can also collect loot drops by putting stickers down in certain places, and there are puzzles that you can only solve by playing in the two- to four-player mode. These include gates that can only be opened remotely, objects that require multiple characters to pull, and in one brilliant scene, a car driven by one character while another dangles on a trapeze underneath.

Little Big Planet poses a bit of a dilemma; it's miles more fun in multiplayer, but also more flawed. Figuring out the puzzles and experiencing the set pieces for the first time with others is one of the most memorable experiences we've had this year, and chances are that you'll find yourself recounting the best moments with your friends afterwards. Unfortunately, there's a downside to playing in multiplayer, and it's something that often afflicts platforming games: the camera. It frequently struggles to frame the action, and considering many precision jumps are required, certain sections become nigh-on impossible. The generous spacing of respawn points lets you retry most of the tricky sections, but if you fail after using up your lives, you have to restart the entire level. There were many occasions in multiplayer in which we intentionally killed ourselves, just so that one player could try a section without the camera jerking around all of the time.

Sadly, with no scalable difficulty level and relatively few truly testing challenges, stalwarts of the genre will be able to reach the last boss in less than six hours. This isn't counting the time it takes to go back and collect everything, but the fact remains, you can see all the main levels in one prolonged sitting. Clearly, if the community jumps on the creation tools then this longevity will be extended, but it will take time and great skill from home designers to match the creativity and professionalism of Media Molecule's work.

Once you've finished the story and built up a stock of items, stickers, and other creation tools, you'll want to head to the My Moon that orbits Little Big Planet to start building your own levels. The creation tools are comprehensive, which is why you have to go through plenty of tutorials to learn the basics. You begin by moving items around, but things become a lot trickier when you start creating characters and moving objects. For example, enemies and allies have to be given an AI routine so they know whether to follow or run away from a player when they're approached. The physics system is easy to understand, so making things is common sense, but it can still be very time-consuming to construct even the most simple moving objects. You can create structures and glue everything together with ease, but it takes a lot more work to use motors, pistons and springs. These help to set traps, make puzzles and add vehicles, which makes for more interesting levels, but creating and testing everything is a lot of work for the creator. Given the work required to build even simple systems, it's a pretty momentous task to re-create something on the scale of the levels made by the developers.

Thankfully, the task has been made easier by the inclusion of premade objects and level templates from the main game. This makes it a lot easier to start dropping in characters, structures, and vehicles, although you'll still want to adapt them to create your own look. The other problem for budding designers is that the game has three separate planes to work on, which lets players move between fore, middle, and background when playing. This means that unless you think on all three levels when making obstacles, players can simply pop into the foreground and avoid them completely. Once you have all of your main content in place, you can add finishing touches such as respawn points, dynamic music that changes according to player proximity, and characters that offer instructions on what to do. You can also throw in point bubbles and prizes to encourage players to play your level, and of course it's a good idea to play through repeatedly to make sure that others won't get stuck.

With all of this in mind, it's no small feat to create a Little Big Planet level that people will actually want to play. The reality, at least according to what we've seen happen in the game thus far, is that home designers will use the tools to make much smaller-scale creations than the levels in story mode. We've seen some great creations based on a nightclub and even TV show The Crystal Maze, in addition to video game homages such as Space Invaders and Breakout. They're simple ideas that incorporate systems already built by the developers, and they're probably a good indication of where the community is going to go with the game.

Going online with Little Big Planet is a breeze as you can see which of your friends are online and jump straight into their pod. The multiplayer online mode works well, even if it's not as smooth as the local multiplayer. You also can’t play the create mode online, though a future update will purportedly enable this feature. Sharing is also well implemented, and you can choose to move levels from your My Moon to the online Little Big Planet. When people play a level here, they can choose from preset tags to help describe the level for other players. This helps Little Big Planet to group similar levels together, so if you like what you're playing, you can search for creations that players have awarded similar tags. You can also add a heart to your favourite designers and search through all of their levels, and the system streams content live from the network so you don't have to save anything. There's even an option to play 'Cool Levels' from the main menu if you want something at random. If you really like a level or fancy adapting what you've seen, you can take levels submitted by other people and copy them to your own moon for later. All in all, it's a system that looks like it can cope with the content that's set to come out after the game's release.

This is a beautifully assembled game, with a patchwork visual style that covers the technical achievements underneath. There are smaller details such as reflections in the collectable balls to look out for, as well as some really nice fire, smoke, and electricity effects. It may be cruel to watch Sackboy die, but he can be electrocuted, burned, and disintegrated in a variety of ways, each resulting in highly detailed effects. Special mention should go to the physics system, which is pitched just a fraction beyond realistic to allow for some amazing stunts, jumps, and races. Then there's the soundtrack, a mix of genres from indie artists such as The Go Team and Jim Noir that all suit the game to a tee. Finally, a nod has to go to the pitch-perfect narration from British comedian Stephen Fry, and apart from his insistence that you don't post anything rude online, his voice is just as charming as the rest of the game.

Little Big Planet is a startlingly imaginative take on the platforming genre, and its story mode, while short, is truly outstanding. It's down to the community to elongate the life of the game, and while only the most ardent fans will be up to the task of making compelling content, the tools here certainly have some potential. If you've not got a creative bent then you might feel like you're getting half a game, but that doesn't stop Little Big Planet being a star that burns twice as bright, half as long.

Metal Gear Solid 4 (PS3)

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots is the most technically stunning video game ever made. It's also a fine example of storytelling prowess within its medium, combining gameplay and narrative so slickly and beautifully that it's impossible to extricate one from the other. It's likely you will emerge awestruck from your first play-through, wishing the experience would continue yet nonetheless satisfied with its conclusion. It's difficult not to sound hyperbolic when discussing MGS4 because every part of its design seemingly fulfills its vision, without compromise. There is no halfway.

Fully realized, lengthy story sequences will come as no surprise to anyone who has played a Metal Gear game. You'll spend a good half of MGS4 watching cinematics, but it would be a grave misinterpretation to assume that great gameplay takes a backseat to the story. Rather, these two elements are tightly intertwined, and this tapestry is held together by an important technical thread: Cutscenes that are rendered fully in real time within the game engine. It's impressive enough that these scenes look as good as any prerendered cinematic you've ever watched. It's even more amazing when those same scenes transition without pause into gameplay, and the same hulking mech you watched lumber about in the cinematic is looming above you. The subtle animations, the lush environments, and the rich textures are the same in and out of story sequences, and the effect is so seamless it may take your breath away. You can skip past the scenes if you prefer, but doing so would soften the experience. The story sequences carry more weight because of the intense gameplay that precedes them--and the gameplay feels more compelling because the story gives you powerful reasons to care about your mission. The high point of this fusion occurs in an exciting and memorable split-screen sequence that simply must be experienced.

Talking about what, exactly, is going on in the plot in the midst of MGS4's grand sweeping gestures is to risk spoiling each little surprise as it emerges. Snake, suffering from the rapid onset of aging, now must cope with stiff joints in addition to the looming specter of Liquid Ocelot's newest plans. This is Snake's final hurrah; yet as the story reaches one height after another, the juxtaposition of huge set piece battles and formidable bosses with Snake's deteriorating body creates tension and gravity even beyond the series' usual pretensions. Some new plot strands emerge while others get tied up, and old friends (and enemies) refuse to be forgotten. You'll also bear witness to a few reunions--some bloody, some teary, and some legitimately shocking. Parts of it are overblown, to be sure. The musical score gets heavy-handed and the voice acting and writing are frequently dogmatic, so while there are plenty of subtle moments, subtlety isn't really MGS4's strong suit. But it doesn't need to be. After all, the fate of the world hangs in the balance, and judging from a few silly attempts at humor that don't work, developer Kojima Productions was wise to err on the side of melodrama.

The gameplay proper is familiar to fans, but it's been cleaned up and expanded, holding as many twists and surprises as the story. For starters, both gunplay and close-quarters combat are more satisfying. Regarding melee, the controls have been streamlined, making it less cumbersome to grab an enemy soldier or perform a stealthy blade kill. Shooting mechanics are even more improved, so much so that shooting your way out of a pickle is just as enjoyable as sneaking around it. There are a huge number of weapons to play with; so many that you'll probably finish the campaign without using many of them. Yet, quality wasn't sacrificed for quantity: Every weapon feels just right, from your handy operator sidearm (best when upgraded with a silencer) and standard issue assault rifles to a powerful railgun. The standard over-the-shoulder view is fine for the most part, but you can gaze down the sights from a first-person perspective. Both views can be further improved with various enhancements, such as laser sights and scopes.

Not that you don't have all the tools for completely avoiding your enemies if you choose that route. Snake's got the basics covered: crawling, hugging walls, peeking around corners, and hanging from ledges, for example. Cover mechanics are tighter than ever, so you can crouch and take potshots from behind cover with ease. There are also a number of important gadgets that will make your life easier in this regard. The most obvious of these is your OctoCamo suit, which takes on the texture of your surroundings when you're prone or pressed against cover. Not only does this make it simpler to avoid watchful eyes, but it's also a cool visual effect. Eventually, you'll be able to camouflage Snake's head, and a few of the available camo options are bound to stir some fans' nostalgia. The Solid Eye is your other major tool, as it expands your compass into a sonic-sensitive radar and allows you to use night vision and a tactical first-person view. These are helpful gadgets indeed, even during boss fights, like a stirring encounter in a blinding blizzard.

Other gadgets, such as portable hiding places (cardboard boxes and rusty barrels) and the Metal Gear Mk. II (a stealthed robot that you can command as a scouting device), are useful to anyone who prefers the sneaky approach. Not every gadget is a welcome addition, though. For example, the much-ballyhooed iPod is a neat touch, but to use it, you cannot have another gadget equipped, so you'll quickly forget the option even exists. But aside from these nitpicks, one of the things that makes the core gameplay so enjoyable is that you're rarely strapped into a single style of play. Shooting your way through requires more thought and care than you'd put into a standard action game, but you never feel as though the gun mechanics are stuffed uncomfortably into a stealth game. If you'd rather sneak, you never have the impression that stealth was shoehorned into a game that's meant to be played as a shooter. Sure, you're Solid Snake--you're not supposed to get caught. But if you're stuck in a jam, breaking stealth isn't a death sentence, and in fact, facing certain enemies head-on is often a heart-pounding, challenging experience. The few levels that do force you into one style, such as one in which you shadow your target through an Eastern European city, are still great, if not quite as impactful.

You'll need to keep an eye on Snake's stress levels and psyche. Though these aspects are more peripheral than health levels, they fit nicely within the plot. When Snake gets stressed (if he gets cold or encumbered, for example), his psyche gauge starts to deplete. The lower the gauge, the slower you will move and the less quickly you replenish health. Generally speaking, the psyche meter is rarely a factor, and should you notice Snake groaning a bit more, there are items like compresses you can use for a pick-me-up. Should the meter get too low, you won't be able to hold up your weapon or rush for cover. This doesn't happen often though, and while you'll need to keep a close eye on your health for obvious reasons, you won't need to pay too much heed to psyche.

Regardless of the tactics you use, the level design and enemy artificial intelligence work in tandem to create unparalleled gameplay. If you go stealth, hiding in that rusty barrel isn't a perfect solution. Your foe may look at it suspiciously, kick it a few times, and eventually blow your cover, so don't expect to be able to trick your way through as you might in other stealth games. In full-on firefights, enemy teams will flank you, use cover to their advantage, and throw grenades with precision to force you out of hiding. Most of your surroundings, inside and out, are littered with objects and cover opportunities, from a trek through a South American jungle to a nostalgic journey through a snowy island base. Each level is more-or-less linear, but within the confines of these areas, you still have remarkable room to explore the various gameplay options and test the limits of your foes. Some enemies are standard soldiers, though many others are wonderfully imaginative. The colossal mechanical Gekkos, for example, are unpredictable and keep you on your toes, while female operatives that pounce from wall to wall intensify an early escape scene.

Later in the game, a few set piece battles deepen the core gameplay even further, including a few peerless on-rails sequences. One of these, a motorcycle chase, is as close as any game has gotten to translating the excitement of similar moments in films to a game format. Another level, which features a gigantic automaton, showcases destructible environments where walkways collapse on top of each other and the screen fills with smoke. In all of these cases, the controls are excellent, with the exception of that same mech's third-person view a bit later on (the first-person view works infinitely better). The interpretation of Metal Gear Solid as an interactive film still applies, but in a way you may not have expected: These levels make you feel like the star of your own action movie.

Boss battles are stimulating, though they aren't all that difficult. Nevertheless, a few of them are tricky and require you to put some thought into your tactics because just riddling the boss with bullets isn't going to ensure victory. Early on, it's clear that you'll be encountering the four members of the Beauty and the Beast unit--female supersoldiers that are as psychologically complex as they are fun to battle. These battles are long and normally require you to fight other enemies in addition to your primary target. In one of them, you can use your night vision to track your target's footprints and use the wind direction to your advantage. In another, you'll dodge missiles from flying creatures while taking on the main boss.

The gameplay and story would, perhaps, not be as effective if Metal Gear Solid 4 did not look and sound so impressive, but truth be told, it's an amazing piece of technology. From the gritty textures of concrete walls to the effective lighting and shadowing, there are few aspects you could reasonably fault. In the biggest battles, billows of smoke fill the screen and blood splatters against the camera--all while meticulously designed helicopters fly overhead and ad-hoc team members take potshots from behind grungy dilapidated vehicles. Yet in the midst of the visual drama, it's the little things that are likely to provoke awe. Small details, such as how Snake rubs his sore back when his stress levels get high or the authentic manner in which he ascends staircases, create as much atmosphere as cluttered underground tunnels and war-torn Middle Eastern cities. You will have to wait through some scattered install periods (just under 20 minutes worth, in total) and the occasional loading screen, and you may find some frame rate drops and low-res textures here and there, but these aren't issues in light of MGS4's impressive graphical accomplishments.

The sound design comes together nearly as well. The soundtrack on its own is rather pompous, but in context, it works just fine to create the appropriate mood for any given cutscene or battle. The voice acting follows suit but succeeds far better. Because the growling voice of David Hayter's Solid Snake is so good, the rare hamming from the mostly excellent supporting cast is easily forgotten. But the sound effects are unforgettable and excellent across the board. The Gekkos emit blood-curdling moos like gargantuan cows, explosions are outstandingly obnoxious, and everything from the clicks of the Solid Eye to the laughter and screams of the beastly bosses are top-notch.

On top of it all, Metal Gear Solid 4 offers some enjoyable online 16-player action to complement its superb single-player experience. Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch are represented, of course, and they play just fine, assuming you don't approach the online component as a standard shooter. The maps are beautifully rendered and packed with detail, and while not every mechanic is as wonderful in multiplayer as it is in single-player (hiding in your cardboard box won't usually get you far, for example), it's all good fun once you adjust to the pace. The multiplayer star, however, is sneaking mode, a Team Deathmatch variant in which one player plays as Snake and another supports him as the Metal Gear Mk II. Shooting others is amusing--but sneaking enthusiasts will enjoy the violent, stealthy game of hide and seek you play as Snake. Playing support is equally entertaining because as Mk. II, you can go invisible, creep up on other players, and zap them with your electronic tentacle. It's a blast. Other modes include base mission, in which teams compete to conquer bases; a capture and defend mode; and rescue mission, which is similar to the same mode in Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence. Unfortunately, the process of creating an online account is laborious, so expect to take a few minutes to enter a litany of information (a pain if you aren't using a keyboard). Thankfully, the variety of customization options and sheer numbers of players online mean that this process is quickly forgotten.

If the story-heavy presentation of previous Metal Gear games taxed your patience, Metal Gear Solid 4 won't change your mind. For anyone who appreciates games that rise above the simple act of pushing a few buttons and pulling a few triggers, Metal Gear Solid 4 is a stimulating ride that you won't soon forget. You'll want to see what happens next, yet when its long campaign draws to a close, you'll wish it would continue. That's not just because it's a well-told tale, but because that tale is woven through a thoroughly impressive game that tops its predecessors.

Iron Man (Xbox360)

Held captive in a cave by soldiers armed to the teeth with weapons of his own design, Tony Stark ponders his fate. Faced with the ugly truth about the world he has helped create, he resolves to turn his genius to other purposes. Stark constructs a high-tech suit of armor and becomes Iron Man, embarking on a quest to ferret out the evil fueled by his creations and salvage his shameful family legacy. Iron Man, a game recently released in conjunction with the feature film, parallels Tony Stark's plight. Iron Man dons the high-tech suit of wide-open game spaces and shiny visual effects and tries to leave the old stigma of movie-based video games behind. Zooming around and blowing up stuff does have its thrills, but that new-suit shine grows dull about halfway through the game as the difficulty spikes drastically while the level design flatlines. After that, there's just no reviving Iron Man.

Iron Man begins in the cave where Tony Stark constructs the rudimentary rough draft of what will evolve into the iconic hot-rod red and gold suit. After his escape, the plot diverges from that of the movie, following similar themes while pitting Iron Man against a host of enemies that fans may recognize from the comics. Levels are bookended by cinematic cutscenes that generally show a little bit of character interaction and then a lot of Iron Man flying hither and yon. Only Robert Downey Jr. and Terrence Howard have lent their voices and likenesses to the game, and their performances, like the cutscenes themselves, are adequate.

After the initial, linear tutorial level, Iron Man is set loose into open battlefields for every subsequent mission. Flying around these large spaces is one of the more entertaining bits in the game, given that they are satisfyingly big and look quite good while you're screaming around them at high speeds. On most levels, the terrain is thoroughly contoured and provides plenty of opportunities for flying low through valleys or ducking behind ridges to evade enemy fire. With detailed suit animations that help bolster the sense of speed, Iron Man is at his best when flying into or out of battle.

Actual combat is a different story. Of the myriad martial means at Iron Man's disposal, the missiles and repulsor beam are the most useful, but also the least exciting. It's difficult to take on groups of enemies while flying; not only will you soon pass them by, but you'll also likely stir up more enemies while coming back around for another pass. As a result, the most efficient way to deal destruction is to hover in the air near your foes, firing repulsors constantly, shooting your missiles whenever they recharge, and dodging the constant barrage of incoming missiles. It's a shame that a game with such wide-open spaces steers you toward such a limited combat style, but it's really the only way to succeed against the brutal difficulty of the second half of the game.

Iron Man's other weapon, the unibeam, is very powerful but takes precious stationary seconds to charge up, seconds that you rarely have. As you beat levels and upgrade your suit tech, this charging time shrinks. You can also reroute your auxiliary suit power to direct extra juice to your weapons, but that power is best reserved for boosting your life support. Even with these tweaks, the abrupt increase in difficulty shrinks your available charging windows down to almost nothing. Using the unibeam is doubly risky because it draws power from your suit, power that you'll constantly need to recharge your life meter. Five or six missiles to the chassis while attempting a unibeam charge are enough to force your suit to power down, which you want to avoid (especially later in the game) because you can recover from a power down only three times before failing the mission.

One amusing element of Iron Man's combat system is the ability to grapple enemies. When Iron Man is close to a foe, he can grab onto them, triggering the unit-specific grapple animation. Most of these require a spat of frantic button tapping or a timed button press, and they result in the spectacular destruction of that unit. Breaking helicopters in half and ripping the lids off of tanks is great fun the first few times, but eventually it becomes more of a hassle than it is worth. However, grappling missile batteries or howitzers is often worthwhile because this lets you control them for a few shots and take out a few stubborn enemies quickly. You can also grapple incoming missiles while in flight and throw them at whatever you like, which, in addition to making you feel like a rock star, is a powerful way to deal damage. Unfortunately, the timing is tricky to get down, so more often than not you'll receive a face full of missile for your troubles. Furthermore, later levels are so thick with missiles that in the time it takes to catch and release one, five more will have crashed into your head.

Iron Man is reasonably entertaining for a few hours, but then things turn sour. Each level follows the same template that has you taking out a few consecutive groups of targets, then moving on to deal with the superweapon or supervillain (sometimes both). This is fine for a handful of missions, but it quickly grows stale. You'll likely complete the first half of the game's 13 levels with relative ease, but the latter half is a totally different story. Enemies abruptly increase in number and become much tougher, and the air fills with enough missiles to cause a partial solar eclipse. Constant dodging and frequent retreat behind hillsides to recharge your health are essential survival tactics, and even elite evaders will experience their fair share of failure. With no checkpoints to break up the lengthy missions, failing is incredibly frustrating, and it'll take a strong measure of grim determination to soldier on to the end.

Beating certain levels will unlock them for play in the One Man Army mode. This places you in familiar level environs with a time limit and a number of enemies to kill. If you complete your goal, you will unlock one of five classic suits from the Iron Man comics, which you can then use should you choose to replay any level. These might delight Iron Man fans, but if you're really going to attempt levels again, the customizable Mark III suit that you use throughout the campaign is your best bet.

Iron Man makes a decent opening argument against the just-another-movie-game stigma. However, by smacking you with a punishing difficulty spike instead of striving for more complex mission structures, it sacrifices most of the goodwill it garners in the early going. Completing the game is a frustrating trial with no substantial reward, and even sympathetic jurors will have a hard time ruling in its favor.

Grand Theft Auto IV (PS3)

Stepping off a boat in the shoes of illegal immigrant Niko Bellic as he arrives in Liberty City at the start of Grand Theft Auto IV, you can tell immediately that Rockstar North's latest offering is something quite special. Yes, this is another GTA game in which you'll likely spend the bulk of your time stealing cars and gunning down cops and criminals, but it's also much more than that. GTAIV is a game with a compelling and nonlinear storyline, a game with a great protagonist who you can't help but like, and a game that boasts a plethora of online multiplayer features in addition to its lengthy story mode. It's not without some flaws, but GTAIV is undoubtedly the best Grand Theft Auto yet.

One of the many things that set GTAIV apart from its predecessors is Liberty City, which is more convincing as a living, breathing urban environment than anything that you've seen in a game before, and bears little resemblance to its namesake in 2001's GTAIII. Liberty's diverse population believably attempts to go about its daily business, seemingly unaware that several criminal factions are at war in the city. Niko has no such luck. He's compelled to start working for one of the factions shortly after arriving, when he learns that his cousin Roman has some potentially fatal gambling debts. Niko's military experience makes him a useful freelancer for employers in the business of killing each other, and though his reluctance to carry out their orders is often apparent, he does whatever is asked of him in the hope that completing missions for other people will ultimately give him the means to complete his own.

Actually, Niko doesn't have to do everything that is asked of him. On several occasions as you play through his story, you'll be presented with decisions that afford you the option of doing what you think is right rather than blindly following instructions. You don't necessarily have to kill a target if he or she promises to disappear, but you have to weigh the risk of your employer finding out against the possibility that the person whose life you spare might prove useful later in the game, or even have work for you in the form of bonus missions. To say anything more specific on this subject would be to risk spoiling one of GTAIV's most interesting new features, but suffice it to say that every decision you make has consequences, and you'll likely want to play through the game at least twice to see how the alternatives unfold.

Grand Theft Auto IV's story mode can be beaten in less than 30 hours, and there are so many optional activities and side missions to take part in along the way that you can comfortably double that number if you're in no hurry. The majority of the story missions task you with making deliveries and/or killing people, and play out in much the same way as those in previous games. With that said, most of the missions are a lot easier this time around, partly because Niko is a more agile and efficient killer than any of his predecessors, and partly because the LCPD seemingly has better things to do than hunt down an illegal immigrant who's gunning down undesirables all over the city. Some of the more imaginative missions sprinkled throughout the story include a kidnapping, a bank heist, and a job interview. The cinematic cutscenes associated with story missions are superbly presented and are the sequences in which the game's characters really shine. Without exception, the characters you encounter benefit from great animation, great voice work, and superbly expressive faces. They're not always so impressive when they join you on a mission and refuse to do what they're supposed to (for example, not following you on an escort mission, or failing to negotiate a doorway). Nevertheless, these problems are few and far between, and they're made less painful by the new "replay mission" option that you're presented with whenever you fail.

New abilities in Niko's arsenal include scaling fences and walls anywhere he can get a foothold, shimmying along ledges, and, most importantly, taking cover behind objects. The ability to stick close to walls, parked cars, and the like at the touch of a button makes GTAIV's gunplay a huge improvement over that in previous games, and, in tandem with the new targeting system, it also makes it a lot easier. Enemies are rarely smart enough to get to you while you're in cover, and given that you can lock your targeting reticle on to them even when they're hidden, all you have to do is wait for them to poke their heads out and then pick them off with a minimum of effort. Locking on to enemies targets their torso by default, but you can use the right analog stick to fine-tune your aim and kill them more quickly with a headshot or two. Playing without using the lock-on feature make things more difficult, but you’ll need to master the technique so that you can shoot blindly at enemies from positions of cover when you dare not poke your own head out to line up the shot.

Given the amount of trouble that you get into as you play through the story mode, it's inevitable that the police are going to get involved from time to time, even when their presence isn't a scripted feature of your mission. Liberty City's boys in blue are quick to respond when you get flagged with a wanted level of between one and six stars, but they're not nearly as tough to deal with as their counterparts in previous GTA games. They don't drive as quickly when pursuing you, they rarely bother to set up roadblocks, and you'll need to blow up practically an entire city block before the FIB (that's not a typo) show up. Furthermore, you're given an unfair advantage in the form of your GPS system; when you're not using it to plot a valid route to any waypoint of your choosing, it doubles as a kind of police scanner. Any time you have a brush with the law, the GPS shows you the exact locations of patrol cars and cops on foot in your area, and highlights the circular area (centered on your last known whereabouts) where they're concentrating their search. To escape, all you need to do is move outside the circle and then avoid being seen for 10 seconds or so, which is often best achieved by finding a safe spot and just sitting there. It's not a bad system in theory, but in practice it makes dodging the law a little too easy, especially when your wanted level is low and the search area is small.

When you're not running missions for criminals, taking part in street races, stealing cars to order, or randomly causing trouble, you'll find that there are plenty of opportunities to unwind in Liberty City. Some of these optional activities offer tangible rewards that can prove useful in missions later on, whereas others are just a fun way to kill time and take in more of GTAIV's superb humor. For example, you can watch television, listen to numerous different radio stations, check out some genuinely funny shows (including some big-name acts) at cabaret and comedy clubs, and use a computer to surf the in-game Internet.

GTAIV's Internet is filled with spoofs of all the kinds of Web sites that you'd only ever look at accidentally or when you know there's no danger of getting caught. Some of them can be found only by clicking on links in spam e-mails, whereas others are advertised prominently on the search page. There's plenty of amusing stuff to find if you spend some time in one of the "TW@" Internet cafes, but the most interesting site by far is an online dating agency through which you can meet women who, if they like your profile, will agree to go on dates with you. Dating and socializing with friends is something you can spend as much or as little of your time doing as you like, and though the people you meet can occasionally be demanding to the point that they become irritating, keeping them happy invariably benefits you in some way.

Keeping friends and dates happy means spending time with them and doing things that they enjoy, and all of them have different personalities. Some friends like to join you for minigames such as tenpin bowling, pool, or darts, whereas others prefer to go out for a meal, get drunk, or take in a show. Of course, dates are much fussier than regular friends, and their opinions of you are influenced not only by whether you pick them up on time, where you take them, and whether you try your luck when dropping them at home, but also by a number of much more subtle factors. Dates will comment on stuff like the car you drive, how you drive it, and the clothes you wear. They'll even notice if you wear the same outfit two dates in a row, though not all of them will be bothered by it. The rewards that you get when another character likes you enough vary depending on who it is. Without wishing to give away specifics, befriending a lawyer can prove useful if you're having trouble with the cops, for example, and having a nurse on your friends list can literally be a lifesaver.

You'll keep in touch with your dates, friends, and some of your enemies using another of GTAIV's great new features: a cell phone. It's hard to believe that something as simple as a cell phone could add so much to a game like this, but it's implemented so well that it's hard to imagine leaving any of Niko's safe houses without it. If you've ever used a cell phone in real life, you'll have no problem operating this one and, given that it's controlled using only the D pad and a single button, it's easy to call up acquaintances and take calls even while driving. There's no unwieldy conversation system to deal with; you simply choose which friend you want to call, what you want to talk about (it could be work, a fun activity, or asking for a favor) and then, assuming that he or she answers the phone, the conversation plays out. Incoming calls are even easier, though they occasionally come at inopportune (or amusing) times; hearing your cell-phone's signal interfere with your car radio is the least of your worries when you consider the possibility of a date calling you while you're with a prostitute or embroiled in a gunfight with the Mafia. Incidentally, new ringtones and visual themes for your phone can be purchased via the in-game Internet, which is typical of the incredible attention to detail that you'll come to take for granted as you play.

To give you some idea of just how much thought has clearly gone into the crafting of GTAIV, even the act of stealing a parked car, which is still achieved by pushing a single button, can now result in any number of different things happening. If the door is locked, as is often the case, Niko will smash a window with his elbow or his foot to get inside. Once inside the car, he may need to hot-wire it to get it started; you can speed up the process slightly by using the shoulder buttons on your controller. If the car has an alarm, it'll sound for several seconds and cause the headlights to flash on and off as you drive away--practically begging any nearby cops to come after you. Stealing cars with drivers and/or passengers inside opens up lots more possibilities, the most amusing of which is someone (possibly you) getting an arm caught in a door and dragged along as the vehicle speeds away.

Most of the vehicles in GTAIV, like those in previous games, have very loose handling that makes it easy for you to perform Hollywood-style U-turns, skids around corners, and the like. You can play through most of the missions without ever violating a traffic law if you really want to, but you can get away with (and will have a lot more fun) driving like a lunatic, provided that you don't collide with any police vehicles or mow down too many pedestrians. A neat touch when driving with the default camera view is that the camera, which is positioned a few feet behind the rear bumper of the car, centers on you rather than on the vehicle, effectively offering the vehicular equivalent of an over-the-shoulder view. When you take the control of something sporty, the camera also positions itself much closer to the ground, which adds to the sensation of speed.

The vehicle handling is difficult to fault, regardless of whether you're in a sports car, a garbage truck, a motorcycle, a speedboat, or a helicopter. However, while driving, you might notice one odd quirk that has been a constant ever since GTAIII: When taking the controls of certain vehicles, you'll suddenly notice a lot more of the same vehicle on the roads. It's not a big deal, and it isn't detrimental to the gameplay, but it's a little jarring if you get into one of the more unusual vehicles in the game--for example, the equivalent of either a Ferrari or a pickup truck--and suddenly find that the city is filled with them. That particular quirk is pretty common in some of the multiplayer modes as well, though you'll likely be too busy keeping an eye out for other players to take any notice when you venture online.

Getting online in Grand Theft Auto IV couldn't be easier. You simply select the multiplayer option on your cell phone, choose which type of game you want to host or join, and then enter a lobby and wait for the game to start. You won't be getting bored staring at a list of names while you're waiting, though, because when you enter a lobby you actually enter an online version of Liberty City in which you and up to 15 other players are free to do anything. There are weapons scattered all over the place to ensure that things don't stay too friendly for very long.

There are more than a dozen different multiplayer modes to choose from, and although some of them are variations on similar themes, there's certainly no shortage of variety. As the host of a multiplayer session, you also have the freedom to greatly customize all of the game types with variables such as friendly fire, police presence, weapons sets, traffic levels, radar functionality, and many more. You can choose where you'd like your game to take place as well, considering that many gameplay modes can be played either on a specific Liberty City island or across the entire map.

Even conventional 16-player modes such as Deathmatch and Race feel quite different than anything that you've played before. And in addition to those, there are objective-based games in which you're tasked with completing missions similar to those in the single-player game: a team-based Cops 'n Crooks mode, a Turf War mode in which teams compete for control of territories, a carjacking mode, three cooperative missions that support up to four players, and more. With the right group of people, there's no reason why you can't have a lot of fun with every single mode that's available. We experienced a few frame-rate issues and lag that caused other players and their vehicles to jump around the screen at times, but for the most part GTAIV's online play is a real treat. One especially neat touch is that, as a passenger in a vehicle being driven by another player, you can mark waypoints on the GPS system for your driver using a map that tracks the locations of other players and objectives.

If you're wondering about differences between the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of Grand Theft Auto IV, the truth is that there aren't many. The PS3 version can only be played after a mandatory install that takes around 10 minutes, and its load times are a little shorter and less frequent as a result. The visuals, which don't always hold up to close scrutiny but are impressive during typical gameplay, are comparable and feature the same quirks (shadows that flicker, for example) on both consoles. Likewise, the audio, which can take a lot of the credit for why Liberty City feels so alive, is exceptional regardless of which console you have and how many speakers it's hooked up to. True to form, GTAIV's soundtrack has plenty of great licensed songs and, unlike other games we could mention, it doesn't force the artist and track information down your throat with pop-up windows that detract from gameplay. However, if you want that information, you can simply dial up a song-recognition service on your cell phone and, after a few seconds, receive it in a text message. Genius.

In case you haven't guessed already, Grand Theft Auto IV is a game that you simply have to play. The single-player game, which you can still play long after you complete the story, is the series' best by far, and the multiplayer features are good enough that you'll likely have no problem finding people to play with for many months to come. The minor flaws that you'll experience are no more difficult to overlook than those in previous GTA games, and they're greatly outnumbered by the features that will impress and surprise you anytime you think you've already seen everything that the game has to offer. There's lots to see in Liberty City, so you'd best get started.

Dark Sector (PS3)

It was almost four years ago that Digital Extremes announced it was working on Dark Sector, a third-person action game now available for both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Better action games have come and gone since then, regardless of which console you own, but the good news is that those same games have left their mark on Dark Sector, which borrows liberally from Gears of War and is at times reminscent of Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. Dark Sector's story isn't nearly as interesting or told nearly as well as that of either of the aforementioned games, but if you step into the boots of elite black-ops agent Hayden Tenno solely for satisfying combat, then you won't be disappointed.

The single-player game starts off promisingly with a moody black-and-white prologue mission set some 20 years before the events of the other nine levels. Getting comfortable with the controls used for gunplay and for getting in and out of cover should take you no time at all as you battle your way through it, and it won't take you long to realize that the enemies you're facing are smart enough to employ a lot of the same tactics that you do in the interest of self-preservation. The story gets underway with a bang as well--a few bangs, actually--but as you progress through the game, the story rarely feels like it's moving along with you. Characters come and go without giving you any reason to care about them, you travel between locations killing everything that moves without really knowing why, and new abilities are frequently added to your formidable arsenal without explanation. Dark Sector's lack of good storytelling shouldn't hamper your enjoyment of the game too much because cutscenes are infrequent and brief. Nonetheless, it's unfortunate that a protagonist as fun to play as Hayden doesn't have a great narrative to back him up.

To simply refer to Hayden as a killing machine would be to downplay just how overpowered you can feel at times while playing as him. The skills with conventional firearms that you learn in the prologue mission stay with you for the entire game, but even as increasingly powerful weapons become available to you, you'll find that you spend far less time using them. That's because throwing the glaive that grows from his right hand early on is a more elegant, powerful, and satisfying way to dispatch foes than any gun. Initially, the glaive is used simply as a projectile weapon that comes back to you like a boomerang after every throw, making enemy decapitations and severed limbs a rare treat. However, when you gain the ability to add aftertouch to your throws, it becomes an even deadlier projectile that you can steer around corners and over obstacles to butcher enemies in glorious slow motion. The PS3 game supports an option to steer the glaive by moving the motion-sensitive Sixaxis controller, but the right analog stick does a better job. Applying aftertouch not only makes slicing up enemies easier, but also affords you a front-row seat for the kill because you get to see everything from the glaive's perspective. Decapitating enemies this way never gets old, though some of the glaive's other uses definitely do.

The glaive isn't just an awesomely powerful weapon; it's a veritable Swiss Army knife that can be used to unlock doors, open ammo crates, and pick up items that would otherwise be out of reach. The uses for Dark Sector's answer to Link's boomerang don't end there, though, because with a little help from the elements your glaive can be used to light torches, create columns of ice, and even put out fires. By hitting specific items scattered throughout the world, it's possible to imbue your glaive with electricity, ice, or fire for a short time, at which point using it to kill enemies becomes more satisfying than ever. Nevertheless, that's rarely the reason why you're afforded access to an element; more often than not, the elements are needed to overcome environmental obstacles or to solve simplistic (though occasionally challenging, timed) puzzles. For example, sheets of black goop stretched across doorways have to be burned before you can progress, and mechanically sealed doors can be opened only with an electric charge. Puzzles like these crop up a little too frequently in Dark Sector and, given that you don't even have to think about them after the first occurrence, it doesn't take long for them to feel like chores that you have to complete before you're allowed to progress and have fun playing with enemies again.

Dark Sector's impressive combat sequences are also broken up with exploration, which becomes a necessary evil as you realize that searching every nook and cranny of an area before progressing to the next is the only way to find ammo, currency, and weapon upgrades. Money can be used to buy new weapons on the black market, which is conveniently located under every manhole you come across. It's important to buy and upgrade both a pistol (which you wield simultaneously with the glaive) and either a rifle or shotgun at some point, because weapons that you pick up from slain enemies function only for a short time before they're automatically disabled. There's a reason they do that, but going into it here would risk spoiling one of the story's very few twists for you. Weapons on the black market are extremely expensive, so despite the range of options to choose from, you shouldn't expect to own even half of them by the time you reach the boss at the end of your first play-through.

There are several boss battles in Dark Sector, and all of them are very different. Variety comes courtesy not only of bosses that differ wildly in shape and size, but also of the weapons and abilities that you'll need to defeat them. None of the bosses are overly challenging if you take your time with them because, with only a few exceptions, their attacks just aren't powerful enough to kill you with a single blow. They'll hurt you, and the borders of the screen will flash red to let you know that you're injured, but Hayden regains health so quickly that getting into cover briefly or even simply performing a few evasive rolls is generally all you need to do to get back to full strength. That's not to say that all of the boss battles are easy, though, because they're not. It's just that often the tricky part is figuring out how to beat them rather than actually doing it.

Although playing through Dark Sector's single-player mode doesn't reward you with a great story, it's definitely a great way to prepare for the game's online multiplayer offerings. There are only two multiplayer modes, but both of them will afford you the opportunity to play as Hayden at some point, complete with all of the skills that he has at the end of the single-player game. Both of the online games, titled Epidemic and Infection, are designed for 10 players and can be played on any of five specially designed maps. Epidemic pits two teams of five, each led by a Hayden, against one another in a battle to see which team can kill the other's leader first. Infection tasks one player, as Hayden, with killing as many of the other nine players as possible before they manage to bring him down. When you're not playing as Hayden, you assume the role of a garden-variety soldier armed only with a firearm, explosives, and the ability to move in and out of cover. One Hayden versus nine might not sound like a fair fight, but when used in conjunction with shield and stealth abilities, Hayden's glaive-and-firearm combo gives him a significant edge over the competition. Ultimately, our experiences with the lag-free multiplayer modes thus far suggest that the balance is about right.

Neither the game types nor the maps really lend themselves to groups of less than 10 players, so bots can be used to make the numbers up until more players decide to join. Like the enemies in the single-player game, the bots generally exhibit intelligent behavior but occasionally slip up. (On at least one of the multiplayer maps, they can regularly be seen standing around doing nothing.) Regardless, Dark Sector's multiplayer modes are a lot of fun even when you're playing as a soldier, and the biggest disappointment is simply that there aren't more modes or maps. A straight-up deathmatch option in which everyone has Hayden's abilities would probably be chaotic, but this seems like a missed opportunity regardless, as does the vehicle that you commandeer for a time in the single-player game but which is nowhere to be found in multiplayer.

Playing online is the only time you'll notice any significant differences between the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of Dark Sector. The Xbox 360 version lets you join unranked or ranked games automatically, whereas the PS3 version features a more conventional lobby system. Both systems perform their functions admirably. The Xbox 360 version benefits from some neat single-player and multiplayer achievements, but these are replicated on the PS3 as "entitlements," so those of you playing on Sony's console aren't really missing out unless you have a penchant for gamerscores that span multiple games.

Visually, Dark Sector rarely fails to impress, though you'll occasionally stumble upon low-resolution textures while searching with a flashlight in darkened corners for pickups. Furthermore, it's a little jarring in such a realistic-looking world that your glaive frequently travels through walls on its way back to you, but then this is a game that really tests your ability to suspend disbelief at every opportunity, given the nature of its puzzles and the lack of storyline. The game's audio is also worthy of note, thanks to an original score that does a great job of letting you know when danger is present or past. Likewise, some really satisfying sound effects make the weapons feel powerful, the environments feel creepy and abandoned, and some of the enemies far more intimidating than they deserve.

Dark Sector isn't the next Gears of War, and it isn't a game that you should go into looking for a compelling story. You could certainly do a lot worse if you're looking for 10 to 12 hours of single-player action and some multiplayer kicks, though.

Lost: Via Domus (All)

According to the television show Lost, in 2004, Oceanic Airlines flight 815 crashed somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. Whether you think the survivors are stranded on an island or bottled up in a different location, Ubisoft has added one more survivor to the mix in its latest adventure game. Lost: Via Domus tells a good story, but it's far too short to justify the game's price of admission.

In Lost: Via Domus, you take control of an amnesiac photojournalist who was also aboard the fateful transpacific flight. During the game you must slowly regain your identity through completing quests, talking with the other survivors, and correctly identifying clues during flashbacks. Early on you find out you had a camera on the plane with you. Evidently one of your photographs made another survivor mad enough to want to destroy the photograph and kill you. The events in the story unfold in a great parallel to the TV series. Most of the game's storyline occurs during the first two seasons of the show, but characters appearing in season three of the show are also included in encounters and exposition. The core characters are all there: Jack, Locke, Kate, Sawyer, Charlie, Claire, Sun, Jin, Hurley, and Sayid. Tom, Ben, and Juliet--of the Others--appear as well to ensure that the hostile, we-were-here-before-you storyline is kept alive and well.

The environments are hands down the best-looking part of the game, particularly on the PlayStation 3. The as-seen-on-Lost locations and the few new environments are beautifully and accurately rendered. The lighting, feel, and sounds of the environment are all spot-on. Frequently, we found ourselves walking out to precipices just to take in the sights or zooming in with our camera to see how detailed the hatch's bookshelves were. The crash site looks true to the show's pilot episode, even if the chaotic initial few minutes don't play out exactly as they do in the TV series. The areas look great, and their diversity keeps you from feeling like you're spending too much time in one place.

The biggest problem is that there is not enough gameplay to fill more than seven hours, even if you go out of your way to find all of the Easter eggs, take in all of the sights, and unlock all of the achievements available on the Xbox 360. The bartering, exploring, hot-wiring, and occasional pistol-firing sequences are all a clear part of the Lost milieu. You'll spend so much time in the fuse-plugging minigames, though, that you'll feel like an electrician by the end of your adventure. That's because the same minigame is played when you need to access everything from old hatches on the island to the crashed jetliner's fuselage.

One standout portion of the gameplay is the way photography is used in the playable flashback sequences. At the outset of each trip down memory lane, you get a glimpse of a torn-up photograph. From that flash, you have to use your camera to take a picture to match the broken image as the sequence of events plays out. The same sequence will loop repeatedly for you as you try to zoom, focus, and position the framing to match what the image was. Upon successfully capturing the required image, you are then treated to a cutscene with a portion of the main character's backstory. The whole premise makes flashbacks interesting, immersive, and enjoyable. The fact that flashbacks fit so well within the main character's photojournalist vocation also makes the functionality feel natural and engaging.

Interacting with the cast should be enjoyable, but that isn't always the case. Your character's dialogue isn't always voiced, but when it is, his comments are often natural and believable. At other times, however, his remarks get repetitious. The voice acting in Lost: Via Domus is generally decent, but the lip-synching leaves a lot to be desired. Aside from the occasionally great delivery by Hurley or the infrequent encounters with the Others, most of the exchanges look and feel flat. Even the nicknames delivered by Sawyer crash and burn most of the time. The characters are instantly recognizable but generally fail to do their real-life counterparts justice. Also, the 360 version has some instances of inconsistent shading on the characters' faces.

All three versions of Lost: Via Domus look and perform in a similar manner. The PlayStation 3 version looks a little cleaner and brighter than the others, but it can be played only after a seven-minute, onetime install. The PC version allows for seamless mouse-and-keyboard controls. The Xbox 360 version looks a little darker than the others. Still, you'll get the same story and a pretty similar experience on every platform.

For the most diehard of Lost followers, the time spent with the game will be enjoyable. Unfortunately, it is over way too fast. Via Domus is full of little hang-ups, and it requires some knowledge of the show that could potentially isolate outside players and keep them from becoming immersed in the gameworld. Ultimately, this game can be recommended for purchase only to the most diehard of Lost fans.

Medal of Honor: Airborne (PS3)

It seems you can't read a preview or review of a World War II-based FPS without hearing about how many games there are in the genre. With good reason, too--it's a crowded one. But just because there are a lot of them doesn't mean there can't be some good ones. Medal of Honor: Airborne is one such game. It starts off really slow, and the whole parachuting hook is little more than a gimmick; but later on the game realizes its potential and gets good.

There's not much of a story to Airborne. It's WWII; Nazis need killing and the world needs saving. You're in the Airborne division, so you'll be jumping out of planes and doing your part to swing the war in the Allies' favor. Before each mission you're given a brief rundown on what's going on and list of objectives to accomplish. Rather than spawning on the battlefield you'll arrive in style by parachuting out of a plane. As you fall to the ground you'll want to maneuver toward green smoke, which indicates a safe landing zone. In theory, parachuting into the level is supposed to open up a whole new style of play. You're free to land wherever you want, but invisible walls prevent you from getting too clever, and nine times out of 10, when you do land somewhere other than the safe zone you'll end up dead in a matter of seconds. There are some special landing zones to discover, and sometimes these areas will provide you with an advantageous starting point. But because you find most of these locations when you're already on the ground, they're of little use.

Once on the ground you'll take on waves of Axis soldiers over the course of the game's six levels. Six levels might not sound like a lot, but each generally takes an hour or more to complete, so it'll probably take most people around eight hours to finish the game. Your objectives are shown on your radar and you're free to tackle them in whatever order you choose. Between choosing your starting location and being able to pick what to take on first it might sound like there's a lot of freedom here, but there's really not--you can't start from many different places, and you have to do the same tasks regardless of the order you start them. Mission objectives range from blowing up AA guns to clearing buildings of enemy soldiers, taking out tanks, and detonating lots of explosives. On their own these tasks aren't anything unique, but because the levels are so long and feature so many objectives you often feel as though you're performing monumental feats rather than routine tasks.

The first three levels aren't very interesting. They're fairly linear, take place in unexciting settings, and don't play to the game's strengths. Starting with the fourth level the game picks up since you're given more freedom as to how you want to tackle the levels. You might decide to climb towers to take out snipers (their position is given away by a reflection off their scope), clear the area of ground troops, and then make your way into a building, while a different player might head to the building first, clear the ground troops second, and hide from the snipers rather than kill them. The game's artificial intelligence isn't very good, but at least it's aggressive. You can pick off guys as they peek around corners, but they won't just take it lying down. They'll spray bullets in your direction without looking, and they're rather fond of blindly tossing grenades over their backs. If you get too close or they get some reinforcements, enemy soldiers will charge right at you and inflict serious damage until you can fend them off with your weak melee attacks.

The controls are pretty standard for a first-person shooter. A sprint button comes in quite handy when trying to dash from one bit of cover to the next. Once you're behind that cover, the ability to lean and fire is extremely useful, as is the ability to raise your weapon and aim using its sights. As you progress through the game you'll be able to upgrade your weapons, earning bigger clips, faster reloads, and secondary firing abilities. You can carry two weapons at a time as well as a pistol, which isn't very powerful but has unlimited ammo. Grenades are often tough to come by, but ammunition is plentiful, as are health packs, which are scattered throughout the levels. It's a good thing, too, because once you start getting hit your health depletes in a hurry.

While most of Airborne is good, it does have its share of problems. Many of the automatic weapons have too much recoil, making them extremely difficult to aim--a problem not shared by the CPU, who is more than capable of hitting you from across the level regardless of the gun. Your fellow soldiers are sometimes quite useful, but other times they don't do anything at all--or worse, they stand right in front of you and block your shot. We also fell out of the level a few times, though this was usually when we parachuted someplace the game probably didn't want us to. When all of these problems come together the game can be extremely frustrating, as you're forced to try the same part of a level over and over again in an attempt to find the best way to circumvent the game's sometimes cheap tactics. One way in which the PS3 version has seen improvement over the Xbox 360 and PC versions is that it seems to take far fewer bullets to take down an enemy soldier on the PS3. It was really frustrating to empty a clip into someone only to have them shake it off like the Terminator, so it's good that this issue is fixed here.

Unlike the last Medal of Honor, MOH: Airborne has a solid online component. Up to 8 people can hop online and play ranked and unranked matches on half a dozen maps and a few different game types. The action's always fast-paced and for us, at least, lag-free. Interestingly enough, multiplayer is the one area where choosing where you want to parachute into a level actually lives up to the hype. As you descend you can see both friends and foes and, if you're quick enough, can land in areas that are quite advantageous--like right behind that jerk camping on a rooftop with a sniper rifle.

Airborne isn't a great-looking game, but except for a frequently terrible frame rate, the visuals don't hamper the experience. The frame rate wasn't an issue on the PC or Xbox 360, but the PS3 version will often come to a near standstill when the action gets hectic. Outside of a few nice-looking buildings, most structures are simple and look pretty much the same--not only to one another, but to every other WWII game out there. There are only a few different types of soldiers and while they aren't very detailed, you can tell one type from the next easily. At least, you can if you're up close. It's tough to tell the good guys from the bad guys when you're far apart, and it's even harder to hit them thanks to a lack of transition animation, meaning they might instantly jump from one position to the next. Weapons look great, but explosions look embarrassingly last-gen. Not only do weapons look nice, but they sound great, too. The rest of the game sounds pretty good as well. You'll hear the familiar orchestral theme from previous MOH games, and there's lots of chatter from both Axis and Allied soldiers.

Medal of Honor: Airborne is a game that rewards those who are patient enough to stick with it. The first half of the game is dull and just rehashes the same sort of gameplay you've seen countless times before. But about halfway through, things pick up and gradually get better and better until the last two levels, which are quite intense and a lot of fun to play. The multiplayer isn't anything groundbreaking, but it's quite good and adds some value to an otherwise short game. If you're tired of the genre, Airborne won't do anything to change your mind, but if you're looking to fight for the Allied cause yet again, it's a worthy tour of duty.

Soldier of Fortune: Payback (PS3)

If you've ever wondered what happened to the Soldier of Fortune franchise, you're not alone. The first two Soldier of Fortune games were popular shooters in their day, blending fun single-player and multiplayer gameplay with the concept of playing as a mercenary. But after 2002's Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix, the franchise seemed to fall off the face of the planet. Unfortunately, it should have stayed missing in action because the series has been resurrected with Soldier of Fortune: Payback, a shooter that embraces all the wrong lessons that have been learned over the past decade.

At first glance, Payback looks like a very pretty game. The visuals aren't cutting-edge, but there's an attractive quality to them, from the lavish depth-of-field blur effects that kick in whenever you reload your weapon to the lush lighting. You no longer play as John Mullins, the hero of the first two games, but rather as a new mercenary caught up in a very cliché and badly told tale of a worldwide terrorist organization that's so clever it brands all of its operatives with the very same tattoo on their necks. It's a wonder they're so difficult to find.

However, it all goes downhill quickly because Payback reveals itself to be a relentlessly linear and highly scripted shooter with a lot of flaws. Perhaps the most frustrating of these deals with the fact that the game relies on a checkpoint save system with no ability to quicksave, which means that if you're killed, you have to restart from the last checkpoint. That wouldn't be so much of an issue if those checkpoints were frequent and numerous, but they're not. Thus, much of the game's six to eight hours of gameplay is spent trying and retrying to get through the many sections of the game. Though there's a regenerating health system, you still die all too easily. It's not uncommon to have to replay a section a dozen times or more before you finally beat it.

The artificial intelligence is bad and consists mainly of two scripted actions. Once triggered, a bad guy will either run straight at you or stand in the open and shoot at you. There's no sense of dynamic behavior in the way the AI reacts to what you do. The weapon modeling is nonexistent; there's practically zero recoil on any of the weapons, even the light machine guns. On the flip side, even though the weapons all feel incredibly lightweight, they do a ridiculous amount of damage. The first Soldier of Fortune games were "edgy" in that you could practically dismember opponents with gunfire. The same goes for Payback, though it looks like the developers just copied and pasted the same code from the earlier games because the visual effect is almost exactly the same. Arms, legs, and heads all get shot off with absurd regularity while blood gushes everywhere. (The game does boast a low violence option that tones down this carnage.)

The music is actually pretty catchy, but the rest of the audio is lacking. The sound effects all seem canned, and the voice acting is terrible. The script certainly doesn't help either because the dialogue would be fitting for a straight-to-VHS action movie. The game also ends in a silly cliffhanger that assumes that gamers are going to want more of this action.

Additionally, Payback's multiplayer is very generic, with such modes as deathmatch, team deathmatch, and capture the flag. There's a whopping five multiplayer maps total, so there's not a lot of variety there either, which is also disappointing, considering Soldier of Fortune II's popular and fun multiplayer mode.

The PC game is slightly less expensive than major titles, but the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 games are full priced. Nevertheless, they're all a terrible value proposition considering the sheer quantity and high quality of shooters this year. Unless you like pain and frustration, there's simply no reason to play Soldier of Fortune: Payback when there are so many other better games on the market.

Heavenly Sword (PS3)

Ever since it was first shown, Heavenly Sword has drawn comparisons to God of War. Like SCEA's flagship franchise, Heavenly Sword has great production values, exciting combat, and an enjoyable story with interesting characters. What it doesn't have is length, clocking in at just six-and-a-half hours from start to finish. So while it's a great game, it's a great game you can beat in one sitting.

Like God of War, Heavenly Sword starts off with what appears to be the death of the game's main character, so the story is told via flashbacks. In this case it's a young woman named Nariko, an outcast who was thought before she was born to be the one to fulfill her peoples' prophecy surrounding the Heavenly Sword. The titular sword is a dangerous weapon that grants tremendous power to whomever wields it, but at the cost of that person's life. Nariko's clan has protected the ancient weapon, but they've grown weak and find themselves under attack from King Bohan, an evil despot who wants the sword for his own use. In this desperate hour Nariko's people and even her father are finally forced to admit that she is their only hope. The game's story is well written (if a bit predictable), and the characters are brought to life by some fine performances by the actors who portray them.

There are a few rudimentary door-opening puzzles and a handful of situations where you'll have to quickly press a button that appears onscreen as you make your way through the linear levels. But most of your time with Nariko will be spent killing thousands of enemies in her quest to keep the Heavenly Sword from falling into Bohan's hands. Nariko has three different types of attacks that she can perform by standing in a specific stance. Speed attacks are performed by pressing the square or triangle buttons. Her ranged and power stances are done by pressing the L1 or R1 buttons respectively. Attack combos can be strung together by pressing square and triangle in specific patterns or by switching from one stance to the next midattack.

Using combos and attacking with style are important not only because they're the quickest way to defeat an enemy, but also because they're the key to unlocking more combinations and even bonus content. Each consecutive attack you perform without getting hit fills a meter that's divided into thirds. Perform enough combos and you'll earn a new combo; reach the second and third level and you'll unlock making-of movies, artwork, and more. You'll also gain access to superstyle attacks along the way. When you've earned enough style points you can hit the circle button and trigger a short cutscene where Nariko finishes off a foe with creative flair. It's certainly beneficial to learn a few combos, but you can get through the game just fine doing the same few over and over again.

However, you'll need to vary the position you attack from. Some enemies are only vulnerable to certain attack styles and some can be attacked only with a successful block or counter, both of which are tied to the three different stances. As bad guys attack, they'll flash a color that indicates what kind of attack is coming. If it's a speed attack you don't have to do a thing; Nariko will block it on her own. If it's a power attack though, you'll have to quickly press the R1 button to block. If it's red, it's an unblockable attack and you'll need to roll out of the way by moving the right analog stick. Counters are performed by quickly pressing the triangle as an attack is imminent. They're a great way to quickly dispatch an enemy, though they're tough to time when you're surrounded by a few dozen people, all attacking at different moments.

Heavenly Sword keeps things fresh by mixing in a second playable character and a few different play styles. For some of the game you're placed in the role of the lovably quirky Kai, a bizarre catlike girl whose favorite "game" is to shoot bad guys with her crossbow. She can't fight at close range, and can only create separation between herself and the enemy by pushing them off of her. The awkward switch from one camera angle to another that occurs when you go from running to aiming makes it tough to get a shot off, so the levels where Kai's on foot and fighting aren't her best moments. It's good, then, that most of your time spent as Kai has you simply shooting bad guys with the game's enjoyable motion controls. By continuing to hold the fire button you can control Kai's arrow midflight in slow motion by tilting the Sixaxis left, right, up, and down. Nariko has a few levels like this where she mans a cannon and wields a rocket launcher as well. Kai's sections are sometimes a tad too long, but it's quite satisfying to guide an arrow across a level and then land it in a soldier's groin or head.

Overall the game's combat is a good mix of being easy to learn but deep enough that you don't feel like you're just hitting the same two buttons and seeing the same attacks over and over. This is an impressive feat considering how shallow the game's enemy artificial intelligence is. Rather than challenging you with smart bad guys with a wide range of moves, the game simply tries to overwhelm you with numbers. Sure, some are fast, some are strong, and some shoot arrows at you, but none of them exhibit any sort of creativity in their attacks. Even the bosses, who at least attack in new ways, aren't particularly clever and are challenging only because their life bars are seemingly endless. Slightly repetitive or not, it's hard not to have a blast when you're controlling a lone heroine against more than a thousand enemies, all of which are onscreen at once.

Heavenly Sword is elevated by its top-notch presentation. Nariko's attacks are beautifully animated and flow seamlessly from one to the next with only a little slowdown here and there. It's a little disappointing that there's not more visual variety to the soldiers, but the few types featured are all well designed and easy to tell apart. This is important when you're trying to use a certain fighting style to take out a specific enemy in a crowd. The levels are gorgeous and have an almost hand-painted look to them--especially when viewed from afar.

Many games come to a screeching halt when telling their story via cutscenes, but this is where Heavenly Sword excels thanks to is its main characters, which are all wonderfully designed and animated: beautiful, compassionate Nariko; oafish, sympathetic Roach; evil-yet-funny King Bohan (portrayed by Andy Serkis, who played Gollum in Lord of the Rings); and the curious, catlike Kai. The cutscenes are gorgeous, marred only by some lip-synching issues and a frame rate that sometimes stutters at the start. You really get a sense of the characters' personalities just by looking at them and watching them move. A well-written and often surprisingly funny script is brought to life by Hollywood-quality performance from the actors, who fit their respective characters perfectly. The inclusion of English, Spanish, German, French, and Italian voice options ensures that just about everyone can enjoy the performances, too. The music is a mix between orchestral movie-style tracks and more modern-sounding instrumental pieces with an ethnic flair to them.

Add it all up and Heavenly Sword is a fantastic game from start to finish. It's just a shame that it's not longer. The developer made the wise decision to keep the action tight by not including any fetch quests or backtracking, but skilled players will probably finish the game in a little more than six hours, and it probably won't take longer than eight hours for anyone else. There are some DVD-style extras to unlock and you can play it again on "hell mode" once you've beaten it; just don't expect to get much more than a great weekend for your $60. If you're OK with that, you won't be disappointed in Heavenly Sword.

Skate (PS3)

Plenty of skateboarding games have come and gone in the years since the long-running Tony Hawk franchise reinvented the genre. Most failed because they simply attempted to duplicate the arcadelike, fast-moving gameplay of Activision's series. After running unopposed for years, Activision's got some new competition in the form of Skate from Electronic Arts. At times, this simulation-style skating game feels as though it was built from the ground up to be the anti-Tony Hawk, and aside from both games taking place on skateboards, the two don't have a whole lot in common. This is largely thanks to Skate's very cool control system, which puts all of the meaningful controls on the controller's two analog sticks and triggers. It's an awesome system that makes tricks feel more involved and entertaining. Unfortunately, you'll be applying this control scheme to a series of challenges and goals that aren't quite as good, and an extremely unstable frame rate certainly doesn't help, either.

Skate puts your skater movement onto the left analog stick. The right analog stick controls how you move and flip your skateboard to do tricks. For a simple ollie, you hold down on the stick to crouch then snap it up to jump into the air. Kickflips and heelflips are accomplished if you come up slightly left or right of center. Shuvits happen when you hit down to crouch, then roll the stick around to the side and up to the top. These are the basic tricks, but they get significantly more complicated. The triggers are used for your left and right hands, so when you're in the air, you can use these buttons to perform grabs. Once you've grabbed onto the board, you can tweak it around with the right stick for different types of grabs. It's an instantly intuitive system with the depth to keep you going for some time, but it isn't perfect. A lot of the tricks are done in extremely similar ways. So when some goals call for specific tricks, like a nollie 360 flip, you might find yourself attempting the trick again and again, only to have some other trick come out. This gets totally frustrating in spots, especially in S.K.A.T.E. competitions, where you have to duplicate someone else's trick exactly to stay in the game.

Grinding in Skate is as simple as lining yourself up with a rail or curb, getting airborne, and landing on the grindable edge. Well, it sounds simple on paper, anyway. In practice, you'll have to really work to line yourself up because the default camera is a low, off-to-the-side angle meant to duplicate the look of a dude following you on his own board, holding a video camera the whole time. Your skater is large on the screen, meaning he'll block a lot of your view--he doesn't seem to become transparent often enough to let you get a clear view of the action at all times. Also, Skate is very big on timing. The height of your ollies or other tricks is dependent on how long you crouch and how fast you snap the stick up. It'll take some time before you're hitting every rail, flipping in and out, or landing in manuals all over the place. The whole system is also purely skill-based. You don't receive skater statistic boosts, unlock new tricks, or the like. Everything is available right off the bat. The only stat that increases is your own personal skill with the sticks.

There's a loose story to Skate's career mode. It opens with you getting slammed by a bus and going in for surgery. This justifies the way you can reconfigure your skater's face and body type in the typical EA style of analog sliders. Once you're back on your feet, you're out to get noticed, so it's time to start recording footage and winning events. The different goals in the game give you some variety, but you'll have to get good at all of them if you want to get to the top. Because you're trying to get covered by two different skateboarding magazines, you'll have to complete a lot of photo goals, which ask you to perform specific tasks on specific objects. Some of the tasks are simple, like reaching certain point scores, while others will demand that you pull off longer grinds, flip specific tricks into grinds, or land in manuals. You'll also encounter multiskater competitions, such as timed battles for the most points, best trick contests, or slalomlike downhill races. There are also free-form footage goals, where you're given a set of tasks that must be performed within 30 seconds. The catch is that you can do these anywhere, so half of the process is figuring out which part of the city is conducive to your task. Some of them require you to skate in no-skate zones, which are patrolled by security guards who will push you over if they catch you. Some require you to do huge grinds, do a lot of spins, remain in the air for 10 seconds, and so on. The film goals are probably the trickiest ones in the entire game.

As you make your way through the game, you'll open up additional skate spots within the city, including such indoor locations as the Plan B Warehouse and the X Games Stadium. Aside from entering these indoor locations, you can skate around the city without seeing a loading screen. But if you decide to warp right to a location, you'll see some lengthy load screens. The distance that you can warp without loading also seems a little random. Some goals have you skate long rails or cover what doesn't seem like that much ground, but if you try to warp back to the other side of the goal, it'll stop and load. When you're stuck on a goal and trying it again and again, the loading becomes really grating, as do the unskippable menu animations that pop up when you fail a film goal. This all sounds like small stuff, but it really gets magnified when you're stuck trying the same thing over and over.

In addition to the career mode, you can play several multiplayer events, such as jam, which is a timed session that is won by the highest scorer. For these events, the city gets broken down into smaller areas. A couple of jam locations are in fairly small areas, like residential-sized pools. When the game sticks you into these spots and there are four players in the game, it just becomes chaos. This is because there isn't enough room to skate and you're left constantly bumping into other skaters, which isn't much fun at all. You can also play S.K.A.T.E., get into best trick contests, races, and so on. The online performance can be a little spotty and seems to really depend on the connection speeds of the other players, as well as your own. This means that one player with a slow connection speed can bring the whole game down. In a game that's so focused on accurate timing, it's pretty lame to randomly drop into slow motion. But when it's all working, it's decent.

The differences between the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of Skate are a bit of give and take. The PS3 version has slightly better control, solely because its looser analog sticks are more conducive to fast trick snapping. The game has motion control support, which lets you steer by tilting the controller instead of using the left analog stick. It's disabled by default for a reason, as the huge dead zone and imprecise motion makes playing the game practically impossible with it turned on. Skate is also limited to four players online, as opposed to six on the Xbox 360, which can be a bummer in some spots; but considering how crowded some of the areas can get with six skaters, this can be a blessing in disguise. But any points the PS3 version earns are totally negated by its awful frame rate. Whether you're playing alone or online, the game drops frames all over the place when anything starts moving quickly. This is a very timing-oriented game, and having a frame rate this bad really hurts the gameplay.

There is also a community aspect to Skate. You can use a replay editor to capture video footage of your performances or snap screenshots at any point and share them publicly. These can then be viewed through a menu in the game or through the game's Web site, which is nice because the person you want to show your skating exploits to doesn't need a copy of the game to see them. These items can be rated and commented on, which is a sharp idea that expands on the sorts of things that EA has done in the past with Burnout or some of its sports games. The only catch is that, as of this writing, the Web site is sluggish and pretty buggy, making it hard to navigate, as well as see the best footage.

Visually, Skate has a realistic look to it that fits with the overall atmosphere of the game. The skaters look good and the animation is great when it's running smoothly, though a few of the up-close talking segments that show polygonal versions of real-life skaters look a little weird.

Like other sports games, Skate is filled with plenty of sponsored equipment and other product placement. For the most part, it feels fine; getting sponsored by board and shoe companies is an integral part of the game's career mode, and that part never feels too aggressive. But it crosses the line in a few spots, like whenever you meet a pro skater. It shows that skater skating a line and doing some nice tricks, but then it zooms up to give you a very deliberate view of his skateboard, trucks, wheels, and shoes, flashing the sponsor logos on the screen all the while. Also, there's a weird bit of reverse product placement in the game because EA and Adidas teamed up to produce some limited-edition shoes. These are introduced and advertised in the game, complete with promotion codes that get you $50 off them when you beat the skaters who endorse them. It's awfully blatant, but it's actually pretty unique. It helps that the shoes are sort of rad. The game also downloads new ads for billboards and other surfaces as you play, though there aren't enough ads, resulting in some cases where you'll see the same stupid billboard 10 times as you skate up a single street.

The soundtrack is a really weird mix of music that doesn't actually play through most of the game. On the default settings, music is ambient. This means that whenever you get close to a skate-friendly spot where skaters might gather and actually have a radio, you'll start to faintly hear music coming from the direction of the spot. If you like, you can set it to directly play the music, but most of the soundtrack is a little sketchy, and the way the game opens with Booker T & The MG's "Green Onions" every single time you load it up makes you feel like you're turning on some awful Jim Belushi movie rather than getting ready to play a realistic skateboarding game.

Aside from the weird soundtrack, the in-game audio is really great. There are lots of great skateboarding noises, especially the way the wheels skid when you do powerslides or land hard and turn. The game also has something like color commentary, which comes from the invisible kid who's "holding" the in-game camera. He'll call out to other pros as you pass by, congratulate you on good trick lines, comment when you stack and break some bones, or impatiently whine when you set the controller down then walk away. His presence is pretty good and gives the game some personality.

While Skate has a handful of issues that hold it back, it has a ton of potential. It's a solid first start for what hopefully will become a regular franchise. With some more refinement and a few more things to do, this could probably be the best skateboarding game around. It's definitely worth playing, if only to get your hands on the trick system; but if you're stingy with your money, you could probably get enough out of it with a rental.

warhawk (PS3)

Warhawk is a 32-player, multiplayer-only shooter from Sony. It has ties back to another Warhawk, an early game for the original PlayStation that focused on the warhawk itself, a fighter jet that can convert to hover mode and back again. You probably don't remember it, which hardly matters, because the multiplayer focus of the PlayStation 3 Warhawk game leaves it with no real story and no real sense of the war you're fighting. This game has a stripped-down feel, but the exciting gameplay certainly makes up for those feelings. This is blue versus red across multiple modes and maps, in the land or in the air. And it's excellent fun.

The real story of Warhawk isn't about the epic conflict between two opposing sides. It's about how this game has been made available. If you want it immediately, it's a downloadable purchase from the PlayStation Store for $39.99. If you're desperately in need of more things to put on shelves, or if you want a voice-chat device, you can buy the game in stores for the standard $59.99 in a package that comes with a wireless headset, some behind-the-scenes video, and a full manual. There's no functional difference between the two games, so it really comes down to personal preference. The downloadable version does not come with instructions at all, which is sort of messed up. Other games on the PlayStation 3 have had Web browser links built in to load up offsite manuals and things like that, but Warhawk has none. So the only way you'd know that you need to push the L3 button to talk or find out about the zones mode is to fumble around for yourself or go to Sony's site, where it has a downloadable manual available. But even that manual, which comes in the box with the retail version, doesn't explain everything, such as some of the terms used in the ranking screen.

It's a good thing, then, that most of Warhawk is incredibly straightforward. It's easy to jump right into a game using the game's server browser, and there seem to already be plenty of people playing at all hours. If you've ever played something like Battlefield 2 or Star Wars: Battlefront, you'll probably take to Warhawk's brand of team-based multiplayer shooting quickly, as it's a simplified take on that experience. The maps have bases strewn about that your team can capture. Capturing them gives you a place to spawn, or if you're playing in the zones mode, it'll help you earn points toward winning the game. You spawn on foot, with nothing but a lowly pistol and a couple of grenades. But at bases and spawn points, you can usually find a host of weapons. These include an assault rifle, flamethrower, sniper rifle, rocket launcher, and binoculars, some of which you can use to call in air strikes. You'll also find plenty of vehicles, such as jeeps, tanks, and the warhawk itself. And in some fortified areas, you'll find turrets that shoot flak or homing missiles, which are very, very effective against incoming aircraft. All of this balances out nicely because the ground troops can take out vehicles with the homing rockets from the rocket launcher, the turrets can defend base positions against air--but not as well against other vehicles--and the tanks are usually sitting ducks for warhawks to plink away at with swarm missiles or cluster bombs.

One of the major gameplay differences between Warhawk and other similar shooters is that you'll find a ton of aircraft on most of the maps. Sometimes you'll feel as if half of the game's 32-player limit is buzzing around, dogfighting overhead, or attempting to strafe ground targets. This gives it a unique feel, and it's a lot of fun. Warhawk controls well regardless of what you're piloting too. You can play around with controller sensitivity to get things just right, and, if you like, you can fly the warhawk using the tilt sensing of the Sixaxis controller. However, the tilt support never feels responsive enough to be useful in tense situations.

Warhawk comes with five different maps. Before you get all up in arms about how low that number looks, each map can be configured for different game sizes, so there are configurations for small, medium, and large-sized games. Each map also has a dogfight configuration, giving you more warhawks to use. The different configurations make the maps feel totally different, giving you different strategies to work with and so on. This means that playing in an eight-player game can be just as thrilling as a 32-player fracas. There are also multiple modes. Team deathmatch works as you would expect, with control-point captures giving you new places to spawn but no real points benefit. Capture the flag is a standard two-flag CTF mode that puts flags in each team's main base. Zones mode creates colored circles around each base, and the goal is to earn points faster than the other guys by holding more zones than the other team. The zones link together if you hold the right ones and level up your control over them to make the colored circles bigger, which brings in even more points. Lastly, there's a deathmatch mode, which can be fun for dogfights, but this is very much a team-based game, so playing with no team to back you up isn't as much fun. You can also play online with a split-screen, which allows multiple players to play online from the same machine. On top of playing on the Internet, the game has support for LAN games.

Outside of the game, you can chart your progress to look at your rank and medals. You'll earn ribbons for a variety of round-specific accomplishments, such as finishing first on the winning team, getting 10 antiair kills, not shooting your teammates, and so on. Badges and medals also take your global counts into consideration, giving you awards, such as a meritorious service medal. You'll get this award for capturing the flag 100 times, defending 100 zones, capturing 500 zones, and then getting two flag captures in the same game. That's sort of steep, but it certainly gives you something to shoot for as you play. As you rise in rank, you'll unlock additional head, shirt, and pants types for your soldiers, giving you a clear way on the battlefield to see if someone's totally raw or a honed online killing machine.

Warhawk will run in 480p, 720p, or 1080i, and the game looks really nice overall. Its greatest visual feature is that you have a very long draw distance, giving you a clear view of things that are really far away. For example, on one map, which is made up of a series of high islands, you can sit in your base and see turrets moving in bases far, far in the distance. Armed with a sniper rifle, you can practically reach across the entire map and knock fools out. The equipment looks good, and it also blasts apart really well. Exploding warhawks cause burning hunks of metal to fall out of the sky, and it looks great. The game sound is also effective, with good weapon noises and explosions. Warhawk, unlike most online PlayStation 3 games, has voice chat, which comes in handy.

Regardless of how you get it, Warhawk is a great multiplayer shooter and one of the first of its kind to land on the still-new PlayStation 3. It offers just enough content to justify its price tag, but more importantly, it plays well, with just the right mix of tactical considerations and finger-on-the-trigger action. With hooks in there for additional map downloads, it'll be interesting to see how this one develops from here.