-Dave

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Bayonetta is a stylish action game made by SEGA and Hideki Kamiya. The main story surrounds a witch with powers that are extraordinary.  The enemies in the game are angelic and since you character is a witch, well you kind of see where this is going to go. The game itself is an all out action title with hordes of enemies to fight. There are many outlandish finishing moves which are graceful and awe-inspiring. This game has a pace and speed to it that you have to experience; we strongly recommend that you download the demo and try the game. This game is like Devil May Cry with a little Ninja Giaiden and some Afro Samurai mixed in. There is a commonality between these games that you can understand the similarities.  All in all Bayonetta is a good investment and I would recommend the game.

The combat mechanics and game play are stylish and immersive. Kamiya and his development team should be honored for this great game and their contributions to the industry.

The design and game graphics are very immersive and captivating. This game pushes the upper limits of the XBOX 360 and would be a great addition to any game collection. The audio and sound effects could have been thought out a little better. We think that the sound design for this game could have been more relevant to the genre.

The Bayonetta story is about the balance between lightness and darkness.  Long ago there were two clans, the lumen sages and the umbra witches. These two groups balanced out the light and darkness respectivly. The lumen aligned with the god of Paradiso and controlled the power of light. The Umbra channel their power from the demons of inferno, they watched over the power of the darkness.  There was a time when both clans had respect for each other, but a tragic event caused the two clans to enter into a war. At the end of this war the only one left standing was the Umbra witch: Bayonetta.

One of the most interesting things aspect of the story is how the two clans are portrayed. The Umbra witches are not intrinsically evil as much as they are important for the balance and order of the universe.  Basically, the synopsis of the game is it is about Bayonetta killing angelic hordes and legions. However, the feel of doing such things doesn’t make you feel evil or diabolical. This is what the life purpose of Bayonetta.

After playing through the game you will come to the conclusion that she is one of the coolest female characters.  The game highlights her sexuality at every opportunity possible moment.  There are some areas of the story that certainly do leave room for improvement, like the plot. The story is kind of all over the place and at times it feels like a loose translation from some Japanese manga story versus a well crafted interconnected sequence of storylines. Other games like Modern Warfare 2 and Mass Effect have a much better conceived storyline and perspective.

The combat system is that of any typical action game. The face buttons control punch, kick and fire.  The right trigger button controls causes Bayonetta to dodge in any direction. This is seriously an important feature to master when playing the game.

Learning the timing to dodge attacks is important. This will help your survivability and overall mastery of the game.  There is a feature called witch time and it is implemented very well. It enables the user of witch time to move Bayonetta at incredible speeds while your enemy is trapped in a sluggish modality.

Bayonetta also has some nasty tricks up her sleeve.  The witch can equip weapons on her hands and feet as well giving her a propensity for maximum damage. There are awesome weapons to discover going through this game like the, demonic katana, clawed gauntlets and ice skates. The glow from the katana is cool and the overall flexibility of the game is a joy to play. There are a mega amount of combos and at first they might seem overwhelming. It does take a few rounds of gameplay to settle on what would for your style of playing. Just pounding one button will work, however, not at the advanced levels.  My favorite types of attacks are the Torture attacks. Depending on the type of angle you use these kinds of attacks on will result in many different outcomes.  I also like summoning a Guillotine and pulverizing angelic opponents (just kidding, god forgive me).

The replayability of this game is very high as you earn halos to buy items and weapons at the ingame shop called “Gates of Hell”. There is plenty to buy in Bayonetta from the dealer Rodin, he is the demonic arms dealer. There are restorative lollipops and battle accessories that make sense of the combination moves in the game.

There is a far share of boss battles in the game as well. All of which are most entertaining. Bayonetta will not only face bosses that are her own size, but she’ll also go up against “Cardinal Virtues”, agents of Paradiso. These are agents that represent the most powerful extensions of divine will and authority.  These showdowns are not only entertaining, but also demonstrate Bayonetta’s amazing finishing moves. In some of these moves she summons the demons from inferno to end the battle. These climax events are similar to the attacks employed on lesser angles, but they occur on a much grander scale.

<Spoilers!!!!!!!*************************************************************>

It is very much worthwhile to point out that the final climatic moments of the game are very well worth all of the necessary achievement whoring.  I have played thousand of video games and I truly found the end boss battle extraordinary. By the closing sequences if you are not a advocate then you need a personality transplant.

I enjoyed my time with Bayonetta and would recommend the game to anyone who liked Devil may Cry, Ninja Giaden and or Dead Space.

Key Game Features:

• String together deadly combos and special attacks to bring down angelic enemies, including small minions and gigantic behemoths
• Rely on Scarborough Fair, a collection of four enchanted guns, plus shotguns, bazookas and fiery claws
• Retrieve a variety of other weapons from fallen enemies
• Fill up the Magic gauge and unleash your powers to banish enemies to hell
• Use linked combo attacks and Bayonetta‘s hair to call demonic forces to your aid in battle
• Transform into a panther, bat or other life form depending on the circumstances
• Employ the Iron Maiden, Guillotine and other gruesome devices to finish off monstrous foes
• For 1 player

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As the player, you will have to choose which side you are on. Whichever side you choose will change how Act 2 is played out. While the game officially has 51 levels, you will only play 39 after making your choose of sides. An additional playthrough on the opposite side will be required to play the other levels.

Just like the original Marvel Ultimate Alliance, you earn experience points to level up your heroes by defeating enemies. All player-controlled powers are maxed out by level 60, but the support abilities will take a bit longer since they require collection of orbs to update. Instead of being able to choose which powers you like to use as you did in the first game you are given four powers that can only be upgraded and not switched out.

Although the four-man fighting style is primarily the same as it was in the first Ultimate Alliance, Vicarious Visions incorporated powerful combination attacks for each character to perform with one another which they have dubbed fusions. There are three types of fusion: clearing takes out an ever growing area from a central location, guided gives you control of the heroes as they run around the room doing damage, and targeted which focuses on only one enemy, but is by far the most powerful. There are almost 300 fusion attacks that can be used with any combination of characters. Using fusions will make the many boss battles easier.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 has 21 playable characters that can be unlocked throughout the game, but you should also be on the lookout for collectable audio files, power-ups, and character unlocks. With the collection of 5 of each character unlocks (Asgardian Runes, M’kraan Crystal, and Gamma Regulator) you will gain three additional and very powerful characters. HINT HINT

Multiplayer can played over Xbox Live or on the same system through the same three acts as the single player mode. However, remember that teamwork is the key. Fusions can not be performed with a desired character if that character is being controlled by another player unless both players press the button to trigger it.

The trivia game and simulation rooms from the first game make an appearance. But instead of each character having their own simulation there are only 12 types like protect, destroy, survival, etc.

One playthrough on legendary takes about 15 hours since you will have to play the game at least twice to get all the collectables and levels. Expect a gamerscore of approximately 670 for both playthroughs. Overall, I have you give high marks to Vicarious Visions for creating an enjoyable game.

Tim Fischer
Managing Editor
Gamertag: porkroll1711

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The campaign starts with your ODST squad preparing to jump into New Mombasa before the slipstream rupture that occurs in the first half of Halo 2. While falling to the city, your team is diverted from the main objective and scattered. The Rookie is the first person you control in the darkened city. Throughout the 10 levels you will jump back and forth between him and the other members of you squad as the story relays what happened to them after the slipstream event. Each squad members’ tale takes place at a different time of day in the game with the Rookie having to find the clues to what happened to them all.

Keep in mind that whoever you are playing at the time is human; you are not a Spartan. Your melee is not as powerful and you can not duel wield like the Master Chief. Run and gun is not for ODST. Stealth is a huge factor in this game. Sometimes it is best to let the patrols stroll on by.

While the other squad members’ levels take place during the daytime, the Rookie is mostly at night. This is when the Visr becomes handy. Instead of an onscreen map like the other Halo games, this time you have a night vision type visor that relays information in colored outlines. Red for Covenant forces, green for allies and yellow for stations you can interact with.

Your weapons do not vary much from the other Halo titles except for the suppressed SMG and the hand gun. Halo 2 and 3 weakened the hand gun so much it was usually tossed by most players as soon as possible. Now the gun is your go to weapon. It’s accurate and powerful. Keep it handy and you will destroy the Grunts and Jackals.

As you progress through the game you have to discover why the Covenant is still in New Mombasa. There are stations that will glow bright yellow when you have your Visr on. These stations will give to one of 30 audio downloads that tell the story of a young girl named Sadie who is trying to find her father during the attack. Without giving away too much of the plot Sadie discovers the other reason the Covenant attacked Earth. Do your best to find the audio downloads. It really does make the story that much better.

The multiplayer mode Firefight is kind of like Gears of War 2 Horde mode. Four waves per round of Covenant attack up to four players. What makes ODST different is that the skulls from Halo 3 become active as each wave is defeated. Even on easy Firefight can become very difficult in the later rounds.

One playthrough on normal net me 535 gamerscore and took almost 8 hours to complete. It’s not a long campaign, but testing yourself in legendary and in the Firefight mode will guarantee you play this Halo 3: ODST for a long time.

Tim Fischer

Managing Editor

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The graphics in this release are sincerely amazing. I have played many video games and it seems like the developers really learned from their mistakes from the first game. In a capture the flag round I noticed the sun changed positions and the flags were blowing in the wind so naturally it was scary. The smoke and explosions were beyond realistic. At times I had to wonder how they managed to upscale the game so much using the same hardware. When you have an opportunity to play this game you will see magnificent vistas of desert landscapes and winter maps where you can track you enemy by looking at their foot prints in the snow.

There are over 15 vehicles which makes crossing some of the large maps real easy. The newest vehicle is the ATV. It is a four wheel motorcycle and is really fast. The most interesting aspect is how agile it is when dodging enemy fire. Despite the many vehicles in the game, the controls are really simple with the exception of the helicopter. Just like the original Bad Company, the helicopter controls are not straight forward, but once you have mastered it, then the helicopter becomes the weapon of choice.

Overall, the lethality of the ammo and guns have increased significantly. Make no mistake in the multiplayer game, it is much less forgiving and you will be killed with less rounds firing into you. I hardly give any game a full five stars, but I was so impressed with the technology, upgrades, guns and maps that I must give this game a full five star rating. Good job EA/DICE.

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Zombie Apocalypse
Genre: Shooter
Release Date: 9/23/2009
Developer: Nihilistic Software
Publisher: Konami Digital Entertainment Inc.

Game Rating: M (Mature)
Blood and Gore
Language
Violence

Microsoft Points 800

What can I say about zombies other than anything with them is always a good thing. Nihilistic got this game right starting with the controls. The gameplay is simplistic with straightforward playability. Zombie Apocalypse has a natural pickup and play element despite a small learning curve to the game,

There is no real background as to what caused the zombie infection or a clear escape path, just survival. The graphics are good, but the real innovation within this game is the moving scenery that can destroy, damage and kill your zombie horde. If used properly you can make the background of dangerous moving objects work for you in helping to dispatch zombies.

The zombies get progressively harder to beat over time and there is more of a balance to weapons and zombies in the game than others in the genre. There are many weapons you get to use like flamethrowers, shotguns, chain guns, and, of course, teddy bears that say “I’m stuffed with love and C4”. There are some funny comments from some of the characters when clearing out a level . I won’t spoil the fun, but you have to hear some of their comments to believe them.

Multiplayer gives up some achievement points just for playing online, and completing levels gets easier with the help of up to four people playing online in co-op.  At times slogging through the game and killing so many zombies may seem to be mountainous, but killing zombies for me is always fun and never gets old. Be warned that the content in this game is not recommended for kids and is lengthy. So if you are looking to add some quick gamerscore, it will not happen on this game.

Online Interactions
Not Rated by the ESRB
Players 1-4
Co-op 1-4
HDTV 720p
In-game Dolby Digital
Online Multiplayer 2-4
Co-op 1-4
Leaderboards

Game Achievements:

Environmental Awareness (5 points)
Kill a zombie using an environmental hazard in any game mode

Gas Powered (5 points) Complete an entire arena, getting every kill with the Chainsaw

Gun Shop (5 points)
Kill at least one zombie with each weapon type in any game mode

More the Merrier (10 points)
Kill 10 or more zombies at the same time in any game mode

Socialite (5 points)
Play in an online multiplayer game

Tour of the City (15 points)
Complete each arena at least once in the same game in any game mode

Can’t Touch This (20 points)
Rack up a 100x multiplier in any game mode

Friends in Low Places (20 points)
Save 25 survivors in any game mode

Interior Decorator (20 points)
Kill 25 zombies in any game mode using environmental hazards

A Week To Live (25 points)
Complete 7 days in any game mode without dying

Hotter Than Hell (25 points)
Complete the final day of the “7 Days of Hell” unlockable mode

Anniversary of the dead (45 points)
Complete the Final Day, in either Single or Multiplayer, and finish the game

Multiplayer action: Spill zombie guts side-by-side with up to four players in online or local multiplayer.

Devastating weapons: Burn, saw, and dismember the undead with ten devastating weapons.

Fatal hazards: Butcher the walking dead using jet turbines, wood chippers, and other fatal hazards.

Survival strategy: Survive over 50 stages of brutal carnage in seven brain-splattering locations.

Bonus game modes: Re-live the apocalypse with seven challenging unlockable game modes

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Actually, writing about Blood Harvest reminds me of something that may be even better. I’m playing with a group of survivors who’ve yet to make the desperate run across the fields to get to the farmhouse, and I’m trying to explain that the trick is to just get a move on. We get there, get organized and start the clock for the rescue to arrive as soon as we bloody can. It will only get worse. They seem to get it. We drop into the grass and scarper. Sheer chaos. I make my way to the farmhouse, and only then do I turn around to realize everyone I’m with has climbed on top of the enormous pile of hay-bales in the distance and are trying to hold them off there. And I’m alone in the house as the waves start to move in…

No – mentioning that reminds me of something else. It’s right at the start of a level. We’ve opened the door to find a med-kit in the room down the corridor. Now, we’ve each got a med-kit, so we haven’t space to carry the leftover. However, about fifty or so meters on, all hell breaks loose, and I end up covered with vomit, pummeled by a mob and generally taken to pieces. I use my med-kit and weigh the odds… I know there’s one back there. It’s really near. And since we’re playing versus, there’s a chance our opposition may not paying attention if I break from the group to run back and get it (the omnipresent AI director would be less sympathetic).

An extra health-pack can be the difference between making it to the next safe room or not. The guys are pressing on but… well, I can make it. I know I can. So I head off through the corridors, on edge, knowing if I spot the infected first, I can take them. I just need to stay calm. Every turn stretches out on the way there. It only gets worse on the way back, as I know they must have noticed I’ve separated from the pack by now. But all is well until I actually have the group in sight – at which point the infected spring a trap and the party is torn apart even as it’s brought back together. By cheery stupid human greed I… well, I was the idiot who got everyone killed in the zombie film. I felt a bit like Judas.

You’re mostly able to revive fallen comrades. Mostly.

Except, I’ve misunderstood, because you meant what’s my favorite moment in the whole of the game. I thought you meant the last time I played. I’d have to think harder about the other one. Left 4 Deed’s a zombie-powered collision between Gauntlet and DOOM, and it generates stories at that kind of rate. In any given mission, someone will mess up or excel in a memorable and amusing manner. Especially the former: in a real way, someone making the unfortunate step of Disturbing The Witch is the late-naughtiest social faux pas equivalent of Warrior Shot The Food.

Of all the co-operative shooters that have come out recently, Left 4 Dead is the one that goes for it hardest. In fact, it goes for it so hard it kind of goes through co-operative games and out the other side – but I’ll get to their eventually. Rather than a traditional linear game, Left 4 Dead’s content is divided into four campaigns, set around four traditional zombie-apocalyptic scenarios (hospitals, airports, farms and small towns). You can go through each one in an hour or so on a standard difficulty level, with the time increasing if you up it to expert – especially if you get stuck on the ludicrously violent sieges which close each one.

While you can play them by yourselves with three pretty-efficient bots alongside you (The Chaos Engine is another reference that comes to mind when playing – and you can take that as a suggestion of what you should do now, modders), the real heart is coming in with three friends and talking nonsense over voice-chat with one another. While 4-5 hours of pure-play content (i.e. no significant cut-scenes) is about standard for a modern FPS – whether we like it or not – the real value of the game is brought by what’s probably the most innovative part of Left 4 Dead: the AI director.

The AI director manipulates the horror. While his changing of the sounds is a boon to atmosphere, the director’s real strength is in mixing up the allocation of bad guys (and equipment). This means that each time you play through a level, it’s an unpredictable experience. Yes – there are going to be themes throughout (mock-naively noting “Oh man! Look out! There’s more zombies here!” is one of the standard things to say), but in terms of what comes when, it mixes up. You really get a sense of a malevolent personality behind the attacks, which does much to increase the tension and zombie-horror atmosphere.

For example, the more you slow down and take your time, the more likely the director just gets annoyed with you and spawns another wave of infected as a message – though never in sight, in my experience, and always from a logical position. As you amp the difficulty up to expert, you learn to expect open cruelty like one of the almost-indestructible Tanks arriving just when you’re on your last legs or the Witch – She Who Must Not Be Disturbed – sitting right by the exit, quietly weeping. Which inevitably results in you quietly weeping too.

But the real wickedness comes to light in the versus mode, where you team up with the director and play leading actors in his horrific drama. This is the co-op plus – a totally asymmetrical experience that I suspect will dominate online play. One team plays the survivors. The other plays the infected. In the normal game you get to see the Boomers (enormous fatties whose fluids, if spread on the survivors, will cause a new wave of normal-infected to home in on them), Hunters (prowling, leaping creatures who knock survivors off their feet and slash at them) and Smokers (whose prehensile tongues can grab people at distance and drag them into the shadows). In versus, you get to be them, and work out brutally Machiavellian ways to make the survivors’ day as bad as possible. When one team gets to the next safe house (or, just as likely, is wiped out), everyone swaps and plays the other side. You score points by how well you did, and by the end of the campaign a winner is found. It’s deeply compelling. And occasionally you get to be the Tank.

It’s almost total win. Valve’s new matchmaking system – where you avoid a server browser and just start games – has a few teething problems. PC owners used to more control tend to feel aggrieved when they consider a substandard server and, when something goes wrong, it’s tricky to work out what’s going on. I’ve had a few problems with the director, such as spawning a Tank in an inappropriate place – but considering how much it does, that’s only been terribly rare.

To be honest, pretty much everyone will.

It’s also a game which is incredibly certain what it is. It doesn’t make any apologies for its extreme take on the genre. Like Serious Sam before it, it’s not afraid of a less-is-more approach to design and a more-is-more approach to enemies. If you believe shooters should be slow and tactical and zombie horror should be Resident Evil, you’re going to be alienated. Oh, and while this isn’t anything to 360 owners, those PC gamers who haven’t gone voice-chat yet need to get with the times. Not being able to yelp at your friends will get you torn apart by the undead pretty fast.

Obviously enough, it’s worth stressing there’s not much here for the single player. But I think the associate oft-stated standard caveat – “as a teamwork game, it’s no fun playing with random people” – is far less true than you’d expect. In fact, throwing a group of strangers in a strange situation and then one of them acting strange is the kind of random chaos that Left 4 Dead thrives upon. Things going wrong is glorious. And when things go gloriously wrong, it’s the sort of thing you happily blow 500-word intros on. Left 4 Dead is the zombie apocalypse trapped safely inside your computer. Take a holiday in their misery.

In short, Left 4 Dead is another deeply professional, personality-filled and progressive take on the shooter from Valve. In a cultural landscape that has as many zombie touchstones as ours, it takes something special to make them shamble appealingly, and Left 4 Dead, both literally and metaphorically, makes them run. In this new co-op landscape, it’ll be interesting to see whether anyone can catch up.

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Placed in this no-win situation in DICE’s latest console-oriented take on the Battlefield series, you find yourself filling the role of the improbably named Preston Marlow (no doubt inspired by DICE’s two favorite English branches of Little Chef). This unassuming, down-to-earth rookie is joined on his adventures by three rather clueless but usefully invincible Bad Company squadmates: Sarge, Sweetwater and Haggard. Afforded precious little respect by your superiors, when things don’t quite go to plan, you and your knuckle-headed trio decide to chase a trail of mercenary gold in the misguided belief that they’ll be able to bag all this tasty loot for themselves.

Set across seven sprawling campaign missions, the single player portion of Bad Company is an unexpected treat. Building on the sense of open-ended freedom we’ve come to expect from the Battlefield series for years, DICE has finally managed to distill all the good ideas of its multiplayer-focused titles to often breathtaking effect. The key weapon in distinguishing Bad Company from the legion of  first person shooters is evidently its beautiful and versatile Frostbite engine. By offering the level designers immense scope in so many areas, it’s the first shooter to emerge in a long time that demonstrates a significant evolution of the genre.

For a start, the pre-release boast about “90 per cent destructibility” isn’t that far from the truth. Not having paid an awful lot of attention to the hype, it was quite a shock to discover that you can’t simply duck behind walls, trees and other cover points and expect to be able to hide from an incoming missile like you’ve been able to do in pretty much every FPS ever. In Bad Company, the chances are that the tree you were hiding behind will fall on top of you, or building you ducked into will be reduced to a hollow shell, while you peer ruefully through an enormous cloud of brick dust and smoke to get your bearings and find your next tenuous cover point. This, of course, has major implications when you’re on the offensive, too. Finally, you can flush out enemies from their sneaky camping positions, knowing full well that a well-placed grenade or rocket will cause pandemonium. Gone are the days of ridiculously impregnable sandbags, fences and thin brick walls, replaced by a much more physical environment that you can blow the crap out of.

You can’t raze buildings to the ground, but you can have a pretty good go.

Just as significant is the Frostbite engine’s ability to render vast, sprawling, vivid environments that boast arguably the most detailed, convincing outdoor scenes on a console title to date. Significantly, that famed Battlefield freedom has finally been translated into a coherent single player campaign, where your choice of route can have a distinct bearing on your chances of success. Governed by a linear succession of objectives, the route you take to get there can often be genuinely up to you. Be it stealthily on foot, sniping everything from afar or storming the gates in a tank, you simply use whatever hardware’s at your disposal and set about taking down everyone in your way, in whichever way you can. With gunships and motorboats occasionally upping the ante further still, the moments when Bad Company is firing on all cylinders are thrillingly epic.

Wisely, Bad Company never takes itself too seriously, either, avoiding the inevitable ‘So Macho’ territory of four super-serious steroid-pumped leathernecked marine jocks Hooyah-ing their way through another appallingly scripted journey into cliche-ridden tedium. Full of surprisingly warm humor, you’re never left in any doubt that this lot are in the Bad Company ranks for a very good reason, though at no stage does the storyline descend into parody, either. It’s a fine line that DICE successfully negotiates. It’s a fool’s (gold) errand where the fun comes from seeing what ludicrous scenario they can stumble upon next rather than yet another eye-rolling save-the-world trudge into sterility.

With so much experience of crafting Battlefield titles down the years, it’s no surprise that everything feels exceptionally polished. Whether you’re steaming along in an APC, piloting a helicopter or dodging tank shells in a speedboat, the handling is always intuitive and satisfying. Likewise, the multitude of weapons feel (and sound) absolutely spot-on. In a genre so saturated of late, it’s the little things that often jar, but in practically every sense, Bad Company feels like the product of a developer inspired to make something that pushes things forward.

That said, in the process of making bold decisions, there are a few controversial choices that DICE has made which might not gain universal acclaim. The most obvious is the curious, bold decision to spawn players back into the single player game, as if you’ve got infinite lives. Evidently a legacy of its multiplayer roots, there’s an inescapable sense that you’re cheating your way through the game. Safe in the knowledge that you’ll simply respawn a few paces back, you’ll continually chalk off a few enemies, get blown up and run back to continue the battle – except on a few time-sensitive, mission-critical occasions when the game deems it necessary to enforce checkpoints if you fail.

Near-instant respawning is a design decision which certainly cuts down on re-loading time (and a fair amount of frustration), but it does smack of an idea based on fixing a lack of balancing than anything. The truth is, if the game didn’t respawn you, it would be mercilessly difficult and almost certainly very frustrating, so it’s hard not to consider it a controversial decision. Equally questionable is your ability to endlessly heal yourself by doing nothing more than injecting yourself with some sort of magic potion. Fair enough, recharging health and endless medipacks are an equally ludicrous game mechanic, but it does feel faintly bizarre to have to constantly press L1/LB followed by the right trigger/R2 in the heat of battle. Frankly, given the option of a cheating health restoring fudge, recharging health does the exact same job without constantly requiring the player to juggle equipment when you’d rather have your weapon to hand.

There’s also a sense that the enemy AI isn’t especially dynamic or adaptive – just irritatingly accurate. Having completed the game on the hard difficulty setting, it’s especially noticeable, with enemies capable of picking you off with unerring accuracy the split second you move into their line of sight from improbable distances (interestingly, the problem is still apparent on Medium). Somewhat disappointingly, there’s never any evidence of teamwork on their part, with no big chases ensuing, or surprise flanking – just a continual procession of entrenched enemy to pick off one by one. Squad AI, too, is often noticeably inert, with frequent instances of your team mates failing to take the initiative in glaringly obvious situations. Worse still, despite your squaddies being specialists in different areas, there are a number of occasions when the game still forces you to deal with situations that they would have logically dealt with. The sum total of this inherent lack of flexibility is that the further you progress, the more predictable and transparent the whole experience becomes.

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