Disaster: Day of Crisis Review

Wielding more Wii Remote-waggling moves than you can shake a quake at, Disaster's lack of clear gameplay focus has resulted in a game that is competent at best and never compelling.

In Disaster: Day of Crisis, spiky-haired protagonist Ray has to overcome floods, fires, a hurricane, an earthquake, a tsunami, two volcanic eruptions, and even an attack from a bear. And there are as many different gameplay styles in Disaster as there are natural calamities. Practically every Wii Remote-waggling gimmick dreamed up for the Wii (so far) has been thrown into the mix, resulting in a game that's unfocused and scatterbrained.
If you think the laundry list of natural disasters Ray faces in Disaster sounds like a pastiche of bad Hollywood movies, you'd be spot-on. The game certainly has cinematic aspirations, with its over-the-top story told through long and frequent cutscenes interspersed amongst the action. And not only are there enough calamities to send Roland Emmerich into fits of ecstasy, but there's also a terrorist threat: Ex-Marine and now rescue team member Ray has to deal with a group of disgruntled army veterans who have stolen two nuclear warheads. Not that our heroic Ray cares much about that. His main motivation throughout Disaster is to rescue the sister of his dead rescue team partner from the terrorists. The game's dialogue is cheesier than a wheel of cheddar, and the big set pieces are straight-up Michael Bay fever dreams, but it is this relentless absurdity that lifts Disaster's story to "so bad it's good" material. After all, if you don't think an attack chopper getting taken down by a tsunami or our hero getting attacked by a bear as he's trying to escape a volcanic explosion is cool, then you need to redefine your sense of awesome.

What's not so awesome is the constant chopping and changing when it comes to gameplay. Part on-rails shooter, part arcade racer, and part a collection of Wii Remote-based minigames, Disaster is a disjointed experience that has some competent sections but no compelling ones. There are several good concepts here that are woefully underutilised--victims of Disaster's everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach. The most apparent one is Ray's health system. In addition to having the typical hit points and stamina bar, the system features a heart-rate meter and a lung indicator. If you run too much, Ray's heart rate increases, forcing him to stop. Hanging around in smoky environments will cause Ray's lungs to gradually degrade, and you'll have to find an area with clear air or risk having Ray collapse. Neither of these features is used to any effect in the game; the only time you'll need to be mindful of the lung indicator is late in the game in a level that's set in a smoky forest. The heart rate meter is even less relevant, because at no time will you need to worry about Ray running out of puff.
Most of your time in Disaster is dedicated to its on-rails shooter side, which has a Time Crisis vibe to it thanks to the ability to take cover from enemy fire. Taking cover by pressing the Z button on the Nunchuk makes you invulnerable to enemy fire, although large explosions (such as those from RPG-wielding baddies) can still hurt because of their splash damage. Aiming is as simple as pointing the Wii Remote at the screen, while reloading is done by shaking the Nunchuk. You can carry four different weapons into battle, which can be selected on the fly using the remote's D-pad. Weapon variety isn't a strong point--while there are more than 15 to choose from, many of those are just slight variations (such as firing speed) of the same weapon. Shooting sections are easy for the most part since red reticles will appear on enemies when they're about to fire (once again, like in Time Crisis). And just like in every other light-gun-based on-rails shooter, enemies don't seem to care much about self-preservation and will often stand in the open waiting for you to pop out and shoot them.
When you're not shooting, you'll be navigating disaster-ruined locales, avoiding dangers and helping out any survivors you find in your path. It's here that Disaster's mountain of mixed gameplay comes in, throwing in new controls seemingly every few minutes, many of which get used only once in the entire game. Running away from a raging fire in a subway, for example, requires you to rapidly waggle the remote and Nunchuk. Avoiding obstacles while being swept away in a flash flood sees you having to quickly wave the remote left or right. Using a parachute has the remote and Nunchuk acting as steering toggles to change the angle of descent. There are plenty of these events in Disaster, and none of them are tough. Dealing with survivors is handled in the same minigame style--running across a stranded person in Disaster starts one of several different games. One requires you to wash away dirt from wounds by pointing the remote at the affected areas and then to wrap the injuries in bandages by rapidly twirling the Nunchuk joystick. Another sees you mimicking CPR by rapidly waving the remote down in time with a person's heartbeat. Some are as simple as waving the remote once to reach out to people hanging from ledges or rapidly pressing the A button to lift a heavy object off a victim. All of these actions have to be performed within a set time limit, but the game is extremely forgiving, and you can simply try again if time runs out. The only challenge is in finding the survivors, because some are more difficult to reach than others.

Finally, Disaster also dips its toes into arcade driving. In several instances Ray commandeers a vehicle in order to catch or avoid bad guys or to flee from natural hazards, such as the blast wave from a volcano's explosion. These driving scenes are controlled by holding the remote sideways and using it to steer--the 2 button is for accelerating, 1 is for braking, and A is for handbrake turns. This control scheme doesn't allow for much finesse, so most driving sections are either too easy or too frustrating (particularly since the cars Ray drives have a laughable tendency to flip over at the slightest bump).
Disaster is not a great-looking game, even for the Wii. Textures and environments are rather bland, which is a pity since the game could have looked much more vibrant with all the explosions you'll encounter. Character models are fairly lacklustre and are more reminiscent of late-era PlayStation 2-quality graphics than the sharper, more vibrant visuals of many Wii games. Sound is also poor, particularly when it comes to the unconvincing effects you'll hear. The sound of Ray's shoes is particularly annoying--it sounds as though he's wearing tap shoes most of the time, and the awful clacking noise when his boots hit concrete is certain to drive you batty.
That's not to say the game is all bad in the looks department. Some scenes of immense destruction--such as buildings collapsing practically on top of Ray--are impressive. But that's the problem with Disaster: Day of Crisis. The good is generally overshadowed by the mediocre, leaving you with a game that has potential but never comes close to realising it. It's fun in parts, but as a whole, Disaster is no earth-shattering experience.

By Randolph Ramsay, GameSpot

Rise of the Argonauts Review

Jason spends too much time talking and not nearly enough time fighting in this Greek mythology-inspired action-RPG.

Loosely based on the same Greek myth that inspired the 1963 movie Jason and the Argonauts, Rise of the Argonauts is an action-oriented role-playing game in which you assume the role of King Jason of Iolcus and go in search of the legendary Golden Fleece. All manner of monsters stand between you and your prize, and doing battle with them is a lot of fun. The same can't be said for all of the time you have to spend wandering around and talking to other characters, unfortunately, and the wildly inconsistent frame rate makes even the stop-motion special effects in the aforementioned movie look silky smooth by comparison.

Rise of the Argonauts gets off to a shaky start. The assassination of Jason's bride on their wedding day in the intro sequence ensure that the story is instantly compelling, but poor voice acting, awkward camera angles, questionable animation (Jason negotiating stairs is a must-see for all the wrong reasons), and numerous visual quirks waste no time in conspiring against it. Furthermore, there's not much combat early on, so much of your time is spent trying to navigate Jason's labyrinthine palace and conversing with guards who, save for their different-colored uniforms, all look identical. Iolcus, like the handful of other locations you'll visit after acquiring the Argo, affords very few opportunities for exploration, but it still manages to be confusing enough in its design that you need to refer to the crudely drawn map to locate mission objectives in a timely fashion.
The high point of Rise of the Argonauts is undoubtedly the combat; Jason is skilled in the use of swords, spears, and maces, and he carries one of each as well as a shield at all times. The controls are uncomplicated and responsive, and it's good that they're the same no matter which weapon you're wielding, because you're encouraged to switch between them on the fly. None of the enemies are particularly intelligent, but they're varied enough that you need to employ different weapons and strategies to get the better of them. Your spear can be used to keep overly aggressive enemies at a distance, while your mace is a good choice for destroying the shields of enemies attempting to hide behind them, for example. Putting your own indestructible shield to good use is crucial early on, but as you progress you become much more powerful and can spend more time on the offensive.
Interestingly, you need to go into the options menu if you want any kind of heads-up display for your health during combat. By default, you're supposed to look for visual clues such as blood on the clothing of Jason and his allies to know when they're in trouble, but the combat is so fast-paced that this isn't always possible. Adding the HUD makes it much easier to know when Jason's health is low, though it's not always important because, in keeping with his mythological status, he's a tough guy to keep down. When your health drops to zero you don't die; rather, you enter a "state of grace" in which the screen blurs and you have 10 seconds or so to avoid taking any more damage before you regenerate around half of your health. You'll die if you sustain a single hit during that time, but there are very few enemies who can keep up as you frantically run and roll around.

There are a number of ways in which you become a more formidable fighter as the story progresses. You'll be joined by a handful of allies who will fight alongside you two at a time, you'll be able to add more powerful weapons and armor to your arsenal, and you'll learn new abilities by gaining favor with the gods Ares, Apollo, Athena, and Hermes. Each of the four gods has a skill tree composed of around 25 different "aspects" arranged into tiers so that more powerful ones become available only late in the game. The aspects vary a great deal and include both passive abilities and god powers that must be triggered manually in combat. Passive abilities include things like regenerating health anytime you kill an enemy, doing more damage to shields, and making your allies more powerful. God powers, which are fun but rarely needed outside of the most challenging difficulty mode, include temporary effects such as increased damage, explosions, and the ability to turn enemies into stone.
To purchase any given aspect you need to earn enough favor with the appropriate god to unlock it, which can be an interesting challenge in itself. The most obvious way to earn favor with gods is by dedicating to them any deeds you've accomplished. You can do this at shrines scattered throughout the world or, less elegantly, via an option in the pause menu. When you dedicate a deed to one of the gods, you earn an amount of favor proportional to the scale of your accomplishment. Settling a dispute among two traders is unlikely to impress in the same way that lopping off the heads of 25 enemies is, for example. The second way to curry favor with a god is by selecting dialogue choices that are clearly labeled as being appreciated by them. This can make the act of choosing dialogue a mechanical one if you care more about pleasing a specific god than you do about your interaction with whomever you're talking to, but the conversations feel so unnatural anyway that this is as good a way as any to get through them quickly.
It's unfortunate that so much of your time in Rise of the Argonauts is spent in conversation, because much of the dialogue is poorly written and the voice acting is even worse. It's conceivable that one is the victim of the other, but certainly neither deserves any credit for keeping the story compelling. Even on the rare occasions that the script and the actors work well together, poor sound design results in unnatural pauses and in volume levels that compete with background noise or have you reaching for your TV remote. The lack of believable expressions on characters' faces doesn't help matters, nor do the load screens that frequently appear at the most inopportune times--occasionally so quickly after a piece of dialogue that there's some doubt as to whether or not the character talking was even allowed to finish.

To say that Rise of the Argonauts has pacing issues would be an understatement of Olympian proportions; so much of your time is spent running around and talking to people that combat feels like a rare treat rather than a focus of the game. It's a real shame that getting to the end of this adventure is as much a test of patience as it is a test of skill, because the combat gets increasingly satisfying as your arsenal of moves and equipment grows. It's true that only boss encounters will pose any real challenge on the default difficulty setting toward the end, but by then that feels appropriate because you're wielding godlike weapons and powers that can literally call down lightning from the heavens. With a greater emphasis on combat and fewer technical shortcomings, Rise of the Argonauts could have been easy to recommend. As it is, though, this is a great story poorly told.

By Justin Calvert, GameSpot

King's Bounty: The Legend Review

King's Bounty is a great modern rendition of an old-fashioned formula.

One thing you can say for King's Bounty: The Legend is that it fares a lot better than most resurrections of old games. While these digitalized archaeological digs generally reveal that you wouldn't want to go home again even if you could (Defender of the Crown, anyone?), the revival of New World Computing's fondly remembered role-playing/strategy hybrid is a vast improvement upon its 1990 predecessor. While King’s Bounty may not be the most revolutionary game of 2008, its refined gameplay makes it a treasure worth hoarding.
Actually, about the only fair negative comment you could make about King's Bounty is that there isn't really anything new here. Just about everything feels like a rip-off of Heroes of Might and Magic. As with that long-lived Ubisoft franchise, the core of this game is all about taking on the role of a hero in a solo campaign (there is no multiplayer option) and guiding parties of mercenaries across a real-time map to fight turn-based battles on hex grids. A strong RPG flavor is granted through character creation, which allows you to choose from warrior, paladin, and mage classes and then trick out your avatar with skills, artifacts, weapons, armor, spells, and assorted other Gygaxian accoutrements. You then explore the huge medieval fantasy world of Darion in the service of King Mark the Wise, plying the trade of a treasure hunter. A story slowly develops regarding the king's older brother and the standard evil threat to the continued existence of, well, everything, although you don't have to pay much attention to it. Essentially, you just wander around doing good deeds, guiding an icon of your hero through the usual D&D-inspired landscape to slay monsters, loot treasure, scoop up skill runes, mana crystals, and leadership banners, and solve quests handed out by your king and various passersby.

Despite that description, this isn't a hack-and-slasher. Instead of whaling on monsters with a small party of adventurers as in the typical RPG, you wage tactical battles with veritable armies of troops on turn-based battlefields. Mages, priests, knights, archers, monsters, and the like are hired at special buildings such as the king's castle for use as shock troops in your hero's party. You start off with a paltry handful of these goons, but soon wind up at the head of a tremendous force of killer Renaissance fair refugees. Stuff enough gold into your pantaloons and increase your hero's leadership skill as you increase in level and you'll be able to afford the services of loads of hirelings. The scale of battles always remains manageable, however, as each unit type is depicted by just a single character model on the battlefield no matter how many of those units you actually command. This keeps the focus on pure tactics and allows you to whip through battles lickety-split, while still letting you make use of each unit's special abilities. As just about every unit comes with some sort of skill involving spells or bonus attacks, cutting to the chase without dealing with hordes of units is vital to keeping the game straightforward and simple.
This should sound familiar if you have any experience playing a tactical RPG. The only real difference between King's Bounty and Heroes of Might and Magic or Disciples is a greater emphasis on role-playing. Story is brought to the fore here in a much more overt way, thanks to a sarcastic sense of humor and a ton of quests to be solved. True, most of these quests have been scooped out of the big bag of RPG cliches (find stolen property, remove a curse, kill the big bad whatever that's plaguing our village, and so on). But many come with multiple parts that force you to venture all over the map to solve them, along with a great deal of personality conveyed through idiosyncratic characters and a lot of text. You can't just skip around like you're filling in blanks; do so and you're liable to get caught not paying attention, as with the quest where you're given the words to a spell solving a peasant's zombie problem and then have to pick the actual phrase out in a multiple choice menu when casting the spell a little later. So even though these various tasks might not break any new ground, completing them is more involving than the map-clearing busywork that dominates the usual tactical RPG.
Difficulty is also scaled well. Starting off on easy knocks down monster hit points to something quite manageable, and cranks up the amount of gold awarded so that you never seem to run out of the coin needed to hire reinforcements. It's gratifying to see newbies getting let in on the action like this; too many games of this ilk seem to want to punish players, or at least present such a grueling level of difficulty that only veterans of the genre need apply. With that said, moving to normal difficulty is one heck of a leap. Enemy hit points take a huge jump and your gold gets slashed to practically nothing, turning what was a pretty fast-moving game into what can be a grueling slog through battles of attrition.

Visual design is impressive, if not cutting-edge. The game is a couple of years out of date, although the use of bright color and loads of details on maps means that everything still looks great in a Disney kind of way. Areas are intricately drawn and laid out in such a way as to increase the fantasy atmosphere. Every nook and cranny is filled with something D&D-ish, from urns and skulls in catacomb corners to webs and giant mushrooms in forest clearings. Spell effects are spooky and imaginative, too. Magic is generally underlined with special effects like clouds of brimstone, puffs of green gas, and even leering skull faces. All of these added details sometimes gets in the way of your simply playing the game, though. Pathways through maps are very twisty-turny and often obscured with foliage or other terrain obstacles. It can be tough to locate a way forward without rotating the map or zooming in. Failing to at least pan the camera around before galloping into an S-curve can also see you trot right into a killer encounter with powerhouse monsters hidden just out of sight. Audio, on the other hand, is similarly secreted away. The score is a generic triumphal blast that repeats so often during tactical engagements you will almost immediately tune it out, while battle sounds are tinny and there is virtually no voice acting in the game.
Forget about looking at King's Bounty: The Legend as a sequel to an oldie-but-goodie and take it on its own merits. Anyone with the nostalgia gene who played the original might get a special thrill out of this sequel coming along almost 20 years later, but you don't need a connection to this classic to enjoy this impressive take on the traditional tactical RPG.

By Brett Todd, GameSpot