The first massive caveat against buying this game is that it’s loaded down with Starforce DRM—the fact that it’s loaded down with invasive DRM at all turns us off; but this particular DRM company has seen a very bad run (Reboots your computer without warning? Resorts to unfair political practices?) The ethical issues should turn away most of the activist geeks; but really what should turn everyone away is the general untrustworthiness of these actions perpetrated by a company installing what amounts to a rootkit on our computers to play a game.

The graphics are dated, characters far more pixilated than should be proper, and the backgrounds are repetitive to a fault. In fact, scraping the surface of this these desolate offerings we discover that everyone in the Restricted Area universe uses the same architect when designing factories. The same someone who makes every other abandoned post-industrial warehouse and factory in every other video game replete with claustrophobic corridors, dying light fixtures, metal grating floors, and ubiquitous exploding barrels. They probably save a great deal of money on janitorial services because not a single one is cleaned.

The enemies quickly become extremely repetitive in behavior and form, sporting only a minimum of eight or so different types—crawling, knifing, shooting, angry…

The game play expects an almost wave-of-enemies Gauntlet style of attacks for some rooms, where others offer nothing but the explodable barrels for company. At least one point or two in the game have actual variation—such as a giant version of the otherwise common enemies—but overall it is lackluster in its offering. Really, the only thing keeping this dieseling engine running is purely the cyberpunk dystopian future appeal.

Amid the things that we found amusing about game play happened to be the ability for characters to do their own in-field cyberdoc meatball surgery. Did an enemy drop a new limb that looks promising right now? Well, no problem little miss, just install it right now—ka-chunk!—and you’ll be on your way in a jiffy. In fact, it’s good that you did that because right now a particularly corpulent mutant is here to beat you to death with his beer gut. Don’t forget the cigarettes!

We started the game off by gravitating to one of our favorite character types: the hacker/engineer.

Jessica Parker, name aside, happens to be a hacker who grew up with a silver spoon in her mouth but quickly fell into a life of crime and mayhem that even her own family’s money couldn’t save her from. She starts the game with a hovering drone that looks a lot like a toy flying saucer—we’re told that it’s a prison robot set to guard her when she was put into the state pen; but at the beginning of the game we discover exactly why it was so easy for her to escape. It sucks.

The remote drone certainly becomes a powerhouse of firepower later in the game, but at the beginning it’s not even as good as the pea-shooter that Jessica starts with. Later on it actually becomes something of a force to be reckoned with; but the girl remains as fragile as ever.

Our biggest problem with her play is that of control points. Certainly, she’s capable of settings mines, laying down suppression fire with automated turrets, controlling machine units, and recharging her drone—but she can’t do any of this without first flying off into cyberspace and downloading strange data from the company computers. This mechanic seems extremely contrived and it’s quite annoying because we lose all of our control points upon leaving the wasteland factory only to have to run cyberspace again to get them back.

Cyberspace, by the way, happens to be a weird TRON filter over the normally grim walls of the factory.

When we moved onto Johnson, a gunbunny extraordinaire with a penchant for plasma weapons and flame-throwers, we discovered the error of our previous choice. Jessica, we read, is one of the most difficult characters in the entire game; she has a rating of 4 of 4 difficulty. Fun as she was, we actually made it a lot further with Johnson than we ever did with our favored archetype of the hacker chickadee.

In fact, in Johnson, we discovered that we have a great deal of suppressed rage—and an unsatisfied desire to set people on fire. What the gunbunny character brings to play is nothing less than the awesome firepower of the flame-thrower. (If only we could equip Jessica’s drone with this thing, it would make the game a lot more fun.) Of course, we learned that Johnson’s difficulty scale is 1 of 4, making him the easiest character to play the game with.

The remaining two characters we did not get to: Victoria Williams, a psionic esper with a terrible tortured past filled with government experiments and pariahood at the cost of her mutation, and Kenji Takahasi, a proud, shirtless street samurai who makes a living at the edge of his blade. Together they round out a refreshingly differential set of characters who have commonalities but notably different styles of game play.

Also interesting, depending on who gets chosen, the storyline weaves them in as NPCs who reveal interesting information about their pasts and motivations. Talking to our own character from the previous game made for some worthwhile replay value in this otherwise desolate offering that had been giving us mostly just a lot of elbow grease for our troubles.

If you happen to find this game for $6 like we did and are ready to suffer the Starforce DRM on your computer, you might find a diversion in this game—however, everyone else might as well steer clear for something more modern or at least better paced.

The game presents itself with a somewhat flimsy but adorable narrative about a character trapped in a book about Greek mythology. Her name is Cassandra, a lovely, alabaster skinned Helena of Troy with green eyes and shimmering blonde hair who cries out to Lex for aid. As a bookworm, of course, he feels the need to do the gentlemanly thing, jump between the leaves and leap to her aid. To do so, he must wade through enemies right out of the Iliad and the Odyssey—with no small Greek names to go along with them.

Each chapter is basically a series of enemies who stand on one side of the screen, facing Lex, and wield all manner of weapons, claws, teeth, and foul magics against him. He fights back with his gift of gab—and sometimes truly wince-inducing wit—in the form of spelling words. The longer the word, the greater the damage inflicted on his opponent. This remains the basic puzzle solving mechanism throughout the game. His enemies and Lex himself both have a set of hearts representing health. Run out of hearts, lose the game.

From here, things get interesting.

The first element that adds RPG elements to this otherwise rail-shooter of a spelling puzzle game is a variety of interesting abilities that opponents have. They run a staple sort of attacks that poison or set Lex on fire, continuing to inflict extra damage over time; and also opponents who can stun him for a round while they line up to hit him again; but the real cheerful fun comes from those abilities that affect Lex’s spelling tiles. Some opponents are capable of cracking tiles, making them useless for inflicting damage.

The next element is special items—treasures purloined from beating bosses at the end of each chapter. Every special item adds another effect to Lex’s arsenal, from a special bow that makes tiles of ‘X’, ‘Y’, and ‘Z’ inflict extra damage to foes when used to the golden fleece that reduces damage. While Lex can only carry three of these at a time, he can stack up quite an inventory to choose from which may change the player’s strategic inclination through different chapters.

Finally are puzzle elements involving the tiles; as the game progresses Lex can gain jeweled tiles from successfully spelling words over 4 letters long. Emeralds, rubies, sapphires—each of which causes its own special effect. Emerald: healing; amethyst: poisons enemy; ruby: lights the enemy on fire. To bring the tiles into effect, Lex needs only to use the letter tile with the jewel in the word he spells.

The primary complaint anyone might have about this game is that it’s extremely simplistic. It lacks overall challenge when it comes to word choice and developing strategy; but really the enjoyment of this game for us came from visiting mythological narratives, meeting strange an exotic characters, and getting to beat the everloving crap out of them with our spelling skills.

(And, of course, there is something truly amusing about beating Alexander with the word “EROTIC.”)

The narrative and story of this game could have been done a lot better than it was. Especially being that the entire story at the beginning was narrated. Instead it comes across as a 1-2-3 style quest with nearly no explanation of why the 1-2-3 need be done. We found ourselves just doing them out of the sheer desire to descend deeper into the dungeons before us, get better loot, and see weirder monsters.

Upon first entering the game there are three zones: the Temple, the town of Druantia—a sylvan paradise threatened by its dungeon—and the town of Typhon—a winter wonderland also threatened by its dungeon. Just like FATE it became our sworn duty to descend into these dungeons and clear them of everything that moved with extreme prejudice. Leaving no monster un-maimed we went about our duty with gusto and verve. Well, mostly our minions did so.

Also like FATE we start the game with a pet. In this case we get to choose a dog or a cat with all the requisite sounds and actions that come with either; although neither lasts very long in that countenance as the game revolves around transforming the pet into various monster forms. These forms come about through feeding the pet various fish caught from the numerous ponds in the towns and in dungeons or dropped from enemies or bought from vendors. Most fish transform the pet for a limited amount of time into a particular monster: spiders, gryphons, electric snails…but one type, the flawless fish, makes the transformation permanent. The type of pet form decision often reflects how the player chooses to play.

We generally went with something quick moving, heavily armored, but low in damage output—mostly because we ran with a summoner. There are a multitude of different magical schools, defensive, attack, and charm. The charm school is mostly miscellaneous effects that happen to include summoned minions, although weaker than most pet transforms there were six of them. And those six added up really quickly.

Both of the dungeons gave rise to quests granted by people in the towns. The quests were delivered to us with the recognizable yellow and white exclamation point symbols. And eventually we descended far enough to run into mini-bosses required by two quest givers in the Temple. They also allowed us to pick up special Heroic gear, which were really trinkets that would go onto a pair of statues in the Tempe. Once the statues were totally completed it allowed us to produce the essence of these heroes.

The essence acted like fish on our pet, permitting us to turn it into a form similar to the quest giver near that statue. It did come in handy for the last boss.

The mini-boss fights only lead to permitting us to go to a final quest giver in the Temple who opened up a portal to a third and final dungeon.

By the time we got there we were so bored with the wave-after-wave of enemy that we had to mow through and step over their trail of corpses that we just hammered our way through the levels until we finally met him and sent him to his maker. The game can become quickly repetitive; if it wasn’t for the varied style of quests and gear that they offered, it would have probably bored us to death rapidly.

Replayability? Yes, but limited. Even at higher difficulty ratings it would be the same old, same old all over again except with more difficult and more interesting monsters to go up against, challenging but ideally just the same game all over again, and without an interesting story to live through again.

If you liked FATE this is more of the same; and it has the same sort of obsessive appeal. The graphics are gorgeous, the dungeons are fun to reveal, the enemies are numerous and continue to leave interesting corpses.

Good grinding. Helvetica out.

With the release of Fallout 3, it has come time to take a look at the deathclaw and all the wonderful moments we’ve shared with it through the years.

In Fallout, you might hear mention of deathclaws from time to time, but your first real encounter with the monster will come around the LA Boneyard. You’ll have to deal with a few of these cheerful puppies for a quest, and then, you can take another quest to go in and clear them all out. What’s a little more violence, right? And hey, they’re worth good XP. So you head out, pop a few more deathclaws, stumble down into this dark, cramped basement, and then promptly get thrown out again with a nosebleed and missing your spleen. The reason for this sudden impromptu organ donation is the Mother Deathclaw lurking under the stairs. Not only is she bigger, tougher, meaner, and more dangerous than her cuddly little children, but you’ll also discover her about five steps from your face. Once you’ve dealt with her, you can wipe out the her eggs, and that’ll do it for the deathclaw menace in Fallout.

Fallout 2 gets a little more interesting with our spleenivore friends. You first come across one in the farming town of Modoc, where it’s locked up in a pen. This is good, because otherwise it’ll kill everyone, and bad, because the Laws of Drama ensure that cage will break open somehow, and it’ll kill everyone.

The real fun comes when you get to Vault 13. You’ll hear voices out of the shadows…growling voices. These deathclaws are intelligent, and they have a story to tell and a quest or two for you. One of them, a fine fellow by the name of Goris, can even join your party as an NPC.

Then, there’s a military base. You’ll find deathclaws here, too, and not the friendly type. Instead, they are the angry type, sent by a super mutant trainer to carve your head into a canoe.

Fallout Tactics also includes deathclaws, mostly as enemies. You can recruit a few deathclaws to your side by helping their Matriarch, but since this is Fallout Tactics, no one really cares either way.

Fallout 3 deathclaws are mean bastards, full of spite, venom, and hit points. You might encounter one or two wandering around, maybe outside the Super Duper Mart. But come around to the town of Old Olney, and you’ll be swimming in a vast sea of murderous reptilian death.

The best way to deal with deathclaws in Fallout 3 is to cripple their legs and blow them up. Attacking something named for killing people in close combat with your own melee weapons is a bad idea that will usually end in loading a save. Keep your distance, keep something between you and the deathclaw, and don’t skimp on the Bottlecap Mines.

Although the deathclaw has taken on different looks through the various Fallout games, it remains at its core the most fearsome beast a vault dweller can encounter. Humans, you can bargain with. Super mutants can be tricked. But there’s no dealing with a deathclaw, save with blood and high-velocity lead. Stay to bright deserts of the wasteland, wanderer, else you may face the deadly claws that know no mercy. Your spleen will thank you.

Fable 2 takes this trick further by giving you more choices, such as the option to be male or female, and then nails you to the game by the base instincts with a lovable pooch who just happens to be part of the user interface. Not only are you given the task of managing morality in NotBritain, but no matter what you do, there will always be your canine companion, smiling up at you with big doggie eyes who just wants to wuv you.

People will kick your dog, and you will murder them for it.

Here’s a quick few hints to get you past some common hurdles in Fable 2.

Celery makes you thin. Slow-time in the Crucible gets added to the clock at the end. Headshots. XP potions are worth more in the Crucible. Females can bulk up like a Rob Liefeld bodybuilding character whose superpower is sucking down steroids. If you’re wearing a murderer’s coat, a bandit’s boots, and carrying a cut-throat’s sword, people are going to make certain judgements about your character and personality, and they will make those judgements while legging it away from you at top speed. Lady Grey is a dead chick, but she’s a hot dead chick. You have to buy the book that teaches the Come Hither expression before you can make out. Real estate pays.

So now Bethesda’s desecration of the great Fallout lineage is on the shelves and word has filtered down the street. It’s good. Great, even, a shiny syringe filled with poison to kill any productivity you might have been planning in the next week or two. At least, if you bought the console version. And didn’t pre-order.

The pre-order crowd once again has taken a well-deserved ass reaming for being stupid enough to give a company their money well in advance while locking themselves into a single retail outlet as the sole source of their gaming heroin. Why should the stores care about getting pre-orders in on time? They have your money! They have your soul!

I found the game a day in advance on the shelves at 7-11.

Likewise, the PC version suffers from the whimsical cruelty of the Securom DRM system, which has been denying access to game after detecting emulation software that doesn’t exist. A patch has been sent out to correct this, but it may or may not actually work for you. Crashing issues and random slowdowns have also plagued the PC version, but that’s nothing new, is it?

If you’re one of the lucky few who can actually play the game, you’re in for a ride. The look is Fallout, the general wastelandy feel is Fallout, and the humour is blacker than the heart of Hell. Also, there’s a live nuke some ten minutes into the game, so that’s nice. Those who suffer through the tribulations of the PC version will be able to take advantage of an unholy fusion of FPS modders and Fallout fanatics, which should see some rather incredible mods on the horizon. Deadly, evil mods. With boobs. By all accounts, this game has a long future of nude patches and pornomachina ahead of it.

Buy Fallout 3. Be prepared. Join the future. They have flamethrowers that are also swords, you know.