Reviews by Someone

Prototype 2 on the PC is almost identical to its console counterparts, which makes for a brutal and exciting adventure.

The Good

Empowering movement mechanics
A huge variety of deadly attacks
Incentives for experimenting
Collectibles are fun to hunt down
Solid port.

The Bad

Almost no challenge
Contains little that hasn't been seen before
Keyboard and mouse controls are clunky.

A solid port is nothing to scoff at. Prototype 2 finally makes its way to the PC after debuting on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 back in April, and the transition has been kind to this brutal open-world adventure. The biggest difference between this version and its console brethren is the slightly improved visuals. Greater draw distance and a higher frame rate showcase your murderous rampage in a more impressive light. Because the technical aspects have been translated with nary a hitch, it's easy to lose yourself in the destructive glee of this unrepentant sequel. Prototype 2 isn't the least bit novel, but it's so utterly ridiculous that it's hard to wipe the smile from your face.

One thing you should keep in mind is that Prototype 2 is at its best with a controller. The fast-paced fighting and empowering exploration come together seamlessly when you have a couple of analog sticks and responsive buttons. If you're using a keyboard, you can still blow through the papier-mache enemies, but the actions don't play out as smoothly. Holding down three keys to glide through the city takes a bit of finger gymnastics, and zeroing in on one attacker in a crowd is even tougher with a mouse. It's easy enough to get used to these quirks with a little practice, but Prototype 2 doesn't feel as as natural with a keyboard and mouse.

In contrast to the devil-may-care attitude showcased in the majority of the adventure, the story does take itself seriously. A military force has quarantined a major metropolis under the guise of protecting citizens from a viral outbreak, but their occupancy is far from altruistic. In reality, they are conducting bioweapon research, and the people are just unlucky cattle being led to slaughter. It's a morbid situation that makes it satisfying to kill your opposition--defense contractor Blackwatch--as you hunt down the higher-ups who ordered this atrocity.

The initial rush you feel when the central plot comes into focus dissipates as you learn more about the conspiracy. Evil stereotypes permeate the cast of characters, but even though there's proper motivation to murder them all, you rarely feel as if you understand whom you're tracking down. Scenes of redemption toward the end of the story breathe life into some of these individuals, but by that point you won't even care what happens to the villains. While character development is lacking, the storytelling is interesting. Most of the dirty details surface when you consume certain people, and the flashes of memory piece together a terrifying puzzle about the inner machinations of power-obsessed heretics who rarely question their horrific actions.

Dialogue-rich sequences explain your objectives before each mission. Plentiful swearing and unrestrained anger highlight most of these conversations, and the vulgar cutscenes force the carefree action to take a backseat far too often. Furthermore, protagonist James Heller holds his hand to his ear and slowly walks around when a contact talks to him, contrasting wildly with the crazed sprinting and leaping that make up his normal locomotion. Problems with the story aside, the artistic style used in the many cutscenes is certainly eye-catching. High-contrast black and white with flashes of color (blue eyes, red flames) add a dramatic pitch to the proceedings. This style is also used when your health gets low in combat and does a great job of communicating your struggles without obscuring your view.

Prototype 2 takes place in an open-world environment where you can run wherever you wish without artificial barriers reining you in. From the moment you're set loose, you don't need any urging to sprint through this city gone to ruin. Movement is free-flowing and empowering. Running up the sides of buildings, bounding down blocks in a single leap, and gliding like a manic flying squirrel make for quicker transport than a tired vehicle ever could, and the unabashed joy of careening through this virus-plagued town is hard to deny. Things do become a little tricky when precision is necessary, though thankfully you rarely have to move with exactitude. Instead, you sprint pell-mell until you crave the sweet satiation of your bloodthirst, and in a snap you're beating a poor sucker so badly his mother wouldn't be able to recognize him.

The convergence of movement and combat makes for instances of unrepentant brutality. While gliding over occupied streets, you might spy a fear-mongering soldier down below. Lock on to him from your safe vantage in the sky, and with a tap of a button, grab his squirming body before he has a chance to scream for help. With one more tap of a button, you can pound him into the unforgiving cement, hurl him into his fellow troops, or infect him with a viral bomb that causes him to explode in a fountain of blood, and then flee from the scene as if you were never there.

There's little reason to perform such an act other than the delicious enjoyment you get from tormenting those weaker than you. As your opposition becomes better equipped and more plentiful, the door opens for even more ridiculous sequences of gleeful violence. Like an anthropomorphic arrow of hatred, you propel yourself from tormenting tanks on the ground to hellfire helicopters in the air, mashing them into a flaming ball or ripping off their imposing guns to lay waste to those stupid enough to tag along beside them. Eventually, you gain the ability to pilot these craft, and though moving is slow going compared to the chaotic sprinting you're used to, it's a fair trade-off considering the impressive firepower you're given access to. Destruction exists everywhere in Prototype 2; you just have to decide in what way you want those who challenge you to perish.

Hand-to-hand combat is just as effective as the murderous weapons. Your arms transform into a bevy of handy killing contraptions such as tendrils, blades, and hammers, and you map two of these to two buttons. Depending on a number of factors, such as whether you tap or hold the button, you perform different moves, and these all finish your enemies in spectacularly bloody ways. The most sadistic of these is a black hole you create with tendrils. Enemies and environmental debris explode at a central point, causing a geyser of blood to shoot from anyone unlucky enough to be at the center. The controls have been streamlined from the original Prototype, so you no longer have to contend with the finger gymnastics the more powerful moves demanded. Instead, your kills are varied and gruesome, and it's so easy to initiate the moves that you happily test out different combinations while dead bodies pile up at your feet.

There's a sadistic joy to brutally murdering your enemies in Prototype 2. You're blessed with such a powerful repertoire that you can cause excruciating pain with ease. Although much of the excitement exists because of this savagery, your enemies are such pushovers that you rarely feel the satisfaction of a hard-fought victory. In many ways, Prototype 2 encompasses the design philosophy normally associated with quick-time events (even though that control method doesn't often surface). In other games, frequent QTEs make you feel like a badass without much work, and that sense of unlimited power is Prototype 2 in a nutshell. Your overpowered enemies keel over after barely even scratching your durable skin, so you tear them to shreds without any fear of dying. Even when you start a New Game+ on the unlockable Insane difficulty, you progress through missions without any serious opposition.

Your biggest challenge comes from overcoming twitchy controls and a camera that falters under certain circumstances. Killing dozens of enemies is no problem in Prototype 2, but when you want to hurt just one attacker, things become a bit more complicated. You move so quickly that homing in on just one man is a crapshoot, and this means you might pick up a box or stray rocket launcher when you desperately need to grab on to a specific person instead. In tight spaces, the camera doesn't know how to properly showcase the actions. Characters become obscured behind obstacles because your view zooms in too tight, making it tricky to get your bearings. Neither of these issues is detrimental because even with hiccups you rarely confront death, but they do get in the way of the freewheeling action during the most intense moments.

These are small problems in a game that's overflowing with simple pleasures. Maybe the best of these flashes of joy come from the way you escape from the military. When you cause too much damage, troops are alerted to your presence and hunt you with extreme aggression. If you escape their line of sight and shape-shift into someone you previously consumed, they immediately call off their manhunt. In theory, this is a fine solution, but in practice, it's so delightfully illogical that it only adds to the ridiculous fun of the rest of the game. The military quits the chase abruptly and is too stupid to understand reality. So, if you transform into a scientist while running up the side of a building, no one will think twice that a medical professional is defying gravity. This leads to a number of hilarious situations in which your pursuers happily ignore gliding hobos and artillery-toting doctors while you giggle at their buffoonery.

The freedom in how you traverse the city and kill your foes is the main draw in Prototype 2, and though the missions give you the flexibility to complete them in unique ways, they lack the inventiveness that could have added variety to your objectives. Just about every mission boils down to exterminating a person of questionable morals, so you rarely have to exert much effort in planning your attacks. At least stealth elements do give you a new way to approach things. Picking off enemies (either by consuming them or planting a viral bomb in their skull) is deviously satisfying and gives some challenge to completing missions even though stealth is usually optional. Plus, secondary objectives give you bonuses for completing missions in specific ways, ensuring you can't just rely on the same technique if you want to excel.

Outside of missions, there are oodles of collectibles to nab. The map sends out a radar pulse in the approximate location of hidden black boxes and secret lairs, so you don't have to explore much to uncover them. But it's fun to traverse the city locating every spare part, and the upgrades you receive for doing so are worth your while. The pacing is handled well in Prototype 2. You learn new abilities every few hours, so you always have something new to play around with, and bumping your stats makes you stronger and faster as you get deeper into the journey. It's a shame the challenge doesn't scale with your newfound powers, but that doesn't detract from the excitement of learning new ways to tear your enemies to pieces.

Prototype 2 is a safe sequel. It doesn't add anything particularly new or inventive to the genre, but small tweaks make it more accessible than the original game. Most importantly, it's an unabashedly fun adventure that doesn't have any doubt about what it wants to be. This is a game about killing enemies in an open-world environment, and little stands in the way to hinder your enjoyment. Mindless violence is all the rage in Prototype 2, which makes for a stupid yet entertaining experience.

Prototype 2 on the PC is almost identical to its console counterparts, which makes for a brutal and exciting adventure.

The Good

Empowering movement mechanics
A huge variety of deadly attacks
Incentives for experimenting
Collectibles are fun to hunt down
Solid port.

The Bad

Almost no challenge
Contains little that hasn't been seen before
Keyboard and mouse controls are clunky.

A solid port is nothing to scoff at. Prototype 2 finally makes its way to the PC after debuting on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 back in April, and the transition has been kind to this brutal open-world adventure. The biggest difference between this version and its console brethren is the slightly improved visuals. Greater draw distance and a higher frame rate showcase your murderous rampage in a more impressive light. Because the technical aspects have been translated with nary a hitch, it's easy to lose yourself in the destructive glee of this unrepentant sequel. Prototype 2 isn't the least bit novel, but it's so utterly ridiculous that it's hard to wipe the smile from your face.

One thing you should keep in mind is that Prototype 2 is at its best with a controller. The fast-paced fighting and empowering exploration come together seamlessly when you have a couple of analog sticks and responsive buttons. If you're using a keyboard, you can still blow through the papier-mache enemies, but the actions don't play out as smoothly. Holding down three keys to glide through the city takes a bit of finger gymnastics, and zeroing in on one attacker in a crowd is even tougher with a mouse. It's easy enough to get used to these quirks with a little practice, but Prototype 2 doesn't feel as as natural with a keyboard and mouse.

In contrast to the devil-may-care attitude showcased in the majority of the adventure, the story does take itself seriously. A military force has quarantined a major metropolis under the guise of protecting citizens from a viral outbreak, but their occupancy is far from altruistic. In reality, they are conducting bioweapon research, and the people are just unlucky cattle being led to slaughter. It's a morbid situation that makes it satisfying to kill your opposition--defense contractor Blackwatch--as you hunt down the higher-ups who ordered this atrocity.

The initial rush you feel when the central plot comes into focus dissipates as you learn more about the conspiracy. Evil stereotypes permeate the cast of characters, but even though there's proper motivation to murder them all, you rarely feel as if you understand whom you're tracking down. Scenes of redemption toward the end of the story breathe life into some of these individuals, but by that point you won't even care what happens to the villains. While character development is lacking, the storytelling is interesting. Most of the dirty details surface when you consume certain people, and the flashes of memory piece together a terrifying puzzle about the inner machinations of power-obsessed heretics who rarely question their horrific actions.

Dialogue-rich sequences explain your objectives before each mission. Plentiful swearing and unrestrained anger highlight most of these conversations, and the vulgar cutscenes force the carefree action to take a backseat far too often. Furthermore, protagonist James Heller holds his hand to his ear and slowly walks around when a contact talks to him, contrasting wildly with the crazed sprinting and leaping that make up his normal locomotion. Problems with the story aside, the artistic style used in the many cutscenes is certainly eye-catching. High-contrast black and white with flashes of color (blue eyes, red flames) add a dramatic pitch to the proceedings. This style is also used when your health gets low in combat and does a great job of communicating your struggles without obscuring your view.

Prototype 2 takes place in an open-world environment where you can run wherever you wish without artificial barriers reining you in. From the moment you're set loose, you don't need any urging to sprint through this city gone to ruin. Movement is free-flowing and empowering. Running up the sides of buildings, bounding down blocks in a single leap, and gliding like a manic flying squirrel make for quicker transport than a tired vehicle ever could, and the unabashed joy of careening through this virus-plagued town is hard to deny. Things do become a little tricky when precision is necessary, though thankfully you rarely have to move with exactitude. Instead, you sprint pell-mell until you crave the sweet satiation of your bloodthirst, and in a snap you're beating a poor sucker so badly his mother wouldn't be able to recognize him.

The convergence of movement and combat makes for instances of unrepentant brutality. While gliding over occupied streets, you might spy a fear-mongering soldier down below. Lock on to him from your safe vantage in the sky, and with a tap of a button, grab his squirming body before he has a chance to scream for help. With one more tap of a button, you can pound him into the unforgiving cement, hurl him into his fellow troops, or infect him with a viral bomb that causes him to explode in a fountain of blood, and then flee from the scene as if you were never there.

There's little reason to perform such an act other than the delicious enjoyment you get from tormenting those weaker than you. As your opposition becomes better equipped and more plentiful, the door opens for even more ridiculous sequences of gleeful violence. Like an anthropomorphic arrow of hatred, you propel yourself from tormenting tanks on the ground to hellfire helicopters in the air, mashing them into a flaming ball or ripping off their imposing guns to lay waste to those stupid enough to tag along beside them. Eventually, you gain the ability to pilot these craft, and though moving is slow going compared to the chaotic sprinting you're used to, it's a fair trade-off considering the impressive firepower you're given access to. Destruction exists everywhere in Prototype 2; you just have to decide in what way you want those who challenge you to perish.

Hand-to-hand combat is just as effective as the murderous weapons. Your arms transform into a bevy of handy killing contraptions such as tendrils, blades, and hammers, and you map two of these to two buttons. Depending on a number of factors, such as whether you tap or hold the button, you perform different moves, and these all finish your enemies in spectacularly bloody ways. The most sadistic of these is a black hole you create with tendrils. Enemies and environmental debris explode at a central point, causing a geyser of blood to shoot from anyone unlucky enough to be at the center. The controls have been streamlined from the original Prototype, so you no longer have to contend with the finger gymnastics the more powerful moves demanded. Instead, your kills are varied and gruesome, and it's so easy to initiate the moves that you happily test out different combinations while dead bodies pile up at your feet.

There's a sadistic joy to brutally murdering your enemies in Prototype 2. You're blessed with such a powerful repertoire that you can cause excruciating pain with ease. Although much of the excitement exists because of this savagery, your enemies are such pushovers that you rarely feel the satisfaction of a hard-fought victory. In many ways, Prototype 2 encompasses the design philosophy normally associated with quick-time events (even though that control method doesn't often surface). In other games, frequent QTEs make you feel like a badass without much work, and that sense of unlimited power is Prototype 2 in a nutshell. Your overpowered enemies keel over after barely even scratching your durable skin, so you tear them to shreds without any fear of dying. Even when you start a New Game+ on the unlockable Insane difficulty, you progress through missions without any serious opposition.

Your biggest challenge comes from overcoming twitchy controls and a camera that falters under certain circumstances. Killing dozens of enemies is no problem in Prototype 2, but when you want to hurt just one attacker, things become a bit more complicated. You move so quickly that homing in on just one man is a crapshoot, and this means you might pick up a box or stray rocket launcher when you desperately need to grab on to a specific person instead. In tight spaces, the camera doesn't know how to properly showcase the actions. Characters become obscured behind obstacles because your view zooms in too tight, making it tricky to get your bearings. Neither of these issues is detrimental because even with hiccups you rarely confront death, but they do get in the way of the freewheeling action during the most intense moments.

These are small problems in a game that's overflowing with simple pleasures. Maybe the best of these flashes of joy come from the way you escape from the military. When you cause too much damage, troops are alerted to your presence and hunt you with extreme aggression. If you escape their line of sight and shape-shift into someone you previously consumed, they immediately call off their manhunt. In theory, this is a fine solution, but in practice, it's so delightfully illogical that it only adds to the ridiculous fun of the rest of the game. The military quits the chase abruptly and is too stupid to understand reality. So, if you transform into a scientist while running up the side of a building, no one will think twice that a medical professional is defying gravity. This leads to a number of hilarious situations in which your pursuers happily ignore gliding hobos and artillery-toting doctors while you giggle at their buffoonery.

The freedom in how you traverse the city and kill your foes is the main draw in Prototype 2, and though the missions give you the flexibility to complete them in unique ways, they lack the inventiveness that could have added variety to your objectives. Just about every mission boils down to exterminating a person of questionable morals, so you rarely have to exert much effort in planning your attacks. At least stealth elements do give you a new way to approach things. Picking off enemies (either by consuming them or planting a viral bomb in their skull) is deviously satisfying and gives some challenge to completing missions even though stealth is usually optional. Plus, secondary objectives give you bonuses for completing missions in specific ways, ensuring you can't just rely on the same technique if you want to excel.

Outside of missions, there are oodles of collectibles to nab. The map sends out a radar pulse in the approximate location of hidden black boxes and secret lairs, so you don't have to explore much to uncover them. But it's fun to traverse the city locating every spare part, and the upgrades you receive for doing so are worth your while. The pacing is handled well in Prototype 2. You learn new abilities every few hours, so you always have something new to play around with, and bumping your stats makes you stronger and faster as you get deeper into the journey. It's a shame the challenge doesn't scale with your newfound powers, but that doesn't detract from the excitement of learning new ways to tear your enemies to pieces.

Prototype 2 is a safe sequel. It doesn't add anything particularly new or inventive to the genre, but small tweaks make it more accessible than the original game. Most importantly, it's an unabashedly fun adventure that doesn't have any doubt about what it wants to be. This is a game about killing enemies in an open-world environment, and little stands in the way to hinder your enjoyment. Mindless violence is all the rage in Prototype 2, which makes for a stupid yet entertaining experience.

Stylish combat and white-knuckle driving make this an enjoyable James Bond adventure, despite some pacing issues.

The Good

Solid shooting mechanics and slick melee combat
Driving sections are a blast
Great production values
Globe-trotting story allows for lots of environmental variety.

The Bad

Gets off to a very slow start after the prologue
Throwaway multiplayer
Gadget sections are simply filler.

Like a great Bond movie, James Bond 007: Blood Stone jumps headfirst into a spectacular action scene before the opening credits even roll. Going from silently dropping enemies on a ritzy yacht right into a pair of harrowing chase scenes--first by boat on the Mediterranean and then by car on the streets of Athens--this third-person action game from Bizarre Creations makes a thoroughly memorable first impression. What follows is a game that takes its sweet time stepping outside the shadow of this explosive prologue, as a number of early levels fall prey to flat pacing and drab, predictable level design. Such woes don't last forever, though, because the invigorating energy of that opening scene returns full force in the latter half of the adventure. The result is an uneven yet worthwhile James Bond experience, aided in no small part by stellar production values that make it easy to forget that this Bond story isn't tied to a new movie.

There's no hiding the fact that the events driving Blood Stone's narrative are paint-by-numbers James Bond. You begin the game on a hunt to track down a weapons dealer bent on terrorizing the G20 Summit, but a tangled conspiracy sends Bond all over the globe tracking down the usual array of informants, turncoats, and crime lords. It's a story that succeeds not because of any emotional connection to the proceedings, but because of the sheer variety of situations Bond winds up in. At any given point, you might find yourself amid a gunfight in Monaco taking cover behind a craps table; speeding your Aston Martin across the cracking ice sheets of a frozen Siberian river; or darting across the rain-slick rooftops of Bangkok not five minutes after gazing at majestic humpback whales inside an aquarium. The voices of Daniel Craig and Judi Dench add familiarity to the cast, while the brisk cutscenes do a good job of capturing the detached, no-nonsense demeanor of Craig-era James Bond.

For the most part, the variety established by the globe-trotting plot is echoed in the game's action. Blood Stone is very much a hybrid of genres, a game that tries its hand at a lot of things and succeeds at most of them. To run the full list, Blood Stone is simultaneously a third-person shooter with a heavy reliance on cover; a stealth game that values melee takedowns over firefights; a racer replete with frantic chase scenes and explosive tracks; and a gadget-driven espionage simulator. The gadgets are the only major weak link. Pulling open your impossibly powerful smartphone allows you to scan and manipulate your surroundings, performing tasks such as cloning hard drives and cracking security points with little more than the press of a button. Ultimately harmless in their simplicity, these moments of espionage don't detract from the gameplay so much as they pad it with repetitive filler--every scan feels the same, and there's generally little context for why something needs hacking.

That said, on-foot combat is what makes up the bulk of your adventure. Played purely as a third-person shooter, Blood Stone is solid, though a bit unspectacular. The cover mechanics are intuitive and responsive, while weapon sound effects and enemy animations harmonize nicely to make for an impactful shooting experience--though a lack of variety in weaponry and enemy types holds back the core gunplay. Fortunately, Blood Stone is also a game that incentivizes stylish melee combat as a complement to shooting your way through a situation. Any enemy within a few feet of you can be swiftly and brutally taken down with a single button press. From judo-chopping an enemy's throat to choking him with your legs, these vicious takedowns are dead simple to pull off but never get old. Melee takedowns also earn you a "focus kill," which is a mechanic that works similarly to Splinter Cell: Conviction's "mark and execute." These focus kills allow you to string together headshots in rapid succession--up to three in a row--in order to ramp up the pace up and really tear through a shoot-out.

The combat is at its best when you're doing just that: carving your way through enemies with a sense of urgency that deftly mimics a Bond movie's brisk action scenes. The aforementioned Bangkok rooftop level is a prime example of Blood Stone playing to its strengths. You're running after someone with ties to a figure you need to learn more about, and it's a chase that sends you leaping across buildings and quickly dropping every bad guy unlucky enough to get in your way. The game does its best to mix up the pacing so that it's not constantly at full throttle, which is a tack that works quite well in the varied and exciting second half. But Blood Stone's first half isn't nearly as well executed, and pronounced stretches of time when you encounter repetitive environments and few enemies are more the rule than the exception. A lengthy trek through the catacombs of Istanbul is littered with barren, claustrophobic corridors, while a stealthy infiltration into a Siberian oil complex carries all the excitement of a sightseeing tour through a Soviet-era office building. Scenes like these--merely inoffensive rather than bad--could be fine as palate cleansers punctuating sustained action scenes, but linked together they simply leave you yearning for the next big set-piece battle.

While the combat takes a while to warm up, the game's driving scenes are consistently exciting from start to finish. At certain points in the story, Bond jumps behind the wheel of a car to chase someone down--generally at the end of a mission as a sort of climactic transition point toward the next chapter. You race through all manner of delightfully chaotic situations, whether it's escaping an exploding oil refinery in Siberia as fire and debris rain from the heavens or testing the speed limitations of a tow truck as you're zipping through construction sites and crumbling freeway overpasses in Bangkok. Bizarre's pedigree as a racing developer is on full display here (the studio is well known for its Project Gotham series): each vehicle features handling that's forgiving enough to allow for some mistakes, but challenging enough to keep the tension levels high. In fact, these cinematic chase scenes are so exciting that you'll wish there were more of them. As is, they make up less than a quarter of the overall game.

One of the reasons the chase scenes are so much fun is that the detailed environments and visual effects really put you in the moment, which is something of a theme for the game as a whole. When Blood Stone isn't keeping you locked up indoors, it's an aesthetically pleasing game. Whether it's the nighttime fireworks above the Monaco skyline or the sunlight dancing off your car's chrome fender as you speed through Istanbul, objects and environments tend to be rich and varied. Your movement animations when you're running around a level can be awkward from time to time, but on the whole, Blood Stone has clearly benefited from a high attention to detail in its visual design. Likewise, the soundtrack does a great job of establishing varied emotions. The music is unmistakably James Bond, with all the extravagant horns and crashing drums you'd expect from a story focused on the beloved English superspy. It's a soundtrack that underscores the tension of big chase scenes and establishes a more subdued feel during mid-mission cutscenes.

A no-frills multiplayer component is included in Blood Stone, but it's a vanilla third-person shooter experience right on down to teams of red versus blue. Modes include team deathmatch and a couple of objective-based contests, but no matter the mode, the combat is much slower and plodding than the fast-paced levels that make up the best parts of the single-player story. Consequently, the online features don't add a whole lot more value to the relatively short (five or six hour) single-player campaign. It's an online feature set that winds up reinforcing the lingering idea that Blood Stone could have been something quite special if it offered a more consistently exciting experience across the board, but the end result is a game that feels held back by a nervous reluctance toward going all in. But when it hits those high notes--which it does more often than not--Blood Stone is a quality action game. From exciting driving to fast-paced and stylish combat, Blood Stone is an enjoyable foray into the world of James Bond in spite of its flaws.

This big, bold sequel offers an eerie vision of a city under siege.

The Good

Nanosuit and big levels offer plenty of flexibility
Powerful depiction of a devastated city
The second half is stuffed with awesome, memorable battles
Good-sized campaign and full-featured multiplayer offer lots of lasting value
Outstanding soundtrack.

The Bad

Poor AI detracts from the excitement
Some online troubles
The first few hours drag.

Crysis 2 has to live up to a high standard. Not only did the original Crysis pack a lot of high-quality action into its good-sized campaign, but its stunningly authentic rendering of lush jungle vistas set the graphical standard by which all modern shooters are judged. Fortunately, this sequel does an admirable job of living up to the original's reputation of sheer technical prowess. It doesn't feature all the visual bells and whistles you might expect in a game from a developer known for pushing the limits of modern hardware. But, this sequel still looks amazing, and it plays that way too. The jungle is now of the urban variety--New York City to be precise. You make your way through office buildings, across crumbling bridges, and around broad city squares, where robotic aliens infest hallways and swarm across rooftops. Large environments give you room to maneuver and grant you freedom to approach battle in a number of ways, which makes Crysis 2 a great alternative to the plethora of first-person shooters that usher you down corridors on your way to the next action movie set piece.

Crysis 2 does an excellent job of portraying a city under siege without indulging in constant action-film cutaways. There is still plenty of cinematic excess here, though it's delivered organically. Yes, there are a few scripted moments in which you are more of an observer than a participant; and, yes, you might be able to hold a key to peer at the imposing alien structure towering in the distance. But rather than wrest control away from you to highlight every falling skyscraper, collapsing passageway, and hovering alien ship, Crysis 2 allows these events to simply happen. And, because they are often so momentous, your attention is drawn to them. The few occasions when the game stops to consider how the average citizen might be affected by an alien invasion lend humanity to your militaristic actions. Familiar landmarks are defaced, lay in ruin, or explode as you watch. There's an eerie contrast between the untouched trees of Central Park swaying in the wind and the rubble stretching behind them. The visual design eschews artistic flair in favor of authenticity, and it mostly succeeds at providing a frightening real-world backdrop for large-scale shoot-outs.

If you appreciated Crysis as a technical benchmark, as well as an excellent shooter, you might be surprised by Crysis 2's more modest menu options. There are a few preset graphics options (high, very high, and extreme), but the menu doesn't allow you to tweak antialiasing settings and such, as you would expect in the sequel to the highly customizable Crysis. (You can adjust these settings by entering certain console commands, but that is not an acceptable alternative to built-in menu options.) Furthermore, the game does not support DirectX 11, so you won't see the advanced lighting techniques here that you see in games like Metro 2033 and Dirt 2. But to pick these nits with much vigor would be unfair to one of the best-looking games in recent times. Crysis 2 looks stunning, runs smoothly on even modest systems, and suffers from few obvious bugs and glitches.

Perhaps the game's most astounding technical feat is that it displays so much on the screen at once and that distant objects are rendered with more detail than you would typically expect. Look closely and you begin to appreciate the details. Birds strut on the pavement and then fly off as you approach. Alien dropships cast ominous shadows on pockmarked concrete and abandoned taxicabs. There are multiple stunning sights, such as a nighttime vista of the burning metropolis from a famed island in the East River. Such scenes are elevated by a rousing and varied orchestral soundtrack that underscores the visual juxtaposition of the picturesque and the profane. Consider, for example, a creepy minor-key track that contrasts dark, throbbing cellos with the busy fiddling of violins many octaves higher. Or an undulating melody through which electronic vibrations weave in and out.

You play as a marine known as Alcatraz, and like Nomad in the original game, you are outfitted with a nanosuit. This suit makes you the soldier of the future; it allows you to jump to great heights, temporarily cloak yourself, and scan your environment. You can also activate a mode that boosts your armor. You receive this suit in dramatic fashion from the original game's Prophet, and the nature of this technology figures heavily into the story. Someone wants that suit. Thus, you aren't just fighting off an alien invasion, but you're also fighting ground troops that would be happy to see you dead. You won't find much of interest in the characters, and the meandering plot takes a while to find its rhythm. But once it does, it carries you along properly, delivers a few twists, and comes to an intriguing conclusion that you won't see coming. How refreshing it is for a game to set up a sequel without resorting to cheap cliches.

It's a shame that it takes an hour or two of nondescript FPS action before you get to see the spectacular devastation. In fact, if you haven't played the original Crysis, the first stretch of the sequel might make you wonder why it is so beloved. You spend the early going pitted against relatively dumb human enemies who run past you towards some distant cover spot but fail to shoot, stand around staring straight ahead, and otherwise act as if they don't know you are pumping them full of lead. Later on, you catch friendlies and aliens standing around together, looking like they might be enjoying each other's company. Aliens and humans alike crash into objects and then just run in place rather than go around them or leap over. Other times, the invading ETs get confused when trying to leap to higher vantage points and make it easy to turn them to alien goo. The AI simply isn't good, and its mediocrity stands out all the more against the otherwise convincing climate.

Fortunately, the AI is an infrequent concern once the invasion is in full swing and you're surrounded by dozens of foes roaming the maps and surrounding you. The aliens come in a few varieties. Some armored creatures might pounce on you and knock you off your feet or fire energy bolts at you. Many of them hop onto ledges and rooftops to gain higher ground. Miniboss types pummel you with rockets and are tough to bring down without a C4 charge or a few rockets. Crysis 2 offers a nice challenge, particularly in its second half; some of those aliens soak up a lot of bullets before going down. You get an array of military-grade weapons, and you can tailor them with different sights (reflex sights, for example) and other enhancements (say, a silencer). You also collect the glitter that dead aliens leave behind (called nano catalyst) and use it to upgrade your nanosuit. For example, you can improve your suit's energy regeneration, or you can unlock a fun ground-pound ability. The suit works a bit differently than it did in the original Crysis. For instance, you no longer activate power mode to jump to higher levels; you just hold down the jump key. Rather than activate speed mode, you sprint.

The maps aren't as spacious as those in the original Crysis or in Far Cry 2, which may disappoint fans of the original seeking a healthy dose of sandbox gameplay. Compared to most shooters, however, Crysis 2 still offers plenty of room to maneuver. As you enter the larger areas--often from a rooftop above--the game encourages you to use your suit to scan the environment. Doing so allows you to tag enemies for assault or avoidance, and it shows you where all-important ammo and weapon stashes are located. How you approach battle is then up to you. You can activate armor mode and go in guns blazing, though Crysis 2 is not a bunny-hopping, run-and-gun shooter; the heavier your weapon, the slower your movement. Carelessness does not bring good results. Sometimes, you can avoid battle entirely by cloaking yourself and sneaking around. More often than not, you employ variations on these themes: cloaking yourself long enough to flank the enemy and then unleashing a barrage; popping a turret gunner in the head; or performing a satisfying stealth kill on a chattering alien from behind. Or perhaps you might use the verticality of the levels to your benefit, leaping to a ledge above and rushing to a better vantage point.

The resulting firefights are exceptional and unpredictable. Crysis 2's variety comes not from one on-rails sequence after another, but from busy, open maps that constantly break up your line of sight and give you a reason to use both short- and long-ranged weaponry. There are a few on-rails/turret sequences, but Crysis 2 is longer than most modern shooters--10 hours or so--and individual levels span multiple fronts. As a result, such orchestrated events don't overstay their welcome, and the game feels more like one extended experience than a series of bite-sized chunks sewn together. What makes Crysis 2 fun is that you author your own destiny by getting in an armored vehicle and squashing a few grunts under your wheels or ripping off the same vehicle's turret gun and wasting enemies.

Such diversity leads to superb shoot-outs in the final two-thirds of the campaign. It's unfortunate that the first few levels lack momentum; the story doesn't go anywhere, the environments only hint at the upcoming havoc, and the baffling AI drains excitement away. Once you finish the campaign, though, it isn't the early down moments you remember most but the thrills that erupted as you approached Grand Central Station or blasted your way through extraterrestrial hordes in a nail-biting sequence near the game's finale. Fending off leaping aliens with your comrades in a large city square is a blast: robotic hulks lumber on the ground level while agile foes skitter across ledges and fire from windows. In another momentous mission, the lights go out and you engage foes while activating your suit's heat-sensing mode.

The multiplayer part of Crysis 2 is superficially similar to that of other modern shooters, and it does a good job of keeping you engaged once you get past some technical hiccups. Crysis 2 rewards you with experience and levels as you play, but unlike the console versions of the game, you get access to all six modes from the get-go. These include standards like Instant Action (Deathmatch); Team Instant Action; a king-of-the hill mode called Crash Site; and a capture-the-flag variant. Rounding out the online options are two assault-and-defend modes: Assault and Extraction.

These game types all grant a good dose of action, though it is much different from the expansive Power Struggle matches that defined the original. Nevertheless, Crysis 2 differentiates itself from other shooters with the same nanosuit abilities as in the single-player campaign. You can cloak yourself for short periods of time and take your opponents by surprise; escape a sticky situation by leaping to higher ground; and improve your defenses by activating armor mode. The diverse maps give you plenty of opportunity to employ these skills. On the vertical Skyline map, for example, jumping to higher ground is a great way to gain an advantage over a pursuing enemy. On the atmospheric Sanctuary, stealthy players will appreciate the many archways and gravestones that shield them from view when they need to recharge their energy. It's all solid fun, and given the nature of the nanosuit powers, it's unpredictable enough to keep you invested for the long term.

PC players will be happy to note that they can join up with others using a traditional server browser, as well as the matchmaking feature, though few players seem to be using said matchmaking. That's not the only drawback affecting online play, either. Joining a dedicated server doesn't get you into a game; all you get is a pre-match room full of people wondering why the match won't start. Unranked servers seem to function just fine, however. According to the game, only playing in ranked servers is supposed to earn you experience and other rewards, but as of this review, playing unranked games has earned us experience points. For now, you can still join others and have a blast while advancing--just not in the way apparently intended.

Gaining experience is important because it forms the core of Crysis 2's elaborate system of unlocks. While you can choose from one of a few premade classes, the game allows you (in most modes) to create your own class by selecting from a variety of weapons and suit modules. These modules are many and may allow for faster firing rate, automatic warning when enemies come near, radar scrambling, and more. Some unlocks are earned by meeting the necessary skill requirement; others are tied to particular milestones. For example, you might earn a module upgrade by killing 150 enemies while in armor mode. There are many such upgrades and many ways to customize your character.

Crysis was a superb game, and it wasn't so just because of the astounding technology that brought it to life. Crysis 2 doesn't make as strong of a mark, but it comes close, and in a sea of me-too shooters, it feels unique and offers an exciting journey that's as much your own making as that of the developer. The wow factor is undercut by some AI and multiplayer oddities. But while the lows are inescapable, the highs are intense, and the more you play, the more extraordinary they become. If you give this sequel a little patience, it will bombard you with the thrills you came seeking.

If you're already playing Crysis 2, be sure to check out our game guide which includes both a full campaign walkthrough and multiplayer load outs tips.

This big, bold sequel offers an eerie vision of a city under siege.

The Good

Nanosuit and big levels offer plenty of flexibility
Powerful depiction of a devastated city
The second half is stuffed with awesome, memorable battles
Good-sized campaign and full-featured multiplayer offer lots of lasting value
Outstanding soundtrack.

The Bad

Poor AI detracts from the excitement
Some online troubles
The first few hours drag.

Crysis 2 has to live up to a high standard. Not only did the original Crysis pack a lot of high-quality action into its good-sized campaign, but its stunningly authentic rendering of lush jungle vistas set the graphical standard by which all modern shooters are judged. Fortunately, this sequel does an admirable job of living up to the original's reputation of sheer technical prowess. It doesn't feature all the visual bells and whistles you might expect in a game from a developer known for pushing the limits of modern hardware. But, this sequel still looks amazing, and it plays that way too. The jungle is now of the urban variety--New York City to be precise. You make your way through office buildings, across crumbling bridges, and around broad city squares, where robotic aliens infest hallways and swarm across rooftops. Large environments give you room to maneuver and grant you freedom to approach battle in a number of ways, which makes Crysis 2 a great alternative to the plethora of first-person shooters that usher you down corridors on your way to the next action movie set piece.

Crysis 2 does an excellent job of portraying a city under siege without indulging in constant action-film cutaways. There is still plenty of cinematic excess here, though it's delivered organically. Yes, there are a few scripted moments in which you are more of an observer than a participant; and, yes, you might be able to hold a key to peer at the imposing alien structure towering in the distance. But rather than wrest control away from you to highlight every falling skyscraper, collapsing passageway, and hovering alien ship, Crysis 2 allows these events to simply happen. And, because they are often so momentous, your attention is drawn to them. The few occasions when the game stops to consider how the average citizen might be affected by an alien invasion lend humanity to your militaristic actions. Familiar landmarks are defaced, lay in ruin, or explode as you watch. There's an eerie contrast between the untouched trees of Central Park swaying in the wind and the rubble stretching behind them. The visual design eschews artistic flair in favor of authenticity, and it mostly succeeds at providing a frightening real-world backdrop for large-scale shoot-outs.

If you appreciated Crysis as a technical benchmark, as well as an excellent shooter, you might be surprised by Crysis 2's more modest menu options. There are a few preset graphics options (high, very high, and extreme), but the menu doesn't allow you to tweak antialiasing settings and such, as you would expect in the sequel to the highly customizable Crysis. (You can adjust these settings by entering certain console commands, but that is not an acceptable alternative to built-in menu options.) Furthermore, the game does not support DirectX 11, so you won't see the advanced lighting techniques here that you see in games like Metro 2033 and Dirt 2. But to pick these nits with much vigor would be unfair to one of the best-looking games in recent times. Crysis 2 looks stunning, runs smoothly on even modest systems, and suffers from few obvious bugs and glitches.

Perhaps the game's most astounding technical feat is that it displays so much on the screen at once and that distant objects are rendered with more detail than you would typically expect. Look closely and you begin to appreciate the details. Birds strut on the pavement and then fly off as you approach. Alien dropships cast ominous shadows on pockmarked concrete and abandoned taxicabs. There are multiple stunning sights, such as a nighttime vista of the burning metropolis from a famed island in the East River. Such scenes are elevated by a rousing and varied orchestral soundtrack that underscores the visual juxtaposition of the picturesque and the profane. Consider, for example, a creepy minor-key track that contrasts dark, throbbing cellos with the busy fiddling of violins many octaves higher. Or an undulating melody through which electronic vibrations weave in and out.

You play as a marine known as Alcatraz, and like Nomad in the original game, you are outfitted with a nanosuit. This suit makes you the soldier of the future; it allows you to jump to great heights, temporarily cloak yourself, and scan your environment. You can also activate a mode that boosts your armor. You receive this suit in dramatic fashion from the original game's Prophet, and the nature of this technology figures heavily into the story. Someone wants that suit. Thus, you aren't just fighting off an alien invasion, but you're also fighting ground troops that would be happy to see you dead. You won't find much of interest in the characters, and the meandering plot takes a while to find its rhythm. But once it does, it carries you along properly, delivers a few twists, and comes to an intriguing conclusion that you won't see coming. How refreshing it is for a game to set up a sequel without resorting to cheap cliches.

It's a shame that it takes an hour or two of nondescript FPS action before you get to see the spectacular devastation. In fact, if you haven't played the original Crysis, the first stretch of the sequel might make you wonder why it is so beloved. You spend the early going pitted against relatively dumb human enemies who run past you towards some distant cover spot but fail to shoot, stand around staring straight ahead, and otherwise act as if they don't know you are pumping them full of lead. Later on, you catch friendlies and aliens standing around together, looking like they might be enjoying each other's company. Aliens and humans alike crash into objects and then just run in place rather than go around them or leap over. Other times, the invading ETs get confused when trying to leap to higher vantage points and make it easy to turn them to alien goo. The AI simply isn't good, and its mediocrity stands out all the more against the otherwise convincing climate.

Fortunately, the AI is an infrequent concern once the invasion is in full swing and you're surrounded by dozens of foes roaming the maps and surrounding you. The aliens come in a few varieties. Some armored creatures might pounce on you and knock you off your feet or fire energy bolts at you. Many of them hop onto ledges and rooftops to gain higher ground. Miniboss types pummel you with rockets and are tough to bring down without a C4 charge or a few rockets. Crysis 2 offers a nice challenge, particularly in its second half; some of those aliens soak up a lot of bullets before going down. You get an array of military-grade weapons, and you can tailor them with different sights (reflex sights, for example) and other enhancements (say, a silencer). You also collect the glitter that dead aliens leave behind (called nano catalyst) and use it to upgrade your nanosuit. For example, you can improve your suit's energy regeneration, or you can unlock a fun ground-pound ability. The suit works a bit differently than it did in the original Crysis. For instance, you no longer activate power mode to jump to higher levels; you just hold down the jump key. Rather than activate speed mode, you sprint.

The maps aren't as spacious as those in the original Crysis or in Far Cry 2, which may disappoint fans of the original seeking a healthy dose of sandbox gameplay. Compared to most shooters, however, Crysis 2 still offers plenty of room to maneuver. As you enter the larger areas--often from a rooftop above--the game encourages you to use your suit to scan the environment. Doing so allows you to tag enemies for assault or avoidance, and it shows you where all-important ammo and weapon stashes are located. How you approach battle is then up to you. You can activate armor mode and go in guns blazing, though Crysis 2 is not a bunny-hopping, run-and-gun shooter; the heavier your weapon, the slower your movement. Carelessness does not bring good results. Sometimes, you can avoid battle entirely by cloaking yourself and sneaking around. More often than not, you employ variations on these themes: cloaking yourself long enough to flank the enemy and then unleashing a barrage; popping a turret gunner in the head; or performing a satisfying stealth kill on a chattering alien from behind. Or perhaps you might use the verticality of the levels to your benefit, leaping to a ledge above and rushing to a better vantage point.

The resulting firefights are exceptional and unpredictable. Crysis 2's variety comes not from one on-rails sequence after another, but from busy, open maps that constantly break up your line of sight and give you a reason to use both short- and long-ranged weaponry. There are a few on-rails/turret sequences, but Crysis 2 is longer than most modern shooters--10 hours or so--and individual levels span multiple fronts. As a result, such orchestrated events don't overstay their welcome, and the game feels more like one extended experience than a series of bite-sized chunks sewn together. What makes Crysis 2 fun is that you author your own destiny by getting in an armored vehicle and squashing a few grunts under your wheels or ripping off the same vehicle's turret gun and wasting enemies.

Such diversity leads to superb shoot-outs in the final two-thirds of the campaign. It's unfortunate that the first few levels lack momentum; the story doesn't go anywhere, the environments only hint at the upcoming havoc, and the baffling AI drains excitement away. Once you finish the campaign, though, it isn't the early down moments you remember most but the thrills that erupted as you approached Grand Central Station or blasted your way through extraterrestrial hordes in a nail-biting sequence near the game's finale. Fending off leaping aliens with your comrades in a large city square is a blast: robotic hulks lumber on the ground level while agile foes skitter across ledges and fire from windows. In another momentous mission, the lights go out and you engage foes while activating your suit's heat-sensing mode.

The multiplayer part of Crysis 2 is superficially similar to that of other modern shooters, and it does a good job of keeping you engaged once you get past some technical hiccups. Crysis 2 rewards you with experience and levels as you play, but unlike the console versions of the game, you get access to all six modes from the get-go. These include standards like Instant Action (Deathmatch); Team Instant Action; a king-of-the hill mode called Crash Site; and a capture-the-flag variant. Rounding out the online options are two assault-and-defend modes: Assault and Extraction.

These game types all grant a good dose of action, though it is much different from the expansive Power Struggle matches that defined the original. Nevertheless, Crysis 2 differentiates itself from other shooters with the same nanosuit abilities as in the single-player campaign. You can cloak yourself for short periods of time and take your opponents by surprise; escape a sticky situation by leaping to higher ground; and improve your defenses by activating armor mode. The diverse maps give you plenty of opportunity to employ these skills. On the vertical Skyline map, for example, jumping to higher ground is a great way to gain an advantage over a pursuing enemy. On the atmospheric Sanctuary, stealthy players will appreciate the many archways and gravestones that shield them from view when they need to recharge their energy. It's all solid fun, and given the nature of the nanosuit powers, it's unpredictable enough to keep you invested for the long term.

PC players will be happy to note that they can join up with others using a traditional server browser, as well as the matchmaking feature, though few players seem to be using said matchmaking. That's not the only drawback affecting online play, either. Joining a dedicated server doesn't get you into a game; all you get is a pre-match room full of people wondering why the match won't start. Unranked servers seem to function just fine, however. According to the game, only playing in ranked servers is supposed to earn you experience and other rewards, but as of this review, playing unranked games has earned us experience points. For now, you can still join others and have a blast while advancing--just not in the way apparently intended.

Gaining experience is important because it forms the core of Crysis 2's elaborate system of unlocks. While you can choose from one of a few premade classes, the game allows you (in most modes) to create your own class by selecting from a variety of weapons and suit modules. These modules are many and may allow for faster firing rate, automatic warning when enemies come near, radar scrambling, and more. Some unlocks are earned by meeting the necessary skill requirement; others are tied to particular milestones. For example, you might earn a module upgrade by killing 150 enemies while in armor mode. There are many such upgrades and many ways to customize your character.

Crysis was a superb game, and it wasn't so just because of the astounding technology that brought it to life. Crysis 2 doesn't make as strong of a mark, but it comes close, and in a sea of me-too shooters, it feels unique and offers an exciting journey that's as much your own making as that of the developer. The wow factor is undercut by some AI and multiplayer oddities. But while the lows are inescapable, the highs are intense, and the more you play, the more extraordinary they become. If you give this sequel a little patience, it will bombard you with the thrills you came seeking.

If you're already playing Crysis 2, be sure to check out our game guide which includes both a full campaign walkthrough and multiplayer load outs tips.

Warhead is a fantastic stand-alone expansion to a superb shooter, and should be played by anyone who likes games with guns.
The Good

The action is focused and intense
Amazing visuals that look--and run--better than before
Improved AI makes fighting aliens more fun
Team Deathmatch has been added, along with a number of great multiplayer maps.

The Bad

A little too linear at times
A few remaining AI quirks.

All of the claims you may have heard that Crysis could only run on nuclear-powered supermachines were greatly exaggerated. But if for some reason you worry that this stand-alone companion to the ultragorgeous first-person shooter will bring your PC to its knees, you should know that it's highly scalable and ran smoothly on a number of machines during our testing. It also looks better, with clear attention given to the game's artistic sensibilities and the lusher, denser environments. But rest assured, developer Crytek has enhanced more than just the graphics engine. Vehicles are more fun to drive, firefights are more intense and focused, and aliens do more than just float around you. More emphasis on the open-ended environments would have been welcome, but a more exciting (though shorter) campaign, a new multiplayer mode, and a whole bunch of new maps make Crysis Warhead an excellent expansion to one of last year's best shooters.

If you didn't play Crysis, Warhead's story may be initially confusing, given that you hit the ground running with little exposition. You play as Sergeant "Psycho" Sykes, the brash Brit who was a bit player in the original game. Psycho tends to play by his own rules, always willing to ignore orders and jump into the fray if that's what the situation requires. The story runs parallel to the events of Crysis, though his strident attitude--and a dramatic cutscene near the end of the game--definitely make this Psycho's tale, even if the actual plot remains the same. In any case, you and your US Special Forces team are investigating a tropical island besieged by North Korean invaders. However, your greatest menace comes in the form of aggressive aliens that turn the luxuriant jungles and glowing beaches into a frozen wasteland. You and your teammates, clad in nanosuits that grant you special abilities such as super strength, temporary cloaking, super speed, and additional armor, confront both threats across a variety of large environments.

Psycho's brazen confidence does more than just establish a gutsy protagonist: It sets the stage for a more focused and intense series of battles that keep the pace moving more smoothly than before. Warhead still offers some of the same kind of sandbox levels, but thoughtful enemy placement and map bottlenecks keep downtime to a minimum. You can approach assaults on beachfronts and Korean encampments in a number of ways, so if you're a stealth enthusiast, you can employ your suit's cloak setting and sneak in, or attach a silencer to your sniper rifle and take out your human foes from a distance. If you would rather employ hit-and-run tactics, you can jump into the heat of battle, cause a ruckus, and use your suit's speed function to zoom away. However, Warhead is clearly focused on the guns-blazing approach, gently nudging you into full-on encounters with its mission objectives, character dialogue, and level design. When you reach primary and secondary destinations, you'll get besieged by large numbers of enemies, both human and (later on) alien. Given that human foes also don nanosuits, they're not necessarily quick to fall; as a result, these sequences are exciting and challenging, and you'll need to use your suit abilities and cover opportunities to your advantage. The easily triggered explosions of enemy vehicles and hazardous barrels further intensify these pockets of activity.

A number of set-piece battles confirm this slight shift toward action-packed mayhem. Your first encounter with a hulking alien war machine may not have the same impact as a similar one in Crysis, but it happens earlier than you'd expect, and it establishes the alien presence with adrenaline-fueled drama. That battle is a wonder, as is a later defensive mission that has you fending off a series of aliens, and requires you to shift focus frequently and use every weapon in your inventory. Another great sequence is a train level that, at first, seems much like similar sequences in a number of other shooters. You can stay on the train and use turrets to gun down the opposition, as expected--but you can also jump off and engage the opposition at any time, giving even this near-cliche sequence plenty of replay value. A linear journey through an underground mine is the obvious misstep in regard to level design, given that it never so much as hints at the open-ended action that makes Warhead a superb shooter.

If you played only that level, you also wouldn't see the host of improvements that power the action, particularly the improvements to alien artificial intelligence. The general design means that these robotic rivals will occasionally still be floating around above you, but they have more obvious smarts now, and they find ways to pummel you with ice pellets while remaining just out of sight, staying on the move, and using cover more often. Human enemies also seem more aware of their surroundings, flank you more often, and activate their nanosuits' armor to minimize damage. They also use the limited visibility that the jungle affords them quite well, hiding in brush to stay just out of sight. There are some remaining problems, particularly if you take potshots from a distance. Occasionally, the AI won't react when you snipe at an enemy, and foes using turrets will sometimes let you walk right up behind them. On the whole, however, Warhead makes clear improvements over the original in this regard, which in turn makes for better combat overall.

Vehicles feel sturdy, which is just as well, because you'll be driving them often, either to cover ground more quickly, or just to take pleasure in mowing down enemies with your mounted weapons. You can have a good deal of fun blazing a trail through the jungle while showering your foes with steel death, and the destructible environments further exaggerate the devastation. A scene in which you speed across the tundra in a hovercraft is done particularly well, offering a good sense of speed but pushing you into enemy hotbeds, giving you the chance to stop and fight or zip away with a quick glimpse of Koreans riddling aliens with bullets.

The improved vehicle handling is also noticeable on one of the new multiplayer maps, on which two teams battle in--and out of--the tanks and helicopters scattered about. This is good stuff, and it showcases Warhead's new Team Instant Action mode, a mode noticeably missing from the original Crysis. It's just good old Team Deathmatch, but it's done well, and the maps are improvements on those of the original. Snipers are still a threat, but the size of the maps are better suited to deathmatch battles, and more thought and care seem to have gone into small but important factors, such as weapon-cache placements and player spawns. The Instant Action and Power Struggle modes are still accounted for, and many of the original maps return, offering a large suite of online options that make online Warhead combat more appealing than its predecessor. Note that unlike Crysis, the expansion requires the online component to be installed separately, and isn't accessible from the single-player game.

Both online and off, Warhead is a beauty. As mentioned before, the game looks better than Crysis, and it runs better too. A test machine that struggled a bit to run the original at high settings ran Warhead smoothly with the same settings. Yet as much as you may have heard about Crysis' technical prowess, you'll still be impressed when you feast your eyes on the swaying vegetation, surging water, and expressive animations. Don't overlook the improved art design, though, which surpasses the original's oft-sterile look thanks to several striking vistas, such as one featuring an icy naval vessel stranded in the frozen tundra. The audio is almost as terrific. Various creaks and groans make heading down a narrow glacial pathway all the more harrowing, and weapons sound appropriately powerful. The voice acting is strong, and the understated soundtrack sets the right tone without ever getting in the way.

Warhead's single-player campaign should take you no more than six hours or so to complete, but not only does it invite multiple play-throughs, it costs only $30--and doesn't require you to own the original. In other words, there is no reason why anyone with a capable PC shouldn't play Crysis Warhead. It's more focused, it's more intense, and though it doesn't provide as much of the sandbox feel as Crysis veterans would wish for, it still delivers on every other front. Play this game.

Midnight Club is fast, beautiful, and way too hard.

The Good

Cool-looking interface
16-player online with quite a few different modes
Gorgeous rendition of the City of Angels
Fast, exciting racing.

The Bad

Excessive difficulty hinders fun
Not very original
Interface favors form over function.

Midnight Club Los Angeles has a lot going for it: excellent graphics; fast, intense racing that takes place day or night; and numerous online modes that support up to 16 racers. Unfortunately, it has a few rather significant problems that hold it back, including a small roster of vehicles and gameplay that, while fun, doesn't break any new ground. But most of all, it is Midnight Club's excessive difficulty that makes it a very good racing game rather than a great one.

There's a bit of a story, but it's the bare minimum to get you in a car to race around the streets of LA. And it is quite a version of LA. The game has a day/night cycle so you're not stuck racing at one time of day the whole time. You won't just race in sunshine, either. Some days are cloudy, and every once in awhile, the clouds unleash torrents of rain. Day or night, rain or shine, the city looks fantastic. The frame rate is steady, the action is fast, and the game's re-creation of LA is absolutely gorgeous. This slightly scaled-down City of Angels covers everything, including the beaches of Santa Monica, the Hollywood hills, and downtown. What's really neat about the city here is not only how many recognizable landmarks there are, such as the 3rd Street Promenade and LA Convention Center, but also the branded buildings, such as 7-11, Pizza Hut, Holiday Inn, and even billboards for iPods. There's certainly such a thing as too much advertising, but it's not overdone here (not every gas station is a 7-11, for example), and having these real-world businesses in the game world helps immerse you in the experience.

As with most street racing games, you drive around the city looking for people to race. When you find someone, you flash your lights, and in most cases, race to the starting line. There are time trials, checkpoint races around the city, freeway races, and races from point A to point B--pretty standard stuff for the genre. You'll also have missions where you must render payback by damaging target vehicles and deliver cars across town unscathed in an extremely short amount of time. There is a police presence, which can and will chase you down if it sees you're up to no good. Chases aren't as intense as in the Need for Speed games, but it's immensely entertaining to pull over and then watch yourself on the police car's dash-cam as you peel out when the cop approaches your vehicle.

When you finish a race, you're awarded money and respect based on your position. Respect unlocks new races, as well as new licensed cars (plus motorcycles), visual customization options, and performance upgrades. The slow way in which new cars are unlocked is most likely because of how few cars and bikes are (about 44) included. But regardless of the reason, it takes a lot of winning to gain new items, which can be frustrating when you've got money to spend and a car in desperate need of improvement.

Frustration is something you'll become accustomed to as you play Midnight Club LA. This is mostly due to the game's uneven and excessive difficulty. Other than the occasional race that lets you choose ahead of time, there are no difficulty settings. There are color-coded races that purport to be easy, medium, or hard, but quite often, the "easy" races are just as challenging as the hard ones. This "one size fits all" difficulty wouldn't have been a problem if the game were balanced, but it's not. CPU racers seem impervious to the perils of oncoming traffic. They rarely make significant contact with other cars, weaving back and forth across lanes like George Costanza playing Frogger. You, on the other hand, won't be as lucky. Even minor scrapes with cars, walls, and fences can send your car spinning and leave you facing the wrong way when you come to a stop. Parked cars are particularly hazardous because they don't have their lights on and are extremely difficult to see. Because of the amazing skill level of the CPU, even one minor error on your part can--and typically will--cost you the race. This means that you'll end up doing a lot of grinding (finding races that aren't insanely tough and repeatedly doing them over) to raise your respect level. It's tedious and doesn't make for a great time.

There are other issues that prevent Midnight Club from achieving its potential. The Google Earth-style map looks really cool as it seamlessly zooms from street level to the sky, but it's not great at showing you where to go. This is a problem because it's a map. The angle at which you view the city streets isn't very user-friendly when zoomed in, many streets aren't marked, you can't rotate it, and while you can set a waypoint marker, it won't show you the best route to take. This is a huge problem when you're racing from one spot to another without checkpoints--you must constantly pause the game and consult the map to make sure you're taking the right streets. This problem is even worse in the ridiculously punishing car-delivery minigames. Not only do you need to keep the pedal to the medal the whole time, but you have to avoid damaging the car all while pausing the game and checking the map every few blocks. Even when there are checkpoints, there is no guarantee you won't get lost. Some of these large pillars of smoke are poorly placed, and the smoke actually obscures what's behind it, making it possible to zoom right by a turn. When this happens, you might as well quit out of the race to start over because you don't get the same rubber-band assistance as the AI and probably won't recover.

If you can look past Midnight Club's many frustrating aspects (unlockable special abilities that do things like slow down time and clear cars out of your path help alleviate some, but not all, of the problems), there's a very solid racer to be found. When the difficulty is just right (it happens occasionally), and you take advantage of the simple-yet-effective drafting mechanic, races are exciting and finishes are tight. There's also a lot of enjoyment in the game's multiplayer component, which supports up to 16 racers via system link, as well as online. You can create your own races, challenge folks who happen to be driving around to standard races, or play one of the game's unique modes, such as Capture the Flag, Team Capture the Flag, Keepaway (get a flag then keep it away from everyone), Stockpile (whoever returns the most flags to his base wins), and more. Because it's a level playing field and you don't have to deal with the AI, multiplayer is where Midnight Club is at its best. Going online also gives you the opportunity to show off your ride to the community where others can rate your car's looks and even purchase it.

Midnight Club Los Angeles is exciting, beautiful, and great when played online. It's a shame that its difficulty is so uneven, because this issue and other problems take your attention away from what is an otherwise very good racing game.

Midnight Club is fast, beautiful, and way too hard.

The Good

Cool-looking interface
16-player online with quite a few different modes
Gorgeous rendition of the City of Angels
Fast, exciting racing.

The Bad

Excessive difficulty hinders fun
Not very original
Interface favors form over function.


Midnight Club Los Angeles has a lot going for it: excellent graphics; fast, intense racing that takes place day or night; and numerous online modes that support up to 16 racers. Unfortunately, it has a few rather significant problems that hold it back, including a small roster of vehicles and gameplay that, while fun, doesn't break any new ground. But most of all, it is Midnight Club's excessive difficulty that makes it a very good racing game rather than a great one.

There's a bit of a story, but it's the bare minimum to get you in a car to race around the streets of LA. And it is quite a version of LA. The game has a day/night cycle so you're not stuck racing at one time of day the whole time. You won't just race in sunshine, either. Some days are cloudy, and every once in awhile, the clouds unleash torrents of rain. Day or night, rain or shine, the city looks fantastic. The frame rate is steady, the action is fast, and the game's re-creation of LA is absolutely gorgeous. This slightly scaled-down City of Angels covers everything, including the beaches of Santa Monica, the Hollywood hills, and downtown. What's really neat about the city here is not only how many recognizable landmarks there are, such as the 3rd Street Promenade and LA Convention Center, but also the branded buildings, such as 7-11, Pizza Hut, Holiday Inn, and even billboards for iPods. There's certainly such a thing as too much advertising, but it's not overdone here (not every gas station is a 7-11, for example), and having these real-world businesses in the game world helps immerse you in the experience.

As with most street racing games, you drive around the city looking for people to race. When you find someone, you flash your lights, and in most cases, race to the starting line. There are time trials, checkpoint races around the city, freeway races, and races from point A to point B--pretty standard stuff for the genre. You'll also have missions where you must render payback by damaging target vehicles and deliver cars across town unscathed in an extremely short amount of time. There is a police presence, which can and will chase you down if it sees you're up to no good. Chases aren't as intense as in the Need for Speed games, but it's immensely entertaining to pull over and then watch yourself on the police car's dash-cam as you peel out when the cop approaches your vehicle.

When you finish a race, you're awarded money and respect based on your position. Respect unlocks new races, as well as new licensed cars (plus motorcycles), visual customization options, and performance upgrades. The slow way in which new cars are unlocked is most likely because of how few cars and bikes are (about 44) included. But regardless of the reason, it takes a lot of winning to gain new items, which can be frustrating when you've got money to spend and a car in desperate need of improvement.

Frustration is something you'll become accustomed to as you play Midnight Club LA. This is mostly due to the game's uneven and excessive difficulty. Other than the occasional race that lets you choose ahead of time, there are no difficulty settings. There are color-coded races that purport to be easy, medium, or hard, but quite often, the "easy" races are just as challenging as the hard ones. This "one size fits all" difficulty wouldn't have been a problem if the game were balanced, but it's not. CPU racers seem impervious to the perils of oncoming traffic. They rarely make significant contact with other cars, weaving back and forth across lanes like George Costanza playing Frogger. You, on the other hand, won't be as lucky. Even minor scrapes with cars, walls, and fences can send your car spinning and leave you facing the wrong way when you come to a stop. Parked cars are particularly hazardous because they don't have their lights on and are extremely difficult to see. Because of the amazing skill level of the CPU, even one minor error on your part can--and typically will--cost you the race. This means that you'll end up doing a lot of grinding (finding races that aren't insanely tough and repeatedly doing them over) to raise your respect level. It's tedious and doesn't make for a great time.

There are other issues that prevent Midnight Club from achieving its potential. The Google Earth-style map looks really cool as it seamlessly zooms from street level to the sky, but it's not great at showing you where to go. This is a problem because it's a map. The angle at which you view the city streets isn't very user-friendly when zoomed in, many streets aren't marked, you can't rotate it, and while you can set a waypoint marker, it won't show you the best route to take. This is a huge problem when you're racing from one spot to another without checkpoints--you must constantly pause the game and consult the map to make sure you're taking the right streets. This problem is even worse in the ridiculously punishing car-delivery minigames. Not only do you need to keep the pedal to the medal the whole time, but you have to avoid damaging the car all while pausing the game and checking the map every few blocks. Even when there are checkpoints, there is no guarantee you won't get lost. Some of these large pillars of smoke are poorly placed, and the smoke actually obscures what's behind it, making it possible to zoom right by a turn. When this happens, you might as well quit out of the race to start over because you don't get the same rubber-band assistance as the AI and probably won't recover.

If you can look past Midnight Club's many frustrating aspects (unlockable special abilities that do things like slow down time and clear cars out of your path help alleviate some, but not all, of the problems), there's a very solid racer to be found. When the difficulty is just right (it happens occasionally), and you take advantage of the simple-yet-effective drafting mechanic, races are exciting and finishes are tight. There's also a lot of enjoyment in the game's multiplayer component, which supports up to 16 racers via system link, as well as online. You can create your own races, challenge folks who happen to be driving around to standard races, or play one of the game's unique modes, such as Capture the Flag, Team Capture the Flag, Keepaway (get a flag then keep it away from everyone), Stockpile (whoever returns the most flags to his base wins), and more. Because it's a level playing field and you don't have to deal with the AI, multiplayer is where Midnight Club is at its best. Going online also gives you the opportunity to show off your ride to the community where others can rate your car's looks and even purchase it.

Midnight Club Los Angeles is exciting, beautiful, and great when played online. It's a shame that its difficulty is so uneven, because this issue and other problems take your attention away from what is an otherwise very good racing game.

Satisfying sync shots and a considerable campaign help Ghost Recon: Future Soldier deliver plenty of entertaining action.
The Good

Pleasing sync shot mechanic
Lengthy campaign is great in both solo play and co-op
Enjoyable competitive multiplayer modes.

The Bad

Numerous AI oddities
Unremarkable firefights.

The decades to come may be full of unknown potential for wondrous inventions, but in the gaming realm, the future is old hat. Invisibility, X-ray vision, and miniature floating cameras are modern marvels that have long since become familiar. Though these tools are potent in Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, there's precious little novelty in your futuristic arsenal, and this can make you feel like you're undertaking missions you've run many times before. So is Future Soldier just another by-the-book third-person shooter?

Fortunately not. Though there's plenty of familiarity to be found here, Future Soldier's brand of stealthy action and streamlined teamwork gives it a distinct appeal. The lengthy campaign lets you wield your AI allies like autonomous weapons; their guns are yours to command, but they handle their own maneuvers, pushing the action along at a slick pace. Replacing them with your fellow humans brings its own challenges and rewards, as does facing off against said humans in the lively competitive multiplayer modes. Though it's more of a product of the past than a vision of the future, Ghost Recon: Future Soldier is a robust package that provides plenty of satisfying ways to exercise your itchy trigger finger.

In the campaign, you play as the ghosts, a four-man team of elite soldiers. Cutscenes and mid-mission dialogue combine to create a nice sense of camaraderie among the crew, and hackneyed archetypes are downplayed in favor of more understated characterization. Personalities are colored in during small moments, like a song streaming out of earbuds, a fleeting facial expression, and a conversation about used trucks. Interactions with other military personnel reveal how isolated the ghosts are from the soldiers they break bread with and how oblivious those soldiers are to this fact. This segregation creates a connection among the ghosts that is a refreshing change from the familiar "bonds forged on the crucible of combat" trope.

On the field of battle, the ghosts try to emulate their namesakes, moving silently with the aid of slick optical camouflage that dissolves if you jog, sprint, or fire your weapon. Staying stealthy is often a mission requirement, and even when it isn't, avoiding detection gives you a distinct advantage. It's easy to maneuver unseen, and you spend a lot of time silently eliminating foes. Stealth melee kills and suppressed weapons are your basic tools, but the key mechanic is the sync shot. Spotting enemies through your scope or tagging them from aloft with your aerial drone, you can designate up to four targets for you and your squad to eliminate in one fell swoop. To execute, simply open fire on your own target, or issue the command with a press of the right bumper.

It's a neat trick, and the seconds of slo-mo that follow are a welcome flourish that allow you to silently mop up more than the few targeted foes. Using sync shots to eliminate enemies is pleasing and relatively easy, thanks to the array of detection methods at your disposal. Drones, sensor grenades, and a few flavors of optical gadgetry give you plenty of ways to detect nearby foes. As long as no one sees the dead bodies, no one gets suspicious, and many situations lay out foes in discrete, easily sync-shot-able groups.

Only in later levels do you encounter larger groups that put your coordination skills to the test. You must now take into account multiple lines of sight and interlocking movement patterns, as well as calibrate the exact speed at which you can tag and take down a new set of targets. Methodically carving your way through these scenarios is very satisfying, and you might even find yourself choosing to reload checkpoints when you are discovered, even if you aren't forced to. Though an alert doesn't always bring your mission to a close, challenging yourself to maintain stealth is usually more engaging and fun than blasting your way through.

Aside from sync shot orders, your AI allies are mostly autonomous. They follow your lead but move, take cover, and engage alerted targets on their own. They are very reliable, but they are prone to a number of unrealistic behaviors that can hamper your immersion. Shooting effectively through multiple thick walls, sprinting past enemies while maintaining camouflage, or failing to acquire a marked target in line of sight are all intermittent AI oddities.

Fortunately, these AI issues rarely have an adverse effect on your progress. Yet regardless of how careful you are, things are going to get loud. Open firefights provide good opportunities to use non-suppressed weapons like light machine guns and shotguns, as well as deadly ordnance like frag and incendiary grenades. The AI is aggressive, but not reckless (to borrow a phrase from the ghost leader), and they throw grenades, flank, and suppress your position with vigor. The latter action can trigger a disorienting camera movement that temporarily prevents you from returning fire, a nice change from the clouded field of view seen in other shooters.

As long as you stay behind cover, dodge grenades, and shoot sharply, you can progress through these encounters without too much hassle. The suggested weapon loadout is always up to the task, though Future Soldier does offer an extensive weapon customization mode before each campaign mission. Almost every part of the gun can be analyzed and swapped out for another that favors different attributes, though it takes some time to unlock the more intriguing hardware. Each component is rendered in loving detail, and it's fun to watch the gun spring apart into fragments and then reassemble. You do all this tinkering with the controller or with the Kinect, though the latter is strictly a novelty and almost no help at all when it comes to testing your weapon on the firing range.

Out in the field, your guns fire with realistic reports and bullets impact targets with a squishy thud. Yet while the gunplay is competently put together, the cover-to-cover firefights rarely coalesce into something truly exciting. There's a workmanlike quality to the action that makes you yearn for the thrill of a sync shot, though some set-piece moments help liven things up. Slow-motion breaching maneuvers and on-rails hostage extractions add some dramatic flair, and the mission with a donkey-sized robot (the Warhound) provides some explosive kicks.

Each campaign mission presents four challenges to overcome in order to unlock extra weaponry, and striving to achieve them is a good way to keep things more interesting. You have to tweak your arsenal to pull some of them off, or just bring a few friends along to help your cause. In fact, some seem to all but require additional human players, and you can have one local or up to three online teammates. Coordinating sync shots and advancing on enemies is more enjoyable with a human crew, and there's also a horde mode in which you (and up to three friends) must defend an outpost from waves of enemies. Escalating weapon loadouts, wave perks, and a variety of gear help you make your stand as things get tougher, and the higher waves pose a stiff challenge to even the sharpest ghosts.

There's also a lively challenge to be found in competitive multiplayer, in which two teams of up to six players can compete in a variety of modes. As in the campaign, you can die quickly if caught out, so cover is a powerful ally. But with the exception of the one-life-per-round Siege mode, respawns happen frequently enough that the penalty for death is not very severe, which allows for more brazen tactics. This gives things a more hectic feel, especially in Conflict mode when the objectives regularly shift the focal point of the battle.

Your firearm skills serve you well, but so does reconnaissance. Stunning an enemy instead of killing him and then hacking his data feed may be risky and time-consuming, but the resulting reveal of enemy positions is a very potent reward, especially in the bomb-transporting Saboteur mode. Using your tech to gain an advantage is gratifying, and success in multiplayer earns you levels and new gear for whichever of the three classes you are playing as at the time.

The competitive action evolves as more players bring more gadgetry and guns into the fray, adding some nice diversity, and even the lengthy campaign provides some good reasons to return to it after you've seen it through. Though the standard gunplay isn't very exciting, stealthly skill shots and diverse combat scenarios provide a lot of entertaining and satisfying moments. The action rarely transcends present-day standards, but Ghost Recon: Future Soldier proves that there is still a lot of fun to be found on the battlefields of the future.

Lively multiplayer modes and a considerable campaign are hampered by bothersome network issues in Ghost Recon: Future Soldier.
The Good

Pleasing sync shot mechanic
Lengthy campaign is great in both solo play and co-op
Enjoyable competitive multiplayer modes.

The Bad

Online play is fraught with technical problems
Numerous AI oddities
Unremarkable firefights.

Today's battlefields, it seems, are teeming with the kind of wizardry that video games have enabled players to use for years. Invisibility, X-ray vision, and miniature floating cameras are modern marvels that have long since become familiar, but Future Soldier's appeal doesn't rely on novelty. Stealthy action and streamlined teamwork blend to create an enjoyable and lengthy campaign, and lively competitive multiplayer modes provide extra enticement. Unfortunately, the online elements of Future Soldier are riddled with network problems that make connecting to and staying in a game difficult. Ghost Recon: Future Soldier is a robust package with plenty of satisfying ways to exercise your itchy trigger finger, but it requires a lot of patience if you want to do anything other than play by yourself.

In the campaign, you play as the ghosts, a four-man team of elite soldiers. Cutscenes and mid-mission dialogue combine to create a nice sense of camaraderie among the crew, and hackneyed archetypes are downplayed in favor of more understated characterization. Personalities are colored in during small moments, like a song streaming out of earbuds, a fleeting facial expression, and a conversation about used trucks. Interactions with other military personnel reveal how isolated the ghosts are from the soldiers they break bread with and how oblivious those soldiers are to this fact. This segregation creates a connection among the ghosts that is a refreshing change from the familiar "bonds forged on the crucible of combat" trope.

On the field of battle, the ghosts try to emulate their namesakes, moving silently with the aid of slick optical camouflage that dissolves if you jog, sprint, or fire your weapon. Staying stealthy is often a mission requirement, and even when it isn't, avoiding detection gives you a distinct advantage. It's easy to maneuver unseen, and you spend a lot of time silently eliminating foes. Stealth melee kills and suppressed weapons are your basic tools, but the key mechanic is the sync shot. Spotting enemies through your scope or tagging them from aloft with your aerial drone, you can designate up to four targets for you and your squad to eliminate in one fell swoop. To execute, simply open fire on your own target, or issue the command with a press of the Q key (or right bumper if you are using a compatible gamepad).

It's a neat trick, and the seconds of slo-mo that follow are a welcome flourish that allow you to silently mop up more than the few targeted foes. Using sync shots to eliminate enemies is pleasing and relatively easy, thanks to the array of detection methods at your disposal. Drones, sensor grenades, and a few flavors of optical gadgetry give you plenty of ways to detect nearby foes. As long as no one sees the dead bodies, no one gets suspicious, and many situations lay out foes in discrete, easily sync-shot-able groups.

Only in later levels do you encounter larger groups that put your coordination skills to the test. You must now take into account multiple lines of sight and interlocking movement patterns, as well as calibrate the exact speed at which you can tag and take down a new set of targets. Methodically carving your way through these scenarios is very satisfying, and you might even find yourself choosing to reload checkpoints when you are discovered, even if you aren't forced to. Though an alert doesn't always bring your mission to a close, challenging yourself to maintain stealth is usually more engaging and fun than blasting your way through.

Aside from sync shot orders, your AI allies are mostly autonomous. They follow your lead but move, take cover, and engage alerted targets on their own. They are very reliable, but they are prone to a number of unrealistic behaviors that can hamper your immersion. Shooting effectively through multiple thick walls, sprinting past enemies while maintaining camouflage, or failing to acquire a marked target in line of sight are all intermittent AI oddities.

Fortunately, these AI issues rarely have an adverse effect on your progress. Yet regardless of how careful you are, things are going to get loud. Open firefights provide good opportunities to use non-suppressed weapons like light machine guns and shotguns, as well as deadly ordnance like frag and incendiary grenades. The AI is aggressive, but not reckless (to borrow a phrase from the ghost leader), and they throw grenades, flank, and suppress your position with vigor. The latter action can trigger a disorienting camera movement that temporarily prevents you from returning fire, a nice change from the clouded field of view seen in other shooters.

As long as you stay behind cover, dodge grenades, and shoot sharply, you can progress through these encounters without too much hassle. The suggested weapon loadout is always up to the task, though Future Soldier does offer an extensive weapon customization mode before each campaign mission. Almost every part of the gun can be analyzed and swapped out for another that favors different attributes, though it takes some time to unlock the more intriguing hardware. Each component is rendered in loving detail, and it's fun to watch the gun spring apart into fragments and then reassemble.

Out in the field, your guns fire with realistic reports and bullets impact targets with a squishy thud. Yet while the gunplay is competently put together, the cover-to-cover firefights rarely coalesce into something truly exciting. There's a workmanlike quality to the action that makes you yearn for the thrill of a sync shot, though some set-piece moments help liven things up. Slow-motion breaching maneuvers and on-rails hostage extractions add some dramatic flair, and the mission with a donkey-sized robot (the Warhound) provides some explosive kicks.

Each campaign mission presents four challenges to overcome in order to unlock extra weaponry, and striving to achieve them is a good way to keep things more interesting. You have to tweak your arsenal to pull some of them off, or just bring a few friends along to help your cause. In fact, some seem to all but require additional human players, and you can have up to three online teammates. Coordinating sync shots and advancing on enemies is more enjoyable with a human crew, and there's also a horde mode in which you (and up to three friends) must defend an outpost from waves of enemies. Escalating weapon loadouts, wave perks, and a variety of gear help you make your stand as things get tougher, and the higher waves pose a stiff challenge to even the sharpest ghosts.

There's also a lively challenge to be found in competitive multiplayer, in which two teams can compete in a variety of modes. As in the campaign, you can die quickly if caught out, so cover is a powerful ally. But with the exception of the one-life-per-round Siege mode, respawns happen frequently enough that the penalty for death is not very severe, which allows for more brazen tactics. This gives things a more hectic feel, especially in Conflict mode when the objectives regularly shift the focal point of the battle.

Your firearm skills serve you well, but so does reconnaissance. Stunning an enemy instead of killing him and then hacking his data feed may be risky and time-consuming, but the resulting reveal of enemy positions is a very potent reward, especially in the bomb-transporting Saboteur mode. Using your tech to gain an advantage is gratifying, and success in multiplayer earns you levels and new gear for whichever of the three classes you are playing as at the time.

Alas, Future Soldier is beset by connectivity issues, and the competitive multiplayer bears the brunt of these flaws. Matches may take long minutes to start with no indication of how long you must wait, and randomly disconnecting from the server mid-match is not uncommon. It can be tough to find populated lobbies in modes other than Conflict, and once you are in a game, you may encounter graphical issues or slight lag. Though we were able to play a number of solid matches, it involved a lot of time spent wrangling with these frustrating problems.

Cooperative play is also hampered by errors, including a common one that causes the game to crash. Ubisoft has issued numerous patches since the game's release, but those hoping to play with or against other humans have a bumpy road ahead. Once you get it going, Future Solider's campaign and competitive play offer a good amount of content. Though the standard gunplay isn't very exciting, stealthy skill shots and diverse combat scenarios provide a lot of entertaining and satisfying moments. The action rarely transcends present-day standards, but Ghost Recon: Future Soldier proves that there is still a lot of fun to be found on the battlefields of the future.