I have invested more than 20 hours in “Fallout 3″ so far, and I have no intention of stopping my adventure through the wasteland anytime soon.

Last night, I had my favorite “Fallout 3″ moment so far. It was completely unexpected, had nothing to do with the main storyline and made my heart race. “Fallout 3″ is depressing, but it’s not scary. This freaked the hell out of me.

On the way Vault 112, which is party of the main storyline, I happened across Vault 106. It’s completely optional. You might never find it. If you don’t, though, you’ll be missing out on a part of “Fallout 3″ so exceptionally wild.

I recommend finding Vault 106 on your own, but if not…SPOILER WARNING!

There were a group of raiders just outside of Vault 106, so I’d pumped up my character with combat-ability drug boosters for battle. As I entered Vault 106, the character was coming down from them and suffering from withdrawal. Moments into Vault 106, my character started experiencing wild hallucinations and the screen began changing colors. Is there something wrong with my TV, I wondered? No, it must be a side effect of the withdrawal symptoms I haven’t experienced before.

It wasn’t, though. The hallucinations kept coming.

I kept seeing dead inhabitants of Vault 106…alive. Or…was this my own past? This “safe haven” was in shambles. Something happened here, but I didn’t know what. There were no diaries, no computers to explain what went wrong. All I could do was delve deeper into the madness of Vault 106 — hallucinations included — and fend of the occasional “insane survivor.”

At the end of my journey into the pit of Vault 106, ‘Fallout 3′ had become ‘Silent Hill.’

What caused them to go insane? I had no idea. But Vault 106 went deeper into the ground and the hallucinations continued. Scientists stalked the halls as the screen went a dark purple, before I was warped back to reality. “Fallout 3″ seldom messes with your visual perception, aside from splashing blood on the screen or warping your eyesight after you use a drug.  This was a completely new way of messing with me.

By the end of my journey into the pit of Vault 106, “Fallout 3″ had become “Silent Hill.” I was nervous around every corner, dropping my controller when accidentally tipping a garbage can. In Vault 106’s darkest corner, there was a scientist. She wasn’t insane; she was simply holed out at the bottom in hopes of avoiding the others, who had clearly lost it.

She fought me, though, and I had to kill her. There was nothing in her possessions to explain what had happened. I had reached the end of Vault 106 without answers.

A chance encounter with a computer while on my way back up, however, explained everything. Vault 106’s overseer had decided to secretly test on the residents with toxic gas — and the plan backfired badly. The residents went insane, killed one another and the survivors simply stalked the halls of Vault 106 in a mental rage. It was all a botched experiment.

How screwed up is that? If these are the kinds of experiences I can look forward to happening on by continuing to explore the entirety of “Fallout 3,” I will not put down this game anytime soon.

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Arguably the best WWII game ever. Simply put, if you like first-person shooters this is absolutely essential.

Yes, yes: Not one but two Wired.com contributors have already weighed in on the first-person parkour game Mirror's Edge. There's still more to be said.

One of the biggest sticking points with Mirror's Edgeis that it is faced with a dilemma not unfamiliar to designers of action games. How do you make the player feel as if he is on a non-stop thrill ride, but also challenge him? Mirror's Edgeis a game about parkour. How do you replicate that sense of running, jumping, and climbing in a non-stop flow -- but also penalize the player for screwing up?

It's a tricky problem, and I don't envy anyone who has to try to solve it. Mirror's Edgemakes a valiant effort, but falls just on the wrong side of the line: There's just a touch more frustration than flow.

This isn't to say that I am not having a (mostly) good time. I'm constantly on the lookout for brand-new experiences, and Mirror's Edge certainly is one. It doesn't make me want to vomit, as Clive Thompson found. I don't know if I'd go so far as to give it an eight out of 10, as Baker did. But neither would I slam it, as Varietyreporter Ben Fritz did-- I wouldn't have "given up out of sheer annoyance within an hour."

However, I agree with much of the insight in both of these reviews, probably because I felt myself being pulled between both extremes as I played. My Mirror's Edgeexperience went back and forth between exhilarating and frustrating.

At absolutely no point does Mirror's Edgecoddle you. This is not a game for anyone who is not a lifelong gamer, because it immediately starts challenging you. One of the very first things you have to do in the game's prologue is make a pinpoint jump off a roof and grab a thin pipe that you can't see until you're already in the air. Unless you're unbelievably lucky or amazingly skilled, it'll take you many tries. This becomes a running theme.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, if you like challenge. It's fun to run up against something that you know you can do, and try it until you master it. It's especially fun when the game rewards you for nailing it -- with things like getting to watch your character make death-defying leaps across buildings. When you're playing a well-designed stretch of a Mirror's Edgelevel, this can be a great fun.

But not all of its levels are created equal. All too often, it feels like the correct path through the level isn't obvious enough, and the only way to figure out what exactly you're supposed to do is to die, a lot. This is even more true when the cops start chasing you and firing guns at you while you're running. If you're at a loss as to what to do, they'll shoot you while you're trying to look for the escape route.

So due to a combination of the game's exacting challenge (reasonable) and unclear level design mixed with die-and-retry gameplay (unreasonable), you die a lot. Dying a lot does not per semake for an unfun game. But in Mirror's Edge, getting bumped out to a loading screen and having to wait to respawn at the nearest checkpoint is just annoying. It seems, at best, an inelegant solution.

How should they have handled it? Beats me; I'm not a game designer. But I do know that Mirror's Edgeis hardly the first game to grapple with this issue. In fact, while it might be dressed up with a new first-person coat of paint, the gameplay in Mirror's Edgeis quite similar to 2003's Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time-- acrobatic trickery combined with occasional bits of combat. And the designers at Ubisoft faced the exact same problem: How do we make a game about putting a character into perilous situations where he could fall to his death at any moment, but not make the player want to stab themselves in the eye every ten seconds?

The answer turned out to be so clever that Ubisoft worked it into the plot of the game: The eponymous Sands let the player rewind time, so that gruesome deaths could be reversed instantly. You could still die for good, but you had a few chances to fix things before that happened. It rewarded you for trying new and outlandish things, not punished you.

I'm not saying that Mirror's Edgeshould have ripped off Prince of Persia, even though it would have helped. I'm saying that if DICE's game was going to be built around the idea of dying a lot, which I think it was, it should have made dying more fun.

Image courtesy Electronic Arts

See Also:

• Review: Mirror's Edge, the First-Person Parkour Game You Must Play ...
• First-Person Jumper: Mirror's EdgeRevolutionizes Platforming ...
• Mirror's EdgeTrilogy Planned
• Games Without Frontiers: Victory in Vomit
• I Would Totally Live in Mirror's Edge's Repressive Nightmare City ...
• Mirror's EdgeMakes the Jump to Comics

The end is near again: Valve has unleashed Left 4 Deadfor PC and Xbox 360, summoning yet another zombie apocalypse for beleaguered first-person shooter fans.

Tons of zombies and a creepy atmosphere? Check. Limited supplies and ammunition? Check. But things are quite a bit different here. Blurring the line between survival horror and cinema -- right down to the kitschy movie posters and dynamically generated banter between characters -- Left 4 Deadoffers a decidedly new style of team-based zombie hunting.

Over the course of four campaigns with five maps each, four survivors must battle seemingly insurmountable odds -- with the biggest barrier to success being how well everyone works together. My first hands-on with the gameleft me with bitter feelings toward my fellow man -- perhaps we deserved this cruel fate after all, if we couldn't even move down a hallway without panicking and being ripped to shreds. But with the game's Tuesday release, I've had a change of heart.

While there is an offline, single-player option, chances are you'll want to take on zombies -- or humans, if you're so inclined -- online with friends and strangers. Left 4 Deadisn't your typical zombie frag-fest, so here are four rather important things to remember while you're prepping for battle.

1. 4 Heads Are Better Than None

You've never played a co-op game quite like this one. Whether you're a Survivor or one of the Infected, you're pretty much worthless without your teammates -- their skill, and the entire team's ability to work together, will make the difference between standing tall in the face of adversity, and limping toward the finish line.

As a Survivor, your partners will be there to pick you up when you've been trampled, heal you if you've squandered your own supplies, and generally provide cover fire and support. There are few things worse than being pounced upon or helplessly dragged away, with your friends having gone on without you.

As the Boss Infected in Versus mode, your only chance at victory lies with getting the humans to split up -- there's a hefty re-spawn time after each death, so working as a team is pivotal. Send your Boomer in first -- the bile he vomits works as zombie bait, sending the NPC horde en masse to attack whatever is covered in his puke. Once those spineless humans are blinded and panicking, Hunters and Smokers will need to swarm in to divide and conquer.

2. Something Really Is Out to Get You

You'll study the maps, hone your aim, and your team will move like a well-oiled, monster-killing machine. At which point, the AI Director opens up that magical zombie faucet in the sky, overwhelming you until you escape, or break.

Dynamic, cinematic campaigns means that as you're wading through corpses, struggling to save ammo and stay alive, every shot you fire and every kill you make is being judged. Skilled players will be rewarded (or punished) with more encounters and greater challenges, while those struggling to survive will find their opposition a little tamer. This keeps the pace lively, without punishing players.

Each of Left 4 Dead's 20 maps will provide a different experience every time you play -- there is no scripting, and there are no spawn points, just a perpetual torrent of zombies, tailored to your own skill and progress.

3. Keep Your Ears Peeled, or Something Will Do It for You

True to that cinematic vibe it hopes to establish, Left 4 Deadoffers up quite a few audio cues to help give players a fighting chance. Characters issue alerts, letting each other know when ammo or weapons are nearby, or reminding friends to heal. There'll also be the occasional reminder to drop whatever it is you're fiddling around with and get moving, as zombies attack those who linger. The announcements can get kind of annoying -- particularly after the hundredth time someone has announced they're reloading -- but you'll usually be glad to know exactly what your team is up to while you're in full panic mode.

The music also plays a very important role in setting up that cinematic experience. The trill of a horn, a haunting choir or a sudden shift in the melody followed by an ominous quaking each signal that something very unfortunate is about to happen, so listen closely. And if you're not averse to voice chatting, get a mike -- it can get kind of hard to type when you're trapped on the ground, firing stray rounds into a disorienting mass of necrotic flesh.

4. When in Doubt, Stay Calm and Run Like Hell

With the exception of sequences where you're specifically told to activate an object and then brace for impact, there is no "planning" in Left 4 Dead, and there are no climactic, scripted battles: The stronger Boss Infected arrive fairly regularly, at the Director's whim in Campaign mode or perpetually lurking as other players in Versus mode.

No, you're getting a genuine survival-horror experience: nursing wounds, scrounging for ammo and acknowledging that strategically making a break for it is usually better than getting slaughtered, especially when the enemy seems focused on a player that isn't you.

Yes, sometimes sacrifices must be made. After all, a team can still be victorious if at least one person survives -- whether that means making it to the safe room, or reviving the wounded before they've died. So remember that Golden Horror-Flick Rule: You only have to outrun the slowest person you're with.

With keen senses, a steady hand and a little luck, you'll do yourself (and more importantly, your teammates) proud.

Images courtesy Valve

See Also:

• Hands-On: Left 4 DeadMultiplayer Demands Brains
• No Left 4 Deadon PS3 (Really)
• Left 4 DeadSystem Requirements Revised

SAN FRANCISCO -- Real-time strategy videogames have long been confined almost exclusively to the PC, mostly because of the fact that they control best with a mouse and keyboard. Since the genre combines the micromanagement of a squad full of individual units with fast-paced gameplay, attempts at controlling games like Red Alert or Age of Empires with delicate precision usually fail with a console's game controller.

With Halo Wars, Microsoft makes a valiant attempt to bring the genre to Xbox 360, in a familiar wrapper. The end result, which Microsoft says will ship to stores in February, won't have real-time strategy fans ditching their preferred control implements. But playing the game at a recent event here, I came away pleasantly surprised.

Halo Wars isn't designed by Bungie. It's the product of Ensemble Studios, the creators of Microsoft's popular Age of Empires strategy games. But the battles still look quite a bit like the Halo world you know and love. Everything from the strafing fire of Covenant aircraft to the exact crunching sound of a Warthog plowing into a pack of Grunts has been replicated faithfully.

Fans of the first-person shooter games will appreciate these touches. But will they play a radically different kind of game, one that relies on strategy and unit management over fast trigger fingers? I don't know. But Halo Wars' great interface, intelligent troops and well-balanced gameplay seem to be coming together well -- in spite of the fact that you have to use a control pad.

Halo Wars, set 20 years before the events in the original Halo, tells the story of the Spirit of Fire, a massive United Nations Space Command warship tasked with finding out what the dastardly Covenant aliens are up to. Turns out, those zealots are looking for something -- giant space rings, maybe -- and the marines of the Spirit of Fire must stop them at all costs. 

The depth of Bungie's carefully created Halo universe means that Halo Wars will feel intimately familiar to fans, even though it's a real-time strategy game and not a shooter. While there are a few new units, most are recycled from the series and play the roles you'd expect: Warthogs are fast scouting units, with a knack for running over enemies. The massive Hunters are ideal for plowing through enemy vehicles, while diminutive Grunts are pretty handy with plasma grenades -- and as an added bonus, their inane banter is absolutely hilarious as they march off to die.

The pace of combat is strikingly similar as well. Covenant forces crumple once their shields are vaporized, a well-placed grenade can turn the tide of a skirmish, and Spartans can even hijack enemy vehicles. This means that players who aren't fans of traditional RTS games can still hold their own, tactically, provided they were paying close attention when they were slaughtering things as Master Chief.

Halo Wars is going to float or sink based on its interface. Fortunately, Ensemble Studios has put a phenomenal amount of attention into a number of crucial elements.

Since the game was developed from the ground up with the Xbox 360 in mind, the controls are well-suited for the console. The directional pad cycles through your bases, groups of units and recent alerts (units being produced, recent attacks, etc), while the L and R buttons will automatically select all your forces, or just the ones on screen. Units are automatically grouped by type, and hitting the right trigger will select individual groups for a bit of micromanagement. Holding the left trigger increases the speed at which you scroll, handy for darting around a particular battle and ordering troops.

While still not up to par with a mouse and keyboard, the controls are perfectly suited for Halo Wars, thanks to the careful attention that has been paid to the size and pacing of combat.

Under the right conditions, your units will hold their own in battle even if you're not paying close attention to each one of them. No, a swarm of grunts won't last long versus a tank, but the game gives you ample time to move your cursor around and direct the action without worrying that your forces will crumple at the slightest opposition.

The drawback is that there aren't as many units on the field. While you can increase the number of units you can place on the map, I hit the limit at about 60. Every large vehicle, like a tank or a gunship, counts as three or four units. Since raising an insurmountable horde of troops is no longer an option, you'll instead need to find the right balance of different units for any situation.

Expansion and base construction is also different in Halo Wars. You can't just plop down armaments wherever you please. Instead, potential base locations are scattered about the map, and you must first capture them -- sort of like the seminal Genesis strategy game Herzog Zwei. Once you've torn down enemy or neutral bases and built a command center, you're offered five pads to erect five buildings, and four spots for turrets. Upgrade your HQ, and you'll be granted a few more pads, which means that the bulk of base construction will involve properly managing which buildings you build, and upgrading quickly.

There also isn't much in the way of resource management. The UNSC build supply pads, and the Covenant build warehouses, but both serve the same function of providing you with a steady stream of supplies. You'll find the occasional revenue source hidden on a map, guarded by mysterious Rebels, but establishing an economy mostly boils down to managing how many supply pads you construct.

The system works great for the single-player campaign, and complements the console's control scheme, but many strategic elements are lost along the way, particularly with the game's multiplayer skirmish modes.

During my hands-on time, we only played on one multiplayer map. Once I learned where all the base locations were, there wasn't much opportunity to be surprised. Both the UNSC and Covenant races had a unit that mitigated this drawback, allowing you to deploy units anywhere on the map, but it still doesn't quite have the punch of constructing forward bases, or starving opponents by cutting them off from crucial resources.

Despite these issues, Halo Wars seems to be shaping up quite nicely. I still wish there were a PC version in the works, but the way things are looking, this may actually be one of the few console RTS games worth playing.

Images courtesy Microsoft

See also:

• Halo Wars Devs Form iPhone Game Studio
• Halo Wars Coming in February
• Halo Wars Dev 'Shocked' at Studio Closing

Let’s go ahead and get the sheep-related jibes out of the way:

This is a baaaaaaaad game.
Play it too long, and it’ll put you to sleep.
Keep sailing, Argonauts. No golden fleece here.

I would’ve worked these gems into the review, but Shaun the Sheep, an adventure title developed by Art Co. and based on the popular British children’s show of the same name, isn’t that bad. A simple and underwhelming game, yes, as most children’s titles are, but there is some entertainment to be had.

The show is produced by Aardman Animations, the studio responsible for the lovable, Plasticine adventures of Wallace & Gromit. It focuses on the intelligent, creative, human-like sheep Shaun and his slapstick escapades in a barnyard. The whistle-blowing sheepdog Bitzer, the plain, unassuming Farmer and the clumsy, daft sheep that make up the rest of the Flock provide plenty of comic situations, while the Naughty Pigs’ mockery, cruelty and scheming make for a good foil. The episodes are very reminiscent of the silent films of the early twentieth century, as there is no spoken dialogue whatsoever (there are sheep bleets, human grumbles and other sound effects, of course) and the comedy is often physical in nature.

The game does a great job in terms of atmosphere. The characters and environments look a lot like their television counterparts, and the animations retain some of that distinctive stop-motion charm, while the music and effects are cutesy in an appropriate way and recognizable to any series fans.

Plotwise, the game isn’t nearly as intriguing as the show. In fact, it can be fairly called “barebones.” The television episodes, one featuring a round of football with a head of cabbage and another a barnyard rave, are mindblowing adventures compared to the game’s rather boring task of finding fifteen sheep before the Farmer returns. Also, sadly, the humor and personality of the show are mostly lost. There are bits here and there, especially in the last, sheep-launching minigame, but not enough to keep the average person playing.

The controls are sharp enough, a non-issue. Moving Shaun around is merely a matter of steering with the stylus, and interacting with the world’s objects is just a tap or two away. The whole game runs smoothly on all fronts, with no technical distractions whatsoever. But, as with the Wii, the unique features of the DS aren’t often capitalized on, and Shaun the Sheep is a firm example of this. The top screen is typically either a static map of Shaun’s location or an image of Shaun and the like mugging to the player, and the microphone and stylus interactions are particularly shallow.

The gameplay, following this shallowness, is patently uninspired. The story mode is essentially a stringing together of gather and fetch quests: finding a certain number of sheep, using Item A on slot B, et cetera. The occasional minigames break up the monotony with plenty of WarioWare-esque microphone-blowing, rapid-tapping and so on, but they’re quite unsophisticated and far too easy to pass. Again, this is primarily a children’s game, but there’s still far too much handholding and dumbing down going on. Or perhaps I give today’s youth too much credit… As for the minigame and collection modes, they are exactly what you think they are: simply components of the story mode set off for quick access and playability.

There isn’t a lot here for older gamers, even older viewers of the television program, as the game isn’t particularly compelling or addictive. I can certainly imagine that the kids who enjoy Shaun the Sheep on the CBBC or Disney Channel will enjoy this for a short while, but the rest of us will find more fun and excitement out of watching the program or - better yet - seeing a few Wallace & Gromit shorts.

And, to answer your burning question, no, the game will not sync up with a similarly titled Pink Floyd song, although that certainly would’ve been an excellent selling point!

+

• Good atmosphere (graphics, animation, music and sound effects)
• Tight, responsive controls
• Appealing to children and family-friendly

-

• Unremarkable implementation of DS features (touchscreen, top screen, microphone, et cetera)
• Uninspired gameplay (fetch quests, been-there-done-that minigames, et cetera)
• Humor and personality of the show are mostly lost

Greetings, Mario fanatics young and old! Finally, after innumerable requests and a handful of death threats, we are responding to high demand for a gallery wholly dedicated to educational Mario games. Awesome, let's learn! So, what is it Mario is going to be teaching us anyway?

As it turns out, quite a lot. His heroic deeds over the years have promoted such abstract virtues as bravery, selflessness and chivalric duty, but at the end of the day, hands-on skills and craftiness are to be rewarded. Rarely has Mario demonstrated his alleged ability to install and repair plumbing (aside from setting flame to the occasional pipe-dwelling piranha plant), and one must wonder whether he ever spends time away from his eccentric and widely-varied hobbies, like being an athlete in virtually any sport and solving picture logic puzzles. Does Mario know anything worth teaching? Ride a hyperlink over to our new gallery stuffed with pedagogy and find out! Oh, and bring a notepad.

It's-a Mario World is a weekly feature in which the ubiquity of Nintendo's flagship character is celebrated: We'll incessantly ruminate about mustache wax, debate the curious whereabouts of the princess and covet the luminous power stars strewn about the galaxy. Check back here every Friday to find out what strange and wonderful thing has got us tipping our caps.

It's-a Mario World: Super Educational originally appeared on Nintendo Wii Fanboy on Fri, 14 Nov 2008 23:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Virtually Overlooked is a weekly feature that spotlights games that aren't yet on the Virtual Console, but should be. Want more Virtually Overlooked? Check out the first year!

Virtually Overlooked: Popeye originally appeared on Nintendo Wii Fanboy on Thu, 13 Nov 2008 19:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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