Thursday, 26 January 2012

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 - Defiance Review

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3: Defiance is a competent though flawed handheld shooter.



The Good

  • Multiplayer is good fun, with rewarding progression   
  • Level design suits the small scale   
  • Touch-screen functions work well in conjunction with button controls.

The Bad

  • Stylus aiming controls have issues   
  • Poor checkpoint placement   
  • Occasional bugs


Given the huge fanfare that accompanies a Modern Warfare launch, it's easy for its DS counterpart to slip under the radar. It's understandable, really. Whereas the console/PC version is a high-octane, explosive visual feast full of gloss and gunfire, the DS offering can't help but seem a little ropey in comparison. And while it almost manages to hold its own, Modern Warfare 3: Defiance struggles with poor controls, a number of glitches, and some ill-thought-out checkpoint placement.

Defiance tells a story that is parallel to the main Modern Warfare 3 campaign. It sees you, playing as members of the National Guard and the British Special Forces, trying to repel the invading Russian army. There's little in the way of story, and scenes jump from place to place, with the general goal always being to "kill the bad guys." Cutscenes are lacking in exposition and also lack a subtitle option, and often, the audio is a bit unintelligible. It's not a huge matter, but most of the cutscenes are in game and can't be skipped, so it would have been nice to follow what was being said all the time.

Mechanically, it's fairly typical Call of Duty. You're funneled from gunfight to gunfight, down tight corridors, shooting bad guys as you go, meeting with the occasional turret sequence along the way. There's a decent balance here; you're never overwhelmed with enemies, which suits the small screen. And you have the helpful ability to peer down the sights with a tap of the touch screen, which snaps your view close to an enemy soldier. There are two control methods. The first, using the stylus to aim, is problematic. Finding the aiming sensitivity sweet spot proves difficult, and more often than not you'll end up flailing as you struggle to get a bead on an enemy. Button control works a lot better though. The D-pad is used to move back and forth and to strafe, while the face buttons allow you to look up, down, and turn left or right. Auto-aim comes into its own here too, compensating for the lack of pinpoint control. The touch screen is used nicely in this control scheme too, with the hot spots to change weapons or interact positioned well so that a quick tap of the thumb does little to break the flow of combat.

It manages to be quite exciting at times. Running in, clearing out a warehouse of Russians, switching up weapons, and hurling grenades is all rather fluid once you get the hang of it. It's often difficult to aim precisely, though, and the limited directional control from the four buttons occasionally becomes a problem, especially at close quarters. It's serviceable, though, and once you get the hang of using the iron sight auto-aim, becomes less of an issue.

An incoming helicopter? Explosions must be imminent.

An incoming helicopter? Explosions must be imminent.

The turret and helicopter sections are less exciting. There are a few missions that see you providing air support or guidance, and these end up being rather fiddly, slow, and boring. The best is one in which you have to guide your troops below in very rudimentary real-time strategy sections. But later missions--where you have to take down tanks and trucks--can get a bit frustrating given the tight time limits and slow movement of the mounted weapons. Later on in the game, a turret section where you fire from a helicopter proves even more problematic, with the game demanding slightly too much quick-aiming accuracy.

Perhaps more annoying is the poor checkpoint placement. Checkpoints are frequent, and you rarely have to repeat more than two or three minutes of the game, but little thought has gone into where they actually occur. One section early on, for example, has you breaching a warehouse. This requires you to listen to your squad chatting about it and then wait for your squad to get into position so you can plant the charge. If you die in the next few rooms of baddies, you're whisked right back to before the dialogue and are forced to sit there and listen to your squad a second time. Then you have to accompany your squad all the way back before you can dive into the combat again. There are too many checkpoints that follow a similar pattern, and it's a shame a bit more thought wasn't put into the structure. The occasional glitches are also annoying. These usually involve a friendly non-player character blocking a pathway or required enemies refusing to spawn. Quitting to the menu and reloading always sorts it. Because the checkpoints are frequent, there's usually little progress lost, but it's still rather annoying.

Thankfully, the multiplayer fares better than the single-player. Once again, it's exactly what you'd expect from Call of Duty, with unlockable weapons, perks, and customizable loadouts. The progression system is just as fun as always, and there are some nice, small maps that are perfectly suited to the smaller number of players. Diving into a random match is easy enough, although you can't choose your game type. There's also the ability to host or join friend matches after you've exchanged lengthy friend codes. Matches can be played online or locally, and if you have a group of friends all keen on Defiance's multiplayer, this is the best way to play.

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Resident Evil: Revelations Review


The Good

  • Taut stop-and-shoot action   
  • Creepy atmosphere   
  • Great visuals, especially in 3D  
  • Entertaining story.

The Bad

  • Unengaging new characters.
Resident Evil: Revelations splices the survival horror DNA of classic Resident Evil with the new, brisker strain of Resident Evils 4 and 5. The result isn't an Umbrella-style crime against nature, but a healthy, happy hybrid: an optimum mix of tense, creepy exploration and stop-and-shoot action, telling a tale of bioterrorism and unwise genetic meddling aboard an abandoned ocean liner. It's also lovely to look at and, with a 10-hour story campaign, it's a meaty slab of a single-player adventure.
Veteran monster mashers Jill Valentine and Chris Redfield return, both in the service of the Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance (BSAA), but not as partners. The game is set after Resident Evil 4 and before 5, in the wake of a bioterrorist attack in which the high-tech island city of Terragrigia gets obliterated. Chris is paired with the flirty Jessica Sherawat, and Jill with Parker Luciani, a husky BSAA agent with a dubious Italian accent. The story plays out in TV-style, bite-sized episodes, each sandwiched between a "previously on Resident Evil: Revelations" recap and a cliff-hanger ending. It's a fun format for the compellingly hammy melodrama of Resident Evil tradition.
Much of the early game is spent playing as Jill or Chris in search of Chris or Jill, scouring the giant ship of horrors with your respective AI partner in tow. The new partners aren't hugely engaging--when you first meet Jessica, she's in shorts and ankle warmers, moaning about the cold on an arctic mission--but you're at least not responsible for their safety, since they can't be killed. Still, you wonder how much lonelier and scarier the game might be without the sidekicks. One of the most atmospheric portions is one that also most resembles old-school, haunted-house Resident Evil: Jill wakes up in a ship's cabin and has to venture alone and unarmed through the decaying luxury of the once-grand cruise liner.
The pace alternates between slower segments of cautious exploration and fraught sequences where you fend off waves of mutants while waiting for an elevator, for instance. In the slower sections, sinister ambiance and the odd well-placed jump scare come to the fore while you navigate ship corridors and dim rooms on the hunt, generally, for a key. The infrequent puzzles are on the slight side (one has you win coins from a casino slot machine and use them to unlock a high-roller suite), but they're agreeable palate cleansers all the same.
Gloomy corridors aplenty.
Gloomy corridors aplenty.
Not so agreeable: the comic relief double act of nerdy BSAA computer expert Quint Cetcham (really?) and his playable straight man Keith Lumley, whose comedy banter completely misses the mark. Their appearances, at least, are mercifully brief; Jill and Chris get the bulk of the screen time, the episodes flitting between BSAA teams, and there are plenty of stretches with these long-serving characters for fans of the series to enjoy.
As in Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D, the franchise's first foray onto the 3DS, you use the circle pad for moving or aiming, the right shoulder button for snapping into a laser-sighted aim mode, and the Y button for firing. It's a comfortable, reliable control scheme that makes for tactical and deliberate combat in characteristic Resident Evil style, and it holds up well even in more hectic fights with fleshy boss monsters. Battles are taut, measured standoffs, where you weigh the option of standing your ground to shoot an inbound enemy against the option of lowering your weapon to retreat to a safer spot.
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