Available at Noble Knight Games

Introduction
The ‘Old School Renaissance’ movement is something that has largely passed me by. As I’ve mentioned before I didn’t start with D&D and by the time I did get to play D&D it had been spoiled for me by a bunch of other games with more progressive, fun or ‘realistic’ mechanics. Since D&D largely passed me by until late 2nd Edition and 3rd Edition, so the OSR hasn’t really drawn my attention before.

Legends of the Flame Princess changes that a little. Here’s a game that combines ‘old school gaming’ sensibilities without the ‘giving a fuck’ that has neutered so much of what the modern incarnations of many of these games have become in futile pursuit of becoming a family pastime.

To me, at least, LofP doesn’t really feel like a D&D clone, despite its mechanics, in sensibility it’s much more like Howard than Vance and if anything is a ‘grown up version’ of Dragon Warriors with more blood, tits and death. That can’t be all bad now can it?

I’m reviewing the Grindhouse Edition which comes with a referee’s book, rules book, tutorial book, a few character sheets and a little packet of dinky dice. The only thing missing was a pencil really.

Background
LofP, despite the evocative name and artwork, much of it depicting the eponymous ‘Flame Princess’ (how a hero can be ginger when they have no souls… I have no idea) doesn’t really have a background. It’s a late medieval/early renaissance feel from the illustrations getting on towards but not really reaching ‘Solomon Kane’ territory or the Early Modern German period that informs Warhammer. Overall it’s pretty nebulous which isn’t necessarily any bad thing at all, leaving you room to make up your own world and fill it out as you wish. The artwork and odd bits of writing and suggestions here and there are more pointers, ideas, not a game world. Still, I would have liked a little more meat on the bones and a peek behind the curtain a little more into the world as the author sees it and interprets it. The tutorial and adventure in the books are a little more whimsical than the art and presentation would make you think and a little at odds with the main thrust of the presentation.

Mechanics
If you know D&D in any of its pre 3.0 incarnations then you basically know what you’re getting into here. LofP does play with some of the sacred cows a little though and is a touch modernised. There are skills, of a sort, very simply organised on a 1-6 pip, roll a d6, basis. There’s no rogue class, rather a ‘specialist’ who can pick and choose skills to suit themselves. Only fighters are REALLY good at fighting. So you have wizards, clerics, fighters and specialists and it harks back, way back, with racial classes for elf, dwarf and halfling. It’s a mix of old and new sensibilities.

HP bloat has been pared back, way back, which means risk stays relatively high. XP is earned more for escaping with treasure than mass slaughter. All in all it’s a slimmer, deadlier version of the old way of doing things and coupled with the no-holds barred presentation that’s very suggestive of how you could, would or should play the game.

There’s one grand omission to the game, but that omission is by design so whether it should be called an omission or not is in question. There’s no bestiary, though there are structural rules for creating strange monsters. This is deliberate so that there’s no such thing as a standard monster in the game and that the monsters are unique, strange, weird and that there’s no commonality and nothing to fix upon, expect or predict. I appreciate the idea but some more examples of monsters would have been an excellent guide to creating one’s own.

Atmosphere
The atmosphere is informed mostly by the art though I believe the choice of paper etc in the books is also an attempt to invoke the feel of the older games. This is a version that doesn’t pull its punches, breasts and guts and blood on show rather than hinted at. The ‘naughty’ promise of the old games that was never quite followed through on is here, in many ways more like a horror game than a fantasy game but given its key direction towards weird fantasy, that’s hardly surprising.

Artwork
The artwork is uniformly excellent but also greatly varied. Much of it is simple line work but it gets across the feeling of the game extremely well, considering so much hangs on the artwork in this regard this is extremely important. I mentioned the paper before, it feels cheap, crinkly and while the colour plates are much more expensive and better quality paper I have a feeling that they might pull free of the binding over time. The cheapness of the paper is not necessarily a minus in my eyes, it does evoke the feeling of the old Corgi Dragon Warriors paperbacks and I have a feeling it will yellow nicely with time.

Conclusion
The box makes this look and feel like a starter game, but it isn’t. This is a grown up version of the game that so many of you started with but it leaves gaps, plenty of gaps, for you to make it your own. It encourages you to take risks, play dirty, play deadly and where the rules have been modernised its to the great advantage of the game as a whole, changed JUST enough. I can see some people getting upset at the adult tangent of the game but, frankly, fuck ‘em.

On the Plus side

Encouragement to play to the hilt.
Evocative and inspirational artwork
A complete approach to a game, even though I don’t think this will be anyone’s starter game.

On the Minus Side

Somewhat flimsy books that won’t hold up to heavy use.
Neither old style nor new style it falls in between the two.
Not as helpful as it could be on the game/monster creation front.

Score
Style: 4
Substance: 4
Overall: 4

No related posts.

Available at Amazon.com

Introduction
This was a bit of a disappointing book. It may be my mind playing tricks on me but I seem to remember Dark Sun having a lot more naturaHaving not so long ago having gotten through praising Monster Manual 2 for making all the monsters at least look scary I’m afraid to report that some of the ones in this book end up looking either ‘meh’, or ‘ridiculous’. Not flumph-scale ridiculous, but really not great. This is a shame as the wildlife of Athas is meant to be some scary-ass stuff, terrifying and dangerous. Not silly. Somehow that isn’t conveyed by this book and topping out at 150 pages, somehow it feels a lot thinner.

Background
As a Monster Manual by any other name, the Creature Catalogue only contains a couple of paragraphs of information on most creatures but it does also contain a section on ‘Personages’. This goes into more detail on the various movers shakers and interesting folk of Athas and fleshes out some meat on the bones of what was covered in the main setting book. While this is a good thing there can be a tendency for statted figures to end up just being another thing to kill, rather than a villain per se. It may have been better – in this instance – to forego the background data and include more monsters as the personality entries take up 2-3 times the space of a regular monster entry.

A few of the entries are Athasian spins on existing critters from the Monster Manuals and they’re presented complete here – which I’m in two minds about. Again, space could have been saved for new creatures by leaving these out or noting the differences, but it’s nice – for once – that they’re not trying to get you to buy another book and that everything’s there.

Mechanics
The monsters use the newer stat block from MM3 – my first encounter with it – and I can’t say as I see that much difference, all things considered, in terms of clarity or ease of use. In addition to the standard critters we get rules for customising other creatures to fit Athas – an example being given is a silt-shark – and a number of themes for creatures such as those bred to fight in the arena or infused with elemental power. The book wraps up with some fantastical terrain, unique to Athas, which makes for some colourful encounters, especially the arena ones which are suitably bloody and delicious.

Atmosphere
Atmosphere is pretty hit and miss in this book, the artwork is a bit of a culprit for that but what amounts to a list of monsters can’t help but be a little dry. It’s the nature of the beast to be such. This makes the artwork all the more important and, as I’ll cover in the next section, it falls a bit short.

Artwork
Having not so long ago having gotten through praising Monster Manual 2 for making all the monsters at least look scary I’m afraid to report that some of the ones in this book end up looking either ‘meh’, or ‘ridiculous’. Not flumph-scale ridiculous, but really not great. This is a shame as the wildlife of Athas is meant to be some scary-ass stuff, terrifying and dangerous. Not silly.

On the ridiculous side we have the Belgoi, the Cilops and the Mekilot.

On the ‘meh’ side we have the Anakore, Braxat and Zombie.

Genuinely fearsome looking, fortunately, we have the Chathrang, Dune Reaper and Megapede.

Conclusion
A bit of an essential if you’re intending to run some Athasian games but even so, it’s a bit disappointing. I remember Athas being a lot scarier and deadlier and too much of what we have here feels familiar and/or looks silly and that’s a bit of a let down having gotten so excited over Dark Sun.

On the plus side:

* Nice creature modifiers/themes.
* Fantastical terrain/hazards are interesting.
* Athasian essentials covered.

On the minus side:

* Mixed bag on the art side.
* Strange choices of what to include.
* Feels ‘light’ on material, despite the size.

Score
Style: 3
Substance: 4
Overall: 3.5

Review by James “Grim” Desborough

Related posts:

1. Dark Sun Campaign Setting D&D Review
2. Adventurer’s Vault D&D Review
3. Dark Sun Campaign Setting (D&D 4e) Review

Available at Amazon.com

Introduction
I didn’t buy Heavy Rain when it came out, largely because it was described by many as, essentially, being one huge eight-hour long quicktime event. Me and quicktime events have never gotten on since I first played Dragon’s Lair, on one of those huge, laserdisc arcade machines and died, horribly, many times. I have serious issues with authority and when there’s ‘one right way’ to do something, whether it be in a game or in real life, I rail against it and get bloody annoyed. Heavy Rain, then, seemed to me to be a nightmarish game which would be the total opposite of anything I might ever want to play, however innovative, however artistic and hower stylishly French it might be.

I was wrong.

Not completely wrong, but I was wrong.

Story
Talking about the story of Heavy Rain without being spoilerific is difficult and I don’t want to give spoilers even though it’s now an ‘older’ game and most people who will have wanted to play it will have played it. I’ll try my best.

You take on several roles throughout the game:

* Ethan Mars, bereaved father whose second child is kidnapped by the mysterious Origami Killer who then screws with him throughout the story, testing him.
* Madison Page, feisty, sexy investigative reporter, looking into the Origami Killer murders.
* Norman Jayden, FBI profiler and massive geek.
* Scott Shelby, private eye, also looking into the Origami Killer murders.

This gives you several different viewpoints on the ongoing plot but the main thrust is through the eyes of Ethan Mars and the main theme of the story is to ask ‘what would you do to protect your child?’ with the tests that the Origami Killer gives you becoming harder and harder as the story wears on towards its climax and its resolution.

Gameplay
You progress through the game via exploration within each section and via progress through quicktime events, moving the thumbsticks or pressing the buttons according to particular order or timing in order to get through the various scenes which might be anything from shaving your face to staving off the attentions of an insane doctor with a bonesaw. You’ll also be called upon to remember things from the various scenes from time to time, so the game requires you to pay close attention to it all the time which can be oddly exhausting, mentally and emotionally.

Unlike quicktime events which are crowbarred into other games, Heavy Rain doesn’t quite have the same punishing level of ‘get this right or you’re toast’ that those have. In most scenes there’s room for a couple of mistakes and even if you do mess up and die horribly, often the game can continue to progress even without one or more of the main characters still being alive. The variety of outcomes and the possibility to continue regardless massively mitigates many of the problems with normal quicktime events and makes Heavy Rain much more playable.

Controls
The quicktime events work well but the more normal scenes – where you’re exploring and investigating – don’t work to the same degree. The movement feels like the early Resident Evil games with the same issue where you go spinning off in a crescent and bashing into things. That breaks the immersion that exists through much of the rest of the game and is a shame and a big source of annoyance.

Atmosphere
Heavy Rain scores highly in its atmospherics, though the ‘uncanny valley’ effect is in evidence, a barrier to empathising with the characters completley. The contrast between the clean, tidy opening to the game and the grime, filth and terror of the rest of the game is effective, though a few more beats of happiness in the later game may have made the darkness more effective.

The game does draw you in and does manage to make you engage with the characters, despite often being understated and despite the barriers of the graphics and the control system. It takes a while but, eventually, you find yourself genuinely caring about the characters and the outcome of their individual stories.

Graphics
Despite the uncanny valley effect of the characters (the main problem seems to be the mouths, rather than the eyes, oddly) the graphics are excellent throughout the game. This may be a side effect of most scenes being enclosed, so a lot of computing power can be brought to bear upon a relatively small area. The animations are fluid and effective and the mocap work is excellent.

Conclusion
This was a very innovative game and we need more of this, however if I had bought it new I wouldn’t have felt that it would have been worth the price as the replay value, I feel, isn’t there. Despite there being something like 20 different possible endings. I think a playthrough after the first time simply wouldn’t have the same emotional connection for the player.

On the Plus Side

* Engaging story.
* Solution to the quicktime ‘issue’.
* It settles the ‘can a game be art?’ question, once and for all – if you accept that it’s a game.

On the Minus Side

* Lacking replay value.
* Uncanny valley is a big obstacle.
* Non-quicktime controls are a bit of a pig.

Score
Style 5
Substance 4
Overall 4.5

Review by James “Grim” Desborough

No related posts.

Available at RPGNow.com

Introduction
I previously reviewed Barbarians of Lemuria for which this is supplemental/replacement material. BoL is an excellent product with a strong focus and some innovative ideas. Barbarians of the Aftermath isn’t quite so great and doesn’t add a fantastic amount to BoL but what it is, is a good source of inspiration and ideas. It doesn’t present an ‘after the apocalypse’ world but, rather, provides a toolkit for you to create your own. I’ll include some examples of what I came up with using the tables in the book, after the review proper…

Background
There isn’t one. As mentioned before this book is more of a toolkit for coming up with your own ideas and backgrounds and what it does well is to generate fairly scant backgrounds via random tables (reminiscent of a simplified Central Casting) which you can then hammer into a vaguely cohesive gameworld.

Mechanics
BotA has some rules additions but none of them are particularly major. There’s a lot of technological gear, random antagonist generation, new careers – and their descriptions – mutations, psychic powers, vehicle rules, modern weapons and a bunch of other stuff which sounds like a lot but these are mostly implications and expansions upon existing rules.

The meat of the book is really the random generation tables for world generation, antagonists, adventures and so forth, great for pick-up or convention games where you might need ideas – and characters – swiftly.

I’m not 100% convinced that the career system works as well for a post-apocalyptic setting as it does for the original Barbarian setting. Skills are simply too diverse in a remotely modernised setting to be covered in this fashion and for it to make sense. Some way of taking individual skills separately to careers would fix this, but would also defeat the point of the career system. It’s a bit of a pickle to solve that one.

Atmosphere
Since the book has no central apocalypse theme and tries to cover all the possible bases at once there’s no real, cohesive atmosphere. The artwork evokes the sort of post-pulp trash fiction of the 50s to the 70s which doesn’t necessarily lock-in to modern concepts of an apocalyptic event, though it does evoke nostalgia in anyone who’s read those old paperbacks. This is part of the problem with producing a generic book, you can’t have a specific vision of it that fits for all these different interpretations.

Artwork
The lineart ain’t great and it’s a shame ‘Grumph’ couldn’t reprise his role as artist from the BoL book. The old-style art is good, but out of step with modern sensibilities and not subject to the same nostalgia level/worship as Pulp or Victorian style art. The book could have really done with having one or two artists do everything, new, so that there was a cohesive style/vision.

Conclusion
A good source of ideas and great for pick-up games, not hugely worthwhile otherwise and a little crude/scant where I’d have liked to have seen more detail. Expanded and spruced up a bit (larger tables with more options, more cohesive artistic vision) and the score would go up by about a point. I’m still not convinced the career system works well within many of these settings but it would work very well for something like Enslaved or Thundarr.

On the plus side:

* Full of ideas.
* Covers a lot of ground.
* Plenty of rules expansions.

On the minus side:

* Tables could be expanded more.
* Lacks focus.
* Bad line art.

Score
Style: 3
Substance: 4
Overall: 3.5

Apocalypse Example
I rolled:
An ongoing Biblical Apocalypse with technology reduced to a renaissance/steam level of accomplishment. Basic resources are available to those who work hard for them, nation states still exist but on a smaller level, reduced to a number of fortified city-states loosely allied to form a nation. There are psychic and supernatural powers, triggered by the presence of the divine and infernal.

My interpretation:
Heaven and hell are warring over the Earth and their struggles have decimated the human population. Some places are resisting both sides, seeking their own way, trying to fight back or escape notice but these are subject to the attacks of zealots as much as angels and devils. Outside the cities – most of which are under the patronage of heaven or hell – the countryside is a blasted wasteland, the two sides in stalemate for the present, trying to sway the survivors to one side or the other.

Adventure Example
I rolled:
The mission goal is to survive. The characters have the bad luck to run into an old missile silo in the wilderness which is infested with strange plants under the control of an otherworldly entity. The reward for completing the adventure is access to pre-disaster technology. The entity’s goal is to seize control of resources.

My interpretation:
Driven to take shelter in the missile silo in the teeth of a horsefly swarm of epic proportions – sent to scour the land by Beelzebub – the characters find themselves in a strange, overgrown military base which is overgrown with plants and filled with plant-zombie succubi, agents of the demon lord Buer who has mastery of the realm of plants. Buer is tasked to take and hold facilities such as these because nuclear weapons – as ‘unnatural’ creations of man, are one of the few things that can harm a devil or an angel – perhaps even a god. If they succeed they’ll gain access to the leftover missiles as well as a stash of military equipment and ammunition – which is in short supply at present.

Enemy Example
I rolled/My interpretation:
Furie Flower
Str 1
Agl 3
Mind – Plant
Appeal 3
Brawl 0
Melee 0
Ranged 2
Defence 1
Attacks – Blade 2
Poison Spit – d3
Lifeblood 3

Siren flowers are women, infected with Buer’s plant-essence at the point of death, their flesh turned green and shiny, their bodies made lush and attractive but they are vicious creatues, Driven to kill and – thus – make more of themselves. Despite this, if they can be captured and denuded of their thorn-claws and poison glands, they have a certain ‘value’ on the black market.

Review by James “Grim” Desborough

No related posts.

Available at Amazon.com

Introduction
I remain largely unconvinced of 4e’s worth for playing your more usual fantasy settings. It seems too high powered and kitchen-sink to me. When it comes to certain, specific settings however I can see it working much better, though for a couple of different reasons. 4e works better with Eberron and – in theory – Planescape because of the inherent gonzo and high-power qualities of those settings. It, theoretically, works for Dark Sun because 4e’s emphasis on personal training and powers suits a material-scarce setting where the individual and their ability has more importance. To that extent, the sheer appeal of Dark Sun has ‘turned me on’ to 4e in a way the previously existing material hasn’t.

Of course, that may just be nostalgia speaking.

Background
The book feels more like a primer than a full setting guide. It just doesn’t feel like it goes into remotely the amount of depth – overall – that a setting book necessarily should. I feel it could have done with being about fifty to a hundred pages longer or could have left out some of the mechanics (epic destinies and alternate class fittings) to make more room for going into the background.

While there’s bits and pieces of information about the background mixed in with the stats and other material the initial introductory guide to Athas is only 17 pages out of some 220 and feels a bit inadequete. I’m a whore for setting information though and while the overall information is fairly scant there’s plenty of information that’s more specific, going into the Atlas of Athas – the world of Dark Sun. Everything is covered, so there’s a lot of information, but not a lot is really gone into in depth.

I’m not sure there’s enough here to get a truly Athasian feel if you hadn’t played Dark Sun in a previous edition and while what is here was enough to – finally – get me excited about 4e this book feels a bit too much like a ‘re-skin’ of the basic game, particularly when it comes to crowbarring in some of the races that didn’t exist in the setting beforehand, especially Dragonborn and Eladrin.

Mechanics
Where you’re not short-changed is in rules. You have Athasian interpretations and re-jigs of all the basic races (Half-giants are now goliaths, which dovetails nicely), new races in the form of the excellent Thri-Keen and the hardy Mul, racial paragon paths, wild talents for latent psychics, new rituals, new epic destinies, Athasian weapons and environmental hazards. New ground is covered with ‘themes’, which allow you to tailor a character a bit further to a more specific, customised end. Themes might be such things as ‘Desert Trader’ or ‘Gladiator’ and just give you a few extra customisation options.

The rules for magic defilement feel a little weak to me, it’s hard to imagine a whole world being reduced to crap based on the rules as applied but I suppose the effect would have to be fairly weak or it would throw off the whole balance aspect of 4e. Still, it’s a real shame.

It would have been nice to have at least a few themed monsters in the setting book, but these are instead hived off into Dark Sun’s own mini Monster Manual.

Atmosphere
The book is presented almost entirely in the standard layout for 4e books and this is missing a trick in making the Dark Sun material stand out and be its own thing. The adventure section – something I generally find to be a waste in books such as these – is the only part that really deviates from the standard presentation and then only in terms of the page border. This is missing a trick in demonstrating and conveying the desolation and danger of Athas. While most of the books in the 4e line are fairly generic, the world books shouldn’t be and making them the same as the rest doesn’t help convey their uniqueness.

The writing is crisp but a little too swift to truly convey the atmosphere and while the maps and art are good they feel a bit too colourful and ‘clean’ for Athas’ savage landscape of danger and survival. It lacks some of the vital ‘edge’ and semi-fetishistic danger that Brom’s involvement in the original had. It’s just not quite as sexy.

Artwork
The art is good but, outside of the page-and-a-half or half-page illustrations it can’t help but fall short of Brom’s work on the original. Doubtless there’s not quite the money to be made in TTRPGs any more, which is why such a partnership between a high profile artist and a game line can’t be done any more, but it would definitely have been well served by putting another house artist with a strong vision more at the forefront of the game’s development, integral to it rather than illustrating afterwards. Of course, this stemming in large part from Brom’s original vision, I doubt that many artists would want to step into his shoes.

Conclusion
This is the book and the setting that finally turned me on to wanting to play 4e and it deserves kudosfor that, however I’m not going to gloss over its flaws. If this were truly going to be a full on worldbook it needed to be about 50% bigger and a bit more complete – more like the 3rd Edition Forgotten Realms books. Elements of the new game that didn’t really need to be added in – such as dragonkin – have been and if anything, it detracts. Sometimes less is more.

On the plus side:

* It’s Athas, and an official, developed, moved-on and updated Athas.
* The atlas, while short, is complete.
* There’s a shiny map.

On the minus side:

* Not enough material.
* Not even basic baddies to kill.
* It really didn’t need dragonkin etc.

Score
Style: 4
Substance: 4
Overall: 4

Review by James “Grim” Desborough

Related posts:

1. Dark Sun Creature Catalog Review
2. Adventurer’s Vault D&D Review
3. Dark Sun Campaign Setting (D&D 4e) Review

Available at RPGNow.com

Introduction
There’s a lot I don’t like about the 40k RPGs. The fact that they’re split across several books, classes and levels instead of the career approach of WFRP, the extremely tight and constricting focus/construction of the games. That said, there’s a lot to like as well. Having waited for a 40K RPG since the original Rogue Trader hardback wargame came out and being steeped in the influences that lead to its creation (primarily British fantasy/SF art, Moorcock and 2000AD) I love the 40k universe like no other and, despite not having been involved in the wargame hobby for some years, I seem to have assimilated the newer stuff (Dark Eldar, Tau, Necrons) by sheer gaming osmosis.

Deathwatch ‘completes’ the series of three books and three settings for the 40k RPG, each in ascending order of sheer munchkinism being Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader and Deathwatch.

In Deathwatch you get to play Space Marines.

Mwahahahahahahaha!

Background
It’s the grimdark future of the grimdark 41st millenium, it’s grim and dark and there is only war, grimdark war on a thousand grimdark fronts against the grimdark alien threat. You’re part of the Imperium of man, which is still pretty grim and dark but not quite as grim and dark as being the slave of orks, the torture-porn of Dark Eldar or being twisted into a spiky-death ball by the ruinous powers of chaos.

Honestly, the commie-pinko-liberal Tau are looking pretty good right now, but then most imperial serfs don’t know about them.

In this iteration of the game you’re Space Marines, knights of the Imperium, augmented supersoldiers of legend. Members of one of a thousand chapters, each of akipedia thousand marines, the elite of elite, the matchless warriors of the Empire of Man and, what’s more, your characterskipedia are members of the Deathwatch, an even more elite cadre drawn from the best of all the chapters and unleashed upon the threat of the alien.

The best way to think of Deathwatch is to think of the player group as a special forces unit, sent wherever the action is hottest to do the tasks that others – even other space marines – cannot be trusted with. It’s hard to do an investigative game when you’re an eight-foot tall, power-armour clad, scripture-spewing fanatic but with an ‘impossible mission’ slant you can do a pretty wide variety of things.

Mechanics
The mechanics are the same as with the other games in the series, d10s are used and most rolls are percentile (save damage). You can save your arse and modify your rolls with Fate Points. Marines are not normal in the slightest and are suitably boosted and powerful with rules that reflect all their implants and their superhuman status, with weapons to match.

Given the emphasis on unit action there are rules for the group to act as a team, a ‘Squad Mode’ as well as a ‘Solo mode’ with different benefits and tactical options. There are also rules for engaging a ‘horde’ so that your unit of marines can mow down large numbers of lesser enemies in a suitable fashion.

You get a good number of enemies as well, with a particular emphasis on the Tyrannids. Rounded out with the material in the other books in the series you have a half decent bestiary though, personally, I feel that each book on its own is a little scant in the enemy stakes.

Atmosphere
The writing and quotations do a good job of setting the atmosphere and the briefings on the situations and war-fronts in the sector. It does feel a little too shiny though, where I feel that there should be a more battered and cathedral-like, ecclesiastical feel to the presentation. Perhaps that’s my old-school sensibilities coming through though, since the ecclesiarchy and their troops are very much separated from the other parts of the Imperium now. Otherwise, one thing 40k has always had going for it has been atmosphere, drawing on a rich geek-culture strain of ideas that are found across many forms of British fiction.

Artwork
As mentioned above I think that the presentation could have been a bit more atmospheric but the Space Marines are an iconic image and there’s plenty of appropriate imagery, heraldry and various aliens being punched in the head and shot to keep you happy. My printing looks a little muddy in the colour images and they look a little fuzzy but that and the overal thematic choice are my only – mild – complains.

I do miss the old pointy-nose power armour though.

Conclusion
The circle is complete and we end on a high, supersoldier special-operations. Military SF is easy to make up adventures and missions for and the hook is a simple ‘You’re ordered to…’ which can be convenient for a GM but, like all the 40k RPGs I can’t help but feel this a little tight-focussed though, of all of them, it has the best excuse.

On the plus side:

* Space Marines that feel like the dangerous adonai they should be.
* Worthy adversaries.
* Completes the game line.

On the minus side:

* You really need all three books for a ‘complete’ game. Especially if you want to do something off the wall like space pirates in the same setting.
* The design/art could have worked harder to promote the ascetic/religious warrior aesthetic.
* Hard to mingle marines in with existing groups unless they’re very experienced.

Score
Style: 3
Substance: 5
Overall: 4

Review by James “Grim” Desoborough

Related posts:

1. Rogue Trader RPG Review
2. Deathwatch (Warhammer RPG) Review
3. Dark Creed Fiction Review

Available at Amazon.com

Introduction
Demon’s Souls is a western-looking but Japanese made ‘RPG’ – in the loosest sense of the word – which has become somewhat notorious, even legendary, for its ‘challenging’ difficulty and it’s old-school ‘hardcore’ sensibilities. Something which has made it a bit of a hit with ‘hardcore’ gamers.

This view of the game is horseshit, based on false nostalgia and a failure to recognize that things are a damn sight better these days and that technology has taken us beyond the conditions that made old-school games, necessarily, difficult.

Story
A mysterious fog has enveloped a kingdom and all word from within has been cut off. The greatest heroes and adventurers from beyond this land have ventured into this fog and none have returned. Being a masochistic dipshit who can’t take a hint like any reasonable person, you’ve followed them into the fog only to be annihilated in turn by a giant demon and waking up, a lost soul, in a weird cathedral like space called The Nexus where, it turns out, you have to venture forth as a sort of ghost in order to collect enough demon souls to reincarnate and take on the forces of evil lurking in the fog.

Gameplay
There’s a massive difference between ‘challenging’ and ‘fucking with you’. Demon’s Souls is very much in the latter camp. The game is not difficult in an honest way but, rather, seeks to deliberately screw with you in order to make the game as difficult as possible, not for any real story reason but just out of pure sadism and the desire to create a ‘challenging’ game experience. This sadistic (and not in the fun kinky way) ethos infects the entire game from the premise and execution of the ‘reincarnation’ gameplay to the exacting timing needed for any of the special moves and actions to work, right down to the control method selection. You’ll repeat things over and over and over the slightest mess up means you’ll have to play the whole level all over again, right from the start.

When you’re playing through the levels to gather enough souls to reincarnate you’re on half health, so in order to play a level normally you’re expected to complete it on a higher difficulty to start with, ludicrous.

Fuck.
That.
Shit.

You can’t even pause for chrissakes and every time you do fail at a level, you go right back to the start, lose ALL your gains and all the enemies respawn.

Controls
The controls seem straightforward to start with, the usual move, block, attack, swap-weapons and swap items controls. The problem comes about with their deeper implications, the combinations and timings of what you’re trying to do and the layout of the controls seems to have been deliberately chosen to make fighting and so on even more difficult. For example, you get a parry/riposte manouevre and a jump-back move that are both meant to protect you in combat. They don’t unless you’re somehow blessed with Neo-like reflexes that slow down time to a crawl allowing you to hit the femtosecond long period in which such moves are effective.

Atmosphere
There isn’t a huge amount of atmosphere, despite the nice intro and the fairly lengthy explanations of the background. The levels have all the soul and character of an assault course and other than ‘collecting souls’ you have little to no reason or understanding as to why you’re repeatedly going over the same, grindingly-dull fights and one-shot kills of your character over and over again in the vain hope of lady-luck striking and you being able to progress to another level of frustrating, repeated death.

Graphics
The game is pretty enough but a little off, a western style RPG that feels as though it was made by someone working on second-hand descriptions that they didn’t quite get. It’s dark, nasty feeling, the bad guys – at least the ones I saw – are spooky enough and not over-the-top as they can be in many games. Skeletons, mad-men, demons and the possessed. We didn’t make it past the first proper level though, so I can’t tell you anything about the later sections.

Conclusion
Old school games were tough because there often wasn’t the technology to save your position, so you had to play them in one sitting. They were also often difficult because difficulty was a way of adding longevity to a game when you didn’t have so much storage and memory to play with and couldn’t necessarily have shitloads of levels for people to play in.

Old is not always better, that’s a logical fallacy. We have the technology now to make games that aren’t pixel-bitching snorefests and enough storage that games can have a lot more play and story value without forcing you to beat your head against a wall six-hundred times to progress.

I think this is part of some backlash against the Wii, Kinect, DS etc and the casual game/kiddy game/’girl game’ and their percieved level of easiness but I think how games have actually developed is more into interactive entertainment. I don’t generally play a game on hard, rather I normally choose easy or normal as I want to balance the pleasure of accomplishment with not being horribly frustrated – plus I don’t have a huge amount of time to invest in these games and I use them as a break.

I remember old-school games and while they were difficult, they didn’t deliberately set out to fuck with you. The controls weren’t deliberately foxed, special moves might be difficult – but they were possible. If an old-school game was a difficult mountain climb, Demon’s Souls was a difficult mountain climb made worse by being forced to wear lead shoes and having a rabid weasel stuffed down your pants.

In summary, about as much fun as volunteering to be raped with the Se7en strap on, sans lube.

On the Plus Side

* Pretty graphics, but that’s par for the course these days.
* We didn’t pay full price.
* Deep but ultimately pointless character customisation (like painting the sistine chapel on a conker).

On the Minus Side

* Sadistically difficult.
* Incoherent.
* Controller-breakingly frustrating.

Score
Style 2
Substance 1
Overall 1.5

Review by James “Grim” Desborough

No related posts.

Available at Amazon.com

Introduction
Another ‘core’ rulebook but unlike PHB2 there’s really nothing in here save the monk character class that can really be called core. The races have gotten increasingly bizarre and obscure to the point where unless you’re playing a fantasy version of RIFTs or a kitchen-sink setting like Planescape, things aren’t going to make much sense. That said, this book does give you the psychic rules that people have been waiting for and addresses a huge flaw in 4e up to this point – shitty multiclassing rules.

Background
Yet again this is a fairly background-free book though, given the exotic peculiarities of the new races it can’t really be called generic. This is at the far-exotic end of crazytown in the D&D mythos and describing monks and monk powers as ‘psychic’ really grates on my nerves and – to my mind – cheapens the monk role in the same way midichlorians cheapen Jedi.

Mechanics
You get your usual list of races, classes, paragon paths and the huge number of powers for everything in a nice, brain-straining ream of little boxes. Mechanics is the meat of this book and no mistake.

Race-wise you get:

* Githzerai – Ascetic humanoids from across the planes.
* Minotaur – Great big bull-men, as close as you get to a ‘normal’ race in this book.
* Shardmind – Crystalline psychic beings.
* Wilden – Living plants and guardians of nature.

Class Wise you get:

* Ardent – A sort of combat empath, able to project emotions to inspire or confuse.
* Battlemind – A warrior with a reservoir of psychic power that they can use to enhance themselves.
* Monk – An extreme version of a Shaolin warrior, in fantasy garb.
* Psion – A powerful psionic ‘magic user’ able to use their psychic power in raw attacks and manipulations.
* Runepriest – A sort of runic warrior-priest, able to channel more specific powers through specific runic foci.
* Seeker – A primal, mystical hunter, a sort of cross between a druid and a ranger.

You also get magic items and feats all suited to these new clases and powers, ensuring that you have all the bases covered when you bring them into your game.

So far, so ‘meh’, but what makes this a really worthwhile purchase are the vastly improved multiclassing rules which are called ‘hybrid classes’ in order to prevent confusion with the existing multiclassing rules, such as they are. Essentially this is a quick and easy way of combining two classes together to make a new one.

By way of example, if I were going with my personal favourite of a Rogue/Fighter combo I could go with:

Role: Defender/Striker
Power Source: Martial
Key Abilities: Strength, Dexterity, Wisdom, Constitution, Charisma.
Armour Proficiencies: Cloth & Leather.flying bears that fire lasers
Weapon Proficiencies: Simple Melee, Military Melee, Simple Ranged, Military Ranged, Shuriken, Hand Crossbow.
Bonus to Defence: +1 Fortitude, +1 Reflexes
Hit Points at First Level: 13 + Con.
Hit Points per Level Gained: 5
Healing Surges per Day: 7 + Con modifier.
Class Skills: Acrobatics, Athletics, Bluff, Dungeoneering, Endurance, Heal, Insight, Intimidate, Perception, Stealth, Streetwise, Thievery.
Extra Trained Skills: Two extra trained skills from the Rogue list.
Class Features: Combat Challenge (Hybrid), Sneak Attack (Hybrid).
Hybrid Talent Options:
Combat Speciality, Fighter Armour Proficiency, Fighter Combat Talent, First Strike, Rogue Combat Talent, Rogue Tactics.

Another great addition is that of skill-based powers that you can swap in for other powers that you have, giving skills a greater utility and point than they had before, which is nice.

Atmosphere
It’s a fairly dry book of rules. The artwork is mixed – see below – and the new race and class material isn’t really given enough room to go into depth or create any atmosphere, so this doesn’t really apply to this book. When it comes to powers, the nature of the new game – with everyone and their pet monkey being able to pull off wazzy powers – means that psychics no longer feel particularly special, different or interesting in their own right. I never particularly cared for the D&D approach to psionics in previous editions but in the context of the new game they’re swamped and no longer individual.

Artwork
As with PHB2 the smaller artwork feels a bit divorced from the text but the larger pieces are very good and evoke the proper atmosphere. That said, the psychic classes – which is most of them – don’t feel very psychic from their illustrations, particularly.

Conclusion
Useful for playing Dark Sun but a bit of a wash otherwise unless you’re playing a rather outre campaign.

On the plus side:

* Monks.
* Psychics
* Decent multiclass rules.

On the minus side:

* Weird races that aren’t much use to anyone, unless you’re playing World of Synnabar. I confidently predict the next PHB to contain flying laser-bears as a playable race.
* Less effort on the magical items.
* Some non-combat applications of skill powers might have been nice to broaden the game.

Score
Style: 3
Substance: 3
Overall: 3

Review by James “Grim” Desborough

Related posts:

1. Divine Power (4E D&D) Review
2. D&D 4E Player’s Handbook 2 RPG Review
3. Martial Power RPG Review

Available at RPGNow.com

Introduction
I reviewed Qin already and thought very highly of it indeed. Qin Legends is a supplement for Qin consisting of the high level masteries and skills as well as a few scattered bits of new material and an adventure.

Background
Qin Legends doesn’t add to much to the background of the game, in fact the only additions to the background material are really to be found in the ‘styles’ and their history.

Mechanics
Essentially this is all mechanics, though there’s a little short fiction and an adventure in the back. The high end secrets of the Taos, new combat techniques, high level skills, flexible weapons and ‘the magic of the gods’ anQin Legends and their artefacts. These are all suitably powerful and thematic and do expand the range from the initial book.

Atmosphere
Not really applicable.

Artwork
As with the original book the main problem with the presentation is that the pages are so grey that the text and the artwork sort of fade into the background for lack of contrast. Otherwise the artwork is servicable and does the job.

Conclusion
Honestly, I would have cut the adventure and folded the higher end material into a new edition of the main rulebook with this as a PDF update for those who had bought the original book. The new mechanics amount to around 32 pages and the adventure is around 18 pages. It might well have been better to fold this into another book to increase the value for money because as things stand it feels like a relatively high price, just to get access to the high powered cheese!

On the plus side:

* Full of neem, zort, goob and cheese.
* More character options.
* Useful NPCs from the adventure.

On the minus side:

* 1/4 of the book is an adventure.
* Not that much bang for your buck (in terms of pages, not in terms of power).
* Doesn’t add more breadth to the powers, just extends them.

Score
Style: 3
Substance: 3
Overall: 3

Review by James “Grim” Desborough

Related posts:

1. Legends of Anglerre RPG Review
2. Legends of Anglerre RPG Review
3. Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space Review

Available at Amazon.com

Introduction
OK, so, given that I gave 4e D&D what’s widely considered to be a ‘bad review’ why am I reviewing this and a bunch of other 4e D&D stuff? Several reasons. 1 – 4e is still semi-open and so things can be written for it, as indeed I have written a couple of things for it. 2 – I’m trying to see if there’s anything I’ve missed. 3 – It’s not irredeemably awful. 4 – I’ll forgive a hell of a lot for the sake of Dark Sun. 5 – I’ve figured a few ways around the whole needing a map thing and besides, there’s some jolly nice map things around now and, what the hell, I like playing Descent. Same thing, right? *Grin*

This is a review of Adventurer’s Vault, which is a big shiny catalogue of ‘stuff’ for adventurers to use to hit things, protect themselves from being hit, run away from things, zap things and so forth.

Background
There isn’t really any. This is about as generic as a game supplement can get. Some things may not be suitable for particular campaigns if you’ve excluded some races or are playing on a particular world – such as Athas – where magic is a little more distrusted or metal is rarer but if you’re playing ‘Points of Light’, Forgotten Realms or your own generic grab-bag setting, you’re pretty much golden.

Mechanics
For the most part this is just an application of existing rules and interpretations thereof. There are a couple of interesting new additions, most particularly rules for Alchemy, creating your own semi-mystical items with a variety of uses. If you’re running a lower magic setting these rules are a great way to bolster your heroes without giving them access to magic.

Atmosphere
There isn’t really any, this is just a book of magical equipment, though the artwork is good and makes everything look very nice, helping you picture your character using the items. I do worry, somewhat, that the ‘specialness’ of magical items is decreased in this edition as they seem to be about as ubiquitous as in the worst excesses of the previous edition – as standard.

Artwork
Very nice, mostly small but that’s all you need for equipment and it’s nice to see many of them in-use rather than just sitting there looking pretty.

Conclusion
Useful, but not particularly inspired.

On the plus side:

* Nicely illustrated.
* Shitloads of stuff.
* Useful new rules for Alchemy.

On the minus side:

* A bit dry.
* I miss random loot tables.
* Magic items end up feeling about as magic as an iPad.

Score
Style: 3
Substance: 4
Overall: 3.5

Review by James “Grim” Desborough

Related posts:

1. Player’s Handbook 3 D&D Review
2. Dark Sun Campaign Setting (D&D 4E) Review
3. Adventurer’s Vault RPG Review

Available at RPGNow.com

Introduction
Charles Stross is an excellent SF author whom you should all read the work of, perhaps his best known work is Accelerando but of late his ‘Laundry’ series, starring Bob Howard, have been attracting a lot of attention with their mix of Lovecraftian horror, office politics, bureaucracy, civil-service mickey-taking and existential terror. They’re sort of like ‘The IT Crowd’ meets ‘The Shadow over Innsmouth’. The series is marked by a modern, ‘geeky’ sensibility, the mixing of themes between red tape, horror, cynical comedy and espionage action.

That sounds like a hell of a mess, but it works and you should read them.

The Laundry is Cubicle 7′s RPG ‘omage to the series, nearly 300 pages of hardback, tentacular goodness with a distinctly modern twist.

Let’s be clear on one thing though, despite so, so many appearances to the contrary, this is not Call of Cthulhu.

Background
There are many different layers to reality, like an onion of strangeness. Each layer of reality is just a quantum thickness away from the other ones and out there, in other universes, things exist. These things are hungry, curious and know how to reach across the universes. So do we, in our own, fumbling, bumbling way by using rituals and multidimensional mathematics. Manipulating the nature of the universe and reaching across the quantum void requires a lot of luck… or a lot of processing power. These days we have the processing power and that means computers and technological devices are more than capable of channeling – or helping to channel – occult forces.

At the end of WWII a treaty was signed to keep these strange technologies out of the hands of the public and not to use them in war. This has largely been followed but still people in the public arena keep discovering – and rediscovering – the mathematical and occult tricks that tap into these forces and so enforcement is needed.

In America the well-funded, heavily militarized and deeply sinister Black Chamber enforce the treaties and pursue transgressors, weaponise magic and get up to all sorts of dodgy stuff in the name of home-dimension security. Elsewhere in the world professional and well-funded organizations do the same within their own borders.

You’re not in America, you’re in Britain and you’re not part of the Black Chamber, you’re part of The Laundry.

The Laundy is not particularly well-funded, it operates out of a nondescript and fairly dilapidated building. Everyone on staff doubles up their duties. It is mummified by red tape and struggles under a weight of bureaucracy that might go so far as to require you to get your bullet receipts signed by the cultists you shoot with them.

All that stands between Britain and annihilation by forces beyond imagining are men in grey suits, IT geeks and secretaries who moonlight as a Poundland James Bond.

Mechanics
System-wise The Laundry uses Basic Roleplaying (BRP), which should be familiar to one degree or another to anyone who’s played Call of Cthulhu, RuneQuest, Elric or any other BRP derived systems. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that this is the same though, while you could play it perfectly well with other BRP interpretations this is – in many ways – the updated and more modern interpretation of BRP that the last incarnation of Call of Cthulhu should have been.

Key differences include:

* The inclusion of a ‘major wounds’ system, allowing for crippling and lasting injuries, ‘criticals’ after a fashion.
* Personality types – With skill bonuses that help define your ‘role’ in the team.
* Assignment and training – Supplements profession skills with some specialist training.
* A much improved magic system.

You also get all the weird techno-occult devices you care to shake any number of sticks at.

Atmosphere
The book is a bit of a jumble between three different perspectives, all under the conceit that the book is actually a leak to C7 from the ‘real’ Laundry. This semi works, but the cutting between game rules, Laundry files and Bob’s observations on the book (often doodled in the margins’ mess up the cohesion a little – even though it’s a great idea.

The artwork is a mixed-bag when it comes to creating the atmosphere but the layout and textual contents are largely on the money. My only slight annoyance is that, to me, the books don’t read – directly – as humorous. It’s more the ridiculousness of the situations, Bob’s gallows humour and sarcastic cynicism commenting on the events that make them humorous. There are some genuinely dark and horrible moments in the books but, reading The Laundry RPG it’s angled more towards comedy than, I feel, the original books are. To be sure it’s a difficult balance to get right in presentation, in play and in writing, but for me, it’s not quite there.

I’m not sure how much fun all the bureaucracy and governmental nonsense will be in play, but as part of the book and in evoking the right atmosphere to someone who might not be that familiar with the books, it’s spot on. The memos and forms in particular are great – something I also like about SLA Industries, another game from C7′s stable.

Artwork
Aside from the cover and inside cover, this is all B&W and it’s very mixed. The cover and inside covers are all great but inside art is a bit sparse and some of it look disproportionate and wrong (and not in the good way that Lovecraftian ‘others’ should be wrongly proportioned). Some of the greyscale work lacks contrast and ends up looking a bit ‘muddy’ which is also a pity. I think that, as regards presentation, photo-montage and manipulation might have been a better route to take, grounding the game in modern reality – at least for 5-10 years or so before everything looks outdated!

This section seems the best to talk about layout… this is a text heavy book but isn’t messed up with dark backgrounds or huge borders, so it’s a nice, clean read. However, one pet peeve of mine is text ‘justification’ which ends up with a few sentences spread… out… across… the… page… in an annoying way. I hate that. Grr.

More illustrations of the ‘baddies’ would have been nice, as they sort of feel like they’re missing.

Conclusion
The muddiness of some of the art and the slightly off tone are the only real drawbacks for me to the book. I’ve given it a 3 for style but it really scores more like a 3.5, I just have to be harsh in reviews and promised myself I wouldn’t do half-marks on the Style/Substance parts.

This is a great, modernized interpretation of BRP and the Cthulhu mythos great for any fan of the mythos, not just fans of The Laundry. The updated and more open systems are a vast improvement and the book also forms an excellent sourcebook on British Secret Service and Police operations and divisions for the wider gaming circle.

This book has essentially everything you need, though some tech-bashing rules and an expanded pantry of Q-Division goodies would be nice for a supplement.

While there is a sample adventure in here – something I normally regard as largely being a waste of space – this one is aimed at also being a source on the Dunwich facility, which means it isn’t a waste after all. Bravo gentlemen.

On the plus side:

* Complete in one book.
* Great interpretation of BRP.
* Packed with material.

On the minus side:

* Muddy art.
* Text…justification…annoying…
* Slightly too canted to the funny.

Score
Style: 3
Substance: 5
Overall: 4

Review by James “Grim” Desborough

Related posts:

1. Cubicle 7 Announces new RPG based on Charles Stross’ “The Laundry Files”

Available at RPGNow.com

Introduction
The old UK comic Starblazer wasn’t only a Science Fiction comic, it also incorporated some fantasy stories. Like Starblazer Cubicle 7 have decided to cover both genres, unlike Starblazer they decided to split it out into a separate book. I wish my local book shops would follow the same cue and take all the damn fantasy books out of the science fiction section and put them somewhere separate.

Legends of Anglerre is, then, the fantasy version of Starblazer’s iteration of the FATE system. It’s an improvement over Starblazer, a complete fantasy game that doesn’t have the same crazed excess of Starblazer, slimmer, neater and better organised, even if it lacks – just a little – of the manic enthusiasm that Starblazer has.

Background
Legends of Anglerre is, really, a generic fantasy FATE system but it does draw for its examples and illustrations on the fantasy world/s as presented in Starblazer (the comic). This helps ground the game, even though the material on Anglerre itself is limited to the back of the book and a scant, perhaps, two dozen pages. This is actually a good thing in my opinion, the book works much better as a generic fantasy sourcebook for Starblazer and FATE than it would with a specific background though I would like to see some game settings come out for this system – to the point I’m thinking about changing one of my projects to the system from its current focus.

Mechanics
The mechanics are those of Starblazer, a version of FATE that uses 2d6 rather than the +/- dice of basic FATE and Fudge. This roll is then modified by skill levels, stunts and other factors and can be further modified by spending ‘Fate’ points or invoking various descriptives about the scene or your characters. It’s a simple, intuitive base system which can be weighed down – a lot – by all the special exceptions and special circumstances that come about from stunts, magic, artefacts and special cases.

Atmosphere
This is more of a generic system book, the atmosphere is quite ‘old school’ and stems largely from the artwork used – which is discussed below. The examples given are colourful and interesting as are the illustrative art pieces. It has its own feel, very British and I feel that – perhaps – this is the spiritual successor to Dragon Warriors, a UK fantasy RPG with British sensibilities and aesthetics but with a more modern system.

Artwork
The artwork – aside from the cover – is taken from the old Starblazers but, weirdly, it feels a bit more outdated than the SF artwork in Starblazer. The quality isn’t great in repro, but there’s plenty of it and that makes it an art-rich book, which I like.

Conclusion
A worthwhile purchase and as good for fantasy – of all kinds – as Starblazer is for science fiction. Eminently tweakable, possible to be kitbashed into many different styles this is, I think, an essential purchase for creative GMs who want to explore their own themes and ideas with a solid, adaptable system that covers all the necessary ground.

On the plus side:

* Excellent mass combat rules.
* Truly generic system.
* Much more polished than Starblazer.

On the minus side:

* The artwork looks really dated.
* Less suited to harder/grittier games – as written.
* Sparse gameworld data – if you wanted it.

Score
Style: 3
Substance: 5
Overall: 4

Review by James “Grim” Desborbough

Related posts:

1. Legends of Anglerre RPG Review
2. Qin Legends RPG Review
3. Heroquest RPG Review

Available at Amazon.com

Introduction
Red Dead Redemption could easily also be called ‘Grand Theft Horse’, it’s a freeroaming sandbox game in the style of the GTA series and by the same company with much of the same humour, cynicism and cinematic eye that those games have. The game is set at the very end of the ‘Old West’ in one of the last remaining frontiers, just as the government and other forces are making a concerted effort to finally civilise the area and bring it under the heel of proper governance. Meanwhile, in the south, Mexico is thrown into the chaos of a revolution…

Story
You are John Marston, a former outlaw who has been trying to make a new life for himself as a chicken-scratch farmer, though he has no talent for it. With a wife and son to be used as leverage against him, Marston is manipulated into tracking down his old gang, members of which can still be found in the area that the government is trying to control.

After an ill-conceived confrontation with one of your old gang you’re shot and left for dead, rescued by a local rancher and her father and nursed back to health, ready to try again. You find your feet and your health again as you re-learn the skills that will serve you well in the frontier, riding, herding, lassoing and the use of your firearms as well as scavenging for plants and skinning animals. Once you’re hale and hearty again you need to come up with an effective scheme for pursuing your old gang and that, of course, entails doing a huge variety of different missions and tasks for all manner of Old West characters across the desert, the plains and south into Mexico.

Of course… once you’ve dealt with the old gang, there’s still one member of the gang left. You…

Gameplay
This is a third-person live-action RPG, in effect, though your moral choices throughout the game are quite limited and two-dimensional, it’s no Fallout or Dragon Age on that score, there are a lot of annoying characters who you’d love to shoot in the face, but can’t. The story, while good, is pretty locked in to one particular course.

The land is rich with wildlife and feels alive, even if sometimes that life is really fucking annoying, such as when invisible rattlesnakes bite your ankles or a cougar appears – apparently out of warp space – and eats your head before you can even do as much as shout ‘Eep!’. This is good as it provides variety and skinning critters is a great way to get some money so you can buy some better guns and horses.

There’s a lot of variety in the missions and the optional side quests, of particular relief to me was that the few race sections that you were forced into were pretty easy – a sticking point in many GTA games – and only optional additional races got more difficult. There’s nothing worse than an impassable mission in something you’re really not good at.

Controls
You negotiate the land using the thumbsticks and gun combat can be either freehand or rely on a lock-on effect. You can also drop into a bullet-time effect called ‘Deadeye’ which lets you line up a number of shots and then unleash them in a rapid fusillade of fire. Controls are intuitive and largely effective, the only real annoyances are the unreliability of the lock on and negotiating terrain that looks surmountable, but isn’t.

Atmosphere
The world is well realised – though it tends to be either way too bright to see what you’re doing properly, or way too dark. The cinematic old west is well realised and familiar stereotypes – some of which are confounded or twisted, make it easy to slip into character, even if the nature of the quests can be jarring for that. Throughout 90% of the game you’re carried along by the atmosphere and story and it is only in the final 10% and the epilogue that one, unfortunately, ends up feeling betrayed by the game and fobbed off. Something that prevents RDR getting the full five stars from me.

Graphics
The graphics are effective but, as pointed out above, can feel a bit too dark or too light. Long flowing clothing feels a little odd and texturing rather than form is used to create effects and shapes that would have better been served with additional polygons. As with quite a few games this end up making the game feel more like an uprated PS2 game, than a true next-gen game.

Conclusion
An awesome game let down only by its ending and epilogue.

On the plus side:

* Evocative.
* Immersive world.
* Engaging story.

On the minus side:

* ‘I fought all that time to get back to this pinch-mouthed shrew?’
* ‘What did I done tell you boy? Ah’m comin’ back from the dead to whup your arse’
* You can’t bone Bonnie, or whores.

Score
Style: 4
Substance: 4
Overall: 4

Review by James “Grim” Desborough

No related posts.

Available at Amazon.com

Introduction
Enslaved is a post-apocalyptic re-telling of the classic Chinese tale ‘Journey to the West’. It spins off from the original tale significantly but still retains a great deal of the character and themes of the original, even though the main theme – redeeming a chaotic land by finding missing enlightenment – is one of the casualties (or at least ends up transmuted into something else). It’s a gorgeous game, with very few niggles, which seems to have – unfortunately – gone relatively unnoticed around a lot of higher profile releases.

Story
The game opens with you, Monkey, trapped inside a prison cell by slavers. Your prison is an egg-shaped metal orb – a nod to the origins of monkey – and as you languish helplessly in your prison, things start to go wrong all around you. The slaver prison – which turns out to be a flying ship – starts to explode and fall apart and its a race against time to get to the rapidly depleting number of escape pods. Once you do get off the disintegrating ship you find yourself in the company of ‘Trip’, a beautiful and technically gifted girl from a wind-farming settlement, technically gifted enough to fit you with a ‘slave band’ and to make you do what she wants.

You then engage in a journey, escorting and looking after Trip while you make your way across and out of a ruined New York to take her home and later, on, aiding her in a quest for revenge. Along the way you meet Pigsy (but not Sandy) and getting to experience a beautifully realised wasteland. It’s a bit more lonely and empty than the original story or its many wonderful interpretations, but it has a unique character all of its own.

This seems like a short summary but, while each step in the story is relatively simple, there’s a lot going on in each part and a good mix between acrobatic progression and swift violence.

Gameplay
Enslaved plays as a third person beat-em-up with a few shooter, RPG and platform elements. Your character – Monkey – is upgradable in his capabilities using an ‘experience’ system, you charge around in third person mode swinging your power-staff and smashing robots to pieces, you can fire energy bolts from its tip and you can leap from handhold to handhold with all the confidence and agility of a hopped-up gibbon. You progress from step to step in an almost completely immersive screen with only the bare minimum of readouts and displays. The only problem with this is that sometimes what you take to be a cutscene is, actually an action scene and while you’re goggling at what’s going on, you die. Once this has happened a couple of times you get wise to it and its not so much of a problem. Controls are largely intuitive and, in addition to the normal sections of the game, there’s a few in which you get to zip around on your ‘cloud’, which are tremendous fun, even if they’re not big, or long enough.

Trip gives you access to upgrades and can also fix things, bypass doors and distract enemy mechs. Unlike in many other games she isn’t too much of a liability to the point where you end up resenting her and doesn’t get attacked so much that you begin to hate having to drag her along. You do need to watch out for her though and often need to throw her across gaps or give her a boost to reach areas that are otherwise inaccessible.

Controls
Controls are largely standard 3rd person run-around-and-hit-things fare, you switch to an over-the-shoulder view when you’re firing your staff bolts, which can be a little annoying since your own body can block some of the field of view. Very occasionally you’ll leap off something in a direction you weren’t anticipating but, by and large, while the flow of motion/climbing isn’t quite as fluid as, say, Assassin’s Creed 2, it is plenty good enough.

Atmosphere
This is where the game excels, the aftermath world in which you find yourself is not the bleak wilderness of Fallout and other, similar post-apocalyptic games, rather this is a world in which man has become largely absent and nature has taken over. This is a world ‘after man’ where vines, plants and animals have reasserted themselves and the ruins have become a new habitat and landscape for the lush growth to take over.

Wandering through this wilderness is a profoundly lonely experience, everywhere there is the mark of human habitation in the past, but little to no sign of anyone being alive in the present. The whole world is like wandering a tomb.

One thing that particularly stands out in this game, for me, is that the death of the world is as much a mystery to you – the player – as it is to the inhabitants of the world itself (Monkey, Trip and Pigsy). You – and they – can only piece it together from reading the in game signs, listening to the few bits of folklore that you’re told by the others and experiencing the flashbacks you get from the slave band. This is, in its own way, far more effective than simply spelling it all out for you as happens in some games and experiencing the strangeness of the new world – as it has been remade – is almost as effective as it is in Half-Life 2. As you take in the broken vistas of the ruined New York near the start of the game, you almost can’t help mouthing silently to yourself ‘What the fuck happened?’

Graphics
The graphics are sleek and bright – another contrast with many modern games which seem to have settled on ‘beige’ as being ‘where it’s at’. While it stops short of being technicolour this tropical colour palette actually enhances the weird experience of exploring ruined New York as it’s nothing like you might expect an East Coast urban centre to be. The characters are well designed and while Trip is attractive she isn’t ‘pneumatic’ which is a welcome break from the ‘Lara Crofts’ and ‘Dead or Alive’ girls. Monkey is a great big, gristly lump of a man, covered in scars, brands and tattoos and exuding muscular danger. It’s nice to see more brutish, assertively male characters as well in games, rather than slimline metrosexuals.

Conclusion
I’m a sucker for the story of Journey to the West in whatever form it appears, most especially – of course – the TV series ‘Monkey Magic’. Perhaps this biases me in favour of anything that explores it or perhaps it makes me more demanding of things that do draw upon the story. Either way, I loved this game despite the change in the story and despite the absence of Sandy and the only real drawback to it that I can think of to the game is that it really isn’t long enough.

On the plus side:

* Beautiful graphics.
* Non-annoying sidekick.
* Immersive, unsettling world.

On the minus side:

* No Sandy.
* Too short.
* Diverges a lot from the original story.

Score
Style: 5
Substance: 3
Overall: 4

No related posts.

Available at RPGNow.com

Introduction
Rogue Trader is the second RPG in the Warhammer 40k RPG line and, thankfully, it hasn’t followed the development of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3rd edition. This is definitely a book-based RPG rather than one of many components that can be lost, misplaced or damaged. This is the ‘middle’ book of the three 40k RPGs and the most loose-reined. Rather than being agents of the Inquisition or Space Marines, both of which are heavily constricted, players in this game take on the role of Rogue Trader, relatively free agents who trade at the fringes and even beyond the Imperium of man.

Background
The characters are the command crew of a Rogue Trader vessel, the Rogue Trader himself – typically – and his entourage. You are amongst a body of Rogue Traders who are heading out into the Koronus Expanse, a dangerous, frontier area of space in which the Imperium is trying to increase its influence. There’s a great deal of opportunity for profit – and for conflict – here and as a Rogue Trader you can choose to try and uncover new sources of profit, explore, or simply take the word of the Emperor forward into the new area of space, hoping to recover – or subjugate – the peoples that live there and to eliminate the Xenos threat.

Mechanics
Rogue Trader uses broadly the same system as Dark Heresy and Deathwatch but has a slightly more expanded and interesting background generation system where you pluck a mix of background elements and stir them together to fit the particular role that you’ve chosen for your character. As with Dark Heresy you are bound into a particular ‘class’ which is a disappointment – again – compared to the brilliant career path systems of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 1st and 2nd edition and this still, at least to me, grates. Even more so than it did in Dark Heresy as, at least to me, it feels that Rogue Traders and their entourage should be even more eclectic than they are.

Rogue Traders and their aides are more powerful than Dark Hersy characters and begin at a much more competent and effective level. The roles that you can choose from include:

* Rogue Trader: The captain and owner of the ship, an independent trader.
* Astropath: Psychic beacon and communications device, with the added bonus of being able to psychically zap people.
* Arch-Militant: A total combat munchkin, the champion and bodyguard of the Rogue Trader.
* Void Master: Essentially the first mate, the guy who makes the ship and crew run smoothly.
* Explorator: A member of the machine cult dedicated to exploring and uncovering new technologies.
* Missionary: Bringing the word and light of the Emperor to mankinds orphans, and setting fire to those who don’t accept it.
* Navigator: A psychic ‘mutant’, a member of the noble navigator houses who are able to guide a ship through the warp.
* Seneschal: The burser and organiser of the ship.

Atmosphere
Rogue Traders are much more radical and there’s no real place for them in the heart of the Imperium. They sail on the edge of Imperial respectability, consorting with Xenos, uncovering dangerous technology and dealing with peoples and planets that are unknown quantities in a great many ways. The book does fairly well in achieving this but seems to have retconned Rogue Traders into being a bit less radical and edgy than they were in the old canon. This is something of a pity as the other two games in the series are so tightly strapped into particular styles of play but does strengthen the possibility of crossover, even with the uncompromising zealots of the other two games.

The fiction and artwork do bring forward some of the style and expectations of the Rogue Trader setting but I can’t help feeling that a few more larger pieces, colour plates, would have done a great deal to impress upon the reader the scale of starships in the 40k universe and the sweeping vistas of the universe as well as the dangers and strangeness of the warp. From the artwork you would expect much more of a ship-centred campaign.

Artwork
The artwork is good, as always, even if some of the physical distortions and exaggerations (expected in any 40k book) border on Rob Liefeld-style excess. As a full colour book it’s an exemplar of the style of the ‘shiny hardback’, even if the borders are a little big and the tan background to the pages can make reading a bit f an eyestrain.

Conclusion
Rogue Trader is a welcome addition to the 40k RPG ranks and brings in some of the looseness and freedom of play that’s all-but non-existent in the other games of the line. Class and level still doesn’t feel right for a game of this type but it is consistent with the other two games, ensuring that they remain compatible. The only real weakness for me is the starship rules but these can be fairly easily hacked with a system from another game or with a minis space battle game of your choice (I’d go for Ground Zero Games’ Full Thrust).

On the plus side:

* Excellent production quality.
* Good artwork.
* Much more adaptable campaign setting.

On the minus side:

* Spaceship rules aren’t great.
* Class and level still doesn’t feel right for Warhammer.
* While less constricted than the other two 40k games, it’s still very tied down.

Score
Style: 4
Substance: 3
Overall: 3.5

Review by James “Grim” Desborough

Related posts:

1. Deathwatch (40k RPG) Review
2. Fear The Alien Anthology Review
3. Deathwatch (Warhammer RPG) Review

Available at Amazon.com

Introduction
Valkyria Chronicles is a squad oriented, turn-based strategy game with a big narrative emphasis and a strong anime style. It’s daring in some ways in its narrative, but not quite daring enough. Regardless, it’s an engaging game and well worth sitting through the cut-scenes for.

Story
Valkyria takes place in an alternative Europe and an alternative World War II. In this world your small nation, which seems to be an analogue for Holland or Belgium, is independent of the two opposed forces which are beginning their clash across this world’s Europe. Your nation, Gallia, is invaded by the Imperial Alliance in a blitzkreig and Gallia’s citizen soldiers – including your team – are rapidly deployed to try and blunt the advance and secure Gallian independence from both the Imperials and the overtures of their enemies, the Atlantic Federation, a force that isn’t above being manipulative and underhanded in their prosecution of war either.

Your squad plays a key role in turning aside the Empire and, ultimately, defeating its invasion which shows that a plucky little nation like Gallia can withstand even the might of an Empire. Along the way you discover things about Gallia’s past, about the mysterious Ur-race the Valkyr and about despised Jews… I mean Darcsen.

Gameplay
Gameplay takes place across a sort of diary/notebook with each double-set of pages representing a chapter. Each chapter is made up of a lot of cutscenes that lay out the background and the mission parameters and then the missions themselves.

Missions take place in a tactical map view and a third person, turn-based view where you take direct control of a character, directing them and making attacks, setting them behind cover and positioning them to take potshots at anyone coming across their field of view. You get a certain number of activations that you can use to move and shoot with your troops and tanks. You can activate the same character multiple times but you get diminishing returns as they can move less and less with each successive activation.

You get to make your squad up of several different kinds of troops, tanks, scouts, engineers, snipers, lancers and assault troops. Each has their own strength and their own weakness and each can be upgraded through training or through equipment, either researched back at the base or captured from enemies in battle.

Controls
On the map page you can get an overview of the terrain and battlefield and you can be aware of the position of enemies that any of your troops can see. Here you select your troops each activation, dropping into third person view and moving them with the thumbsticks. When you choose to fire you drop into a closer view and can line up your shot, though whether you hit or not is mostly down to chance. That’s essentially it.

Atmosphere
This is an alternate World War II that lacks aircraft but the combination of cel-shading and very well-done cutscenes creates an atmosphere that invokes much of the spirit of WWII and touches on a lot of themes from history, both in WWI and WWII. The light, cartoony nature of the graphics helps emphasise the ruin and the stakes of the conflict, rather than drawing a way from it and the characterisation and storyline from the cutscenes genuinely makes you care about your unit and the lives of your soldiers, extra knowledge about their backgrounds and lives is even released in your diary screen as you move on, giving each a sense of their own personality which is reinforced by traits that come into play in certain conditions during combat.

Graphics
The cel-shaded graphics are some of the best I have seen done in any game that uses the technique. Much of Valkyria genuinely looks like watching an anime cartoon and while some cutscenes can come across a little wooden – still a problem with CG – most are streets ahead of any similar games. The whole thing feels almost like a watercolour sketchbook and almost like a comic, complete with onomatopoeia.

Conclusion
If you have any love for alternate history or the mystical aspects of WWII this is a good game to get, if you have any love for skirmish games or turn based strategy at all, get this game. Full stop.

On the plus side:

* Engaging storyline.
* Excellent gameplay.
* Brilliant cel-shading.

On the minus side:

* Too…many…cut-scenes.
* Some levels take a very long time to play.
* Doesn’t follow through on some of the more controversial source material.

Score
Style: 4
Substance: 4
Overall: 4

Review by James “Grim” Desborough

No related posts.

Available at Amazon.com

Introduction
God, fucking DAMN but Damn Simmons is a lot of hard work to read. I thought Ilium/Olympus was a hard read and that was an advance on the density of Hyperion. He’s hard work to read but in a good way, he makes you think and he’s dense with references to classical (in both senses) literature. Where Hyperion and Ilium call back to more ancient works, Drood calls back to the Victorian writings of Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins as well as the obsessions, strengths and weaknesses of both men, woven together with a thread of the supernatural (?) obsessions of the times.

Review
For me, at least, this was a book about what’s real and what’s fiction, about the inevitable jealousy that exists between even great creative individuals if one perceives the other as being even greater or one gets more attention than another from the public or feels that they are being overlooked. The story is told from the position of the ‘lesser talent’ in this partnership between Collins and Dickens, Wilkie Collins.

Wilkie is presented extremely unflatteringly, even though he is the narrator. All the flaws and weaknesses of the historical Wilkie are exaggerated and enhanced in the book, conveying a sense of the character’s arrogance and self-loathing simultaneously. Dickens doesn’t come across that much better, a domineering boor and an exploiter of friendships, controlling and altogether too impressed with himself, buying into his own legend.

The book commences with the rail disaster at Staplehurst, in which Dickens was caught up and which profoundly affected him in his later life. This disaster also introduces the peculiar, mesmeric and supernatural character of Drood, a mutilated underworld boss and master of animal magnetism – a topic which also fascinates Dickens – who hovers amongst the dead of the disaster like a vulture and whose existence begins to have a more and more profound effect upon the life of both Dickens and, more especially Collins.

Collins and Dickens pursue Drood in London’s seedy underworld, Dickens’ ‘Great Oven’ and its more literal underworld, a place of crypts and chambers, of sewers and hidden vaults. While Drood’s power increases, Dickens slowly declines and Collins sinks further and further into opium addiction while he struggles to deal with the pain of his ‘rheumatical gout’.

What is Drood? A shadow? An underworld boss? A mystical kingpin of the occult? An imagined ghost? An hallucination? Despite the revelations on all these possibilities throughout the book you’re left not, quite, feeling sure.

Conclusion
Worth the effort, this is, par for the course, an intelligent, literate, deep novel that’s worth more than one reading to get to the real meat of the horrific story – whichever interpretation of it that you prefer.

Score
Style: 4
Substance: 5
Overall: 4.5

Review by James “Grim” Desborough

No related posts.

]]> http://www.flamesrising.com/drood-fiction-review/feed/ 0 http://www.flamesrising.com/fallout-new-vegas-ps3-review/ http://www.flamesrising.com/fallout-new-vegas-ps3-review/#comments Tue, 16 Nov 2010 15:06:46 +0000 GRIM http://www.flamesrising.com/?p=10595 Fallout 3 was a giant, radioactive monster of a game, an awesome game that was SO awesome that we could forgive it many of its flaws and drawbacks simply because the awesomeness factor was so strong that they didn't matter. We didn't CARE if the game crashed the console every so often or if you couldn't get to the boat to Point Lookout because the level wouldn't load properly, because we wanted to play so very much it gave us boners that could double as battering rams. We forgave it its sins. Second time around we, or at least I, are not as liable to be so forgiving. Especially if many of the flaws and errors of the game are the same ones that dogged our experience with Fallout 3. We sort of expect them to be fixed or, at least, for the same flaws, errors and bugs not to show up this time around, given that they were patched in Fallout 3 and that this is a 'whole new game' which has had more time to finesse the engine and iron out the issues. Related posts:

1. Vampire Apocalypse Fallout Review

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Available at Amazon.com

Introduction
Fallout 3 was a giant, radioactive monster of a game, an awesome game that was SO awesome that we could forgive it many of its flaws and drawbacks simply because the awesomeness factor was so strong that they didn’t matter. We didn’t CARE if the game crashed the console every so often or if you couldn’t get to the boat to Point Lookout because the level wouldn’t load properly, because we wanted to play so very much it gave us boners that could double as battering rams. We forgave it its sins.

Second time around we, or at least I, are not as liable to be so forgiving. Especially if many of the flaws and errors of the game are the same ones that dogged our experience with Fallout 3. We sort of expect them to be fixed or, at least, for the same flaws, errors and bugs not to show up this time around, given that they were patched in Fallout 3 and that this is a ‘whole new game’ which has had more time to finesse the engine and iron out the issues.

Don’t get me wrong, this is still a brilliant game with a huge amount going for it, but ‘however good she looks, someone, somewhere, is tired of her shit.’ Besides the annoying bugs, the source of my frustration can best be summed up by this quote, that came out after Fallout 3 was released…

“Greatest lesson? Don’t let the game end, and don’t have a level cap.”
- Todd Howard, Executive Producer, Fallout 3

How’s that crow taste Todd? (Yeah, Vegas has both).

Story
You are a courier, a member of the Mojave Express courier group. You were assigned to deliver a mysterious platinum poker chip but end up being shanghaied and then shot in the face by ‘Benny’, a big man in one of the Vegas casinos. Recovering from your wounds in a little no-horse town you start to put your life back together and set about finding Benny and the chip and completing your task. Along the way you’ll get mixed up with the slaving hordes of Caeser’s army, the expanding New California Republic, the Mysterious Mr House (Wizard to Vegas’ Oz), the Brotherhood, remnants of the Enclave, The Followers of the Apocalypse and a great many gangs, interests, casinos and individuals.

Where Fallout 3 was more of a straightforward black/white, good/evil choice that was directed towards a singular ending, New Vegas has many different endings and many different ways of completing the game. This is less of a black and white choice and more a choice of faction, of shades of grey and no group comes out entirely smelling of roses – and neither will you.

There’s a lot of call-outs to previous versions of Fallout, which is nice for us e-grognards who have played the games for some time and gives rise to many ‘Aha!’ moments. Many of the side-quests are interesting in and of themselves and provide more insight into the nature of the post-apocalypse wasteland and the developing world. The one problem with this is that the atomic frontier is rapidly becoming civilised and one wonders how much room there’s going to be left in the game world if powers like the New California Republic keep expanding and game continuity is retained.

Gameplay
Gameplay is 90% the same as Fallout 3 with the main differences really only being in character development and levelling and the moral/faction system. This time around when creating your character you get to pick some beginning traits in addition to the ones you develop later on, this is nice as it helps you futher individualise your character and helps you decide if you want to play ‘sensible’ Fallout or ‘Zany, whacked out’ Fallout.

The second part is where problems occur and it’s up for debate whether the greater breadth of choice and alliance pays for the issues that arise from the faction system. For example, even if a faction loathes you, even if you’ve been gunning them down in droves and teabagging their corpses, even if you’ve been raping their mothers while pouring sugar in their gas tank with no moral repercussions, you can’t steal from them or you lose karma. A related issue is that if you’re wearing the armour of an opposing faction when you’re picking up missions, your choices can be narrowed by the armour that you’re wearing, even if nobody of that faction is around to see you.

You level up and, while the cap is 30, there’s still a cap (Oh Todd…), the game also ends, completely ends, when you finish the mainline plot (Oh Todd…) so you best make sure you get all your exploring and sidequests done before you set about ending the game.

One other addition is the ‘hardcore’ play mode which lets you take the whole survival thing full on, needing food, water and rest on a regular basis and with every single item having some weight to it. The reward for this is only a trophy and it is a huge pain in the arse, so if you’re only playing for fun, I wouldn’t bother.

Controls
The controls are unchanged from Fallout 3. It’s a first/third person RPG/shooter hybrid with a ‘turn based’ bolt on called the VATS targeting system, which lets you drop out of first-person-shooter mode to pick your shots nicely.

Atmosphere
New Vegas lacks some of the atmosphere of Fallout 3 and feels like more of a hodge-podge of elements than that first game did. The desert also feels a lot more monotonous than the ruins of Fallout 3 and makes everything very beige. Plot-wise the conflict between opposing forces and ideologies around Vegas and the Hoover Dam compensates for this a great deal and you do find yourself being drawn into the conflict and making some very difficult decisions about who to back, how, and what you’re willing to do. Only Caeser’s legion is really somewhat two-dimensional as the ‘baddies’, but a game needs some people you can really hate and enjoy gunning down. Their habit of crucifying people lead me to mercy-kill people who had been strung up, which was something spontaneous on my part and that I felt, showed I was being drawn into the game.

Graphics
Fallout 3 looked very nice but we sort of expect things to improve a bit further in later iterations of a game. Given how the bar has been raised by a lot of other new releases the graphics of New Vegas, while servicable, no longer really impress as they once did.

Conclusion
This is still a good game but lacks the impact and sheer awesomeness of Fallout 3. The shine is really taken off by the bugs in the game which, hopefully, will be ironed out in updates fairly rapidly. It’s also taken off by failing to learn the self-admitted lessons from Fallout 3 as the game retains those issues. This time around I’m just not willing to forgive a sandbox game that ends up being closed, the random hangs and crashes, the bugged quests that I can’t complete or, especially, the fact that the monorail with the bomb – that I disarmed – still blows up, leading to radio clips stating that BOTH outcomes happened. Apparently, not content with cats, Schroedinger experimented with trains in the Fallout universe and they’re now subject to indeterminacy.

On the plus side:

* A whole lot of game going on.
* Excellent political plot.
* Big freedom of action/choice for a CRPG.

On the minus side:

* Bugs, bugs, bugs.
* Nobody listened to Todd.
* Beige.

Score
Style: 3
Substance: 4
Overall: 3.5

Review by James “Grim” Desborough

Related posts:

1. Vampire Apocalypse Fallout Review

]]> http://www.flamesrising.com/fallout-new-vegas-ps3-review/feed/ 0 http://www.flamesrising.com/kraken-fiction-review/ http://www.flamesrising.com/kraken-fiction-review/#comments Thu, 16 Sep 2010 11:45:08 +0000 GRIM http://www.flamesrising.com/?p=7797 China Mieville is one of my favourite authors and has energised the alternative/urban fantasy or the 'New Weird' for me as much as Peter F Hamiltion re-energised British science fiction for me. I wasn't so keen on The City & The City but his Bas Lag novels and his somewhat similarly themed children's book Un-Lun-Dun are acts of pre-meditated brilliance. Kraken lacks the pure and unadulterated awesomeness of Perdidot Street Station but is much better and more engaging than The City & The City and closer in theme to King Rat, somewhere between that and the Bas-Lag novels in terms of wierdness. Comparisons with the last book I reviewed, Into the Nightside, are likely to be inevitable in the course of this review. Related posts:

1. The Magicians Fiction Review
2. Dog Days Fiction Review
3. Princeps Fury by Jim Butcher Fiction Review

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Available at Amazon.com

Introduction
China Mieville is one of my favourite authors and has energised the alternative/urban fantasy or the ‘New Weird’ for me as much as Peter F Hamiltion re-energised British science fiction for me. I wasn’t so keen on The City & The City but his Bas Lag novels and his somewhat similarly themed children’s book Un-Lun-Dun are acts of pre-meditated brilliance. Kraken lacks the pure and unadulterated awesomeness of Perdidot Street Station but is much better and more engaging than The City & The City and closer in theme to King Rat, somewhere between that and the Bas-Lag novels in terms of wierdness. Comparisons with the last book I reviewed, Into the Nightside, are likely to be inevitable in the course of this review.

Review
Kraken follows the story of Billy Harrow, a curator at The Natural History Museum in London who begins to get caught up in strange events when one particular specimen, that of a Giant Squid, mysteriously and impossibly vanishes from the museum with no evidence at all of how it came to disappear. Billy is a bit of a cloistered academic, living in a rarefied world of specimen cataloguing and preservation with a special talent for cephlapod preservation – so no wonder that he ends up both suspected and examined by those who take an interest, criminal and mystical in the events.

Initially Billy is a passive victim of events, though he can’t help sticking his nose into them and poking around, wanting to know what happened to his prime specimen. In so doing he gets the attention of a special – if unconventional – police unit who seem to hold onto some very secret and very special information and appear to be a powerful occult organisation. In a flipside to conventional conspiracy lore however, while the government and police do have a handle on the occult, they’re considered a bit of a joke, a relatively ineffectual player in London’s secret, occult underground.

Billy get’s dragged further and further into the strange world of rituals, magick and cults as the story progresses, eventually finding the balls and knowledge to make his own way, even while surrounded by squid-cult berserkers, activist golems and deadly origami experts. Eventually Billy emerges as a hero, embracing the occult and the strange and emerging as a power within that world as the plot surrounding the squid unfolds and the secret war over its pickled corpse bleeds over into the real world.

Parallelling and trailing after Billy’s descent into the weird, like a literature version of a musical round is the story of Marge, partner of one of Billy’s friends – Leon – who ends up killed because of his peripheral involvement. Unwilling to let Leon and Billy’s disappearance go she trails after them and gets sucked into the underworld in a similar manner to the descent of Billy. For me this felt like China playing with our expectations of narrative and bringing an ice-cold shock of the ‘real’ into the fantasy world. Why would a modern woman sit helplessly by like some medieval damsel and wait for the police to solve such a problem? Why couldn’t she get off her arse and do something herself – which she does. While this could have been an afterthough or an overly PC attachment, unnecessary to the novel, for me the ‘echo’ of Billy’s descent reinforces the theme and adds greatly to the overall arc of the story.

There are many great characters scattered throughout the book. Billy is initially a somewhat annoying wishy-washy type but grows and develops over the course of the story in a noticable way that makes you appreciate him. Marge’s doggedness and determination make her an admirable character while WPC Collingswood – a foul mouthed, chain-smoking police witch – is a strong female character that brings some much needed humour and spite into the book, without being a politically correct cipher. Goss and Subby, two of the primary villains, are a little disappointing by comparison to the others, a combination of mute and verbose that’s been done better elsewhere and while both sinister and blackly humorous they never seem to quite gel.

Conclusion
This is a great book and a return to the full-on strangeness that makes China so engaging as a writer, bubbling over with ideas that seem to indicate a return to the energy and inspiration that seemed to be lacking from Iron Council (the last of the three Bas-Lag novels). Comparisons with other urban-fantasy/new weird titles are unavoidable seeing as it has all but become its own genre and, to refer to my last review (The Nightside) this one, while containing over the top action and weirdness, manages to contain it by introducing it bit by bit, rather than cramming your face into it right from the get go. It’s also consistently and constantly obvious that these places, these people, these things are secret – at least normally – and so the strangeness exists within an established context that allows you to maintain your suspension of disbelief much better.

Score
Style: 4
Substance: 4
Overall: 4

Review by James ‘Grim’ Desborough

Related posts:

1. The Magicians Fiction Review
2. Dog Days Fiction Review
3. Princeps Fury by Jim Butcher Fiction Review

]]> http://www.flamesrising.com/kraken-fiction-review/feed/ 0 http://www.flamesrising.com/the-last-remnant-360-review/ http://www.flamesrising.com/the-last-remnant-360-review/#comments Tue, 24 Aug 2010 11:45:45 +0000 GRIM http://www.flamesrising.com/?p=7828 The Last Remnant is a tactical RPG by Square-Enix and that comes with a weight of expectation. Last Remnant doesn't disappoint on these stakes, though it is a little unpolished. Coming out of playing through Final Fantasy XIII this game feels like a dry run in many ways, the theme of powerful, unknowable machines and whether they're being used or using the people around them and, system-wise, taking a great deal of control away from the player and putting it in the hands of automation. No related posts.]]>

Available at Amazon.com

Introduction
The Last Remnant is a tactical RPG by Square-Enix and that comes with a weight of expectation. Last Remnant doesn’t disappoint on these stakes, though it is a little unpolished. Coming out of playing through Final Fantasy XIII this game feels like a dry run in many ways, the theme of powerful, unknowable machines and whether they’re being used or using the people around them and, system-wise, taking a great deal of control away from the player and putting it in the hands of automation.

Story
The Last Remnant places you in a fantasy world of multiple human and non-human races and kingdoms whose power largely derives from rulers being bound to Remnants, powerful magical machines and talismans that grant powers, create art, can be used in war or bring prosperity and luck.

You enter the game in the role of Rush Sykes, son of famous Remnant scientists and brother to Irinia Sykes, inheritor of a special power that enables her to wrest control of Remnants and to control powerful ones that are beyond the capability of most. Irinia has been kidnapped as you begin to play and you are trying to find her and save her from whoever has taken her. In so doing you stumble into the middle of a battle and end up hooking up with Lord David Nassal (Dah-veed), the ruler of Athlum, a small but ambitious client state of the larger realm of Celapelais.

As the game continues you throw in your lot with Athlum and grow in friendship with David and his generals, ranging across the world to find and rescue Irinia while at the same time being drawn into Athlumian independence and the machinations of the council chairman, the God-Emperor, The Academy and the sinister warlord, The Conqueror.

Gameplay
The Last Remnant is unusual in that, rather than concentrating on the actions of individual characters, you form units of characters and, in effect, create small, skirmishing armies. You get very little direct control over the action save for particular special actions (summoning ally Remnants and using special, powerful magic or attacks), most of the time you can only select the broadest sort of action, accenting the unit on healing, attacking with combat skills or attacking with magical skills.

The secret to succeeding at the game is building effective units using the right leaders and the right soldiers. In the end it mostly comes down to hit-points though, so long as you can survive attacks from powerful enemies, you can pretty much guarantee a recovery.

Options are slow to build, army size increasing and combat power increasing two different ways, firstly in a more traditional ‘leveling’ manner, and the second coming from using your skills. The more you use combat or magical skills, the faster they advance and the more powerful they become. There’s also a power-building sub-game where you can build new weapons and equipment from monster parts and things dug up around the world. This isn’t complete to the extent that it could be but it does encourage you to roam around and explore, as do the guild missions – little tasks that unlock extra unit formations, money and other special rewards.

Atmosphere
The game feels a little flat sometimes, the cities are rather static with people just standing around, the environments are pretty but don’t come alive, there’s no weather and they are a little plain. Rush is peculiar, a modern anachronism in a fantasy world which is explained, later, but is nonetheless jarring through much of the game.

Cut-scenes and in game graphics are mostly the same, though there’s a few cut-scenes which aren’t and in many of these the cut-scenes the animation is wooden, even if the dialogue isn’t. Overall while the game is good and the story is much more comprehensible and complete than many (FXIII *cough cough*) the game feels like it was developed for the previous generation of consoles and in this generation of consoles with our unforgiving expectations, that feels like a cop out and greatly reduces immersion.

Graphics
The graphics are workmanlike and stylish but sluggish to load (Xbox 360) and not as good as one would expect, or hope for.

Conclusion
A huge problem on the Xbox 360 with this game was the loading from the disk. While this was alleviated somewhat by installing Disk 1, getting onto Disk 2 things slowed down immensely again and the Xbox sounded like it was preparing to take off like a jet constantly, meanwhile the game was stuttering and slowing down constantly with big pauses as parts of the game were loaded and unloaded.

In spite of these problems the game is interesting and gripping and, perhaps, better for those who prefer a more traditional, open-ended RPG to the linear railroad that FFXIII turned out to be! Worth picking up on a budget, but maybe for the PC or PS3.

Score
Style: 3
Substance: 4
Overall: 3.5

Review by James ‘Grim’ Desborough

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