The Syfy Channel has been attempting to merge the realms of television and video games for the past few years. Their first attempt was with the Red Faction series, releasing the network original movie Red Faction: Origins in 2011. Origins was intended to bridge the gap between Guerrilla and its sequel Armageddon, both of which were mediocre critically and financially. This time around, the Syfy Channel has bolder plans: attempting to put together an MMO and an episodic television series that intertwine and change one another.

From the minds of television’s Battlestar Galactica and Caprica, and Rift developers Trion Worlds comes the open-world third-person shooter MMO, Defiance. Set in the year 2046, Defiance brings an oddly unique take on a bleak, dystopian future. A collection of refugee aliens have immigrated to Earth seeking sanctuary, yet inevitably cause war and environmental catastrophe.

You take on the role of an Ark Hunter searching for pieces of lost technology. Instead of being located in St. Louis like the show, for whatever reason, you’re stuck in the San Francisco Bay area. A planet-wide terraforming accident has caused a catastrophic change to the terrain, making the entire world seem completely foreign. You work for an important tech industry mogul looking to learn the secrets to terraforming.

Most of the characters in Defiance feel generic, bland, and generally disinteresting. The archetypes are all here: rogue, law man, scientist, and engineer. There isn’t a single character in the game that feels fully fleshed out or unique. There’s too much imitation and not enough originality. Races fit in the same mold; knocked off from various other sci-fi and fantasy franchises. You have Ferangi, Vulcan, and Borg, along with many other troped-up species.

The voice acting is absolutely atrocious. It’s truly difficult to understand exactly how it could be so bad. Characters from the television show are voiced by their real-life actor counterparts; apparently, though, they only cared about getting their paychecks. Whoever was providing them direction obviously had no idea what they were doing. It’s some of the worst voice acting you’ll hear from a AAA title ever, though, to be honest, the actors don’t have a lot to work with. The writing is on on par with the most juvenile Star Trek fan-fiction ever written. After the success of Battlestar Galactica, it must be a network mandate to create hip gibberish swearwords in the vein of “Frak”. The writers actually thought it would be a good idea to turn the word “shit” into “Shtako”. There aren’t enough fingers and toes in the world count the amount of times this catchphrase/made-up garbage word is ham-fisted into the game’s dialogue. It’s the kind of thing that will make you cringe at just how pedantic it feels.

Gameplay in Defiance is a lot like that found in Borderlands. You carry two weapons and have one ability power, which you can select from a skill tree. There are only four actual abilities in the game, however, with the rest of the tree comprised of passive skills that augment abilities or style of play. When it comes to the passive skills, they will definitely leave you wanting more and never quite make you feel like you have actually progressed.

Instead of levels, Defiance uses a skill point and power rating system to relay a sense of progression. Certain weapons and abilities require certain Ego power ratings to be equipped. Progression is fast—if not a bit too fast—and rarely do you ever actually feel like you’ve become more powerful. It’s discouraging, to say the least, but at the same time, enemies never quite feel like they’re getting stronger either.

Loot works much the same as it does in other MMOs, with a few notable exceptions. Items gain experience and can level up along with your character. For the most part, this works fairly well and adds maybe the biggest sense of progression. You can find items from enemies you kill or special loot boxes you can buy from a vendor using an in-game currency or through a micro-transaction. Unfortunately, though, there isn’t a whole lot of variety in look or feel from weapon to weapon.

Now let’s talk a little about the AI. Or maybe we should say lack thereof. In typical MMO fashion, enemies try to take the most direct route until you’re in their attack range. Occasionally, they’ll hop left or right in an attempt to avoid your attacks, which is entirely predictable and not difficult to deal with. The only real difficulty in combat is managing the number of enemies, some of which will infinitely spawn from preset places throughout the world until certain conditions are met, or enemies that have specific weak points that are hard to hit. It’s a lot like being inside World of Warcraft, except you have to aim and shoot instead of pressing 1 – 2 – 3.

The missions—which may as well be called quests—are also quite disappointing. They’re just rehashes of the same old formulae we’ve seen in countless other MMOs over the past 10 years. They’re just dull and lack any imagination or creativity. You’ll still kill 10 rats, run back and forth from point A to point B, run errands, fetch items, and do everyone’s favorite thing in all videogames: escort missions. It’s enough to make you enter a coma from complete boredom. It’s only saving grace is the public Arkfall missions that take place randomly in the game world.

While the missions and gameplay feel completely dated, the world does feel alive. Even when there aren’t human players around, the NPCs and wildlife do a fantastic job of giving the game a lively atmosphere. There are times when you actually feel as if you’re immersed within the world. At least until somebody starts delivering dialogue, and then you’ll begin to feel as if you’re actually watching the Syfy Channel.

The best content in the game is arguably its instanced co-op dungeons. Crawling through story rich environments with friends or random people can be very rewarding and satisfying, and it is definitely something that they need to concentrate more on in the future. There just aren’t enough really good ones right now.

Defiance is definitely a game that’s designed for consoles first, and the PC is almost an afterthought. The game’s social features are buried behind many layers of context-sensitive menus that navigate poorly using a mouse and keyboard. It’s so bad that no one even bothers using chat.

Like most MMO’s, Defiance makes an attempt at Player-versus-Player. There are small-scale 8v8 and 6v6 battleground-style maps featuring everything you would expect from an instanced arena death-match. The big draw, though, is its Shadow War mode, in which up to 64 players fight for control of specific points of control in the actual game world. Balance is pretty poorly executed and is almost an entire afterthought. With the game designed the way it is, it devolves into a stealth shotgun war.

It remains to be seen whether or not the show will be successful. Early word from critics has not been exactly positive, which raises many questions. What happens to the game if the show is canceled? Will the Syfy Channel try and force the series to go on as long as possible? It’s not likely, since there’s so much money tied into this endeavor from so many places by so many entities. Then again, this is a network that canceled its most popular series ever simply because they didn’t have full control over the IP. We’ll see if it works… We’ll see.

Rating: ★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆ 

This review is based on a retail copy of the PC version of Defiance developed and distributed by Trion Worlds.

EA has done the unthinkable: they’ve made Diablo 3‘s Error 37 seem like a completely minor inconvenience. When SimCity launched at midnight EST on March 5th, 2013, they initiated one of the biggest launch catastrophes in the history of video games. With only four servers and a comically bizarre queuing system, their online infrastructure buckled under the weight of gamers who had waited 10 years for a sequel to SimCity 4. Since the launch, EA and developer Maxis have taken very minor steps to fix problems faced by many who are simply trying to play the game. Even without the launch day fiasco, the newly re-imagined SimCity still has plenty of problems. Most of these problems point to the obvious anti-pirating steps of always-online DRM and the methods taken to shroud them as gameplay features.

The newest iteration of SimCity is essentially a multiplayer city builder. Anyone who tells you that this is a single-player game–in any shape or form–is flat-out lying. Maxis has taken the old features of the franchise and broken them down into smaller, more bite-sized components. There are a number of these quantified features that are actually much improved with downsizing. No more tedious power-line laying, setting up individual sewer pipes, or, thankfully, obtuse subway systems. These have all been bundled down to run along every road, minimizing the tedium that came with the previous titles. While they succeed at improving the series’ old shortcomings, they’ve created new ones and break parts that were previously well-crafted.

You start off by selecting or creating a region, much like selecting a server in an MMO, but on a much smaller scale. These regions contain varying amounts of plots–basically the area where you put your city–each with their own unique properties and resources. Each resource is limited and can be shared with neighboring cities at no risk or reward. The big problem, however, is that even essential resources such as water are limited. What happens when a region runs out of water is anyone’s guess right now.

Certain resources are required to build specific items used in the creation of Great Works. Great Works are the big multiplayer draw, requiring an effort from each city in the region to complete them. Once completed, each Great Work provides unique bonuses that benefit all of its neighboring cities. For instance, the Arcology provides benefits to workers, students, and shoppers at a cost of 300 simoleons per hour. As of the time of this writing, we’ve been unable to get the server to approve the building of a Great Work.

Another new feature is the introduction of supply chains. Supply chains require certain materials in order to create certain buildings and acquire specific resources. Supply chains almost ensure that a single city cannot survive completely autonomously. While it’s nice to see new additions to the franchise’s feature set, it has a certain forced feel. Knowing that the city you are building will never reach its maximum potential is disheartening.

What’s also disheartening is the size and scope of each city plot. Cities are significantly smaller than in past iterations in the series. No more megacities that are intricately designed; now you’re basically building the equivalent of a borough. It’s almost impossible to keep pollution out of residential areas due to the limited amount of space provided. There’s also no terraforming, which means that cities built on mountainous areas have even less total area to work with.

With limited space comes a much more formulaic method of city creation. Different points in the size of your population will require different city services. At around 2,800 population, you’ll need your first fire station. Not building the fire station will literally cause your city to burn to the ground. While a fire station should be a requisite for any town, the method in which the fire trucks put out fires is completely broken. Instead of different trucks going to different fires, each truck goes to the same fire to attempt to put it out. This causes multiple fires in a city to spread, creating overall havoc and destruction.

These same principles extend to crime and crime fighting. Cities that lack proper education and police forces will actually have their criminals spread to neighboring cities, which is the ultimate form of griefing. Having to constantly fight off another city’s criminals is frustrating and can cause a huge hole in your economy. Add to that the fact that cities can choose to be crime havens through the heroes and villains DLC, and you’ve got the perfect opportunity to completely annoy your neighbors.

SimCity is a decent experience; you’re likely to get 20 hours in before you realize the shallow pool you’re swimming in doesn’t actually get any deeper. It’s unfortunate that Maxis and EA have opted for a more social route for their AAA title, even though they already have a social version on Facebook in SimCity Societies. In many ways, SimCity plays a lot like Farmville. Why provide gamers with something they already have? It’s completely mind-boggling that this game was designed with such a devil-may-care attitude.

If you’re looking for an updated, modern version of the city building powerhouse that once was, you won’t find it here. Instead, you’ll find the shell of its former greatness. The social features are a nice touch, but the always-online aspect is severely disappointing. Combining in the shoehorned efforts to make these decisions a part of the gameplay, Maxis has failed to improve upon its past success. Instead, they’ve provided a hollow experience that is only skin deep and suffers from its own limitations and constraints.

Rating: ★★★★★★½☆☆☆ 

This review is based on a retail copy of the Origin version of SimCity developed by Maxis, published by Electronic Arts

How does a man reclaim his family? How does he return to the present-day future? How does he avenge his fallen partner? But more importantly, why does this Asian schoolgirl want to kill you? Answers to these questions, and all of life’s most philosophical quandaries in The Showdown Effect.

The Showdown Effect is a new side-scrolling action game from Arrowhead Game Studios, creators of Magicka. This time around, the studio is focusing more on a competitive eSports approach. Combining parkour-style platforming and precision aiming, The Showdown Effect creates a menagerie of chaotic bullet fury, slick moves, great hair, and ostentatious blood sport. It has all the flair and witty humor one would expect from an Arrowhead game.

Controlled on a flat 2-D plane much like many games from yesteryear, Showdown’s unique feature is its precision aiming, requiring you to actually keep your mouse cursor over your targets to inflict damage. Most side scrollers only require you aim in a general direction to hit targets, but Showdown‘s finely tuned aim separates the good players from the truly great players. It’s a mechanic like this that could allow the game to be a legitimate eSport. Some weapons can be spammed, such as the grenade launcher and throwing knives–this is how the platforming elements come into play. Highly skilled players are able to avoid such missile-like attacks while simultaneously maintaining the dexterity to mow down their foes with bullet based weaponry. The skill required to pull off such feats is what really separates the game from other somewhat-competitive side-scrolling games like Smash Bros. Without these finely tuned features, the experience would be extremely generic and bland.

Many melee weapons like the katana can be picked up throughout the maps. Each one has its own unique animation, damage, and timing. There are also many elevators and doors to allow for many entertaining tactics. Sometimes you just want to pick up a sack of flour and beat someone into a bloody mess, or put all your weapons away and go straight kung fu on their face. This is the app for that.

As usual, Arrowhead is up to its old tricks, parodying pop culture with a clever sense of humor. For instance, take the game’s arguably best character, Dutch McClone. Dutch is a literal amalgamation of just about every single Arnold Schwarzenegger character in history. He was sent back in time after having his identity stolen. He now fights to recover his stolen identity and discover just exactly who did this to him and why. On top of all that, he has an Austrian accent and constantly declares that he’s just a kindergarten teacher.

The are currently eight playable characters in total, with more to be added in the future. Each character has their own unique ability that they can use in combat. Dutch’s ability renders him invincible for a few seconds or until he takes a certain amount of damage. This causes him to be the most picked character, which is fine, since there can be multiples of the same character in each match. It’s unfortunate, however, that the other characters’ special abilities aren’t as competitively appealing.

Showdown has four unique game modes, varying from free-for-all (just called Showdown) to team deathmatch. Right now Showdown seems to be the primary focus. Every time a character dies, they respawn in a mere second or two, keeping a constant flow of action going. Before the match ends, the Showdown round begins, where everyone has one life to live in a last-man-standing climax. The winner of the Showdown round is given a score point bounty based on the amount of players in the match. The person with the highest score after the Showdown round is declared the winner.

With so much replay value and charm, this is a game that’s almost impossible not to recommend. The marriage between humor and truly skilled gameplay makes it one of the most innovative games of the last five years. Whether or not it actually takes off as an eSport remains to be seen. The eSports community can be very fickle with what they choose to actually support. But if you’re looking for a video game where a giant Power Ranger fights Godzilla in the background accompanied by an epic heavy metal song blaring at eleven, this is the game for you.

Rating: ★★★★★★★★★☆ 

This review is based on a review copy of The Showdown Effect for the PC, developed by Arrowhead Game Studios and published by Paradox Interactive.

Grinding Gear Games consists of a small group of ARPG fans who got tired of the stagnant market and decided to make their own game. PoE spent 3 years in secluded development before being announced in 2010. A few months later, the project entered into its first phase of closed beta. Since then, the game has been iterated, balanced, tested, and finally opened to the public for play. Even in its infant stages, PoE has a large, dedicated fan base investing thousands of hours a week.

Path of Exile is set in a dark, hyper-violent fantasy world where survival is nearly impossible. Your character finds themselves washed up on the shores of Wraeclast, a remote continent reserved for criminals and outcasts. In order to survive, you must kill, or be killed by, the harsh environment and its native inhabitants. The game’s quests are fully voiced and guide you through a scripted adventure as you trek across the vast and dangerous landscape. All this is done with exceptional quality that enhances the atmosphere.

The game plays much as you would expect from the genre. The camera offers a fixed isometric view, along with a functional, if not completely unspectacular, mini-map  You move your character by clicking the ground, sending them in a direct line to your mouse cursor. The auto-pathing is a bit wonky—if not entirely non-existent—and rarely ever does it independently resolve an obstacle. There are times where this can be advantageous, yet it could use a bit of improvement. Abilities work in much the same way, with projectiles flying towards your mouse cursor. A lot of ranged attacks can be dodged depending on their speed, which makes combat feel less laborious and more enjoyable. You’re going to need a modicum of twitch skill and reflexes in later areas where encounters are extremely volatile.

The big feature that separates PoE from other ARPGs is its competitive leveling leagues and PvP systems. The game currently features standard and hardcore leagues. Standard is the basic game with respawns, while hardcore gives you one life to live. Each league has its own ladder system, which ranks players based on level and time spent. In the future, Grinding Gear Games intends to create leagues with specific goals that unlock account wide rewards to the victor. There’s also a PvP league in the works in which each area of the game is shared by all players, and upon death you drop all your equipped and inventoried possessions.

Another seemingly unique feature is the class and skill gem system. Each of the six classes use two of the three major stat pools. For instance, the Shadow class splits between dexterity and intellect, while the Templar uses strength and intellect. This all culminates in the passive skill web, the size and scope of which can’t even fit on a single screen in-game. Each level awards a point that you can allocate in this tree, passively buffing your character and allowing you to further customize your play style.

Speaking of play style, PoE offers a unique system in which Gems provide you your abilities, and they level up with your character as long as you have them equipped. Each Gem is socketed into a corresponding color slot in your equipment. Some sockets are linked, meaning the Gems in these slots can benefit each other. Some are support only, meaning they do nothing more than augment the ability Gem they’re linked with. All Gems can be equipped by all classes, so long as they meet the stat requirements. Gems are acquired from quests, random drops, and through player trading. Just one more time, say it with me one more time, with feeling…Gem.

There are lots of ways to mod out gear in order to have the proper sockets and links you need. Instead of the economy of the game being currency based, each time you sell to a vendor, you’re awarded components to create gear mod items. These items range from a mod that changes a socket’s color to a mod that upgrades an ordinary item to a magical one. Without a currency, you’ll find most people using these mods as bartering tokens, along with Gems and high-end gear.

Unlike most of its contemporaries, Path of Exile has a dark, brutal, and foreboding art style reminiscent of Diablo and Diablo 2. Most of the environments are dark and dank, with very few bright areas. Grinding Gear Games definitely wanted to take a much grittier look compared to Diablo 3 and the Torchlight series. PoE‘s atmosphere is definitively grim and dire, which may be what hardcore fans of the genre are looking for.

There are still some things left a mystery when it comes to the game’s micro-transaction model. There isn’t a lot available in the store at the moment, and who knows what could show up in the future. Right now, though, Path of Exile might be the last great bastion for ARPG players. It has the widest array of features on the market today, and if you’re looking for a good dungeon crawler, there’s no real reason not to give it a shot. You have nothing to lose, other than maybe your mind.

Rating: ★★★★★★★★½☆ 

This review is based on a retail copy of the PC version of Path of Exile developed by Grinding Gear Games.

Another day, another Kickstarter. This time it’s Born Ready Games and their first foray into the space combat genre with single-player-fighter-turns-into-mech game: Strike Suit Zero. Raising $174,804 with the goal of $100,000 and achieving the stretch goal of mod tools, Strike Suit Zero is another shining example of what crowd funding can do for small time developers. Strike Suit Zero—or SSZ—is a space combat game similar to classics like Tie Fighter and the Wing Commander series, but with one big caveat: you can turn your fighter into an anime styled mech.

You take on the role of Adams, a faceless, voiceless pilot who has apparently fallen out of favor with his superiors. You have to earn the trust of your commanders and comrades in order to be allowed to take the helm of a fighter again. You know, a real rebel story, where you’re Starbuck and everyone else is completely incompetent. The story hinges on some cliché elements, like a woman fused with an AI construct, a commander searching for his white whale, and Adams being the chosen one, all of which are totally mismanaged and telegraphed from the get-go.

You spend most of the game with your wingman and commanding officer, Reynolds. She’s a fiery, but effective, leader who will deliver such witty monotone one-liners as, “You know the drill, Adams” and “I’ve got your back.” It’s unfortunate that the voice actor seems as if she’s taken twelve Ambien and just wanted to go sleep instead of offering a moderately appealing performance. That seems par for the course when it comes to all the voice acting in the game. There was plenty of opportunity to use the voice work tactfully, but for some reason the best mechanical use is, “They’re going after Adams.” This line is repeated constantly with no context and sometimes no real reason other than to fill quiet time. It’s unfortunate that Born Ready Games didn’t seize more opportunities to use voice chatter as a mechanic rather than ambiance that breaks immersion and falls flat.

Mechanically, the game is pretty simple: cycle targets, shoot targets, win the game. It’s fun for a while, but becomes repetitive. Missions are long and don’t vary much. You’ve got the typical escort, kill, bombing run, and capital ship battles that are tried and true tropes of the genre. You can unlock new weapons by earning medals and special objectives, but you really don’t need to grind in order to progress. There’s nothing really new or earth shattering, either. The controls work well, but you’ll likely find a flight stick or gamepad better-suited to gameplay than a mouse and keyboard.

The defining disappointment though, is the very thing that separates the game from the rest of the genre. The mech—also known as Strike Suit—is incredibly underwhelming and mostly boring to use. You gain a resource called Flux, which powers the fighter’s Strike Suit mode by dealing damage to enemies, thrusting, or taking damage. Think of it as a rage meter from World of Warcraft. You use Flux each time you shoot or fire rockets from Strike Suit mode. You can gain Flux while meched out, but the amount is reduced greatly in order to get you to use it more strategically. It just feels like the mech could use more unique abilities beyond shooting and firing rockets to make it more appealing.

If there is one thing SSZ does well, it’s visuals. The space-boxes are beautiful and do a great job of immersing you in the universe. You really feel like you’re in space, dog fighting, looping, and bombing. The ships are all nicely rendered and have a distinct visual style inspired by countless space operas and animes.

If you’re into future-tech animes and flight combat games, you should have plenty of fun playing SSZ. If you like the idea of a fighter that transforms into a mech and expect to get something out of that, you’ll be disappointed. Only around one third of the thirteen missions feature the Strike Suit, which you don’t even use in the first couple of hours. There’s about 5-6 hours of content though, so you will get decent bang for your buck. If that’s not enough for you, there’s always Freespace 2 and the mass of mods being made to this very day.

Rating: ★★★★★★½☆☆☆ 

This review is based on a retail copy of the PC version of Strike Suit Zero developed by Born Ready Games

Dark Vale Games’ first foray into the wild, Forge, is proof positive  that failing your Kickstarter isn’t the end of the road. It’s also proof that Steam’s Project Greenlight needs better oversight. Forge is very much in a beta state, yet the store page makes no mention of such. For other games, this has been a serious public relations nightmare, and even caused games to be removed from the Steam storefront. Forge has a much lower profile and has slid away from scrutiny…until now.

Forge is an MMO battleground-styled arena game. It most resembles a MOBA but lacks many of the tropes and mechanics found in the genre. The real hook, though, is the lack of grinding–or so the store page would have you believe–yet the game has a full-featured levels system. It’s incomplete, but promises unlockable abilities in the future that can replace current ones. Forge is definitely a game of promises…and problems.

The biggest problem with Forge is the controls. Forge uses MMO-style keys with hitscan aiming, which makes movement and ability use difficult. The default key bindings are completely ridiculous. For instance, the ‘b’ key is bound to an ability for just about every class. No human can feasibly reach the ‘b’ key while trying to dodge attacks with ‘wasd’; it’s flat out counter-intuitive. Luckily, keys can be re-bound, but the sheer amount of active abilities is complete overkill. Sometimes less is more, something games like Dota, League of Legends, and Guild Wars 2 do well. Honestly, you’d be better off playing those games anyway.

Forge has five classes in total, each fulfilling a specific role designed around coordinated team play. Balance seems to cater more toward team play than one-on-one encounters, but for some strange reason, the Pyromancer is the most well-rounded and has the largest variety of abilities. They win most one-on-one fights with little trouble thanks to their combination of crowd control, defense, and powerful burst damage output. The most-played class so far seems to be Assassin, thanks to their ability to turn invisible indefinitely. Assassins seem to only be good at catching players off on their own though, and sometimes even then they don’t have enough damage to take on solo encounters.

Forge features 3 game modes at the moment, with more promised for the future. There’s your basic Capture the Flag, Team Deathmatch, and Arena modes you’ve likely played before in other games–nothing groundbreaking or innovative. The maps are fairly well-designed but at times feel far too large. The wall jumping mechanics given to all players do make up for this at times, but there is a large amount confusion as to what walls will work and what walls won’t. The vertical nature of the maps lends a heavy advantage to ranged classes. Don’t worry though; the inclusion of stealth mechanics gets plenty of people to play melee classes.

The worst part of the game by far, though, is its lack of basic features. Group functionality and server selection have yet to be implemented–normally a huge issue–but Forge typically has only one game running at a time. The playerbase seems dead on arrival, making it a chore to find games even at peak hours. Couple that with a halfway-implemented leveling feature, and you’ve got one hot mess of a catastrophe. Greenlight is getting a reputation for shovelware, and Forge only reinforces it.

The only real positive is the graphics. They are on par with everything in the MMO-PvP space. A good use of color and distinct silhouettes gives the game superb visual feedback, something even World of Warcraft has had trouble with. Detailed skyboxes and environments add a nice touch of ambiance to the aesthetics.

If you’re dying for MMO-style PvP combat but don’t want a monthly subscription, get Guild Wars 2. Forge will bring you nothing but a nice long wait while the developers try to implement their lofty feature list. There are far too many flaws and not enough positive things in Forge to make it worth buying. It’s unfortunate that this game couldn’t reach its Kickstarter goal, because we might have had a better game if it had.

Rating: ★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆ 

This review is based on a retail copy of the PC version of Forge by Dark Vale Games

After releasing arguably the best of stealth action game this year in Mark of The Ninja, Klei Entertainment is back at it with wilderness exploration survival game Don’t Starve. In Don’t Starve, you play one of several characters dropped in the wild for seemingly no reason. You have to survive off of the land and try to find your way home by chopping down trees, collecting flint, using grass as tinder, and building fires at night to fend off unwanted threats.

There’s also a deep leveling progression system that allows you to unlock new characters, research new items to craft, learn new types of magic, and acquire yet-to-be determined unlocks. Each time your character dies you lose all the items in your inventory, but you’re given XP in proportion to the amount of time you survived and retain any science, research, and magic you may have unlocked. You can then choose to retry or generate a brand-new world.

Graphically, the game is quite soothing to the eyes. Don’t Starve features smoothly drawn cartoon graphics and a distinct visual style akin to a Van Gogh painting. This game is most similar to Minecraft graphically. with low system requirements and minimal resource hogging. The only thing it lacks is the ability to create makeshift structures. This is a game solely designed around survival.

The wild is frightening.

The game is still in beta and yet has a surprising amount of features already implemented. There is even a feature in the games menu that tells you the expected length of the wait until the next release build. Don’t Starve is expected to be complete by March 2013. You can order now through Steam for instant access.

The MOBA genre has exploded over the last few years, with titles such as Heroes of the Newerth, the original DotA, League of Legends, and Dota 2. Now Monolith and Warner Bros. have decided to enter the fray with Guardians of Middle-earth, a Lord of the Rings-themed MOBA game for Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. If you were ever afraid that a DotA-style game would be dumbed down if brought to a console, your fears were unfounded, as Guardians of Middle Earth is anything but dumb. In fact, it’s quite brilliant.

In Guardians of Middle Earth, you get the typical 3-lane, 6-tower map setup from a top-down perspective. The towers can be upgraded by players when they reach certain in-match levels. There are also neutral buff shrines in the jungle area between lanes that can be captured for your team. Each shrine increases your team’s health regeneration, allowing you to stay in lanes longer, which you need to do in order to gain XP. While there is a single-lane map, we’d advise against playing it, as it often devolves into cascading rage-quits that ruin the experience.

There are no item or gold mechanics in the individual matches, nor is there any last hitting required. These meta-game elements are relegated to Call of Duty-style load outs and unlocks from XP and gold gained by completing matches. The amount of individual load outs is gated by your account level. The items used within, however, are gated by gold. You purchase gems, potions, and relics from the in-game shop using gold, and this is basically a way of specializing your load outs to meet certain needs across a range of characters. This whole area of the game is way too large to cover extensively in a review. Suffice it to say, the depth and variety in load outs is immense.

The in-match skill mechanics have much more to do with teamwork and map awareness than twitch reflexes, though these can indeed come in handy. Movement is controlled with the left thumbstick. Attacks are controlled with the right thumbstick for directional aim, moving your character’s facing along a 360 degree axis. Your facing will also change with your movement, but holding the right stick will override the left stick’s facing controls, allowing you to strafe and backpedal reliably. A ring is drawn around your character, showing your attack range, area of attack (usually a cone), and directional facing. It works well most of the time, but there are situations where you can’t tell if you’re hitting your target or not.

Using abilities is frustrating. You get the same ring-like HUD element for each targeted skill, but these skills are assigned to the face buttons. We don’t know about you, but we don’t have the dexterity required to hit the A-button and use the right stick at the same time. You usually end up having to aim with your movement and just be careful enough not to run too far while attacking. It’s not ideal, but there is a certain level of learned skill in doing it right.

One nifty feature, seemingly borrowed from the original Monday Night Combat, is the ability to upgrade towers. Towers can be freely upgraded by all players as long as they are a certain in-match level, with each of the 4 upgrade types requiring a different minimum level in order to be applied. The creep waves can be altered in the same fashion by upgrading a barracks found behind each lane’s second tower. These barracks are immune to attack until the tower in front of them has been destroyed. Upgrading the barracks allows the creep wave to concentrate on different styles of pushing, such as heavy siege for breaking enemy towers, or improved front line fighters in order to hold the enemy from being able to push to your base easily. It’s a great strategic mechanic that more games in the genre could benefit from.

The Heroes – or in this case, Guardians – are ripped straight from the pages of Tolkien’s classic and range from the bastion of good himself, Gandalf the Grey, to the epitome of evil, Sauron, along with a few other notable characters like Gollum and Legolas. Each Guardian fits a different archetype and role, making for what could be an extremely diverse meta-game, although ultimately, only time and the community will decide how competitive the game becomes.

As for the community and player interaction, there doesn’t seem to be a lot going on in that department, at least within the game. Most players don’t seem to wear their headsets, which is a blessing and a curse at the same time. Time spent with the game has been rage- and troll-free, but just about every match has had someone disconnect or leave. It’s unfortunate, and we’ve yet to win a game shorthanded or lose a game with a numbers advantage. Luckily, queue times are short at about 2-3 minutes.

There really isn’t much else to say. The character design is great and borrows heavily from the films, and the sound is pretty top-notch, too. The graphics are as good as you’ll find on current-gen systems, if a bit muddied. But the gameplay is the core of the experience, and if you’re looking for an easy way to get into the genre, Guardians of Middle-earth is about the best bet you have. The barrier to entry is much less daunting, with fewer mechanics compared to other MOBAs, shorter matches, fewer characters, and fewer opportunities to be heckled. If you’re looking for an intensely deep MOBA experience, that’s still there as well, you just have to be willing to chase it.

Rating: ★★★★★★★★☆☆ 

This review is based on a retail copy of the Xbox 360 version of Guardians of Middle Earth developed by Monolith published by Warner Brothers