Best Surprise 2011 // inFAMOUS 2

The "Best Surprise" award goes to the game that didn't have a lot of hype behind it but turned out more awesome than anyone could've imagined. It went from being off my radar to taking up all my time.

I loved the first inFAMOUS.

Even after I'd beaten the storyline, I spent hours collecting the last of the scattered Blast Shards and finishing up any leftover side missions. Sometimes I'd just glide around, doing nothing in particular. Maybe I'd blow up a car or three. Maybe I'd do a Thunder Drop off the tallest building I could find. It didn't matter what I was doing, really; I just liked inhabiting Empire City and playing as Cole. Even so, I couldn't bring myself to feel anything more than dread for inFAMOUS 2.

Blame that on the first major reveal for inFAMOUS 2, which showed off a newly revised Cole, swapping out the bald, bland superhero with a gravelly voice for a trendy, tattoo-laden playboy with a cocksure swagger and a seemingly endless supply of clever one-liners, now fighting against the Reapers from Blade 2 with giant lobster claws for arms.

Uh, what?

It only got worse from there. The second major reveal detailed the characters who'd be surrounding Cole on his latest adventure. Even as the developers recognized that Cole's buddy, Zeke, had been one of the worst parts of the first game, they promised that he would still be a major character in the sequel. As well, they showed off the two new ladies in Cole's life, Nix and Kuo, who would represent the newly revamped moral choice system. You see, Nix, a sultry African-American character who wears revealing red leather, keeps her hair in dreadlocks, and has fire powers, would represent "evil," while Kuo, an Asian-American character who wears a business casual suit, is a government agent, and has ice powers, would represent "good."

What's that called, children? Say it with me now: subtlety. Very good!

It honestly felt like the developers at Sucker Punch Studios were trying to burn their own franchise to the ground. It was the only explanation. Then—suddenly!—as if the clouds parted to allow God himself to intervene, Sucker Punch came to its senses. Cole was turned back into that beautiful, bald man we all grew to love (or at least tolerate) in inFAMOUS. Nix and Kuo ended up having much more depth than we could've anticipated. Zeke got a true character overhaul that not only made him bearable, but likable. Even those dumb lobster zombies turned out all right.

But that's not all. inFAMOUS 2 represents a true distillation of everything great about the first game while still layering on smart changes of its own. Take Cole's new Ice Launch power. When he uses it, ice rises from the ground, thrusting him forward higher than he could ever jump normally. It's a satisfying move that removes one more obstacle in the player's exploration of the city. But the true brilliance of the Ice Launch comes with the new electrical wires placed above the street just out of jumping distance, but at the exact height of an Ice Launch. Rather than having to climb up to a power line to start Cole's electric grinding, the Ice Launch allows players to simply tap a button and speed away.

It's that kind of brilliant design that led me to call inFAMOUS 2 "one of the most perfect games I have ever played" in my review. Once again, I found myself playing for hours with no real objectives. I'd see how long I could skate along power lines across the city without falling, then test whether or not I could throw a car and tether to it while it's still in the air.

Based on those initial reveals, I thought Sucker Punch had completely lost sight of what made the first game so special. I thought I was going to hate inFAMOUS 2. Instead, it absolutely blew me away and became one of my favorite games of the year. I'm sorry I ever doubted it.

If you want to hear how I chose inFAMOUS 2, you can download my deliberation process, subscribe with iTunes, or listen to it below:

Runners-up: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Catherine

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Most Disappointing 2011 // Mortal Kombat

The "Most Disappointing" award goes to the game that seemed like it was going to be absolutely incredible, but for whatever reason, it just didn't live up to the hype. I was expecting to love this game and instead was completely underwhelmed.

It's really weird to be giving Mortal Kombat, a game I once called "the most fun fighting game ever made," the Most Disappointing award for 2011, but here we are. I guess that's just what happens when you ship a game with broken online play and don't fix it for six months.

When it comes to fighting games, I'm an enthusiastic tourist. I love hearing about all the crazy strategies, watching the pros duke it out in tournaments and sharing the inevitable YouTube clips later on, but unless it has "Street Fighter" in the title, I'm probably not going to be "hardcore" about it.

I got hardcore into Mortal Kombat.

For a while, that's all we played in my apartment. We'd crowd together on the couch, laughing and trash talking and setting up ridiculous matches where we wouldn't know who we'd be playing as or against, or even if our characters would have arms. It became the new go-to party game.

Pretty soon, I found myself on Mortal Kombat strategy forums, figuring out the best combos for my favorite characters, then practicing them for hours in the Practice mode with all the damage percentile and location displays turned on.

Then summer rolled around and I was home again, now without quick access to friends and roommates who wanted to play. I'd been clamoring for a real challenge though, so I was excited to move the fight online. I wasn't excited for very long.

"The online multiplayer experience is one of the worst I've ever had," I wrote in my review. "If you're lucky enough to connect to a match, prepare for an unplayable, unresponsive mess. Lag pervades every aspect of the experience, even the character select screen. The developers keep promising some magical patch to fix everything, but it's already over two months too late for me. As far as I'm concerned, Mortal Kombat doesn't even have online play."

I had reached rock bottom, now finding myself on Mortal Kombat tech support forums, poring over angry posts from other frustrated players all looking for a solution. For me, that solution never came. By the time NetherRealm Studios had finally patched its game up to a working standard, I'd already moved on.

I've heard that the game works online just fine now, but I haven't checked — I haven't touched Mortal Kombat in months. I'm out of practice and I just don't care anymore. If I want to play a fighting game online now, there are much better alternatives, like, say, Street Fighter III: Third Strike Online Edition, which plays beautifully online.

[Update 1/13: A friend convinced me to try the online play again. "Just one match," he said. "See if it's changed." So I tried it. I won the match, but the character select screen lagged, the match itself lagged, and even the Fatality animation at the end lagged. And that's while running the latest patch, 1.05. So yeah. Turns out that it's still messed up.]

Offline, Mortal Kombat has no equal. It's the best fighting game in years, hands-down. But that's precisely what made its downright atrocious online play sting so much. There were worse games in 2011, but nothing disappointed me more than trying to play Mortal Kombat online.

If you want to hear how I chose Mortal Kombat, you can download my deliberation process, subscribe with iTunes, or listen to it below:

Runners-up: Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception, Killzone 3

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Most Potential 2011 // L.A. Noire

The "Most Potential" award goes to the game that sounded awesome on paper and had real flashes of brilliance, but could still be so much more. Hopefully this game will get a sequel that can deliver on its promise.

I did not finish L.A. Noire. I made it about halfway through the Arson Desk, which means I'm maybe an hour or two away from finishing the game. But I can tell you right now: I'm never going to finish it.

It completely broke for me after the Homicide Desk, about halfway through the game. I realized how utterly formulaic the game was: You get a case, examine the body, collect evidence that leads to new locations with more clues to find or people to interrogate, and once you've exhausted those, solve the case. Rinse and repeat. Nothing I did felt like it mattered anymore, so eventually, I just stopped.

But until that point, L.A. Noire had been absolutely blowing my goddamn mind. I'd never played anything like it. I was being challenged to think like a real detective, learning how to interpret evidence and use it to either corroborate people's stories or catch them in their lies. I couldn't play it absentmindedly, either, since a sharp eye was always needed to read people's faces during interrogations.

Oh man, those faces.

L.A. Noire broke every other game for me. I simply can't look at other games anymore without thinking about how awful and fake the characters look. The MotionScan technology at work here is astounding, easily single the most impressive thing I saw in a game all year. It uses 32 high-definition cameras to capture every little detail about an actor's face as he performs his part, and the results are stunning. The characters in L.A. Noire actually emote. They look like real people, and that's because they are.

I want that technology in every game I play from now on. In L.A. Noire, it was an essential part of the game since you needed to study people's faces to determine whether or not you should trust them. While most games don't really require this level of detail, they could all benefit from having characters that look and act like real people. It's a huge leap forward in the art of telling immersive stories in games, and I know this term gets thrown around a lot, but I really believe that L.A. Noire represents a watershed moment for games.

L.A. Noire reminds me of Heavy Rain. Both are deeply flawed games, but they're also incredibly ambitious in the way they attempt to push the medium forward. I don't know that I would necessarily want an L.A. Noire 2, but I definitely do want more games like it.

If you want to hear how I chose L.A. Noire, you can download my deliberation process, subscribe with iTunes, or listen to it below:

Runners-up: Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon, Red Faction: Armageddon

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Review // Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception

Without a doubt, Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception is the most lavishly produced, highly polished game I've played all year. It's also one of the least fun.

That's coming from a guy who beat Uncharted 2: Among Thieves in one ten-hour sitting because it was just that good. Sure, it totally fell apart at the end, pitting Drake against ridiculous blue monsters for no good reason before flagrantly ripping off the final boss fight of GUN, but the nine hours before that were sheer brilliance, so all was forgiven.

But Uncharted 3 is a mess from start to finish, opening with a bar fight that plays like a poor man's Batman: Arkham City and closing with a shameless retread of Uncharted 2's final moments. As the credits mercifully closed the curtain on Drake's Deception, I was left totally speechless, wondering how Naughty Dog could've dropped the ball so badly.

Let me take this opportunity to reiterate just how outstanding the production values of this game are: It's beyond gorgeous, filled with the kind of crispness and bright colors that made Uncharted 2 pop off the screen. The set pieces are technical marvels, pushing the PlayStation 3 harder than we ever thought possible and making for exhilarating showpieces. There are no cut corners here, and it shows.

That said, looking pretty just isn't enough when the rest of the game is so lackluster.

Uncharted 3 stumbles right out of the gate, opening with an awkward bar brawl and a blatant disregard for the events of Uncharted 2. It never feels inspired, like that game did; it feels like "just another adventure," which I'm sure most people will be totally fine with, but wasn't really what I was looking for. Abandoning the last game's conclusion in favor of yet another trip around the world to find yet another fabled lost city, with only the barest of explanations, just feels lazy.

Chloe is still in the mix, though no longer as a love interest nor as feisty (and therefore, is much less interesting), now joined by a cheeky Brit named Cutter, both of whom get inexplicably cut from the story about halfway through. Really, the one character that Uncharted 3 does any justice to is Sully, whose past with Drake is explained in a long scene that culminates with a chase that would have been awesome if it wasn't an instant-fail the moment you make a wrong turn.

Ultimately, the story here hits most of the same beats that Uncharted 2 did, right down to a late "reveal" of Elena, who's been off doing her own thing between games, and ends on the exact same note, too. It lacks the passion of earlier games, and more than ever, just feels like an excuse to string set pieces together.

No more is this evident than the sinking cruise liner that Naughty Dog proudly trotted out at its big E3 2011 reveal. It's stunning, for sure, but it also has shit-all to do with the rest of the game. It's a two-hour tangent in the middle of the story that goes nowhere and serves only as an impressive set piece. It's window dressing, and nothing more.

Something to note is how much that sequence changed between the E3 demo and the final game. In the demo, combat smartly took a backseat to the spectacle of everything going on around you, and the whole scene played out quite smoothly as a result. The final game, however, foolishly throws dozens of enemies at you, breaking the flow of another "would have been awesome" scene. Instead of concentrating on finding a way out of the ship, I was busy dodging bullets, grenades and fists, and not having much fun at all.

It's a game that has a few good tricks, but uses them all too often. If you liked the end of that E3 demo, when Drake runs toward the camera, then I hope you'll still like it the fifth or sixth time you do it in the full game. You'll run toward the camera from water. You'll run toward the camera from fire. You'll run toward the camera from a nonsensical swarm of spiders. You'll run toward the camera from another nonsensical swarm of spiders, and then once more, just in case you weren't tired of it yet.

You'll also fight some very nasty brutes, seven-foot-tall beasts of men that come at the most inopportune times and usually require that you take them out with your fists because, really, guns are so passé. You'll fight one every time Naughty Dog seemingly didn't feel confident that a combat scenario would be memorable enough, which proved to be pretty often: You'll fight one in a bar, a burning chateau, a citadel, a plane, a truck, and just when you thought you couldn't possibly fight another one, you'll fight another one. Despite the location changes, these fights play out exactly the same way every time and would've been much better reserved for one or two instances throughout the entire game.

But the biggest downfall of the Uncharted series has always been the gunplay. Whether the enemies take too many bullets, the combat scenarios aren't well-designed, or the aiming is busted, something is always wrong. Well, that hasn't changed.

Looking pretty
just isn't enough
when the rest of the game is so lackluster.

Uncharted 3 has all of those problems, but it's the poorly designed combat scenarios that I found the most frustrating. Probably the worst of these had me fighting dozens of pirates in a ship graveyard. They were spread out across several boats, and I had very little cover to work with. The enemies were extremely aggressive in this section, constantly flanking and forcing me to risk getting shot while I moved to new cover. Sometimes, I'd be in the flow of things, handling it well, feeling good, when an armored guy with a shotgun would come running at me from the side. If I couldn't take him out quickly enough, I'd die from his shotgun, a wayward grenade, or the never-ending gunfire from other enemies.

After about seven retries, I did what I always do at some point in every Uncharted game: I dropped the difficulty down to Very Easy and moved on with my life.

There were also times when I'd be fighting alongside AI partners who were more content to watch me die than pitch in. For instance, there's a point in the game where Cutter gets injured and Sully needs to help him walk, so Drake and Chloe are charged with covering them. You're assaulted by waves of enemies, eventually culminating in guys with riot shields and an armored brute. I didn't have any grenades to deal with the riot shield guys, but since the enemies only ever focus on Drake, I figured I'd use that to lure them away from Chloe, exposing their backs to her. Dangerous for me, but easy kills for her, right? Apparently, too easy — Chloe refused to shoot at them, and eventually I was forced to abandon what should've been a winning strategy.

Not everything in the game is bad, though. There are occasionally some truly exceptional moments in Uncharted 3; they're just undercut by all the bullshit. Drake wandering helpless for days through miles of desert, for example, is truly exceptional. The way Drake just happens to stumble onto what he was looking for in the middle of that desert, however, is bullshit. Drake being totally fine to run around and fight dozens of guys after days in that desert with no food or water is also bullshit.

I'd like to tell you that the multiplayer saves Uncharted 3, but I can't. Granted, since I only rented it, I couldn't actually play the multiplayer in the final game, but you can read my coverage of the multiplayer beta to understand why Uncharted's multiplayer isn't really for me. I also tried out the Subway promotion that was supposed to offer the full multiplayer ahead of the game's release, and it seemed largely unchanged from the beta, so I'm going to assume the multiplayer's still not for me.

I'm completely aware that I'm the odd man out here. I get that. But for as good as Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception looks, and as intricate as its set pieces are, I simply didn't have fun playing it.

Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception / $59.99 / PS3

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Review // Batman: Arkham City

You know, the title of "best Batman game ever" used to be difficult to get.

That's before Rocksteady Studios took the crown by force two years ago with Batman: Arkham Asylum, a game I enjoyed quite a bit, let's say. Before that, had you asked me what the best Batman game is, I would've said, "Oh, Batman Returns for the SNES, easily." That game came out in 1993. It took 16 years for a better Batman game to be made, and not for lack of trying, either. No, there have just been a lot of garbage Batman games over the years — until Arkham Asylum changed all that.

And now Rocksteady has done it again with Batman: Arkham City, making it look totally effortless in the process.

The first thing Rocksteady set about doing with Arkham City is expanding the scope of everything. The world is bigger, the stakes are higher, and while Batman is far more capable than he was in Asylum, his enemies are, too. Arkham City is a much more dangerous place than the asylum ever was, and it feels that way.

There have been some changes to Gotham City in the 18 months since the events of the first game. Quincy Sharp, the old warden of Arkham Asylum, was elected mayor, and with him came the rise of Hugo Strange, a diabolical genius who knows Batman's true identity and who orchestrated the creation of Arkham City, a massive prison carved from Gotham where criminals are allowed to do whatever they want as long as they stay within the walls.

While Batman was (understandably) not too thrilled about the idea, I couldn't have been happier. Soaring over buildings, perching on gargoyles, listening to the city to get my next objective — it's the true Batman experience, executed flawlessly.

The mechanics of controlling Batman have a purity that makes the simple act of getting from A to B a treat all on its own. You're quickly introduced to a mechanic that allows you to grapple to buildings and accelerate past them to launch yourself into the air again, similar to the grappling hook-parachute combo from Just Cause 2 that made that game such a joy, too. There's a real skill to traversal here, something the game encourages with side missions that have you flying through rings or rushing across the city.

It's so easy to find yourself in a state of nirvana in this game, whether gliding over the streets of Arkham or punching dudes in the face, where the controller melts away, you cease thinking and begin to simply... react. You'll need to be able to reliably get into that mindset if you want to do well at the combat, which I'll maintain is, hands-down, the best melee combat system ever created.

It's incredibly fluid and animated beautifully, looking more like a choreographed fight than a video game. It encourages the player to be very deliberate and spatially aware by tapping into the same addictive part of your brain that Call of Duty does with its Kill Streaks. For every five-hit combo, you'll earn the ability to use a special move, ranging from a brutal, instant takedown to a total disarm, where Batman grabs an enemy's weapon and destroys it — it's constant incentive to keep your combo going.

And like in Asylum, while there may only be one attack button, Batman still has an entire arsenal at his disposal. The way Rocksteady has used almost every single button on the controller to allow players to have quick access to each of Batman's gadgets in the middle of a hectic fight without interrupting the flow or being overly complicated is nothing short of astounding, especially given how many more gadgets he has now.

Of these, my favorite is probably the disruptor gadget, which is only really useful during stealth sections. It allows you to remotely disable an enemy's gun without him knowing. Then you can drop down in front of him and watch him freak out after his gun fails.

What I love most about the stealth in Rocksteady's Batman games is the slightly sadistic tinge to it all. Batman's main weapon against his enemies isn't a gadget or a fighting technique; it's fear. You're not just supposed to be taking out guys wantonly; you're supposed to be turning them against one another, playing on their paranoia, becoming a true terror of the night. It became a game unto itself for me to set up excessively intricate systems to inspire that fear, like starting off by quickly stringing up two enemies with Inverted Takedowns on opposite ends of the room so the remaining guys would have to run through the middle, where I'd detonate a fire extinguisher, creating a smokescreen that I'd hop down into and silently take out one of the thugs as they all panic, then grapple away before it clears, and so on. I became a monster in Arkham City, and loved every minute of it.

I think it speaks volumes about the quality of Batman: Arkham City that the worst part of the game is the downloadable (and therefore, optional) Catwoman content. There are four Catwoman missions if you've downloaded it, the first of which acts as a prologue to the rest of the game, but a bad one — there's no context to what's going on or why, is incredibly short and insubstantial to the overall plot, and most importantly, replaces the actual introduction (which is fantastic) as the opening to the game.

The rest of the missions feel sandwiched into the story, breaking the otherwise excellent pacing, and would've been better left relegated to the main menu to be played later so that rather than interrupting Batman's story, they would've been complementing it. Oh, also, she's not much fun to play as, either, thanks to a severely limited toolset and the inability to fly. So not only does it take her longer to get places, but she can't do much once she's actually there. That certainly doesn't help. Honestly, I'd recommend just waiting to download the Catwoman content until after you've finished the game.

Ignore the Catwoman missions, though, and Batman: Arkham City has an awesome story, filled with smart writing and outstanding performances from the entire cast. It's engaging and dramatic and silly in all the ways you'd want a Batman story to be, but it's darker than you might expect, too. While a lot of the story might feel like an excuse to have you facing off against each of Batman's villains, I'd argue that that's exactly what's great about it: You turn all of Batman's greatest enemies loose in a small city-sized prison and I'd imagine he's going to have a pretty busy night. It continually ramps up and gets crazier until reaches its spectacular conclusion.

And then — because why not? — Catwoman gets a mediocre epilogue.

Beyond the story, there's so much stuff to do. The game is packed with side missions, collectables, riddles, and challenge rooms, all of which are really satisfying to complete. The riddles, in particular, are gratifying to get, often requiring you to solve a fiendish puzzle first. Something about hearing the Riddler chime in after you've solved an especially difficult one to accuse you of cheating is consistently amusing. The challenge rooms return from Asylum, pitting you in combat or stealth-focused arenas with specific goals to meet, but are now accompanied by "campaigns," which are just series of three challenge rooms strung together with "modifiers" you have to activate. These can be positive or negative, like offering Batman regenerating health, making his enemies more aggressive, disabling Batman's gadgets, etc. You have to use all of them before the campaign is over and you can only use up to three at a time, so it takes some real strategy to decide which are best to use for which challenge.

In every respect, Batman: Arkham City absolutely raises the bar for other games, with the best melee combat and stealth action to date, a gorgeous, well-realized world, stellar voice acting and animation, and a tremendous value. I can't give enough praise to this terrific game.

Batman: Arkham City / $59.99 / PS3 [reviewed], 360, PC

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Review // Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3

I can't remember the last time such a high-profile game had the odds stacked against it to this degree.

Infinity Ward, still reeling from a late backlash against Modern Warfare 2, was torn apart and rebuilt following the sudden termination of its founders. Sledgehammer Games, a newly formed studio that was supposed to be giving a new spin to the Call of Duty franchise, was called in to help Infinity Ward deliver Modern Warfare 3 on time. And through it all, players turned their noses and sneered at what they considered to be a soulless shell of a company, declaring the franchise dead and running to the open arms of Electronic Arts, only too happy to position Battlefield 3 as the anti-Call of Duty.

But it was still made, and now, after spending dozens of hours with it, I can confidently say that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is pretty fucking rad, and that you should buy it.

Say what you want about how incredulous the stories of the Modern Warfare games have been or how many plot holes they have; I'm still willing to decree them the best, most engaging stories in any first-person shooter this side of BioShock for the mere virtue that I can remember the names of the characters. And not only that, but I actually care about them, too. Going into Modern Warfare 3, I was genuinely interested in how things were going to play out for Soap and Price. I'd call that a triumph.

Compare that to Killzone 3, where I wanted nothing more than Sev and Rico's heads on a pike by the end. I can't tell you anything about Nathan Hale from the Resistance series beyond the fact that he's as bald and bland as every other modern character out there, and unless I were to cheat and take a quick trip to Wikipedia, I couldn't give you a single character's name from Halo: Reach's Noble Team. Honestly, I'm impressed enough with myself that I even remembered that they were called "Noble Team."

Mind you, Modern Warfare 3's borderline nonsensical depiction of a near-future World War III isn't exactly high art, but it's easy to get absorbed into and provides a great catalyst to put you in some insane scenarios. And really, in a game more concerned with keeping the act of shooting dudes in the face fun and intense for five hours than weaving an intricate and thoughtful treatise on the futility of war and the horrors of what men are capable of doing to each other, that's totally fine.

To Infinity Ward's credit, shooting dudes in the face for five hours was a blast. There's a feel to the guns in the Modern Warfare franchise that nobody else has ever quite nailed — they feel substantial without the polarizing sway of artificial weight so prevalent in games like Killzone; they feel powerful without the crutch of excessive (and distracting) recoil in games like Battlefield. Maybe it's because enemies go down in just a shot or two, or because the reticle changes to let you know you've hit someone, or that distinct sound of the bullet impacting an enemy. Whatever it is, the gunplay in Modern Warfare 3 remains the best in the business.

But what really keeps it interesting are the absurd scenarios you're put in. Whether it's barreling past populated subway terminals while in a truck chasing a train full of terrorists or engaging in a breathtaking zero-gravity gunfight in a free-falling plane, you're almost always doing something completely crazy in this game. In fact, it's the middle act of the game, where the set pieces let up for a little while for standard boots-on-the-ground firefights, that I enjoyed the least. It was still fun, but I much preferred the pulse-pounding intensity of the scripted moments.

There are definitely some logical inconsistencies in the game's story that might bug some people, like why the Russian president is launching full-scale attacks on Europe at the same time that he's trying to negotiate peace, or how Russia even has the resources to attack all of Europe at once, but none of that really detracted from the story for me. No, I was more bothered by things like why Frost, one of the playable characters, was suspiciously absent from one of the final missions and was never seen again, offering zero conclusion to his storyline.

Overall, though, the game's story should be commended for eschewing the increasingly modern trend of leaving the ending open for potential sequels. There's a real sense of finality here when the credits begin to roll, and it's refreshing.

But the moment the credits are done rolling, you get dumped right into the returning Spec Ops mode, so get a friend ready. If you played Spec Ops in Modern Warfare 2, you know what to expect — missions designed for two players, often involving multiple pathways through a level or requiring each player to take on a vastly different role, usually amounting to one player covering the other player's back from the safety of an AC-130 gunship, for example, or a series of remote turrets. It's nothing new, but it remains a fantastic mode that simultaneously encourages cooperation and trash talk.

What impressed me more was the other side of Spec Ops, the new Survival mode, where the game just throws increasingly difficult waves at you until you die. I didn't really think a wave-based survival mode in Call of Duty would be all that fun, but it pretty quickly surpassed the Missions mode for me. When I wasn't playing it, I was thinking up new strategies and reminiscing over how wild some of the later waves get, like when the game decides to drop three Juggernauts on you at once, or dogs with C4 strapped to them, or three Juggernauts with riot shields and helicopter support.

It's more fun with two people, but I actually found myself making it further on my own. I didn't have to worry about whether my partner was carrying his weight, or taking cover when he was injured so I wouldn't have to come revive him, or executing our strategies properly. I could just... play. But hey, that's probably my fault for picking my roommate to be my partner.

Of course, that just leaves the competitive multiplayer. There have been some really smart changes to the tried-and-true Call of Duty formula, like the new Kill Confirmed mode that operates like Team Deathmatch, except that kills only count if you pick up dog tags from fallen enemies; you can even outright deny enemy kills if you pick up your teammates' tags before the other team can. It's a really clever mode with layers of strategy, like realizing you can use tags as bait, or that any tags you see could be a trap.

Another smart change is the new Kill Streak system, so if you're a more casual player who isn't confident in his ability to rack up a dozen kills in a single life, you can switch to, say, the Support option, where your kill count persists even if you die. You'll just be getting more defensive rewards, like body armor for your team, rather than the assortment of missiles and gunships that someone using the traditional Assault option gets.

There are other great tweaks here and there, but if you've played a Call of Duty game since the first Modern Warfare, this is going to feel very familiar. If you've played all of them since then, it might feel too familiar. But if you're someone like me who only plays the Modern Warfare games and avoids the off-year Treyarch filler, Modern Warfare 3 is going to feel like coming home.

I love that matches rarely exceed 10 minutes, so I can play a round or two to kill time and feel totally fulfilled. I love how customizable everything is, so that I can design a class to suit my play style that's wholly unlike anything my friends are using. I love that it's not as woefully unbalanced as Modern Warfare 2 was, where the double shotgun superhumans broke what should've been an awesome game. The maps are a little less memorable this time around, but there are still some real gems.

Unless you've been playing a Call of Duty game every year and now you're just completely burnt out, you should pick up Modern Warfare 3. It provides a satisfying conclusion to the trilogy, has some truly stunning moments in the campaign, and offers multiplayer that's more addictive than ever before.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 / $59.99 / PS3 [reviewed], 360, PC

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Review // Assassin's Creed: Revelations

What if the sequel to the best, most ambitious game of last year came out and was surprisingly unambitious, content to merely replicate everything its predecessor did without really pushing anything forward? Would you be okay with that? Because your answer will determine whether or not Assassin's Creed: Revelations is for you.

Personally, I think you should just skip it. If you've never played an Assassin's Creed game before, this is easily the worst starting point, a confusing mess of convoluted plot details and intricate gameplay systems. And if you have been keeping up with Desmond and the rest of the Assassins, you'd be better off giving yourself a break from the series and coming back next year, eager for Assassin's Creed III.

That's the problem with making Assassin's Creed a yearly franchise — it's just not a style of game that can support that kind of release schedule. If you've stood on a rooftop above a guard and pressed the button to jump down and assassinate him once, you've done it a thousand times. You need an extended break between games for that to feel fresh again because it's exactly the same every single time you do it.

The difference between Assassin's Creed and a game like Call of Duty that's also on a yearly cycle is that, in Call of Duty, you're doing the same style of actions, but you're not doing the exact same actions. In Modern Warfare 3, sure, there's a guided stealth level, just like in previous Modern Warfare games, but at least it's a different guided stealth level.

In Revelations, however, you'll be doing many of the exact same actions you did in Brotherhood: you will buy shops to revitalize the city's economy; you will recruit Assassins and send them on missions throughout Europe; you will climb tall buildings and synchronize to reveal parts of the map; you will assassinate witnesses and bribe heralds to reduce your notoriety; you will hunt Templar captains and light the influential towers they once protected. You did all of those things in Brotherhood, and they have not changed in Revelations.

Without a doubt, that staleness is Revelations' biggest problem. There's just nothing that feels dramatically new here. Ezio has a hookblade now, and yeah, it's pretty cool, but it's not enough. Brotherhood introduced Assassin recruits, an innovative multiplayer mode, a faster combat system, challenge rooms, and so much more. It felt appreciably different from (and better than) Assassin's Creed II. Revelations, on the other hand, introduces the hookblade, a tower-defense minigame, bomb crafting, and... that's it, really.

How significant are those additions? Not very. The hookblade is fun, letting you climb faster, use ziplines and roll over enemies in your way, but it's definitely not a game-changer. The tower-defense minigame is an annoying chore that pops up every once in a while on your map, nagging you to recapture a Templar tower you took over earlier. It's mindless, requiring you to spend "morale points" to place different units of Assassins and barricades on a road that waves of Templars will march down. Fail and the Templars regain control over that tower. I found the easier solution to be to ignore contested towers altogether and continue playing the game as though they didn't exist at all.

And bomb crafting? I did it once, for the tutorial, then never did it again. The idea here is that you can use ingredients you find around the world to craft custom bombs that complement your play style, but given the number of tools Ezio already has at his disposal — hidden blades, Assassin recruits, poison darts, a gun, a crossbow, parachutes, throwing knives, courtesans, mercenaries, coins, etc. — I never once felt like I needed to go craft a custom bomb to tackle a situation.

In fact, what bombs made me realize is what the series needs most: focus.

Think back to the first Assassin's Creed and ignore the godawful mission structure for a moment. What tools did Altaïr have at his disposal? His speed, his sword, his hidden blade, his dagger and his throwing knives. That was it. There was real incentive to be calculating and cunning — Altaïr couldn't get caught and slaughter 15 guards in the blink of an eye like Ezio can. And once you'd assassinated your main target, your only option became to run. You were forced to work within those limitations, creating some of the most exhilarating moments in the series.

Revelations has none of that. As Altaïr, you'd often get backed into a corner, forced to claw your way out like a frightened, wild animal. You felt real tension and danger. Ezio, on the other hand, is always calm. He's so capable that it's practically impossible to get cornered, but even if you do, you definitely won't feel scared — you'll be too busy running through a list of all the easy ways for Ezio to take control of the situation.

Ezio is a walking cloud of death. He points his fingers at men and they die. He has aged, yes, but he has aged too gracefully. Revelations had the opportunity to bring back a little of the fear that drove players through the first game by introducing limitations on Ezio's abilities, but he is as spry and agile as ever, if not more so. There is nothing he can't do, and that's boring.

But Revelations' problems don't stop there. As a game that promised answers, claiming that "the intrigue of secrets has passed," it completely fails.

The premise here is that Ezio is on the hunt for five keys in Constantinople that will open an underground library in Masyaf to uncover Altaïr's final secrets. If that sounds lackluster to you, it's because it is. By the very nature of that premise, nothing truly exciting can happen until the final moments of the game. And sure enough, nothing truly exciting happens until the final moments of the game, but even then, if you've already beaten Assassin's Creed II, you already know the grand revelation.

What Revelations does do, though, is some hardcore retconning of Altaïr's story. Not only has Ubisoft completely changed his face, voice and personality from the first game, but his story doesn't really match up with what was supposed to happen to him after the first game, either. As well, it introduces a pretty serious plot hole near the beginning of the game that never gets resolved.

Instead of providing real answers, Revelations introduces baffling questions of its own.

Through and through, Revelations just feels like there was less passion behind it, less vision. It barely inches the franchise's story along, despite promising to take leaps forward. The presentation is noticeably worse than past games, filled with ugly faces, glitches and an inconsistent frame rate. And with the exception of the hookblade, the few new gameplay additions fall flat.

Assassin's Creed: Revelations is not a bad game. Pretty much anything great about Brotherhood is still great here. But if you've already played Brotherhood, Revelations has nothing new to offer. Instead, take a year off and come back fresh for Assassin's Creed III.

Assassin's Creed: Revelations / $59.99 / PS3 [reviewed], 360, PC

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