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Game reviews

Here's what we think

By JOSH KORR
Published January 9, 2006

CALL OF DUTY 2

Company: Activision

Price: $59.99

Rating: T

Grade: A-

Company: Microsoft Game Studios

Price: $49.99

Rating: M

Grade: C

Company: Ubisoft

Price: $59.99

Rating: T

Grade: C+

The Xbox 360's initial batch of first-person shooters offers important lessons for developers: Try something new and don't worry about production values; deliver a thorough, fully polished game; or just don't bother.

There's little original about Call of Duty 2, Perfect Dark Zero and King Kong. But while Call of Duty doesn't concern itself with being different, concentrating instead on presenting a seamless experience, Perfect Dark and King Kong try to mask their derivative game play with hype and unsuccessful immersion.

I'm still not sure why Perfect Dark is supposed to be a big deal. It's a futuristic sci-fi shooter, and it plays like any other futuristic sci-fi shooter. The only slightly new element seems to be weapons that have multiple uses. Why this got so much prerelease attention from the gaming press, I couldn't say. The game has plenty of multiplayer options, but so do a zillion other titles.

The colors are leached in parts, so the characters look somehow flat and blend into the background. Jagged edges abound, something the 360's advanced hardware is supposed to clean up, and often when you look around the screen seems to catch in the middle - the bottom moves with your character but the top half lags slightly.

King Kong also has technical problems and suffers from repetitive, cliched game play. Ubisoft has said developers tested the 360 version on high-definition screens, not realizing the end product is too dark for standard-definition TVs. I assumed the gloom was ambience, though this might explain why I was twice stuck for 15 minutes when I couldn't see paths carved into rock.

The developers have made a big deal of eschewing on-screen radar, inventory and score markers to give a more natural, cinematic feel. This attempt at video game naturalism seems silly, given how much the game hews to convention.

The game mostly consists of spearing or shooting Skull Island's giant insects and dinosaurs. Spears and bones are always there at convenient points. When you need to do long-range shooting, a sniper rifle happens to be in the nearest crate. Most of the repetitive puzzles involve finding a torch to light a spear to set brush on fire to clear your path; sometimes you also have to find a lever to open a door.

It is cool to play as Kong, but that gets old fast, too. You just mash buttons to thwack dinosaurs and swing or climb a wall like in Prince of Persia.

Call of Duty 2, on the other hand, doesn't pretend to be anything other than a highly refined World War II shooter. The graphics aren't quite what I expected from a next-gen system, but they're still among the best out there. Snow and smoke flutter and plume more realistically than in any game I've played. Nighttime levels actually look like nighttime, but everything's still easily visible.

The great visuals and tight controls, coupled with newsreel-type footage at the start of campaigns and diary entries shown at loading screens, make for an immersive experience. The only jarring element is the hilariously bad "Russian" accents, which alternately sound Middle Eastern, Spanish and Russian.

Call of Duty shows that it's okay to be derivative, as long as the total package is first-rate. For games that try to cover up their lack of originality instead of accepting and polishing it - well, there are still plenty of great PlayStation 2 and Xbox games out there.

[Last modified January 6, 2006, 12:14:05]