Dungeon Siege III

If there’s one thing that Obsidian Entertainment and Square Enix are not afraid to, it’s bringing the popular Dungeon Siege series to the 360 and PS3.  Well, that and sending waves of formidable bosses your way.  Don’t worry, the mounds of loot you’ll retrieve will help you immensely.
If you’re looking for an enjoyable, dungeon-crawling, hack-and-slash, action role-playing game that two people can play on the same screen, then this game is right up your alley.  To be honest, it’s the most fun I’ve had with a game of its genre in quite some time.  The game takes place in the same lands as the other Dungeon Siege games, but aside from some references and evolved environments, you would never know.  The story stands completely independent from the other games.
Up to four players—two on the same console—can play together taking on the roles of Lucas Montbarron, the sword-wielding warrior; Anjali, who can shift between human form and an incarnation of elemental fire; Reinhart Manx, a scholar of arcane magic; and Katarina, who solves her problems with firearms.  Combat is fast and furious.  You will be mashing the “A” button a lot, doing your normal attacks, and will have your special attacks assigned to the “X,Y,Z” buttons.  The left and right triggers bring up other abilities that your character has.  Defensively, I have found that dodging takes care of all of your problems.  Each character also has two different offensive stances to switch between.  For example, Katarina uses her rifle to take care of foes from afar, but up close she can dual-wield shotguns and pistols, as well as wielding curses.
 
The combat is fun, but it’s not without its faults.  The camera does some quirky things when playing on one screen with two players.  The camera will over-rotate, and sometimes during attacks you won’t be able to see who you are fighting, or where one of the players are.  It never led to a death for me, but it led to annoyance.
Each character is customizable—to a degree.  When you level up you receive points to assign into a combat ability, a proficiency (which allows you to add special effects to your combat ability), and talents (which give you passive improvements).

While the game can be challenging, especially some of the bosses, it does not promote competition between teammates.  There’s not the feeling of added stress by having to get to an item drop before your teammate;  all players share whatever gold and loot is picked up.  Players even share the health and focus orbs that enemies drop.  It’s the friendliest co-op action-rpg that you’ll ever play.  Other in-game actions are easy as well.  Obsidian Entertainment made sure that the player could access multiple menus or actions with the click of a button.  You can access all of your quests and items, as well as breadcrumbs (a line of gold orbs that guide you toward your destination for a short period of time) all through the d-pad.
To expand on the loot, since that is what drives action-rpg games like this, I want you to know that there’s plenty of it.  You will always be picking up new items.  The nice thing about the loot is that you don’t have to fight over it with your teammates.  Each item only usable by a certain character, since none of them use the same armor and/or weapons.  When I played with other people, there wasn’t any “I need that more than you.”  Instead, there was, “Wow, that’s an awesome gun.  Grats.”  Much nicer, don’t you think?  There is also tons of attributes on the items, such as doom, warding, bloodletting, vampirism, etc.

All of the different attributes on the loot lets the player choose the items that match their playstyle the most.  Unfortunately, none of the loot really causes any aesthetic pleasure.  The difference in looks is barely noticeable.  If you are playing with two people on the same screen, you won’t notice any difference at all since you can’t zoom in at all.  Sometimes you can notice a faint glow on a weapon, but that’s about all.
Graphics-wise, the game holds its own.  The environment glows a little bit too much for my liking, but it’s not bad by any means.  Character and enemies have some modest detail to them, but nothing makes you want to say “wow.”
The story is also satisfactory;  there’s nothing great about it, but you won’t be lulled to sleep.  However, conversations are frustrating.  You can, of course, speed them up by skipping the voice acting, but it just feels like there’s way to much fluff to get to the point.  Each player can vote on which dialogue option they think should be said, but only one person gets the final say.  Depending on how often you agree/disagree on dialogue, you earn achievements and deeds (gives your party a passive buff).  In the end, the story is going to play itself out no matter what you say.

Dungeon Siege III is a game worthy of your attention if you like the hack-and-slash, dungeon crawl, action-rpg type of game.  There’s no fighting over the massive amount of loot you’ll come across, and most of all, IT’S FUN!  Minus story fluff, inconsequential dialogue, and an unruly, this game gets a lot of things right, or is on the right path with a lot of things.

Hunted: The Demon’s Forge

Sometimes the best way to distinguish your game among others is to incorporate elements across genres into a single, coherent gameplay experience. On paper, this gets people very excited—-think about Halo, which gives players shooting, driving, and flying all in one beautiful package. Unfortunately, it takes a lot of work to get every component working properly, and if one malfunctions even a bit, the entire experience can be ruined. Enter Hunted: The Demon’s Forge.
Hunted was designed as a “dungeon crawler” of sorts, but with typical RPG elements blended with cooperative combat. There’s Caddoc, the gruff sword-swinger, and E’Lara, the nimble elf archer. There are no other choices—-by maintaining these two characters, each one can undergo a unique story arc and personal crises can be… oh, who are we kidding? These are just silly archetypes that we understand immediately, and they actually work well enough within the context of co-op battles. Don’t expect anything epic, but the lighthearted jibes and exchanges between them provide some nice relief as the game plods along.

Although either character can technically be used across a variety of combat scenarios, their specializations in ranged or close warfare form the core of the game. This is particularly nice in multiplayer because it’s strangely more consistent than the single-player campaign. This is mainly due to your assignment to a character, rather than having to constantly worry about switching back between them—-which can only be done in specific contexts, mind you. Why the game couldn’t allow players to freely switch characters at any time is a mystery; even Donkey Kong Country managed this trick, after all.
Unfortunately, the melding of slashing and shooting doesn’t work out quite as smoothly as one might hope. It’s easy to get turned on by this premise, but Hunted simply doesn’t deliver on its primary design. By the time you’re an hour into the game, very little novelty awaits you. In the past, many games have spruced things up by adding new abilities or significant rewards to keep things fresh. Instead, Hunted feels drab and stretched thin as you go along. The combat is awkward and repetitive, and the AI is terrible. This is often forgivable among foes, but in any game with friendly AI, the problems become a major headache. Your companion often behaves erratically, lagging behind or charging ahead when they shouldn’t and generally making a mess of things. It’s a bit like the stress of bringing a date to a formal event, only without having to leave the comfort of your living room. Somehow I doubt that was the intended selling point for the game.


Another disappointment lies in the narrative itself. While technically you could produce any game with a “fantasy” flair, a product from Bethesda is held to a higher standard. If a fantasy story isn’t rich enough to make the player feel utterly submerged in the world, everything tends to turn rather silly after a while. The intrinsic intrigue of an investigative mercenary duo will die down if clues are not offered along the way—-even little bits of tasty substance to keep curiosities piqued. A lot of people might have been able to overlook this, but this area feels very lackluster and lends the impression of a rushed product.


All told, Hunted offers a modicum of playing pleasure on a slow weekend, but a rental would be safer than a purchase. The visuals seem dated in a few spots, and in fact, the game sounds better in most areas than it looks. The music is particularly strong, probably one of the few things that Hunted gets right, but scarcely enough to warrant a purchase. Irksome gameplay and unpolished graphics keep Hunted grounded in the realm of “decent at best.” With so much potential, it seems a more serious execution could offer better things in the future.