Halo Wars Review

Bungie Studios has spent the last decade refining its winning formula for first-person shooter success with the Halo series. The epic sci-fi saga about humanity's battle for survival against the alien Covenant collective has now spanned three games on Microsoft's Xbox consoles, and that number will only grow in the years to come. For the first time, a non-Bungie development studio has tried its hand at expanding the series in the form of Halo Wars, a real-time strategy game set in the universe popularized by the enigmatic Master Chief. And although Spartan warrior John-117 doesn't appear in the game, developer Ensemble Studios has otherwise closely followed Bungie's formula for success. Halo has always been about intense bursts of run-and-gun gameplay with pretty graphics and a robust and addictive multiplayer component, all wrapped up in a compelling story. Rather than strike out on its own with an approach more akin to its wide-open Age of Empires series of real-time strategy games, Ensemble has stuck to the Bungie formula in Halo Wars. Missions are tightly designed, the action moves constantly forward, and momentum isn't bogged down with complex technology trees, multiple buildings and resource gathering operations. Because of this, Halo Wars serves almost as a "my-first-RTS" rather than as a Halo-ization of more traditional strategy offerings like AoE, Starcraft and Command & Conquer. Compared to those games, Halo Wars offers you less control over where you set up your base of operations, how you build your armies and the manner in which you achieve your objectives. In stripping the RTS experience down to its core function of creating an army to defeating an enemy, Halo Wars brings something fresh and lively to the console RTS landscape. Many console strategy games are ports of their PC counterparts, which causes design problems from the outset. Actions that were designed to be managed with the precision controls of a keyboard and mouse are shoehorned onto a controller with a limited number of buttons and a slower system of on-screen navigation. As a result, many of these ports simply don't work as advertised, and gamers end up shaking their fists at an angry and vindictive God. The Ensemble developers seem to have had just that experience, because they took a totally different approach with Halo Wars. This game was built from the ground-up for the Xbox 360, and the control system shows it. Almost every action in Halo Wars can be accomplished with two button presses, and production choices are made from a Mass Effect-like radial menu that never has more than eight options. On the battlefield, just tap the A button on a unit to select, say, a Spartan super-soldier; move your cursor to a location via the left analog stick; and tap the X button to send him there. If the location is empty, your unit will move there, and if it's occupied by an enemy, he'll attack like the well-trained Marine he is. Most units also have a special attack, which you can execute at the touch of the Y button. Warthogs, for example, can plow over enemy ground forces, which comes in handy as a last resort. Once you use a special attack, it will need to recharge, so use them wisely. Marines and their vehicles don't train and build themselves, so you'll need to handle that on your own. All of Halo Wars' campaign missions are played from the United Nations Space Command perspective (sorry, no Covenant campaign), and most start you out with a single base of operations, or at least a spot to build one. These Firebases come with three building sites and can be upgraded to support up to four additional sites. In some campaign levels, and in most multiplayer maps, you'll have the opportunity to operate additional bases, but you can only build in designated areas. While some may find this restrictive, I found it to be refreshing approach that significantly streamlined the base-building process, which can be cumbersome to manage in other console RTSs. Although your base site is fixed, that doesn't take the strategy out of the process. Halo Wars is as much about managing limited resources as it is about blowing stuff up. Each Supply Pad you build as the UNSC, and each warehouse you construct as the Covenant in multiplayer matches, will provide you with a steady stream of resources that you can use to build your army, beef up your base and deploy super weapons. One of the most satisfying things to do in Halo Wars is to fully upgrade the Magnetic Accelerator Cannon on the Spirit of Fire, build up a healthy stash of resources and then spend those resources to unload a group of three pinpoint 600-ton rounds on a Covenant base. Nighty-night, bugs. Dropping mad loads of Tungsten on the Covvies wouldn't be nearly as much fun without the awesome explosions said rounds impart upon detonation. Ensemble did some great graphical work on Halo Wars, and it paid off. The particle effects and damage modeling are incredibly satisfying to watch, and every Covenant and UNSC unit is lovingly recreated to look just like its counterpart in the previous Halo games. And the graphical eye candy doesn't stop at the battlefield. The CGI cutscenes in Halo Wars are beautiful, and they add a tremendous amount of character and weight to the game. Die-hard fans of the Halo storyline won't be disappointed with the way Ensemble and Microsoft brought the world to life, from the intricately detailed Spirit of Fire to the FMV sequences that show Spartans engaged in intense hand-to-hand combat. There's a cutscene for each of Halo Wars' 15 missions, and they're a nice reward for completing each level. Unfortunately, the tale they tell isn't quite up to the standards Bungie has set in previous games. It's not the plot that's the problem; it's just your standard the-galaxy's-in-danger story. Rather, it's the characters involved that left me somewhat wanting. All are fairly stereotypical, and the two main characters, Sgt. John Forge and Prof. Ellen Anders just weren't very likable to me. The former is a chauvinist tough-guy who's none too pleased about having to babysit a lady doctor on a man's mission. And Anders is what IGN Xbox 360 editor Erik Brudvig describes as your typical "Dr. Science" archetype -- a cheeky, headstrong egghead in a white lab coat who won't take no for an answer. The best character in Halo Wars is probably Serina, an A.I. with attitude and more than a little contempt for the humans she's charged with assisting. But Halo Wars makes up for its character shortcomings with its unflagging devotion to retaining the Halo feel. The story still feels epic in scope, and there are some powerful on-screen moments. Even the interface and extras are unmistakably Halo. The Easy, Normal, Heroic and Legendary difficulties are here, as are the crossed-sword icons to represent them. There are even skulls scattered throughout the game that you can collect by meeting special objectives in the campaign. Flip them on just like you would in Halo 3 to turn on effects like Grunt Birthday Party, which adds a shower of confetti to every Covenant Grunt you kill, or choose More Cowbell to crank all explosions in the game up to 11. Halo Wars is full of nice touches that show the development team's personality and dedication to the Halo universe. Hardcore fans will find plenty series lore to pore over in the cutscenes, and there's even an unlockable Halo timeline that lays out the history of humanity's struggle for survival. Ensemble also injected its own irreverent sense of humor throughout, including the game tips that scroll along the bottom of the screen in the menus. This is where I learned that "The Brute Chieftain likes Thornbeast for dinner, but it better be rare." It wouldn't be a Halo game without multiplayer, and Ensemble didn't skip this area either. Halo Wars features an online multiplayer matchmaking system similar to the one Bungie built for Halo 3, albeit with far fewer bells and whistles. Just pop into the multiplayer menu, and the game will find you a party and match you up with competitors via TrueSkill. There's nice attention to detail here, from the Halo 3-like ranking system to the transparent system of party matchups (Halo Wars lists your party's TrueSkill rank). Since the game's not out in the wild yet, it was impossible for me to test how Halo Wars' matchmaking system holds up under the strain of Xbox Live with tens of thousands playing. But from my limited tests taking the game online, things worked smoothly. Voice chat worked well, there was no lag, and matchmaking was quick and painless. Again, all that could change when the game is released. There are only two playable factions in Halo Wars multiplayer: UNSC and Covenant, which I didn't find to be a detriment to the experience. That's partly because both sides have three different leaders to choose from, each of which has access to different perks, units and bonuses. Your leader choice can make a big difference in your strategy on the battlefield, which is a nice touch. Some may complain that the Flood isn't a playable faction (although they are in the campaign). Personally, I hate the Flood, and I was happy they were excluded. In addition to matchmaking, you can also create custom online matches, engage in skirmishes locally against AI players or even play through the campaign cooperatively with a friend. But competitive multiplayer is really where Halo Wars opens up and allows you to stretch your strategic muscles. You can play one-on-one, two-on-two or three-on-three matches, and there are 14 maps that are scaled to those game types. Unlike the strict campaign, the multiplayer modes of Halo Wars feel most like what RTS fans are used to from the genre. Like the Halo FPS games, the Halo Wars campaign is all about quick bursts of fun strung together, and that means missions with carefully defined objectives. For many PC RTS players, the draw to the genre is the ability to step into the shoes of a powerful general with every little bit of the situation at his or her command. But there aren't that many ways to complete the missions in Halo Wars. There wasn't a point where the game really took off the training wheels and said, "There's the enemy – go get him however you see fit." As a fan of both the RTS genre and the Halo universe, I liked Ensemble's approach to blending the two ideas, but I found myself wishing the reins were a bit looser. However, I still had a ton of fun with Halo Wars, and I highly recommend it to any Halo fan who's never really cared much about real-time strategy. But if you're a hardcore RTS nut who's a bit of a control freak, you might be disappointed with the options here.

Closing Comments

Halo Wars deftly dodges between the hardcore micromanagement of real-time strategy and the instant gratification expected by Halo fans. Ensemble has nailed console RTS controls, but at the expense of some depth. The campaign missions often seem overly scripted and the experience doesn’t have the wide-open feel of some other RTSs. But the Halo feel is most definitely present, and serves as one of the game’s biggest strengths. The cinematic cutscenes are gorgeous, if the narrative is somewhat thin in places. Overall, Halo Wars is a fresh and expertly polished approach to the console strategy genre, and it’s a fitting goodbye from a beloved studio.

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Review

Four years ago Blizzard launched World of Warcraft, a massively multiplayer online RPG that abruptly snatched the spotlight from former genre heavyweight, Sony Online's EverQuest, and went on to enjoy a degree of success few could have predicted. With 11 million subscribers worldwide, the cultural impact of Blizzard's creation is difficult to accurately measure. It's spawned its own lexicon, countless Internet memes, appeared as the focus of an episode of South Park, and has dominated industry discussion about online games since its release. Games like this like this aren't one-shot, linear run-throughs or exercises in melding gameplay with abstract artistic themes; they're services. You pay a subscription fee and in return you get stable servers to play on, constant bug fixes, updates to game systems, added content, and customer support lines. It's a much different experience from other media, such as movies or books, particularly when trying to assess some kind of worth. You don't fault a movie for crashing, for instance, you fault the projector. A paragraph in a novel will never glitch out, requiring you to close and reopen the pages to reset it. A massively multiplayer online game has so many more moving pieces and potential complications that having a company like Blizzard working behind the scenes should inspire confidence. It's got the quality assurance staff and support to ensure its products are remarkably polished, perform well, and actually work across a range of desktops and laptops with wildly varying hardware configurations. Also, the fact that there's such a large player base means this virtual world isn't getting shut down anytime soon, a danger with this type of game as most recently demonstrated with NCsoft and Tabula Rasa. Wrath of the Lich King is the second expansion to Blizzard's game, something the player base has already snatched up in great quantities. This kind of release schedule, with an expansion roughly every two years, differs from what Sony Online did with EverQuest, a game that just received its 15th expansion in just about 10 years. What you get with a Blizzard expansion is an incredible amount of content, some of the more prominent features being a new level cap, a new continent, the first added player class since the game's launch, and a general assurance it's all going to work correctly. Simply having plenty of content and stability isn't enough to make the game worthy of your dollar however. You could, for instance, have a magazine subscription where the product is always on time, in good condition, and is full of pictures and text, but in the end it's still just another issue of Sawdust Quarterly. As most gamers out there know already, World of Warcraft is a remarkable product. From the entertaining, strongly defined classes with wildly diverse functionality and generally solid feel and timing of activating skills, to a gigantic, beautiful open world and myriad ways to spend your time leveling up professions, coordinating large-scale attacks against powerful dungeon bosses, or engaging in player versus player battles ensures you'll find something to like. While the previous expansion, The Burning Crusade, offered quite a bit for new WoW players back in January 2007 with two new playable races and accompanying level 1 – 20 starting zones, Wrath of the Lich King is geared more for high level players. The level cap has been bumped up to 80, and the new continent of Northrend isn't accessible until you've got a higher level character, so if you're new you'll need to move through the original release content as well as territory from the first expansion, both of which are required to play Lich King. That being said, Blizzard made the leveling process up to 70 much more rapid through patches released before The Lich King's arrival, so those who activate now won't spend nearly as much time in the original release territory or Outland from The Burning Crusade as those who dove in when the content was still new. With the majority of the player base at or very much on their way to the level 80 cap at this point, any green players won't really experience the full degree of the community and social strengths of the game until later on. Even longtime players will have to retread some old content since the new class, the Death Knight, starts at level 55. Provided you've got a high enough level character you can roll one of these demonic melee fighters as Horde or Alliance and experience right away one of the expansion's major strengths; a stronger narrative cohesion. Unlike the other classes, Death Knights get their very own introductory quest lines that have you working temporarily for Arthas, also known as the Lich King. In all it's about 49 quests that start out with your character battling against the forces of light, killing citizens, infiltrating operations, assaulting strongholds, and flying frost wyrms over battlefields to reign death on those below. Through a few in-game, voiced character interactions alter you'll witness some dramatic events that provide a nice narrative context for the class within Blizzard's alternately self-serious and flippant fictional world. After the introductory sequence you take a bit of a detour though Outland as you'll need to level up to the requirement for entry into Northrend before rejoining the story of Arthas. At least Blizzard didn't make players restart at level 1. While it's difficult to say at this point what kind of role Death Knights will carve out in raiding groups and what kind of PvP strategies will be developed, they're certainly an entertaining class to play. Compared with the other nine alternatives in World of Warcraft, Death Knights have a distinct rhythm to their play styles, a result of two unique resource systems used to pull off moves. Death Knights start off fights by consuming different types of runes to activate skills, all of which have an accompanying cooldown sequence. Using these skills also builds runic power that makes available other skills, meaning the flow of fights with Death Knights alternates between managing rune cooldowns to trigger abilities and counterbalancing that with those that consume runic power. Talent trees of course strengthen different aspects of the class. Depending on how you've allocated your points you can be more effective at generating and maintaining runic power, make yourself more resilient in battle, dramatically boost your damage output and unlock a number of interesting skills. The Death Knight can, for instance, briefly come back to life as a ghoul after being killed, project a stationary anti-magic zone to dampen incoming magical damage, call down a gargoyle to inflict damage on foes, blow up corpses like Diablo II's Necromancer, and even summon a ghoul companion. Considering the class wears plate armor it's certainly a force to be reckoned with, and is particularly noticeable in PvP because of its death grip ability, which yanks targets from a distance to the death knight. It's been a long wait for a new class to toy around with, and what Blizzard has delivered provides players with a fresh set of distinct, entertaining skills to put to usewhile playing solo and grouped. One criticism that tends to get leveled at MMOs like WoW is that there's no strong central narrative. Something like BioWare's Mass Effect has a powerful story and characters, the endless nature of the MMO and the need for the developer to keep players engaged so they'll keep that subscription active means there can't really be a true termination, even if there are climactic events, though games like Turbine's Lord of the Rings Online try to address that. That being said, Blizzard has built in much more narrative across the zones of Northrend, anchored by frequent appearances by Arthas, which makes the leveling process a more interesting endeavor. Like in the Death Knight opening sequences, players will get plenty of opportunity to interact with the Scourge's heavily armored leader. He tends to show up all over the place, after seemingly mundane quests in the Howling Fjord to the finale of a dungeon run through Drak'Tharon Keep on the borders of Grizzly Hills and Zul'Drak. He'll spout sinister lines with a Dr. Claw-like cadence and whether you take him seriously or smirk at his overwrought malevolence, you can't help but pay attention when he raises his sword, Frostmourne, to single out a victim or emphasize a point. One of the more involved questlines in a zone called Dragonblight fleshes out more of Arthas' history, his transformation from noble prince to embodiment of evil, and culminates in a lengthy cut-scene surrounding the Wrath Gate (Black Gate?) that gives players a better sense of what's going on in the world at large, and with a follow-up questline that spans the old world and provides a nice connection between the new and existing content. What's perhaps more effective for narrative delivery is how Blizzard's implemented localized changes in the game world depending on your actions. This can be as subtle as a bed of flowers popping up around an NPC after you turn in a quest, to more large scale alternations. After the Wrath Gate event, for instance, the landscape in front of the entrance is encircled by fire and screaming citizens run every which way and it stays that way afterward. In the Death Knight opening scenario, you'll travel back and forth between the land and a floating necropolis, and between each journey to and fro there'll be no load times yet the landscape below will shift from idyllic human town to a roaring battlefield over which frost wyrms soar. These types of transitions, though sometimes subtle, really work to enhance the notion that you're affecting the game world in a meaningful way. Coupled with the in-game cut scenes and you've got a World of Warcraft with far more narrative direction that has been previously seen. Yet you've still got to drop in the caveat that it's a good story…for an MMO. It's something that those ensconced in Azeroth will absolutely adore, but won't win over those who put the game to the side years ago or those who never took any interest in the genre in the first place. Another step forward for Blizzard is their overall zone design. Northrend not only looks far more appealing than any of the old world content but also contains a wider variety of quests. It's an important development as many tend to complain about how getting quests to kill X number of mobs, pick Y bits of random crap off the ground, or collect Z collectibles off of corpses can make you want to tear your hair out, and rightfully so. Those types of quests are boring, and in Wrath of the Lich King Blizzard has not only strengthened storytelling, but it's greatly improved the quest structures. You'll still spend time killing and collecting but quest chains are mixed up with vehicle missions, like running dragon battle daily quests at Wyrmrest Temple where you blast fireballs at other winged reptiles. There's sequences where you swoop around battlefields to snatch up survivors as well as numerous instances where you put on disguises to infiltrate enemy installations and quest for monsters which all work to alleviate the drooling stupor you might fall into after doing the same type of quest for hours on end. Some of these sequences don't work all that well though, like a giant-riding section in Zul'Drak and a defense sequence on a mountainside in Icecrown, but the glitches hardly affect the overall experience. The zone designs contribute to the sense of variety as well through complex geographic layouts like the sprawling canyons of the Howling Fjord to the jungles of Sholazar Basin. The highest level zones of Storm Peaks and Icecrown are even more impressive, as they cater to players with flying mounts. In Icecrown, for instance, a quest hub floats over the zone in the form of a battleship. Not only does it make for an interesting setup as you fly up to receive tasks and can explore the innards of the ship, but builds on the notion that this is an epic conflict and allows for some gorgeous vistas as you fly out over the railing and behold the frozen wastes and Tolkien-esque black barbs of Icecrown Citadel and its snaking gates. Then there's of course the instanced dungeons in which players battle tougher content but are rewarded with better items for their character. From the starting 5-man endeavors into The Nexus and Utgarde Keep to higher level instances like Gundrak, Wrath of the Lich King's basic dungeons are all fairly accessible and brief, meaning there aren't droves of mobs to battle through to get to the loot yielding bosses. We were moving through with pick-up groups in roughly 45 minutes, and that was without anyone having previous knowledge of the layout or boss attack patterns. The more involved raid dungeons in Wrath of the Lich King can be entered in either 10 or 25 man groups, yet again lowering the bar for players who may be intimidated by the more organized, team-oriented styles of play. Beating on AI controlled bosses and leveling your character isn't the only option in World of Warcraft; there's also quite a bit of player versus player combat to be had. On open PvP servers you can slap around anyone of the opposing faction, but Blizzard has gradually added a number of more ordered systems to its game over the years, something expanded upon in Wrath of the Lich King. Wintergrasp, a zone dedicated entirely to PvP, lies buried near Northrend's center. It's an attempt by Blizzard to give more structure to larger scale conflicts, as players can enter the zone and after a timer counts down attempt to assault or defend a fortress. It's not something that's going to elevate the game's open PvP element to the level of Mythic Entertainment's Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, but it's still a nice change of pace from leveling or bashing bosses since, in addition to engaging in large-scale team battles, you can commandeer siege equipment armed with rams and destructive projectiles to break apart pieces of the stronghold, adding another element to the PvP gameplay. The culture surrounding this new zone hasn't really matured at this point, though there's certainly potential. Something that's a little more measurable is the Strand of the Ancients battleground arena, a new type of set player limit see-saw battle where teams take sides storming a series of gates with siege equipment. It fits in with the general philosophy of the expansion pack where Blizzard takes what their player base enjoys and adds to it, in this case socketing another cog in the overall PvP machinery. Plenty of smaller scale changes have been implemented on top of this, not the least of which is another new profession, Inscription, that among its many functions allows players to power up existing skills. Other profession systems have been adjusted as well. With Enchanting, one of our main character's professions, it's possible toenchant rings, though only your own. An achievement system has also been built into the game, evidence that Blizzard took a note from systems whirring in something like Microsoft's Xbox 360, where simply by virtue of adding in a goal, let's say kill a number of turkeys within a time limit, the company can keep its player base busy sometimes even without a reward beyond a higher achievement point total. Not to deny the player base a fancy new hangout, Wrath of the Lich King includes a new capital city. Called Dalaran, the metropolis floats over the sparkling forests of Crystalsong on Icecrown's border, and comes with portals to other major cities, access to battlegrounds and Wintergrasp, and even its own instance, the Violet Hold, where groups fend off wave after wave of powerful enemies and bosses. Dalaran, like the rest of the zones, is quite pretty thanks to graphical effects recently added into the game including real-time shadows and more detailed models. Pairing those upgrades with the more interesting zone designs and a return to more realistic settings, a refreshing change after the alien zones in Outland, and you've got a game that still manages to impress with scenes of occasional beauty. And of course you get character animations practically unparalleled in the genre, and a diverse range of spell and ability effects that easily allow players to identify another's class as soon as something's cast. Many of Warcraft's sounds will be familiar to players, but the music and effects are still of the highest quality. While running around Northrend you'll be treated to a score that works to enhance the overall feeling of the zones, and it's always great to listen to the Lich King's spiteful verbal barbs.

Closing Comments: With Wrath of the Lich King, World of Warcraft's play style has been tweaked to be more accessible, addictive, and deeper. Any longtime player is sure to be pleased with what Blizzard's done here since it gives the higher level population a wealth of new content for play as well as improves the overall look of the world. And let's be honest, if you're going to spend hundreds of hours in a virtual space, it helps if it's pretty. It's an MMO system that works, as the game's success underlines, but you've got to ask yourself after four years how long this kind of momentumcan last. Perhaps within the next two years, or by the time the next World of Warcraft expansion is released, there'll be a clearer answer.
As for now, Blizzard is more than content to build on World of Warcraft's formula, improving and refining nearly every aspect of the game, delivering new quest systems, a better and more focused narrative, loads of new goals to chase by yourself or with friends, and made acclimating to its world's complexities a process generally free of the headaches of something like CCP's EVE Online. Those who've yet to jump in should absolutely do so; it's hard to imagine anyone being disappointed with such a well-run, polished product that offers so many reward strata and diverse styles of gameplay.

Reboot: Luigi's Mansion For Wii, DS

Do you realize it's been seven years since Nintendo released Luigi's Mansion alongside the launch of GameCube? I can hardly believe it. The project, which starred Mario's cowardly brother on a trek through a haunted house, proved a charming, funny, and polished affair. It played well, making use of the GameCube controller's dual-analog setup; it was meant to be a showpiece of the new pad, in fact, although I don't think Nintendo fully succeeded in that goal. It also looked good. As Luigi wobbled with fluid animation through eerie hallways and rooms filled with paintings and furniture, lightning bolts flashed in the foreground and cast shadows onto nearby walls. I'd be remiss if I didn't additionally note the catchy soundtrack full of jingles so memorable that I've adopted a couple of them as ringers for my iPhone. And using the character's flashlight and vacuum to find and trap ghosts was a clever, engaging mechanic. Obviously, I enjoyed the game -- the seemingly lower review score of 7.0 I gave it was the result of Mansion's shallow nature, nothing else. I mean, I breezed through the experience in five hours and rarely encountered genuine challenges.
Sandwiched between Super Mario 64 and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess in the pantheon of Nintendo console launch titles, Luigi's Mansion pales in comparison. Although the Big N still sold two million copies of the game, it's frankly neither as revolutionary as Mario 64 nor as epic as Twilight Princess. Yet, I really do feel like Mansion is a franchise worth continuing and more specifically, enhancing -- a real possibility with the added power of the Wii console and more importantly, its unique controller. Not only that, but there's an opportunity for the publisher to simultaneously migrate the series to its handheld. Just as a port of Mario 64 launched DS, so could a portable version of Luigi's Mansion help sell DSi.
What, exactly, would Nintendo need do to really reboot the series -- give it a proper makeover befitting of Wii's upgrades and advancements? The obvious answers: better controls, better graphics and a new hook. But since I'm just editorializing anyway, indulge me as I get into the specifics -- a melange of ideas I think would make for a far better experience -- ones that really utilize the strengths of Nintendo's system. There are the presentational tweaks and upgrades. Luigi's Mansion employed a static camera system that moved with the character as he explored environments, triggering transparency for walls and objects before they could obstruct the viewpoint. I actually liked this method and feel that re-using it would make a lot of sense in certain situations, even if for reasons of nostalgia -- fan service for those who really enjoyed the GCN title. However, I also believe Nintendo would be wise to take a look at a game like Fragile: Farewell Ruins of the Moon, which positions the camera behind the back of the main character as he explores the world. (Click here to watch a video.) This is both more immersive and would jell better with some of the gameplay controls I have in mind. Ideally, a Wii sequel would employ the two different viewpoints depending on the situation.
Luigi's Mansion featured some great character animation and lighting effects, but with a small bump to Wii's GPU and CPU, not to mention roughly double the RAM and a much bigger storage medium, there's plenty more than can be done. In fact, at Space World 2000, Nintendo showcased a rendered demo of Luigi's Mansion as it hoped it would be; the end product didn't quite live up to those initial visuals, but I think a Wii build could easily surpass them. Think about it. More room for texture clarity and variation and a little more power for advanced texture and lighting effects, from a plethora of maps (specularity, bump) to per-pixel-like lighting for Luigi's flashlight. Now throw in volumetric fog for environmental effect. Bloom lighting to bring ghosts to life. And crank up the particles so that when Mario's frightened brother has a ghost caught with his vacuum, the trail sparkles and pops as it shifts between colors to indicate just how close Luigi is to catching the enemy.
"A Wii version of Luigi's Mansion could take advantage of the systems more powerful technology in many fantastic ways," says Eric Nofsinger, chief creative officer at High Voltage Software, currently making The Conduit for Wii. "The scale of the game could be increased, allowing the player to explore not only the mansion, but the environment around the mansion. Luigi could navigate a hedge maze, search through a haunted greenhouse, get lost in the woods, or rummage through a garage filled with ancient vehicles."
Adds Nofsinger: "The Wii can more effectively handle liquid and water effects, which allow the Mansion to have bodies of water for Luigi to interact with. These could be ponds, swimming pools, or flooded basement rooms, but they would all add visual pizzazz. These could also be used to add underwater exploration elements and ghost fighting to the game."
Nofsinger also has some ideas about lighting. "These effects can be dramatically increased as well. Not only should Luigi's flashlight be less of an obvious 3D 'cone,' but all the shadows should all be generated in a more real-time manner, allowing the ghosts, and Luigi's flashlight to cast shadows when their light is thrown on nearby objects," he says. "Colored lighting would help as well, allowing the various brightly colored ghosts to affect their environment. The player could even cycle through colored lenses for Luigi's flashlight for gameplay effects (different colors could be used to highlight different ghosts, or hidden objects)."
Don't stop there, though. As games like Boom Blox have proved, realistic physics are every bit as possible on Wii as they are other systems and this fact could take the Luigi's Mansion franchise to new heights. Imagine being able to use the character's vacuum to manipulate in-world items as well as suck in ghosts, stacking objects atop each other to create a makeshift ladder for Luigi to use or to interact with the world in realistic ways. For example, floating a burning candle across the room to a nearby curtain, which catches fire, revealing a hidden doorway beyond. Even ghosts could affect physics. Picture a ghost caught in your vacu-stream battling to get away, regularly toppling objects and hurling items at you in an effort to break free. Whereas the original game felt repetitive, a little light on depth, regular physics-based puzzles would alleviate or altogether eliminate such a shortcoming. Fragile has something else in common with Luigi's Mansion in that its main character wields a flashlight as she explores a dark world. The difference is that Namco's game has the benefit of the Wii remote and seems to utilize it well. As you move through blackened rooms, you point the flashlight with great speed and accuracy, all with Nintendo's controller. This simple mechanic implemented correctly and used in conjunction with Wii MotionPlus could dramatically enhance a Wii version of Luigi's Mansion. Simply move Luigi through the mansion with the nunchuk's analog stick and point with the Wii remote. So easy. So fast. So exact. And obviously, the same control configuration would serve Luigi's vacuum-based interactions. Point at items, grab them with the B-trigger and the move them around with the remote. You could even throw them around and catch them mid-air if you're quick enough with Nintendo's controller. (I used to do this all the time with games like Elebits and found it a fun show of skill, even if it served no other purpose.)
So where would Wii MotionPlus come in? Ghost locks, of course. As soon as you lock onto one of the supernatural foes, you'd use the Wii remote to reel it in like a fish, pulling backward, twisting it side-to-side, and slowly inching the enemy closer to its trap. The aforementioned particle trail, changing in color, could simultaneously serve as a visual cue, letting you know when to ease up and when to pull harder. If the trail were to change hues to blue, you'd know you've got too much slack and need to pull back; to red and it's you'd push forward or the lock might break. You would do all of this while moving Luigi about with the analog stick, edging him backward when necessary and walking him forward when the opposite is true. I think it would be a fun mechanic.
What Nintendo shouldn't do, though, is stop with the basics. I was playing Left 4 Dead on Xbox 360 last night and found its online four-player cooperative mode downright addictive. Nintendo has the capability and means to give Wii owners an experience very similar for its software, a reboot of Luigi's Mansion included. Suppose that a Mansion sequel included an online cooperative mode. Four players battling through mansions, working together to find and capture ghosts. Of course, the ghosts in Luigi's Mansion are a far cry from the zombies in Left 4 Dead and as a result the threat level and intensity would be inherently diminished, but I think there are ways to increase it. There's the cheesiest way: add a clock timer and set a goal for the number of ghosts that must be captured. It'd work, but there are better, less artificial methods to achieve the same goal. Imagine that as you and three friends explored the mansions, chatting over WiiSpeak, the ghost count continued to grow -- unless, that is, you controlled it. If you and your buddies could not keep finding and sucking in ghosts, the mansion would eventually become too haunted and you'd be forced to exit, effectively losing the match.
Matters could be made more complicated by Luigi's cowardice. When zombies attack in Left 4 Dead, they deplete your health; lose enough and you'll lie on the ground, dying, your only hope a team member who might revive you. Take those fundamentals and apply them to Nintendo's game. Luigi could function by way of a courage meter that increases as he captures ghosts but decreases when he fails to capture them -- that is, he gets a lock but for one reason or another is unable to accurately suck them in. If the courage meter drops to nothing, Luigi bolts, flailing his arms and screaming as he runs aimlessly through the mansion. You would not have control of this, but your teammates could choose to come to your rescue and instill courage back into the character. The added challenge of chasing Luigi about the environments would raise strategic questions, particularly if the ghosts are mounting. Should your friends even bother going back for you or should they just try to push forward and finish the mission? But what about an alternative gameplay style? Something inspired by another game this time: Splinter Cell. Consider a versus mode in which two Luigi characters (or Mario and Luigi, or even your Mii avatars) walk through mansions in search of two ghosts. Mario holds only a flashlight. Luigi has a vacuum. And the two must work together to catch the ghosts -- the first accurately using the flashlight to stun them and the second utilizing the vacuum to suck them in. Meanwhile, the two ghosts are on a mission to find the mansion's various fuse boxes so that they can shut off power in the electrified rooms whose illuminated areas keep their brethren locked in place. If they can shut down all the boxes, all of the ghosts are able to run free and Mario and Luigi must vacate the mansion.
Maybe you like some of my ideas and maybe not. But regardless, I think it's clear that there's plenty of juice left in this franchise and that a Wii reboot could really do it justice. That said, why not go ahead and develop a DS version, too? Take the franchise to the portable realm and introduce it to more players? Could a DS game emulate the GameCube experience? Is that even possible?
"Yes, absolutely. Luigi's Mansion could not only be faithfully adapted for the DS, but also take advantage of the touch screen for capturing ghosts by sliding the stylus," says Jools Watsham, head of Renegade Kid, a developer leading the charge when it comes to technical achievements on Nintendo's handheld. It created Dementium: The Ward and is currently underway with Moon, one of my most anticipated portable projects. "On a side note," adds Watsham, "If Nintendo are looking for a developer to adapt Luigi's Mansion to the DS, we're interested!"
Asked how a DS title might interact with a Wii version, Watsham casually responds, "There are many ways of approaching a combo-release of the two titles. It would be great to have a co-op mode where you control a different character (perhaps Baby Luigi, or a friendly Boo) on the DS to not only assist in the main quest of cleaning on the Wii, but also help clean different areas of the mansion that Luigi can't reach - like mouse holes, attic, beneath the floorboards, etc."
There are even more possibilities with DSi, still without an American release date but destined to hit sometime next year. Using the portable's built-in camera, you could take various photos -- of yourself, your family members, your dog -- and then upload them to the Wii game, where they would become paintings hung on the walls of the spooky mansion Luigi explores. Meanwhile, as Watsham points out, the stylus control that DS brings to the table seems perfectly suited for a game of this type.
There's no proof that Nintendo cares enough about the Luigi's Mansion franchise to consider a Wii sequel, but stranger things have happened. For example, characters from a Japan-only shooter called Sin & Punishment made a cameo in Super Smash Bros. Brawl by way of a simple assist trophy. Now, Sin & Punishment 2 is set for release on Wii, a fact that shocked many when Nintendo announced it earlier this year. Luigi's Mansion featured a full-blown level in Brawl. That's good enough for me to keep the hope alive.

Sonic Unleashed

Even though SEGA promised that all versions of Sonic Unleashed – the next 3D platformer featuring the company's videogame mascot – would ship simultaneously, the company spent most of its time focusing on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions. Unfortunately, at least in preview builds, those versions have only looked prettier in screenshots; in motion, that's a different story with its incredibly inconsistent framerate and movement that didn't speak well for the design's overall quality. After finally experiencing the Wii version for the first time this week, I have to ask: maybe the company should have been focusing on the Wii version instead? It's too early to say whether the Wii version will end up being a great game, but at the very least in my brief hands-on with Sonic Unleashed, I have to say that the Wii version certainly looks and plays better in Wii standards than the more advanced console versions do, even with the lower visual standards. Sonic Unleashed is a Sonic game that's separated into two distinct portions. During the day, players do the established Sonic thing and run really, really fast through bright and vibrant environments, leaping over ledges, sliding under platforms, running through crazy loops and corkscrews while collecting rings and taking out enemies using Sonic's lock-on targeting attacks. Speed is key in these levels as you're rated based on how fast you get to the end – and that includes the time you take out the boss. In the corner of the screen you'll see exactly when your S ranking will tick down to an A, the A ranking to a B…and so on. At night, that's when things get a little more hairy. Sonic transforms into a Werewolf like creature (which is still really, really odd considering he's already a furry creature, but whatever) and romps through these locations in a slower, more brutal pace using hand-to-hand combat in place of the lock-on targeting attacks. Now, I've already experienced this game in a work-in-progress version on the Xbox 360 a few months ago – while the crispness of the visuals were certainly impressive, the fact that the game's framerate took a serious dive in both the speedy daytime environments and the more slow-and-brutal nighttime levels were a little to jarring to accept. Sonic has always been about speed, and when you can't get your 3D engine to portray that speed, you're in serious trouble. The Wii version that I played earlier this week was promised to be a final build of the game, and in the two levels I experienced – one day, one night – the framerate never dipped below its locked refresh. The game is clearly running at 30 frames per second, which is slightly disappointing considering speedy games tend to feel more fluid when they're running at 60. But at the very least, it was a consistent 30 FPS that never tanked at all. The game definitely doesn't have all of the bells and whistles of the Xbox 360 version – no realtime physics engine to bounce the shattered remains of crates and doors around the environment, and no 720p/1080i HD resolutions. But even without the "next gen" effects the Wii version looks great and Sonic Unleashed seems to be one of the better looking Wii titles on the system. According to SEGA, while the Wii version shares the same story and the same game locations as the other versions, Sonic Unleashed on the Nintendo console has its own level designs and challenges. Some of the Wii levels may look similar to the ones that will appear in the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions, but there are subtle and not-so-subtle changes to make the Wii version its own game. Well, the Wii and the PS2, anyway – SEGA's also making Sonic Unleashed for the last-generation Sony system, and it will be a port of the Wii edition. The Wii version is controlled using the Nunchuk/Remote combination and features motion control for some of Sonic's basic abilities. In the daytime "Sonic" levels, Sonic attacks using a whip of the Wii Remote after lock-on targeting an enemy; it's surprisingly satisfying. During the nighttime "werewolf" levels, all of Sonic's attacks are motion-based – a Wii remote thrust, or a nunchuk thrust…or a combination of both. When you're climbing as the werewolf, you waggle both controllers alternatively. For those who want a more traditionally playing game of Sonic, SEGA has incorporated both Classic Controller and GameCube controller support so you can simply press buttons instead of motion-waggling the devices. Sonic Unleashed is all wrapped up and ready to go, and according to SEGA you should be expecting the Wii version to hit shelves next week. Before we give you our final review of the title, hit the movie link below to see exclusive direct feed footage of the Wii version in action.

Gears of War 2: Making it Bigger!

The first Gears of War was a showpiece for the buzzwords "Destroyed Beauty." Unreal Engine 3 expertly crafted dilapidated environments and broken down cityscapes, delivering what many considered to be the most visually impressive title on Xbox 360. Gears of War 2 does what a good sequel must do and expands on the mold set forth in the first game. When Cliff Bleszinski delivered his now infamous marketing line of "Bigger, Better, and More Badass," I'd guess that the first portion was not only a descriptor for the physical scale of the environments in the second Gears, but also the feeling that the player derives from blasting their way through the five act adventure. SPOILER ALERT: Not to dissuade you from reading the first part of our Gears of War 2 week-long coverage, but the next several paragraphs discuss (usually dealing in vagaries) locations and some specifics to Gears 2. While I personally don't consider them spoilers, some of you might. You've been warned. Having played through Gears of War 2 on the hardcore difficulty setting, I can say that it's certainly a longer game than the first. Thankfully for the armada of Gears fans out there the North Carolina-based developer did not drop the ball in terms of delivering entirely new gameplay situations that span a far greater number of diversified settings. Gone are the days of ripping your way through building after building and courtyard after courtyard. The first game had three strong deviations from the aforementioned formula: the final act on the train, the underground levels, and the vehicular level that has you taking out swarms of Krill. For all but the Locust infested underground, which was a fairly lengthy few chapters that included the revelation of the Theron Guard, the changes were small. It didn't hurt the core gameplay much but it would have been nice to explore more unique parts of Sera. Gears of War 2, almost as if it's aware that the core gameplay doesn't stray far from the first, does a much better job of keeping the levels feeling fresh. Without spoiling anything, I can think of five strong variations on locale that are totally unlike the experience of the first. Beyond that, nearly every mission feels larger in scope and importance than what transpired in Gears 1. This feeling of importance and meaning has little to do with the actual size of the levels. We've shown Marcus and Dom escaping the underground on the back of Reavers and on the top of Derricks battling Brumaks in the side of cliffs but it's not the size of these locations that delivers the feel that Epic Games promised so long ago. Instead it's an amalgam of everything from Steve Jablonsky's score, the voice acting from the likes of the inspirational Chairman Prescott, all tied together by the actions done by the player. Gears of War 2 is a story of a last gasp for humanity, the tale of a group of warriors trying to land a blow deep into the heart of the Locust horde. Those who have seen the recent Last Day trailer know that Marcus and Dom are launching themselves down underneath the crust of Sera in an attempt to stop the Locust at their source. The feeling of being Bigger is also accentuated by unearthing more of Sera than we've seen before. New characters like Tai Kaliso and Dizzy Wallin and the interesting way that they're handled in the story helps bring the player closer to understanding the feeling of Dom and Marcus' struggle against the Locust. The Stranded are another tool that helps flesh out the feeling of hope that drives the COG soldiers. They're a sect of citizens who didn't make it into the safe confines of Jacinto and instead have remained on the perilous war torn surface of the planet. Dom and Marcus stumble on a group of Stranded in search of Maria and the player is given a look at the resiliency that continues to hold the people of Sera together. It's important to remember (while avoiding spoilers) where Gears of War 2 takes players. It starts above ground in a hospital, venture onto a Derrick and trudges toward the broken down, Locust infested city of Landown, then continues to throw locales that differ in gameplay style, color palette and architecture at the player. It all culminates with an adventure into the Locust lair itself. Those who have heard us talk about the multiplayer map Ruins know the layout. Locust carvings and drawings cover the ceilings, ground and walls as players are greeted with swarms of the subterranean creatures trying to protect their home turf (or are they up to something else?). There are elements like retractable cover that allow players to sculpt the battlefield here and there, again creating a new definition for the term "Bigger" than what some might have originally thought. It should be no surprise that Gears of War 2 delivers the bigger "aesthetic pleasures" that most will be expecting, but it's the undercurrents in the game that truly do the marketing moniker justice. From the emotional responses to some of the climactic events to learning more about the people of Sera to fighting some truly massive enemies, Gears of War 2 is indeed bigger than the first in just about every way imaginable.

Spider-Man: Web of Shadows - Amazing Allies Edition Review

Some wept for another mediocre rendition of their favorite hero, some unleashed screams calling for my head, and many just buried their faces in their hands to ignore the mess altogether. Still, in the midst of the dark clouds surrounding the main version of the title, a ray of light has shone through. That light -- that glimmer of hope -- is Spider-Man: Web of Shadows - Amazing Allies Edition. On a story level, the portable version of this game shares a bit with the tale you'd find on a console. Venom shows up, Spider-Man fights him, and part of the black suit we know as the symbiote leaps onto our hero and outfits him with the familiar black and white costume. From there, Spider-Man can switch between his red duds and his black duds at will and has to make choices throughout the game that dictate whether he's staying true to his "Great Power/Great Responsibility" roots or he's letting the symbiote turn him into the aggressive jerk from the old school comics. As you wrestle with these choices, Venom's symbiote continues to break off and infect New Yorkers. Soon, the city is a black, gooey mess that only our friendly, neighborhood Spider-Man can clean up. With that, the major similarities between the two SKUs stop. Web of Shadows on the PSP plays as a side scroller featuring 3D characters on a 2D plane -- think Bionic Commando Rearmed. You've been recruited by S.H.I.E.L.D. to run from left to right through New York's buildings, air ducts, and secret bases on a mission to find the components that can create a sonic wave large enough to send the symbiotes packing. Of course, it wouldn't be a superhero game if you didn't have waves of bad guys popping up and keeping you from rounding up the few power couplings you need. The majority of foes you face on this quest will be street thugs and symbiote-infected folks, but there's the occasional robot and boss (Shocker, Tinkerer, Kraven, Jackal, and more). To take these guys down, you're going to rely on Square to punch and Triangle to kick. If you leap into the air and hold X, you'll cast out a web line to swing and kick from, but those two simple buttons pretty much amass all the offense you're going to have in Web of Shadows. If your feet are on the ground (or wall or ceiling) and you tap the right shoulder button, you can cast webbing at your foes, but this only stops them without hurting them. If that combat system sounds weak, Amaze has tossed in a number of extras to try and keep the fighting fresh. For starters, you'll notice five slots in the upper-right corner of the screen. These are your power-up slots. Before you go on a mission, you'll be able to arm these circles with allies and abilities to help you crush the competition -- exoskeleton power-ups make it harder to damage Spidey for a period of time, web darts turn your webbing into fast and furious projectiles, and Spider-Man Flurry allows our hero to speed around the screen and clean everyone's clock. You'll earn and unlock these abilities by finding spider tokens hidden throughout the levels, and you'll be able to stockpile them in the power-up menu. Still -- if the name of the game didn't give it away -- the biggest deal in the power-up arena is the ability to call in your allies. Basically, you'll arm one of your allies at the power-up manager and when you need him or her, you'll hold the left shoulder button and use the directions to cycle to the appropriate power-up slot. From there, you press circle when the slight waiting period ends, and the character appears on screen to lay waste to the baddies. Storm slams folks with lightning, Stiltman stomps all over the competition, and Hypno Hustler jams out on his guitar while your opponent's health is drained. All of these attacks are just the summoned character standing in front of the screen while damage registers against the opponent, but there are a ton of friends and foes to unlock and it's cool to see them pop up. So, beyond the power-ups you're finding in the levels, you're going to have skills to purchase as well. See, as you take out bad guys in the game, you'll see a white number rise above their beaten bodies. This is a value that's being added to your skill point total. When you're back at the main mission menu and about set to go out on a new leg of the journey, you can pop into the Skills Manager and buy new moves, abilities, and power-up slots with these points. Stuff ranges from the simple Web Slam that allows Spider-Man to web two foes at once when you pull off a button combo to the expensive, rare power-ups and health bar increases. Now, there are a few layers to this skills system. To begin, the skills are color-coded so that you know which costume they're augmenting, but perhaps more important is the reputation system. At the top of the Skills Manager screen is a little red Spidey head and a little black Spidey head. Next to each of those craniums is a number that indicates your reputation for each suit. Most of the skills that you can purchase will have a point cost and a reputation minimum. So you might have the 525 points needed to purchase the Symbiote Strength 3 skill, but it's entirely possible that you won't meet the minimum requirement for black suit rep. Getting your reputations up is actually one of the big reasons I feel Spider-Man: Web of Shadows - Amazing Allies Edition is a charming game. See, When you run into people or situations on the street, there's usually a sound clip of Spider-Man making a wisecrack that then moves into a text-based conversation. The other person's statement appears at the top of the screen, and your choices for what Spidey can say appear below. Generally, there are three color-coded choices. Red is good, gray is neutral, and black is bad. You make a choice, and if it's red or black, you get a point or so added to that suit's reputation. What makes this fun is that fact that this game is extremely well written. It's funny, has a good handle on the Marvel Universe, and Spider-Man reads like Spider-Man should. Now, the good/bad thing isn't limited to just answering questions; your actions matter, too. I mean, one of the first good/evil dilemmas I was faced with was when Spider-Man found a construction worker's lunch and had to decide if he wanted to be evil and eat it or leave it alone and settle for leftovers at home. Later, I found J. Jonah Jameson captive in a secret fortress and stored next to his super-nice clone. Spider-Man is forced to decide which version of his boss he lets go. Don't get me wrong, this game isn't a comedy and lots of choices are as simple as helping a citizen or telling them to screw off, but it's a blast thanks to the genuinely interesting text that has been created for each conversation. On top of all of that, Spider-Man acts like Spider-Man in this game. One of my major complaints with the other versions of Web of Shadows was the fact that the Spider-Man in that game was a whiney dude who threw innocents off buildings and didn't act anything like the Peter Parker from the comics. That isn't the case here; Spider-Man's voice has the energy you'd expect and he's funny. Still, Amazing Allies isn't the greatest Spider-Man game in the history of mankind. For starters, you can't hit enemies when they are on the ground. You'll knock a thug to the ground just about every time you fight one, but when they're sprawled out on their backs, you can't touch them. Even when they're up and mobile, hit detection is wonky. At one point, I had a bunch of villains on a pyramid of boxes. If I stood on the level below an enemy, I couldn't hit him. If I hopped up on his box, I couldn't hit him if I was too close. Basically, I had to move to the very edge of the box and fight or just repeat a jump-then-kick maneuver. Even bosses have a few irritating issues. Whether you're fighting Venom, a symbiote-infected Luke Cage, or whomever you run into, there are only specific points when you can attack the big bad guy. Even if they're just standing there charging their weapons, you can't hit them. This is annoying, but kind of a throwback to the side scrollers this game is trying to mimic. Another old-school touch some might find out of place is the fact that each Spider-Man mission has checkpoints, but if you were to quit the game and come back to it later, you'd be forced to restart the mission. The checkpoints aren't save points, and that's weak for a portable system. A final oddity is that the PSP has a tendency to take an extended stutter now and again. You'll be playing, and usually after a checkpoint, the game will just freeze for a moment or two before allowing you to continue playing. It's not too bad, but it's weird that it's there.

Closing Comments

In the end, Spider-Man: Web of Shadows Allies Edition is a welcome throwback to the Spider-Man games of old. More than a few times I found myself using the D-pad to hop around an enemy and reminiscing about playing Spider-Man on my SEGA Genesis. The action is simple, but the quirky humor, Spidey's trademark verbal jabs, and slick style make the game a lot of fun to play.
Still, I can't recommend the game too highly. If this was a $20 game, I'd have no problem telling you to fork over your cash, but problems such as the inability to hit enemies who are lying on the ground or running at you, the game's awkward pauses, and the fact that Spider-Man kind of glides across stuff sours the $40 deal.

What We Want In BioShock 2

In 2007, 2K Games released a critically acclaimed first-person shooter set under the sea in a once utopian paradise that had tragically gone awry. A tale that explored moral dilemmas, totalitarian control and genetic manipulation -- among other complex themes -- BioShock set itself apart from other shooters with its immersive world and its creative gameplay mechanics. Players could choose to blast their way through enemies or take a stealthier, more manipulative route, tricking enemies into fighting each other before they moved in to mop up the survivors. Regardless of how you ran through the halls of Rapture, or which moral path you chose, the game only scratched the surface of Andrew Ryan's incredibly complex world, and fans eagerly awaited a sequel.

Recently, with the release of BioShock on the PS3, the veil of secrecy seems to be lifting. By beating the game on any difficulty setting, a teaser trailer for BioShock 2: Sea of Dreams is unlocked in the extras menu. The trailer is supposedly set on the Atlantic Coast, and features a young woman staring out at the Atlantic Ocean and clutching a Big Daddy doll, with a cityscape quickly rising from the sand behind her. Before any explanations of the city's appearance could be made, the logo screen and subtitle pops up, ending the trailer abruptly. This, of course, got all of us at IGN thinking: what would we want to see in the upcoming sequel to BioShock? I checked with IGN Editors to see what elements they would want to see addressed, changed or eliminated entirely, as well as where the game should be set and what characters should be included. For our thoughts, as well as the BioShock 2 Teaser Trailer, check below. Additionally, if you're interested in the BioShock Head To Head, check here. (Note: all images in article are taken from BioShock.) The first and most immediate question that came to mind was exactly when and where the sequel should be set. I wanted to know whether our editors thought the game should be set a few years after and would be a return to Rapture, if it should be set in a new location, or if the sequel should actually be a prequel. In case you don't know, the original game took place in 1960, and was set entirely within Rapture's underwater walls. Although you traveled through different locations in the city, you were still confined to Rapture as you explored the hallways and tried to eliminate Andrew Ryan. Overwhelmingly, the majority of our editors wanted to see a prequel to the original BioShock, with many of them wanting to experience the exact moment that chaos breaks out. Being in the midst of this insanity, with a city completely falling apart and being destroyed around you could be one of the most compelling stories ever created, especially with the denizens of Rapture trying to do everything they could to survive.

Greg Miller, IGN PlayStation Editor, summed up much of the prevailing thoughts by saying, "I want to be a character in Rapture as everything goes to hell. An underwater city filled with super-powered people on the brink of insanity sounds great." Others mentioned that the city was too large and too vast to simply be used once as a backdrop and tossed away. Chris Roper, IGN PlayStation Editor-in-Chief, mentioned that more of Rapture needs to be seen. "I'm sure there's plenty of places that we haven't seen yet, and if there's a gap of time either before or after the original title, revisiting some of the places we've seen before would also be great." Charles Onyett, IGN PC Editor and reviewer of BioShock on the 360 and PC, concurred, stating, "the sequel really needs to be a prequel to be interesting, as the story of Rapture's fall would be, I think, far more interesting to play than whatever the muddled aftermath might have been." However, not everyone is a fan of the prequel idea. Jason Ocampo, IGN PC Editor-in-Chief, hates the idea of a prequel, mentioning that they should be "taken out back and beaten." However, Jason also provides his own thoughts as to what the game should wind up being. "I think storytelling demands that you take risks, and that you not hit the reset switch. I'd like to see the aftermath of BioShock and see how the situation and story adapt and change to the events of the first game; it's not enough to simply make another haunted house of a city full of Little Sisters and their guardians. That would just be more of the same."

Ryan Geddes, IGN Xbox Editor, also would like to see something a bit different than the old stomping grounds, saying, "for me, Rapture wore out its welcome just a bit. I personally would prefer to visit a new location, and from what we've already seen in the trailer, that appears to be the plan. I don't have any preference on whether BioShock 2 should be a sequel or a prequel; I just hope that whatever the devs decide to do retains the feel of the original." Hilary Goldstein, IGN Xbox Editor-in-Chief, agreed with this statement completely, and was even exasperated by the potential of re-entering Rapture, mentioning, "I'd like to see a new setting altogether. Though the history of Rapture is interesting, I don't want a rehash of levels I've seen before. I feel like I've had my fill of Rapture and it's time for something new. I'm sure it will be a return to Rapture though. Sigh." Another question I posed to the editors was what the next game should focus on. The original game dealt with a lot of complex issues that haven't been touched on in many games, like utopian ideals that become corrupted over time, genetic and mental manipulation and being trapped by addictions. Since we don't know what "Sea of Dreams" refers to, or what themes will be covered in the sequel, it's hard to know how deep the game will be. Many of our editors felt a few options could be presented, with a strong connection to explaining the corruption of society from a utopian ideal into the flawed, desperate state of nature that is presented in the original game. Jason highlighted the utopian problem specifically, mentioning that "the theme of Bioshock for me was the danger of utopian thinking. Human beings are horribly flawed creatures, and attempts by governments to impose a kind of utopian ideology atop human nature are inevitably doomed to failure. This is a salient theme that often bears repeating."

Greg and Chris both seconded this, with a stronger focus on the decisions made by the citizens of Rapture. "Why did people decide that modifying themselves was the way of the future," Greg wondered. "Were there folks who resisted? What happened to those that didn't go with the flow?" Chris also wondered about the morality of the people in Ryan's experiment, stating that "corruption and greed could, and probably should, also be big points of the story, and it would be interesting to see those elements make their way into the player's hands." Nate Ahern, Xbox Editor, contributed perhaps the most creative twist to this question, potentially placing the gamer into the hands of the creator of the doomed underwater city, Andrew Ryan. "It might be interesting to put players in the shoes of the person, or at least the main driving force behind creating Rapture. The story of a person trying to build the perfect world full of perfect people, only to have it all crumble at their feet could be riveting," he said. That raised an interesting question: just how much of a connection to the original game has to be in the sequel? Should Andrew Ryan have had some hidden agendas or machinations that are mysteriously uncovered at the start of BioShock 2, prompting the events of the game? Will Dr. Tenenbaum, one of the main characters of the original game, play another role in the title, particularly if the game is a prequel? This elicited a range of responses from the editors, from those who didn't require these connections to those that felt a strong need to include specific characters.

Nate, for example, thought that there were a few specific characters that had to be in the game: "the main icons from the first game are Rapture, Big Daddies and Little Sisters. Everything else is more easily forgotten and can be replaced." Chris didn't think that big twists had to occur as a reason for the game itself. "There's enough there that we don't know about yet to make for an incredibly interesting story without needing to throw some curveballs and possibly screw up the lore," he said. Jason thought that connections to the previous game were solely tied to timing in the sequel, stating that "it depends on how much time has passed between the games. If it's a few years, then definitely yes; if it's more like a few decades, then no. The longer the gap, the more the events of the first game should pass from memory and turn into myth or legend."

One continuous element that a couple of the editors felt needed to be included was Andrew Ryan himself. Hilary thought the story would need it to tie the two titles together. "Ideally, BioShock 2 would be set somewhere new, but still have connections to Tenenbaum and Ryan. That way we have a connective thread to the original, but 2K Marin is free to spin the story in whatever direction it sees fit," he said. Charles felt that Ryan was a key element that had to be included in the sequel, stating, "Ryan needs to be present, since without him there'd be a dramatic loss of personality. He basically characterized all of Rapture and without him, I think the setting would have far less impact." Geddes agreed with this point, indicating that he felt there was more to Ryan than was let on in the original game. "There was definitely more to Andrew Ryan than Rapture, and that's what I'm hoping to hear more about in BioShock 2. Why the subtitle Sea of Dreams? It's an intriguing phrase, and it's encouraging to see that it's not 'Return to Rapture.'" While Andrew Ryan might have been the primary force that controlled the city and was a malevolent presence in the first game, sneering his displeasure through the radio at your advances in his flooding domain, the citizens of the town were the true threats that players constantly dealt with. Apart from the splicers that were driven mad by the genetic and physical manipulations they'd done to themselves, players also had to deal with security turrets, bots and cameras that would attack if they got too close or triggered alarms. How should these threats be handled in the sequel? Mark Ryan Sallee, IGN Guides Editor-in-Chief, wanted to focus more on a larger variety of enemies than was found in the original. "It'd be nice if there were more than three different types of enemies. In BioShock, there are splicers, spider splicers and big daddies, and really the big daddies are the only interesting things to fight. Give the splicers significant gameplay differences, for example: splicers with shields that can only be damaged from behind so you've gotta use plasmids to stun them, or splicers that themselves use plasmids against you."

Other editors focused more on manipulating the mechanical obstacles that you faced in the game, changing the way that you could interact with turrets or bots. Chris thought that it would be great to combine elements of bots to be more effective in battle. "This would depend on whether the game is a sequel or prequel. If it's a sequel, I'd love to see elements of the first game mixed together and combined in new ways. For instance, bots could now be affixed with cameras, making them harder to avoid," he said. Charles focused much more on turrets and hacking, feeling that manipulating these machines would remake elements of gameplay, stating: "assuming it's a prequel, these would all still be present, though new mechanics of hacking would be nice to see. For instance, if you could take two downed security bots and cobble them together into a more powerful one, or fashion sentry turrets into customizable weaponry that you can add parts to as you improve your skills -- that would make for some meaningful and engaging gameplay choices." Ryan Geddes focused more on traps instead of direct combat, seeking a different way to eliminate splicers. "Each player in BioShock approached combat a little bit differently. Personally, I like to set up elaborate traps for splicers and Big Daddies that included all of the above and then some. I hope these elements return, along with some new traps and methods of sabotage. I need new ideas for booby-trapping Ryan Clements' desk," he said. Watch yourself, Clements -- Geddes has you in his sights. One other aspect related to combat dealt with Little Sisters and Big Daddies. If you've played the original game, you know just how daunting it is to fight and eliminate these creatures, which would also include a moral dilemma with their ward once the giants were felled. Would you harvest the Little Sister for her Adam, essentially killing her, or rescue her and receive less Adam, but freeing the child. In the teaser trailer, the "Little Sister" (if that is what she is) appears to be much older than the children in the original game. How will this affect the moral dilemma of the game if the Little Sisters are no longer little, but older teenagers or young women? This provoked a large amount of discussion between the editors.

Chris thought that they could be called Sisters and could receive more personality, noting: "as children, they just did what they were programmed to do. As adults or even just teenagers, they would be smarter, perhaps having their own agendas instead of just collecting Adam." Greg agreed, thinking that there was potentially some emotional motivation driving these young women. "I want to see how these ladies are dealing with all the crap they did in the past and how they're trying to move forward. I would imagine a few of them are out for revenge, and I'd like to see those emotions developed. A few Big Daddies that aren't over trying to protect the girls would be interesting too," he said.

Charles took this into a different direction, potentially raising the idea of the Little Sisters taking more of a backseat in this one and the Big Daddies taking a more prominent role. "Since I'm still hoping the game's a prequel, we'd get to see the development of the Little Sister and Big Daddy relationship, which I think would be really interesting. In that case the player wouldn't be harvesting the Sisters for ability upgrades, but witnessing the development of and perhaps even participating in the creation of Big Daddies, who you eventually fight later on in the game, would be a great mechanic and serve as a powerful narrative thread", he said. Could that mean that the young woman on the shore is the initial Little Sister that helps create the original Big Daddy relationship? Who knows... Of course, collecting Adam would obviously lead to plasmids, the incredible inventions that allowed the citizens of Rapture and the player to launch fire, electricity and other powers from their hands towards their opponents. How should these powers evolve or be manipulated in a sequel? Similarly, how should the weaponry of the game change or be improved in BioShock 2? A large consensus seemed to come from editors about wanting the ability to combine plasmids together for different effects. Fran Mirabella, Director of Video Production, pointed this out specifically, saying, "I'd like to see the ability to mix effects of plasmids, maybe. It could just be a visual thing (like Electric Shock shattering after an Ice Blast), but perhaps there could be a bit more strategy to it." Nate liked this idea, but wanted to push it farther, combining plasmids with weapons to unleash extra damage and chaos. "I'd like to see plasmids not only be able to be mixed with other plasmids, but also infused with weapons. It'd be nice to get a crossbow with a bolt tip that contained a swarm of bees that could attack a group of enemies when planted in or around one."

While Greg demanded a flight plasmid (to help him live out his Superman fantasies) and Ryan wanted a chainsaw at the end of a machine gun (to help him live out his Marcus Fenix fantasies), Charles had a more in depth weapon customization suggestion. "I'd like to see far more in terms of customization. Instead of just using random junk to craft ammunition types and upgrade stations to power-up weapons, I'd like to see the system developed into something more sophisticated where you can tweak a bunch of different parts of weapons to modify their functionality. Maybe this means there are only less weapons, but the ability to apply individual hoses to a flamethrower to increase power or modify a shotgun so it has more barrels would strengthen gameplay." If plasmids and weapons could be expanded in these ways, what elements from the first game need to be completely eliminated or changed to work better or differently? For instance, should the character you play as in the sequel harvest Little Sisters in the same manner (assuming that Little Sisters remain in their form from the first game)? There appeared to be agreements with the editors revolving around two elements of the game: hacking and Little Sister Harvesting. Almost all of the editors felt that hacking needed to be either streamlined or eliminated completely because of how repetitive and boring it became. Nate mentioned that he'd like to see a different way of hacking entirely, saying, "hacking was an important part to the first game but I'd like to see it scaled back and changed up with different kinds of hacks available. It shouldn't all be about guiding the stream of green goo through a maze, but instead a set of five puzzles that pop up at random or for specific types of machinery." Hilary agreed, wanting to see more mini-games included to add variety to the hacking.

As for the Little Sisters, there was unanimous agreement that harvesting the children was fine for the original game, but needs to be completely redesigned for the sequel. Almost everyone wanted to see this move in a different direction to help upgrade your character. Charles felt that it would be tied to the narrative of the original too much to work for either a prequel or a sequel. "I think there's going to have to be another type of mechanic for upgrading your character. Harvesting Little Sisters just wouldn't make any sense with regards to the overall narrative if you set the game before or after the original," he said.

Nate wanted to be able to harvest more than Little Sisters to provide some variety, saying, "while Little Sisters obviously played a large role in the first game, maybe it would be cool to harvest other things, maybe innocent people in the second game. Still have Little Sisters play some kind of part, but not the same as in the first game." Creatively, both Fran and Geddes raised the possibility of playing as a Little Sister, which would turn the pre-existing gameplay in a different direction. "Maybe we'll actually play as a Little Sister. Now that would be interesting, challenging and risky. Bring it on," Geddes said. Apart from that, Mark Ryan had some interesting suggestions as to how the game should be further adjusted: "the most glaringly poor mechanic of BioShock is the vitality chambers that reduce the game's challenges to basically nothing. I'd like to see the game ditch the adherence to first-person shooter norms and do something more interesting with the controls and environment interaction, ala Metroid Prime. I don't mean to suggest abandoning dual analog control -- wouldn't be horrible, but it'd be commercial suicide -- but get away from the same formula of weapon choices, weapon cycling, switch pressing. Really it'd be nice to feel like I'm playing an original game, instead of a prettier version of Wolfenstein." Hilary also chimed in that there needs to be a penalty for continually manipulating your genes, just as what happened to the splicers, stating, "The first Bioshock suggested that plasmids and genetic modification is what ruined the people of Rapture. Yet it didn't ruin the main character. There needs to be a cost for your self-inflicted genetic experiments."

So if changing mechanics was fair game, what about changing the environments of BioShock 2? As previously stated, the original game was set entirely within Rapture, but even inside of the various areas of Rapture, the game felt extremely stage-based. Whether it was moving through the artistic madness of Sander Cohen's Fort Frolic, the engineering areas of Hephaestus, or the lush garden areas of Arcadia, each themed area was decidedly linear, and while you could go back to previous areas, there was no real need to. Should the sequel remain a linear experience, or become a more open-world adventure?

The editors were essentially split down the middle on this one, with some feeling that BioShock 2 would be an incredible experience as an open-world game. Chris mentioned this specifically, tying much of the open nature to a prequel set in Rapture before things go wrong. "Having all of Rapture open to you at any time would be fantastic, especially if it's set as a prequel just as things were starting to go bad. You could take advantage of actual shops, see entertainment shows just for kicks, and really dig into the setting. It would be an undertaking to do something on this scale, but having something on the order of Fallout 3 set in Rapture with plasmids would be phenomenal if done right," he said. Charles seconded this idea, mentioning that this would be a better way to allow players to explore the game environment, stating, "A more open-world environment would be great. Put in friendly NPCs that you can interact with, maybe some item vendors, possibly throw in a simplistic questing structure. Though that would detract from what made the first so compelling with its focused narrative experience, I'd love to see the sequel veer in a totally different direction and allow us to explore and learn about more of the world. Trying to copy the narrative power of the first isn't going to be as effective when trying to tell a different story. I think it'd be served better by a different progression mechanic and world layout." Not everyone shared these opinions, however; Ryan and Greg felt like turning the game into a more open game experience would ruin the its atmosphere entirely. "BioShock worked well in part because it was claustrophobic. Changing that would upset the balance and create an entirely new type of game (no more traps, etc.)," Ryan said.

It might seem as though we covered everything, but just to be sure, I asked if there was anything else that editors might want to see within BioShock 2. The responses were pretty creative, to say the least. Chris wanted a million dollar bill packaged with the Collector's Edition, while Hilary simply wanted "boobies" and Jason demands aliens be excluded. Greg's demands were relatively simple: "A main character I can connect with, more of a penalty for dying, and flight. Let me fly!" However, Charles and Fran had a few interesting answers. Charles pleaded for the single-player only focus to remain for BioShock 2 so that the action would still be solid. "Please don't shoehorn in a multiplayer mode just for the sake of having one. I'd hate to have my weapons loadout in single-player limited by multiplayer weapon balance considerations," he said. Fran, on the other hand, wanted to see much more destruction and interactivity, stating, "with the animations being as awesome as they were, it would be sweet to see them amp up level destruction or allow you to climb or interact with more things. I don't want Shenmue, but I would like to strangle a splicer with my bare hands -- or my plague, stone, or fire hands, for example." Fran also had one final comment saying, "would you kindly give me more photography with the ability to save and send pics?"