Game reviews

While Dante slices through the belly of an undead beast with his razor-sharp scythe, traverses a crumbling bridge with a quick-time event, and overthrows the ruler of a damned land with vicious determination, a burst of familiarity might flash through your mind. From the gothic art style and the vengeance-fueled story to the stationary camera clearly displaying the blood-splattering combat, Dante's Inferno is a wholesale imitation of the superb God of War series. Or, at the very least, it's desperately trying to be. Unfortunately, the impression lasts for only the first few hours. What starts as a fast-paced and epic quest to destroy Lucifer in an underworld populated by grotesque and disfigured beings, devolves into a monotonous and downright predictable hack-and-slash. Dante's Inferno gets close enough to its source material to make for a gory and satisfying few hours in hell, but its many flaws prevent it from rising to paradise.

The lesson delivered by Dante's Inferno is one every person should keep in mind: Do not, under any circumstance, make a deal with the devil. You will lose, and you may not be handy enough with a scythe to hack your way out of the mess you create. In this case, Beatrice thought too highly of her husband Dante's moral character. Worried that he would lose his life while liberating heathens during his holy crusade, she comes to an agreement with Lucifer. If he stays faithful, the devil will ensure that he makes it home alive. If he loses control with a seductive slave girl, though, Beatrice will forfeit her own soul forever. The story is told using three distinct styles to chronicle Dante's descent into darkness to rescue the eternal spirit of his betrayed wife. The CGI and in-game cutscenes are expected, but it is the series of sparsely animated cartoons that stand out. These fill in the backstory of Dante's actions during the crusades and go a long way toward developing his character. The story has few surprises, but the manner in which it slowly puts Dante's entire life into perspective makes for an interesting setup for his adventure.

And the adventure does start out on a strong note. The first few hours have an epic scale that makes the descent from the earthly plain into the pits of hell feel like a momentous transition. Pathways crumble underfoot, threatening to spill you into the bubbling lava below; gargantuan creatures loom in the distance, tossing out taunts as you make you way through their defenses; and horrible abominations are introduced every few minutes. The vile enemies you battle are modeled on the circles of hell, and they do an impressive job of embodying these contemptible sins. Lust, for instance, is populated by prostitutes who were all too willing to sell their bodies while they were alive, and they are punished by having their souls sold in the afterlife. The typical anatomy of these women of ill repute is grossly exaggerated, and though you'll certainly want to avoid their disgusting makeshift lassos, their presence makes for a disturbing trip to the land of the damned.

In the early stages, you will battle a number of horrific caricatures. The prostitutes of lust are followed by obese monsters who do a fine (yet gross) job of personifying gluttony, and an army of blade babies who haven't been baptized are sure to get a rise out of even the most jaded individuals. But these disgusting portrayals of the deadly sins are soon forgotten as you get deeper into your quest. After the shocking imagery used in the early going, you have only knights and wizards to look forward to, which lack the appeal of the repulsive enemies that precede them. In fact, the only memorable foes in the entire game are introduced within the first couple of hours, making the rest of the adventure much less interesting and far more predictable. Furthermore, although it makes sense that the circle of gluttony would be populated by grossly obese individuals, the fact that they pop up in heresy, anger, and every other circle doesn't mesh with the rules set in place.

The level design follows a similar descent into banality. What starts as epic and explosive soon becomes repetitive. Too much of Dante's Inferno takes place in confined rooms that don't hint at the huge world you're in, which lowers much of the impact of clawing your way through the netherworld. The puzzles that crop up only serve to artificially slow your progress rather than give you a worthwhile change of pace from the violent combat. Much of the time, endurance is the only tool you will need to complete these tests. Box-dragging or crank-turning puzzles aren't fun or mind-bending challenges. Rather they are just time wasters and only detract from the experience. The few times that they do force you to think only reinforce the poor design of these puzzles. Difficulty only exists because the camera either doesn't show you what you need to see or highlights an area that is not important.

While Dante slices through the belly of an undead beast with his razor-sharp scythe, traverses a crumbling bridge with a quick-time event, and overthrows the ruler of a damned land with vicious determination, a burst of familiarity might flash through your mind. From the gothic art style and the vengeance-fueled story to the stationary camera clearly displaying the blood-splattering combat, Dante's Inferno is a wholesale imitation of the superb God of War series. Or, at the very least, it's desperately trying to be. Unfortunately, the impression lasts for only the first few hours. What starts as a fast-paced and epic quest to destroy Lucifer in an underworld populated by grotesque and disfigured beings, devolves into a monotonous and downright predictable hack-and-slash. Dante's Inferno gets close enough to its source material to make for a gory and satisfying few hours in hell, but its many flaws prevent it from rising to paradise.

The lesson delivered by Dante's Inferno is one every person should keep in mind: Do not, under any circumstance, make a deal with the devil. You will lose, and you may not be handy enough with a scythe to hack your way out of the mess you create. In this case, Beatrice thought too highly of her husband Dante's moral character. Worried that he would lose his life while liberating heathens during his holy crusade, she comes to an agreement with Lucifer. If he stays faithful, the devil will ensure that he makes it home alive. If he loses control with a seductive slave girl, though, Beatrice will forfeit her own soul forever. The story is told using three distinct styles to chronicle Dante's descent into darkness to rescue the eternal spirit of his betrayed wife. The CGI and in-game cutscenes are expected, but it is the series of sparsely animated cartoons that stand out. These fill in the backstory of Dante's actions during the crusades and go a long way toward developing his character. The story has few surprises, but the manner in which it slowly puts Dante's entire life into perspective makes for an interesting setup for his adventure.

And the adventure does start out on a strong note. The first few hours have an epic scale that makes the descent from the earthly plain into the pits of hell feel like a momentous transition. Pathways crumble underfoot, threatening to spill you into the bubbling lava below; gargantuan creatures loom in the distance, tossing out taunts as you make you way through their defenses; and horrible abominations are introduced every few minutes. The vile enemies you battle are modeled on the circles of hell, and they do an impressive job of embodying these contemptible sins. Lust, for instance, is populated by prostitutes who were all too willing to sell their bodies while they were alive, and they are punished by having their souls sold in the afterlife. The typical anatomy of these women of ill repute is grossly exaggerated, and though you'll certainly want to avoid their disgusting makeshift lassos, their presence makes for a disturbing trip to the land of the damned.

In the early stages, you will battle a number of horrific caricatures. The prostitutes of lust are followed by obese monsters who do a fine (yet gross) job of personifying gluttony, and an army of blade babies who haven't been baptized are sure to get a rise out of even the most jaded individuals. But these disgusting portrayals of the deadly sins are soon forgotten as you get deeper into your quest. After the shocking imagery used in the early going, you have only knights and wizards to look forward to, which lack the appeal of the repulsive enemies that precede them. In fact, the only memorable foes in the entire game are introduced within the first couple of hours, making the rest of the adventure much less interesting and far more predictable. Furthermore, although it makes sense that the circle of gluttony would be populated by grossly obese individuals, the fact that they pop up in heresy, anger, and every other circle doesn't mesh with the rules set in place.

The level design follows a similar descent into banality. What starts as epic and explosive soon becomes repetitive. Too much of Dante's Inferno takes place in confined rooms that don't hint at the huge world you're in, which lowers much of the impact of clawing your way through the netherworld. The puzzles that crop up only serve to artificially slow your progress rather than give you a worthwhile change of pace from the violent combat. Much of the time, endurance is the only tool you will need to complete these tests. Box-dragging or crank-turning puzzles aren't fun or mind-bending challenges. Rather they are just time wasters and only detract from the experience. The few times that they do force you to think only reinforce the poor design of these puzzles. Difficulty only exists because the camera either doesn't show you what you need to see or highlights an area that is not important.

Chime feels like an experiment but plays like a game. This innovative mash-up of block-based puzzle gaming is one of the most original puzzlers to come along in ages, and a percentage of the proceeds from every sale go to the OneBigGame charity to boot. New and old fit together here just like the blocks that you play with, letting you make groovy ambient music as you get comfortable with a new-age take on Tetris. It's all a little brief, with fewer levels and songs than you would like, although at just 400 Microsoft points ($5) in the Xbox Live Marketplace, the game still comes highly recommended.

As you might expect from the brief description above, the concept behind Chime is a little out there. Play unfolds on gridded game boards with some that are plain and rectangular, and others that are split into sections or divided by obstacles. Random shapes pop up as in such block-based predecessors as Tetris, Columns, Lumines, and the like, with your goal being to fit them together to form point-scoring quads that cover at least 3-by-3 squares of the board. The bigger the quad, the more points you count. You can also add to the size of quads for a limited time by lining blocks up against them, clocking a multiplier that goes up with the number of quads that you complete, and gradually covering the entire board. Here's where the music comes into play.

While you're doing all this, a beat line moves steadily across the screen from left to right as a basic ambient or techno tune plays in the background. When this pulsing line rolls over your quads, the music changes and expands. It also adds in drum beats, flutes, vocal choruses, and so forth. If you listen closely, you can hear how well you're doing in a level by the way that your actions shape and fill out the song. This isn't just for effect, either. While the tunes from musical geniuses like Philip Glass, Moby, and Paul Hartnoll (of Orbital fame) are great to listen to all on their own, the beat line also serves as a timer. When it passes by completed quads, those quads vanish from the board and that area of the board changes color to signify that you've covered it. Stray pieces also last for a limited number of passes across the board by the beat line. So you have to move quickly when arranging blocks or you'll risk having everything go poof, which also resets your score multiplier.

Sound a bit confusing? It is confusing, especially at first because the game comes does not come with an interactive tutorial. Even the "How to Play" section in the main menu doesn't make much sense until you've played a few levels and gotten an idea of how the design concepts work. Still, even when you don't have a clue as to what you're doing, the game is never frustrating. The basic play is intuitive, at least if you've played a block puzzle game before, and once you realize how you can alter the music through forming quads, it draws you into the levels. Once you get how you're supposed to play, the game becomes quite challenging. There are quite a few shapes to arrange, which makes pulling off big quads fairly difficult in some of the more restricted-space boards, and getting 100 percent coverage of a board is very difficult, especially if you opt for the shortest of the three timed gameplay modes. The game is also about more than just scoring. The combination of laying down blocks, listening to music, and watching quads explode into what look like neon flowers when the beat line passes is amazingly hypnotic. It transforms the usual goal-focused gamplay experience into something more akin to playing with an amusing toy while spacing out to some groovy tunes. So even though it won't take you long to play all the levels and hear all the songs, you'll find yourself drawn back in to the game, playing just to immerse yourself in the experience.

Although it's a little too modest in size to be classified as revolutionary, Chime is still an incredibly captivating and inventive experience. Book an entire evening for the first time you try the game's block-building and music-shaping gameplay because you will almost certainly find yourself hooked for many, many hours. For just 400 points and the good vibes of donating some money to charity, this is a must-buy for anyone who likes puzzle games.

By Brett Todd, GameSpotPosted Feb 4, 2010 5:54 pm PT

Aspiring young chefs would do well to heed the important lessons that Fast Food Panic inadvertently delivers like a swift smack upside the head. If you don't know how to cook the meals you're asked to prepare or how to properly wield the tools needed to do so, you're bound to produce more than a few steaming plates full of burnt, awful-tasting rubbish. Even after you complete some quick tutorials, struggling with the confusing and imprecise controls during the first few minutes behind the grill in Fast Food Panic feels like trying to wrestle a greased ox--not something you want to be doing when you've got a dining room full of hungry customers. And just when you've finally tamed that beast, the game viciously pulls the rug out from under you with a few other unpleasant surprises.

Fast Food Panic aims to tap into the same foodie gaming audience that typically flocks to titles like Cooking Mama and Order Up. Though it lacks a substantive storyline, the game stars a nameless male and female chef duo seeking to kick off a new restaurant and skyrocket their culinary careers. You start out with a meager eatery that expands to larger digs as you progress through the early stages of the game. Successfully beefing up your restaurant eventually culminates in a globe-trotting trek to serve meals to fussy foreigners in distant countries. Much of the gameplay is a high-speed juggling act that has you balancing your attention between slaving over the hot grill to whip up some tasty grub and trying to placate grumbling customers armed with short fuses and picky tastes.

The two main characters graciously split the dining room and kitchen duties. However, you can directly control only one of them at a time, leaving the game's inept artificial intelligence to take over your partner's job. You can switch back and forth between them with a tap of the Z button, but attempting to micromanage all aspects of your operation is a futile task. Despite their stupidity, computer-controlled characters seem to be slightly more proficient at handling the customer service end of things. Stick them in the kitchen, and they'll plod away at a snail's pace, haphazardly slapping together meals that will make your clientele want to puke. It serves you well to stay in the kitchen where the real action is, not only because the AI is a lousy chef but also because other duties like greeting customers, taking orders, and serving food feel more like half-baked afterthoughts than legitimate gameplay options.

Several orders typically come in at once, and you can multitask and hop between dishes you're preparing by flicking the nunchuk's thumbstick. For example, you might throw some burgers and buns on the grill and then switch over to rolling out pizza dough while the burgers cook. Queuing up additional orders simultaneously gives you a bonus score and keeps you from falling too far behind. Sending the food quickly is as important as preparing it correctly, and doing a good job adds to your customer happiness meter. This overall score is tracked by a bar at the top of the screen. If the time meter fills completely before your score meter maxes out, you have to start the level over.

Every order is filled by completing a multistep sequence of minigames, and your accuracy at each step of the way determines the overall quality of your dishes. Figuring out how to prepare them is the first irritating obstacle to contend with. Extremely basic instructions can be found both in-game and in the manual, but they're too vague to be of much assistance. It takes a lot of trial and error to figure out how to complete some of the minigames and achieve a top rating. The other issue is that the controls often feel imprecise, and the moves aren't always intuitive. Flipping burgers, plucking and placing condiments, and popping a pizza in the oven are pretty straightforward tasks. Fiddling with boiling pasta on the stovetop, dropping stuff in the fryer, and cutting pizzas with precision are not. There's a lot of remote shaking and combined button pressing incorporated into the control setup that makes it unwieldy.

After much repetition, you'll eventually find the sweet spot with each minigame. There's plenty of opportunity to practice due to the startling lack of variety in the recipes available for you to cook. You'll start off with basic burgers and soon graduate to making pizzas, crepes, and pasta. Aside from a few variations within those four categories, that's it. This poor variety is a major misstep in a cooking-focused game. Instead of having a broader range of dishes to prepare, you get saddled with random minigame chore interruptions designed to break your concentration. It's a real annoyance when you're in the middle of cooking five separate dishes and have to stop what you're doing to go out and clean up an alley full of trash, help the wait staff tally bills, or wash dishes by hand. Other challenges designed to add something extra to the gameplay also end up getting in the way of the fun. Top chefs and food critics sometimes stop by and require you to impress them with your culinary skills. When traveling around the globe to cook, you'll also encounter some stereotypes like "picky" Parisians, "stubborn" Germans, and "ravenous" New Yorkers. These tough customers have specific requirements of their food, though it's not always easy to tell exactly what sets them off when they erupt in anger and force you to replay a level over and over again.

The dual responsibilities in the kitchen and the dining room could have been a great opportunity to integrate some cooperative gameplay, but the only multiplayer modes to be found are optional minigames that are unlocked as you play. These random exercises task you with completing activities like serving scoops of color-coded ice cream, putting out grill fires, and tossing pizza dough. They have no bearing on the main game, but they do offer some fun little diversions in short bursts.

This laundry list of grievances make Fast Food Panic sound like junk food for your Wii, and that's mostly true. After simmering in the game's numerous issues long enough for them to cook down a bit, the grind of intensely frantic and overstimulating food assembly can be somewhat enjoyable. But it's just not going to be enough to make you want to stomach the purchase.

By Nathan Meunier, GameSpotPosted Feb 4, 2010 5:54 pm PT

You probably won't want to check in to Hotel Giant 2, which is a management sim that could be summed up as convoluted and a bit cranky. This sequel to the tycoon game that was a modest hit eight years ago dumps most of the enjoyable aspects of playing a Hilton-like heir in favor of rigorous micromanagement. This isn't as much of a game as it is a total re-creation of life in the hotel business. In fact, it's so focused on the nitty-gritty that you'd have more fun taking overnight shifts on the front desk at the nearest Motel 6. There is a certain charm here that might appeal to the detail-oriented among you, but the game is so demanding that even the biggest control freaks will likely find themselves worn out after a few hours of play.

The core gameplay mimics the original Hotel Giant, as well as a score of copycat tycoon games last seen gathering dust in the PC games aisle of your local department store. As usual in these sorts of things, in the single-player campaign (there is no multiplayer; just the solo campaign, a random option, and a few sandbox hotels), you're a near-omniscient boss who is given control of a series of reclamation projects in various states of disrepair. Your orders are simple--get them into the black. You work on everything from massive elite hotels in desirable locales like Paris and Hollywood to rustic inns in the middle of nowhere. Just about everything can be tracked here, so if you like micromanagement, sit right down and stay a spell. The menus are extremely detailed, as well as loaded with all sorts of information like room occupancy, reservation rate, customer satisfaction, employment policies, advertising campaigns, and package deals. You can even delve into your market share to compare how you're doing against your rivals or get strict on the staff members and review their uniforms.

Refitting hotels is a major focus of gameplay. Guests always want something that you don't have, so you're constantly called upon to gut existing accommodations and lay down new rooms. The Sims-like aspect of dressing up your hotels is the most entertaining aspect of the game because there are absolutely tons of options here for room types and furnishings. You can add nearly anything to your hotels, from groovy piano bars and swimming pools to arcades and gift shops. Then, you can outfit them with an incredibly broad range of accoutrements like a virtual Martha Stewart. There are numerous choices for everything. Don't like the basic style of urinal for your bathrooms? Spend a little more and buy the glitzy ones. Feel like a new floor? Browse the dozens of carpet and tile samples to lay down a new one. Interested in some arcade machines for your game room? Check out the multiple types of shooting and racing games on offer. Everything looks great, too. All of the objects are sharply drawn, and the sheer number of those objects ensures that you don't have to build the same room twice. Guests mill about amiably, eating meals; hitting the tanning beds; shooting pool; and even hanging out in the sauna, pouring water on the hot coals. It looks and feels like you're actually in a hotel, right down to the annoying Muzak soundtrack.

But it's all a bit much. Hotel Giant 2 could have been fun. Running a glitzy European getaway for the rich and famous doesn't sound half bad. Neither does trying to turn around a faded icon on Sunset Boulevard. But most of these fantasy aspects of being a big-time hotelier have been drained away through a focus on mundane tasks. There are just too many options here, forcing you to make decisions that you really don't want to bother making. Was it really that important, for instance, to give you a dozen or so options for mood lighting on tables in your hotel bar, including a few variations on basic candles? Or to force you to set up a menu in your hotel restaurant, right down to picking the appetizers, soups, entrees, and desserts? Depth is one thing. Having to choose between the stuffed spider crab and the crispy lamb chops with almond is quite another. You can easily spend hours and hours fiddling with little things like this, and the problem is that there's no way to automate most of them. At first, though, you really get pulled into it. Just working on a restaurant can be all consuming because you get caught up in trying to make sure that people have a good range of main courses and that they can afford your lobster. Still, everything is so meticulous that the thrill wears off.

Scenarios also don't have big objectives that are blasted out to you at the start of play. There are goals to be met, like increasing the overall hotel rating or building a restaurant with good customer satisfaction scores, but you have to hunt for them in the menus. It can be a little hard figuring out what you're supposed to do. You can click on a tips button to get a couple of ideas and on individual rooms to see what you're missing, but generally, you have to see what guests are complaining about to really find out how to improve your hotel. Unfortunately, they moan about anything and everything. My room is too small. The lighting in the lobby is too dim. I want a spa in the health club. There aren't enough exercise benches in the gym. I wish my room had one more TV. I want a phone in the lobby. And so on. All the griping seems widespread and random, unlike in most other management games where the great unwashed tend to all moan about one problem at a time, which gives you a good idea as to what needs to be prioritized. Here, it's often like you're doing nothing but manning a virtual complaint desk and racing around responding to bleats about seemingly every little thing, from the carpet weave to the snooty guy at the front desk. It might be realistic, but you spend more time with busywork than you do planning a dream destination for tourists.

If you're contemplating a real career in hotel management and love fiddling with every little detail, you might want to give Hotel Giant 2 a shot. Otherwise, give this crash course in the hospitality business a pass. While you can tell a lot of design work went into this carefully considered and encyclopedic hotel game, the sheer weight of what you're called upon to manage is too heavy for all but the most dedicated player with a lot of time on his or her hands.

By Brett Todd, GameSpotPosted Feb 4, 2010 11:17 am PT