Dungeon Siege III Xbox 360 review

Dungeon Siege III Xbox 360 review

A dungeon crawler without good loot, like Dungeon Siege III, is missing something essential. If the prizes that pop out don't feel valuable, there's no slot machine appeal of opening chests, busting apart wooden barrels or slicing up monsters. Dungeon Siege III's bits of loot come with all kinds of statistical bonuses, and a multitude of special effects like elemental damage or chance to stun. But it's rare to ever get a strong sense that swapping one item for another has a significant effect, many items have near identical visual designs, and no piece is moddable. After not too long, scooping up loot begins to feel like garbage collection instead of treasure hunting.

Obsidian Entertainment, which took over the franchise from creator Gas Powered Games, is more interested in offering satisfying combat mechanics than a tantalizing loot lottery. Each of the four character classes gets nine core abilities - three defensive, the other six offensive and split across two fighting stances. All the abilities can be evolved by gaining experience and leveling up, giving Anjali's area-of-effect firestorm a healing effect or Reinhart's glyph magic a chance to slow enemy movement speed.


Though the total number of abilities per class feels small and you're not forced to make significant either / or choices about which to acquire, you won't receive enough points to fully customize all of them, meaning by the game's end, another player's Lucas Montbarron build won't be the same as yours. The addition of ability mastery, whereby more powerful versions of abilities can be unleashed if you use them enough times, adds more variety to the system. More importantly, Obsidian did a good job of ensuring each ability serves a well-defined purpose, so there's minimal filler.
Movement around the battlefield is just as important as proper ability use. Stance shifting to access different abilities is quickly done with a single button press, and the waves of enemies that swarm into battlefields force you to make frequent use of your dodge ability to get out of tight spots and slip away from magical projectiles. There aren't any potions in Dungeon Siege III, so your survival isn't based on stocking up at shops and spamming them when necessary. Fighting flows naturally, feeling more like action game than a traditional dungeon crawler. For example, Anjali can spawn a field of fire and summon a demon dog to help in her ranged form, then switch to melee and perform a spinning heel kick over the flames before jumping into the sky and slamming down to devastate enemies. If any remain alive, she can dodge back and skewer them with a hurled spear, or swap back to fire form and conjure a column of flame. Using the abilities in concert like this helps to keep up interest in the combat where the loot system fails.



Due to the lack of potions, Dungeon Siege III also doesn't make it feel like you're wasting resources by using abilities. Every standard attack you land builds focus, the resource abilities consume. By constantly attacking you can quickly gather enough focus to often use your most powerful stuff. The fun doesn't last the whole game, however. Even though Dungeon Siege III regularly tosses new enemy types at you throughout a variety of environments, leveling up after you've unlocked a class' entire ability set doesn't feel nearly as rewarding. All you'll be able to do is tweak abilities and talents, adding higher percentages to critical hit damage or reducing the focus cost of special skills, which isn't exactly thrilling.

Games of this type typically don't offer much in the way of story, so it's certainly welcome to see how much attention it gets in Obsidian's version of Dungeon Siege. Characters interact in conversation with a Mass Effect-style interface and decisions made throughout the course of the game can actually affect events later on. Those used to bland bubbles of quest text will appreciate this, though it's tough to really care what happens because the personalities, even the main villain, have little depth. These characters exist solely to play flat, plot-necessary roles, not to entertain with their dynamic personalities. Dungeon Siege III does a better job than many other loot games to establish motivations for quests and make it feel as though your actions affect the story, but it's not a story worth remembering.

It's also worth forgetting this game has a multiplayer component because of the restrictions in Dungeon Siege III's online suite. The game plays out entirely in two-character co-operative mode with the partner class of your choosing controlled by a capable artificial intelligence that will make use of a variety of skills and revive you when necessary. You have full control over the skill development of the AI characters and can equip them with gear, but as soon as you go to play online, none of this matters. By hopping into the game of another through the game's online browser you can't import your main character. Instead, you're forced to select from whichever character classes aren't already active in the game (two of the same class are not allowed), and won't have any control over skill development while you're disconnected. While this might work if you want to play with close friends, it makes Dungeon Siege III's online mode near useless if you're looking for a random partner to pair up with and make progress.

Duke Nukem Forever Xbox 360

Duke Nukem Forever Xbox 360



The hypocrisy of Duke Nukem Forever's distaste for new shooter heroes is clear early in the game. Duke is disgusted when offered a Halo-like suit of armor, asserting that his unassailable machismo is more resilient than any association with modernized entries of a genre he helped define in the mid-1990s. Yet Duke can only carry two guns at a time and has a regenerating health bar, elements popularized by the game he so readily dismisses. Duke Nukem Forever suggests Duke's compulsive need to pull the trigger to broadcast his manliness is enough to overcome any obstacle, which, as it turns out, it's not.

There was never anything complicated about Duke Nukem. He was an icon in his 1990s heyday because he was more than a floating gun. Duke had a voice, spouting action and comedy movie quotes. He made Army of Darkness' "Hail to the king, baby" his own, and lifted lines from Aliens, Dirty Harry and more to make sure his enemies knew he didn't accidentally pull the trigger. Duke Nukem has always been a walking joke, a vainglorious 1980s-style action star parody overflowing with testosterone and disdain for anything that doesn't involve squashing aliens, drinking or girls. In Duke Nukem Forever, he hasn't changed.









Duke still has the maturity of a twelve year old boy, objectifying women whenever possible, and barking out movie quotes with voice actor Jon St. John's bassy cadence. He's unapologetically vulgar, which is good for a few nostalgic laughs as he again kills aliens to save the world. It's disappointing that during Duke Nukem Forever's preposterously protracted development, nobody took advantage of the immense opportunity to do something thematically creative. Instead of playing with the idea of Duke as an anachronism, Duke returns in classic form, and he's never felt so old, so out of place, and so embarrassing. Just wait until you find the wall boobs.

Duke is one of the elder heroes of gaming, and could say whatever he wanted with legitimacy if there was a first-class shooter experience backing him up. To the game's credit, Duke Nukem Forever's shooting sections are simple fun. Charging humanoid pigs and zig-zagging jetpack aliens spawn in battle zones and Duke gets to pulverize them with shrink rays, freeze guns, shotguns and his fists. The real star of the show is the shotgun, which unlike the other weapons that lack a sense of power, can obliterate enemies at close range, sending them arcing off in the distance after a well-placed burst of lead. The shrink and freeze rays are toys, adding some humor value as Duke stomps on miniaturized aliens or executes their frozen bodies. The multitude of stage bosses are enormous and some of the action set pieces exciting. It's all straightforward, classically-styled kill-factory sequences that let you turn off your brain and revel in the primal glory of the aim-and-shoot gameplay loop.

What falters is just about everything else. Duke Nukem Forever takes cues from games post-Duke Nukem 3D and clumsily straddles over a decade of genre growth. Turret sequences are too often used as a crutch to break up on-foot fights, but they're a welcome alternative to the frequent first-person platforming segments that make up an unnecessarily large percentage of the story mode. I understand that games like this need to slow down from time to time in order to space out encounters. But when Duke shrinks to miniature size and drives toy cars over jumps and hops across shelves over an electrified kitchen floor, Duke Nukem Forever loses all its entertainment value. It's creative in concept to have Duke bounding over hamburger buns to cross a hot cooking surface, but the actual mechanics are as dull and straightforward as possible. Then there are the Half-Life 2-style physics puzzles where you'll need to remove barrels to lighten minecarts or add barrels to shift the positions of platforms that do nothing but waste gameplay space, forcing us to relive poor imitations of 2004's highlights.

In most cases, the sections in Duke Nukem Forever that connect the shooting are dull, derivative experiences that feel like they exist for no other reason than to bloat the story mode, and it isn't clear if they're meant to parody video game filler content. It might be different if Duke approached a puzzle section, laughed, lobbed some curse words at it and moved on, but since we're forced to solve the puzzles to continue it's not tongue-in-cheek satire, unless the joke is on us.

There are throwback moments in Duke Nukem Forever to his early days when keeping a finger off the trigger earns rewards. In a strip club stage that's crudely deployed as a dream sequence Duke can play air hockey, a version of whack-a-mole, and a simple pinball game. These are meant as distractions, but along with his ability to interact with a handful of other random objects, they're distractions with a point. These 'Duke-like' actions extend the length of his Ego (health) bar, adding concrete incentive to explore and discover more ways for Duke to express his boundless self-satisfaction.

Once the story's done, you can drop into the online modes like deathmatch, team deathmatch, capture the flag (or, more accurately, capture the babe), and king of the hill. Online play is characterized by fast, frequent kills and success is largely determined by your ability to memorize map layout and weapon spawn points. It's a traditional approach to online first-person shooting filled with chaotic action, jet packs, jump pads and goofy weaponry like freeze rays, shrink guns and trip mines so you'll never feel safe. It doesn't try to tell a story and doesn't force you into poorly conceived vehicle sequences or drawn-out platforming sections, so it doesn't share the story mode's identity crisis. There's also a modernized persistent leveling structure layered overtop, which rewards you with content for what's probably the best piece of fan service in the game, Duke's penthouse, which is an actual virtual space you can explore and admire paintings, statues and more that further glorify Duke's wafer-thin persona.

That Duke Nukem Forever looks dated, has framerate issues and long load times on Xbox 360 maybe shouldn't be surprising, and though the grinding guitar music is entirely appropriate considering the subject matter, it's not catchy enough to stick in your head. Aside from serving as an end point to an overlong development cycle, there's nothing remarkable about Duke Nukem's return.

Closing Comments
Duke Nukem is an icon of mid-1990s video game culture – brash, vulgar and committed to the art of the one-liner, like a twelve-year old boy with internet access. His association with Duke Nukem Forever's extended development cycle has propelled him to legendary status, attaching to him an undeserved significance. Duke Nukem Forever isn't a revitalization of the early days of the first-person shooter genre or a middle-finger to the increasingly complex and sophisticated nature of videogame entertainment. It's a muddled, hypocritical exercise in irritation with solid shooting mechanics and decent encounter design. There's some dumb fun to be had in Duke Nukem Forever, but the game tries hard to ensure it's only fleeting.

Shadows of the Damned Xbox 360 review

Shadows of the Damned Xbox 360 review

Shadows of the Damned is a strange game. Not just because of its visuals, which are weird, or its story, which is deranged, but because of the way it comes together. Or doesn't. Shadows of the Damned is a game you might play and enjoy, but not necessarily because you'll enjoy playing it. The things it does best - the bizarre visuals, the fantastic soundtrack, the strange narratives and side stories - are largely removed from what you spend your time doing.

The premise to Shadows of the Damned is simple-ish, but again, strange. Garcia Hotspur's crazy (no, really, she's completely out of her mind) girlfriend Paula has killed herself, and the lord of Hell, Fleming, has claimed her as his own. So Garcia's off to the City of the Damned to get her back, with only his Johnson to help him.

Yes, that was a dick joke, and get used to it. Shadows of the Damned leaves no stone unturned in its quest to find (and f**k) every possible opening for a joke about a penis. It's not subtle. It's not even especially clever most of the time. But it tries to compensate by being as unabashed and gigglingly self-aware about it as possible. And it almost pulls it off, unless, of course, you're past laughing at genital humor. If that's the case, you'll want to get off at the next stop.

Mechanically speaking, Shadows of the Damned is a collection of strange, arcade shooter conceits stuffed into a game that seems like it's poking around the edges of a modern third person action game. Garcia wields Johnson, his former-demon-turned-swiss-army-knife-of-hell-knowledge-and-pain-dispersal companion, in one of three different weapon forms: a pistol, a shotgun, and a machine-gun. Johnson can also fire out a light-blast that has various effects – it incapacitates weaker enemies, and it can chase away darkness during one of Shadows of the Damned's many dark-light puzzle sequences.

The City of the Damned is frequently home to giant pockets of inky darkness that will slowly tear Garcia apart – it is called Shadows of the Damned, after all – unless, that is, he can figure out a way to chase it away. The particulars become more complicated over the course of Garcia's feel-good trip through the underworld. Early on, a quick light-shot into a mounted (but alive-ish) goat head is enough to clear it up, but later on you'll be shooting multiple balls of blood snaking vein-like off a central hub of darkness spewing demon pubes and… well. You get the idea.






The problem here is that none of this is particularly interesting. Combat feels clunky, which is a combination of issues perceptual and mechanical. The camera is zoomed in much too close to Garcia to have a good view of what's going on when he's aiming, and Garcia is yet another third-person shooter plagued by molasses arms. On normal difficulty, the only danger you'll ever really face are from enemies hitting you from off camera because your field of view is so small. Granted, you're not stuck in place while you're aiming, but otherwise, Shadows of the Damned plays like a game from 2005, not 2011.

Wipeout In the Zone Xbox 360 Review

Wipeout In the Zone Xbox 360 Review

I'm not in shape and the idea of jumping up and down in my living room does not appeal to me, but Wipeout In the Zone struck a chord and delivered a multiplayer experience that got me sweating and smiling.

Just like the game show, Wipeout In the Zone is broken into episodes that pack three rounds of challenges. The video game is hosted by the same snarky men and sexy sideline reporter, but this time they've been Xboxed (they're avatars). You play as your avatar or one of the ones you've unlocked through the game. Wipeout In the Zone sticks with this bright, cartoony style, and it works. None of the challenges are visually stunning, but they look good.

Still, this is a Kinect game, so who cares about the visuals? The big thing you probably want to know is how it controls. The game is played from a third-person perspective, so as you run in place or jump in your living room, the onscreen character follows suit. This is key to running down the ramps and leaping over leg sweepers. You have to crouch, dive and more if you want to have the best time when the course is said and done.






I dug all that. The controls definitely aren't as responsive as some might be looking for -- I had to jump earlier than I was expecting in order to launch myself over gaps and stopping on a dime is all but impossible -- but that didn't matter in terms of the whole package. My matches in Wipeout In the Zone weren't about winning, they were about beating the course of spinning red padding and laughing at my fails. The game uses the same replay system as the show, so watching my friend get clobbered with a big foam bat over and over again from different angles was fun.


There are issues with Wipeout In the Zone. The host dialogue repeats early on, I had no idea how to dive to home plate in Brusieball as there are no real tutorials, and the game can get wonky with the attack windows for obstacles as well as the gravitational pull of the Big Balls.

Read about how Wipeout In the Zone was reviewed.

Closing Comments
Wipeout In the Zone is far from perfect, but it's fun. When I was laughing at my replays or mocking a friend's fail, the little stuff didn't matter. If you have a Kinect and are looking for a game that's offering good times, look no further but don't expect an instant classic. This is a simple game you can just jump into and have a laugh -- in between deep, wheezing breaths.

Cars 2 Xbox 360 review

Cars 2 Xbox 360 review

Like Mario Kart but hate the Wii? Cars 2 might be for you





Amid the sea of mediocre or just plain awful licensed games, Disney and Avalanche Software surprised everyone with Toy Story 3 last year. By working closely with Pixar, Avalanche was able to take the essence of the property and turn it into a game that not only made sense, but was actually really good. When I heard the same amount of time and collaboration was going into Cars 2, I expected to see the same level quality. I'm pleased to say Cars 2 exceeded my expectations.

In Cars 2 (the film) Lightning McQueen travels around the globe to race in the World Grand Prix, while some agents from Command Headquarters for Recon Operations & Motorized Espionage (C.H.R.O.M.E) are trying to get to the bottom of an evil plot. The console versions of Cars 2 leave the story-telling to the masters at Pixar, and instead focus on making a game that's related to the story, but not bogged down by it. There really isn't a story in the Cars 2 game. You're taken behind the scenes to be trained as a C.H.R.O.M.E. agent by completing simulations of races and other driving tasks, and that's basically it.

Cars 2 is a kart racer that takes more than a little inspiration from Mario Kart and is just as fun. But instead of turtle shells and banana peels, you're using real weapons like machine guns and rocket launchers. You're also doing more than racing in Cars 2. Different modes have you hunting down enemies in a vast arena, or competing in teams in a capture the flag-style set-up. With easy drop-in and drop-out local multiplayer for up to four players, Cars 2 should have many a family having fun together.

But it's really not just for families. If you can look past the kiddie license, you'll find a racer that's super easy to pick up and play, but a bit more complicated to master. Besides using weapons, you can also perform tricks in Cars 2 to build up your turbo boost meter. These tricks include in-air flips and spins, driving on two wheels, and driving backwards (with the controls reversed appropriately.)You can also forcefully side-swipe opponents to force them off the track. I had a blast racing against some of my fellow editors or blowing them to bits in the deathmatch-style arena mode.

But that also brings me to the game's biggest fault. Racing by yourself just isn't as fun as with others. Thankfully, the game supports multiplayer in all modes, meaning you can unlock all the characters and tracks (of which there are many) by playing multiplayer. Another minor flaw is the lack of knowledge you have of your position in a race relative to the finish line and other players. You're told what place you're currently in, but it would have been nice to have a mini-map of sorts that showed you just how far behind or ahead you are.



Visually, Cars 2 is great. You can tell that Avalanche works closely with Pixar in the little details, like how the cars lift their tires to turn and move their entire bodies in expressions. Another nice touch is that during all of the modes, you can see your car's face in the upper left corner, so even though you're staring at their backside most of the time, you still get the feeling that you're playing as one of the characters from the film. This is helped along by the fact that many of the actors who voiced the characters on the big screen also voice the characters in the game. With the exception of Lightning and Finn McMissile, pretty much all of the other characters have their true voices, and each character has a collection of unique comments and taunts that help add to the atmosphere.

It's not surprising with Disney's kid-friendly focus that Cars 2 doesn't feature online play. This would have been cool for us older gamers, but I can understand where Disney is coming from in leaving it out.

Closing Comments
Cars 2 is a great multiplayer game that rivals Mario Kart. Playing alone isn’t quite as fun, but it’s still a solid solo experience. The fact that there’s little story doesn’t really matter because you won’t miss it, and don’t let the license scare you off. Under all the Pixar beauty is an extremely fun game.

F.E.A.R. 3 Xbox 360 Review

F.E.A.R. 3 Xbox 360 Review



The shooter market is definitely a saturated one, rife with derivative titles that rarely buck any trends. But every so often, a title comes along that does things a little bit differently. F.E.A.R. 3 is one such game. A horror and gore-inspired romp, F.E.A.R. 3 approaches the conventions of first-person shooters from a different perspective and successfully mixes together familiar gameplay elements with a unique and authentically chilling setting. F.E.A.R. 3 isn't without its problems, and these problems stop it from being a top echelon shooter. Still, its tendency to go off the beaten path is largely successful and will appeal to shooter fans and horror aficionados alike.

In F.E.A.R. 3, gamers are placed in the role of the genetically-enhanced Point Man, the protagonist from the original F.E.A.R. As you may remember from the end of F.E.A.R. 2, the mysterious female foil Alma forces herself upon that game's playable character -- Becket -- and becomes pregnant with his child. Alma is an evil psychic dynamo manipulated by Armacham, the same company responsible for Point Man's genetic enhancement, but her powers far outweigh his own. Thus, stopping Alma from having this kid is the name of the game in F.E.A.R. 3. Because after all, if Alma is so powerful, who knows what that kid is capable of?






Stopping Alma's pregnancy will be no easy task for Point Man, especially because he's accompanied continuously by the apparition of fellow Project Origin prototype Paxton Fettel, another character fans of the series will be familiar with. One of F.E.A.R. 3's great strengths is that you can actually play as Fettel through any level that Point Man already beaten, which gives a completely different feel for getting through the main campaign.

While Point Man is your typical gun-toting badass, Fettel is able to possess enemy soldiers and generally cause an insane amount of havoc. Better yet, you can play the campaign together with a friend locally or online, utilizing both characters' strengths simultaneously.

In terms of aesthetics, F.E.A.R. 3 provides passable graphics that look slightly dated but still get the job done. And the game runs fairly smoothly, with the exception of some stuttering when the game is loading and saving mid-play. Regardless, you won't mistake F.E.A.R. 3 for a top tier shooter in terms of its looks. On the other hand, F.E.A.R. 3 is a sonically appealing game. The voice-acting is at times over the top, but the sound effects and music add greatly to the scary feel of the game. There's audio nuance everywhere.

Both single player and co-op will require you to work your way through the same eight stages (known as Intervals). Playing through on co-op will allow you to blaze through the game significantly faster than playing on your own, but F.E.A.R. 3's campaign is best enjoyed as a solo affair. Though the game is much more difficult this way, playing on your own maximizes the frights and scares. Co-op is a fun experience in its own right, but should definitely be left for those who have already played through the campaign once before.

Mechanically, F.E.A.R. 3 will feel familiar to fans of the FPS genre. Your characters will have access to a number of firearms, explosives and more. Point Man and Fettel can also use their own psychic powers, primarily in the form of time slow-down and enemy possession respectively. The combination of the conventional and the supernatural isn't revolutionary by any stretch of the imagination, but it works well in F.E.A.R. 3. And though the stages are generally linear, there's reason for ancillary exploration, mostly to take in the sheer amount of ambiance present on most levels (not to mention to find collectibles).

If I have one major complaint about F.E.A.R. 3's core gameplay, it's in terms of grenade throwing. It's hard to use grenades in the game with any modicum of accuracy. Chucking grenades way over the intended target is more likely to happen than the perfect toss. Additionally, the AI glitched out on me once in a while, not reacting to my presence when I was clearly in view. None of this breaks the experience, but it certainly hampers it unnecessarily.

Child of Eden Xbox 360 review

Child of Eden Xbox 360 review

There's something about Child of Eden that makes people shut up and fixate on the screen. It could be because you're entranced by the colors bursting artfully in tandem with upbeat techno music or just the thought of, "Holy crap, am I tripping right now?" Either way, this is a title that people take notice of and for good reason. Child of Eden, a spiritual successor to Tetsuya Mizuguchi's cult sensation Rez, is an incredibly satisfying time, but it's one that can be over shortly after it begins



Child of Eden truly is an experience unlike any other this generation (save maybe Rez HD of course). The story doesn't really matter or make much sense, but basically you're saving a girl and the Internet, which is now known as Eden. Child of Eden is essentially a first-person, on-rails shooter. You're not actually killing anything; you're purifying databases full of corrupt information. It's just you, the reticle, the music and the visuals -- a simple, yet effective formula. It's difficult to explain why it's so cool, but once you get your hands on Child of Eden, everything will make sense.

Each level (or archive) outlines a specific part of life on Earth. Beauty is comprised of plants and butterflies, Evolution includes a whale transforming into a bird, and Passion is more of an industrial paradise filled with machinery. The neon art style alone is something to gawk at, but the incredible score ties each level together perfectly. This is one of those games where the songs got stuck in my head for days and I wanted to play the game just to hear the soundtrack again. The sights and sounds work together to place you in a sort of happy trance. I felt my troubles melt away and the only thing I had to do was explore Eden.

You eliminate impurities plaguing Eden by shooting in two main ways: rapid fire shots or a lock-on gun where you select targets and then release a button (flick your wrist if you're using Kinect) to exterminate them. There are multiple control schemes for both a regular controller and Kinect, so you can find what's most comfortable for you.

I've heard people dismiss Kinect as a viable control option because there's no vibration feedback. After trying both control options for Child of Eden, I found that I preferred Kinect's superior responsiveness. Yes, Kinect makes navigating Eden's databases far easier. In fact, the analog sticks seem clunky compared to swiftly moving your hand around the screen.

As for the lack of vibration, I ended up becoming my own feedback by swaying to the beat. I'm sure I looked ridiculous dancing back and forth and flinging my right arm about, but I was having a damn good time.





Don't get me wrong, you can't just dance around and expect to make it through Eden. Enemies will fire projectiles that can only be eliminated by using the rapid fire gun. The only trouble is with all the colors flying around, sometimes I didn't notice when enemies shot at me. In an effort to help players out, there's a incoming shot warning similar to grenade alerts in other shooters, but there's so much going on that it's not always helpful. If I ever was in trouble, I turned to my Euphoria bombs, which devastate enemies and made me feel like I was on a roller coaster ride. (I had to throw my arms up over my head to unleash it with Kinect.)

Trenched Xbox 360 Review

Trenched Xbox 360 Review

One of the things I sometimes dislike about reviewing a game is that I'm not given as much time as I'd like with it. Not that I don't get to finish it, just that I'm not allowed to play at my own pace. But with developer Double Fine's Trenched I just couldn't help myself; within two days I had completely blasted through the campaign, grinding levels over and over again to max out my level and collect that oh-so-precious loot. I'm just going to say it: I love this game.






Trenched takes place in a alternate world, where 1940s-esque soldiers pilot giant anthropomorphic machines called Trenches in an effort to fight a madman and his army of constructs. Part third-person shooter, part tower defense, Trenched challenges you to fight wave after wave of enemies in a variety of stages. Sometimes you're defending one position, other times you're defending multiple, but the goal is always the same: deploy turrets and use the guns on your mech to blast the holy hell out of anything you see. Collecting the "scrap" the enemies drop when they die allows you to deploy additional turrets (or emplacements), which look great as they fall from the sky before they drill into the ground.

A big part of the fun in Trenched is figuring out the right mech for the level at hand. Picking a chassis changes the amount of guns and emplacements you can bring, so once you've figure out your play style you have to decide what armaments suit the enemies ahead. If you want to play it like a shooter, pick a chassis that allows you to take a host of guns , supplementing your combat weaknesses with one or two emplacements. If you're more the sit back and watch type, you can take an engineer chassis with hardly any weapon slots and a bunch of emplacements, to create a network of turrets to hit your foes. Sometimes it's fun to bring an assault mech outfitted with six shotguns, while other times I felt like a badass when I'd manage to construct a mech that could fight long range, short range and everything in between. It makes for a lot of replayability, as you can play levels super aggressively one time, or more strategically later.

The best part about playing any stage, though, is collecting "loot boxes."There are simply few things better than the thrill of getting randomized loot that allows you to min-max your stats and damage output. I'm a nerd for constant tweaking and customization of my trench. It's downright addictive, and makes me replay stages over and over in hopes to get a shiny new gun or chassis.

Besides a couple of boss battles, all the levels boil down to the simple goal of staying alive and defending a point. The reason it never gets old is due to the sheer entertainment that comes from utilizing your mech against a variety of enemy types. One second I find myself firing an artillery round into a crowd of enemies at long range, the next I'd be swarmed by tiny enemies that forced me to utilize my machineguns while falling back. You can never sit on your laurels while playing Trench, because just when you think you're ready for anything you're forced to adapt to a new combination of enemies. Not only that, but unless you've brought the right emplacements, it's up to you to go out there and collect the scrap they drop. Every stage becomes a dance between shooting and looting, and the few seconds between waves become precious.

The gameplay is really well done, but what makes Trenched more than just another tower defense or shooter title is its well-developed atmosphere. The campaign story isn't that important to the levels themselves, but the writing is every bit as witty as I've come to expect from Double Fine. Between levels you return to a hub world on top of an aircraft carrier. Here you can inspect and customize your trench, choose your level, and invite friends to join you in your hub before taking to the field. The setting is just really well done, perfectly capturing the feeling of the alternate mid-20th century.

Inviting some other players to join you in your hub is worth it too, because multiplayer makes replaying levels even better. It's a little too easy to play through stages with four players (despite more enemies or tougher mini-bosses), but with two to three players you can really experiment. One player can take on the role of a tank, leaving the other players to use weaker engineers or exotic combinations of weapons they wouldn't normally take. The best part, though? You get loot every time.

Trenched is a pretty short game, but that doesn't really bother me since you can replay levels for more loot and experience. The things that do bother me are minor gameplay choices like the inability to destroy your own turrets. It sucks to take up a prime piece of real estate (turrets have to be placed a few feet apart) with the wrong type of turret cause you weren't paying attention. I could nitpick just about any game, but Trenched is fantastic despite any minor flaws it has.

Closing Comments
Trenched is the best downloadable game I’ve played all year. Its skillful blend of witty writing, fun shooting, and tactical tower defense makes for hours of replayable gameplay. Take into account the loot grind that Trenched inspires, and the online coop, and Double Fine’s created a title I hope turns into a franchise