Consoles, Games and Emulators.

A superb single-player story mode and online support for up to 16 players make this the best Grand Theft Auto game yet.

Stepping off a boat in the shoes of illegal immigrant Niko Bellic as he arrives in Liberty City at the start of Grand Theft Auto IV, you can tell immediately that Rockstar North’s latest offering is something quite special. Yes, this is another GTA game in which you’ll likely spend the bulk of your time stealing cars and gunning down cops and criminals, but it’s also much more than that. GTAIV is a game with a compelling and nonlinear storyline, a game with a great protagonist who you can’t help but like, and a game that boasts a plethora of online multiplayer features in addition to its lengthy story mode. It’s not without some flaws, but GTAIV is undoubtedly the best Grand Theft Auto yet.

One of the many things that set GTAIV apart from its predecessors is Liberty City, which is more convincing as a living, breathing urban environment than anything that you’ve seen in a game before, and bears little resemblance to its namesake in 2001’s GTAIII. Liberty’s diverse population believably attempts to go about its daily business, seemingly unaware that several criminal factions are at war in the city. Niko has no such luck. He’s compelled to start working for one of the factions shortly after arriving, when he learns that his cousin Roman has some potentially fatal gambling debts. Niko’s military experience makes him a useful freelancer for employers in the business of killing each other, and though his reluctance to carry out their orders is often apparent, he does whatever is asked of him in the hope that completing missions for other people will ultimately give him the means to complete his own.

Actually, Niko doesn’t have to do everything that is asked of him. On several occasions as you play through his story, you’ll be presented with decisions that afford you the option of doing what you think is right rather than blindly following instructions. You don’t necessarily have to kill a target if he or she promises to disappear, but you have to weigh the risk of your employer finding out against the possibility that the person whose life you spare might prove useful later in the game, or even have work for you in the form of bonus missions. To say anything more specific on this subject would be to risk spoiling one of GTAIV’s most interesting new features, but suffice it to say that every decision you make has consequences, and you’ll likely want to play through the game at least twice to see how the alternatives unfold.

Grand Theft Auto IV’s story mode can be beaten in less than 30 hours, and there are so many optional activities and side missions to take part in along the way that you can comfortably double that number if you’re in no hurry. The majority of the story missions task you with making deliveries and/or killing people, and play out in much the same way as those in previous games. With that said, most of the missions are a lot easier this time around, partly because Niko is a more agile and efficient killer than any of his predecessors, and partly because the LCPD seemingly has better things to do than hunt down an illegal immigrant who’s gunning down undesirables all over the city. Some of the more imaginative missions sprinkled throughout the story include a kidnapping, a bank heist, and a job interview. The cinematic cutscenes associated with story missions are superbly presented and are the sequences in which the game’s characters really shine. Without exception, the characters you encounter benefit from great animation, great voice work, and superbly expressive faces. They’re not always so impressive when they join you on a mission and refuse to do what they’re supposed to (for example, not following you on an escort mission, or failing to negotiate a doorway). Nevertheless, these problems are few and far between, and they’re made less painful by the new “replay mission” option that you’re presented with whenever you fail.

New abilities in Niko’s arsenal include scaling fences and walls anywhere he can get a foothold, shimmying along ledges, and, most importantly, taking cover behind objects. The ability to stick close to walls, parked cars, and the like at the touch of a button makes GTAIV’s gunplay a huge improvement over that in previous games, and, in tandem with the new targeting system, it also makes it a lot easier. Enemies are rarely smart enough to get to you while you’re in cover, and given that you can lock your targeting reticle on to them even when they’re hidden, all you have to do is wait for them to poke their heads out and then pick them off with a minimum of effort. Locking on to enemies targets their torso by default, but you can use the right analog stick to fine-tune your aim and kill them more quickly with a headshot or two. Playing without using the lock-on feature make things more difficult, but you’ll need to master the technique so that you can shoot blindly at enemies from positions of cover when you dare not poke your own head out to line up the shot.

Given the amount of trouble that you get into as you play through the story mode, it’s inevitable that the police are going to get involved from time to time, even when their presence isn’t a scripted feature of your mission. Liberty City’s boys in blue are quick to respond when you get flagged with a wanted level of between one and six stars, but they’re not nearly as tough to deal with as their counterparts in previous GTA games. They don’t drive as quickly when pursuing you, they rarely bother to set up roadblocks, and you’ll need to blow up practically an entire city block before the FIB (that’s not a typo) show up. Furthermore, you’re given an unfair advantage in the form of your GPS system; when you’re not using it to plot a valid route to any waypoint of your choosing, it doubles as a kind of police scanner. Any time you have a brush with the law, the GPS shows you the exact locations of patrol cars and cops on foot in your area, and highlights the circular area (centered on your last known whereabouts) where they’re concentrating their search. To escape, all you need to do is move outside the circle and then avoid being seen for 10 seconds or so, which is often best achieved by finding a safe spot and just sitting there. It’s not a bad system in theory, but in practice it makes dodging the law a little too easy, especially when your wanted level is low and the search area is small.

When you’re not running missions for criminals, taking part in street races, stealing cars to order, or randomly causing trouble, you’ll find that there are plenty of opportunities to unwind in Liberty City. Some of these optional activities offer tangible rewards that can prove useful in missions later on, whereas others are just a fun way to kill time and take in more of GTAIV’s superb humor. For example, you can watch television, listen to numerous different radio stations, check out some genuinely funny shows (including some big-name acts) at cabaret and comedy clubs, and use a computer to surf the in-game Internet.

GTAIV’s Internet is filled with spoofs of all the kinds of Web sites that you’d only ever look at accidentally or when you know there’s no danger of getting caught. Some of them can be found only by clicking on links in spam e-mails, whereas others are advertised prominently on the search page. There’s plenty of amusing stuff to find if you spend some time in one of the “TW@” Internet cafes, but the most interesting site by far is an online dating agency through which you can meet women who, if they like your profile, will agree to go on dates with you. Dating and socializing with friends is something you can spend as much or as little of your time doing as you like, and though the people you meet can occasionally be demanding to the point that they become irritating, keeping them happy invariably benefits you in some way.

UEFA Euro 2008 plays a better game of football than anything else on the market, but only just.

UK REVIEW–First things first: UEFA Euro 2008 plays a better game of football than any other game currently available for either the Xbox 360 or the PS3. EA Canada’s gameplay team has been hard at work on the core engine since it finished FIFA 08, and its work shows. UEFA Euro 2008 isn’t that far ahead of the latest FIFA offering, but minor improvements are apparent all over the pitch.

As you’d expect, Euro 2008 features a much smaller roster of teams compared to FIFA, only featuring the international teams that are eligible for the European Championship, without any reduction in the sticker price to compensate. The football is slightly faster than in FIFA 08, the animations are smoother, and the addition of a manual celebration mechanic lets you control your player after scoring. All of these things add up to make UEFA Euro 2008 a slightly better match experience than FIFA 2008, but not that much better.

Euro 2008’s single-player modes are as varied as could be hoped given the limited nature of the licence. You can play through your chosen team’s qualifying campaign or just jump into the finals with your team. You can also play through in the Be A Pro mode or its new cousin, Captain Your Country.

The Captain Your Country mode expands on the Be A Pro mode introduced in FIFA 08. You create a player and control him during the course of the qualifying campaign rather than in just one match. The aim is not only to see your team through to qualification, but also to rack up a large enough number of good performances to be made captain by the time you reach the finals. The weaker the team, the easier it is to become captain, but the harder it is to make it to the finals. Your personal score for each match is based on how well you perform in your allotted role; as a defender, you can run forward to knock in goals, but you’re more likely to do well staying at the back and waiting to put in that goal-saving tackle instead.

You compete against three other players bidding to make the transition from B-team unknown to captain, with your scores out of ten displayed as you go along. This leads to some interesting gameplay, as there are a number of factors to bear in mind. Firstly, you want to perform as well as you can in your chosen position. Secondly, you want your team to get through to the finals and then win. Finally you want to do better than your fellow captaincy candidates, which can lead to a certain amount of gamesmanship as you try to ensure that they don’t get the chance to impress. This is an interesting take on co-op play, and it works really well in both single player–where the other players are AI controlled–or in multiplayer, where the mode really takes off as the competition hots up.

The football itself is very similar to FIFA 08, complete with its advanced trick system that allows more skilful players to skip past multiple defenders when mastered. As with FIFA 08 this system can seem overpowered in multiplayer games when one player has mastered it and the other has not, but the online skill matching does a good job of ensuring that this is rarely an issue.

In addition to regular matches and competitions there are a number of scenarios to play out, which put you in control at moments from the actual qualifying campaign that were particularly significant. For instance, you might be tasked with coming out on top after having been dumped into a game 2-0 down with 10 minutes to go, or you might be required to replicate Scotland’s famous 1-0 victory over France in Paris. Winning the European Championship with any side unlocks a batch of new scenarios from Euro 2004.

In previous midseason football titles released to coincide with major championships, playing through the full qualifying campaigns was a nigh-on pointless experience when playing as a high-ranked team, because you would steamroller the poorer international sides, but that isn’t the case here. The opponent AI changes are noticeable from the get-go of your campaign, with weaker teams defending in numbers and making your life in front of goal very difficult indeed. Crowds are more vocal than before, too, and are more hostile both home and away. When you’re already a goal down in a match that you have to win, hearing even virtual fans chanting “We want our money back” does nothing for your confidence. These changes do really give the game a lot of added value as it

The other significant gameplay factor that has been tweaked is the weather, which now plays a more significant role than before. Rain has noticeable effects on the speed the ball skids over the surface; if you hit wet turf, your pass will fly off faster than you’d expect, but if you hit a muddy patch, you will howl in dismay as the ball slows down and a defender slips back to cut out that seemingly perfectly weighted pass to your advancing centre-forward.

The multiplayer game has also received a certain amount of attention. The most obvious change is presented to you front and centre: UEFA Euro 2008 features a metagame that will tally up the performance of the various European nations throughout the tournament, with daily prizes for those who perform best. This performance is measured with a new in-game scoring system that attempts to quantify the skill you’ve shown. This is based on not only the number of goals you score and let in, but also on pass completion, shot accuracy, and more. It’s adjusted for the skill of your team and the skill of your opponent’s team. This may help to address the main problem FIFA 08 has had online–where Barcelona, the best-rated in-game club side, are the most popular team to play because they’re so good–but we’re sceptical. More significant is the introduction of quick 16-player tournaments, which can be set up among friends or with random people over Xbox Live or the PlayStation network. This is a compelling addition to the series’ basic multiplayer modes and is something we hope to see replicated in FIFA 09.

Despite its smaller scope, Euro 2008 replicates the drama of a major international cup competition very well. The gameplay isn’t a significant enough an improvement over FIFA 08 to make it easily recommendable as an upgrade given the sticker price, but if you’re yet to experience EA’s football offerings this season then now’s the time to start.

Chosen One isn’t what Skee-Lo had in mind when he wished to be a baller.

EA and Midway share the rights to NBA-licensed arcade basketball games. As a result, the NBA Ballers franchise is released every other year, with EA’s NBA Street series occupying the year in between. This year is NBA Ballers’ time to shine and that didn’t happen, which means it’s a down year for arcade hoops. NBA Ballers: Chosen One has some interesting ideas, particularly with regards to its presentation, but it’s ultimately a disappointment thanks to repetitive gameplay and needlessly complex controls.

You can single-play games of 1V1, 2V2, and 1V1V1, or sharpen your skills in practice, a shootout, or three-point contest. You can also play ranked and unranked matches online using your custom character, which is pretty cool. The bulk of Ballers’ content, however, is found in Story mode. Here you create a player, give him a nickname (we went with “Beans”), and choose from hundreds of different shirts, pants, shoes, jewelry items, and more to customize his appearance. You’ll unlock more gear as you progress, but you can make a truly unique baller with just the stuff that’s unlocked from the outset. Your created player will be terrible at first, but his attributes will improve slightly after each game. These attribute boosts are supposedly based on your performance in the previous game, but they seem more random than anything else. Story mode’s premise is simple. Each year after the NBA playoffs, the top players in the league take part in a street ball tournament, the winner of which will be known as the “Chosen One.” Story mode is divided into six episodes, each of which contains five chapters. Episodes are introduced by short video segments that feature Public Enemy’s Chuck D as a host of an NBA Tonight-like show. He doesn’t have anything particularly riveting to say, but the segments are nicely produced and add a bit of realism to the mode.

Although the game’s six episodes have diverse themes, they don’t feel that different from one another. Most of the time you go up against other players one-on-one and try to beat them. Sure, dunks might be worth three points in a round, you may have to pull off a particular special move, or you might play to 21 instead of 11, but after a couple of chapters you realize there’s not much variety, or at least variety that matters. Even the media mogul chapter, where you’re vying for a spot in a soft drink commercial, isn’t interesting. You spend most of the chapter beating guys head-to-head and then the last chapter performing specific moves against LeBron James while the commercial is filmed. But this just ends up feeling like the rest of the game because the moves are presented in list form before the round (once you start playing, you can’t reference them again, either), you’re doing the same combos you’ve been doing for the last few hours.The “commercial” that plays when you’re done doesn’t even look like a commercial, nor does it feature the moves you performed while shooting it.

Most people don’t expect a great story or a lot of variety to the game modes when they play an arcade-style basketball game. They want the best players, over-the-top dunks, hard fouls, diverse court locales, as well as fast-paced, fun gameplay. Chosen One delivers most of these. There are more than 80 current NBA players as well as legends such as Wilt Chamberlain, Moses Malone, Daryl Dawkins, Dr. J, Larry Bird, Magic, Bill Russell, and more. The basketball courts are spread out among a number of interesting locations including an airplane hangar, a penthouse suite in Boston, the Chicago lakefront, a rooftop in Dubai, South Beach, and the mountains of China. Dunks are suitably outrageous. Even someone like Steve Nash can throw down some crazy dunks and pass the ball to someone standing courtside for a long-distance alley-oop. Toss in plenty of blocks, steals, and physical play, and you have a game that should be a lot of fun, at least on paper.

But NBA Ballers: Chosen One isn’t fun, and there are a number of reasons for this. To start with, the controls are much too complicated for this style of game. You can juke with the right analog stick or a face button, but you can also hold down any of the shoulder buttons to further modify your jukes, dunks, and alley-oops. Eventually you’ll learn all of the moves, but you’ll still have a difficult time performing them thanks to frequently unresponsive controls, especially when you’re forced to hold two shoulder buttons in conjunction with another button. Like in NBA Street you must perform flashy jukes and dunks to fill a meter. The twist here is that this meter serves to fill another meter, which, depending on how many levels are full, gives you a guaranteed steal, successful juke, made shot, block, or game-ending super dunk.

These super moves, particularly the game-ending super dunk, are so effective that you’ll spend most of your time trying to fill your meter with the game’s worst feature: act-a-fool combos. You begin an act-a-fool combo by holding a shoulder and face button together while standing near a player. Once the combo starts, button icons appear onscreen, and you must press them as quickly as possible. The defender can also try to press the buttons, and if they do so before you, the combo ends. The AI won’t stop you very often, though, and once the combo has ended after five moves, there’s usually an open path to a dunk, which will be worth five points thanks to the bonus points awarded from the combo. Not only do you get bonus points for the combo, but you fill your meter as well. It takes just three or four successful act-a-fool combos to fill the meter to the point that you can end the game with a super dunk. Playing the game this way is cheesy and boring, but you’re forced to do so because some of the challenges, like coming back from 20 points down with three minutes to go, and beating T-Mac in a game to 11 without letting him score, are absurdly difficult.

The problems don’t end there. For some reason there are fouls in the game, and though you aren’t penalized for the first four, when you get your fifth foul, the other player gets a foul shot that’s worth three points and they retain possession. The defensive fouls may be annoying, but they do serve to keep you honest. The fact that you can get called for charging is just plain annoying and has no place in this kind of basketball game. One particularly terrible game variation gets rid of the checked-ball rule, so you don’t have to take the ball back on a change of possession or after you score. The game devolves into both players standing under the basket trying to catch the ball as it goes through the net, and then immediately putting up a shot when they do catch the ball. It’s mind-numbingly stupid. Toss in inconsistent goaltending calls, repetitive cutscenes for super moves that often end with you facing away from the basket, and horrific clipping problems that see the ball go through the rim on dunks so that you don’t even know if you made them or not, and you’re left with a flashy-looking game that isn’t much fun.

NBA Ballers’ strongest aspect is its presentation. Even the menus are attractive. The cutscenes that introduce players like Kobe, Agent Zero, and LeBron look cool and inspire a sense of awe when they play before a big matchup. It’s a shame that big-name players like Shaq, Kidd, and Gasol, who were recently traded, aren’t on their current teams. Nevertheless, players look lifelike and have a swagger to them that only NBA players seem to have. There’s little variety to more routine actions like running, diving for the ball, and shooting from one player to the next, but there’s no shortage of great-looking dunk and juke animations. While the “normal” moves generally look great, the developer got carried away when it comes to the cutscenes for special moves. These noninteractive clips that play for every special move are repetitive and do nothing but interrupt the flow of the game. To make matters worse, there’s no way to turn them off.

Chosen One’s audio is surprisingly subdued. The soundtrack by Just Blaze stays mostly in the background and doesn’t stand out as particularly good or bad. In addition to hosting the TV show in the game, Chuck D also provides play-by-play. He gets a little repetitive, but he’s better than most of the announcers found in other street games. Plus, hearing him yell “They call him Mr. Beans!” when our player threw down a dunk never got old.

NBA Ballers: Chosen One deserves credit for trying to bring some new ideas to a genre that isn’t known for mixing things up. But while many of these ideas may have seemed good during the design phase, they don’t work in the context of the actual gameplay. There’s no reason to pick this one up, regardless of how bad you need a basketball fix–there are plenty of cheaper, better options available.

Rainbow Six Vegas 2 isn’t the best sequel ever made, but it’s still a great tactical shooter in its own right.

If the original Rainbow Six Vegas felt like the first night of a trip to Sin City, its recently released sequel feels like the second; a little worn, but still a lot of fun. There’s still a casino’s worth of content and the best gameplay this side of Caesar’s Palace. Plus, the introduction of a sprint button not only increases your speed, but also quickens the pace of the entire game. On the other hand, the cooperative play has been pared down a little and the expanded experience gains are about as glamorous as pillow mints–even if you are grateful for them. A third night of this might be too much to handle, but if you like to place bets with bullets at all, you’ll definitely want to put some money down on Rainbow Six Vegas 2.

Despite the name Tom Clancy in the title, the Rainbow Six games are hardly known for their ace storytelling skills. Having said that, the way the original Vegas ended on such a terrible cliffhanger ending, when all it really had to do was give you a reason to kick some terrorist butt, was especially disappointing. Fortunately, the campaign in Vegas 2 makes no such errors. You no longer play as Logan Keller. Instead, you hunt terror and save hostages as a custom character referred to as Bishop in the campaign. Although the specifics of the overarching story are pretty easy to lose track of, one thing is clear: There are terrorists and you have to get them before they get Vegas. However, there are a couple of great scenes in the campaign. For example, there is one where you’re supposed to meet up with a guy to find chemical weapons, only the terrorists meet up with him first. Because he’s wearing a communication device, you can hear the proceedings as you make your way through the level. First, the terrorist in charge rails angrily, then the guy pleads with him, then the terrorist rails some more, and then the guy starts screaming “NO, NO, not THAT!” Then there are no more words, just animal noises of pain, fear, and more than a little loathing. Other moments don’t seem quite as authentic, especially those that involve civilians. While it’s nice that they’re in the game, you’ll occasionally lose if you fail to prevent the terrorists from executing one of them. That’s just plain silly because it’s unlikely that a group of commandos would leave a bunch of terrorists and weapons behind because Hank the Hostage bit the dust. Also, it’s so easy to die in Vegas 2 that you really don’t need the extra “game over” screens.

Just like in the previous game, you play through each stage with your two not-so-trusty sidekicks. They’re like roulette wheels in the way they oscillate between deadly efficacy and utter helplessness, though the odds are actually stacked in favor of them doing the right thing. Their normally smart, super-effective behavior actually makes it even more striking when they get stuck behind the occasional box. The campaign isn’t very long, but it has its share of awesome firefights and is a good way to warm up for the online play.

Although many of the locales aren’t the first ones that would come to mind if someone asked you to imagine a shootout in Vegas, they are inventive, nonetheless. There are a few nondescript warehouses, generic loading docks, and lame industrial areas that could just as easily be in Rainbow Six Fresno. But, then, there’s also the theater level. This is a full-on replica of a decadent theater complete with stage, backstage, seats, and a balcony. The tricky thing about it is that one team has easy access to the balconies, while the other is pinned by the somewhat open stage. If a player from the latter group can make it across and exit stage left, hopefully with a close-range weapon like a shotgun, he can get all No Country for Old Men on the snipers watching the action below. How quickly the hunters become the hunted.

The best way to cross any open space in Vegas 2 is to sprint, and that can now be accomplished with the push of a button, which is similar to what you’ve done in nearly every shooter that’s come out since Gears of War. But unlike the reckless and half-blind dash in that game, Vegas 2’s version is easier to control. It’s also more versatile because you can sprint sideways, as well as forward. However, when you see a grenade rattle on the ground in front of you, you’ll wish you could also sprint backward (you can’t); realism be damned. Sprinting is a small, minor addition to a great big game like this, but it has a major impact on Vegas 2’s pace and gameplay. It’s obviously a good thing to be able to run a little faster when you’re trying to close in on a flash-blind enemy, and it goes with the shotgun like peanut butter goes with jelly. Sprinting around a corner while pulling the trigger on a shotgun blast before the gun is even half on the screen and catching your enemy with a mouthful of buckshot is one of the sweetest kills the series has seen. Less obvious and less gory is the overall effect on the pace of the play. Sprinting provides a welcome shot of adrenaline, especially online.

Speaking of the Internet, online play used to be the only place you could go to level up your soldier and unlock new gear, but that is no longer the case. You can now gain experience points, ranks, and equipment by playing through the offline content. And, it’s all universal. If you become a sergeant by playing the heck out of terrorist hunt campaign, you’ll still be a sergeant when you log onto your system’s network. The main perk here is that by playing through the single-player campaign first, you’ll enter online play with a few weapons and clothing-customization options already unlocked. This really doesn’t add anything to the game as much as it fixes a minor flaw with the original–you should have been able to gain experience points offline all along, although it didn’t matter to most players because the online content is such a huge part of the game. This meager expansion of the experience model is also noteworthy considering Call of Duty 4’s recent strides in the developmental department. When it comes to creating your character as you play, Vegas 2 has pretty meager cards.

Despite this, the options for online players have actually slimmed down a little when you compare the original with the sequel. Previously, four players used to be able to tackle the campaign cooperatively, but now, that number has been reduced to two. That may sound crazy and retroactive, but four players can still tackle terrorist hunt. And to the game’s credit, it’s easy to drop in or drop out of the two-player campaign. There is one co-op issue, though, that makes no sense: the fact that your two computer controlled companions are both controlled entirely by only one player. The other player feels like an awkward stepparent: You know you have good advice, but the kids just won’t listen to you. It’s clear that giving each player one minion would have wreaked havoc on the stacking and breaching system, but there are ways around this issue. If it were easy to transfer control of one or both minions between the two players, the tactical options would have been even broader, and both players would feel like they got to play with the nifty order giving.

The other new additions are multiplayer modes: team leader, total conquest, and demolition. Team leader is the most creative because it blends a VIP-style match with elimination play. As long as your VIP is alive, your guys can respawn at will. But once he drops, every death is final. Coming back after your leader has been assassinated is possible, but not probable. Total conquest isn’t a complete departure from the conquest mode featured in the original Vegas; now, you must hold three transmitters for 30 seconds. This is a fun, frantic mode because your objective is constantly changing between assault and defense. You always know where to go, and you usually have a good idea of where to find the enemy. Finally, demolition is a classic bombing mission where one side tries to blow up a target while the other tries to defend it.

Though that last mode is old school, the graphics are anything but. Though there are occasional instances of texture blurring and fill-in during frantic online play, there will also be times when you’ll get blasted by an unseen enemy because you were too busy admiring the walls. And what walls there are in the game. From the gritty, sweaty walls of Kill House to the deep red and dimly lit papering in the theater, Vegas 2’s walls are unmatched, except perhaps by BioShock’s. The characters look good too, especially when you’re shooting them. Blood spurts from bullet wounds, splattering nearby walls as the gun noises pound and the controller rumbles with approval. Well, the Xbox 360 one does, but more on that later. The music and sound effects are also excellent. The audio queues are as clear as they are life-saving, and the music is rousing. The track in theater is especially epic and unusually operatic for a military shooter.

Though there are differences between the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of Rainbow Six Vegas 2 that make the 360 version slimly preferable, both unequivocally capture the same excellent experience. The lack of rumble in the PS3 controller is still a drag. Also, it takes a little longer to find a good PS3 online game for three reasons: fewer people are playing, you can only see a match’s latency once you’ve joined, and you will randomly be unable to connect to certain servers. But the graphics are comparable and the gameplay is identical, so overall, the PS3 version is easy to recommend.

And that makes it better than most games because Rainbow Six Vegas 2 is the best tactical shooter on the market. It doesn’t gamble as much as it should and, instead, seems to take cover behind the formidable foundation established in the first game. But to its credit, Rainbow Six Vegas 2 does make one big gameplay tweak and provides another highly playable single-player campaign. It also provides a decent suite of cooperative options and more excellent online multiplayer. Though its experience system is now clearly behind the one found in Call of Duty 4, no game has a better control scheme or more satisfying tactical play. This ace belongs in every shooter’s hand.

It looks like Koei has finally exhausted Asia. The publisher best known for its takes on Chinese and Japanese history heads to Europe with Bladestorm: The Hundred Years’ War. The game is a look at the bloody conflict that spawned a few classic Shakespearean plays and the legend of Joan of Arc. This shift to the West doesn’t come without its problems, however. Although the number of troops that cross swords on battlefields is impressive and while the multigenre gameplay that blends action, strategy, and role playing holds at least the promise of innovation, way too much repetition mires the game in mediocrity.

Those expecting a French-English version of the Chinese carnage depicted in Koei’s Dynasty Warriors series will likely be disappointed. Instead of the all-action theme of that franchise, Bladestorm throws a changeup that mixes melee madness with commanding companies of soldiers that range from knights and archers to pikemen and cavalry. Although you take the role of a mercenary seeking fame and fortune while observing battlefields from the standard third-person perspective, you go after your goals by taking charge of troops or fighting as part of groups. There isn’t a great deal of strategy involved when playing general, however. All you have to do to take over troops is run up to the nearest company of allied soldiers and click a button. With one bellow, you’ve got a gang of pals willing to die for you. If only it was that easy in real life. Anyhow, the only difference between this approach and the typical solo actioner is that you have to make a brief pit stop to grab a bunch of guys to attack along with you, so you don’t just charge enemy positions solo.

This rudimentary control scheme leads to Bladestorm’s downfall in some ways. Commanding troops is so simplistic that you can just about forget that you’re not alone. Buddies in chain mail follow you automatically, attack the closest bad guys whenever you hold down the right trigger, and make shared actions en masse at the drop of a button. Every action is so precise that it can be rather comical to watch. It’s like you’re part of a chorus line of medieval knights, all swinging swords and firing arrows in unison. Also, because you’re just abstractly going into battle, you never get the direct, visceral satisfaction of pushing a button to drive a sword into an enemy’s head. Even though it can be sort of cool to hit the shared actions buttons and see everyone in your company attack with swords or lances simultaneously, it doesn’t have the immediacy of solo arcade fighting. You feel a step removed from the fray, which isn’t very satisfying. And because there isn’t much of a strategic component in battles to compensate for this odd distance between you and the action, you sort of get the worst of both worlds in that neither element seems to have been pulled off very well.

Battles themselves are also pretty straightforward in that they always seem to play out the same way. You just rampage across a generic French countryside in each mission, conquering one base after another until you reach the target settlement and take it out. There is little variety in your fighting, while battles are typically so loaded with troops and so chaotic that they come off like crazed mob scenes where you fight battles of attrition with little direct control over the outcome. You send your swarm of goons in against the enemy swarm of goons and then hit the shared action attack buttons every time that they regenerate. If your health drops perilously low, you pull back to the nearest allied base to heal up and grab a fresh company of troops, then head back to the front lines. Conquering enemy bases is somewhat satisfying because of the appearance of named enemies and commanders that add a personal element to all the mass carnage. However, even then, you’re not taking on these foes in direct combat, so your level of fulfillment that comes from killing them is limited.

And for a game that attempts to depict some of the reality of fighting with huge numbers of troops, everything is awfully arcade-ish. Battles wrap at nightfall every day no matter what’s taking place when the counter runs down to zero and the sun sets. You can be right on the verge of taking an enemy stronghold, have dozens of troops inside the walls, and then have to do the whole thing all over again the next day simply because it got dark. Aside from the annoying repetition that this forces, it just seems dumb, as if you’re calling battles like ballgames on account of rain. Artificial intelligence is also anything but realistic. Enemies seem so reluctant to attack that they usually just sit back until you slam into them head-on. The only thing you really have to worry about is the high number of enemies. Sheer weight of numbers almost always rules the day, so you don’t have to concern yourself unduly with smart attacks or even the rock-paper-scissors formula that governs how units battle one another.

A little depth between battles makes Bladestorm somewhat more interesting. You spend time preparing to take the field in a tavern, where the barkeep offers you contracts for upcoming battles. You also upgrade books covering different types of troops (organized by weapons used), buy equipment, purchase units and strength-buffing pennants for instant deployment in battles later on, or get the latest gossip from fellow barflies. Being able to custom outfit the types of troops available to command and their battle skills through books is actually pretty interesting. It makes you feel like you’re really learning your mercenary craft and all of the personal equipment gives you the sense of actually controlling an alter ego. But these abilities aren’t all that obvious in battles. Sure, it’s great to buff the tackle skill of sword-wielding infantry. Yet all this really does is up the damage dealt out, so you don’t see any obvious difference in how the game plays. And even though a story is told as you lay waste to medieval France, there is no rhyme or reason to your actions. Although you’ll make it through the campaign quicker by sticking to one side, you can jump ship for whomever is offering the most money whenever you want, which eliminates strategic considerations when planning moves. Why bother thinking when the battles all play out the same way and there are no repercussions for swapping sides?

Frills are nonexistent in both the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of the game. Neither offers up any multiplayer modes of play. Both are pretty much equally bad when it comes to video and audio quality. Graphics have been dialed back too close to original Xbox levels possibly because of the large numbers of troops onscreen simultaneously. So the game moves quite well on both platforms but isn’t much to look at on either. Visual design isn’t spectacular either largely because of a flat color palette that makes it tough to tell different types of troops apart and to read the minimap (which is also too tiny to use properly even on a 54″ HDTV). Audio effects are of similar quality, with lots of tinny bombast involving swords smashing together and horses galloping. The only major difference between the two platforms seemed to be stability; the 360 game locked up on a number of occasions while the PS3 game ran without a hitch.

Even with such a solid, action-first squad-combat idea, Bladestorm comes off as only half-finished. Both the new gameplay concepts and the European setting need to be fleshed out more to really pick up on the promise shown here.

Pain is a fine example of what can be done with the Havok physics engine, some destructive urges, and little else. It twists its basic principle of using a fleshy crash-test dummy as slingshot ammo into several compelling single- and multiplayer modes, all of which tap into the same primal urges that make watching a car crash or popping bubble wrap so compelling. It’s not a terribly intellectual game, and apart from the Rube Goldberg punishment routines you can put your puppet through, it’s never very complicated; but damn if it doesn’t make for some misanthropic fun.

The underlying mechanic in Pain has you loading up a guy into a guy-sized slingshot then launching him into the world, usually with the intent of inflicting as much pain on both your character and the world around him. You can adjust the angle and power of the shot before you launch. Once you’re in the air, you’ve also got a pretty significant amount of drift control over your trajectory. Holding one of the face buttons as you sail through the air will make your guy stretch his hand out in one of four directions, allowing him to grab onto objects in the environment. Holding one of the face buttons in conjunction with either the L1 or L2 buttons will cause your guy to strike one of a number of generally stupid poses, which can earn you bonus points, allow you access to hard-to-reach spots on the map, or just make it easier to inflict specific types of damage to your character’s anatomy.

Once your guy makes contact with any part of the environment, he turns into a floppy, Havok-powered rag doll, though you can still nudge him in different directions with “ooch,” an ability that will refill at regular intervals as long as your guy is still in motion. There’s also super-ooch, a more potent, single-use version of ooch, which you can charge up by shaking the Sixaxis vigorously. In addition to being fun to say, ooch is a critical factor in getting the most out of each launch, and judicious use of ooch can make a single launch last for several minutes. Ooch can be kind of finicky as well, and you need to use it as soon as you earn it. As we found from our experience, a full ooch meter can randomly disappear at a moment’s notice. As long and detailed as the game’s mandatory tutorial is, the inner workings of ooch remain somewhat mysterious.

Pain builds a number of modes around these mechanics, and they all deliver different takes on the same basic “throw guy at stuff” premise. Paindemonium is a basic sandbox mode where your only concrete objective is to rack up as many points as possible. And, really, half the fun of Pain is figuring out different ways to hurt your guy and break stuff. The mime toss mode is more focused, requiring you to launch your guy toward a mime that’s suspended in midair, grab him, and then hurl him through a bunch of panes of glass. Your goal here is to break all the glass as quickly as possible, with as few throws as possible, and the complexity of the various, unpredictable physical forces you’re dealing with can make this a serious challenge. Spank the monkey has you targeting football-loving monkeys as they appear in different locations on the map. It gets a little bit tricky when the game starts challenging you to take down multiple monkeys at once, but it’s still kind of shallow and probably the least compelling of the single-player modes.

On the multiplayer side, you’ve got three different modes from which to choose. There’s horse, which goes by the basic rules of its basketball namesake, though without the basketballs. After the first player launches, the next player has to make contact with one of the items that the first player did while also beating his or her score. Bowling is a two-player game that has you launching your guy at a standard 10-pin setup, though the fun twist here is that the other player can trigger various explosives during your turn and a well-timed telephone booth flying at your face can turn a strike into a gutter ball real quick. The fun-with-explosives mode litters the level with explosive crates, and each player tries to bounce off more of these crates than the last. The multiplayer modes, especially bowling, really amplify what’s great about Pain, which makes the fact that there’s no online play kind of a downer.

As great as the Havok physics engine is at simulating impact, velocity, momentum, and the relative value of Pi, or whatever, there are still times when it seems like you lose speed more quickly than you should. The camera can also be frustrating at times, occasionally changing perspective at inopportune moments or simply getting stuck on the other side of a solid object. The biggest complaint to be lodged against Pain, though, is that for the current $9.99 asking price, it feels a little lean.

You’ve got your default guy Jarvis, plus a second unlockable character, and you’ve got one level in which you can unlock a second configuration. Jarvis fills his role of masochistic stuntman enthusiastically, and he’s got plenty of alternately stupid, agony-induced things to shout. The downtown level that comes with Pain is dense with explosive and destructible objects that you can bounce your guy off of, with no shortage of great nooks and crannies to explore. It’s a decent-looking level, jammed with small visual jokes and oblique references to such movies as Fletch and Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise, though it’s apparent that the physics require more of the PlayStation 3’s muscle than the presentation.

Still, the volume of content you get can make it feel like you’re just playing a demo at times. It’s already apparent that Sony intends to flesh the package out over time with premium downloadable content, and as eager as we are for more Pain levels, we could’ve used more stuff from the start. Pain is almost more of a toy than a proper game, but it’s a really good one.

The Golden Compass for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 owes a lot to 2005’s The Chronicles of Narnia. Like Narnia, it is a game based on a film based on a fantasy novel, and it even goes so far as to summarily lift hunks of gameplay directly from the earlier title. Yet for some reason, the designers picked all of the bad stuff while leaving behind the good. The result is a muddled mishmash of gameplay ideas that lacks focus and certainly lacks any sense of fun.

If you aren’t familiar with the accompanying film, or the Philip Pullman novel on which it’s based, you will probably be rather confused by the game. As Lyra Belacqua, you seek to save your friend Roger from the grasp of evil folkloric kidnappers known as Gobblers. Lyra is accompanied by her daemon Pantalaimon (or Pan, for short), who is the physical embodiment of Lyra’s soul, and she is occasionally joined by a hulking armored polar bear named Iorek. Lyra also possesses an instrument called an alethiometer–the golden compass of the title–which can answer any question that she asks it. You’ll figure out what’s going on in bits and pieces and with the help of short clips from the Golden Compass film. Yet you’ll likely never care about Lyra or her companions, and important chunks of exposition are completely glossed over, leaving you wondering what’s going on or why you should care.

Gameplay is a mess. There are a lot of ideas at work here, but none of them pan out all that well. First up: exploration. You spend a lot of time roaming about doing busywork, particularly in an insanely long and boring sequence on the Gyptian vessel. The highlight during this level is–get ready for it–mopping the deck. In other levels, these tasks may have you hiding under furniture or throwing snowballs, but none of them are interesting, and they are generally sliced up by cutscenes and other gameplay mechanics.

Platforming ushers in more mediocrity. Granted, there are some nice ideas here. Lyra can use Pan as a grappling hook and latch on to poles for simplified Prince of Persia-inspired swinging, and the duo can glide for short distances. There are also beams to keep your balance on as you cross, though these moments seem to take forever, since Lyra walks across them so slowly. The controls are super-loose, which is deadly on the dock level–one of the dumbest platforming sequences ever dreamed up. Not only do the slippery controls make Lyra a pain to maneuver, but you can’t manually control the camera, which makes it impossible to judge distance. Even worse, the camera has a tendency to move on its own in the middle of jumps and balancing acts. Expect to reload this level countless times, while cursing the designer who created it.

The Golden Compass relies heavily on timed button sequences, already one of the most overused mechanics in modern-day games. Attacked by a giant bee? Press some buttons in the right order. Need to push over an ice bridge? Press some more. Even some boss fights are won in this manner. There is some action buried in here, though it’s found mostly in the game’s first and final levels. Playing as Iorek, you’ll paw through three types of enemies: witches, Tartars, and wolves. Once you build up enough rage by using standard melee attacks, you can pound the ground to do extra damage. You can also hold two buttons down to grab an enemy and fling it around, but for the most part, you can defeat this tiny assortment of foes by mashing a single button. Some levels are capped by boss fights, which aren’t hard, but thanks to the lack of player camera control and the shoddy hit detection, they’re plenty annoying.

There are still more elements at play. Sometimes Lyra will try to deceive other characters, which requires you to perform a set of minigames. Some of these games function properly, at least, such as one where you push the left analog stick in a whack-a-mole variant. Others are simply terrible and are so poorly explained that you may have no clue how the minigames even work the first few times they appear. There’s also the matter of the golden compass itself. Lyra can ask it questions, and the accompanying minigame consists of keeping a reticle centered on the compass with the left analog stick while executing (you guessed it!) another timed button-pressing sequence.

Even the visuals can’t capture the fantasy magic of the film or novels. Animations and environments are crude, textures are muddy, and there is absolutely no imagination to be found in the bland art design. There are also some weird graphical bugs, such as blinking polygons and pixelated seams. Sound fares no better. The musical score is fine, if unmemorable, but most sound effects are either embarrassingly clunky or missing entirely. The voice acting is serviceable, but there are times when the same character will talk over his or her own dialogue.

Initially, the wide variety of gameplay elements make it seem like there’s going to be a lot to do in The Golden Compass. Unfortunately, most of these facets are too repetitive, too frustrating, or too boring to keep anyone’s interest, young or old. So, perhaps unsurprisingly, the game is just the latest in a string of movie tie-ins that sacrifice good gameplay for the sake of a quick buck.

Game compilations are usually dry and dusty affairs. Most are either a collection of “classic” games that were new 10 or 20 years ago or a repackaging of two- or three-year-old games with all of their expansions. In general, they’re usually nothing to get excited about. So trust Valve to completely redefine this category with the weirdly named The Orange Box. This is a package that has something for almost everybody, including one of the greatest shooters ever made and some of the best new and original content of the year.

The Orange Box is essentially five separate games: Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode One, Half-Life 2: Episode Two, the puzzle game Portal, and the colorful multiplayer action game Team Fortress 2. Half-Life 2 and Episode One are older games that were originally released for the PC in 2004 and 2006, respectively. Episode Two, Portal, and Team Fortress 2 represent entirely new content that debuted with The Orange Box. The PlayStation 3 version of The Orange Box is identical in content to the recent Xbox 360 and PC versions of the game. For a detailed rundown of what that content includes, you should refer to our Xbox 360 review.

With that said, the PlayStation 3 version of the game doesn’t perform nearly as well as its Xbox 360 and PC counterparts. There is a noticeable problem with the PS3’s frame rate at times. The frame rate hiccups are inexplicable because they can occur when almost nothing is happening onscreen or when you’re in the midst of a big battle. It’s not a huge gameplay issue, but it is very noticeable and a significant irritation. In addition, the PS3’s loading times are longer than the Xbox 360’s, and they’re frequent enough to be noticeable, especially if you make a habit of dying and restarting.

Frame rate and loading issues aside, the content in The Orange Box for the PS3 is as good as the content in the superb Xbox 360 version. This is definitely a must-have game for the platform that will provide countless hours of single- and multiplayer action. It might not be the definitive version of The Orange Box, but it still represents one of the greatest values in gaming history.

What’s old is always new in college basketball, a sport that has respected and honored its past for decades. That goes for college basketball video games, too. Although classic teams are nothing new for college games, this year’s NCAA March Madness 08 from EA Sports is taking a look backward with its ranking of the top 50 college players of all time. Now, any list like this is going to be fertile territory for argument, so after we’ve given you a chance to check out the list for yourself, GameSpot’s Brian Ekberg and Aaron Thomas, along with SportsGamer’s Shanker Srinivasan, will give their thoughts on EA’s list of the best college basketball players of all time.

The Top 50 Players (name — school — overall rating)

1. Michael Jordan — North Carolina — 96
2. Kevin Durant — Texas — 94
3. Earvin Johnson — Michigan State — 94
4. Clyde Drexler — Houston — 92
5. Larry Bird — Indiana State — 92
6. Steve Nash — Santa Clara — 91
7. Kenny Anderson — Georgia Tech — 89
8. Chris Bosh — Georgia Tech — 89
9. Richard Hamilton — Connecticut — 89
10. Jamal Mashburn — Kentucky — 89
11. Jason Terry — Arizona — 89
12. Reggie Williams — Georgetown — 89
13. Ray Allen — Connecticut — 88
14. Carmelo Anthony — Syracuse — 88
15. Butch Beard — Louisville — 88
16. Travis Best — Georgia Tech — 88
17. Mike Bibby — Arizona — 88
18. Junior Bridgeman — Louisville — 88
19. Caron Butler — Connecticut — 88
20. Mike Dunleavy — Duke — 88
21. Ben Gordon — Connecticut — 88
22. Chris Jackson — LSU — 88
23. Kevin Jackson — California — 88
24. Jason Kidd — California — 88
25. Christian Laettner — Duke — 88     26. Randy Livingston — LSU — 88
27. Kenyon Martin — Cincinnati — 88
28. Rashad McCants — North Carolina — 88
29. Laron Profit — Maryland — 88
30. Oscar Robertson — Cincinnati — 88
31. Jerry Stackhouse — North Carolina — 88
32. Charlie Tyra — Louisville — 88
33. John Wallace — Syracuse — 88
34. Derek Anderson — Kentucky — 87
35. Keith Bogans — Kentucky — 87
36. Sean Elliott — Arizona — 87
37. Brian Evans — Indiana — 87
38. Art Heyman — Duke — 87
39. Larry Johnson — UNLV — 87
40. DeMarr Johnson — Cincinnati — 87
41. Pete Maravich — LSU — 87
42. Stephon Marbury — Georgia Tech — 87
43. Ron Mercer — Kentucky — 87
44. Andrew Miller — Utah — 87
45. Chris Mills — Arizona — 87
46. Joakim Noah — Florida — 87
47. Ed O’Bannon — UCLA — 87
48. Glen Rice — Michigan — 87
49. Cliff Robertson — Connecticut — 87
50. Dennis Scott — Georgia Tech — 87

Our Take on the List

Brian: First things first, let’s talk about Kevin Durant in the number two position. Now, I know KD has got some major marketing juice right now as the cover star of March Madness, but sticking him ahead of Magic Johnson and Larry Bird makes about as much sense as trusting that Greg Oden’s knee was going to make it into the regular season. Remind me, guys, did Durant win anything at Texas? Yes, he was a collegiate scoring machine, but compared to a guy like Joakim Noah–who led his team to a national championship, then came back and repeated the feat–Durant just doesn’t stack up. Does he deserve a place on the list? Perhaps. Is he the number two? No way. EA should have kicked the marketing guys out of the room when this list was being dreamed up.

Another thing that pops out at me is the preponderance of LSU players on that list, trailing only Kentucky in terms of SEC talent making this list. Chris Jackson (before he changed his name to Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf), Randy Livingston, “Pistol” Pete Maravich… No doubt about it, the Bayou Bengals really are a hotbed of college talent. That being said, how can you talk about LSU basketball without mentioning Shaquille O’Neal, who tore up the SEC in the early ’90s? Could Shaq-Daddy’s tenure on the cover of the NBA 2K series have played into things here?

And hey, one more thing, while we’re talking about curious absences: Why isn’t Auburn’s Charles Barkley on this list? I know my Tigers aren’t known for their hoops chops, but you’ve got to give Sir Charles some respect.

Aaron: I know this game has the word “madness” in the title, but I didn’t think it was in reference to player rankings. Brian already weighed in on the madness behind Kevin Durant’s number two ranking, but I had to mention it. That’s crazy, yo. There are other things that stuck out to me, both good and bad. I was surprised that Mike Dunleavy was ranked higher than Christian Laettner. People forget what a great college player Laettner was because he didn’t exactly set the world on fire in the NBA. If you’re good enough to be the only college athlete named to the first Dream Team, I think you deserve to be ranked higher than Mike Dunleavy. While we’re talking about Duke, where’s Grant Hill? We’ve got Ed O’Bannon on here, but not Grant Hill? Another notable omission was Allen Iverson. When he wasn’t going to jail for throwing chairs in a bowling alley, he was a heck of a player at Georgetown. Don’t get me started on why Bill Walton, Lew Alcindor, Ralph Sampson, Len Bias, and David Robinson aren’t on the list.

That’s not to say this list is all bad. I question Magic and Bird not being two and three, respectively, but you could do worse than having Clyde the Glide in there. Just reading the top 50 has brought back a ton of memories from college tournaments I watched. I remember Larry Johnson and the seemingly unstoppable Running Rebels running headfirst into a Duke team that didn’t get the memo that they were supposed to lose by 30 points like they did the year before. Then there was Jason Kidd (still with braces, if I remember correctly) running rampant through the tournament and knocking off the Blue Devils in 1993. And while I think his number 14 ranking is too high, Carmelo Anthony did have one heck of a year in his one year at Syracuse.

Shanker: This list is obviously skewed toward current athletes and those who had great NBA careers. Well, sort of. Where is Lew Alcindor (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar)?! His UCLA team lost only two games total in his three-year stint as a Bruin. The guy has never lost a tournament game, and he was tournament MVP all three years. If winning championships carries any weight at all on this list, Kareem needs to be number one, because he won three. Next, David Thompson is not on the list. He led NC State to a 57-1 mark and an NCAA championship in two seasons. How can these two not be on any meaningful list of all-time college greats?

If statistics are the governing factor here, “Pistol” Pete Maravich and Oscar Robertson need to be in the top five. Maravich averaged more than 44 points per game during his three years at LSU. No one even comes close to that mark. Oscar Robertson put up nearly 34 points per game and more than 15 rebounds.

I don’t have a problem with MJ topping the list because it’s at least understandable. I just want to know what possible benchmark EA is using that could result in Kevin Durant being number two. In what way was his NCAA career even memorable?

Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground gets most of the Tony Hawk formula down, but the parts that stray from that formula are the parts that don’t work out so well.

Not many franchises can say that they single-handedly launched a genre, but that’s exactly what Neversoft’s Tony Hawk series did back in 1999. Annual sequels have come ever since, some of which have made major changes to the skateboarding formula, while other have made minor adjustments. This year’s game, Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground, starts with last year’s game as a basic formula, but shuffles around the goal structure and game progression. It’s the same solid skating base that the series has had all along, but a smattering of frustrating goals that feel like they’re broken and a heavier focus on using a bad level editor to place objects into the world gets in the way and drags the entire experience down with it.

Though past Hawk games have tried to bring all of its skating together using a story, Proving Ground compartmentalizes its story by breaking it up into three distinct “lifestyles.” You’ve got the career path, where pro skaters like Arto Saari take you around and shoot skate videos with you. Then there’s the hardcore path, where guys like Mike Vallely and Dustin Dollin teach you the fine arts of wearing jean jackets and how to properly knock over pedestrians. Lastly there’s the “rigger” path, where guys like Jeff King and Daewon Song turn Proving Ground into a puzzle game and have you place or modify pieces around the environment and rig up some new trick lines. On top of all that, there are plenty of other nondenominational chalk challenge goals, where you’ll see marks around the world that ask you to grind, manual, wallride, or leap from one mark to the next. Most of the goals can be completed in three ways for three different difficulties, ranging once again from amateur to sick.

From the three lifestyles, things are even further broken down into episodes, which usually focus on one specific skater giving you a handful of different goals. Bob Burnquist’s set of goals has you learning some new tricks, then taking on competition skating. Bam Margera’s goals focus more on climbing than on actual skating, though you’ll still have to skate around a bit to interrupt the filming of his TV show. Lance Mountain shows up to show you how to carve bowls and slash grind, two of the game’s new control additions. When you complete all of the episodes in one lifestyle, an “uber” challenge appears. Tying all of this together is a meter that fills up as you complete goals, and each time it’s full, your career advances, netting you a shoe sponsor, a signature board, your own skate video, and so on. You’ll eventually become successful enough to form a skate team, and this in turn unlocks a new challenge. When you beat that–a fairly trivial set of tasks in the grand scheme of things–the credits roll with no grand finale. It’s possible to claim that you “finished” Proving Ground with something like a 40 percent completion ranking, something that will probably take most Tony Hawk veterans something like six hours to accomplish. Obviously, there’s more to do and see, like classic mode, high score runs, and a new dot-eating goal type called Hawk-Man, though the quality of the goals is spotty.

The focus on rigging as a lifestyle means that a large chunk of the action is devoted to you using a little world editor, where you can place your own rails, ramps, and other objects. This editor is pretty bad, though, so it can be super frustrating to use. Furthermore, the goals that require you to place your own objects usually aren’t much fun, because it’s stuff like creating long sets of rails to move you from one checkpoint to the next without touching the ground. What’s worse is that other photo goals also use this editor to let you plop a camera down wherever you think it will do the most good. It can be hard to determine if the camera’s in the right spot. Camera goals have another problem–you actually have to take the photo yourself. Once you skate into frame, the action slows down, effectively throwing off your timing if you’re trying to land a trick at the same time. Then, while all of that is going on, you need to push in the right stick to take the picture. This leads to a whole lot of frustrating hand twisting. We also encountered at least one goal where it felt like no matter where the camera was placed, it couldn’t be placed low enough to actually trigger the slow-motion photo-taking sequence while doing a required grind.