Scenery Villa

• Opportunities for perverse mayhem.

Almost 15 years ago Postal was released on the PC, giving players a chance to go on a virtual murder spree and setting off a wave of outrage from concerned parties. A few sequels and expansion packs later, Postal III has arrived with a fresh new slate of gory gameplay and gross-out humor. Though the ragged limb dismemberment delivers on the gore front, the game falls short in every other respect. Stilted controls, terrible AI, and poor level design make playing Postal III a chore, while an utter lack of wit or cleverness causes the humor to fall flat. When you add in a suite of disruptive and game-crashing bugs, you’ve got one dismal download.

Postal III begins with a lengthy cutscene chronicling Postal Dude’s sordid past, which involves a whole lot of violence and strange characters. None of it is necessary to follow the plot of Postal III, which is just a long string of bizarre exploits motivated by Dude’s need to get paid or get out of bad situations. Your first two jobs offer a glimpse of the vulgarity and irreverence to come. First, you must vacuum up soiled tissues from a porn video arcade and shoot them at protesting hockey moms who have invaded the store under the leadership of a Sarah Palin look-a-like. If you hit one with enough dirty rags, she will vomit profusely and then leave the store. Success! The store owner/mayor/presidential candidate/human slave trafficker (played by porn legend Ron Jeremy) declines to pay you, so it’s out on to the street where you get a gig rounding up murderous cats. These feral felines are infected with AIDS and are therefore driven to maul human beings. They are also the primary meat supply for a local Mexican/sushi restaurant, so soon, you are beset by machete-wielding, gun-toting Asians in aprons and conical hats.

The cutscenes help chain these bizarre scenarios together (narrated in bored tones by Postal Dude), but the whole game continues in this scattershot manner. The disjointed flow creates the feeling that Postal III is the result of an attempt to brainstorm a bunch of wacky and offensive scenarios and then stitch them together into a game. The rogue’s gallery comprises tired stereotypes, including bungling police officers, gay cowboys, dirty hippies, obsessive nerds, angry moms, cranky Asians, and belligerent Taliban. Each group either plays its stereotype straight (nerds demand rare action figures!) or does the opposite of what you’d expect it to do (Taliban does business with American fast food joint!), but neither option is ever funny. Postal III aims for some “I can’t believe they said that!” shock, but the things they are saying became cliche years ago, and relentless repetition encourages you to tune out most of the chatter. Without a spark of wit, a clever twist, or a sense of comic timing, the writing and dialogue in Postal III remains depressingly humorless.

The perfect crime.

Laughs you do get from the game will likely come from the action itself, but it might take you a while to get there. After the intro cutscene, you begin with a tutorial sequence on a zombie-infested bridge. This acquaints you with the basic movement and shooting mechanics, which are fine if you are using a gun in an open area. If you maneuver around environmental elements, though, you’re likely to get hung up on corners or uneven terrain. And if you try to melee attack an enemy, your swings might miss despite being directly on target. Throwing a grenade is straightforward, but pouring gasoline onto enemies and lighting them on fire is finicky and inconsistent. Postal III is shaky on the basics, which gives rise to countless frustrations and awkward situations as you progress.

Once you’ve come to grips with the stilted gameplay, it’s time to learn the limitations of the AI. Allies and enemies behave similarly; they meander unevenly around the conflict zone, stopping to shoot the nearest enemy or simply standing around while the fight rages around them. A single headshot from any gun decapitates your foe instantly, so it’s possible to run through dozens of foes with point-and-click ease. But playing as a straight shooter is dull, so you may want to experiment with your large arsenal to spice up things. Molotov cocktails, psychotic cats, a pepper spray flamethrower, and a fart gun are just some of the options, but the more creative you try to get, the more likely it is that you suffer an untimely death. Accidentally killing an ally will double your enemies instantly, and setting yourself on fire is practically a death sentence until you realize that peeing straight up into the sky will save you.

Ah yes, peeing. Once again, you can unzip your fly and pee on anything at any time. This kind of vulgar mayhem has some mischievous appeal, but it soon gets old as you become preoccupied with the numerous deficiencies that block your progress. After enduring some frustration and being bombarded with unfunny dialogue, however, you might find yourself with a bit of a grudge toward the game. At this point, you can take your anger (or any spare anger you have lying around) and perhaps find an outlet in the dark reaches of Postal III.

If you’re not careful, your feline ammunition will turn on you.

The vigorous dismemberment mechanic allows you to sever heads and limbs, leaving ugly, ragged wounds that spurt blood. Shredding a body on the ground and then throwing the bloodied appendages at passersby offers a certain perverse appeal, as does the subtler mischief of peeing into a policeman’s computer fan. Killing a dog with a badger may not be something you discuss in polite company, but it’s less creepy than knocking pedestrians out with your Taser (be sure to hold the trigger until they’re unconscious), drenching their bodies in gasoline, and then standing over them with a lit match. Even the game’s bugs create amusing situations from time to time, notably when you shoot someone with a previously vacuumed turd and it hangs in midair, radiating poop waves like a small fecal star.

Though you can get some depraved enjoyment and mild catharsis out of such villainy, it is small consolation for the aggravations you must endure while playing Postal III. On top of the defective gameplay and barely functional AI (which makes the few escort missions excruciatingly bad), this is an ugly and unstable game. Homely character models, rough textures, and ungainly animations paired with visual bugs and intermittent crashes add technical deficiency to the long list of flaws. Although there’s an alternate ending for going the peaceful route, there’s too much wrong with Postal III to make it worth playing even once.

• Some striking visual elements.

What is it that makes adventuring in the worlds of massively multiplayer online role-playing games so appealing? Much of the allure comes from creating heroes and watching them get progressively more powerful as you do things like acquire hard-earned gear and improve the skills of your characters. But without heroic quests and exciting adventures for your characters to undertake, all of those weapons and skills seem pointless. This is the biggest problem with War of the Immortals, the latest in Perfect World’s stable of free-to-play MMOGs–your characters can get all dressed up in spiffy and spectacular armor, but they have nowhere interesting to go.

It’s not that the realm of Motenia, where War of the Immortals takes place, has no sense of imagination. If anything, it is a wild hodgepodge of elements that shows a lack of focus and restraint rather than a lack of creativity. It is a world endangered by the ages-old struggle between the gods Odin and Loki. And as you talk to non-player characters and read the automatically compiled chronicle of your adventures, it seems to take its lore seriously. But this reverent tone doesn’t mesh with the game’s ubiquitous sillier elements, like the international assortment of beautiful women in the central city of Atlantis, representing countries like Brazil, South Africa, and Sweden; the fact that you can buy bizarre outfits, such as British schoolboy or schoolgirl costumes for your characters; and the presence of some zany pets, such as kangaroos sporting sunglasses. The overall tone is whimsical but inconsistent; if you’re looking for an online world you can believe in, look elsewhere.

Your adventures in Motenia begin with the creation of a character. You first choose from one of eight classes, and your choice is made more difficult by the fact that the character-creation screen provides no information on the skills, strengths, and weaknesses of those classes. You might be able to infer a little something from class names like magus, champion, and enchantress, but for detailed descriptions that clarify exactly how a duelist is different from a slayer, you need to refer to the game’s website. Ultimately, your choice of class in War of the Immortals isn’t nearly as impactful as in many other MMOGs. You gain a few new abilities from time to time as you level up, but there are no branching skill paths here or opportunities for the kinds of specialization you may have come to expect from games in the genre.

War of the Immortals also hamstrings your ability to improve your existing skills. To raise a skill to the next rank, skill trainers require payment in both experience points and in coins. The payment of experience points means it will take you that much longer to reach the next level; the payment in coins is likely to exhaust your supply long before you can improve all of the skills that are currently available. Of course, this problem is easily remedied with the purchase of certain items in the game’s ZEN marketplace. ZEN is the currency you can acquire in the game in exchange for real money, with 1,000 ZEN running you $10. (If you spend more money, you can get bonus ZEN; at $50, you get 5,300 ZEN.) Strictly speaking, you don’t need to purchase ZEN to climb the ranks in War of the Immortals, but it makes your growth much quicker and more pleasant.

Sunglasses Kangaroo is poised to be the biggest internet sensation since Keyboard Cat.

You can purchase items that grant you huge quantities of coins, so you never need to worry about not being able to afford that skill training. You can also acquire health potions, which aren’t sold for coins by any NPC; they can only be crafted by players who choose alchemy as their crafting skill or purchased from the ZEN marketplace. And should you die, a modest amount of ZEN lets you perform a “perfect revive,” resurrecting you instantly in the spot where you fell with your health fully restored and able to carry on the fight. Without a perfect revive (or a nearby player who can resurrect you), you are transported to the graveyard, from which you must make your way back to where you were if you wish to resume your quest. How much or how little ZEN a player might spend can vary wildly. Packs of health potions might run you 400 or 500 ZEN. The best gems on the marketplace, which can be embedded into your equipment to significantly improve its power, often go for 1,250 ZEN a pop. And a specific mount is currently selling for a whopping 15,000 ZEN.

• Challenging platforming for all skill levels
• Entrancing soundtrack
• Tons of stages to unlock
• Leaderboards let you watch others’ replays.

Dust and grime surround us. Every day, they collect atop coffee tables and in forgotten kitchen corners, but no more. In Dustforce, it’s time to fight back. Filth falls before four acrobatic janitors–each equal parts ninja and handyman. Their world is built on speed and has you building momentum while sweeping away patches of leaves and battling waste-covered foes. It’s up to you to determine how these chores piece together to earn the best score, and when you do, it’s immensely satisfying.

There is a unique economy of movement in Dustforce that must be mastered to succeed. Running and jumping are simple. It’s when you start zipping around in midair that things get tricky. For instance, most characters can either double jump or dash while in the air. That is, unless you defeat an enemy while airborne. Then you can either dash again or make a third jump. And once you touch the ground, the whole system resets. If this sounds confusing, don’t worry; the game eases you into this system through a comprehensive tutorial stage and several basic early stages.

At the end of each stage, you’re graded on completion, finesse (a blanket term that factors in your combo meter, whether you defeated all enemies and the like), and speed. If you perform well enough, you earn keys that unlock doors leading to more challenging stages. Each stage also has two unique leaderboards: one for overall score and another for time. However, the best feature is the replay support for each entry on the leaderboards. These can offer insight into surmounting the tougher stages. They also offer plenty of “That doesn’t look so hard” moments and feed into the game’s already addictive nature.

Compared to other 2D platformers, such as the masterful Super Meat Boy, Dustforce feels slower and heavier. This weight stems from the extra layers of complexity afforded by the game’s movement and combat. For combat, each character has a light and heavy attack. By chaining light attacks together you can propel your character through the air while striking an enemy. Hitting a foe with a single, heavy attack is faster; however, this leaves behind a patch of filth for you to clean up. Everything–from cleaning to combat–feeds into your combo meter. Once full, this meter can be used to unleash a screen-clearing attack. Using these elements together makes the stages feel like puzzles. You’re constantly experimenting with different combinations of dashing, attacking, and jumping to find the fastest route.

A level editor is advertised as ‘coming soon’ in the game.

Dustforce is supported by outstanding audio and visual design. The music feels especially fitting: a calming, trancelike soundtrack that is akin toinMomentum and Mirror’s Edge. The music has the added psychological effect of calming you down when you hit attempt 50 on the same level, and its subtle nature prevents it from becoming grating after listening to it for long stretches. The visuals are just as rich. Each of the game’s four settings has its own style and is rendered using a soft, pastel color palette that complements the soothing tone set by the score.

This harmony is interrupted by a lack of explanation of some basic features. The two most striking examples of this have to do with the differences among the four playable characters and the game’s multiplayer. Of the four playable characters, the blue character with the broom appears to be the most well-rounded one, while the purple character with the feather dusters is quicker but can’t jump as high. This lack of information only serves as a detriment to the game and adds unnecessary confusion.

The multiplayer mode is even more baffling. This local-only mode supports up to four players in a king-of-the-hill type of match. This is not explained, and when you first load it up, chances are you won’t know what to do. Thus far, the game has taught you to clean up everything in sight as quickly as you can. In this mode, some players play as the four cleaners, while the others play as their messy counterparts: spreading dust, leaves, and the like across the map. Therefore, your first instinct is to clean and fight until one side dominates the screen (which is almost impossible). Gradually, it becomes obvious that cleaning and fighting are not the focus of this multiplayer mode–and unless you have a keen eye, chances are you won’t know what to do next.

Being able to disable checkpoints is a welcome feature when aiming for the fastest time.

There are a handful of other, smaller issues that drag Dustforce down from greatness. On one computer, the game performed without issue, while on another similar setup, it suffered major performance dips when traversing the overworld and would infrequently crash on specific stages. There is also a mysterious video tab in the options menu that has been left completely blank. Being able to perform the basic functions of resizing the game or playing in a window would be a welcome addition. While these issues do reveal some rough edges, the game proper is left largely unaffected. Sliding through the world of Dustforce is a fun, free-flowing experience, and it’s easy to get hooked on it.

• Outstanding production values capture the vibe of the Star Wars universe
• Companions add depth both to the story and to the gameplay
• Combat is exciting to watch and hear
• Eight fully voiced, branching stories give you a good reason to reach level 50
• Crew skills keep things moving by automating gathering and selling.

As the opening crawl of each film reminds us, the spacefaring Star Warstales we know and love don’t occur in the far-flung future but, rather, in the distant past. It’s appropriate, then, that Star Wars: The Old Republic does not represent the future of online role-playing games but a refinement of what has preceded it. Instead of opening a wormhole into an unknown dimension, BioWare has remained in the local galaxy, taking proven game mechanics and heightening them with the branching narrative and overall structure that have characterized the developer’s output for many a year now. The result is an enjoyable massively multiplayer online game with knockout production values. The Old Republic’s foundation is somewhat ordinary; what makes it great are the fine details that gild its edges.

Many of those details should be familiar to anyone that’s played a BioWare game in recent years, such as Mass Effect or Dragon Age II. However, The Old Republic owes less to past BioWare successes (including the related single-player role-playing game, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic) than it does to the MMOGs that have come before. In fact, the license and a few other elements aside, the first hours of the game might have you thinking: “I’ve already played this game.” You select from a number of humanoid races, none of which seems particularly unusual, given the breadth of unusual creatures to be found in Star Wars lore. You then choose a faction (Sith Empire or Galactic Republic) and one of eight classes (and after the starting area, an advanced class).

The familiarity continues as you make your way through your class’s opening area. You take some missions and kill some creatures using the game’s straightforward hotkey combat system, all while a bunch of other people do the same thing. Where Star Wars: The Old Republic tries to stand out in this early stage is with its fully voiced character interactions. Other MMOGs have featured plenty of voice acting (EverQuest II, for example), but not to this extent. In The Old Republic, your interactions play out much as they do in BioWare’s single-player games: in oft-lengthy cutscenes in which you respond to others using a dialogue wheel. The three options for even the most minor of conversations are of the usual “kind,” “neutral,” and “mean” classifications.

Of course, such a description isn’t exact, but it’s the general gist–at least, as far as standard interactions are concerned. In many cases, these decisions are all smoke and mirrors: a way of playing your chosen moral role but ultimately leading to the same conclusion. Other times (far fewer times), you face decisions that have impact, and the “good” decision might bring you closer to the light side of the Force, while the “mean” might align you with the dark side. A previous ally has been exposed as a traitor; do you kill her or allow her to live? If you show mercy, you earn light side points, which affects your moral alignment. But if you sink your lightsaber into her flesh, you earn dark side points. Your light side/dark side level determines access to certain gear. When you reach a certain tier, you might then use a weapon previously unavailable to you.

Sabers, sabers everywhere!

The downside to this morality system is that there’s little mechanical benefit to staying neutral. If you stay morally ambiguous, your rewards are fewer and less diverse. You may find yourself choosing the light or dark option for the sake of that blaster you want, rather than following the code of your convictions. Yet, your choices don’t just have practical implications; there are narrative ones as well. Some are relatively minor. That traitorous ally? If you kill her, your vengeance will be noted in conversation at a later date. If you overlook her transgressions, she might send you gifts to show her gratitude. Some have more dramatic repercussions. A Sith lord gone rogue needs to be put in line. You might send him a warning by killing his son or spare the offspring and kill his duplicitous dad. The implications aren’t always major in the broad scheme of things. Even so, they make you feel as if you have power over your own adventure, though not over the world you inhabit.

How involved you feel with the plot depends in part on what class you choose. The Jedi knight tale is plain enough that some long conversations feel more like filler than necessary plot or character development. The terrorist conspiracy driving the Imperial agent story, on the other hand, is far more complex and compelling. Even then, some of the writing falls flat, with much of it coming across as what an author might write on a page, but not what a living being would say. But all of that voice acting goes a long way toward making the characters come alive onscreen. Almost all of it is high quality, with the actors making even the most stilted dialogue brim with character. Even the shortest line readings, such as your companions’ battlefield quips, are loaded with personality.

Ah, yes–companions. You’ve seen this structure in BioWare games already: You amass a crew on your spaceship, which functions as a central hub, and then take one into the fray when you reach planetside. But companions are more than combat pets, though they are certainly effective in that role. They also figure into the story, which makes you far more invested in whomever you summon to your side than you would expect. In fact, your teammates enrich almost every aspect of your virtual life in one manner or another. Equipping new gear is a treat in any RPG; maintaining your crew’s equipment, as well as your own, enhances the joys of progression. Combat is better, too. Because you get to know your companions outside of battle, it’s like having a real individual at your side rather than a disposable henchman. You can even send your crew members off on gathering missions, have them craft equipment for you, and sell your vendor trash. These conveniences keep the pace moving. BioWare clearly thinks your time is better spent swinging sabers and firing blasters–not mining crystals and scavenging for droid parts. You can still do these things, but they aren’t likely to occupy much of your time.

This is not the Jawa you’re looking for.

Of course, this is an online game, so AI companions aren’t the only individuals you have at your side. When playing with others, you participate in conversations as a group, earning a currency called social points as a reward for consistent responses. You need to be with guildmates or other players to conquer heroic quests, which might require a full party of four. Heroic areas offer a nice difficulty curve. You could steamroll through earlier ones, only to find your party must make good use of crowd-control skills and heals later on. You can also join others for four-person dungeons called flashpoints, which give you a chance to exercise the power of choice as a group. Do you overload power conduits, distracting enemy forces but risking innocent lives? Or do you disable them and keep losses to a minimum? Either way, flashpoints are a lot of fun, and they too offer a wonderful difficulty curve. Early skirmishes might be easy enough to handle. Facing a boss that leaps about the room while turrets pelt you with lasers is a greater challenge. It’s also an enjoyable one, particularly if you’ve got a good tank to absorb all of that turret fire. Prefer something a little more epic? Then you should enjoy the eight-man and 16-man dungeons called Operations.