Mannequin fighting has never been considered among the most revered forms of combat in this world. That's likely because, aside form the most furtive corners of department stores, it doesn't exist. We'll assume it hasn't gained more widespread appeal because it's repetitive, boring, and pointless, which accurately describes the experience of playing through Made Man. You'll be doing quite a bit of mannequin-blasting in this game, since the AI routines for the enemies are about as complex as a cup of dirt.

You play as Joey Verola, a Vietnam veteran climbing the hypothetical ladder of the New York mob. It's a third-person action game split into stages based on flashbacks from Joey's life. In the present, Joey's driving in a car, telling mob and war stories and when he launches into each you have to shoot your way through it. In this sense, the game actually has an interesting narrative vehicle, although the story itself isn't particularly gripping. If only the shooting was remotely interesting.

Most of Joey's enemies, from country folk with shotguns to mob soldiers to FBI agents, all suffer from extreme lethargy. They're more than content to simply stand still, firing their weapons until the clip runs out, then reloading, and then resuming the exact same action. Joey is able to put his back to walls and fire around corners to stay out of harm's way, but this is hardly necessary given the opposition's pathetic level of intelligence.

Once in a while you'll see an enemy do something which indicates they have a slight sense of self-preservation. They'll duck behind cover, occasionally, but then ruin their chances of living by standing up to shoot in the exact same spot every time. You can sit there with your cursor sitting over where you saw their head pop up, and they're dead. Other enemies will run directly at you; many try to fire through solid walls, and others run automatically to specific spots, start firing, and never move.

In an action game where all you do is shoot, you need interesting targets. Made Man delivers a shooting experience more akin to hitting immobilized elephants with a sniper rifle from five feet away.

We can't forget to mention all the awkwardly tacked-on combat mechanics in this game. Killing enough people allows for an extreme slow motion mode, allowing you to line up your firing cursor even more accurately, as if that was required. There's also a Retort Kill mode, where, after you shoot down an enemy, you can once in a while hit the circle button to unleash a stylized execution. By that we mean the screen splits in two, Joey spouts an idiotic line of dialogue before shooting the downed opponent in the face.

Made Man is a clear example of how stuffing profanity into dialogue in no way makes it better. Though the voice acting for Joey and some of the main characters isn't the worst around (see Mage Knight: Apocalypse), it's poorly written. The random shouts of grunt NPC enemies are so bad they'll probably make you laugh, maybe even briefly distract you from furiously hitting the power button on your PC. Gun effects are much worse, with shots sounding more like a soda can opening than gunpowder being ignited. Visually, there's practically nothing to hold your attention. With Made Man, you get simple environmental textures, generic character designs, and bad animations.

But hey, Joey can wield dual shotguns. That counts for something, right?

For the PC version, players are treated to a more high-resolution version of an ugly game, though you won't find any widescreen settings. Props have to be given for including mouse support, something neither Capcom or Ubisoft decided to implement for the recently released version of Resident Evil 4.

©2007, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Obsession can be dangerous. Its consuming nature causes otherwise rational people to spiral headlong into some bad situations. Take Phillip, the main character in Penumbra: Overature. After receiving a note from his long lost father -- 30 years lost actually -- telling him specifically not to come find him, his slide into obsession over the occurrences surrounding his patriarch's disappearance takes him down a one way track to despair and dementia in the depths of a mine in Greenland. While the story presentation can be clumsy, along with some of the game's controls, what's here is a pretty good effort from a small developer creating the first episode in an adventure series that has a lot of potential for future creepouts.

It's a strange mood that immediately grabs hold when loading up this first episode of Penumbra. Phillip's confusion becomes your own, which from one point of view helps you forget your own life and step into his shoes, but from another point of view simply comes off as incomplete storytelling. Yes, Phillip has been wondering about his father for years but why would he pick up his life and go on what was likely to be a one way trip to Greenland in the search of answers? Why would he develop an unnatural obsession even in the light of incredible danger? Even a quick intro about a useless life unfulfilled because of questions about his father's disappearance would have served as a more grounding introduction.

As it is, the story is told through a quick introduction followed by several notes and books found in the environment and some fairly insane dialog from a recurring influence named Red. The mine that Phillip so recklessly flings himself into has a great air of mystery about it and reading through the various notes and hearing the ramblings of Red only helps increase your own uneasy need to delve deeper into the mystery. While the game doesn't manage to produce a level of obsession equal to what the main character is supposedly feeling (partly because his own journey into darkness isn't particularly poetic or really justified), there are enough interesting questions presented to want to know more, especially with a disturbing scenario and creepy cliffhanger at the end of the episode.

I guess it's just a matter of no turning back, even when undead dogs, spiders, and gigantic Tremors-like worms start attacking. Deeper and deeper the rabbit hole goes, where it stops, nobody knows. Once Phillip jumps into that hatch, his old life ended.

Whether you appreciate the mood and themes or not, Penumbra does have some interesting mechanics for a PC adventure game. Developer Frictionless has utilized the mouse much like the Wiimote is being used in many of the games on Nintendo's new console. Mouse over a interactive item and the cursor will turn to a hand allowing control of that object in a physics based environment. Simply click to grab and then pull, push, turn, or pick up the objects to manipulate them. Every door needs to be opened with a push or a pull and many other objects have the same effect. In a lot of cases, these simple physics rules create some interesting gameplay puzzles and solutions. I can't shake the feeling that I wish there was more of that, but what is there is pretty good for the first episode of an unproven adventure series from a small development house. None of this is totally new, but it is a welcome change for an adventure title.

What isn't good is the combat system. It uses the same interactive ideas. Equip a weapon such as a hammer or a pickaxe, hold the left mouse button, and then use mouse movements to swing the object at enemies. The problem is the enemies are too fast and persistent and the controls too clumsy to be an effective solution in a one on one fight. In some respects, that puts more of the focus on sneaking, but combat is unavoidable and frustrating at certain points in the game. Luckily, the enemy AI is incredibly simple so it's possible to fool enemies into falling down pits or simply stand on a box and wait for them to run up and try to bite you (which they can't do because they can't reach you) and whack them on the nose when they attack. Either way, it's a lousy system that they should really reconsider for the next episode.

All of the game takes place in a full 3D environment which allows freedom of movement, unlike many slideshow adventure titles. It helps with the immersion though the dated graphics engine doesn't. While some of the environments have a creepy "there's no way out, what the hell am I doing here?" type of feel to them, they're technically way behind the PC game average. Enemies are pretty poorly modeled and environmental textures aren't much better. It makes me wonder if the reason you never see any humans dead or alive (aside from making the player feel alone) is that they didn't have the technical budget for it. The darkness of the environment helps set the mood and add some scares thanks to the game's minimal, yet creepy soundwork, but the series could definitely use a bigger technical budget.

©2007, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Frequent readers of IGN know what a long shadow X-COM casts over the whole genre of squad-based, tactical alien invasion games. While games like Fallout, Silent Storm and Jagged Alliance have managed to offer up the squad-based, tactical part, it's taken a long time for developers to try their hand at the alien invasion part while also incorporating X-COM's base-building and overall strategy components. Fortunately, we're seeing more and more games following that model. Most aren't very good, but they're headed in the right direction.

UFO Afterlight is just such a game. Building on the lessons learned in UFO Aftermath and UFO Aftershock, Afterlight (which is actually a real word) offers up the goods in terms of concept -- xenophobic alien hunts, futuristic research and manufacturing paths, base management, labor and resource allocation and pretty much anything else that the head of a self-sufficient, futuristic, alien-fighting force might enjoy. In this case however, too much repetition in the battles and a cumbersome base interface make Afterlight somehow less than the sum of all its parts.

Fans of the series who remember the heroic struggle we fought in the previous game might be surprised to discover that this sequel opens with humanity in virtual exile on Mars. The Reticulans have sent the cryogenically frozen race of Earthlings to a small territory on the Red Planet. A few dozen Earthlings who happen to be awake serve as the soldiers, engineers and scientists for the new installation. Unfortunately, there are other races living on Mars (and a surprisingly large number of them), who don't take a liberal view towards this recent immigration.

Your scientists and engineers will have to take up arms alongside your soldiers to fight back alien encroachment, expand humanity's territory (though force, if necessary), secure essential resources and basically do all the other things that humans are known for -- living, laughing, loving and hosting backyard cookouts. While the fight for survival is a worthy goal, UFO Afterlight doesn't really go far out of its way to tell you what the whole point of all this is. This isn't a big problem at first but you're eventually told that the thousands of humanicicles will be thawing out soon and if you haven't "won" they'll die. Talk about pressure. Whether that victory requires the complete eradication of all other Martian life, the discovery of a new technology or the forging a new diplomatic alliance is up to you to discover.

The story plays out in conversations between your various department heads and the leaders of the various alien organizations you encounter. Each conversation points out new opportunities and obstacles that you'll have to confront as you progress through the game. In some cases, you'll open up negotiations with a previously unknown faction, and in other cases, you'll learn about new production opportunities. Though the dialogues are meant to highlight scripted moments during the campaign, you're still free to play the game however you like. Word to the wise: rapid military expansion is always a good idea.

To ease the management burden you'll only have a single base this time around. Staffed with soldiers, scientists and engineers (and some remarkable folks who happen to combine two of those roles), the base will be your home for the whole game. Here you'll assign research priorities, manufacture new tools and weapons, and send out teams to explore, improve, attack or defend the various territories around you.

The fun thing about this part of the game is that you never have enough personnel to keep the base running at peak efficiency. You'll have to reassign engineers to help construct new base facilities, and take researchers away from an important project so they can build a resource-collecting structure along your frontier. You may even have to send an engineer out with a combat team to investigate alien sabotage to your water supply. Trying to decide which tasks should receive priority is really the point of the strategic game, especially once your manufacturing and research options open up.

We're always interested to see video games show up outside of the regular gaming community. Whether it's simulators for military training or RTS games for shows on the History Channel, it's interesting to see the ways that games can serve a purpose beyond the fun to be had actually playing them. The latest case in point is Strategy First's Making History: The Calm and the Storm. This World War II strategy game was designed as a tool for classroom education but has finally found its way into commercial release. Now the post-grads out there can play the game secure in the knowledge that learning something from the game isn't as important as actually enjoying it.

In terms of historical modeling, Making History falls somewhere between the relatively straightforward World at War and the unnaturally convoluted Hearts of Iron. Players can choose from a variety of starting dates, from the pre-war, post-depression of 1936 to the endgame in the summer of 1944. Each of the main combatant nations is fully playable, putting the player in charge of the economy, production, research, diplomacy and of course military of their chosen country. Played out in simultaneous turns (each representing a week) on a large and detailed map of the world, Making History seems to embrace everything that a designer could imagine for an operational World War II game.

Though there are some broad historical trends that you can't really derail, half of the fun in this game is in trying new strategies. What if the United States had cut through the Central Pacific rather than focusing on the Phillipines? What if England had allied with Germany against the USSR? What if the Western Allies had opened a second European front in 1942? Being able to explore these "what if" scenarios (called "counterfactual" by historians) is loads of fun.

Unfortunately the game suffers from a deficiency in AI that make most nations a bit too passive. Sure, those who have the power to do so can tend to throw it around a bit. (In one game, once the Allies had conquered Germany, the Soviets decided to start new wars in Scandinavia and the Middle East.) For the most part, however, the nations of the world are content to sit and let you conquer them. Concentrating your own forces and ignoring your flanks seems like a perfectly workable strategy in the games we've played. Things might be better in multiplayer but finding opponents is nearly impossible.

Given the number of decisions you'll be asked to make in each turn, maybe single player is a safer bet. Players will need to manage each of their territories, determining how to maximize resource production in each one as well as deciding what to use those resources for. Before the outbreak of war (or even in areas far from combat) you may want to focus more on producing the various supplies you'll need to keep your war machine running. Closer to the front, you may want to focus more on the production of military machines and infantry units. We'd love to have seen a little more of this information on the main map so we could read the overall production of a region at a glance, but access to the full range of city and factory details in the sidebar windows makes it almost as easy.

Decisions about your research paths are also important. Depending on your start date, you'll have access to a specific range of technologies that you can use to create new units, boost resource production, or gain access to a host of other abilities. Like the creation of arms, oil, tanks and pretty much everything else in the game, you'll need to assign territories to produce research for you. Finding the balance between the benefits of new technology and its cost in terms of lowered production and resource consumption is one of the most interesting facets of the game.

Unless you've been hibernating in a PC bunker for the last two years, you've probably played this one already. It hit GameCube in early 2005 and blasted onto the PS2 later that year with a deflated price point and extra content. Now it's 2007, Resident Evil 4 is on PC, it's got all the added goodies of the PS2 and the same addictive gameplay. Unfortunately, Capcom forgot to add mouse support, upgraded textures, any kind of scalable graphics interface, or anything new beyond the PS2 version.

That being said, RE4 is still a great game. As Leon Kennedy you head to Europe in search of Ashley, the U.S. President's daughter. Craziness ensues as you discover a town of not quite zombified villagers, robed cultists, and all sorts of other monstrosities and curiosities. Resident Evil 4 wowed gamers when it first came out with its willingness to buck many of the stagnant thumbprints of previous Resident Evil games. It introduced a new control scheme to make shooting and maneuvering less of a migraine, put a larger emphasis on action, both in number of opponents and twitch reaction sequences, and told an interesting tale. It still, however, forces you to stop and aim before you shoot, a mechanic that I, personally, still don't understand. It must be written somewhere in the cosmic expanse that "Thou shalt not make a Resident Evil game where you can shoot from the hip." It's a poor mechanic for close-up fighting, and it's still in this one.

More importantly, RE4 tells an expertly well-paced tale, one of the most attractive aspects of the game. There's rarely a moment during the lengthy run through where you're bored, or you feel like you've completed the challenge ahead a nauseating amount of times before. You will have to retrieve two or three halves of a symbol to open doors on multiple occasions, but the method for acquiring them is always entertaining. Each area feels new, the enemies keep changing forms, weapons, and incessantly surprise you, and your responsibilities switch between protecting your own skin and that of the President's daughter. Wait, escort? Don't vomit just yet; this isn't the kind of escort gameplay you're used to, it's really well done in RE4. The game gives you spots to hide Ashley when you're busy clearing enemies in front, provides an easy to use stay / follow system that doesn't glitch out, and even includes some charming extras, like pressing a button to catch Ashley when she hops from a ledge, or giving her a piggyback boost to open a gate.

Here's the main caveat with the PC version: you can't configure any of the controls to the mouse. If you're without a gamepad, such as an Xbox 360 controller or whatever else, you shouldn't play this game. With no mouse support, you're forced to aim with the keyboard. If you should choose the take such a route, the amount of cursing, self-inflicted injuries, and noise complaints filed by neighbors the ensuing frustration will cause is no fault of ours. We can't quite figure out why Capcom chose not to support the mouse, especially considering Lost Planet, the Xbox 360 original they're bringing over soon, does feature mouse support. They're clearly capable of doing it, they just didn't. Using a gamepad solves the control problem, though the instant action sequences can be disorienting. At various points during the game you'll be prompted to hit two buttons at once to avoid some deadly threat, such as a moving car, swinging blade, or falling axe. Whereas on the GameCube and PS2 these prompts corresponded to the buttons (be it A and B or Circle and Square), the gamepad only shows up as "1" or "2." Thankfully the prompts tend to be displayed onscreen in positions corresponding to their layout on the gamepad, but even late in the game it'll still feel awkward.

The visuals are another area where someone manning this port clearly fell asleep or just didn't care. Character models have been given a significant detail upgrade. They don't look anything as good as with other PC titles with action so up-close, but they're not going to wrinkle your forehead. The backgrounds and cut-scenes, on the other hand, are two very different shades of disappointing. From a distance background visuals look nice, but that's mostly because the level architecture is so well done. Get up close to a brick wall and you'll have to pop some Tums. The lighting is sad compared to other modern PC games, with little to no shadows or attention to realism. Finally, there's simply no excuse for the cut-scenes, which are so horribly compressed it looks as though somebody is dragging a rake across the back of the monitor's screen.

Framerates do remain smooth, however, and there's a lot more to like about the visuals. Enemy designs and animations are fantastic, particularly once you start fighting the painted cultists and giant insects later on. Boss designs can be truly harrowing too, overflowing with gristle, gore, and metallic spikes. Assuming you haven't played this before, some of the boss fights are so unnerving you might even forget about the dungeon wall that looks like construction paper behind them. Amazingly, the game somehow supports a 1920 x 1200 resolution. We can only assume there was some sort of divine intervention to prompt this.

Like in the previous versions, the sound is terrific. In gaming, there's little more satisfying than a booming shotgun blast splattering three heads at once, while other enemies spin and slink to the ground in pain. Thundering weapons effects and eerie enemy howls and chants bring the world of Resident Evil 4 to vibrant life. The voice acting, as seems to be a tradition in the franchise, still sounds forced, like a golf ball through a stirring straw.

Yet another element that didn't survive the port in good shape is the UI. It's been included in a horribly low resolution; a pang of visual discomfort you'll be assaulted with every time you open the menu. You'll see it in the bottom right corner of the screen as well, your health ammo display; a constantly visible, blurry circle adding to the sizable portfolio of things done wrong or not at all for the PC version.

©2007, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Ryan Lennox is so pissed off his arm catches on fire. He's an angel, or at least he was, and now he's working for Hell to blow apart a secret heavenly outfit called EtherLight. As the main playable character in Infernal, a third-person action game from Eidos, it seems like a promising setup. Turns out it isn't.

They really tried for a snappy style of dialogue in this game; attempted to cobble together a wise-cracking, angel-turned-hellish-mercenary attitude. While you'll occasionally hear a sharp quip, such instances are stranded in a lake of convention and contrived one-liners. But the story isn't the main reason you're here, as unfortunately seems to be the case with most games.

Lennox has a bunch of tattoos, short spiky hair, and a tendency to kill things of angelic persuasions. He's supposed to be a badass. His feeble dialogue and utterly stereotypical enemies do a fine job of making sure Infernal's personality never strays from the mundane. But what about the one girl enemy whose skin-tight outfit has nipple outlines on it? She's cool, right? She and Lennox have a strained relationship but there's sexual tension writhing underneath. We've never seen that before.

Gameplay falls into the dialogue's mold: a few noteworthy sparks glittering over an expanse of cardboard. The demon powers can be entertaining for a short while though the level designs built to test your ability to implement them aren't particularly challenging. The weapons, enemy AI, and cover mechanics all suffer from awkwardness, uselessness, and blandness, in no particular order.

For each fighting area, enemies spawn in front of Lennox and on platforms of varying verticality. Depending on which weapon is being used, be it pistol, machine gun, or welder gun, you can unleash a different super-powered attack that consumes chunks of mana. To recharge your magical energy, you kill enemies or wait around for an extended period of time. This actually works well, forcing you to mow down foes to ensure the super abilities are available.

The shooting mechanics aren't that interesting, though. Foes display a decent amount of AI, helping to keep things engaging for at least a little while (like 10 minutes). Most of those who walk on the ground perform backflips, even when you're not shooting at them. At other times they'll do small head dodges, run from rooms, move into cover spots, and resist the temptation to charge through doorways directly into your gun barrel. You get flying enemies too, though they float around in generally the same spot. A few of the tougher enemies require more precise maneuvers to take down. The impossibly armored welders, for example, are only vulnerable in their backpacks (ingenious!).

Then there's the cover system, which is too slow to be useful. By pressing against a wall, which happens too often by accident, you can peek around corners to fire your weaponry. The issue is when you actually fire, Lennox steps entirely out of cover at a painfully slow rate. It's such a ponderous process that during a firefight, it's far more useful to just stay in the free-roaming WASD mode to dispatch your opponents.

Lennox can demonically siphon health and ammo from killed enemies by standing over them and hitting a key. It requires several seconds of charge time to complete, which can get aggravating. It makes sense in battle - if enemies are still around it challenges the player to strategically select which bodies can be safely drained. However, out of combat, you still have to feed on the fallen for a few seconds resulting in frequent lulls in an otherwise fast-paced game. Why not just switch the feed mechanic to instant-trigger after a room is cleared of bogeys? As it stands, the feeding or soul-sucking or whatever you want to call it is like dumping molasses on an ant.

There are some good ideas here to make the gameplay somewhat interesting. Lennox can move objects and enemies around with a telekinesis ability, for instance. There's a teleport ability not only useful for solving puzzles, but also to warp forward on the battlefield and shoot enemies from behind for a brief moment. You still take damage, but it at least gives you a better vantage point. Had this kind of gameplay mechanism been more tightly interwoven with the core gameplay, and the fighting arenas been filled with more interesting opponents, this game could have been worth playing. As it is, it's more just a flashy graphical package drowned in pounding rock music you've probably heard in hundreds of other action games like this.

©2007, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved

When 1C and Battlefront first announced they'd be working on a game together, we were a bit surprised, primarily because the two franchises they're each best known for seem to have so little potential for crossover. After all, what could the makers of a flight sim and a wargame have to offer each other? Then when we considered how much each studio manages to embrace both detailed authenticity and the breadth of their subject matter, our surprise gave way to excitement.

Their joint effort, Theatre of War, owes a fair bit to Battlefront's own Combat Mission series but tempers the hardcore warmongering with an attractive graphics engine and a more familiar real-time format. The result is an interesting and generally satisfying middle ground between the RTS and wargame genres. While the realism and visual appeal of the new game are definitely the two biggest draws, they also at times become the game's biggest weaknesses, the former because it leads to some monotonous mission design and the latter because it takes such a toll on most PCs.

There are five large campaigns here -- Polish, French, Russian, US/UK and German -- and each contains several missions. You can opt to play through the campaigns in any order but there is a bit of satisfaction in following a rough historical sequence that the game presents. A number of one-off battles and an editor expand your options beyond the basic campaign play. Like most wargames, each mission starts with a set number of units with the possibility of getting more reinforcements once you achieve certain objectives.

Rather than taking the "everything but the kitchen sink" approach of Combat Mission, Theatre of War uses a smaller number of units to render a smaller number of battles. That's not necessarily a criticism; players will still have the chance to fight from the invasion of Poland to the final stand at Berlin and will still have a wide range of units to choose from but the designers have intentionally kept your options a bit more limited this time around.

Taken individually, the battles are quite compelling. You'll order your off-map artillery to soften up enemy defenses while your infantry approach under cover and your tanks move around the flanks. True line of sight, realistic damage and ballistic models, moral effects, commander influence and individual soldier skills make each encounter wonderfully unpredictable but undeniably convincing.

The problem is that so many of the missions seem like a repeating formula. While it's true that all combat can be described in terms of "you attack me" or "I attack you," the various attack and defend missions here don't feel substantially different from each other, either in terms of the forces involved or the geography. Discounting the occasional weather effect, each map contains the same exact elements: golden fields, tree-lined roads, small farm houses and gently rolling hills. While the designers are understandably limited by the selection of theater, fighting over the same stretch of farmland again and again just gets old.

On the plus side, the maps themselves are generally quite large. Most maps are a few kilometers on a side, giving you a wide area to play in. Defenses are usually positioned to keep you from completely outflanking your enemy, particularly on the narrow, rectangular maps, but you can still maneuver your troops towards an objective in a number of ways.

One of the most appealing aspects of Theatre of War is the realistic handling of line of sight and weapon ranges. Provided they're not impeded by any obstacles, units can see clear across the map. This makes the use of trees and hills to screen your movements absolutely essential. It's even more important when you consider that tanks and AT guns can fling shells at virtually any target they can see. Too many World War 2 games purport to be realistic and yet ignore this very basic reality.

After more than 20 years of comic books and cartoons, I'd like to think I'd be a pretty good superhero if I was bombarded with cosmic rays or given a mysterious green ring. However, after spending some time with Spider-Man 3, I'm starting to doubt I could save New York without throwing up all over it.

The camera is super-villain bad in this game.

As Spidey swings around New York -- a version of the city that's 2.5 times bigger than it was in Spider-Man 2 -- the camera swings and swivels like mad behind the hero. Granted, you're in control of it via the mouse, but it's nonsensical control. Rather than have the mouse direct the webs you're slinging with the handheld device, Spider-Man 3 has you use your A and D buttons while the mouse controls the camera, combat and webbing. The convoluted controls are one of several flubs that remove the fun from your time in Spidey's PJs.

Spider-Man 3 uses the mega-huge movie's storyline as the main bridge of the game. Yes, you'll battle villains from the comics (Kingpin, Kraven, etc.) and some original gangs, but the meat of the story is Peter Parker's dealings with the Sandman, his former best friend Harry Osborn (the New Goblin) and Venom along with his personal struggle with the symbiote -- that's the black suit for those of you who don't speak geek. Once Peter dons the dark duds, he goes from a wisecracking hero to a skull-cracking jerk. The longer he wears the suit, the worse his attitude gets.

Just like Pete's descent into darkness, Spider-Man 3 gets worse the longer you play. The game opens up with Bruce Campbell acting as our familiar narrator and walking Spidey through his new found controls. Ol' web-head can now web zip with one button; his Spider-Sense turns the screen black and white while displaying enemies in red, allies in green and objectives in yellow; and Spider-Reflexes allow the wall-crawler to slow time and counter attacks with a single button press. You get the basics down while saving some folks from a fire, and get your first glimpse of New York.

The city looks good, but when Campbell pops back in to walk you through web-slinging, things start to sour -- namely when he tells you to use your left stick to direct your web. Uh, Bruce, I'm rocking a keyboard and a mouse here, buddy. Get past Campbell's banter, and you're set loose on the city, where the horrid framerate jumps out at you. Even on IGN's supercomputer with the game on its default settings -- 1024 x 768, city detail low, surface quality low -- Spidey chugs through the air as he uses the clumsy control scheme to swing through the streets.

Yargh.

It might make you carsick, but there's plenty to do in Spider-Man 3. The title features 42 missions, a plethora of random events such as hurt cops and gang fights that pop up as you swing around the city, races, skydiving challenges, 75 gang tokens, 35 secret tokens, 30 skyscraper tokens and 30 subway tokens for the web-head to tackle.

If the same handful of crimes in the last Spider-Man game kept you happy, the expanded roster of events -- Activision said there are three times as many events in Spider-Man 3 -- will keep you playing. Can they get repetitive? Sure. It seems every mission has you stopping a car, but sometimes you'll get to do something cool such as follow a speeding police cruiser to a crime scene. Even better is the fact that the pop-up crimes aren't just there to be there this time around -- they play into Spidey's Crime Fighting Index. See, New York is broken up into different gang zones. These zones are visible on the in-game map as well as tracked on Spidey's stat menu. It's up to you to patrol these areas, bust bad guys and watch the zones turn from angry, gang-controlled neon to peaceful, Spidey-influenced green. The better you do, the more upgrades you get for your health and reflexes.

But please don't let the expanded crimes fool you. Like any super-villain in Peter's life, this title's got problems.

Although New York is prettier than last time, Spider-Man 3 is not up to snuff visually. Cars, buildings and textures pop in and out as you shoot through areas; you'll still see the same civilians over and over; the frame-rate chugs along as Spidey swings; the view gets a smear of Vaseline as lights in the night crop up; and collision detection is laughable - watch in horror as Spidey sinks into window awnings and stands with one foot off of a car.

The gameplay doesn't take a bite out of the Big Apple either. Activision and Beenox tossed all sorts of combos and goofy names for moves into this title, but when all is said and done, Spider-Man 3 is a button-masher. You'll get dispatched to a group of enemies, jump into the air, and begin alternating between your mouse buttons to decimate the crowd. There's no manual lock-on either, so expect to get stuck in a bicycle kicking animation with a knocked out baddie while his partner shoots you in the back. Once you get the black suit -- around the six-hour mark -- your attacks will be suped-up, but other than the visual, it's not much to write home about.

However, the biggest problem in Spider-Man 3 is the simple fact that the missions aren't fun. Even if you're just in this for swinging and random crime -- which also suffer from the aforementioned framerate and car-stopping problems -- you'll have to suffer through the storylines to improve Spidey's skills, and you'll find yourself ready to web your own eyes closed in frustration. Guarding gas dispensers from a horde of attacking lizards and defusing bombs in the subway become exercises in anger, and they only serve to propel you towards terrible bosses.

Look at the leaders of the Arsenic Candy, one of the gangs plaguing your city. While the rest of the all-female crew can be dropped with a few punches, the mallet-toting leaders of the group are all but invulnerable to regular Spidey attacks as they hide behind their wobbly hammers. To win, you have to let the girls come at you. When they do, a yellow fist appears over their heads, you hold down the reflex button, time slows, Spidey dodges the attack, you press another button, and Spidey hits back to inflict damage. It's easy, but it's also excruciatingly tedious.

"But, Greg," you say. "It can't be that bad. You beat those girls in a few exchanges, right?"

Yes, you do beat the girls quickly, but not bosses such as the Kingpin. If you've read a Marvel comic book or watched the Spider-Man animated series of the '90s, you know the Kingpin. The undisputed king of organized crime, Wilson Fisk is a massive man who packs an equal amount of muscle. Coming into Spidey's tiff with baldy, I expected the battle to be a tough one and Kingpin's health to deplete slowly as Pete wailed on him.

Sadly, I was right.

The Kingpin fight is twenty minutes of joyless reversing. Spider-Man stands in the middle of the room, the Kingpin attacks, Spidey dodges, and Spidey punches Fisk once in the face. If I punched him more than once, I risked getting caught in a combo or running out of Spider-Reflexes and watching Fisk land a devastating attack. I played it safe and patiently countered the mountain of a man one slow, boring punch at a time.

The worst news? Kingpin isn't the exception when it comes to boss battles - they all suck. New Goblin? Run in circles while Harry shoots crap at you and then reverse his attack to win. Kraven? Let him rush you, reverse and win. Scorpion? Run in circles to dodge his laser, let him rush you, reverse and win.

I wish I had more good news for you, but I don't. One of the photo missions has Spider-Man standing in a populated park taking pictures; most pedestrians don't react to battles in front of them; and let's not forget the lame Mary Jane Thrill Rides in which you and MJ swing through the city collecting hearts that are floating in the midair.

Stan Lee must be rolling over in his bed of money.

©2007, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved

This action-adventure game is neither amazing nor spectacular.

By: Li C. Kuo

We understand that there are hardcore Spider-Man fans out there. There are people who will eat up anything and everything Spider-Man related no matter how bad it is. We can't stop these people from running out and buying, say, Spider-Man 3 for the PC. Heck, they probably already have their copies and are already writing in an angry letter about the score we're giving this game, but we feel it's our duty to warn our loyal readers about Spidey's latest adventure for the PC.

For starters, let's get one thing straight: Spider-Man 3 isn't a complete loss, but it's damned close. The biggest gripe we have with Activision's newest addition to the Spidey game franchise is how poorly the game runs. Both on computers in the office and on our home systems (both of which are fairly beefy dedicated gaming PCs) Spider-Man 3 chugged along like the Kingpin in a wading pool filled with molasses. This was the case even when we turned all the detail settings as low as we could get them and dropped the resolution down to 800x600. It's frustrating to see this game run (relatively) fine on consoles but so poorly on our PCs.

We figure this is most likely the result of poor optimization and high system requirements. The shoddy frame rate directly affects gameplay, especially certain "heroic" scenes that play out just like the interactive cut scenes from Resident Evil 4. During these segments you'll have to quickly press the button that appears on the screen to have Spidey successfully pull off an impressive stunt. Press the button too late, or press the wrong button, and Spidey will fail. A poor frame rate will throw off your timing and make these segments a tedious and repetitive task.

Keeping the Streets Clean

Throughout Spider-Man 3 you'll fight a number of street gangs and other hoodlums. You'll be able to beat them down in random and pre-set missions where you'll help clean up the city. Your missions will include finding stolen goods, finding and defusing bombs, rescuing civilians, and chasing cars and choppers and other vehicles though the streets of New York. You'll also pick up photography missions from the Daily Bugle.

When you're not fighting crime you can take part in a number of different challenges, such as thrilling Mary Jane by taking her out web swinging, or racing through different checkpoints to set new speed records. There really is a lot to do in this game. Between the main storyline (which is similar but not exactly like how the film goes), the crime-fighting and photography missions, and all the challenges, there's enough content to keep you gaming for a very long time... in theory.

Punch, Kick, Repeat

Sadly, these missions end up getting repetitive. It's true that as you play you'll learn more moves and become more powerful, but combat is so simplistic that you can't help but be bored after a short while. You have two attack buttons, a jump button, and a button for your web attacks. Pounding away on the different buttons is usually enough to pull off a number of wild combos.

You don't have a block button -- instead you have a dodge button. When you hold this down time slows down and Spidey will automatically dodge any incoming attacks. You can't hold down this button forever. A blue bar on your hud goes down as you use it, and when you run out you have to wait for it to recharge by itself. We wish there was still a block button so that you're not left completely defenseless when the bar runs out.

The only part of the game we really like is the web-swinging, and even that is hindered by the poor frame rate. Fans will be pleased to see a number of spidey villains appear that aren't from the movie, including Rhino, The Lizard, and Kraven the Hunter. Bruce Campbell is back as narrator, and as always, his quips are enjoyable.

At its heart Spider-Man 3 is a boring game with high production values and a big license attached to it. The developers have done a good job of recreating New York City, and we appreciate the freedom the game allows. Graphically the game can look spectacular, but there doesn't seem to be a PC that can run it well. The music is solid, and most of the A-list Hollywood cast from the film voice their characters in the game. It's easy to see how appealing this all looks on paper. Sadly, once you load the game up and get playing, it quickly becomes obvious that this is really just a rushed port that isn't worth your time.

©2007, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved

In 2001 a game titled Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis was created by Bohemia Interactive. It was easily the most realistic first-person shooter of its time. In fact, Operation Flashpoint was so realistic that a more advanced version of the game called Virtual Battlespace ("VBS") was adopted for use as a training tool by Australian and New Zealand armed forces as well as the United States Marine Corps. Now, six years later, Bohemia is back with ArmA: Combat Operations, the spiritual successor to OFP.

This time the action takes place on a fictional island nation called Sahrani. You're part of a US military detachment responsible for training the locals in modern warfare. As expected, all hell breaks loose and you and your buddies will find yourselves caught up in a violent coup. Now you'll have to hold out against superior numbers until the cavalry arrives.

Something Familiar

Anyone who has played OFP will feel right at home when they load up ArmA. In fact, at first glance very little has changed between OFP and ArmA. The controls are virtually identical, as is the interface and the command system. Even the music will sound familiar to OFP players.

This might appeal to OFP die-hards, but to us it was a little disconcerting. Six years have passed since the release of OFP and a lot of advances have been made in first-person shooters since. The result is that the already-clunky controls feel even worse now. To make ArmA as realistic as possible, your mouse movement is tied to your avatar's arms, so as you move your mouse your arms will move your weapon. This means that if you aim at something on the extreme upper-left-hand corner of your screen your own arms will obstruct your view, which quickly gets frustrating.

Not only that, but rather than having the mouselook feature move the camera like in a conventional shooter, there is a small invisible window of movement in the center of your screen where you can move your weapon without actually affecting where the camera is pointed. If you actually want to look in another direction direction you'll have to move your mouse beyond that small window and only then will the view change. This felt clunky in OFP, and it still feels clunky now.

Not all of the traits retained from OFP are bad. Just like the first game, ArmA is unrelenting in its pursuit of realism. For example, the game accurately recreates the supersonic crack of bullets whizzing past your head (hint: when you hear that distinctive snap, it's time to move). An entire arsenal of NATO and Warsaw Pact weaponry is lovingly recreated here with detailed models and gorgeous textures. If you look carefully you'll be able to read the markings on various weapons and even see instructions on some of the more complicated instruments of destruction.

Planes, Tanks, and Automobiles

This same attention to detail also extends to the vehicles. 30 different vehicles are depicted, both civilian and military. Helicopters, tanks, airplanes, cars, and boats are all at your disposal. Each vehicle will behave realistically as well, so don't expect a civie pick-up truck to last long under enemy fire; there's a reason those things are considered "soft targets."

Ideally, you'll want a joystick to fly the choppers and planes, which you'll eventually have to do in the single-player campaign. A-10s and Cobras as well as Blackhawks are all prominently featured. Flying these aircraft takes some getting used to, but when compared to the rest of the game, these portions feature the most relaxed realism. Sections where you take to the skies are a nice change of pace, but ArmA is best when it focuses on infantry combat.

A Shooting War

On the ground it's just you, your squadmates, and your rifle. Most combat takes place at ranges between 100 and 300 yards; any closer and things start to get really hairy. ArmA factors in everything from fatigue to bullet deflection, the sound barrier, and other ballistic characteristics for every shot fired. Hitting a stationary target at 100 yards or less is cake, but that's rarely the case in a firefight.

Anyone who knows anything about shooting will tell you that shooting a moving target is one of the hardest things in the world to do, which is a sentiment ArmA takes to heart. Your enemies will move from cover to cover and can spot you from hundreds of yards away if you're not careful; if you stay out in the open too long they'll zero in on you and put a bullet in your noggin. Next to your squadmates and your weapon, cover and concealment will be your two closest friends. You'll quickly learn that there is no possible way to play ArmA like any other first-person shooter. It doesn't matter if you're a Ghost Recon pro or can beat Rainbow Six: Vegas on "realistic"; ArmA is a completely unforgiving beast, and most of the time you'll die without knowing who or what killed you.

Thankfully there's a save-game system in place. OFP featured a checkpoint system, which is still in place here, but you also have one save-game slot which you can use anytime, and it is a lifesaver. By limiting it to just one slot, the tension of combat remains in place, but makes the game much more approachable. There's also a time compression feature, which is handy considering that some of the missions will have you traveling very long distances. (ArmA features 250 square miles of land to explore.)

War Isn't Pretty

Graphically, ArmA in some ways could be compared to the city of Los Angeles. It's pretty when you're far away, but once you get closer you realize that everything has a synthetic, fake look to it. Once we were on top of a mountain overlooking a valley that leads to the ocean and a fellow editor glanced over and said, "Wow! What game is that?" Another time we were crawling through the grass while under fire and a passerby said, "Dang, that is one ugly game."

The engine that powers ArmA can be cranked up to show incredible draw distances and extremely high-resolution textures, but doing so will bring just about any system to its knees. Even on the "recommended" detail settings we were never really satisfied with the framerate; if you're serious about playing ArmA, you'll need a fair amount of horsepower.

Where ArmA really hits its stride is in its mission design. There are some spectacular scenarios here. Sure, there are the usual defend or search-and-destroy missions, but they're threaded together to feel like a real battle. In one mission you'll lay demo charges on a bridge and blow it after an armored column crosses it. You'll then use anti-tank weapons to harrass the column, fall back to a more secure location, and fight off a counter-attack.

These are sweeping actions that make you feel like you're in a real military campaign with real military objectives, as opposed to a Jerry Bruckheimer movie. The fact that there's nothing "Hollywood" about ArmA is its greatest strength; the controls are clunky, the realism is challenging, and the game is unforgiving, but if you're into this kind of stuff you'll find yourself loving every moment of it.

This level of enjoyment is multiplied when you take ArmA online. The first thing you'll notice when going online is that there are a lot of co-op servers. Servers can support more than 60 players at a time. The potential for a euphoric gaming experience is here, but it depends on your players. When you find a good game you'll have people in choppers providing air cover, drivers in humvees transporting soldiers to hotspots where the action is, and tanks providing added punch where needed. Sadly, finding a game where everyone knows what they're doing is rare, but hopefully that'll change with time.

Be All You Can Be

For the hardcore military buff, ArmA's attention to real-world detail is unmatched; comparing it to something like Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter is like comparing IL-2 Sturmovik to Combat. If this concept scares you, then run away: ArmA will eat you up and spit you out before you can figure out how to aim your M-16. But if you're currently waiting to see if your application to the U.S. Army Ranger School went through and have the patience to deal with clunky controls and sudden deaths, you might do well to check it out.

©2007, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Bohemia Interactive's follow up to Operation Flashpoint is just as realistic, just as massive and just as difficult.

By: Steve Butts