Review: "Afterfall Insanity - Dirty Arena Edition"

The practice of cutting off a section of a game and selling it wholesale has become surprisingly common in recent years. While in some situations it results in an egregious ”paid demo” sort of deal, other times it can be rather delightful. At a discounted price, you can buy a smaller, shorter version of a title. For people gaming on a budget, this can be an extremely useful way to explore an unfamiliar game without investing too much money – or time.

Such is the case with Afterfall Insanity – Dirty Arena Edition. The “Dirty Arena” is the survival mode from the full game, Afterfall Insanity, a horror-action game landed on Steam in the first Greenlight wave. Dirty Arena Edition has two very purpose, express goals: provide a compelling, short-hand Afterfall Insanity experience, and in doing so, sell budget gamers on the full title. A bit of pressure then rides on this edition – much like a demo, if it fails to sell me on the full game, it has failed.

With that established, Afterfall Insanity – Dirty Arena Edition has failed.

Review: "Mafia II"

The Freakin' Mafia

review for Mafia II, 1 player third-person action/adventure, available now

Not having played it, I heard the original Mafia was kind of a big deal. A compelling open-world, a character-driven story; in the wake of Grand Theft Auto III, Mafia was like The Getaway - bold, gritty, and exciting. Or, that's what I understand, anyway. As good as Mafia supposedly is, I'm afraid that doesn't make Mafia II any less boring.

The game starts off with the main character, some under-characterized Italian immigrant, being drafted into the American Army in the wake of the end of World War II. What follows is the tutorial that other tutorials follow - a mostly on-rails shooting gallery that teaches you the basics of taking cover and opening doors. Certainly not too fancy, but hey, it's an adequate tutorial, even if it is painstakingly arbitrary. After fifteen minutes of shooting, there's about two minutes of confusing exposition before the cleverly titled "Chapter 2" begins. And since Chapter 1 was only about 20 minutes long... this was the moment I knew Mafia II wasn't going to be very good.