Damnation

As we've seen before, taking the best bits of top titles and melding them together does not necessarily make a brilliant game. Wheelman managed it, blending elements of Grand Theft Auto and Burnout to fine effect, making for a fast and fun actioner. Damnation gives it a go with highlights from fellow third-person shooters, and while not terrible, it does fall way short of the bullseye.

Set in an alternate steampunk history where an evil industrialist's drug-fuelled army threatens to engulf every state during the Civil War, where big gruff men wear cowboy hats and women wear little, it certainly has a unique premise going for it. Chronicled through cheesey, melodramatic cutscenes following the oddly named and soulless voiced characters, the plot is uninspired and uninteresting, with the merely adequate graphics and poor storytelling techniques acting as a barrier to any possible immersion into the tale.

The control system is also equally as unorthodox, managing to be awkward and cumbersome compared to its forebearers. Movement is unnecessarily skitterish, making precise movements hard and melee attacks even harder. Shooting is made clumsy through the fixed control method,  requiring either clawed hands, great dexterity or a hell of a lot of practice to even have a chance of hitting enemies with the peashooter arsenal on offer. The lack of fluidity leads to some less than stellar gunplay, as does the fact that you're never quite sure whether your bullets are hitting their intended targets or not.

The A.I. is generally competent, if a bit stupid. Enemies mainly stay in the spot where you find them, with only a brave few daring to get up close and personal. Allies are usually helpful, but do have a tendency to go down frequently.  The fact that there's no HUD display to tell you where they're floundering around, means  the player must rely on ‘soul vision', a feature that allows them to see combatants through solid objects. The fact that this can only be used while standing still and takes a few seconds to charge up can leave you vulnerable to incoming fire, which wouldn't be so bad if your teammates combat skills were a bit more up to snuff . Getting stuck on little bits of the environment doesn't help when you need to get to your pals quickly either.

The other main feature of Damnation is the use of acrobatics and free-jumping to scale, explore and progress through the vertical environments.  While implemented well, some of the gymnastics, especially reverse backflips up ledges, are a bit over the top, and it can sometimes be difficult to see where you're supposed to be going.

Damnation also incorporates ‘extreme content' in a bid to contend with the big boys. What this essentially boils down to is an enemy's head disappearing when sniped, and the occasional puny explosion of giblets, and is nothing compared to what you'd find in Fallout 3 or Gears of War.  You'll also find poorly signposted vehicle sections and irritating invisible walls in a spate of titles of similar quality to this.

Damnation isn't a terrible game, but it's not great either. It's not broken, and it is playable, but there's nothing here that will hold your attention for long. The shooting is decent, but Gears of War did it much better. The wall-jumping is also satisfactory, but Uncharted had it beaten more than a year ago. Uninspiring and unremarkable, Damnation is strictly middle of the road on the third-person highway.