Damnation (PlayStation 3)

GameSpot editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 1.5 stars Poor
  Detailed editors' rating
  Overall score: 3.5 (1.5 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Brett Todd
• Reviewed on: 06/09/2009
• Released on: 05/26/2009
• Originally published on GameSpot: Damnation (PlayStation 3) Review

Damnation's biggest accomplishment is making steampunk look bad. Even the usually cool mashing up of fantasy and sci-fi can't save developer Blue Omega Entertainment's mess of a third-person shooter. Aside from the intriguing alt-history setting that combines robots with the Civil War, everything about this game is inept. Combat is a dreary repetitive-motion exercise where you clumsily gun down enemies who have the intelligence of ducks in carnival shooting games. Ugly, convoluted levels see you acting like some kind of cowboy take on Spider-Man and leaping around buildings that make about as much architectural sense as the girder levels in Donkey Kong. And the remaining minimal entertainment has also been bled out of the game by hideous graphics, choppy frame rates, and screechy sound effects.

The steampunk storyline is poorly set up as well. You play an outlaw named Hamilton Rourke, a member of a rebel gang at large in an alternate 19th-century America where steam-powered high-technology robots and weapons were introduced during the Civil War. An evil industrialist named Prescott has taken charge of the country thanks to legions of robots and a serum that gives soldiers super strength, and it's your job is to take him down. All of this gives the game's settings a sinister atmosphere akin to that of a Wild West take on the ruined City 17 in Half-Life 2. Some levels even feature Prescott speaking on a loudspeaker, waxing philosophically about the destruction of whole cities and how he is the only way back to peace. Lots of steampunk trappings litter the levels, including giant airships, powerful sci-fi weapons, robot soldiers, and creepy enemies that look like a combination of WWI trench grunts and the Combine storm troopers from Half-Life 2. But these elements are never formed into a coherent whole. The background story behind these fantastic events remains a mystery. All you get are a few flashes of strange newspaper articles and photos, along with some quick cutscenes that depict Prescott as a bad, bad man.

But you won't care much about the story behind Damnation for very long. The gameplay is so trite and repetitive that you quickly go from curiosity to get-me-the-hell-out-of-here boredom. Instead of the fluidity that characterizes the best shooters, the pace here is choppy and awkward. Most of the time, you simply race along unopposed, with the main source of interest being the ability to leap up or down the faces of buildings and shimmy up flagpoles. This can be intriguing in spots. Intuitive controls make it easy to pull off some amazing leaps and backflips. With just a quick two-button combo, you can fly through the air backward and flip around to grab hold of a ledge or bounce off one wall to leap up to a ledge. Many levels are structured like erector-set puzzles, with you having to figure out how to vault and climb your way to the top of teetering towers. Still, it's all absolutely absurd. Many buildings are so gutted and wrecked that they would collapse long before you got perform your Cirque du Soleil stunts in them, while others simply couldn't stand up because of the way they were designed even while totally intact. All you can really say for the ability to leap around and the odd architecture is that, at least, the developers tried to move beyond the generic linear shooter.

But in the end, it doesn't work. All of the mildly entertaining derring-do is constantly interrupted. It's as if the designers realized at the last minute that they were supposed to be making a shooter, so they brought all the leaping and gallivanting to a crashing halt by stocking the levels with dumb ambushes. As a result, one moment you're dancing about like an acrobat in buckskins, then the next moment, you're hunkered down behind cover for three or four minutes, only peeking out every so often to rip off a couple of shots at the dozen bad guys who have suddenly popped up in front of you. None of these shooting sequences are the least bit enjoyable. Enemies simply stand in one spot blasting away at you or move mindlessly in and out of shelter like targets in shooting galleries. Baddies also take a stupid amount of punishment, leaving you to blast away a dozen rounds with the game's small selection of wimpy weapons before they finally bite the dust. The only challenge is to your patience. You can easily get so annoyed with constantly taking cover from the barrage of enemy bullets that you jump out into the open to try to get things over with quickly...but instead, you just wind up getting killed.

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