Originally Published: May 31, 2009, on Examiner.com

If someone came up to you and said they were going to make a game that combines the plots of Wild Wild West and Terminator, what would you do? I know I would be pretty damn excited.

That was exactly what was attempted with Damnation, a new third person shooter for Xbox 360. Unfortunately, this Frankenstein-like hodgepodge of plots falls flat on its face before the disc can even get warm in your system.

In Damnation, along the timeline of American history, somewhere during the Civil War, things have taken a nightmarishly drastic turn. Steam powered weapons have been invented by a man named Prescott and sold to both sides of the war. This war profiteering has extended the conflict to the point where people cannot remember a time of peace. Using his now immense wealth, Prescott has emerged in an attempt to reunite the country under his own tyrannical fist with the help of a handy mind control drug he uses to poison unsuspecting towns’ water supplies and an army of robots. As Captain Hamilton Rourke of the resistance, you set off in search of your lost fiancée while undermining Prescott’s advancing robot/zombie army at every possible turn.

Aside from a plot with unrealized potential, this game is a total and utter waste of time. It resembles something from the previous generation of consoles instead of the current. There are more glitches in the first level than most game trilogies have in them.

On top of that, most third person shooters allow the character to duck behind cover, but this game conveniently forgot that so most of the game you’re stuck in the open during a fire fight hoping your trigger finger is faster than the A.I.’s. To make up for this shortcoming, the A.I. was made so abysmal that they won’t use cover either, leaving you and your enemy just out in the open shooting at each other. To say the game play leaves something to be desired is like saying the Palestinians and Israelis have a misunderstanding.

Add in that when you’re not fighting, you’re unnecessarily climbing up walls just because the game wanted to have some Assassin’s Creed elements to it or roaming around on a boxlike motorcycle just to get from desert outpost to desert outpost so they can say they had vehicle levels and the only thing left in the dust is the 10-15 hours of your life that you lost playing this piece of garbage that you’re never going to get back.

There are multiplayer vs. and co-op modes, but why you would ever want to put another person through this kind of torture is beyond me. The worst part is that, if you should play it, you need another person to get about 60% of the Gamerscore for this game and unless you’re in Guantanamo Bay, people are going to be a little hesitant when it comes to torture like this.

Along with horrible, last-gen graphics, insane load times even for Xbox 360, and the worst voice acting I’ve ever heard in a game, Damnation is just plain damned and not even worthy of serving as a coaster for my coffee mug, never mind ever seeing the lens of my Xbox 360 ever again. Avoid it at all costs.

-Ray Carsillo