Tilting at Windmills

Sharkoon X-tatic SP: Players only love you when you’re playing.

2011-02-08T09:53:00.001-06:00

The slowride for headsets comes in many forms, colors and prices. Strict music listening headphones of the 60s and 70s were the pinnacle of those who could not afford the high end hi-fi speaker sets of the vinyl era. Couldn’t drop 5gs per speaker back when minimum wage was $1.25/hr; not a problem. Save some cash for a nice pair of Koss Pro 4AA, sit in your dad’s recliner, and drift off into the pre-MTV age of listening to music. Fast forward to the 80s and 90s, and a rebalance on price and access to what people accept as normal for speaker sets, even for your backwoods hillbillies to be able to afford speakers for their wizard picture machine and wax spinning echo maker, came into being.

Headphones have since fallen to the wayside except for mp3 players and headsets. One needs mobility while “attempting” to sacrifice little on sound quality. The other, known for its good looks and snazzy comebacks thanks to Judy one of the Time Life Operators, is used for its ability to not only receive but to send sound through magical tin cans strung together at speeds that shake the imagination when compared to your pappy’s day of the telegraph, van de graaff, and spiral graphs. Used for Skyping, chat roulette, and other various conferencing business, headsets are a staple of the multiplayer game industry. Whether it’s highly competitive FPSers, MMOs, Koreans battling each other on GOMtv, or casual PUGs full of trash talk that your mother hopefully never finds out about, headsets have become a great communication peripheral to complement multiplay of any sort.

Recently while attempting the legendary difficulty in Halo: Reach with a friend, it became quite apparent that Xbox supplied headsets are of poor quality. Even though we had trudged through and completed one of the hardest campaigns in a while, the experience wasn’t the best as far as teamwork communication was harder to decode than a Sherlock Holmes Dancing Men Cipher. After some frolicking on the interwebs it became apparent that choices for the Xbox specifically were few and far between. The main reason for the limited choices, even though the system has multiple usb ports used for many other peripherals, is that the headsets have to be plugged into the tiny 2.5 mm headphone jack on the wireless controllers. A simple rule to follow without delving deep into hi-fi electronic theory, the larger the plug/port, the more data and consistent signal can be transmitted/received. Being stuck with a crappy 2.5 mm port contributes to why few companies have attempted to mass produce a choice for a third party headset and makes sifting through the spare choices worse than finding good acting in a Bert I Gordon movie.

If you’re using different devices to make up for quality issues, wanting to improve your multiplayer communication experience, sick of putting up with mediocrity, or have already thrown your headset into a Will it Blend video, the idea of purchasing a third party headset has probably popped into your head.

Turtle Beach sets are among the most plentiful and vary quite a bit in reviews and prices for different models. Some common problems arose after reading all the reviews and trending the data. Early models are prone to physically breaking, hard to find due to discontinuations, or uncomfortable to wear for extended periods much like the women of America’s Top Model. Most recent models have changed from the wired usb powered types to using an IR plugin into the Xbox directly in order to keep the leash on Ol’ Yeller. Using this type of wireless signal can lead to issues with the latest TV and other similar entertainment technology since both use arrays of signals within the same frequencies. Many of the recent models are prone to annoying feedback from other devices’ background noise. Other companies such as Madcatz have no complaints but are on the rich and famous side of price soaring into the region of a standalone Xbox.

Eventually I landed on the company Sharkoon. At the time what I had found was the chance to pre-order a new headset: the Sharkoon X-tatic SP. A different model, the X-Static Digital, had been out for some time but fell into the “high in price” category. All of the previous reviews of the X-Static Digital were good and sounded better than any of the Turtle Beach. So I took a leap of faith and pre-ordered the Sharkoon X-tatic SP crossing my fingers to the point of blisters.

After 100 hours of use I was quite surprised as to how well the Sharkoon X-tatic SP held up to my expectations for the $60 price tag on Amazon. Here’s a quick list of pros and cons for the headset:

Pros -

Sound Quality - The ear speakers are very solidly designed and output high and low ranges with excellence. Whether it’s the vibratos of David Crosby’s Laughing or the precise quiet footsteps of an enemy running around the corner in Call of Duty: Black Ops, the SP delivers. The foam around the ears is very good at external noise cancellation to the point that I could not hear a frustrated wife talking from three feet away while listening to music or gaming. The microphone also outputs sound with distinct clarity on Xbox and PC due to a small amplifier.

Comfort

- With eight hour spans of wearing the headset I was surprised to find that my head didn’t have the feel of a giant’s hand crush when taking it off. The foam material around the ear is a bit more durable, quiet when moving the headset around on your head, and side pressure against the head is light. The only thing that is a bit of an issue with comfort is that if sitting at maximum range with the headset for extended periods, one’s neck with begin to be sore from a slight pull from the cord. Nothing like having a sore neck of all things to remind the player to take a break from gaming.

Usability - One very nice feature for the SP is its ability to be used with Xbox, PS3, or PC with proper adapters and a slight flick of a switch. This cross-console/PC option is a bonus but may be unnecessary for those specifically looking for an Xbox headset.

Price Tag - It’s a price some people would complain about, but after researching which headsets are worth their weight in gold, the Sharkoon X-tatic SP redeems itself beyond the going Cash for Gold rate.

Cons -

Corded Anchor - It is not wireless. This saves the user from noise feedback since there is not a wireless signal but much like the dreaded nightmares of the Game Cube cord length, you may feel like you’re sitting in the front row at the movie theater with a 70” TV and a 10 foot length of the cord. With the Xbox, an extra wire connected to the controller adds to a corded mess for those who enjoy moving around to duck, bob, and weave from digital effects as they play.

Mic - Without having mannequin heads of all shapes and sizes, and even more depressing since Ted Danson’s head isn’t readily available for comparisons, the length of the microphone didn’t exactly end directly in front of my mouth. This gives the headset a more Bluetooth feel and may pick up on ambient sound a little more than some prefer especially when mommy’s yelling to finish your homework. Sensitivity threshold is slightly higher than I would like in order to stay quiet while gaming at night. Also since the mic is detachable, this creates another piece to the large mess of parts on this headset.

Availability – This is of course like most of the capitalistic world of today available online but brick and mortar attempts at tracking down this headset may be rough as Gamestop seems to be one of the few stores to carry the headset. Save on gas and order online.

Overall the Sharkoon X-tatic SP is a great addition to any multiplayer gaming experience. For a reasonable price, reliability, sound quality and comfort the SP will not be a disappointment until you hear what people are actually saying to you.

Fleetwood Mac – Dreams

2010 year end video game reviews:

2010-12-25T19:25:00.000-06:00

Restarting offtrack starcraft betting, expanding on previous success, delving into the three dimensional controllers, and revitalizing former glory hounds didn’t exactly begin 2010 but it did end that way. 2010 showed a new change in holiday season releases pushing back games like Gears of War 3 into 2011 to keep away from the mix of powerhouse holiday releases creating a more even set of releases. This is probably a bit more coincidental with the 2012 end of days paranoia or prevalent consumer practices when consoles have reached their peak in their era. If your Christmas stocking this year wasn’t filled with at least one blockbuster, coaly disappointment is all that’s left to be eaten for there was no lack of choices. Without further ado, here are some quick reviews of games from 2010.

Xbox360:

Quantum of Solace – 5 hour completion. Rough controls. Alpha Protocolish looks at times and overall quite bland. Odd non-matchup to movie. Cover system buggy or annoying (if kneeling behind cover and you break cover you go straight to standing up instead of remaining kneeling). Usual made from movie disappointment. Skip at all costs. RATING: {–3.0}

Army of Two: 40th Day – 10 hour completion. Simple and easy controls. Fun co-op with scaling difficulty. No save system for partners progress/cash in splitscreen? (unless they are signed in but it doesn’t tell you to). Storyline was basic yet choices allow for at least a second play through. Character customization such as mask creation from online is a nice addition. One of the better early releases of 2010 and one of the few games where co-op is needed rather than playing single player. RATING: {4.0}

Spinter Cell: Conviction - When a series changes its ideals and style to fit a wider audience, it tends to lose some of the magic in the progress. Where the music industry has lost touch with music, Ubisoft has began to focus on storyline presentation and making the almighty dollar instead of making the extremely difficult, trophy under the belt, award winner. Still a fun 3rd person shooter even if anonymity has been lost in translation, expect to play once and never to play again. RATING: {5.0} [Previous Review]

Alpha Protocol - When companies like Obsidian branch out to attempt something new they are taking a chance and with Alpha Protocol they failed much like typical UPN comedies of the 90s. All the pieces are there but bugginess and odd voice acting overshadow the quality greats such as the reactive dialogue system, storyline, and black market character customization. Too bad networks like CBS still seem to use laugh tracks because even UPN realized that doesn’t work and neither did Alpha Protocol. RATING: {1.0} [Previous Review]

Dragon Age: Origins Awakening - This standalone expansion was a reminder that things such as expansions aren’t necessary to play and do not always meet eye to eye with their former colleague. Origins was this type of release and at the time was more about no other releases rather than quality. Skip and wait for the second title coming next year unless the original was entrancing to the heart. RATING: {3.5} [Previous Review]

Bioshock 2 – In rare occasions the way a game looks and plays match and are above levels that an average game can barely reach. In the case of Bioshock 2 it is slightly less of a shock as the first but still well worth playing at least once especially in preparation for Bioshock Infinite. Big Sisters and polished looks are improvements over the first but the storyline is a bit of a departure. Multiplayer is not the high point again so stick with a need to rent if anything. Jules Verne, Jacques Cousteau, Steve Zissou and Scuba Steve approved. RATING: {8.0} [Previous Review]

Final Fantasy XIII - A radical change in relation to previous Final Fantasy games, XIII has taken my personal relationship with Square-Enix to the point of a new low. Where others may attempt to play it in a classic manner, the fact that the battles are real-time places the player at a disadvantage if not auto-attacking in a very boring manner. An item creation system that in the end is unnecessarily unused leaves the game playing out more as a movie than a game made even worse due to the most linear exploration for a Final Fantasy game yet. If only Square-Enix could get their act together a bit more in their MMOs, I may revaluate the RPG relationship again. Dues Ex 2 coming out in 2011 gives them another chance to sway anyone in their non-RPG realm which has started to blossom lately in comparison to their classic series. RATING: {3.0} [Previous Review]

Mass Effect 2 – With this release, Bioware has truly become a shining leader in RPG releases. A storyline written by actual certified writers with similarities that rival the X-Files and a sequel that matches the original in such a quality manner that it begins to feel like an MMO expansion, Mass Effect 2 is quite the must play. The only downside is a bit of overzealous DLC that tends to add up in the wallet region even if each has a chocolaty nougat center. Throughout 2011 leading up to the third release, we’ve been promised addition DLC matching the story between the second and third so until then a second play through hopefully saving all the companions is not a bad idea. (X-Play’s game of the year for 2010.) RATING: {9.5} [Previous Review]

Dead Rising 2 - Weapon creation, connecting storyline, and easier to rescue survivors are some of the best improvements for DR2 while attempting to complete it within 10 – 15 hours. The overall difficulty seems easier than the first but aiming and control ease might have something to do with this. The multiple endings are available again for an extra play through or two and DLC is scheduled for release later in 2011. Cutscene meshing is well done but occasional over the top voice acting is sprinkled in for cheesy zombie movie reminiscing. If zombies or the original are your forte` then add DR2 to the playlist for a rental in 2011. RATING: {6.5}

Medal of Honor - As far as single player FPSers are concerned, Call of Duty is quite experienced for giving the player an emotional connection to the characters. MoH is no exception and makes for the best single player reality FPS game of the year. MoH still suffers from the feeling of constant spawning of enemies that use the same running patterns to reach the player, but this isn’t nearly as obtusely ignorant as the multiplayer is concerned. If you are into nail scratching chalkboards then the MoH is for you as the hype, TV commercials, and promises pierce straight to a deep place of confusion since it is done so poorly. Respawning can be a huge annoyance when outnumbered and the flow of battles feel jerky and unsmooth making multiplayer pale in comparison to MW. Rent for just the single player. RATING: {5.5}

Halo: Reach - The other FPS single player game that is better but set in the realm of Sci-fi is Halo: Reach. An overhaul of a game that is very similar to the first release with storyline, level design, and the feeling of a multi-world war is accomplished quite well in H:R. Both single and mulitplay are beacons as everything has been revamped toward improvements. Single player can be done in co-op modes and is by far the best co-op game of the year meshing beautiful cutscenes and just the right amount of difficulty to keep the challenge that the first Halo had. Multiplayer has additional character unlocks and customization and new game modes to expand on keeping multiple games from getting repetitive. As long as one can stand the Sci-fi environment that is less like Dune but more like Stargate, H:R is a very enjoyable game all-around. RATING: {9.5}

Fable 3 – Lionhead Studios and their head Peter Molyneux have quite a knack for Monty Python references as well as creating a very unique RPG. Taking a progressive character that develops physically to the choices the player makes, Lionhead has pushed this idea further making weapons and a whole kingdom that does the same. The rest of the game is similar to the previous two which means that the end comes at an abrupt unwanted time when one wants more and the co-op suffers from camera and character distance trouble. Anyone who enjoyed the first two for their British personality will again find solace in Fable 3. RATING: {5.0}

Fallout 3: New Vegas - An intriguing release with a behind the scenes checkered company past doesn’t phase this game. With many similarities to Fallout 3, this game is more appealing to those that played the turn-based originals with many turns and twists connecting the older games to this one. At times the game is buggy and on the consoles will be subject to freezes, especially outside of New Vegas, but those problems become overlooked when the depth of large scale questlines and timing of when and what order those quests are completed are taken into consideration. A large amount of replayability is very likely but the 50-100 hour completion time (coinciding with the amount of exploration you undertake) may be overwhelming for the meek and merry. My favorite release of the year and a definite must play. Additional DLC will be arriving in 2011. Just be ready for your tongue to get used to the taste of a good ol’ sarsaparilla. RATING: {8.0}

Modern Warfare 2: Black Ops - 2008-2010 high school yearbooks were signed with begrudgingly sly comments of kill to death ratios all because of MW2. But since then corporate changes occurred without surface flashiness when Treyarch played smoke and mirror games with commercials of Kobe Bryant and Jimmy Kimmel in order to hit record sales. Minus the change in the creation guard, some obvious differences between this and MW2 are obvious once the game is played. The multiplayer visually is a step backwards which seems awkward and quite a glaring oversight but the gameplay is one of the best as always. Shots required to kill an enemy have been increased a bit changing overly annoying people that go for single shot kills at an alarming rate but also making killstreaks or sniping a lot more difficult for everyone. New unlock customization orders and game modes in multiplayer are some big changes but welcoming after repetitive prestiging. The single player is extremely short again but still well done in all of its sweatiness of jungle warfare. Great for multiplayer but basic in single player, MW:BO is a trophy release of the year but yet seems like it won’t reach the glory that MW2 had. And if you play and like this game, forum trolls with all their spiky hair will tell you can only like this game and can’t enjoy Halo: Reach at the same time for some reason. RATING: {9.0}

PC:

King’s Bounty: Armored Princess – There are two main types of turn based RPGs, the final fantasy non-grid type of battle system or the ogre tactics grid/board game type of battle system. King’s Bounty is grid based but uses a very different idea in the fact that usable units are finite. Types of units vary in attributes and therefore amounts of single unit army numbers, but these differences in how units and battles play out make for a difficult game. Ease of progression is best done by finicky back and forth map movements picking off weaker enemies while avoiding the steroidal beefcakes but in doing so your movement paths look ridiculously overlapping. Armored Princess is the third in the series and is slightly easier than previous games and is not for everyone even RPG fans. This is a demo tryout game for sure before purchasing because so few people will enjoy this. RATING: {1.0}

Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty – Even after Korean videogame “athletes” were found to be involved in betting schemes, a new round of superstars will emerge with SC2. Yes, SC2 is the best multiplayer strategy game out there due to quality of game that Blizzard produces. One sad change is the single player game has cutscenes that match WoW visually and voice acting that is downright headshaking in its terribleness. The story if one can separate these problems, is ok but not as grasping as the original or expansion but the missions and level design are above average. If you purchase SC2, multiplayer should be the only reason, and that part won’t disappoint. The DOTA mod will soon be available too for all those that enjoy the hero units. But Blizzard, why do SCV units say, “in the rear with the gear?” RATING: {9.0}

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl + Call of Pripyat – Ukrainians and Russians are not exactly alike but GSC Game World know exactly how to make a player feel like they are in the shoes of a Russian. One of the sleeper hits of 2007 and a not as amazing but still good sequel in 2010, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is a series to revisit from time to time. A survival game that focuses heavily on realism, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is an instant classic. It may be a bit expensive to throw into the mix of all the late 2010 hits, but everyone should make it a point to play the first at some point in their lifetime. Brush up on the pronunciations of the Russian alphabet before you do because P may confuse you for a pirate’s theme song. RATING: {9.5 / 4.0} [Previous Review]

Metro 2033 - Vampires and zombies may be all the rage lately but Metro 2033 can scare anyone more than a horde of raving Twilight fans. A linear game compared to the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series, Metro 2033 is good the first time through even if the story is as confusing as trying to quickly read Lost Paradise. Shotgun shells almighty, this game will make the typical player feverishly throw random lead into every dark corner as light and sound play tricks and the environment gives anyone a case of claustrophobia. Rent it and ram it. RATING: {4.5} [Previous Review]

ARMA 2: Operation Arrowhead – Where Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising showed that converting the series to the console is a bit more difficult than Codemasters would like to admit, the PC reality war series ARMA still holds the torch for one heck of a large scale warfare FPSer. Operation Arrowhead is a bit shorter than the original OF game but a change in where the fake wars take place is a nice change. The desert environment is not as flashy as MOH’s Middle East but instead OA will give the player the opportunity to place themselves at the helm of commanding troops and modern armaments such as the fast attack Bradley vehicle. Large amounts of controls, modding, and replayability are all included with an ARMA game yet this expansion is much shorter than ARMA 2’s story. Old command bugginess and clipping graphics are the worst of OA’s problems but no other game has been able to match this series’ broad scope military strategies. Hold a candle for freedom and move your platoon twenty clicks in real-time you badass you. RATING: {5.5}

Command and Conquer 4: Tiberium Twilight – Rest in peace C+C. TT when compared to any other strategy game or its own series should give a person the remorsefulness that can only come when putting down an old pet. You’ve enjoyed your time with that family rascal, from the days when it was spry and cheerful, to the later years of many lovely memories, and now at the end of its life you begin to remember how it used to be rather than what it is now. It’s the worst part of getting old but yes all living things die, Command and Conquer reaching that time now. We will miss you Kane. We will miss you NOD attack bike that inspired hero units in today’s strategy games. Oh what fun we had. RATING: {1.0} [Previous Review]

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm – MMOs are unique in that they last much longer than the initial release date of usual games and even longer with expansions. Most MMO players find that each expansion takes away from the original direction of the game and sometimes can be the breaking point for people to leave the game altogether. Wrath of the Lich King was much like this for WoW in that dungeon raiding was brought down to a new low in boredom almost killing the series. Now with the release of Cataclysm a new revitalization has occurred. Much of the major originality has been brought forth again. Dungeons are quite difficult again and many improvements such as guild levels, visual and enthralling questlines, and graphically changed old worlds are among some of the multiple changes. Blizzard has come full circle and reborn a MMO unlike many other MMOs could never do: hit the seven year mark and still go strong. RATING: {8.0}

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl + Call of Pripyat, Metro 2033: I’d like to go home, I’ve mined the graveyard of unpublished poems

2010-10-31T20:02:00.000-05:00

здравствуйте! As an American watching too many Hollywood films for one lifetime and being surrounded by events such as outsourcing, everyday judgments about foreign lands lean to the side of mostly harsh and are much easier to find than free chocolate for a hungry woman. So when a company comes around from a land that would take a very long plane ride to reach, it’s easier to dismiss and distrust than even give the game and company half a chance. Now compound that with a former foreign political party that forced the popular duck and cover movie that our parents or grandparents enjoyed thinking while trying to sleep produces even more happily earned motivation to buy anything coming from the CCCP.

As an American with a specialized background, I’ve been forced to sit through training dealing with one of the worst industrial accidents in the last century: Chernobyl. Within the stacks of paperwork there are plenty of videos such as this one and this one, etc, all bringing the events of the disaster to a very eerie realization. The nearby town Pripyat for example, was created to give workers of Chernobyl a place to call home but has remained abandoned since it was evacuated a day after the accident.

With all that smile friendly news enters the company GSC Game World from Kiev, Ukraine. After running some searches of games developed in Ukraine the overall list seemed smaller than Mega Millions winners from the Midwest. And it wasn’t too long ago that a Russian speaking company pushed my typical easy going nature to the edge of “bad touch” boundaries. But the strength of persuasion can come from many avenues even those that are less expected. Irrational Games’ podcast was the first place to drop not only GSC’s name but a very specific game that influenced Bioshock.

That game Irrational mentions on multiple occasions is S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl for the PC. At first glace, minus for those coming out of their Y2K bunkers in time to resupply for 2012, one can easily see that S:SC was released back in 2007. But before brushing off what looks like a dated game compared to today’s standards there is hope. An additional free download (considered a mod but is more like a total overhaul) is available from a large group of freelance developers here. After updating this three year old game to visually mimic today’s games, S:SC begins to play a sly game of unravel the mystery. But do not go into S:SC thinking it’s a typical “your a good guy, here’s some bad guys, go kill and we’ll fill you in on why later.” S:SC in fact has lot of depth, girth, berth and whatever other awkward synonyms for wideness you can muster up when it comes to its central theme.

There are some core elements from a few different places that become interlaced within S:SC. The first chunk comes from a 1979 (prior to Chernobyl) Russian movie called Stalker. Skipping over the need to watch the entire movie, Stalker was about three characters intent on trying to reach a place called “the room” within a quarantined wilderness because of its rumored ability to grant any wish to those who enter it. A very interesting side note (according to wikipedia) is after filming this movie, some of the cast and crew died from various types of respiratory disorders which they had believed to have come from a scene filmed near a discharge river used by a nearby chemical plant as it was said to have been snowing in summer.

The second piece of S:SC’s storyline comes already aforementioned accident of Chernobyl and that part may be a bit obvious just from reading the title of the game. So yes, S:SC is set in the “area” of today’s Chernobyl where the military will stop any random civilians from gaining access to the highly irradiated and dangerous area. With Chernobyl comes all the abandoned buildings and power plant itself to be explored along with the frequent need to watch the old Geiger counter.

And the third puzzle piece of the central theme is the sc-fi book Roadside Picnic. Going straight to the cliff notes, Roadside Picnic is about the concept of a messy family going on a picnic in the woods. They arrive and animals scatter and hide to and fro while the family stays for a while, eats, and then blazes off leaving all sorts of trash behind. The animals then slowly come out to inspect what was left behind, objects foreign to them, each having different dangers or benefits. For example a half eaten sandwich is consumed like any other food, but a mostly empty can of motor oil when sniffed and licked makes the animal very sick. Roadside Picnic is that same concept only with aliens and people. A group of visitors come to Earth at various locations, stay just long enough to be noticed and then quickly take off. People then begin to explore the areas to find strange artifacts left behind. Some are very dangerous while others have very odd benefits. Once this is realized, the areas become exclusion zones guarded by respective militaries. A group of known as stalkers, once again, are the only ones who venture purposely into the zones in hopes to find artifacts to bring back to sell.

These three concepts make up the backdrop for S:SC. The game takes place in Chernobyl, a true exclusion zone, and you play a S.T.A.L.K.E.R. who is found by a merchant on the edge of the zone. Awaking with a bit of amnesia you find a message on your PDA saying to kill a fellow S.T.A.L.K.E.R. The merchant gives you a slight introduction into the zone telling you to be on the lookout for artifacts that hold powers to be sold for high prices. From there the game is a sandbox FPSer where quests are given with specific times by which they must be completed and it is the players choice to solve the mysteries of S:SC or run around randomly in the name of democracy to put a bullet in anything sounding Russian.

And everything in this game does sound as Russian as this folk song. Even when choosing to play this in English, many of the NPCs are not translated in the random small sayings as they wander by or some of the dialog text. As you stand by allies within a camp, one will on occasion pull out a guitar to sing a song to make you feel like Kansas is oh so far away.

This makes for an interesting environment as it gives a foreign land feel but some smaller parts of the game stay lost in translation. The initial learning curve of the game is high since much of what is going on starts and stays mysterious but at the same time adds to the ongoing element of horror with its little explanation. One such problem with translations and storyline I encountered was that I was never able to find the main person to kill and yet was able to end the game a different way. This disconnect was slightly frustrating but with the aid of our old pal The Internet, the second time through made more sense.

The horror element is what Irrational Games pointed out as a key piece to what makes a this a memorable game. True to their word S:SC is one of the scariest games I have ever played. When it’s 3am with all lights shut off and a few too many cold ones the scary portions of any game will be enhanced because of the surrounding environment the game is played in. S:SC does not need any enhancement. Other games such as Resident Evil, FEAR or even Eternal Darkness use very standardized, flashy Hollywoodish, or unique out-of-game scare tactics. S:SC uses an indirect method with heavy attention to the lack of sounds or focus towards a person’s ability to recognize the cause of a sound. This is compounded by the fact that S:SC is a survivor oriented game constantly leaving the player with limited ammunition, hunger, bandages, weapon durability, overall health, and a small carry limit. Additional mods can be applied to S:SC bringing the survivor portion to a more post-apocalyptical standard possibly forcing the player to kill a fellow ally for his food in order to suppress life threatening hunger. The horror portion is also shadowed by the background of Chernobyl. GSC Game World took a lot of extra time in researching and even visiting the exclusion zone to ensure the player is given a real and dangerous place that many know about but develops into an even scarier place they more intimately familiar they become with it.

The general aspects of S:SC (as long as the complete mod is installed) are run-of-the-mill for today’s standards. The graphics with weather effects and time of day changes are visually stunning. The sounds and music are very unique to S:SC due to its origin but are nonetheless high quality. The controls are customizable and aiming is strong due to the mouse/keyboard combination of PC games. The combat realism is quite astounding as bullet trajectories matched with proper caliber and gun choice as well as only having iron sights or limited scopes are again an effect of S:SC being a survivor based game. The multiplayer is more muted due to its age but this is an unnecessary addition as the emotional ties are focused within the single player direction. The AI is well done being accurate and tactful. Overall difficulty is quite high and only gets higher with additional mods but this added challenge is a welcomed one from the simple quick fix FPS games of today. The storyline is also unique and is directly derived from the previously mentioned core elements but is not coupled with many cutscenes compared to most games of today.

Rarely does a game three years old peak such a late interest now that Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo are well enough established with this generation’s consoles. And sadly this summer was a busy one for me and therefore this review comes at a conflicting time with the upcoming heavy hitting holiday releases instead of during the summer when nothing outstanding was released. But if anything, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl should stay in the back of your mind like an amazing commercial that sticks in the craw the next time there is a lull in your gaming life. It is a one of a kind creation that deserves the title of classic and is worth not just one but a few plays through. (Available on Steam)

Rating: 9.5 {on a scale of –10 to 10}

Three years later (skipping Clear Sky due to known bug issues) a direct sequel called S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat was released by GSC Game World. Much of the gameplay, horror and survival aspects are the same as S:SC but of course some improvements have been made. This time you are a military agent posing as a S.T.A.L.K.E.R. to investigate the disappearance of lost helicopters that were flying over the town of Pripyat. The town and surrounding rural areas are again realistically imported as the play environment including one of the most famous Ferris Wheels in the world. Not long ago Modern Warfare 1 included Pripyat as part of its story allowing you to make your way through some of the abandoned buildings but its graphical engine made the town gleam instead of the grimy reality that S:CP paints.

The graphics of S:CP are a step up over the original (unmodded) as well as the continuity of the story and translations with NPCs. Gun and armor modification as well as an RPG interface with stats are good improvements but overall the game doesn’t connect on the same level as S:SC. A majority of the game is spent outside of Pripyat and once the player arrives, exploration of all the visual landmarks comes mostly from player’s curiosity instead of being driven there by the main story.

The disconnect may come from the simple fact that GSC made it rain in S:SC by letting you waltz all the way into Chernobyl and then expects you to be overjoyed by making it rain with scratch tickets in the abandoned neighboring town. The mighty dollar rains and reigns better so if you decide to play S:CP, you’re rolling the dice on finding the same amount of pleasure that you can get out of S:SC. (Available on Steam)

Rating: 4.0 {on a scale of –10 to 10}

The latest and vastly different game released by THQ and 4AGames (founded by former developers of GSC) after S:CP was called Metro 2033. This release was more of an accessible horror/survival game in order to reach a broader audience than the previously mentioned games being released on consoles as well as PC. The play environment is again Russian based taking place very near Moscow yet most of the player’s time is spent underground as its title hints at. In Metro 2033 you play the child of a survivor after a terrible apocalypse ravaged the world’s surface. The survivors of Russia have hid themselves within the nearby metro tunnels of Moscow scraping by with their trusty thirsts being quenched by whatever little vodka they can find.

Changing from a sandbox game to a very linear one, Metro 2033 still focuses much of its gameplay within the horror genre. A very dark game graphically forces the player into the same realm of Doom 3, Resident Evil, Silent Hill, etc, where most of the scares are caused by visual panic from enemies having the same working distance as a dance partner. A unique feature in Metro 2033 is a flashlight with what seems like the shortest battery ever but can be recharged by hand. This creates situations where in the midst of battle, time management of the player’s visual aid must be taken into account. Another unique feature is managing a needed gas mask’s chemical cartridges in order to stay on the surface or within oxygen deprived tunnels. The player’s breathing becomes the ambient noise when the mask is on and adds a new source of tension as changing situations shift the rate.

The story is a bit interesting but has a very odd ending not causing any type of beckoning to replay Metro 2033. A single play through is all that’s really necessary and can be done in about 10-12 hours based on difficulty chosen. Most of the game is very close combat forcing gun preference toward shotguns over assault rifles or long range sniper weapons purely for spread fire room clearing. In all the FPS games over the years, Metro 2033 takes the cake as far as keeping the buckshot flying. I used so many shells that for the next few games that I played I swore off the sound of an empty shell hitting the ground. The controls are simplified and sometimes slightly awkward on the console as everything is jammed onto a controller. The AI is good at flank techniques yet not impossibly difficult when they outnumber.

The overall game is fun but an unnecessary one to play through unless one is a large fan of the genre. Rent it if slightly interested, but skip it over S:SC if time and cash is limited. What Metro 2033 does do indirectly is point out that GSC Game World and 4AGames should be around for years to come making quality games from across the back pond. Even if they are bloody reds they do know how to make a good horror/survival game. (Available on Steam)

Rating: 4.5 {on a scale of –10 to 10}

Menomena – Dirty Cartoons

Album Version

Splinter Cell: Conviction + Alpha Protocol: Your will to speak clearly exposed too much, unsung once too often could not rub off

2010-07-13T21:21:00.001-05:00

A spy game is a challenge all on its own by having to mix entertainment, reason and sensibleness with a pinch or two of mystery.
Comparisons using different eras of Ian Flemming's James Bond movies, the quality of a "spy" game can mimic the suaveness of Sean Connery, be over the top ridiculousness of Pierce Brosnan, the straight professionalism of Roger Moore, or become the slick modern spy of Daniel Craig. Some games utilize their spycraft in unique ways that seem plausible while still maintaining dignity but others are so outlandish and confusing they are thrown to the wayside quickly. Recently two titles have been released, one being a sequel to a long series of stealth and gadgetry and the second being a newcomer from a company with an interesting history.

The first, Splinter Cell: Conviction from Ubisoft, was released back in April of this year and is the fifth game in the series. A continuation of the storyline is the core of this series and yet this game branches off in a vastly different direction from its predecessors with regards to gameplay. Where previous SC’s were very stringent on plausible deniability, this title cares little for consequence when leaving piles of bodies and yes up to Drowning Pool amounts of bodies may hit the floor. Your average security guard or even U.S. solider can be given a headshot with no recourse. Bodies no longer have to be hid or cameras bypassed to help keep the stealthy approach rolling since most alarms only create more roadblock targets instead of game over failures. This guiltless pleasure and freedom to its possessor works in two different ways. It steps away from what this series was known for to create a more accessible game to the casual gamer yet breaks the continuity of the previous four games to a slightly unreasonable or illogical approach. But yes, one must accept the rules set forth by their creators.

But don’t spend so much time dwelling on those five orphans you’ve just created, because it was done so using a new feature in SC:C called ‘mark and execute’ where previously flagged enemies can be simultaneously taken down with the push of a single button. SC:C also adds a new feature where storyline and checkpoints are illuminated on the walls of your current surroundings instead of breaking the action with loads of cutscenes. Graphics are pristine for a 3rd person shooter while the sounds and music are present but nothing special much like your favorite television parents Jon and Kate Gosselin. The controls are slightly awkward like all SC games using odd default button arrangements. The overall difficulty is no where near the previous games since guns blazing is a more viable option sending stealth to the achievement playground. This ease may be a warm welcome to veterans of SC but with very little reloads or respawns, the game can be accomplished quickly (less than 12 hours). The addition of a Co-op only portion of the story is a bonus but unnecessary to accomplish the single player game.

The story plays out as a nice continuation but is somewhat predictable in its entirety. Where the good spy novel or movie presents its story in the fashion of an enigma, SC:C’s story would only feel that way to someone new to the spy or even suspense genres. For the player that’s new to SC, the story will give slight confusion until it reaches its fruition and for fans of the previous games, will feel almost as if the story is now complete. Obviousness like the alter egos of Bruce Wayne or Edward Nigma aside, the presentation flows well with the gameplay. The pre-mission customization of equipment is great but the preference for silent weapons versus the tornado siren of an unsilenced one keeps the choices limited.

Overall, Splinter Cell: Conviction is a handful of changes, steering the series in new directions that are a big step away from the original. It is a very short ride like some rounds on the Bill Paxton pinball machine but none of the new features make this title in the Splinter Cell series one that is unforgettable like the first. It is worth a single play through, especially for fans of the previous games, but this is definitely not a game that will be missed and doesn’t drive the need to replay or compel a player to spend time on other single player modes or even bother with the multiplayer mode more than once. And where does this fit in the realm of comparisons to spy movies? Splinter Cell: Conviction is probably the typical Roger Moore spy of a game so rent it if it tickles your fancy.

Rating: 5.0 {on a scale of –10 to 10}

The second spy game first needs to have its company established to give a proper background. Alpha Protocol was released by Obsidian Entertainment on June 1st, an offshoot of Interplay. Obsidian Entertainment has created games like Knights of the Old Republic 2 and Neverwind Nights 2 and the soon to be Fallout 3: New Vegas. Why they have been allowed to create entire standalone sequels with the same title made by Bioware should start to perk up ears and make itchy heads since franchises, especially very successful ones, tend to keep high amounts of money flowing by making their own sequels. Quite simply, Obsidian was formed from a group of employees that Interplay laid off: Black Isle Studios at the time. Bioware purchased some rights to games like Fallout while Obsidian maintained some rights being they were from the original company that produced Fallout. It’s all confusing as far as intellectual rights are concerned but understanding that Alpha Protocol is a 3rd person action spy game with RPG elements created by a unique company that has been on the cusp of outstanding RPG titles is important.

Alpha Protocol created a lot of possibilities and hopes as it was a new venture by creating a new crossover of genres. No other company has attempted to mix RPG storytelling and customizing with an action spy game. There have been plenty of other action games but no RPGs centered on the idea of espionage. The only other RPGish spy game that comes to mind is Super Sneaky Spy Guy which contains no action while you stare at real photographs to unravel the mysteries of an empty cruise ship.

Cutting the fat before I drag this out, Alpha Protocol is not a game for very many people. There are three distinctive portions of this game: The 3rd person action, the storytelling system, and the RPG elements. Few people will enjoy AP due to large problems that truly are surprising for a company that has had their act together in the past. To put it bluntly the action parts of AP have a lot of issues; Graphics look old, the physics, combat, and camera control feel like riding a classic willy’s jeep on a rough road, the music and sound are so so, bits of the voice acting sound worse than local radio commercials, extremely linear paths for each level, and the AI enemies when not alarmed by your presence patrol rigid paths making 180 degree turns faster than a blink of an eye. It all adds up quickly to a pile of annoyances much like a long trip to the bathroom with only a creepy Celine Dion Anne Geddes book to pass the time. These problems do not make the game unplayable, but instead give obtuse glares from the shadows while gremlin laughter can be heard but not seen.

At the same exact time where this game begins to fail, it also dabbles in something great. KOTOR and other Bioware titles use a very simple system of RPG dialogue unfolding the story in various directions while the player makes choices on what type of character to be. AP takes this a step further removing the scripted choices. AP instead forces timed attitude responses on the fly that are reactive to the current dialogue. For example, if a mysterious new character enters a scene and says to leave this town or die, your choices can be sarcastic, professional, or aggressive in nature with the actual responded dialogue unknown until after you’ve made a choice on the type of response. The choice made can affect your relationship with that person in a neutral, positive (I like you), or negative (I loathe you) direction which also affects how much of the story is revealed from that character and future conversations with other characters. This system is slightly overshadowed by awkward voice acting at times but ignoring the spoken word and focusing on the written subtitles will keep an RPG lover enthralled. This system is very interesting and creative, working excellently in the spy genre and makes for a unique presentation of storytelling. The ‘true’ story in AP is a well kept secret hitting on the unpredictability of a Robert Ludlum level of storytelling for a game. Hopefully this will be implemented into future games (aka future Fallout games) because there is truly nothing else like it.

The other RPG elements are tiny glimmers of hope even if the visual portions were slightly lacking. Customizable guns and equipment (even if all weapon mods are identical looking), unlockable attribute bonuses, a competitive black market of equipment and intel, and an in-depth stat system that records all of the fatherless children you’ve created are among some of the high points of AP. Sadly all of these RPG pieces are interlaced in the 3rd person action and errors and bugs become easier to focus on than successes. The black market, for example, contains intel items such as maps or dossiers on characters yet options like maps are unnecessary since all levels are linear in nature.

The game can be completed in vastly different manners, ranging from not killing a single person in the whole game (using tranquilzer rounds), to ensuring all beating hearts become bleeding ones. Regardless of picking a full, empty or somewhere in between kill-count, stealth or disregard of stealth can be chosen much like SC:C but in AP’s case affects the outcome of the game as well as the difficulty and speed of completion. Guns blazing, this game can be finished in ten hours or less and the stealthy reserved approach pushes completion time beyond ten hours to about fifteen. Either way the only reason this game would be replayed (I finished it from start to finish twice) is to change all of the hefty dialogue choices and outcomes to better grasp the story yet this is probably unnecessary for anyone who dislikes punishment.

All in all, Alpha Protocol seemed like it was originally created from a dialogue and storytelling system that will rival future games to come but became a laughing stock of action games for this generation of games by poor implementation of a 3rd person shooter portion. A great reference point for the future, AP was a heavy disappointment in what was either a publishing, time pressure, and/or gross oversight during testing error. Because of this the only James Bond era AP can be compared to is George Lazenby’s uniqueness of starring in between Connery’s films and that’s about it.

Rating: 1.0 {on a scale of –10 to 10}

Helmet - Unsung

Dragon Age: Origins Awakening: Mystical boys feeling alright, raggedy wisdom falls from my hand

2010-06-08T21:19:00.000-05:00

Peculiar as the word expansion usually coexists with the notion that owning the original is a must, Dragon Age: Origins Awakening is one of the very few “stand-alone expansions”. Brought to us by Bioware, DA:OA builds on the hefty success of its company’s namesake as well as its predecessor. For those that never played the original, there may be some major elements missing for the player to truly grasp the game’s entirety. For those that have dived deep into the ideal dungeons of our youth in the first, you may be slightly surprised at DA:OA.

By tossing around the term “stand-alone expansion,” confusion and jaw dropping anger are just a couple of the mental states that can result not to be mixed up with a Rick roll while cruising around Youtube. On the one hand DA:OA feels like a large amount of extra downloadable content that’s wrapped into one extra large present you didn’t see coming especially with it’s quick release date after the original (four months apart). On the other hand it isn’t as obviously advertised and priced as such. Bioware has been known to be able to keep the drive and gameplay experience felt in an original game willing and able in its sequels. If Mass Effect is any measure at this momentous achievement then players expect the same level of brilliance in other releases from its parent company. Expectations run higher as companies show us they can make the high jump into success when others have failed.

The cause and effect of DA:OA is shown in its display and contours. For a player to understand and begin to enjoy themselves while playing DA:OA, the original needs to have been conquered first. A player can create a hero from scratch and hop right into DA:OA but the journey will begin at level twenty, the same level cap DA:O left us at. The abilities available at this point can confuse a new player as well as trying to setting up not just one, but a full party of characters. By comparison it would be as if a person was invited for the first time over to Bob’s house for a classic D&D pen and paper session and asked to roll a high level character and join in out of the blue. That person might have a grasp of D&D but Bob’s house rules can be a bit different and everyone else’s eyes in the room are a bit bloodshot and glazed over from the 36 hour session filled with Monster energy drinks and Pop Tarts. Yes, scary and intimidating just for a pen and paper game. Much of the same can be said for never playing DA:O and hoping to somehow piece together a joyful experience in DA:OA.

Sure DA:OA does fulfill the term “stand-alone expansion” in a sensible manner even if they don’t plaster a nice neon sign on this factor. The story continues on from the end of DA:O as years have past. An interesting twist on the end of the first as some darkspawn have begun to rise again. As the darkspawn had been thwarted and driven back, most of the land has become complacent with their time of peace. A new uprising of darkspawn occurs only this time the mindless zombie routine has been dropped and intelligent spawn leaders have surfaced. The story references many portions of the first and the gaps in a knowledge base for the second will frustrate a person trying to piece it all together.

Characters from the first are found throughout the game, some joining your quest for glory while others become part of the backdrop. Choices made before do affect you in this game although most will barely tweak the storyline. An unbalanced mix of character classes are prevalent in the expansion (I had no tank/sword + board type of character and instead had an over abundance of casters) due to not being able to play all the previous characters or being unable to foresee the classes of upcoming party members. The significance of some interactions with characters/npcs for a newcomer would add another level of scrambled nonsense as the player would ask themselves, “why do I have five minutes of dialog with someone who has no quests and won’t join my party?”

Controls, visuals, sounds, and almost everything else are identical to the previous game. The difficulty however is on scale with getting lost in the bird’s nest known as Justin Bieber’s hair. Where the first was a die, respawn, die, respawn, routine of roulette, on the hard and Mountain Dew X-treme settings, DA:OA was quite a breeze. This may be due to having access to high level abilities from the get go or working strategies already in use from all the dying the first caused. Either way the only real challenge encountered in this entire expansion was the very last portion giving quite the sigh of relief to an expert of the first but causing a craving for the feel of accomplishment after it’s completed.

With the very successful franchises Bioware has employed, Dragon Age: Origins Awakening is a small blip on the radar that will soon be forgotten unless an odd reference to a highly priced expansion has to be made in conversations of the future. While fans of the first will somewhat enjoy this extra release, it is by all means an unnecessary whimper of an achievement to play through to the finish (10-15 hours). Unless my judgment is clouded and narrow minded somehow, after completing DA:OA I found it hard to believe that another sequel will be made to import characters into without the same issue of ease with childlike difficulty.

Rating: 3.5 {on a scale of –10 to 10}

Vampire Weekend – Boston (Ladies of Cambridge)

------------ Upcoming Reviews still in the works ------------

Splinter Cell: Conviction / King’s Bounty: Armored Princess / Red Dead Redemption / Lost Planet 2 / Alpha Protocol

Bioshock 2: You can feel it in your mind, oh you can do it all the time, plug it in and change the world

2010-05-18T19:56:00.000-05:00

From the depths of a gloriously visual rich landscape known as Rapture, Bioshock 2 from 2kgames (2k Marin and Irrational Games) is a first person horror/shooter plain and simple. Yet plain and simple is quite the opposite for this and its predecessor. With a strong focus on art and creativity, Bioshock 2 is not only a solid game but a full experience placing the player in a big set of metal boots to fill. Baring that the player doesn’t already have a fear of water, Bioshock 2 will gently send shivers down the spine, the kind of shivers that come with a healthy amount of urination.

Set eight years after the first you are thrown back into the imaginary underwater city known as Rapture. Bioshock 2 jams the player in the boots of an older model of the Mega Men of the sea, the Big Daddy. Not the weak Adam Sandler’s Scuba Steve type of diver that first comes to mind, the Delta model in B2 is about on par with say Jacques Cousteau. It’s a decent middle ground versus the fear inducing deep divers from the first just like their Yu-Gi-Oh card says. As you awake in your Big Daddy suit you begin to unravel a mystery surrounding the Little Sisters and the first generation of Little Sisters from the first game who have now become the Big Sisters. Many of the characters from the first are mentioned and the story in this sequel is good even if it does peter out after a bit of time, picking up fast to end full swing.

The controls are pretty simple to master as is typical of most FPSers, and the difficulty scales well. The true difficulty is the play style that is pushed onto the player by balancing a slower pace (minimizing the “kick the door down, run and gun with almost limitless ammo”) and starving the player of resources by having small ammo and item caps. Doing so yields a stylistic game that plays farther on the horror side since survival becomes harder. And by style I’m not referring to the deep emotional connection anyone gets by watching America’s Next Top Model but instead an artistic style that compliments the gameplay. This was in the original and is still very prevalent in the second making quite the statement if and when Irrational Games or 2Kgames has been involved with games of the past or will be involved with future games.

Fueling this style is the art direction. With vibrant visuals as well as rich ambient sounds and music, the player becomes one with the game. Even the backdrop of the undersea world of Rapture becomes a vital part of the game much like the Nakatomi Plaza was a character in Die Hard. And now that you know what a TV dinner feels like you can focus on some visual differences from the first to the second game such as a more colorful world with sound and lights, sharper images and a bigger depth of detail. The Big Sisters alone give a new feel for apprehension during pursuits by giving them a screech resembling a rabbit being caught by a snake(link may be disturbing). The world of Rapture looks more polished with added aqua flora and fauna such as coral, sea slugs, and the typical leafy plants found in nine out of ten fish tanks.

The length of time to complete the game is about ten hours if you scrounge around for everything which felt slightly less than the first. A few different endings are available based on a couple choices during the game. Overall the game was a solid followup and an amazing addition to the FPS genre by having what felt like a load of amazing talent bases in its creation and a style that isn’t found very often in the genre. The ride is worth it at least once but replayability and multiplayer is nothing like the first time so I’d wait for the greatest hits or a rental. A nice bonus to go along with Bioshock is a few podcasts available from Irrational Games either on iTunes or their website as they discuss many aspects of their games as well as decisions made while creating their games.

Rating: 8.0 {out of a –10 to 10 scale}

MGMT – Electric Feel

Command and Conquer 4: Tiberium Twilight: They couldn’t think of something to say the day you burst with all their lions, with all their might and all their thirst

2010-04-10T21:30:00.001-05:00

From one longstanding series to another, Command and Conquer 4 from EA is said to be the last installment in the fifteen year running series. Known for its live acting cutscenes from the era of Wing Commander, Hanging with Mr. Cooper, Hootie and the Blowfish and very difficult strategic gameplay, the C+C series always had a distinct personality compared to other strategy games. Much of that was probably due to arch nemesis Kane’s bald head and snide quips while he lead the opposing force NOD or National Organization on Disability. So does C+C go out like a lamb or a lion?

Well to start it off the live action cutscenes are again in full swing. Kane is back and looks as good as he did when he first unveiled himself from under the hood, but the GDI forces look a little more unrecognizable and a mishmosh of who knows who. The storyline picks up right where it left off in the last game with the alien forces defeated even though their pylons still remained on Earth. Kane is revealed to have more to do with these aliens than previously thought and he attempts to ascend through the pylons. Many of the same units are back in this installment including the classic mammoth tanks, as well as plenty of new additions, but units are now separated in an unexpected way.

A new change in C+C4 is the ridding the previous required building creations for units and resource gathering of everyone’s favorite radioactive element Tiberium. Now instead a flat cap on population totals is given with each unit needing different points to create them. This in turn creates a micromanagement game of properly countering the enemy with units based on strengths and weaknesses such as rocket wielders versus air units, chocolate against peanut butter, etc. A unique addition to this is the separation of types of units. Since resource gathering has disappeared, building creation is also missing and is instead replaced mobile bases. There are three types of mobile bases, offensive, defensive, and support, each with their own strategies. While being placed in the fray of war, a new and different base can be called to the battlefield allowing you to mix and match types of units temporarily and also plays importantly in multiplay.

The offensive base contains heavy vehicular units more powerful than the other two bases, the defensive uses more smaller individual troops but can build structures like laser towers and bunkers, and the supportive base builds mainly air units and can also use added powers on your troops in the field such as quick repair. With the base mobility and tight population caps, most of the game turns into utilization of the terrain while you micromanage individual battles. Against the computer AI, the scale of difficultly is on par with predecessors by being having to go 1v3 or 1v2 against it. A solid challenge for sure but an annoying one like attempting to rally your ant farm against alien ant farm.

Both factions have available single player missions to undertake if that is your forte. What is somewhat surprising though is the total number of missions for both sides, numbering under ten, some of which can be conquered very quickly. This makes for a lightning fast single player game leaving players to either dwell on past C+C memories, pondering why the title shares anything with vampires, or muster onward to multiplayer. The graphics are way behind in this date and age even for a strategy game while the controls are quite simple to master.

Quite simply and as writing this review has also reminded me of how unmotivated C+C4 made me feel, C+C4 only gives disappointment to a once great series as it would seem EA was just attempting to throw together a finale for the extra cash using the name to sell the game. No huge improvements are made, the story ends expectedly but with a blandness that even live actors can’t save, and the gameplay is boring and lacking enough to shed tears over. It would be best to visit the cemetery of games, pay your dues, and move on to new games. So bring your best black attire, a single rose, and kiss Command and Conquer goodbye.

Rating = 1.0 {out of –10 to 10}

Passion Pit – Sleepyhead

Final Fantasy XIII: You know you can’t keep letting it get you down and you can’t keep dragging that dead weight around

2010-04-10T20:18:00.001-05:00

And it’s with a heavy heart, Square-Enix, that I feel we should reevaluate our longstanding relationship. We’ve had so many good memories together since 1987 when we were both so young, filled with curiosity and wonder. As one of the oldest and respected gaming companies I’ve enjoyed growing old with you, from the earliest days of FFI, to Secret of Mana, to Chrono Trigger, to FFTactics, to FFXI, to even those different times like Vagrant Story, Front Mission, and Parasite Eve. But with your latest project, Final Fantasy XIII, I feel like you’ve slipped away from what’s made you so amazing. I feel like we’ve gotten to the point that I don’t even exist anymore except to sit and watch you like I’m a ghost. I’d hate to think all of the time we’ve spent together has now come to this but since our relationship now is on the edge of possibly ending for good, I think it’s best just to spend some time apart.

While I wish game company relationships were a little more straightforward like this, the complexities of what make a good customer/product provider relationship can depend on many things, and to keep that relationship strong over time, a company has to evolve to an ever changing world. Final Fantasy XIII from Square-Enix, which is the longest running game series for consoles filled with its own self-titled irony, is in all respects an attempt to adapt into a new decade of possibilities. It is another train stop from a quite triumphant and glorious game company. It’s on the level with an almost decade of searching for the next big pop star, regardless of the country.

With such a powerhouse company with many notches on its belt, it’s hard to imagine finding a game to dislike, especially one within their cash cow series. Picking apart the previous 12 games, searching for identifiable aspects that make the Final Fantasy the series that has captivated gamers since its conception, one can easily find some of the best written stories games have to offer, character sets who have grown and developed as the age of games gets older, musical scores that are now performed by sponsored orchestras, and one of the most copied RPG battle systems since consoles were first born. Yes, there are also a lot of Japanese culture-esque informalities from gigantic chicken/ostriches to white demons that have a very extensive vocabulary of one word, but all of these can be brushed to the side as you focus on the vital portions of Square-Enix’s games.

In FFXIII, the story, characters, and entirety of the game is all separate from previous games once again. In XIII there are six characters all unique with interlacing back stories. The main story itself is quite involved, containing a boat load of cutscenes to move it along, probably giving XIII an unofficial award for amount of cutscenes ever in a single game (I’m still searching for a montage of the words focus and choice on youtube as they become the most overused words throughout all of XIII’s cutscenes). The voice acting is beautifully done with the addition of Australian accents for a couple characters that are supposed to be from a separate planet. Like much of the RPG genre, at least 50-60 hours have to be spent in order to finish this game. This should not come as too much of a surprise though as the game is contained within three DVDs, an amount of memory the original FF could only dream of having in it’s time. And while having dreams of ramming a Delorean to 88 to give NASA the processing power of today before we ever landed on the moon, FFXIII spits out a long story reveling within itself to the well over three hour mark of a total movie. So make sure you bust out your entire box of Orville because there is a lot of sitting time.

While you’re taking in all of the sights of the story, there is a lot of music to be had and all of it seems somewhat muted or swept beneath the rest of the game. When the music does awaken, you realize it’s repetition has become rampant. This is also expected as leveling within a Square-Enix RPG has previously taken people to the point of mental instability, the same place in your mind where you begin to argue with yourself over dye numbers used in Twinkies and names of actors from your favorite 80’s sitcoms.

The idea of repetition is not the terrible notion in XIII unlike other RPGs or even older FFs, and this is due to its linearity. Whilst you dungeon dive with your minimap is on, all crevices and hiding places are within short walks, enemies are all visible, some can be avoided, and enemies no longer drop currency. Gone is the idea of off the beaten path for dungeons, the idea of towns to explore has faded, and leveling is done differently as exp is now awarded directly as points to purchase abilities and stats under a system with few choices. Stats have been whittled down to strength, magic, and hp alone making the understanding of their correlations easier. Gone are mana bars and item management (to keep health high) is negligible as health is reset after each battle. Dropped items and treasure sold is almost the only way to make a living in XIII, fully immersing players in the old unused economic system of bartering. And since most are out of touch with the going rate of sheep’s wool and tiger fangs, be prepared to be swindled and taken for all your worth; every piece of scrap metal and dead carcass feels like a rare drop. Items dropped are used for weapon and accessory upgrades (no armor or equipment whatsoever) and require a large amount of farming and input to be worth the effort. All of these tiny facets of XIII make for a simplified RPG compared to all of the predecessors appealing to a wider age group.

Everything described, small similarities or differences, are just offsets of something deeper. It might be tough to figure out where all my earlier disdain comes from; in fact, with the barter economy, every gamer should have the same amount of excitement as a kid opening a Nintendo 64. If you search anywhere on the big I you’ll find it quickly as it is the largest topic of discussion. Skipping your Topeka searches, and right in time for Easter, Square-Enix has decided to put all its eggs in one place: the battle system. Map designs, storyline, simplification of stats and leveling, etc, are all based off their interactions with the system. Everything else meshes well in regards to the system in FFXIII, but this is where I decided to take a step back and really wonder why I began to rush right to the end of the game to be done with it, rather than become engulfed within the enjoyment of playing it or bothering to scrounge up every treasure.

The battle system is the core of any RPG as it puts the player in the driver seat, enveloping the gamer as a part of the story, deciding the destiny and outcome of its characters. In XI and XII the battle systems were quite a step away from the turned based types of the previous ten. For FFXI, the real time system made sense as the game was MMO in nature, and the idea of a turned based MMO combo is about as bad as kitty boxing without youtube. For XII, the system mimicked XI being very difficult to handle at times in a single player way, but battles were fun and actually worked well, being closely relatable to Bioware’s systems. So where does a company go from making ten turned based games and a couple of real-time? Well if not improving either one, why not combine the two?

It sounds like an interesting idea, one that would spice up the series again and be different and unique enough to call it another milestone. Well pay close attention and try to picture how this system works. The system is first set in such a way that it takes the first twenty five hours to go through the entire tutorial for it and gain total control of your squad of six. (The first twenty five hours you run a constant gauntlet of battles and cutscenes while heading in only a single direction.) A party is set up of three members, each of which is made up of mix of three out of six classes: two offensive (commando/melee and ravager/magic), a buffer (synergist), debuffer (saboteur), a healer (medic), and a tank (sentinel). During each battle you only actively control one character and passively control the other two. What this means is you can only control the class your other two characters are using and their chosen abilities are automatic. Not only are theirs chosen automatically but you can hit one button to automatically fill in abilities to be used by your active character. As time passes, your action bar fills and abilities with differing amounts of your action bar can be chosen and executed but only for the previously chosen active character (you cannot switch while in battle). This means that for almost all of your battle time you pound on one button on the controller to autofill the action bar and the other times you are just switching class sets back and forth (class sets are also prechosen and you can only choose six sets prior to battles), i.e., Commando/Ravager/Medic and Medic/Sentinel/Ravager, etc. Trying to individually choose abilities of your active character is slower than autofill and leads to enemies feeling hastily aggressive since battles are still in real-time.

To sum up everything about the battle system take a game series that contained twelve games each having the complexities of chess and throw in a thirteenth that feels much like checkers. Ok maybe a slight step up like 3d checkers but very limited in its control of battles. In turn that dreaded repetition found in every Final Fantasy game appears only this time it’s in the wrong place. The game is still a challenge regardless of the system but the difficulty is unforgiving and more frustration than outthinking an opponent as damage predictions, life bar watching, and enemy action patterns run wild and are almost too fast to keep up with. Blind luck at times seems to be cause of outcomes because a poor switch of classes can quickly lead to your party leader’s death (only one needed for) and game over and the same pattern of choices the next time will work even if everything is copied identically. Battles now are timed and item rewards for successes are based on hitting goal times to attempt to keep your battles on the offensive side, dancing with luck in the pale moonlight. Even with the drive to finish battles quickly, battles become quite lengthy and combinations of class sets utilizing the sentinel class draw out battles to the far side of madness. A nicely implemented retry option allows for less save point reloading frustration after a game over, but the amount of retries I needed to finish the entire game was more deaths than I ever remember having in any of the previous FF games. So add in all the lost battle time to bad luck, timing, or poor predictions, and you’ll find your two feet ever closer to the edge of the cliff.

After unwrapping it all, starting with that little bow on top, the surprise you find in the box is a shiny movie. The game portion of FFXIII feels like a boring and frustrating blockade preventing the player from the next cutscene. And even though the cutscenes are all an amazing presentation of the story, the $60 pricetag for a game where the interactive portion is not fun makes for a very expensive movie. Maybe it was the amount of love I had for Square-Enix before this release and the length of time between XIII and XII that makes the gaming relationship hurt so much. No matter the causes, the consequences are hard to forgive. So Square-Enix, I tried to understand some of the reasons for your latest changes, but jeopardizing the loyalty of an already long existing relationship can cause terrible effects for both sides for years to come. Buy it used if you must, enjoy the movie, and maybe we’ll see something different in a few years.

Rating = 3.0 {out of a –10 to 10 scale}

Ok Go – This Too Shall Pass

Just Cause 2 Demo: It was a holy shaking earthquake and you were stuck up the tree

2010-03-15T22:03:00.000-05:00

Never getting to play the first and somewhat intrigued at screenshots for the second, Just Cause 2 from Eidos and published by, of all companies, Square-Enix is due out March 23rd. Not as disappointing or typical as most other demos tend to be, JC2 is a 3rd person delight at times, and at others a frustration and copycat of another famous series.

The first installment was released late 2006, a year after it’s direct predecessor, Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction where the gameplay is sandbox style. And ok, Mercs was just a mimic of GTA but the changes made it worthy to separate the two games. Where GTA focused on driving and the city, Mercs focused on destruction and the country. JC is very similar to Mercs. Very. And with this game the differences between Mercs and JC aren’t enough to separate the two. Lots of explosions, vehicular manslaughter, and equipment air drops, not to be confused with log drops, are all quite fun the first, second or third time through or get old just as fast.

If you’ve never played GTA, Mercs, or JC1, the concept is quite simple. Take on some missions while the rest of the world is open to destroy or just breeze around in lusciously stolen vehicles and take in some various scenery. In JC2, you are a black market merc aiding in an overthrown of an evil dictator on an island in Southeast Asia. And the way in which any evil dictator is overthrown in the modern world is to create random chaos. And why? Just Cause. Yep. Tagline.

What JC does really well, better than Mercs or GTA, is entrancing the player with beautiful graphics in the world you explore. Where the console versions may be stuck at a set resolution, the PC version can be forced to FarCry or Crysis levels of beauty. Exploring the world can be done at quick rates without vehicles with the addition of a grappling hook in JC2. This allows you to grab trees, buildings, vehicles or even the ground and zoom quite quickly from here to there like Curious George on speed. Base jumping is made easy with an unlimited amount of parachutes making falling out helicopters and Boeing 737s a breeze. So the exploration and transportation is done well.

What isn’t done as well is the aiming system. Precision aiming can be a bit of a pain on the fly as well as the AI aiming that gets increasingly accurate as time progresses after initiating a battle. When things are pulled off to your liking they do look amazing as the destruction system is somewhat a step up from most action games. Vehicles lose parts and pieces, buildings crumble, and Bob working the fruit stand seems to not mind you running over his business time and time again. Quest progression does seem a bit random and listless but might be overshadowed by the open world environment. Control of some of the vehicles is sometimes difficult to grasp, ie the piper cub planes, but what is interesting is the responsiveness of the vehicle chosen and where you are using that vehicle does yield a nice change. For example, riding on a sport bike on the streets is pretty easy to accomplish but once you take it offroad, the bike realistically feels sloppy and almost uncontrollable.

Just Cause 2 was a very fun game to try, the demo allowing for anything available in the full game being at your fingertips within a 30 minute time period. If you enjoyed GTA, Mercs, or JC1, Just Cause 2 deserves you to try at least the demo. As for forking over the cash for the full game, you would have to really love the sandbox environment genre or not have spent money on any of the others before it as you can attain the joy of open world mercenary work by playing some of the older games for a cheaper price or waiting for one of those special Steam clearance weekends. Sorry Rico.

The Middle East – The Darkest Side

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 + Alien vs. Predator Multiplayer Demos: Opinions were like kittens; I was giving them away.

2010-03-08T16:24:00.000-06:00

After a quick couple of downloads and plenty of the internets to research the pieces, Alien versus Predator and Battlefield: Bad Company 2 are just on the horizon for upcoming possible purchases. So without further delay here’s a quick review of the multiplay demos for AvP and BBC2 (not to be confused with your friends over the pond).

There’s some expectations when making a sequel and BBC2 took time to listen to fans of the first making changes while including more of what worked in the first. Comparisons to MW2 make for easier understanding so brace yourself. From EA and DICE, BBC2 isn’t a carbon copy of FPSers. There are some things that set it apart and each aspect holds some weight much like Michael Moore.

Past Battlefield games were known for their multiplayer experience and I can easily see how this release will be another. First, the map sizes are exceptionally big and designed a little bit differently than most other FPSers. The graphics don’t skimp but are not the best out there. They do however work well with the map sizes and large player caps even if it’s no where near MAG’s 256 number. The designs are meant for the game types they are played on, namely conquer the territories. Since the battles are aimed to be progressive, the maps therefore feel like a battlefield and not a random scattering of people running across the same ground in all directions.

Vehicles are abound and a vital portion to what works well with the Battlefield series. Controlling them is also easier than BC1 and makes for less issues of poor drivers or bugginess unlike Orkin commercials. A copycat MW system for self progression is used allowing you to choose from 4 main classes and customizing each as experience points are gained. I guess this is the new standard for all FPS multiplayer games now to keep people coming back for more; just be sure that if you are coming back for more you put in some more time on that treadmill too.

The biggest piece of this digital pie is the destruction system used. What that means is buildings, the environment, vehicles, and just about everything else are destructible by the side effects of warfare. It is beautifully done and makes for an enjoyable ride while romping through the countrysides. It is unlike any other FPSer around so take soak it in while it’s around. The destruction system and vehicles separate BC2 from MW2 because the pacing and feel of each appeal to different playstyles which can exist simultaneously in a person but it may take that special kind of person to find a big place in that person’s heart for both MW2 and BC2. That special someone with a big wallet.

I am going to guess that the single player is quite similar to the first installment which was pretty much the Blue Collar Comedy tour meets Ernest joins the military: fart jokes galore. This leads to a story that a bit difficult to stomach more than once and is probably completed quite quickly, but these are just guesses using past experiences with EA. Does it all add up to a game worth purchasing now? If you are very into multiplay, then I could imagine an easy purchase. If you are going to bank on a worthy single player game too I’d save my cash for something a little darker?…

Working the opposite darker corner of the street of BBC is the retro release with an updated look: Aliens vs Predator. Straight back an entire decade since AvP first knocked on your door, wet from the rain in 1999, you had an opportunity to accept AvP into your house to warm itself by the fire. Requiring a PC at the time and two decades after the release of its original movie, AvP was quite unique in its single player game allowing you to choose a marine, alien or our blessed roommate predator. Besides a minor flaw of a missing save feature in the single player game, AvP was a great release putting you in the shoes of a scared marine with the one and only motion sensor noise noise that can still stir up a nightmare or two when you hear it.

Even after a decade has passed, I can still remember the original AvP and how difficult it was to transition easily between the 3 characters and their controls. And this is the first difficulty in the latest release of AvP. Porting to consoles as well as PC, jamming all the possible controls onto a controller is a bit difficult as well as being the person trying to remember them all. More importantly is that the multiplayer portion has no pizzaz or more specifically any reason at all to want to play the multiplayer portion. After sitting through a difficult system of joining a multiplayer game, most of the action requires a person to run around madly until an opposing player is found in which you attempt to close the distance or increase it depending on what character you have chosen. The running gives the feel of the ice skating smoothness instead of actual running, but this is a difficulty with many multiplayer games. Beyond that attacking seems a bit awkward and team play is just a random consequence of choosing the same race as others.

What is hopeful is that the single player, updated and revamped, should still make for an enjoyable game. The concept is pretty simple, emulate the movies as much as possible and let the fear ensue. Where previous fear based games such as Doom, Resident Evil, or F.E.A.R. need you to get entranced with the game itself before the fear can result, AvP only requires you to have watched the movies alone at 3 am with the spooky sounds of a furnace to watch them with you. The fear then comes naturally rushing back and welcomes you with bead projects, puppy dog eyes, and internet sites devoted to itself. I can not reason with a full price tag to go along with a re-release game as well as a lacking multiplayer portion so bide some time and wait for Steam to chop the $$$$$$’s down but keep this release in your back pocket for a rainy day later this year.

Modest Mouse – Out of Gas

Mass Effect 2: But as she shook your hand, she stole your man, it was done so swift it had to be a plan

2010-02-15T18:24:00.000-06:00

Getting a present a couple months after the holiday season, especially when your birthday is in the later half of the year makes a person feel real special. Mass Effect 2 from Bioware delivers that oh so sweet feeling that doesn’t come around too often with the additional surprise being it’s so early in the year. The size of the joy ME2 can bring is dependant on something that few sequels care to worry about, but in the case of ME2 creates a stepping stone for any wannabe series to come. But before all of that, lets get deep into the vastness that is Mass Effect 2.

It has been three years since the first release so comparisons are necessary in nature but overall, ME2 is a large improvement over the first. The final product is more slick and polished much like Sean Connery has become with time and an equal happy memory to dwell on for years to come. And what makes all of this possible? Nothing as large as some controversial issues or groundbreaking ideas even though there are a couple of each. They are not the focus. And no, not the large thrills you get while watching the World Series of Poker repeats on ESPN Classics or the highlight reels from Millionaire Matchmaker and the Bad Girls Club on REALtv. Those are close but with ME2 it’s truly just a beautiful mixture of roleplaying, story, characters, graphics, music, and gameplay or as the lapers say, everything you want out of a game.

Mass Effect 2 takes place in 2183 out among the depths of space. The story is a direct continuation of the first game transitioning with little questions other than those intentionally put there. You are put in charge of a crew and a ship and are asked to put together an elite squad who are scattered throughout the universe each with unique abilities to solve a threat to all of humanity. If you happened to have played through the entire first Mass Effect, you can import your character with all your previous choices made which in turn affects the 2nd’s plot and characters. Bioware’s trademark dialogue choices are abound as you interact with those old and new giving you the chance to be a true renegade or a goody two shoes. Added to this version are opportunities to enforce extreme instances of painful force or saving grace simply by hitting the appropriate button during dialogue cutscenes.

With all the dialogue choices it is apparent that Mass Effect 2 is a roleplaying game which gives some a bad feeling to start but the flip side is the over the shoulder 3rd person combat. The combat improvements over the first installment are all shining examples of a company listening to their fanbase. The controls are easier to handle with squadmate commands and abilities and layouts of environments make more sense tactically even though they are obvious indicators of incoming fights on occasion. The fighting itself is tougher than ME1 requiring you to stay as low as much as possible, timing and taking good shots, and playing the angles with your group. A new addition is the attribute of abilities to specific classes such as special ammunition, biotic and tech abilities, and military type abilities such as increased shields or a cloaking device. Each additional character is assigned a character class that is unique in weaponry and abilities and is larger in number than ME1. There is some building on technical attributes such as specific ammo working well on robotic enemies and also working well on shields, but the combinations and best use matches are at times tough to predict with regards to group makeup or even on the fly with changing combat conditions. All of this makes you forget about your missing pet Wookie.

Equipment, armor, and upgrades are under a completely revised system making full use of resources and credits. The idea of credits in the first was a complete waste if you scoured the universe for upgrades in turn not needing to spend a single one, but in this version credits become essential for needed equipment upgrades, ship fuel, and probes used to gain resources necessary to create upgrades. The searching of planets with probes is the only real downfall of the game as the pace and repetitiveness is aggravating if not downright headshakingly mind numbing. But even this is a step up from the driving of the survey vehicle over gigantic terrain in the first.

The characters in ME2 are quite diverse and with much more personality than those Hadouken guys of Street Fighter. Each are vital help in your endgame mission to save humanity as well as possible choices for an out of this world love interest. Where the first installment would allow you to completely ignore some characters the entire game, ME2 has specific missions for each character to gain their loyalty and unlock additional abilities. This is important as the final outcome is judged on the loyalty gained before undertaking the endgame missions. And with all of the different missions it becomes apparent quickly that no 2 missions in ME2 feel repetitious in design unlike most of the additional side quests of ME1. Many of the locations throughout the universe are quite stunning visually with music to match inside and outside of combat. Specific city locations are much more simple in layout and require a lot less travel time and loading screens to get to where you need to go.

Most importantly, the story with the character development, new and old included, is by far the biggest highlight for the game. This aspect is where this series makes others shameful to consider sequels and will make a few companies stare longingly into Bioware’s eyes wondering how they got so cute. As a standalone game for someone that did not play the first my enthusiasm may be hard to comprehend even if most of the previous highlights are explained in this game. But the intertwining of both games and their storyline with its character presentation and evolution in the second is done even better than most movie sequels have ever been able to accomplish save for maybe Rambo or Land Before Time. A nice bonus is the new plot character who rivals the cigarette smoking man from X-Files. He is played by actor Martin Sheen doing one of the best voice acting jobs since the narrator of the Fallout series or any character in Resident Evil 1. And not to be overshadowed by Martin’s spectacular job, the rest of the voice acting is top notch even if some of the facial expressions during dialogue scenes don’t do the best job conveying emotions.

In theory, RPG fans will automatically pick this title up without batting an eye while others may be slightly apprehensive. But after playing through this and the first game, it is easy to see that fans of action movies or games or sci-fi in general will find a place on the dusty trophy shelf for Mass Effect 2. Without playing the first there is still enough meaty goodness within this game for anyone as long as you are a bit on the mature side with the snap violence that even the dialogue can bring. With the amazing storyline, gameplay, characters, etc, Mass Effect 2 is a game you’ll not regret later in life. So with the dry year of 2009, start off 2010 right with all your extra saved cash on Mass Effect 2.

Rating: {9.5}

Whodini – Friends

2009 year end wrap up: With the beating of a tiny heart, hang on to the things you're supposed to say

2009-12-30T17:48:00.015-06:00

In like a lamb and out like a lion, 2009 was a big year breaking records in the entertainment industry when others suffered under a brittle economy. So jumping right into it, here were some of the supernovas and black holes of this year:

360

Having another harrowing year choosing which mulitplatform format to run with, 360 almost trumped all. Regretting only that programs such as Steam and Xboxlive don't overlap servers, the 360 was quite a workhorse for me this year.

Modern Warfare 2 - {Rating: 10} Record-breaking release, living up to the hype, best game of the year, etc, etc. Really what can I say that hasn’t already been said? Multiplayer that is more addicting than the first one being free, single player that hits all the major highlights of what a story should be (including the first time ever "If you are offended easily you are allowed to skip one mission"), and the best collector's edition extra to be included with a game. This game is the first online FPSer since Counterstrike that will keep you occupied for months and months to come. Stop spending time reading about it and start playing it.

Borderlands - {Rating: 8.5} I knew you were in the mood to go buy some books today and what better place to do it than your local Borders....land's end catalog.... Wait this is nothing like the book store at all. Instead it's a true MMO take on a FPSer. Ok maybe just stealing all the great ideas from diablo: Visible damage numbers, an odd but workable art style, co-op play much like the good old days of diablo (scaling difficulty with additional players), and a bajazillion guns, Borderlands made quite a sleeper hit. Additional expansion packs are already available and if you're not playing with a buddy, then you're not getting the full run for the border experience.

Dragon Age: Origins - {Rating: 7} Stepping back to the direction of Knights of the Old Republic focusing on the RPG portions of its games, Bioware hits it high with Dragon Age. Slow to start and enough spoken dialogue to rival many books on tape, Dragon Age is the first game where a dialogue decision making system has found the right way to write in a very ambiguous fashion giving a heavy responsibility to what choices are the ones you really want to make. The combat system is a bit rough at times and the length of the game increases exponentially with scaling the difficulty higher but is rewarding in replayability with the first choice of class/race. This is another game with additional downloadable content and will probably lead to a few sequels to come.

Wet - {Rating: 3.5} Ewww. That's just icky. Oh you meant wet work. But what happened to the work? And what happened to the amount of fun Max Payne brought me? You probably won't find a lot of it with Wet. There are some highlights such as the southwest atmosphere, B-movie presentation, and camera work. But most of it is lost in the repetition and short story. [Previous Review]

Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising - {Rating: 4.5} Semper sac' a really ack. This game was overshadowed by MW2 and the size of that shadow is ginormous. As far as military simulations goes, OF games are the way to go but in knowing that OF games are a simulation and not your typical FPSer paced game, most will not find pleasure in this game. Great graphics, and easy control system, and mission openness rivaling a Bethesda game, OF is for the few,the proud, the simulated marines. [Previous Review]

Resident Evil 5 - {Rating: 9.0} The rest of the world was pretty upset by this game claiming it was not as good as the 4th installment and was terrible when played solo. Well why the heck would you want to play it solo anyway? The biggest plus for this game was that it was the only serious release from the beginning of the year until August. So it's easy to Monday morning quarterback this game now, but this game will always have a special place in my heart, especially since they've improved their voice acting. [Previous Review]

Rogue Warrior - {Rating: –3} With only a single highlight for this release (being able to rival Bob Seger for knife moves) this sad excuse for a game was made even worse by the exceptional looking trailer released earlier this year touting direct inspiration from real life Seal Team 6 creator Dick Marcinko. After creating the hype, the final release waned into oblivion with atrocious AI, voice acting that needed a swear jar of ridiculousness (Yes my opinion was quite the opposite of that reviewer), and a presentation built on a nine year old’s dream. This game isn’t based on a movie so it had no excuse for its lack of quality and was even delivered by Bethesda which twice in one year makes me leery to purchase any more games not created by them directly.

Wheelman - {Rating: –5} Does everyone love the steak necked Vin Diesel for his tour de force acting roles such as Shane Wolf in the Pacifier like I do? Well Wheelman is another in a fine line of versatile voice acting performances that Shakespeare himself would envy. And even Vinny can’t be the salvaging saving grace for this disaster. Midway has been decent with their releases for a few years but an occasional hiccup is bound to occur. This GTA wannabe is that nagging case of the hiccups that a good scare can’t save you from. Trying to mesh a GTA style game with Burnout driving sounds like potential is there but after trying it once, repetition and lack of creativeness are what you find. A storyline that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, an idiotic Tarzan carjacking ability that makes you king of the concrete jungle alright, and a sandbox environment that a cat just got done using, Wheelman is for no one no matter what your IQ or how much of a Diesel fangirl you are. Maybe the subtitle of this game was actually supposed to be Pacifier 2.

Call of Juarez - {Rating 3.5} Wild Bill sure loves his pistolas. This spaghetti western game was an improvement from it's predecessor but for most players finding enjoyment would be a challenge. No Co-op main story, so-so multiplay, and little to nothing to separate this from any other FPSer other than it’s a western setting made Call of Juarez rentable during the summer of no releases but now it’s definitely a skipper. Hopefully sometime in the future a quality western FPSer will be made. [Previous Review]

Star Ocean: The Last Hope - {Rating 7.5} Many gamers looking to branch to new areas of gameplay could find salvation in Star Ocean as prequels did not need to be played to grasp the storyline. Few advertisements made availability of this game very minimal and at first glace the game looked difficult to handle but this was not exactly the case. Good cinematics, plot and gameplay made this RPG one of the first quality RPG released on the 360. [Previous Review]

Forza 3 - {Rating 8} Vroom Vroom Vroom I want you in my room. Since the advent of Gran Turismo many great racing games have come and gone and Forza 3 is not only a good racing simulation game but a great one. Hundreds of tracks, cars, and mods make Forza the first to meet Gran Turismo head on and give it a run for its money. Visually stunning graphics at very high frames per second make this game not only a fun one to play but also one to watch. This is also the first racing simulation game where you can breeze through the simulation portions (quick customization, etc) or dive deep into modifying each one of your lovely racing tools appealing to avid car fans as well as your average Sunday driver. I’m still waiting for the day when racing simulation games make it to driver’s ed classes.

Wii

This year was a bit light on the Wii. Not many quality releases throughout the entire year were made and the few that would of made some huge highlights are not due out until 2010. Oh what patience Wii owners must wield.

Wii Resort - {Rating: 7} You and your friends sick of Wii Sports yet? Want to swordfight with your buddy with all your clothes on and still come up a winner? Or how about reenact your favorite scene from Robin Hood? You can do all of this and more in Wii Resort. A nice array of solo or multiplay games with a few different game modes, Wii Resort is a great game to embarrass or humiliate your friends and family as they attempt to become Larry Bird in the 3-point contest. You also get the opportunity to force man’s best friend to fetch your wild frisbee tosses and slap a newspaper against his head when he doesn’t win it for you. Ok no slapping is allowed but I’ll bet there’s a real dog laying around somewhere you can take you all your aggression out on. With all the games to choose from coupled with the original Wii Sports, Wii Resort is a great addition to the entertaining guests library. Just be patient sitting through the tutorial at the beginning of the game, since Nintendo is showing the world that they feel some sort of responsibility for broken TVs.

Tiger Woods 2010 - {Rating: 6.5} Just like creating a sex tape to boost popularity, Tiger Woods knows the right way to boost his game sales. With all the controversy and gossip to take up eons of time at work having to listen to Debbie’s (from accounting) opinion on Tiger’s home life and how she’s ‘got it all figured out’, you can go home and take out all your anger driving little white balls 300+ yards into a tiny little hole with the first game to utilize Wii Motion Plus. The putting will begin to help rise your hulk rage, but after a ton of practice, you can actually feel rewarded with a job well done. [Previous Review]

Deblob - {Rating: 4} Music, paint, and oddity surround Deblob. The game is quite the mystery as to how it came into being but now that it is around us all, slamming paint against your neighborhood walls seems to be an enjoyable hobby to have. Some usual platforming frustration with camera angles and controls are not missing but tend to be made up by the amazing sounds and music that occur while painting the town red. Not for everyone, Deblob will probably appeal more to those that care about creativity than destruction so avoid this title if you believe you can sniff the paint through the TV. (These two I’ll bet spent plenty of days doing just that.) [Previous Review]

Picking up the pace from previous years of only notable mentions, the PC titles are starting to become a stronger choice from previous years especially with the small arcade style games. 2010 should also be a strong year with the big upcoming release of Starcraft 2, if it ever really does happen.

Left for Dead 2 - {Rating: 8} As I said with the release of the first LFD, if you can find 3 buddies that all have this game, and can find a time when all 4 of you can play it, this is a great title and will give you a craving to watch every zombie movie known to man. But after purchasing this title, I realized the game is still a quality game with only 1 friend to co-op with. Solo play has some good intentions but will frustrate as AI does not compare to your neighbor that was ate by zombies. Controls and gameplay are straightforward FPS in nature but what separates this title is the Half-life style of presentation, level design, and overwhelming zombie hordes that feel a better match than the types from Serious Sam. So grab a chainsaw and start taking down trunks.

Aion - {Rating: 3.5} There are a few absolute truths in this world and when you play Aion, the obvious underlying truth is Koreans hate free time. This beast of a release will attempt to steal every waking hour of your life and give you little reward for your efforts. The visuals are a step above for MMOs, but the quest line organization and communication windows are lacking. The quests, which show a level limit, do not show a group necessity but almost are impossible without them and leveling shows suicidal tendencies when calculated to level per hour. The ability to fly is a great addition but becomes quite a novelty quickly. Beyond not being WoW, Aion did not strike me to be anything groundbreaking or capable of swooning millions. Those that already played and enjoyed other NCSoft games may find a new home but for most others, good luck.

X3: Terran Conflict - {Rating: 2} The rare space simulation game that’s not actually that new of a release, X3:TC is a game that isn’t self-aware enough to realize just how big of a game it is. Not focused on solo ship combat, and instead believing in trade routes and mining operations, X3 takes away from what most other space games profit from and makes for a hard game to sell and describe. A small story, vast amounts of controls to master, and a very high difficulty, X3 is neither for the meek or merry. The graphics and idea are good but not having a good combat system keeps the appeal to those that really enjoy the Civilization series. Either that or those who majored in international trade back in college. [Previous Review]

Peggle - {Rating: 4.5} The chances of getting a seat on the Price is Right are small and actually becoming a contestant even smaller, so for those that don’t make it to the showcase showdown please enjoy Peggle. The bleeps, bings and dings are abound when you plop your way through Peggle’s lovely simple physics of bouncing. It’s a simple game to figure out and can appeal to those of young and old, large and small, illiterate and colorblind. The only thing that doesn’t work well is the title as it rhymes with words that often accompany clowns and your creepy uncle that always does magic tricks to impress the ladies. Becoming a master of Peggle would also put you in this category so be careful. [Previous Review]

Plants vs Zombies – {Rating: 6} By far the best penny arcade game of the year, Plants vs. Zombies is an easy game to figure out and creates hours of fun by balancing RTS ideas with speed and zombies. As you protect yourself from a home invasion of brain eaters, your vegetable garden becomes the ultimate defense weapon and is done with simple but great animations and designs. This game was also the first game to predict the death of Michael Jackson by including his Thriller zombie right into the mix so kudos for hitting the deadpool predictions PopCap. If you like the constant struggle of the living versus the living dead, fun puzzle/strategy games, or if you are just looking to find another game that anyone and everyone can play, Plants Vs Zombies is a sound choice. So get planting. [Previous Review]

Machinarium - {Rating: 5.5} If Tim Burton made the movie Wall-E, Machinarium would be the outcome in game form. A mixture of quirky flash animation puzzles, Machinarium will keep that noodle of yours stirring until it finds just the right shape. The only issue with Mach was once you play through the game once, there’s no need to play it again. Some puzzles are a bit on the tough side even for experts at riddles and jumbles so youngin’s might be a bit frustrated but an added feature of a minigame hint book allows for some help from time to time. The backgrounds and animations were among some of the most creative and brilliant designs for a game on the simpler side of things so if you enjoy not so easy puzzles and the movies of Timmy B, try Machinarium.

Empire Total War - {Rating: 8} The RTS behemoth of 2009, Empire Total War is a reminder what it would take to actually win a game of Risk. Taking a lot of time to complete an entire campaign, ETW is quite an interesting game as its AI attempts to stay within true historical guidelines as long as you allow it to. Controls are on par with any RTS and difficulties scale well with world domination, ETW is for those that love RTS games and also for those that want a little more out of their board game night. Ground battles feel repetitive after a short while but naval battles are something to behold as the graphics, controls and strategies are unlike anything before it. And who can argue with having to battle actual pirates of the world? Take that Jack Sparrow. [Previous Review]

Hired Guns: Jagged Edge - {Rating: 1.5} Haunted with former versions of itself, HGJE made me die a little inside. Loving the genre so much and with the technology of today, I assumed such a great game could of been created but this was not the case. Extremely hard three dimensional control, bugs, and terrible characters, HGJE will be an eternal reminder that no matter how good a series was, when rights are transferred to a new company great things may not happen. [Previous Review]

2009 memoranda

Total new games purchased: 20 (22 in 2008)
Best 1st person shooter: Modern Warfare 2
Best RPG: Borderlands
Best Strategy: Empire Total War
Best Multiplayer game with friends in the same room: Wii Resort
Best Multiplayer game with friends across the world: Aion
Best Penny Arcade type game: Plants vs Zombies
Biggest surprise of the year: Borderlands
# of new games beat: 13 (8 in 2008)
# of unfinished single player games: 4 (7 in 2008)
# of controllers broken: 1 mouse
System played the most: 360 (not counting time on computers)
# of times playing games pissed off the wife: 156 (Modern Warfare 2 is her favorite)
Biggest hopeful for 2010: Starcraft 2
Other hopefuls: FFXIII, Splinter Cell Conviction, Mass Effect 2, Bioshock 2

Beach House - Norway

Favorite video of 2009 –> Ramona Falls - I Say Fever

Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising: Fire all your guns at once and explode into space

2009-11-01T21:00:00.019-06:00

The word simulation becomes a tag along word from time to time. Microsoft's Flight Simulator is probably the first to come to mind and when slapping the word at the end of a game title, a certain preexisting judgement comes along with it; the idea that since it is a close replica to the real thing, the amount of fun is limited. The 3 game series, Operation Flashpoint, while missing that word 'simulation' in all senses should have the word attached to its titles.

Available for PC, PS3, and Xbox360, Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising from Codemasters is a long awaited sequel with much to live up to. The first in the series, Cold War Crisis, was an amazing rendition of the pace, feel, difficulties, and distances of modern warfare firefights. Much of war is not fought at typical fpser's favorite distances of less than a hundred meters where the face of your opponent is clearly visible. OF games keep most battles at the realistic large distances where the sounds of ricochets and shrapnel scare, confuse, and pump adrenaline much like a forgotten pan of jiffy pop left on the stove. Scouting ahead with binoculars and popping smoke isn't just for voyeuristic wizards as OF allows for many different strategies, some of which work, and some of which force you into a grave or jail cell you dirty wizard you.

This sequel takes place on an actual island off the west coast of Alaska with its named changed to Skira. In an imagined or sadly possible future where oil becomes ever more rare, China claims original ownership of Skira after oil is found deep within and Russia defends their stance of ownership since gaining control of Skira during WW2. As things escalate, the proud eagle riding, stars and stripes waving U.S. steps in to aid their Communist hating, poor big brother Russia. And not only does the U.S. step in to help out their buddy and attempt to inflict pain on the country stealing the U.S.'s manufacturing jobs, but the favor of saving Russia doesn't seem to be returned during the entire campaign of Dragon Rising.

In Dragon Rising you take the role of a USMC sergeant in charge of three other troops taking a full campaign to fruition. This sounds as if it could last as long as a few previously known historical conflicts but this campaign ends up to be less than a week so no need to pack more than a few pairs of underwear. The main campaign includes much of what I imagine a true military campaign to entail, such as a special ops behind enemy lines precursor followed by the initial beachhead assault. Missions vary in difficulty and objectives range from simple 'destroy it all' to sneak and demo without being caught. Many missions gave me little to no trouble while some had to be retried over 10-20 times.

Much of the gameplay mimics the previous games and the controls translate well to the console controller setup. Most troop commands are simple to accomplish quickly and your troops react to changing conditions. A.I. of enemies and allies, however, is at times frustrating or idiotic or at least buggy. Beyond A.I. bug issues, I ran into clipping problems where objects and models could be walked through after respawns and A.I. could see and shoot through them as well (Xbox360) killing me from who knows where.

The amount of weaponry available is near the 70 range and all are of modern design. Vehicles are included as with all OF games but very little of the campaign missions involve the use of any beyond humvees or APCs. In Cold War Crisis multiple missions forced the player to become a tank commander, bomber pilot, and helicopter gunner where Dragon Rising's main campaign ignores these options and keeps you in your running boots. It did leave me with extra time to brush up on some old dance moves but left me craving for more and gave me a feeling I was missing the sense of a full war simulation experience. I also noticed the removal of character equipping prior to missions and couldn't find a valid reason for this missing component. In turn you are allowed to look at your starting equipment and that of your entire company but can do nothing to drop unneeded extra weight.

I did not take any time to attempt the co-op, mission editor, or multiplayer modes which all have the potential to make the game better than what I experienced. With the implementation of a co-op mode for the entire campaign the storyline development of your character becomes lacking. This would only be noticed if you had played the original; specifically the rising of your character's rank and subsequently responsibility for additional squad members during missions. Instead your rank stays stagnant and you stick with your four man crew.

I did still enjoy the overall game although I have a hard time seeing how this could compete against monster games with hype and advertising such as Modern Warfare. The visuals were done exceptionally well. Bombings leave large amounts of fire and smoke but still can't compete with true pitmasters. Gunfire and long battles give the movie-like response of thankfulness to still be alive. And the biggest bonus in picking an OF game is the openness of environment and objective completion much like Bethesda's games (ie, Morrowind, Fallout 3).

Want to run right at your waypoint guns blazing? Want to sneak through the woods and not fire a shot completing an entire mission without killing a single enemy (yeah sounds real fun but it is an option which I did accomplish on accident)? Want to steal a helicopter, kamikaze dive it into the ocean, bailing out at the last second and put in hours of swimming to reach the island again only to be shot and killed by an AA emplacement you somehow didn't see shooting you on your way out to the ocean making you want to commit seppuku for your shamefulness of time wasted because you thought grand theft helo is the only place GTA games can go next?

Well Dragon Rising will let you fulfill those fragile dreams. Its release did suffer from bad timing as its release was very close to MW2 and if your cash flow limits the amount of choices you can make, choosing the latter will guarantee a better choice. If you somehow happen to find some extra time to see how our red, white, and blue boys get things done in almost real-time, give OF:DR the good ol' rental. It will not compare to MW2 but it's differing experience that separates simulation from the rest.

Rating : 4.5 {on a scale of -10 to 10}

Steppenwolf - Born to be Wild

Wet: These days I seem to think a lot about the things I forgot to do

2009-10-23T17:35:00.017-05:00

Paying heed to predecessors such as the "you can't take yourself this serious" The Matrix in 1999 and 2001's Max Payne not to be confused with the Marky Mark version, Wet on Xbox 360 and PS3 by A2m is quite a replay on previous successful ideas. Focusing on slow motion 3rd person action with over the top violence, Wet is a great game for that quick one time fix.

You are an Uma Thurman (Kill Bill) style contract killer for hire that brandishes a sword alongside dual wielding firearms. The story is presented in a 60's B-movie approach using a melting reel, for example, when you die. Cutscenes have gritty scratchy overlays and levels are sometimes separated with old theater videos reminding you to visit the lobby for refreshments. It makes for a very stylistic presentation reminiscent to the cold, dark Max Payne's comic book scenes or snowy silent winter.

The story is so-so for an action game, expected plot points and outcomes are prevalent. The gameplay action is where the fun is found. The slow motion fighting is a blast to watch and play through as level design is based around it, but can get old very fast. Three buttons make up the slow motion action (run along walls, slide on the ground, or leap through the air) and after a few environment changes and pushing the 3 in different orders the game becomes a race to reach the end.

Your main weapons include what look like .44 magnum six shooters which can be emptied in a matter of 2 seconds and since reloading would break up the action Wet decides to kindly forget the theory behind reloading. Accompanying your revolvers is a Hatori Hanzo sword but sadly Sonny Chiba is not the presenter. The sword which is an amazing addition to this type of game is pretty limited in its usefulness unless you manage to find a locked door or can evade gunfire enough to get within 5 feet of your opposition.

Kills offer points used to unlock new moves or weapon improvements but are not necessary and only make the game slightly easier. Some of the action sequences have guess the button much like the Resident Evil series and most bosses are finished in this manner. Thankfully they are much easier than the RE ones that always seemed like they put you in the middle of a Press Your Luck show. At other times you are given a very bloody face which in turn enrages you enough to go into a red and white mode to start chain killing people giving additional bonuses for keeping the chain rolling.

The controls are easy to negotiate and the action flows well as the sounds of guns and explosions enhance the experience. The music selections are a perfect fit since all are fast tempo southwest style songs. Much of the music gives the feeling of wanting to brandish a ten gallon hat and empty whiskey bottles into your tummy which is only bad if you are playing this while driving. And yet it would still be safer than texting and driving.

A full clear of the game takes near 15 hours depending on the difficulty chosen and since it has a very repetitive nature, does not give the desire to be played over again. The love of the fighting in the Kill Bill movies, Max Payne or the Wachowski Brothers films is probably a good indicator that you will enjoy this game, just intend on setting aside a few days for a rental instead of bothering to dent the wallet buying the game.

Rating : 3.5 {on a scale of -10 to 10}

Tribute to a classic genre: Been a long time since a federal dime made a jukebox sound

2009-08-09T12:33:00.036-05:00

Some genres receive a lot of attention while others are pushed off to the side and almost entirely ignored by the entire gaming culture. Deserving more credit than it ever receives, isometric turn-based strategies were one of the original genres that bridged the gap of pen and paper into the electronic realm. Game for game ITBS games make the entire genre one of the most difficult and complex genres to play leaving casual gamers crying for their mommy and hardcore gamers wishing there were more hours in a day and for their friends to stop calling your mom a cougar.

So in an effort to rehash on some happy years of gaming and to shine the invisible medals of games once defeated, I've taken some time for inward reflection to ponder which ITBS will always stick out and helped define the genre for what it is. That time of meditation produced the following list which is not in any particular order but was chosen due to each game's importance to their respective system over the years. Danger: This list contains games that still pass me middle school notes which to this day I still check yes, I do like you.

Shining Force 2: Sega - 1994 - Genesis

If you were lucky enough to own or know someone that did own a Sega Genesis, there was a slight chance that you could of played one of the first console ITBS games. And yes, since this is written in English, I'm not talking about all the possible previous Japanese games (notably the Fire Emblem series has resurrected into something worth playing).

This game was one of the first to introduce the idea of an RPG style game in which you could control a group of up to 12 characters at once and doing all of the playing on a grid style map. Characters were all very unique and allowed for choosing which were a waste of time and which would be the workhorses of killing the armies of Zeon. And on a brighter note, this game also had involvment from mythical centaurs which are so rare nowadays that seeing one in the shower applying Old Spice bodywash is the only chance at catching a glimpse of these majestic animal/humans.

The main character was named Bowie to aid you in becoming delusional enough to believe his first name was David and he was taking a quick smoke break in Labyrinth to save another civilization with his dance moves and action batch.

The game overall was quite lengthy and made for good replayability if switching out characters. It didn't receive much credit from the world as the age of initial consoles were rough on the Genesis and if you loved games enough that you couldn't hate any console, you were more than likely either a large fan of pure RPGs or side scrollers and couldn't relate to this game well. This game did help vary and emphasize 20 different character classes helping stem later RPGs to utilize ones such as berserker and animal types. If you were lucky enough to play this the first time it was available, you may be inclinded enough to want to replay it again as it's now available on WiiConsole.

Final Fantasy Tactics - Square - 1998 - PS1

Years later the genre was quite stale if you only owned consoles, and especially if you were without one of those expensive personal computers. There were a few choices but most had no storyline or terrible gameplay. Enter the king of console RPGs to venture into the ITBS arena and squash the competition with FFT.

FFT took everything that makes a good ITBS great and trimmed the fat of annoyances. Tons of story, different classes, and true strategic gameplay kept PS1 gamers so enthralled that owning an original version of FFT to this day can reward you with over $50 to collectors. Fans of previous FF games saw for the first time the entire ensemble of old class choices combined along with a few extra to boot the most amazing of which was the Calculator. If you were lucky enough to level the proper classes to unlock the Calculator, your mathalete skills could be put to use to heal or do damage to all characters on screen reminiscent of craps, trigonometry, and the board game Sorry.

FFT set the bar high for later GBA and PSP ITBS games and reissues but sadly none have matched the original. Opinions vary as to why FFT glimmers as others clash plaids, but many will agree that the story hits many high notes housing interesting characters such as one of the most badass playables named Wiegraf. The rest of the opinions say that the gameplay, detailed environments, and balanced strategies requiring you to scratch the old noggin' to succeed put FFT at the top of the ITBS of all times. And much to the appeal of people who find FF games annoying, chocobos and moogles are kept to a bare minimum. Kupo?!?

X-Com UFO Defense - Mythos Games - 1993 - PC

Crank up the VGA display, whip out the 3.5-inch floppies, and start up MS-DOS, it's X-Com time! Right when PCs were becoming a booming economic staple in everyone's home, competing against Coke's mission statement to have a vending machine every mile, X-Com made gamers some of the most patient people around. Well patient or full blown domestic extra-terrestrial abusers. X-Com was one of the most difficult ITBS games around and in case the first time through was too easy, you could also scale the difficulty higher to grind your teeth at night for the next century.

X-Com showed the world a game in which the era of the Internet and TV would give people even more reason to keep staring into the stars as shows such as X-Files and the Sci-Fi channel took off. Set all across Earth, the X-Com (Extraterrestrial Combat Unit) attempt to save the world from the on-going threat of alien terrorists much like the similar threats of Predator, Ko-Dan, Killer Klowns, or Martians from Mars. As you spend global amounts of cash on bases and research, you attempt to reclaim Earth from these invaders using their technology against them while hopefully not creating a deficit over 2 months. Yes, the US has had a deficit for almost the entire 21st century but blow your budget for 2 months and it's game over.

Much of the games acclaim over the years has been the intertwining of a Sid Meyer's Civilization-esque game and joining an ITBS with a great interface, sounds, and gameplay. X-Com was also one of the first ITBS games to use projectile weaponry and urban military tactics within a game without shortchanging on fun. While games such as Wolfenstein and Doom were busy making bullets per second enjoyable, X-Com was slowing the speed of battle down to where claymation directors felt at home. So if you've ever played and finished X-Com: UFO Defense, you deserve a free beer to trade war stories over. If you didn't get enough of X-Com the first time it is again available on Steam as well as it's many sequels.

Jagged Alliance 2 - Sir Tech Canada - 1999 - PC

Where would Jack Ryan be without clandestine black operations? Well Tom Clancy might be flipping burgers and we wouldn't get great games such as JA2. Not to skimp on the prestige of JA1, JA2 gave Rambo a reason to go back into Burma with the same cheesy lines and almost as much gore. Ok no where near as much blood and guts but the same attitude.

Taking a small group of mercs into the fake Eastern European country of Alruco, you attempt to free the civilians of the country from the evil clutches of dictator Deidranna. Overthrowing her husband Enrico who escaped the country after her attempt at framing Enrico for her father's murder, you are fronted a small amount of cash, a laptop with direct links to all the websites a merc would need, and a one way ticket into the country.

Rich with voice acting and distinct personalities for an array of characters, JA2 makes replayability unique and a quite varied experience each time. Some characters such as the Russian brothers Ivan and Igor make such a lovable pair you begin to prevent their deaths at every turn sometimes reloading savepoints until you can't stand it anymore. JA2 plays on the map overview strategy mixed with turn based battle action made famous with X-Com and takes the fighting to a new level introducing more layers of physics down to differing bullet calibers and ballistics.

You could hate ITBS games but the storyline presentation in JA2 is one of the more humorous around. As you progress further into Alruco freeing town after town, Diedranna receives reports from her assistant Elliot who then in return receives a proper beating for each piece of bad news. After a while it becomes one of the oddest rewards systems for a job well done. Well those that can't feel sympathy for digital Urkel wannabes find it laughable since we can't save the rest of the Family Matters cast from Jaleel White's suspenders.

Fallout - Interplay - 1997 - PC

Two men enter, none leave. There are a few games here and there that touch on a futuristic Earth but none had ever been as bleakly honest as Fallout. Some would show the world uniting in an effort for space exploration, others would have humanity unite in order to defend off invading aliens, but Fallout would go and say no to handholding togetherness and instead stay on the edge of suicide when resources become scarce and care not about the repercussions of scorching the Earth. This post apocalyptic environment becomes one of the biggest characters and gives a great sense of being alone and fearful of death around every corner.

Set in Southern California in the year 2161, you are a survivor of World War III living in an underground vault. The vault's water chip breaks and you are chosen to go into the wasteland to search for a replacement.

Much of the personality of the game is contained in references to pop culture a lot of it 1950's related. The presentation of the RPG portions of the game are done through a Monopoly man type character that makes light of the darkly vast wasteland that is now the world. The childhood innocence clashing with the dark humor makes for quite the combo making the entire journey unforgettable.

Fallout became one of the starting RPGs to flirt with the idea of choices and repercussions morbid as many would be. Any NPC can be chosen to become a target for random violence even down to children. Prostitution and drug use can become hobbies while you choose to either help your vault or totally ignore them and become the wasteland's biggest fan. Multiple endings can be gained depending on choices made throughout the game even down to the last seconds as you receive an ultimate reward for helping your vault. All of these aspects took ITBS games to a new level of quality and expectance including the atmosphere and ethics.

Syndicate - Bullfrog - 1993 - PC

A quick honorable mention since it's not turn based goes to the isometric wonder known as Syndicate. Taking place in a future where corporations use cyborgs for hostile takeovers, Syndicate puts you in charge of your own corporation as you fight against the futuristic Wal-Mart known as Eurocorp. Using a four agent team, you roam the gritty concrete landscape of cities exterminating, persuading and stealing corporate goods. Much of the setting derived from the movie Blade Runner, as well as the attitudes toward cyborgs and civilians.

Besides the Lorenzo Lamas trenchcoats that your agents are forced to wear, the action is where this game deserves the mention. Just about everything can be destroyed and there is no consequence for killing off civilians. In fact, an item called the Persuadertron can be used to convince mobs of civilians to become a wall of protection for you and then can be sent to their death if you feel a twinge of nervousness for your cyborg buddies. The overall idea of Syndicate would make for a great game today but sadly no confirmed remakes are in the works.

Summer Catchup: I can be the source you crave, I can spell what you can't say

2009-07-12T12:00:00.031-05:00

To go along with the first "scheduled" summer vacation for me in over six years, I felt the need to catch up on reviews on things I've put off. So here are some quick reviews of games and technology that are overdue.

PogoPlug - No it's not a recharging station for your gyroscopically enhanced pogo-segway. This small

little piece of electronic plastic goodness is essentially remote desktop-ing made easy. Made by a company called Cloudengines, this device bridges the gap between your external hard drive and your router. It then allows you to stream your hard drive onto whatever lovely computerish device, aka iPhoneS(nob), you happen to be using to annoy the hell out people eating their dinner at that fancy restaurant Olive Garden. What used to be a limitation on OS matching between a computer and remote device has now been removed and replaced with a large

backorder and a price tag of $99.

Nokia E71x Smartphone - And speaking of the vile world of confusing popularity contests

with annoyances in public, one of the newest AT&T installment standards is the Nokia E71x Smartphone. Nokia really does know how to make quality phones and AT&T knows how to take them a step back.

The design is slick, battery long lived, camera is so-so, standard software artful in its self destruction, but web browsing, WLAN, and GPS portions are above the rest as long as you stay under the 3G umbrella during reception rain. Navigation of menus and number typing is a bit on the "special side" but once understood the phone does shine for those using it in the business sense. As long as that business isn't human trafficking then you'll be happy if an E71x comes your way.

Tiger Woods 10 (Wii, EA) - It's in the game alright. No, not shoving Tileset golf balls into any opening you can find around your TV. The Wii Motion Plus will take care of that sort of thing for you if you haven't done it already.

TW10 is a large showoff of what sports games should feel like when you are handed

a controller. Even if you aren't a fan of rolling out of bed onto your couch Sunday mornings for day long sessions to watch golf, playing this game will help you begin to enjoy the difficulty of getting a small white ball into a barely big enough hole about 300 yards away. And then it will help you begin to whip Wii controllers into fragile objects around your room. And then help you turn into a similar demonic hellion known as Adam Sandler in Happy Gilmore.

The game (with Wii Motion Plus) is so sensitive to very slight motions as you swing your controller that it will bring you to the point of wanting to keep your wrist in a splint to avoid draw shots. The added features from previous years are a big bonus such as disc golf, real time weather, and precision putting. And yes you can still deck yourself out in actual Caddyshack fashions as you progress through the Masters Tournament.

Rating: 6.5 {on a scale of -10 to 10}

X3: Terran Conflict (PC, Egosoft) - X3: TC is the latest in the series. It was released in September of 2008 and done so with barely a glimmer of advertising along side of it.

Some games take their genre so far above and beyond, that expectations of what the game actually is or could be vanish, and you are left with something a bit odd and hard to describe. It is much like comparing Microsoft's Flight Simulator versus Ace Combat. They both have planes and they both involve flying but crashing and burning in one takes a little more work than the other.

X3: TC is a simulation game in the biggest sense of simulation. Combat is there but is not a large highlight unlike Wing Commander, Descent: Freespace, X-Wing vs Tie Fighter, Freelancer, etc. The storyline is there but is overshadowed by the rest of the game.

So what exactly are you left with? A gigantic universe to explore and trade within. A place to commandeer for your galactic space stations and armada of ships. It's much like Pogs or Magic: The Gathering. At first it's really interesting to look at and play but after a short time passes only a select few people of the world will still be able to find enjoyment out of it.

Extremely high learning curve, not so easy controls, and a hard difficulty make X3: TC an even harder selection to pick. Open source coding for modification, beautiful graphics, and a reason to dust off the old joystick make X3: TC a good alternative for those looking to branch way way off.

Rating: 2 {on a scale of -10 to 10}

Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood (360, Ubisoft)- A sequel to the 2006 release, this first person shooter is one of the very few western FPS games available. A run of the mill FPS with a very different setting for those that are used to killing Nazis or Aliens, CoJ: BiB will probably only appeal to those that really enjoy the setting the western setting.

The game and it's appeal can be compared to something similar to the movie Jacques Cousteau and Life Aquatic. Unless you were a large fan to the original works, the semi-recent film will seem more like an awkward broadway play that stays a mystery.

So unless your parents made you sit and watch every Charles Bronson, Clint Eastwood, and Henry Fonda western of the 60s and 70s, you probably won't even have the slightest bit of interest in CoJ: BiB since most gamers are too young to know where the term spaghetti western even came from in the first place. And if you did happen to watch them, there's still a decent chance you'll probably just bide your time and skip over this game waiting for HALO: ODST.

CoJ: BiB is a pretty average FPS and doesn't have enough meat behind it to make a good meal. Boss fights are done in the old western showdown at noon style, the action is fast paced, multiplayer competitive but not as good as CoD4, and the storyline and voiceovers are great but short overall. The gameplay is a copycat to the Call of Duty series with waypoints, respawning, and storyline progression.

But again, the fast paced action and multiplayer are the only things linking FPS gamers of today to the western setting of yesterday. If you're into a good appetizer and salad while you wait for dinner this fall, CoJ: BiB could be for you otherwise just order a bigger meal later.

Rating: 3.5 {on a scale of -10 to 10}

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (360, Infinity Ward/Activision) -

One game that I had initially put off buying was CoD4. The Call of Duty predecessors were always very short with the single player game and could typically be completed in 15 hours or less. The single player was always extremely fun to play but brought no multiplayer strength with it limiting reasons to pay $50+.

Another annoyance was the other CoD games were all set in the WWII realm and after playing so many WWII games now, I can almost rattle off every gun and caliber of bullet used during that era without ever actually firing any of them. An overdone period of time in the history of the world when it comes to FPS and strategy games, I set aside the CoD series altogether until very recently.

Modern Warfare was well worth the revisit to the CoD series. Reviews of the game all over the internet have told the story many times over and all say the same thing. The game is great from start to finish in all aspects that make up an FPS game. Graphics, sound, storyline, gameplay including both single and multiplay, etc, are all top notch.

One part that really sets this game apart is the way the character modeling design is done along with the background and camera. The model design from what I've read is separate from the way previous CoD games did them. In modeling speak they have faked certain aspects to give it a three dimensional look and at the same time gives a ton of extra detail while keeping the game running at 60 frames per second.

The look of the characters and background is amazing and is shown off even more when a gun is pulled up to the shoulder and the camera puts only what's directly down the sights into focus fuzzing out the surrounding area. It's an exaggeration of what the eye really does but it's the good kind like the size of Babe the Blue Ox or the hope you feel for the Cubs to make the playoffs.

The best part about the game is how the multiplayer is done. The multiplay is on the same level that Halo 1 was when it was first released with different play modes and maps. As you play you begin to work your way through levels of experience gaining the use of new weapons and abilities. Unlocking new items becomes as addicting as playing the slots after a few too many mojitos. This idea has now become a standard for multiplayer games and will be copied for years to come.

Overall the game is well worth the small price that comes with a game of the year release so be sure to pick it up and grab an xboxlive gold package too. Just be sure to get ready to mute those arrogant mic users again.

Rating: 9 {on a scale of -10 to 10}

New Young Pony Club - Ice Cream

Aion MMO Preview: Lava flows over crooks and cragged cliffs to the ocean and explodes in a steam heat fevered cyclical motion

2009-07-01T14:24:00.002-05:00

Over the history of MMOs and even other genres, there has been a representable and recognizable feature to the graphics and gameplay of games. It comes with being able to distinguish what country/company the makers of that particular game happen to be or being able to come reasonably close to guessing who the man behind the curtain is with just a glance. Another "putting the face to the name" game is Aion for the PC. Made by the well known Korean company NCSoft (Lineage, City of Heroes, Guild Wars), this MMORPG is another sci-fi fantasy fiction MMO but from what I can translate from forums and reviews, contains less hardship and grindy-ness than the typical run of the mill Korean MMO.

The graphics are some of the highest quality above and beyond FFXI, Everquest, and WoW, allowing for excessive video card settings whether it's to be a big time showoff or for visual stimulation. This brings with it the problem of using an older computer to run the game and having to deal with graphical errors besides networking ones if you are still forcing a dinosaur to play with hover-boards and space guns.

One look at the game and there should be some tingling of deja vu occurring in the back of your head. NCSoft has taken what works in games such as WoW and built from those ideas. The interface down to the action bars, chat logs, and menus all look eerily similar to WoW. From what I can tell it is all fully customizable with the ability to resize and move things as you see fit. Fighting and combat text looks much like it's predecessor City of Heroes as does the extremely large character customization feature when doing character creation and item customizing. This allows for people to not fall into the Age of Conan issue of all looking exactly the same from level 1 - 20. Class selection is the usual D+D montage as seen by the video below.

Aion boasts both PvE as well as PvP, also sporting what it calls PvEvP where races can fight along side of NPCs against opposing races. Quick transportation is available by means of metamorphosing flying creatures but a new idea is indulged upon when it comes to close proximity's. Not the water wing kind of your childhood but more like the advertising ploys of Victoria Secret. Missing the laciness and tassel-liness, after completing part of the main quest you are given angel wings to allow you to explore areas in the upward direction and in essence becoming a flying mount. A nice addition to this is the ability to fight foes in the air making for an even larger variety of motion and fighting sequences as well as new challenges with PvP.

What's interesting about Aion is it has already been released in the Far East for over a year now. This will make the release to North America and Europe a far more mature one in terms of bug issues and latency problems that other recent MMOs have suffered from on initial release and should keep more people interested beyond the one month break or make point.

There has been enough time since the initial release of WoW for companies to shrug their shoulders and give in to completely running with everything that works for keeping an MMO fun and easy enough to play. Quests are given to the player with easy directions, such as waypoints, and with the old question mark/exclamation point indicators. English folk that are playing the Korean version now can still accomplish the quests without the ability to read the text. Items when equipped become soul bound and can no longer resold keeping auction house enthusiasts from the ability to hold the market hostage (FFXI). Party play is done with an almost carbon copy interface to WoW showing buffs, debuffs, health bars, etc, all in the same arrangement.

The setting may not be for everyone, a lot of ideas have been done before, and the drudgery of having to start over again make Aion a game for those that can put all that aside. It's probably not the best MMO to start with for those that are new to MMORPGs, but for those looking to branch off slightly, specifically from WoW, may have a good transitional feel with Aion. I can see that this is NCSoft's answer to WoW and I have decided to see for myself if Aion will stand the test of time. Open beta weekends are available to those that pre-purchase either from NCSoft directly or from Gamestop or Amazon.

Andrew Bird - Fitz and Dizzyspells

Rupture: Do you miss me, Miss Misery like you say you do?

2009-06-23T18:53:00.007-05:00

A long time ago I played various MMOs such as Ultima Online, Everquest, FFXI, etc. With hours upon hours of time spent interacting with people and building odd gaming relationships, some of which were people that were not only good at the game we were playing but also very nice and fun people to play with, I had a very hard time moving from one MMO to another.

On one hand you spend a boatload of time investing in levels, equipment, etc. You also spend a lot of time with building and keeping relationships. To up and leave a game completely means you not only loose all the digital stuff you've acquired, you also loose those digitally made friendships.

Rupture is a new great way to keep and search for those relationships you might of once had. Rupture is in all essence a social networking site much like myspace, facebook. What is nice and different about it is the fact that it interlaces many different online gaming communities such as Xbox-live, WoW, EA online, etc spanning different exclusive companies that wanted to do the same thing but were limited by only reaching within their own grasps.

Rupture pulls achievements and constantly tracks progression of your MMO characters, new achievements and the ability to challenge people to new created achievements open to everyone or closed between friends. What's nice is the associated and usually very different gamertag/character names all get pooled into your one Rupture name. All of your old gamertag/character names can be searched for and sorted depending on the game as long as you input them. Only know a guy by a single character in WoW? Search for that name and as long as he's put it up, it will be found and you can see that he also plays HALO 3 a ton under the xbox-live gamertag Killerorkilla.

The best part is, it's all free. Eventually I believe that Rupture will try to pull cash from advertisements but for now it's completely clear of the clicking garbage and already set for use in its beta phase.

I'm not sure what new annoyances will come out of this new site except for being a larger target across multiple games but hopefully the annoyances are all minimized and kept from spawning new scams.

So if you're out there and you want to track down your old pals, sign up on Rupture today.

Elliott Smith - Miss Misery

Plants Vs Zombies: Giant X's on your eyes, and with your half of the ransom you bought some sweet sweet sweet sunflowers

2009-06-23T16:01:00.008-05:00

And again with the living dead, Plants Vs Zombies from PopCap Games isn't your usual change your pants scared-dy cat type of zombie killer thriller. PvZ is another puzzle type game comically making light of flesh eating zombies much to the appreciation of Zombies Ate My Neighbors fans.

This fast, easy to learn game is another hard to shake addiction. You know that darn PopCap company sitting on that dim light corner of the Internet is holding. So if you have a tiny taste of brains, PopCap is ready for the sleight of hand exchange with a smile.

The point is quite simple. Your job is to use garden friendly plants with various abilities to stop different types of zombies from getting into your house. Battles are fought around your house with a 5 lane highway/lawn/grid. Using the sun as a system of currency, you spend points placing various plants while collecting a constant stream of sunny income and waiting for cooldowns of your plants to be able to place them again. If a zombie reaches a plant he will begin to devour it with the ultimate goal of making it across your lawn and into his newly acquired dining room.

The game plays out like other strategy type games where utilizing resources early on determines ease of success later. It also becomes a very fast paced game as there are many things to keep your mouse clicking(sun chips, money, and plants). This is probably where the "jonesing" for more comes into play as wave upon wave of zombies pour in and a constant tending of your garden needs to be maintained to stay alive.

Additional mini-games and game modes such as zombie bowling and survival become available as you chip away at the adventure mode. There are also extra challenges as the adventure mode is finished such as replaying with random plant sets and purchasing speciality items with all your money earned.

If you like the constant struggle of the living versus the living dead, fun puzzle/strategy games, or if you are just looking to find another game that anyone and everyone can play, Plants Vs Zombies is a sound choice. So get planting.

Rating: 6.0 {on a scale of -10 to 10, 5 being a must play}

Low - Sunflower

E3:09 Highlights

2009-06-01T18:57:00.008-05:00

Here are some of the not so French tickles that I caught while spending a little too much time staring at Olivia Munn and the rest of the G4 gang.

EA - Besides the typical sports games of yore here's a look at what I hope is not just Star Wars Galaxies 2. Yes, a new MMO set in the Scifi universe that all Scifi fans know: Star Wars the Old Republic. Since it is made by the creators of KOTOR, the big push for this game is the storyline and questlines touting consequences for every choice made. Also a reminder that Mass Effect 2 is on the way and what looks like all the unenjoyable portions have been removed.

Ubisoft - By first starting off on the right foot having Joel McHale initially introduce the Ubi conference, CEO Yves Guillemot spent just a handful of time on information for all of the Tom Clancy hits, Assassin's Creed 2, Red Steel 2, etc. Instead almost all of the talk was over their new direction which is taking a vested interest in all aspects of entertainment beyond gaming. Their first large branch-off is a 3-D game/movie combo called Avatar. The 4 year running production is directed by James Cameron and was a project he originally had created over a decade ago but the technology was not up to his vision. Thankfully this was not a forced project made during the Deep Blue Sea era of CGI. And for the first time in a while I will probably buy another Splinter Cell game.

Sony - Big PSP push for them with all sorts of ports and similar versions of big hits. New Metal Gear Solid game for PS3 (exclusive one for Xbox360 too), some more Final Fantasy videos but overall the only half thrill I got was watching some God of War 3 gameplay. It looked smooth, brutal, and visually amazing.

Nintendo - One big surprise was a new 4 person co-op 2D Mario Bros. game for the Wii. It plays out much like the gamecube/DS game Zelda 4 Swords. Interesting but this again is another example of a Wii game needing more than just yourself to please you and others. The one surprise was a short video of the next upcoming Metroid game due out in 2010. This shows a bit more of the old 3rd person viewpoint that fans enjoy.

Microsoft - Modern Warfare 2 as well as Mass Effect 2 were a few of the 360 delights. Both were large improvements over their originals and hopefully will both be released before I make out a Christmas wish list. The one big showoff Microsoft accomplished which was above and beyond any other of the console press conferences was Project Natal. Natal is an additional little device that resembles a web cam and microphone combined. It doesn't seem like it would be that interesting until it is understood that it is a gaming device requiring no controller but your body. Some amazing features of Natal are voice AND facial recognition, video conferencing, dashboard browsing controlled by your body motions, etc. Here is an example of what looks like a game of sorts called Milo which is a little interactive AI program.

Peggle:Watch it now, the eagle in the sky, how he dancing one and only

2009-05-25T00:09:00.011-05:00

When you cross a dominant gene of The Price is Right's Plinko with a slightly recessive gene of Pinball, 75% of the time you end up getting Peggle from PopCap Games. PopCap has been one of the leading companies spanning almost every current console and having one of the biggest hold in the PC/Mac Internet community for small simple puzzle games. Bejeweled, Book Worm, and Zuma are some of the other popular puzzle games they have to offer all of which are very addicting and bring back the olden days of "highest point" boards at your local arcade this time using the web as the ego show off landscape.

The point of Peggle is pretty simple. From the top of the screen you aim at pegs and blocks as you guesstimate your angle of the dangle. After you release the ball physics takes over and flashbacks of an unexcited Bob Barker come to mind as the ball bounces back and forth lighting everything it touches in it's path until it falls to the bottom of the screen. Once the ball is ready to be shot again the previously lit pegs are taken off the board and you begin to make due with what's left. The main goal is to light all of the orange colored pegs and blocks before you run out of ammunition accruing extra points and ammo if you can pull off extravagant things like hitting a multitude of pegs and blocks before the ball falls to the bottom.

It's a repetitive but fun routine as you try to guess good bounces to take and challenge yourself to added difficulties such as clearing an entire level by starting with only one ball. As you clear the adventure mode, you unlock Peggle masters that each have their own abilities when hitting a green peg like Tula's Flower Power instantly lighting up 20% of the remaining orange pegs.

Overall it's a simple concept and balances random chance with a bit of strategy and luck and a multitude of versions can be found depending on what you've got to work with from the PC, to the Nintendo DS, to Xboxlive. There's even a free WoW mod that you can play during moments that you are sitting around waiting.

From young and old, to new and experienced gamers, everyone could find themselves plinking and plopping and ponging along with Peggle. And even those hardcore gamers need to take a break during their 20 hour gaming sessions and what better way to do so than with another simpler game. You're not going to put in 80+ hours or pull off an amazingly coordinated button mashed combo but you will find yourself attempting to hit that ultimate high score.

Rating: 4.5 {on a scale of -10 to 10, 5 being must play}

Yes - Owner of a Lonely Heart

Star Ocean: The Last Hope: I could spend the rest of my days playing through what might have been in love

2009-05-13T12:04:00.002-05:00

Star Ocean: The Last Hope from Square-Enix and developed by the small company Tri-Ace is the 5th (and possibly last) installment in the Star Ocean series only out for Xbox360. A nice reminder of RPGs of the past, SO: TLH is a good example of a stereotypical Japanese RPG especially if you don't normally play RPGs. A rich and cutscene-a-plenty storyline, just enough repetitive fighting to level your opposables to a thumb wrestling championship, and item management that would go better with an day shift manager, TLH is good RPG for new and old gamers alike.

Made by the same company that brought us Infinite Undiscovery, TLH is a much better step toward what fans of RPGs expect to get from a single game. And for those that never owned a Super Famicom, PS1, or PS2 to be able to play the other Star Ocean games, TLH is very much a standalone since it is a prequel taking place a few centuries prior to the first Star Ocean. The story does tie into the other Star Ocean games and helps explain the somewhat surprise ending for Till the End of Time but anyone new to the Star Ocean series can still find themselves not needing to research anything from the older games.

For those unfamiliar with previous Star Ocean games the core background to the games follow with an Earth that was scorched from nuclear war. The survivors put all of their efforts into space exploration trying to find a new planet to call home. You are a part of the first exploration party and the actual game portion is the adventures you encounter while out in the "star ocean".

Star Ocean was one of the first RPGs to change from menu driven turn based combat system to a real-time type. Encounters, whether randomly popping from out of nowhere or actually touching an enemy on a map/dungeon, were still done with the classic cut-away screens unlike Castlevania, Zelda, or Secret of Mana that kept combat and wandering in real-time. On top of it, the combat for SO was all party based. Besides unique combat, other factors such as the large crafting system made this series a building block for later days with the later advent of MMOs. Take that Doom!

The biggest selling point for all RPG video games is the storyline and the meshing of the player actually feeling like they are "role-playing". An entire book's worth of dialog can be crammed into an RPG making a way to bridge the gap of tedious page flipping in some old dusty book that weighs a ton and smells like mothballs. If the storyline has substance then working through all the battles over and over just to go up a single level makes it all worth it or ends up taking away 80+ hours of your life you'll never get back (Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and Battletoads thank you). TLH has a novel's worth of dialog and contained within 3 DVD discs are a plethora of cutscenes to fill out the story nicely. On top of the usual read-along just as much voice acted dialog is done in case you hated reading everything and wanted to forget what books were altogether.

Combat is better than the older SO games and doesn't evolve into impossibility like some of the previous SOs. Previous SOs were so difficult, especially toward the endgame, that trying to figure out a trickeration type strategy to just finish the game was a usual implementation for disheartened gamers. I remember playing SO2 and seeing a strategy in which a single party member was utilized and only one ability was used (ah, AIRSLASH) and not even bothering with other party members or any other abilities. The strategy worked so well that the whole game could be completed this way. This time all party members pull their weight with or without your direct input and do a decent job with self preservation even on harder boss fights and endgame. Not as much saving, dying, reloading, and repeating till your head spins, thankfully.

Repetitiveness isn't as big a factor since combat is a challenge and rewarding when mastered. Enemy difficulty keeps pace when sticking with the storyline instead of having to take extra time to "level". There are some nice additions such as combos that can be done with fellow party members and in addition, they can even be micromanaged and changed to fit your damage needs.

The overall look of combat is a big step up from previous SOs and is very fluid in it's delivery. And it's not only the combat that shows off the graphics as the rest of the game grinds on your 360's hardware constantly. Cutscenes aren't above the visual quality of the rest of the game showing that the entire game can not only look fantastic but help to give the feeling that a lot of work was done making the gameplay look spectacular. The cutscenes don't act like separate movies inserted here and there but instead are like a part of the gameplay and story keeping the player enthralled with everything and not making the gameplay a disappointing experience when the player is given control again.

This SO had very few low points that stuck out. With all RPGs, the way in which directions on what to do and where to go next is a big part of the presentation. TLH utilizes a lot of the cutscenes to do this but in a few cases trying to figure out the next step for progression isn't the easiest thing for your cereal box decoder ring. There are also handfuls of awkward and head scratching "situations" that only anime fandom would ever consider a necessity. These can be seen with some of the characters like the personal crafting utilization program: Welch. One big teeth grinder comes from the monotone character Lymle as the creators decided to add in a South Park type tagline to the end of EVERY sentence she decides to speak ('kay). After about 20 minutes of being forced to hear the joke being taken too far, the cuteness gets loaded into a weapon of scary proportions as you begin to look into the barrel instead of looking down the sights.

Small hiccups aside, from start to finish Star Ocean: The Last Hope is an experience that fans of all of the classics will enjoy, worth the play through for any RPGer, and a good choice for those that have never ventured into needing experience points. Hours upon hours of cutscenes, gameplay that's enjoyable, minimized repetitive leveling, atypical combat that's fun, and a good return on the investment for time given, SO: TLH is by far an RPG Xbox 360 owners have been looking for ever since the console's release.

Rating: 7.5 {on a scale of -10 to 10, 5+ being a must play}

O + S - We Do What We Want To [only actual video available is Permanent Scar]

Resident Evil 5: Zombie no go go, unless you tell am to go, Zombie no go stop, unless you tell am to stop

2009-04-27T12:05:00.010-05:00

"Now lets all just stay calm and hopefully we can take care of this 'Zombie' problem in a civilized manner"

Who knew a pregnant woman who barely plays video games with a hardcore gamer would both squirm with anticipation of getting through a normal work day to be rewarded with a zombie-blasting-fun-shotgun-reloading-handholding-good-old-time? For all your marriage needs Resident Evil 5 for PS3 and Xbox360 from Capcom is there fulfilling all that marital bliss people talked about you having after exchanging vows about sickness and genetic altering viruses and boy, was everyone right on about it all being worth it.

Without saying all the same stuff again about the love of zombie in all of its forms (Previous Review of RE5 Demo) I'm going to just stick to my reaction of RE5 after finishing the game with my diamond in the rough on a par 4.

A quick synopsis for this game will remind you of any RE typical virus problem creating zombies that must be dealt with. After zombie after zombie are destroyed you take arms up against the person in charge of distributing the virus. This RE takes place in a fictional African country as this makes for a great 'test' site for the newly created virus without the fear of a military superpower intervening. Instead, you and your partner are a part of a small group that investigates biological terrorism around the world and is assigned to this lovely country after rumors start of people making meals of other people.

RE5 is everything I'd hoped for with a little extra gravy on the side. It makes for a very hard decision when comparing to its predecessor, RE4, on which is better. The shock value on what a huge step forward RE4 was made for a high bar to live up to but with the addition of the Co-op mode, the beauty of this generation of consoles, and sticking with all that worked previously, RE5 has at least matched RE4 in greatness.

The solo play is quality as the AI of your uncontrolled partner has the aim of a true champ and avoids death fairly well. Your AI companion however, does not understand what it means to conserve ammo and will blow through just about every bullet you hand them. For anyone who's played any of the RE games, you know that ammo is scarce and is one of the things that will make or break your survival as zombies attempt to chomp on your pooper and neck alike. In some instances your AI buddy will be such a good shot that it almost feels like cheating. This makes the game a bit easier than I prefer but others may appreciate all the help they can get.

The Co-op mode is one of the best 2 person Co-ops I have ever seen. The overall game is so fun that even someone that is typically not enthralled with gaming can start to play RE5 and notice smiles appearing on their face. After completing the game with my wife I realized that this game's development was actually centered around the idea of you playing with someone and making the experience of two people better than just one. Many of the fights in the game are meant for you to coordinate times to reload, when to take shots, exchanging of equipment, and covering one another from all directions which is best done with a real partner and not a skynetty one. The controls are easy enough for anyone to pick up and quickly learn as they are identical to RE4's 3rd person over the shoulder shooting controls.

Hopping right into playing with a partner isn't the fastest thing to do as RE will save all of your progress no matter who's game you are joining and no matter where they are in the story. What is nice about this is all the extra unlockables that are bought with a how-smooth-was-success based point system is saved to your account and not just the person's story you are playing.

The cutscenes and storyline are solid and mesh very well to make the experience a complete one. There is still some of the extra unnecessary unusualness that RE/Capcom likes to have such as extreme physical attributes (punching through a person) and over the top characters. Even with this strangeness, the voice acting is done very well and the music and sounds of the game also make for a seamless movie played out as a game or game played out as a movie depending on your half full/hall empty outlook. Different pistols sound like their real counterpart and the ooga-booga zombie sounds still have the same old scariness that comes from when you know damn well it's in the shadows somewhere.

Completing the game just like RE4 unlocks some extra modes of play but not as many as RE4. RE4 had a very difficult extra storyline that could be played after the game was completed and RE5 is missing something like that. I'm going to guess that since the new trend of games now is to have to purchase extra expansions, they will probably release something like this at a later date.

Lots of head disintegrating action, smooth transitioning cutscenes, fun gameplay, and an opportunity to make a real life partnership even stronger make Resident Evil 5 a game everyone should take the time to find a partner to play it with. Yeah, it being RE5, I think...

Rating: 9.0 {on a scale of -10 to 10, 5 being a must play}

Fela Kuti and the Afrika 70 - Zombie (video is only 10 min of the full 12+ min song)

Empire Total War: South of the river you stop and you hold everything, a band is blowing dixie double four time

2009-04-18T19:59:00.003-05:00

Remember when you used to sit behind Heather L. in 6th grade History class and each day you took bets on whether the teacher would have sweaty armpit stains or not? Unless your name was Ryan K. you probably weren't doing exactly that, but I'm guessing that you remember just as much similar nonsense from those days than actual history that was taught to you. And now you wonder why you can't answer any trivia questions about who Saxony was aligned with during the 18th century. Care for a refresher on history so you can start winning arguments at your local watering hole? Better go out and grab the interactive teaching tool called Empire: Total War from Sega. Ok it's not focused on teaching per-say, the teaching of the 18th century comes as a nice result if you pay attention to the details in this immense game.

A gigantic turned based strategy game (real time during battles) for the PC, Empire is a great mashed potato mixture of older strategy games such as Risk and Civilization. If you have sat at home and had a few bed days lazily watching the History Channel, you may recognize the older versions of Total War being utilized to reenact great historical battles of the world.

As seen by this in-game screenshot, the game in motion is as beautiful as a new bride walking down the aisle minus the flowers and cottony whiteness. The camera, while in battle, can be angled high in the sky to see formations and flanks shifting to zooming right down to the soldier's point of view to watch them load and blast grape shot at nearby sloops. Naval battles in particular are quite impressive as ships broadside one another having sails, masts, planks, and sailors become part of the watery wreckage.

Those eye catching things aside, the game plays out like you would expect any typical turned based strategy. After picking your favorite allegiance, the primary campaign starts in the year 1700 with the territories your country of choice owned. From there you begin to amass land and naval troops, pick new buildings for cities and capitals, research military, philosophical, or industrial upgrades, establish trade routes, adjust taxes, send spies on sabotage missions, rearrange heads of state, and conquer opposing faction territories to claim for your own. After exhausting all possibilities, you end your turn and a 6 month time period passes as all other factions do the same repeating the cycle until you reach the end year of your campaign.

One thing that's impressive is the AI's ability to do its best in replaying history out to how it truly happened. The "what if" choices make interesting results as the AI adapts to your decisions while simultaneously keeping as historically close to reality as possible. A separate campaign mode for the colonization of the US is also included called the Road to Independence for all those wishing to brush up on why Britain had such a hard time keeping tabs on those in the New Land.

The difficulty of the game seems much harder than previous Total War titles as the turtling and steamrolling is an almost non-existent strategy with high upkeep prices for each unit. A lot of political micromanagement is needed after completing philosophical upgrades and the people clamor for reform. Alliances and trade routes all come with their respective ex-girlfriend type baggage as the rest of the world is trying to accomplish the same thing as you.

The learning curve is about 5 - 10 hours depending on your past history with turned based strategies not to be confused with your past history with Stratego. There are a good amount of tutorials to step you through how to play the game but those things are for losers right? Once you get a good grasp on how to play the game, there is little that will piss off any player. Extra difficulty occurs dependent on the faction you chose at the start (large naval presence of northern European countries like Sweden vs almost exclusive land military presence with central Europe like Prussia) and may make for very different starting points and strategies but with one choice there are advantages and disadvantages abound.

Loading screens can get lengthy at times and Empire relishes in the latest technology by taking time to point out that it is "best played" with the newest i7 chip during initial loading screens. And it's just like a company to help remind the world how to spend all the disposable income we all have during this economic time.

Some pathing of your troops can be harrowing. On the map screen it may seem like only the most direct route can be chosen while the AI controlled troops will show you some type of tricky avoidance pathing. You will see the AI sidestepping right around forts and cities with troops in them making a sprint for your capital. Similarly in battles your troops will walk right in front of your artillery and take friendly fire causalities instead of walking behind them. After losing a general in battle to your own cannons you'll quickly learn what seems like a simple command can turn into a slap in the face and an embarrassment that your kids will never forget.

Great battles, graphics, sound, historical alignment, depth, and play make Total War: Empire an all-around strategy game into a benchmark of the first decade in the 21st century. With little to complain about, this game is worth the time it takes to complete just the "short campaign" and worth the extra time to replay it over and over trying out different sections of the world in the 18th century. I only wish that more people would be able to see games such as this and realize how great history class could of been as well as what most kids were probably daydreaming about in those 6th grade classes. Yup, you and Heather L., I mean the wars and what they must of been like.

Rating: 8.0 {on a scale of -10 to 10, a 5+ being a must play}

Dire Straits - Sultans of Swing

Fallen Earth Early Preview

2009-03-31T20:03:00.002-05:00

I've got a quick addition as I just re-found out about this today after hearing rumors of one from the Fallout series (I think that one is over).

A post apocalyptic MMO named Fallen Earth.

Teaser Trailer

4 Part Interview w/ gameplay

Well it doesn't look as good as some of the Korean choices but at the same time none of them have anything close to having a game where you can put spiked shoulder pads, nails through your arms, and a large mohawk on your head.

Hired Guns Jagged Edge: Last night I held Aladdin's lamp, And so I wished that I could stay

2009-03-30T15:53:00.006-05:00

The ever vagueness saying "AND MORE" couldn't be a more hopeful statement when it comes to the latest installment of the Jagged Alliance series: Jagged Edge Hired Guns for the PC. Brought to us by the company GFI (Russian so I wouldn't go screwing with them) HG is a total revamped game in the series which has traveled down the usual path of separation from the originals.

The series is one of the rarest types of strategies in that it is a small squad turn based strategy. Final Fantasy Tactics, Fire Emblem, the Commandos Series, Fallout, and Front Mission are some similar types but if you are looking for modern guerilla warfare strategies, you are even more limited in your choices.

This time set in Africa, HG takes you through most of the core values of the Jagged Alliance series such as laptop received directives to online purchasing of equipment and mercs to increased usage of action points for better accuracy per shot to the removal of an evil dictator. Hell, XEP624 is still the code used to start your psych test in the creation of your own character and many of the questions are still the same just reworded.

The squad screens within and outside the battlefields are very similar to the originals as well as the idea of needing to sap the resources of the land you are fighting on to make necessary expenditures unforgettable.

And this is where our journey through magical nostalgia land ends. The first step away is the utilization of three dimensions. The camera can be shifted every which way to get a good line of sight or to frustrate you to the point of launching your mouse pad across your living room. In order to not allow the camera to journey through objects (that's the way they set it up) you will find yourself spinning and angling until you give yourself a case of vertigo.

Most games of today will step you through some sort of tutorial and HG says, "um no" to that idea as they throw your face down in the muck to learn things the hard way. The learning curve for someone that played the originals multiple times through was still around 4+ hours. Someone entirely new to this type of game would sadly need 8-16 hours to get a good hold on how to play it. I am not exaggerating in the least about this as there are many mistakes that can be made and no way to catch them until it's too late.

For example, in the originals you could take over mining operations to help fund your mercenary needs which were payments for your equipment and guns for hire. This game however does not prompt you in any way except for small notes in the game manual and load screen tips that your hired assassins need cash more than once and must be paid promptly every day at 00:00. And where are you to secure means to pay your employees? Well, by taking over areas that have random amounts of income generation which cannot be known until you take over the area. You also can again recruit militia to defend your owned areas but in this game the amounts required are so enormous and non-refundable that it's worthless to do so.

Most of these differences stem from less micromanagement on the map screen. No more worrying about medkits vs first aid packs, vehicles, SAM sites, mechanical kits, need for leadership increases, landing zones, etc. Each contract for a specific merc is for one day reoccurring instead of choices of weeks. There is no way for a quick figure of next day income or contract expenses which again will lead to a mercenary leaving with good equipment to be forever lost if you can't afford their contract.

The battles are relatively good. Most show off modern techniques and keep bug issues to a minimum. You can now lob grenades easily through windows and even using bullets to help change the terrain around you. You can burn a few rounds into a door, creating a large hole and lay waste to everything behind it in a single turn. The battles are what make this series good and they are done with that intention. The available weapons are gigantically numerous and realism is abound.

But the major gap in the game is the storyline interlaced with environment. After a few days in the imaginary African nation, I forgot why I was even there. After a few more days I didn't care, I just wanted to finish the game. I didn't get the sense that I was raping and plundering the land for any good reason or any guilt for pumping a 40mm grenade right past the faces of African civilians into another group of people that just happened to be shooting back. You receive emails about your small triumphs over the evil dictator of the land but that's the only part of your progression that reminds you that you've, well, progressed. There were large improvements over translations from the demo version but still the occasional Englilsh problem would poke it's head out.

Overall, the Jagged Alliance series was one that I was glad to see resurrected, but I do not feel the need to replay this game compared to the old ones. I doubt anyone new to the series would even bother picking HG up, but for those that took a chance, will play through this feeling like they ate fast food even though a filet minot is what they were craving. Fills you up but are you satisfied?

Rating: 1.5 {on a -10 to 10 scale, 5+ being a must play}

On a different note while I was purchasing this game I noticed another on the same shelf that caught my eye purely because of its name. Space Siege made by the same guys (gas powered games) that did Dungeon Siege except this time is set out of the medieval fantasy realm and plunged into the space fantasy one. Reviews that I later read make it seem like a run of the mill dungeon crawler but I'm guessing someone that enjoyed the others for co-op play will probably enjoy this one too.

Steppenwolf - Magic Carpet Ride

Intel's Core i7: I'll be a diode, cathode, electrode, overload, generator, oscillator, make a circuit with me

2009-02-23T00:09:00.014-06:00

The surge seen in the 80's and 90's with computers was almost sickening. Company giants like Commodore, Lotus, Gateway, and Sun were beasts in their day and most were making millions before the first reusable alkaline battery was available in 1992.

I remembered those decades having people spending entire paychecks on the absolute latest available hardware on the market. Software started coming out so fast that you would start losing blood from all the papercuts trying to thumb through Videogames and Computer Entertainment. Of course this was the 80's where people had a lot of that disposable income to just throw around. It was so bad that I began to believe R+D departments for most computer companies seemed like a viable and profitable place to have a job. Being too young to have a legal job I still was around enough older people to be able to enjoy, hate, and learn about all things computers.

It was a long ride that eventually got popped economically and today the champs that trained hard and sometimes with their evil jabs have sustained the computer market. Even if every change wasn't the most legitimate one, we still have come a long way from the LOAD "*", 8, 1 commands. The one giant that every person that places their fingertips near a keyboard or even watches television commericals will come across is Intel. Being the first company to develop a microprocessor, they've always been ahead of the rest and over the last 6 months have done it again. Their latest creation, i7, is another step into the direction microprocessors have taken.

Without boring or confusing people, the i7 is based on the latest microarchitecture Intel has created called Nehalem. Many people know the large previous version of this known as Core Duo/Quad Core (not actually 4 so don't let it fool you) and both were the first steps in adding "cores" while interlacing and sharing input/output sites and caches. In layman's terms, instead of making a faster and faster single core, they took 2 central processing units and simultaneously allowed for both to process information thus allowing for much better multitasking and the illusion of double the previous speeds of single cores. Ok, maybe quoting Arnold will make sense of it; "My CPU is a neural net processor; a learning computer".

What's different about the i7? It is that Intel has made a true 4 core processor. Not touching the Quad Core debate, this time they have made a four core processor and clouded that by adding in the magic number three for shared L3 Cache or having 7 more SSE4 instructions. Either way it's a different design and outward looks can't tell you much more than the fact that it's different. Another change is the turbo mode operation which is much like the turbo mode on most cars kicking into a higher power output when needed. You can only use DDR3 RAM with i7 as well as other chippy intensive stuff that I'd rather not delve too much into and after reading up on the topic in depth, few would want to know about it all either. The real test and reward is in the use and abuse.

I was fortunate enough to be able to play around with a new system containing the i7 chip as well as an Intel motherboard, 2 ati graphics cards, 3 GB of DDR3 and various other bells and whistles. Not being a paid reviewer of technology with hardware laying around to swap in and out for true testing, I can only compare what I noticed to other recent Dual and Quad Core systems I've touched. Each have a multitude of differing peripherals but all under the guise of a single OS: Vista.

I benchmarked multitasking of the i7 by pulling up a youtube video, playing a quicktime video, playing a non-intensive game in window mode, running a spyware removing piece of software, and doing a regular hard drive search all at the same time. Now most other systems I've ever tried, especially using Vista do not take multitasking lightly. Once you get to about three major tasks, Vista will put the kabosh to most of your efforts at least with initial loading of them. If you get them all started it starts to yield a bit to show multitasking and with the i7, pending a non-crashing Vista, can handle quite a bit. It seemed to be able to pull out 2 more tasks than a Dual but about the same as a Quad. Now I'm guessing with a Linux or Win 2000 operating system you'd see a real pull away with the i7 but that's even harder to compare to with my little stash of goodies.

But who gives a crap of multitasking when there's games to be played? Much like feeding the child before the parent, you've got to feed your inner child and feed mine I did. I tried Empire: Total War, Crysis, and Farcry 2 and found all three to be very impressive showoffs from the i7. Total War on an old Dual core with a good graphics card was pulling about 20 FPS where the i7 nailed 45+ easily (highest settings). Crysis and Farcry 2 were both played at highest settings and only Crysis had the tiniest bit of lag but never dropped under 20 FPS. It was truly a beautiful sight to be able to play these three games at their highest settings and not to worry about clipping, jipping or too many unit lagging. Total War, a game that has a loading screen saying "best played on an i7," doesn't lie about how it handled with lots of units all interacting and reacting at the same time. Battles played out as if they were straight out of the History Channel in HD minus all the Hilter propaganda. I enjoyed the system so much I spent extra days testing it to it's limits and found only Vista to be a cause of problems.

Total cost of the system used was $1000. The primary components were about $500 and added peripherals could range from 100 - limitless depending how much you wanted to max everything out and every dollar spent felt like you were rewarded with a dollar in return.

Now this may not be the best time for most people to be shelling out cash on a loaded computer system with the economic developments the way they are. If you are lucky enough to be able to build something new however, this is the way to go. The i7 is a thing of beauty in its design and capability. And even if you don't buy anytime soon, this will probably be the chip to abolish all ideas of a single core design for good bringing us into a new era and eventually to the one we call Skynet.

Polecats - Make a Circuit with Me

Halo Wars Demo: It was cold and it rained so I felt like an actor and I thought of more and I wanted to get back there

2009-02-16T17:53:00.000-06:00

Due out Feb. 20th by Ensemble Studios, aka Microsoft, Halo Wars is another RTS, this time only out for the 360 console (and no they refuse for some reason to release it to the PC for now at least). After sitting down to test out what a few others have been looking forward to playing, this demo helped me back to the path of another memory that I had stored by means of the dewey decimal system when I should of had it on speed dial. That time-tested and true memory is the problem with listening to people that are in love with a franchise. Those star crossed lovers tend to magnetize themselves into hearting things and hopefully an ice pack slaps them in the face to show them what their attraction will bring, good or bad, before it's too late. Works for sex appeal, that new car smell in a pontiac aztek, and in this case a video game.

So it's a little harsh to say those things first, but everyone needs a good old fashioned open palm thwack to get their head aligned before jumping around for joy with that newly purchased bag of magic beans. Halo Wars does some stuff well considering that Ensemble has fallen into the same old "console RTS" bear trap. To beat the old drum of RTS knowledge, the best RTS games require close to, if not an entire keyboard for all the quick functions needed to play well. Tom Clancy's Endwar bypassed this idea by adding in voice commands but Halo Wars is all done entirely with the controller. This causes a removal of the nice complexities that an RTS can carry and you are left with a simplified version of what could of been something challenging.

On the flip side the game is very easy to figure out and play. Almost any fan of the HALO games can pick this up and learn it in under 30 minutes. That also includes the stereotype that most HALO fans barely know what the restrictions on their learners permit are. Graphically it is a quality game especially for an RTS on a console. The graphics match the other HALO games as does the music and sound effects. Units are very similar to their predecessor games with new units necessary for the balance found in RTSs. All of these things will make any HALO fan giggle with glee. Gameplay and strategies are easily figured out as units have a basic strong vs/weak vs setup along with the ability to upgrade units. One main difference from most other RTS games is no resource gathering is required and instead a building at your bases can be created that houses a constant stream of incoming supplies at a given rate. Pushing the limits of a console on the graphical limitations, I found that having a large army of units all involved in battle at the same time did not show the typical graphical lag PC RTS games sometimes suffer from.

The biggest thing that one will notice after starting to play this game is hopefully a glimmer of a reminder stored in the long term attic of the brain. Admittedly if you live in Korea, this might actually be a short term memory, but for most of the world it now lands in the dusty old cardboard box sections. To truly understand you also have to look a bit into the future as well and connect the old with the new. There has been an empty space created with the distance between the release of Starcraft 1 and the eventual release of its sequel. This has made most RTS fans turn to other choices such as Total War, the AOE series, Warhammer 40k, Company of Heroes, etc. These other games are all agruably great if not better RTSers with their similarities and differences to the beast of a benchmark called Starcraft.

And herein, after about five minutes of playtime, is where a couple solid flashbacks should and will take place. Halo Wars is, well, pretty direct in its choices for game style. You have the 'humans' (terrans) vs 'covenant' (protoss) and are missing the 'vs the flood' (zerg) as far as anyone knows for now (unless in the single player campaign you band together to take down the flood and I think I've heard that storyline a couple times before). Ideally, if you worked for a game company, you would want to make an attempt at separating yourself from Starcraft even though it is a highly sought after franchise and small aspects and similarities will naturally be stolen. This game, on the other hand, did not feel like any many attempts were made at separation besides utilizing the HALO universe. It almost seems that those over at Emsemble loved playing Starcraft so much they decided to fill this soul searching time without Starcraft 2 by deploying their "HALO modded edition of Starcraft ".

The looks of some of the units and their abilities were too similar for me to think of anything other than the Starcraft series. Flamethrower marines, now where have I seen that before especially considering I don't remember that at all in HALO? Some of the upgrades for the units even seemed a little too similar for my tastes. Granted both games are supposed to be set in a distant future sci-fi universe, but Warhammer 40k didn't remind me of Starcraft as much as this game does. Maybe it's just me and my wild urge for Starcraft 2. I guess the strong comparison to the Blizzard game is because I did not see anything within the demo that seemed like a new idea or creative piece of gameplay or anything else to really set this game apart. I honestly feel that this game will not even stand the test of time and will be forgotten about after about a year of its release unless the need for another reference presents itself.

Regardless, a line in the sand will have to be drawn whether you can pick up this game and ignore similarities to Starcraft. This could be done for those who are big into FPSers and want to branch off into a known game universe. Maybe someone who does not want a game to be so complex that you are bogged down with a ton of commands and options? Or maybe if you are too young to have ever picked up Starcraft? Maybe being a big fan of the HALO universe would help block out the scars of an old bad Battlenet rank?

The next line in the sand would have to be whether you can actually stand, like most other failures before it, playing a RTS on a console. I found it very annoying trying to do unit selections since most of the success of minor and major battles is based on micromanagement of units playing off their strengths. I also found that due to the difficulties of managing specific units, and the limitations of what you can actually do with just a controller in your hands, this game becomes a game of choosing what units to create and upgrade more than how to use the units that you have created.

As you can see, Halo Wars may teach you that what you may be strongly attracted to at first, may eventually lead you into an internal struggle to torment yourself by attempting to look like you are not tormented.

One other thing to note is that the release of Warhammer 40k Dawn of War II is due out on 2/19 for the PC only and Halo Wars is due out 3/3 for the console only. If I was really itching for a RTS right this minute I would probably go with the former since both will be the same price. If I was looking to try out RTS games for the first time I would go with the latter. And if I was really wanting to not get my panties in a bunch for needing a RTS so quickly, I would probably hold off for the release of Starcraft 2 sometime this year, probably near the November time frame. By then it will be like Blizzard saying revenge is a dish best served with laughter and giggles. Or if you want another RTS that's not a sci-fi oriented one, Empire Total War is due out on 3/3.

Five Years - David Bowie

DeBlob: I see people turn their heads and quickly look away, like a new born baby it just happens every day

2009-02-05T16:10:00.005-06:00

Not THE Blob

Released for the Wii by the company THQ, Deblob is a game involving humor, creativity, and a general abundance of color violence. Best described as a platformer, DeBlob takes you into the heart of a fantasy world called Chroma City. The evil black and white I.N.K.T. Corporation (notice that it's not called Empire, Army, or other military synonyms) enter into Chroma and start stealing the colors away from everything and begin enslaving the "colorless" citizens. Enter Blob, the round hero with his rag tag bunch of friends to save all of Chroma City from its lack of triumphant true diversity by running around and painting the town red.... and yellow, blue, orange and every other color of the ROYGBIV universe allows unless you have the good old fashioned color-blindness handicap.

DeBlob is quite a fascinating game in its delivery, simple enjoyment, with a buffet of visual and musical dishes. The controls are simple to pick up and respond quite well but the game has very minor typical camera issues found with all three dimensional games. There are simple instructions for available actions and abilities and extra quests/achievements are easily explained and plentiful. The main actions of the game are accomplished by first acquiring a color from an enemy and then roaming around applying that color to everything in sight.

The idea seems cheap and pointless for hardcore gamers, and that reason will keep this game low on the priority list next to shaving, bathing, and soaking up UV rays. For those that take a chance and play this game will find themselves enjoying quite near everything about it. The musical portion alone is done in a manner to keep repetitive sounds from being annoyances and the visuals also stay away from the little sister poking you in the eyes over and over.

The game really helps you reminisce about finger painting. The good old days of putting on a smock, and saying no to using a brush because it already took you five minutes to take your snow pants and galoshes off so you'll be damned if you aren't going to enjoy yourself before you've got to put it all back on again. Ok, if it doesn't do that it at least gives you an electronic mimicry that Jackson Pollock would be proud of.

Overall, if you want a hardcore, violent, difficult challenge of a game, DeBlob isn't for you. If you want to play a simple yet creatively made game, give DeBlob a chance as you'll be pleasantly surprised at how fun the color wheel and painting the town red can be.

Rating: 4 {-10 to 10 scale, 5+ being a must play}

F.E.A.R. 2 and Ace Combat 6 demos: and outside you see the waves in her eyes and I won't blind what you decide to swear by

2009-01-28T13:55:00.025-06:00

It's been a long time since there was a battle of the Midway. About 66 years now, but the concept has always been about good old dog fights and not the illegal kind with pitbulls or rottweilers that you used to referee for to get you through a bad economic time. I'm talking about the kind that today is fought with volleyball, hot perspiration, and steamy showers. And without a multi-million or billion dollar piece of equipment to pull it off with in the back yard, you'll need to probably find a supplementing game. How about Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation from Bandai: Namco?

If you are looking for an American-esque flight sim/dogfight game this game will probably give you a few confused looks on your face when you play it. The storyline is Japanese in its writing, translating, and action cinematics which can put some people off. Looking past that you'll find a very fun 3d "vertical scrolling" shooter, you know, the kind that you used to spend all the quarters in your piggy bank after school just to play.

Simple controls to pick up and lots of air combat, Ace Combat 6 is a good console game to try out if you have a yearning for a Tie Fighter replacement.

Separately, F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin by Monolith Productions and published by WBIE is another game that will keep you popping truckers caffeine pills as you fend off visions of Ringu to not succumb to sleep.

The first installment was a decent game in what it was trying to do for the FPS genre. It had it's scary moments for sure, but overall it felt like more of a Half-life mod that didn't mesh its horror moments and seemed to ostracize any quality FPSing. The FPS wasn't anything spectacular as it pushed the primary focus to the horror portion.

F.E.A.R. 2, however, has a different look, feel, and amazing presentation to it. The available demo off xboxlive is worth a try and just reading a review can not prepare you for how well this game has improved over its predecessor. I can't figure out if it's due to Vivendi letting its little brother WB Interactive Entertainment take a little more control or if its just all the money made from the success of the first, but either way you should treat this as a whole new game.

The demo starts you off after a helicopter crash as you try to regroup with your fellow squad members. You find yourself very close to a school and soon you begin to see how well the horror portion has really become seemless with FPS portions of the game as you start to fill up your nightmare fuel tank. Objects like desks and lockers are randomly pulled in various directions by a strong force, a little girl crying can be heard as all other sound is silenced suddenly, and bodies are found dismembered and mutilated in what looks to be pretty horrific ways all while the old flashing light, dark, and shadow routine is used.

The FPS area is much better as a typical copycatted aiming system and HUD are used and aiming is very tight for a console FPS. The storyline is delivered within the HUD's radio/camera and by reaching key points along your travels. The first person perspective is a bit bouncy at times and can probably leave people nauseated just by running around. Graphically F.E.A.R. 2 has reached the level of this generation of games and leaves only the amount of content as the last burning issue when it is released in February. Remember though, like most other stylistic story heavy FPSers, you'll probably only want to play this through once so a rental may be the best course to take and not a full blown purchase. Save your cash for RE5...

Resident Evil 5 Demo: you should follow me down. there's no color and no sound in a black and white town

2009-01-28T00:38:00.002-06:00

Capcom has come a long way from their original survival horror zombie thriller Resident Evil. Taking place in a fictional midwestern place called Raccoon City, members of STARS (Special Tactics and Rescue Service) were sent in to investigate murders involving cannibalism that had occurred there. After searching for lost Bravo team members shortly after the investigation started, Alpha team finds themselves surviving for their lives within what was first thought to be an abandoned mansion. From there Capcom had a franchise on their hands stemming sequels, movies, books, other types of games such as Umbrella Chronicles (played much like the House of the Dead style light-gun shooters) and also inspiring many other similar series such as Silent Hill. To truly pay tribute to all these zombie games, a proper ten second silence must be given to the NES great Zombies Ate My Neighbors.

In 2005 the last major release in the series, RE4, was by far one of the best games available for the gamecube console. RE4 had one of the best control styles fully utilizing the fisher price controller with a now copycatted 3rd person, over the shoulder, laser-sighted aiming system. The game also brought back the black cat crossing your path paranoia and piddle in your pants fear that made the original a classic. The storyline flowed very well with actual gameplay and had additional challenges after the game was completed. To this day I still reflect on the many days spent playing RE4 after a few too many cold ones at 3am while listening to Brian Eno records and wondering how I wasn't placed in a mental institution for how scared I was of Las Plagas and moving silhouettes. Thankfully things like the Wiggles can help save anyone's sanity.

Capcom's next installment, Resident Evil 5, is due out early in March 2009. A demo of this game is available on Xboxlive (Gold members initially) after some many impressive trailers tickled our fancies for the last few months.

The first thing that this demo shows off, besides RE4 flashbacks of zombies dying face down in the muck, is that they have not steered away from what works. Great controls, beautiful graphics, and lots and lots of zombie head popping action. 2 levels are included (1 more than the previous japanese demo) both of which allow for the opportunity to try out the newest addition to the game: a 2nd player. Even if you don't have a friend to play with in co-op mode(over xboxlive if not split screen), the game controls an additional player that you have to share guns, ammo, and herbs to survive together. You both look out for one another and like all other great male/female duos of all time such as lucy and ricky, fred and ginger, sonny and cher, ace and gary, etc, you have to lean on one another to be successful.

After playing through the 2 levels many times, I realized, after the emptiness of finishing Fallout 3, I had something to look forward to once again. Hopefully you will say the same thing and maybe even want to fight along side of me as a scantily clad chesty female. Kind of like the tactical support of Fiona from my new favorite show with the voice of Sam?

NPPL 2009: lit only by the glow from hope you buried deep, to see what it would grow

2009-01-07T16:16:00.008-06:00

Ok so it's a picture of PSP and not the NPPL...

D Y N A S T Why? Because you love the game of paintball so much that's why. Brought to us by Activision, NPPL Championship Paintball 2009 is the first paintball game in over three years since the release of Greg Hasting's game for the earlier console generation of xbox and playstation. Well, OK, there really weren't any before that either. And that's the focus for this review.

So most people that play FPS games really focus on the controls, AI, and hopefully minimal repetitiveness. Trying to imagine those that would play this game is a simple task to do. They are the ones that spend much of their good weather days dodging little balls, praying that none land in sensitive areas that already house a couple. Everyone else has enough common sense to stay off the fields of war and within the safety of distance, will also distance themselves from this game. I myself have spent dollar after dollar on cases of paint and FPSs alike, and even I have trouble turning a blind eye to the factors that will keep most from experiencing this game at all.

Comparing to the only other major paintball game, NPPL 2009 is an improvement graphically. There is a better array of ingame equipment to choose from because of additional sponsorships obtained versus Greg Hastings Paintball. The feel of tournament play is somewhat similar to what actual paintball feels like. But sadly this is where all the positives begin to dissipate. It is a paintball game and if paintball is something you enjoy then there's somewhat of a chance this recreation will be enjoyable. This is not by any means a typical FPS for those expecting it to help a newbie begin to embrace the sport. A person who has never set foot on a paintball field will really zone in on the aspects that make this a video game and not the pieces that help mimic the sport and in doing so can really jab you in the eyes.

The problems start to occur with a lot of repetitiveness. There are a lot of loading screens and some do not seem like they would be even necessary. Handfuls of them occur after only about thirty seconds of gameplay and you tend to find yourself sitting on an imaginary bench with nothing to think about. The music is the expected soundtrack of paintball especially if you have ever watched any Derder type films about the sport. The issue with the music is menu screens tend to play the same song every time you reach them between rounds, new tournaments, equipment screens, etc.

Controls are somewhat good (2 right buttons acting like a double-finger trigger) but the default stick for aiming is the right one which is a lot of precision aiming matched on the same hand as the speedy busy fingers. The bunker leaning is not as good as what it was in Greg Hastings as you can not hold a full lean and strafe without breaking a lean causing a lot of jerky movements. Diving or sliding into bunkers can be somewhat tricky and prone position snake play is unbearable.

The AI and tournament play may be a little more on par with what real tournaments feel like but the speed of some rounds is so fast that off the break, more than half of the opposing side or yours will can be eliminated and barely any paint down open lanes is found. Greg Hastings did an excellent job of utilizing lane shooters while mixing other teammates for hopping from bunker to bunker on the field. NPPL 2009 has all players aggressively moving the entire time barely letting you get to a bunker to use one full hopper of paint. This is where loading screens become a constant greeter as you are slapped in the face with them even between multiple rounds against the same team on the same field (for example best 2/3 rounds).

Overall, NPPL 2009 is a great and wonderful reminder of one of the greatest games that people can go out and experience. Trying to describe the adrenaline rush of diving behind a bunker with the sound of paint coming inches from your noggin probably can never be recreated with just a video game so go balls out, get a facefull of paint, and save your money before you decide to even think about picking up this game.

Rating: 2.5 {-10 to 10 scale, 5+ being a must play}

Ratings Explanation

2008-12-31T16:25:00.002-06:00

Here is the utilized rating system I use to put a quantification from whence only subjugated feelings and ideas are now truncated into numerical form. Ratings will be on a scale of {-10 to 10}, {-10} being the worst like ET the Extra Terrestrial and {10} being reserved for games that need to go next to the bowling trophies and the baseball signed by relief pitcher "the Mad Hungarian" Al Hrabosky.

Now to make such a hefty judgement on all the needs of a gamer, one has to weigh all the factors that make up a legendary release of a game and games that need to sink in hot summertime garbage juice.

Difficulty and Reward - Is the game hard but rewarding when accomplished? Do you want to bust your console with a battle axe after only a couple hours of play? Can the game be played in your sleep while you care for you child, cook dinner, and fill out your taxes, and all memories of the game become forgotten quickly thereafter?
Learning and Yearning Curve - Can anyone learn to play it and yet not be a master after about 2-3 hours of play? If people start the game and step away will they want to pick it up again later? Does it feel like it needs to be finished?
Tingling the senses - Controls, graphics, sound: feels good, looks good, sounds good yet doesn't tax a system it's played on. Controls get the job done and yet don't become an extra burden that you have to deal with. Graphics push the envelope of the system they are on yet don't succumb to usual over done games that clip, lag, and bug you to death. Sounds mimic real life, set the mood, are creative, and aren't some awkward Hanna-Barbera situational additions. Will this game be used later on as a benchmark or a comparative example in any way?
The rug tying the room together - Storyline, depth, cut scenes, loading time, monotony, violence, humor, packaging, properly debugged prior to launch, total hours of play for respective genre, possibility for sequels/expansions, advertising and overhype, availability, extra merchandising, etc

Year End Review: the big star is falling, through the static and distance

2008-12-25T12:00:00.003-06:00

Quoting the honorable Arnold Schwarzenegger (including his political career), "One more thing; I work alone," this year started with a lot of mediocrity but thankfully didn't end that way. Both solo and multiplayer games were great this year with the usual lacklusters, buttbusters, and a few mind twisters due to microsoft, nintendo and sony all having their consoles out on the market long enough for quality game development. The biggest releases of the year were either sequels or remakes of originals with very few new game franchises and the best games being solo adventures.

The most innovating hardware release of the year was Wii Fit and software was Fallout 3.

The biggest pile of old banana peels and three week old used diapers, even though I would of loved to find an EA or a Disney type sing a-long game for your pre-adolescent American Idol to blast their undeveloped vocal cords with, was at first hard to think of. I pondered long and hard what had happened this year and remembered that I should probably go a tried and true direction; based from a movie in which the movie was as equally if not more vile - Jumper: Griffin's Story.

A question which I heard from the PAX (penny arcade expo), that took place in August, was how feasible and/or motivated developers and publishers are to invest so much time and money into games that make the same amount of profit as the more novel games such as Guitar Hero which take very little development at all to create.

Compared to last year, there were a lot more quality games released, a huge boom from the end of October through the Christmas season, but compared to my teenage years of gaming and overlooking my collection vs the old days, the collection seems smaller and not filled with as many gems.

It hurts to reflect on the fact that the gaming industry is so large in comparison to when I was a child and therefore should really be producing one gem after another. My latest generation console collection looks like a handful of starlets hidden among piles of pleasure themes and get rich quick schemes. This worries me about the future years when most games don't give the appeal to even play through them more than once and can be completed in just under 20 hours or only breaking them out if others are around to play with you when these days working in the family is usually done by both parents and should be by all thirteen and older children. In the end it's all in the power of the dollar and what you spend your cash on to influence the profits of the companies that choose to create quality thumb mashers or drink coasters so take heed with what you throw your cash towards.

With the new year comes a new rating system to put a quantification from whence only subjugated feelings and ideas are now truncated into numerical form. Ratings will be on a scale of {-10 to 10}, {-10} being the worst like ET the Extra Terrestrial and {10} being reserved for games that need to go next to the bowling trophies and the baseball signed by relief pitcher "the Mad Hungarian" Al Hrabosky.

Ratings are based on what I presented in the Fallout 3 review:

Difficulty and Reward - Is the game hard but rewarding when accomplished?
Learning and Yearning Curve - can anyone learn after about 2-3 hours of play and will people want to play it
Tingling the senses - Controls, graphics, sound: feels good, looks good, sounds good yet doesn't tax a system it's played on
The rug tying the room together - Storyline, depth, cut scenes, loading time, monotony, violence, humor, packaging, properly debugged prior to launch, total hours of play, possibility for sequels/expansions, etc

Usually anything above a rating of 5 is worth the purchase and anything below is reserved for those who are monopoly man rich or have a strong love for similar games.

Here's what I bought, how far I got, and what I thought of the games in 2008 in autobiographical order for each system:

360

I was very happy with the year end releases available for the 360. Again issues with choosing 360 or PC versions happened on a couple of occasions almost always ending with the PC as the flagship. The 360 only selections were solid and Microsoft has in my opinion exceeded Sony in the console market for good games due to their prices for their console and availability of developer tools since the old beastly Xbox original days.

Best purchase on the 360: Fable 2

Worst purchase on the 360: Operation Darkness

# of games beat vs unbeat for 2008 on the 360: 5 v 4

Rainbow Six Vegas 2 - {rating: 4.5} It's odd to say but this game didn't really feel like its original journey into Las Vegas. It felt more like following people into Atlantic City just for the weekend. The high neon glare environment was missing from most of the game and it puts you back into what felt like an older Rainbow Six game. On the upside the progression/unlocking content and ability to customize your character really made for some nice additions. Too bad 1 and 2 weren't just one gigantic game. Overall a good game but the first was better. Took about 20-25 hours to fully complete.

Battlefield: Bad Company - {Rating: 4} If you like laughing at, not with, Larry the Cable guy, the single player game can be quite enjoyable but very short for the full price of the game. Controls are the oddest I've seen for a FPS in a while and the AI is usually way too tough if the minimap didn't exist. Multiplayer, which I have seen videos for but have not tried myself, looked fun or at least would be with a free month of Xbox Live. Completed the single player in probably 8-12 hours of play.

Grand Theft Auto IV - {Rating: 7} Thug life. It's hard to express how surprising GTA4 was in its self-conflicted main character who really seems to fall into his criminal life rather than aggressively seeking and blooming into a random killing lunatic like the other GTAs. Supposedly two different endings from a major turning point can be obtained but the ending I received was so good I didn't want to go back and change anything I had done. Out of all of the GTAs this was probably the best done as far as missions and their tie in with relationships and the storyline. A couple improvements to the gun play portions of the game still didn't fix the problems I still had with the usual aiming and maneuvering and it still felt like a Rockstar game. It took about 30 hours to complete and was well worth it to play through once.

Too Human - {Rating: 3} Great to look at, different idea of controls, a good mix of diablo and other classic mixed play types, and Norse mythology, this game sadly falls short of anything beyond the 20 hours it takes to beat (way too short for RPG) and really isn't for everyone. It's best described like this: She at first had me at with her good looks then I started to get to know her and found out it was only skin deep. I broke up with her without trying a multi-partner type relationship that she suggested, and she left telling me that I'd come crawling back after a year or two to try the relationship again since she was set on building a business that was much like a franchise.

Mercenaries 2 - {Rating: 5} Never playing Mercs 1, Mercs is a GTA with a military backing that doesn't really give the side quest push GTA dangles out in front of you. The game makes up for it in air strikes and hijacking helos. Almost everything can be destroyed and can be with quite devastating weaponry such as carpet bombing or satellite guided missiles. This is a great one time through game since the story really seemed like it wasn't there. Took about 15 hours to complete and yet was fun the entire time. [Previous Review]

Operation Darkness - {Rating: 1.5} Another turn-based small group strategy game from Atlus taking place in a WW2 setting. Goes from easy to accomplish to damn near impossible within one level. Has issues where you get a "game over" happening due to small miscalculated line of sight or unforgiving enemies that are extremely overpowered in comparison to your characters. Probably only appealing to those that played Tactics Ogre, I have yet to finish this game and just get pissed when I think about trying to.

Infinite Undiscovery - {Rating: 4} Where have all the RPGs gone? This was the first decent classic medieval type RPG out for the Xbox. Taking the gameplay type from FFXII this was a nice change from the old stop and fight random encounter RPGs. A very odd storyline and characters that I first thought were just bad translating voice jobs, this game takes a ton of time on cutscenes. Gameplay isn't near as good as FFXII but it's been 2 years since that game was released and this is a reminder that tri-Ace is still creating games with Squaresoft, including the great Star Ocean series (due out quarter 1 of 2009). [Previous Review]

Fable 2 - {Rating: 8.5} Aw, I if I had a kid I would want it to be a little British kid. A great solo or co-op RPG this game's biggest fault was being released too close to so many other quality games. And with that fault came my inability to sit down and play through more than 10 hours so far but I've watched my wife play through over 25 hours and enjoyed just listening to the humor and culture that only Lionhead puts in games. Guess I'll have to make my wife sit down again for tea and crumpets during the holiday season with me so I can finish it. [Previous Review]

Tom Clancy's End War - {Rating: 6} "Breaker, Breaker 1-9 this here's Rubber Duck. Wait, what do you mean you don't understand that command?" Utilizing a peripheral that used to be used for trash talk about chocolate milk and pwnage, End War does an excellent job implementing a strategy game on a console while still keeping the game fun and enjoyable to watch and play. Voice commands are simple and can be quickly given even if after every command a couple random expletives are added. I played the demo for about 5 hours and have played the single player campaign for about 10 hours. I am keeping this game on the back burner for after Fable 2 and Fallout 3. When that day comes I'll crank the Warren G and happily yell WMD. [Previous Review]

Another year where there were few PC only games, as it has been the trend for the past 5-10 years. I also switched over from my years of Windows 2000 use to Vista and built a new computer just for the occasion. Also got a large usage out of my iMac and started on new adventures with technology based on a different operating system other than one from Microsoft. It almost ended up that the comps were used outside of games more than using them for what they do best. Almost.

Best purchase on the PC: Fallout 3
Worst purchase on the PC: Conan the Hybordian Adventures
# of games beat vs unbeat for 2008 on the PC: 3 v 2

Crysis - {Rating: 6.5} How much did you spend on your computer? Keep it upgraded? No I mean with the latest of the latest. No even better than that. Well guess what, I've got a game that will prove to both of us if you are lying or not. Medium settings? Ha, you did lie to me. An overall short game, 15 hours at most, this game, if you can find a system that can handle it, is the best in looks and physics to date and probably will be for quite a while. Let's just call it the new test standard to replace Unreal Tournament, Counterstrike, and Castle Wolfenstein. Completed and good for the one time through or to test your new drivers/video card.

Company of Heroes + Opposing Fronts (expansion) - {Rating: 7} Need any more games about WW2? Even one that's been out for a while? Well you should need one more and this would be the one. A strategy game focused on smaller squads and combat tactics such as line of sight, elevation, terrain effectiveness of armor, traps, artillery, air strikes, gun emplacements, etc., this game was a nice change from the old steam rolling with gigantic numbers strategies. Storyline and cutscenes along with the map actually felt like progression through the timelines of real portions of WW2. Took about 30 hours to complete the original and an addition 15-20 for the expansion along with a slew of random runs against just the computer. Quite a blast the entire time.

Conan: Hybordian Adventures - {Rating: -2} High hopes. What could of been something of great decapitation and splendor instead was riddled with bugs and choppy gameplay. Soloing was fun but felt the same no matter what class was chosen. Amazing detail but lack of good endgame fun made this one a month of finding out that jumping into a game right when it's released, instead of waiting and reading reviews, may have to be adjusted accordingly in the future. Garbage after 1 month of play.

Warhammer: Age of Reckoning - {Rating: 4} So then I did wait for some reviews and this time it was worth it to find out how good the game was. Lots of PvP focus this is one of the first MMOs that feels pretty good to just jump on and play for a little bit instead of hopping on and waiting around to see what's going on for the night. If you loved the Warhammer universe this might be the game for you. I'm just not sure this will actually stand the test of time vs WoW. I have since cancelled my WAR account after the release of WotLK due to the cost balance of having both and only playing one. [Previous Review]

Spore - {Rating: 6.5} I did well in art class or at least that's what my art teacher told me. She said I was very good at rendering already created objects into my own creations. Well good thing EA made a game for anyone who parked their toshie in art class to create something out of the depths of their minds. You know that place in your head in between the taste of blue cheese, old episodes of Simon and Simon, and farfrompuken bumper stickers? Read my in-depth review if you want to know a little more than my ramblings. Few PC games can gather a crowd to switch off and play without a multiplayer environment. Not entirely done with the single player game, I tend to find myself just playing with the creator modes. If you can dream it, you can evolve it in Spore except for the damn baseball field I want.

Farcry 2 - {Rating: 7.5} While blasting Toto's "Africa", I found myself unjamming the lovely Mac 10 in the best 1st person shooter since Crysis. Taking me about 40 hours to complete, the action is always fun but the story is hard to remember or follow with similar character names and large gaps of time spent roaming the countryside. The 1st person action and graphics in this game are big strong points but I'm not sure that it is worth replaying the whole thing over to try to see if other endings can be achieved. Well worth the one time play through just remember to bring the bug spray.[Previous Review]

Fallout 3 - {Rating: 10} Bert the Turtle hopefully prepared you for what is one of the best games to come out in almost 3 years. If it's not the beautiful landscape, butler robots, empty bottle scavenging without the 10 cent refunds, or gruesome dismemberments, then it has to be taking in large enough doses of radiation to regenerate crippled limbs. One thing that I failed to mention in my previous review but really helped in making a good judgement of Fallout 3 was the fact that the game really did not have much hype prior to release (HALO *cough*cough*) unless it was searched for. This helped keep judgements and enjoyment of the game for those that actually took a chance and played it. A must play for elderly to children alike, this will be a game that other game companies will either copycat or be compared to for years to come. About half way through this game, I'm not intending to rush this at all. [Previous Review]

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King - {Rating: 5.5} Well thankfully one company is out there consistently making great quality games and that company is Blizzard. It's really hard to find many faults with the products they produce and if you are playing MMOs, the odds will say you're playing WoW. And if you're playing WoW, the odds will say you probably bought this expansion within the first week of its release. And since we all love gamblers and statisticians, make sure you also go out and hug your neighborly financial advisors and home loan providers for all their hard work they've done the last few years. Well maybe things will change since this was an election year and many gamblers went out there and voted. Remember, always bet on black, oh, excuse me African-American. [Previous Review]

Wii

Nintendo is by far the best company at making games to sit next to someone and play together. Now not necessarily needing to be sober to do so, the Wii also gives much enjoyment just watching others play games as it does actually being the player. This year added to one more in the multiplaying arena but really has lacked quite a bit in the solo play compared to its first year on the market.

Best purchase for the Wii: Mario Kart

Worst purchase on the Wii: Animal Crossing: City Folk

# of games beat vs unbeat for 2008 on the Wii: 0 v 3

Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn - {Rating: 3.5} Sequel to gamecube's path of radiance, more of the same with no real big changes overall compared to it's counterparts. I really enjoy these turn based grid strategies but they are not for everyone. Only made it about 1/2 way through the game and got distracted by other releases so I can't say much more about the entire game.

Super Smash Bros - {Rating: 5} Sequel to gamecube's smash bros. Great multiplaying fun with a very neat single player side scrolling adventure. Tons of unlockables and many hours to make your hands bleed. Pikachu your face, pikachu your ass, pickachu your balls into outer space. So much stuff to unlock I have gotten side tracked to actually finish the single player adventure but I find myself passing out controllers for this one on the weekends when people find their way over to my house.

Wii Fit - {Rating: 5} Cost is a bite in the wallet but the piece of equipment is amazing. Will probably be implemented later into some other innovative games in conjunction with the normal controller. The fitness game included is laughable in it's blunt honesty and seriousness of how it portrays your image (wii self image) and is unforgiving in your failure to improve your body and health. Great way to torture those that already are self-conscious or show off your balance while drinking alcoholic beverages and doing yoga stances. Does not have an end to it but has additional games and activities to be unlocked.

Super Mario Kart - {Rating: 6} Another in a line of sequels from gamecube classics. It comes with a nice little miniature kart steering wheel that makes you feel like you are at the family fun center. The same one that has the miniature golf course with the windmill that spins but is missing half a blade and has the funny smell of three week old pizza and popcorn. The game is a lot like the original and just as fun with even more tracks and characters to choose from. If you are going to race with someone else this is the game that everyone can enjoy. Also doubling as a great DUI benchmarking game, I have yet to make it very far within this game but again another in multiplaying fun.

(Wife's Purchase) Animal Crossing: City Folk - {Rating: 3} A great teaching tool for showing children what real life will feel like as long as you make them play it for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. Not very much of an improvement whatsoever, this game is only going to appeal to those who have not played the previous versions. But another ironic sutblety is the fact that this feels like a metaphor for switching from one job to another (original to sequel) and feeling the same constant grind of day to day work even if it is a "new job". [Previous Review]

Games I didn't spend the money on or never rented but I should of:

Ninja Gaiden 2, Call of Duty 4, Gears of War 2, Dead Space, James Bond 007: Quantum Solace, Left 4 Dead, Mirror's Edge, Personal Trainer: Cooking

2008 memoranda

Total new games purchased: 22
Best 1st person shooter: Farcry 2
Best RPG: Fallout 3
Best Strategy: Tom Clancy's End War
Best Multiplayer game with friends in the same room: Mario Kart
Best Multiplayer game with friends across the world: WotLK, WoW
Biggest surprise of the year: Fallout 3
Approximate hours spent playing games in 2008: 2007.5 huh that rounds to 2008 (60% being WoW)
# of new games beat: 8
# of unfinished single player games: 7
# of new games without a single player storyline: 7
# of controllers broken: 1 Wii controller and 1 mouse
System played the most: 360 (not counting time on computers)
Biggest real world event missed while playing games: Election of President Obama
# of times playing games pissed off the wife: 156
Average # of extra applications running in the background while playing computer games: 4 (2 internet websites, iTunes, calculator)
# of new songs listened to while playing various games this year: 2157
# of days the lawn should of been cut but was instead pushed off an extra day due to games: 20
Biggest hopeful for 2009: Resident Evil 5
# of approximate phone calls received while neck deep in something requiring concentration on too many subjects at once: 300
Last indescision I need solved before the end of 2008: Nuggnuts.com vs Whoppervirgins.com

Music of 2008

2008-12-23T11:52:00.004-06:00

It's been a good year for listening to new music. I found I had purchased more music this year than a few previous years and am pretty happy with almost every choice made. So here's a quick list of what I felt were some of the best choices of 2008. Thank you Andy for all the helpful searches and exchanges and First Order Historians for their constant blogging. Please note that some choices are not new releases in 2008 and just a new purchase within 2008.

Regrets of which I had few

The Magnetic Fields - Distortion
(Most of the album) Thief - Sunchild
(Most of the album) West Indian Girl - S/T
Not finding a Faunts album for sale
My job for not allowing me go see more shows
Hella (The Ladies) on the wrong days
Having to say the band name Loose Fur
Not knowing more Scandinavian Languages
Still enjoying CAKE

Favorite Purchases of 2008

Aimee Mann - @#%&*! Smilers
Alaska in Winter - Dance Party in the Balkans
Andrew Bird - Armchair Apocrypha
Anna Jarvinen - Jag Fick Feeling
The Besnard Lakes - S/T
Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago
The Clientele - God Save the Clientele
Costa Music - Lighter Subjects
David Byrne and Brian Eno - Everything that Happens will Happen Today
Department of Eagles - In Ear Park
DeVotchKa - A Mad Faithful Telling
Dido - Safe Trip Home
Emiliana Torrini - Me and Armini
Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes
Frightened Rabbit - The Midnight Organ Fight
Goldfrapp - Seventh Tree
Halou - Sawtooth EP
Headlights - Some Racing, Some Stopping
Helio Sequence - Keep Your Eyes Ahead
The Innocence Mission - We Walked in Song
Jenny Lewis - Acid Tongue
Johann Johannsson - Fordlandia
Longwave - Secrets are Sinister
Mogwai - The Hawk is Howling
Mum - Go Go Smear the Poison Ivy
The National - The Virginia EP
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!
No Kids - Come into My House
The Notwist - The Devil, You + Me
The Postmarks - S/T
Ra Ra Riot - The Thumb Line
Ratatat - LP3
School of Seven Bells - Alpinisms
The Sea and Cake - Car Alarm
Sea Wolf - Leaves in the River
Sun Kil Moon - April
Tunng - Good Arrows
TV on the Radio - Dear Science
U.N.P.O.C. - Fifth Colum
The Weepies - Hideaway
West Indian Girl - 4th & Wall
Wolf Parade - At Mount Zoomer

Surprised to find something of age that should be purchased

Cocteau Twins
Julee Cruise
David Bowie - Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust
Bachman-Turner Overdrive for Karaoke
Phil Collins - No Jacket Required for Karaoke
After careful combing through loads of his music Brian Eno
Blues Image