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Glad I didn't stop early on. I almost never got back to this one after starting it because I bought Rage shortly after beginning this one. I had been waiting in rage forever and the controls seemed tough on this one early in the game so I put it aside and played Rage. After that I was hesitant to start this up again because of the controls but I liked the other aspects of the game early on so I eventually decided to get back to this. SO GLAD I did!
For those of you having trouble with the controls at first, please...stick to it! Once you get used to it and it clicks in with your hand/eye coordination the controls actually work very well and feel much better. I'd say it took me about 4 hours of play to truely get used to them and another hour after that to be able to use them freely without thought, but after that it's so good you will have trouble believing you ever had issues with the controls.
As for the game itself, it is so much fun I almost can't stand it. You can get VERY creative with kills and limb dismemberment and some of the areas are suffucating and claustrophibic which is GOOD in a zombie game. The tension is unreal. I played single player mostly but want to find a few people to go through this again in co-op with because the co-op I DID play was infinitely better than this already tight, fun game.
The things that bring this down to a 4 aren't TOO bad but I can't give it a perfect score. I'll preface it with this though, the game is GREAT, it's worth playing so don't let the following deter you. There are way too many "fortify the area" type parts for my liking. This isn't necessarily bad, some may love this aspect of the game, but I myself liked it for the first few times I needed to do it but staled on it after a while. Another thing is that it DOES take so much time to get used to the control scheme. Like I said above though, it IS worth the effort. There were also quite a few bugs. Not any game breakers that I ran into, but plenty of minor ones that forced reloads and a few that had me resorting to looking up a solution on the internet. The good thing is that there WERE solutions to be found with a simple search, so no game breakers but it was a hassle when I needed to do this.
Overall great game though and a breath of fresh air even in the crowded zombie genre. | video-games_xbox |
Awesome Game :D. I've never been one to enjoy dancing games, especially the old school DDR (Dance Dance Revolution).
The songs were often too fast, and even though I am a dancer, I had trouble keeping up with the speed of the songs.
However, when I finally got the opportunity to play the Just Dance games, I instantly became hooked and couldn't stop playing.
Just Dance 3 is even more fantastic than the first two, and is now offered on other platforms than just the Nintendo Wii.
I still wanted a game that scored me based on how my entire body moved, and Just Dance 3 did exactly that.
Since it is for the Kinect, there are no controllers or mats, and you are able to move freely. It is slightly more challenging than the
Wii version because the Kinect is picking up your entire body's movement, not just the controller like with the Wii, so you definitely
don't have an option to slack off and just wave your arm around while sitting on the couch.
Just Dance 3 has the original modes to choose from like in the earlier games, and also has added new modes to the mix.
One of these modes allows you to record and play back your OWN dance moves! LOVE IT.
In addition to being a great source of exercise, there is a fantastic song selection. Here is an entire alphabetical list of the songs:
1. 2 Unlimited: No Limit
2. A-Ha: Take On Me
3. Anja: Dance All Nite
4. Aretha Franklin: Think
5. Bananarama: Venus
6. Black Eyed Peas: Pump It
7. Bollywood Dream: Kurio ko Uddah le Jana
8. Cee Lo Green: Forget You
9. Countdown Mix Masters: Beautiful Liar
10. Daft Punk: Da Funk
11. Danny Elfman: This is Halloween
12. Donna Summer: I Feel Love
13. Dr. Creole: Baby Zouk
14. Duck Sauce: Barbra Streisand
15. Girls Aloud: Jump (For My Love)
16. Groove Century: Boogie Wonderland
17. Gwen Stefani: What You Waiting For
18. Inspector Marceau: The Master Blaster
19. Janelle Monae: Tightrope (Solo Version)
20. Jessie J featuring B.o. B: Price Tag
21. Brahms by Just Dance Classical Orchestra: Hungarian Dance No. 5
22. Katy Perry: E.T (BONUS - only in the Special edition)
23. Katy Perry: Teenage Dream (BONUS - only in the Special edition)
24. Katy Perry ft. Snoop Dogg: California Gurls
25. Kiss: I Was Made For Lovin' You
26. Konshens: Jamaican Dance
27. African Ladies: Pata Pata
28. Latino Sunset: Mamasita
29. Laura Bell Bundy: Giddy On Up (Giddy On Out)
30. Lena Meyer-Landrut: Satellite
31. Lenny Kravitz: Are You Gonna Go My Way
32. LMFAO featuring Lauren Bennett & GoonRock: Party Rock Anthem
33. Madness: Night Boat To Cairo
34. MIKA: Lollipop
35. Nelly Furtado ft. Timbaland: Promiscuous 832. Pointer Sisters: I'm So Excited
36. Pointer Sisters: I'm So Excited
37. Queen: Crazy Little Thing Called Love
38. Reggaeton Explosion: Boom
39. Rita Mitsouko: Marcia Baila
40. Robbie Williams & Nicole Kidman: Somethin' Stupid
41. Robin Sparkles: Let's Go To The Mall
42. Scissor Sisters: I Don't Feel Like Dancin'
43. Sentai Express: Spectronizer
44. Sweat Invaders: Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)
45. Taio Cruz: Dynamite
46. The Buggles: Video Killed The Radio Star
47. The Chemical Brothers: Hey Boy Hey Girl
48. The Girly Team: Baby One More Time
49. The Sugarhill Gang: Apache (Jump On It)
50. Tommy Sparks: She's Got Me Dancing
51. Wilson Pickett: Land of 1000 Dances
This game is fantastic, and I'm definitely going to be playing it for a long time.
In my opinion, Just Dance rivals Dance Central, but I believe that Just Dance 3 is more fun ;) | video-games_xbox |
One of the best Controllers You Can Buy Right now for only $50. PDP remotes have been hit and miss over these past few years, from PS2 on up I have had many controllers from them both good and bad. However, no matter how bad they were, there was always something that drew me into the PDP brand, it was a mixture of style and comfort that just seemed perfect for me, and no matter the price I knew I always wanted at least one PDP controller per console. When I heard I was going to be able to review the new prismatic controller for Xbox One I was super stoked to get into the device and game with it. After a few days of testing on Black Ops 3 and Fallout 4, I can say this is not just the best PDP controller they ever made, but also gives first party controllers and the elite controller a run for its money.
When the package arrived at my doorstep I knew it was a PDP product, they always do great work on making the package their own, making it super easy to spot a PDP product a mile away. One the front of the package you will find a picture of the controller that changes color as you look at it from different angles. This gives the user an estimate on the colors you can choose from when gaming. Upon opening the package, you will find the controller itself and the detachable USB cable along with the instructions. I would keep the instructions handy as it can be tough to figure out all the enhancements this controller features.
Setting up the controller is impossibly easy, just plug the included USB cable into the controller then plug it into a USB port on your Xbox One. I do suggest buying a USB hub from Amazon as it can be a pain to reach into the back of the Xbox if you are using the side USB drive already. After this has been done, all you have to do is turn the controller on as you normally would any other device.
Once I was able to get my hands on the controller I immediately noticed how well done the fit and finish is compared to the older PDP controllers. The thumb sticks feel just as good if not better than the first party sticks. Te triggers both feel great with very little travel, making it an FPS gamers dream come true, and the buttons feel excellent with very little give. Upon further inspection, you will find a little button on the right side of the thumbstick. Surprisingly, this controls your headset from the included 3.5mm headphone jack on the bottom of the controller! I was amazed how feature packed this controller is considering how low the price is. While holding in that little button, your D-Pad will now controller master volume and chat volume. Up and down turns the master volume accordingly, while left and right controls chat audio. Simply release the little button for your D-Pad to go but to normal buttons. I find this not only intuitive but wonderfully done and is even better than what Xbox has to offer.
Around the back, yu will find a small black button directly in the middle of the controller. This changes the controller into one of three modes. Pressing it once turns a little light on the front of the controller blue to change the color and brightness of the remote, green for button mapping (more on that in a minute) and the last option turns leds on the controller on when vibration is detected. Pressing it once more saves your controller settings and you are on your way to victory. Two surprising inclusions to the back are two mouse wheel like buttons on the back of the remote. These are placed right where your middle finger would rest while gaming, and while it can take a bit to get used to, it can really come in handy on the battlefield. The two buttons can be scrolled up or down or pushed in leaving 6 possible different customizable mapping buttons. Mapping really couldn't be any easier, just press the button on the back twice, pick which button you want to map scroll up/down or push in press it, then press the button you want to map to that button as well. After this press the back button again to save your programmed button. That is all it takes and you are on your way.
After setup, you will find a very cool, bright blue controller to start off with (Halo fans will love this color), but if you aren't all that keen on blue its wonderfully easy to change colors. Pressing the button once and scrolling with the right thumb stick is all it takes. Once you find your favorite color press the button to save it. If that color is a bit too bright, press the button again and this time use the left thumbstick to change the intensity of the color. While there are a ton of different colors to choose from, there is no way to just turn the colors off if you o not want the for night-time gaming (that I could find) and there is no way to get a pure white color. This is not too much of an issue, but a white LED would have looked great with my white Xbox One. Another slight con is there is no automatic color change or anything like that. If you choose a color that is it until you change it again. I would have loved to see my controller slowly change colors over time and it would have been fascinating to see how many colors there really are on the controller as moving the thumb stick can have a drastic color change with just the slightest push of the stick.
The included 3.5mm headphone jack was a very smart idea by PDP. This feature sets it far apart from its competitors as all controls are dedicated directly on the controller, no need to play in the menus to turn the sound up or down, it can al be found right there for easy and simple gaming. The back mappable buttons are also an awesome feature that I would love to see more controllers implement in the future, as panic knives are easily thrown, and reloads are much faster out on the battlefield.
Looking in on the controller reveals all the inner workings of a Xbox Oe controller and it is awesome to see how everything is wired perfectly for gaming. PDP really pulled out all the stops with this controller as even the rumble sticks on the bottom look of great quality with very little plastic to be found of the innards of the controller. The controller also just feels great in the hands. It handles exactly like a first party controller and I feel the buttons feel actually a bit better than my original Xbox On controller. The thumbsticks are also made of ALPS instead of plastic that the first party controllers use, making it super durable to even the biggest rager you know when they game.
Overall, this is an awesome controller for just about any gamer on your Christmas list. I have never used the Elite controller on the Xbox One, but who wants to pay $200 for a controller when the system only costs $300? This controller by PDP has everything the first party controllers have and then some. The buttons feel excellent, the color choice is an awesome option and the simple mapping of the back buttons are second to none in the third-party controller field. While the controller is wired with no battery option, the PDP Afterglow Prismatic controller makes an awesome secondary controller, once you feel how much effort has gone into making the controller, it just might beat out your first party controller as the main controller you use for gaming.
This review can also be found at my Website GamersFTW.co.uk.
I have received this product in exchange for an honest, unbiased review. | video-games_xbox |
Amazing game. Period. I really wish I could've given this a 4.5, because I don't feel this game is a perfect 5, but not a 4/5 game either. I waited this long to write a review so that I could beat it and give this game a proper review. Since everyone wants to compare this to Fallout 3, I will say FO3 is about 75% RPG/25% shooter, while Borderlands is 25% RPG/75% Shooter. Let's start with the pros and cons.
PROS
+ Gameplay: The game plays so smoothly, controls are very easy to pick up, this game is very user friendly. No camera issues, this game is just very very smooth.
+ Co-op: The highlight and strong point of this game. Co-op. This is definitly a game that should be played with friends. What I loved was, the transition from solo play to co-op play is virtually flawless. Whoever is hosting the borderlands session is the mission set that are available, meaning a higher level player can come help a lower level finish a mission, even if higher level has already completed said mission. If a player wants to drop (Unless s/he's host) they leave the game and the game continues as normal. Perfect co-op, other games should learn from this (I'm looking at you Fable II)!
+ Achievements: I got this for the 360, and am reviewing it for the 360 version. I'm assuming the trophy list is the same or similar. I love the achievements list for this. The full original 1000 are definitly obtainable with a minimum of 25+ hours. They are not too easy and not too difficult, and set a standard on what the achievement list for most games SHOULD be.
+ Guns/Shields/Grenades: A ton of weapons, this is what they were telling us from the beginning. A bajillion weapons. It's really more of, we have a ton of guns that look different, and have different stats and effects. They still fall within about 8 classes (Shotgun, Machine gun, Pistol etc.) Not a bad thing per se, it's always fun upgrading weapons etc. Eridian weapons (Alien-esque weapons) are awesome by the way.
CONS
- Glitches: Several times I got caught in a glitch. physically stuck in a corner, in a house, and no way to get out. I would either have to kill myself, or exit game and restart. It doesn't help that I picked Brick, the biggest guy, but still...
- Story: A short summary of the game is, that you are looking for the vault. The vault's wherabouts are a mystery, and are supposed to contain riches beyond your wildest imagination. That's pretty much it. You do mission after mission, with "cutscenes" only occuring during boss fights. There was many times I was wondering if what I was doing had anything to do with a story, or was I just doing it for giggles.
- Bosses: I thought the bosses were trash. The majority of them were too easy, and they didn't really stand out in my mind. The cutscenes to the boss were the best thing about them.
The game was a lot of fun. While I did say, the story was less than memorable, I personally forgot all about it, while looting, upgrading, shooting, and collecting stuff. It's a blast, and in my opinion a game to BUY, not rent. Also 2 packs of DLC, which I'm about to go play =]. Definitly pick this up! | video-games_xbox |
I've read the info, I've seen the videos and I know the game. If you are looking for the next video game to suck you in to another world and never let go, like Halo...this is it! It's not be first-person shooter like Halo, but don't let that stop you! The game is a third-person shooter being published by Microsoft and if all the hype is true, will remind you why the XBOX is the most powerful gaming machine in the world. Let me tell you the cool features.
CONTROLS OF MULTIPLE PEOPLE: Rather than control one character like in Halo, you control a team of four commandos, each with their own skills. You use the skills and abilities of each commandos for certain tasks. Imagine using a highly skilled sniper that can take out an enemy in a single precise shot, then using the assault trooper to take on a platoon of troops, then finishing of the base with your demoltion specialist.
TONS OF LEVELS: There will be six different exotic worlds, each with a unique environment, enemies and gameplay strategies. Gamers will learn how to best use the unique abilities of the commandos to survive in each world.
MULTILAYER: My favorite part of Halo was the multiplayer. And just like Halo, Brute Force will have Co-op and deathmatch mulitplayer for up to four gamers. While in Halo you can only have two players in co-op now you can battle it out with up to three friends through the entire mission campaign. Each player can select which member of the squad to control, and jump in or out of the game at any time. Snipe the enemy from behind while squad-mates blaze forward with the heavy stuff. Or sneak ahead as the scout to decide how to instruct teammates to fight with optimal tactics. Also, friends can battle it out against one another in a variety of deathmatch modes.
WEAPONS AND EQUIPMENT: How does miniguns, Sonic Cannons, Stealth Suits, Sniper Rifles, and Psychic Blasts sound?, Each weapon is specifically designed to take advantage of certain enemies and environments. Like in Halo you must learn the strengths of each weapon to best exploit the weaknesses of your foe.
AMAZING GRAPHICS and SOUND: If you thought you have seen gorgeous graphics, you haven't seen nothing yet. This game will blow you away. Not to mention the sound. Many games coming out for the XBOX support Dolby 5.1 surround and Brute Force is no exception.
So there you have it. Brute Force will be one more reason that the XBOX is the best video game machine in the world. I think Brute Force, Panzar Dragoon, and Unreal Championship will show people how good video games can really look. Well, at least until Doom III and Halo 2 come out next year. | video-games_xbox |
Madden-Defective-Trash 09 (FREEZE. This game is seriously horrible, which is why EA is now on its "second patch." A few reasons will be stated.
LOS LIMIT
The line of scrimmage (LOS) limit is useless during gameplay. The quarterback can scramble from the backfield while being pressured, pass the line of scrimmage and complete a pass to his receiver without any penalty. More devastating to the defense is this: the defensive back (DB) breaks coverage and leave the receiver wide open, causing the QB to complete a deep pass.
To combat this glitch, Senior Designer Cummings states: "We addressed this by making sure the DB will no longer break on the ball when the QB crosses the line while throwing."
This means that the QB crossing the line of scrimmage (even though it is a violation/penalty) will remain in the gameplay, while the defensive back stay with his man and not break coverage.
USELESS PLAYER RATINGS
This glitch is perhaps the most disheartening glitch during gameplay. Players' ratings are put in the game for a reason and expected to have an impact and mean something, but they do not mean anything. EA developers added the ratings for the hell of it and for show - knowing they will be useless on the field and hoping gamers would not realize its uselessness. There have been many instances where QBs run over defenders and dishrag them around as if the defenders are Barbie Dolls. During a game against the New York Jets, QB Chad Pennington trucks DE Jason Taylor and then MLB Channing Crowder, and was later gang tackled. Such nonsense like this does not happen in real life and never would; it's impossible, especially against DE Taylor.
To show how useless and unrealistic the players' ratings are, three of these players will be evaluated. Because there are so many attributes, only the important ones will be mentioned: Overall, Strength, Trucking, and Tackle.
QB Chad Pennington's (6'3"/255 LBS) ratings: Overall: 81; Strength: 49; Trucking: 40; Tackle: 14.
DE Jason Taylor's (6'6"/260 LBS) ratings: Overall: 98; Strength: 77; Trucking 10; Tackle: 80.
MLB Channing Crowder's (6'2"/242 LBS) ratings: Overall: 85; Strength: 77; Trucking: 10; Tackle: 89.
The disparity in Jason's and Crowder's trucking compared to Pennington's is fickle and quite funny. How can a QB have a better trucking attribute than defensive players? Moreover, how could the strength of both Taylor and Crowder have no ability to render a tackle when their strengths are higher? Quarterbacks are not known for their trucking ability because they don't truck. When QBs break the line of scrimmage, they run for yards and slide on the ground or run out-of-bounds to avoid a hit (that's common), so for Pennington to have a trucking ability is fantasy; he doesn't even have the strength to truck.
Although he rarely did, it would be believable if a former QB like Michael Vick trunks and abuses a defender because he has the speed, agility, power, elusiveness, and more. In fact, he was known for making players look silly on the gridiron, but Pennington and other present QBs? Get out of here! It's foolish.
Strangely, there are even punters/kickers who have better trucking ratings than defensive players, which makes this glitch even more absurd: Dolphins' B. Fields, 45; Eagles' S. Rocca, 74; Jaguars' A. Podlesh, 35, etc. Never have a punter truck anybody in the NFL; it if occurred, it was rare. Basically, anyone can truck and throw aside any player in this game; the difficulty levels (even on All Madden) and ratings mean nothing. The physics is severely broken and means nothing. What a con.
POOR TACKLING
The tackling ability is poor at best. There is no other way to say it, because the tackling EA implemented this year is not authentic. Everyone (especially CPU) in this game seems to have the ability to breakaway and spin away from unexplainable easy tackles like never before, even when tackled by two players simultaneously. All the players on the field appear to be on superman mode. A player such as a RB can actually get hit by a defender, fall back and lose leverage, and without even putting his hand on the ground to gain his balance, he breaks the tackle(s) and continues running. The Laws of Physics demonstrate that such occurrence can not happen. This kind of absurdity can happen with any player, from a QB to a WR, from a DB to a PR. Don't weight, force, leverage, power, motion, and other physical mechanics matter anymore?
Hall of Fame RB Barry Sanders (the best RB in NFL's history) defied the laws of physics by doing some incredible things - and simply murdering and making his defenders look stupid: breaking 3 to 4 tackles at the same time; leaving his feet and landing on his feet; losing leverage and mysteriously rebounding; breaking heel tackles; trucking defenders; sniff-arming defenders with ease; escaping from two defenders while wrapped up; making defenders embarrassingly jump one way as he gained more yards or scored a touchdown; dragging defenders forward as he ran, etc. It wouldn't be problematic if a few players had some of these abilities, but everyone on the field? Not only do players embody the Sanders' motif, but their uniform seems to be drenched with Vaseline, which makes tackling a chore.
USER CATCH/SPIN-CATCH
In Madden NFL 08, the user catch was good and not so irritating. This year's Madden version is a different story. Under user control, a WR can run down the field open and have a clean bomb, but once the ball is about to be caught, the WR jumps up and does a strange spin-catch, allowing defenders to gain ground and make a tackle. There is no way a WR can be running down field alone at full speed and mysteriously turn around and do a spin-catch, when he could have easily continue his stride and catch the ball by turning his head around. (At times, the WR doesn't even react to the ball, even if it's at arm reach, when he is guided by the user.) Maybe this happens because the QB leads the WR poorly by throwing a bad pass, which is a common problem too, but it still shouldn't happen because receivers don't do such a thing.
The spin-catch affects the offense tremendously and seems to be an often occurrence. Spin-catches are done in real life, but the way EA executed this feature is unrealistic. When a receiver lines up and does a slant route, he does not jump and spin, showing his back when the ball is in the air, to catch it. In a slant route, a WR runs to the ball and reach out for a catch; if the ball is thrown high (beyond his ability to catch it), then he jumps for the ball with his face focused on the position of the ball in order to catch it. A receiver never turns his back, losing the sight of the football, and catches it in slant routes. It's not possible nor is it logical.
Moreover, there have been times when a simple screen play is done, and for some reason the RB spins and jumps and catches the ball by turning around for no reason. There is no way to explain why stuff like this occurs, and why EA implemented a dismal/impractical spin-catch feature when the game is marketed as a "real" football simulation.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE?
By definition, artificial intelligence (AI) is the ability of a computer to execute functions that usually require human intelligence. No one expects the AI to be perfect, because humans are not perfect. However, people don't expect AI to lack the intelligence of common sense, and that's what they lack in this latest installment. They don't block nor do they care to block; they stand around and investigate the scene as if they are FBI agents; they miss easy interceptions by not putting up their hands, and more. These unresponsive issues are a headache. The user can only control one player at a time instead of his entire team, so he expects computer backup. Sometimes they act on impulse, and most of the time they don't. When the latter occurs, it is simply a mess.
For example, when a RB play is called, an offensive lineman (OL) could be directly in front of him as he runs and for some strange reason, the OL moves out the way and just stands there, leaving his own teammate defenseless while defenders are converging. Why would an OL abandon a block and simply stand there or aid another OL hold off a defender that is irrelevant to the play, allowing his RB to be tackled? This lack of common sense is mind-boggling, and would never happen in a real life football game. This is not AI; this is what I call PD, Pure Dumbness.
In Madden NFL 04 and 05, EA added a great feature that allowed anyone running with the ball to facilitate a lead block by pointing his hand, which was great for RBs (unlike the pointless OL Lead Blocking feature). Strangely, this feature was gone in the later installment. This is what EA is known for; developers put a feature in one year and it vanishes the following year.
The AI flaws occur in every aspect of the game. For example, on offense, a WR could be the intended target and when the ball is in the air, he doesn't even try to catch it. He doesn't even react to the ball. Many times, the ball hits him directly in the back. Every WR knows that when the ball is in the air, he needs to react and attempt to catch it, or knock it down if the defender is in position for an interception. Therefore, why is this realism not in the game?
Another case in point occurs on defense when the DB has a clear-cut interception and doesn't even put his hands up to catch the ball. Because of such stupidity and lack of common sense, the ball hits him directly in the face or chest. This is what gets one's veins boiling. At least attempt to catch the ball. If things like these occurred in the NFL with a WR or DB, he would get a tongue-lashing from his coaches and probably released the following week.
EA claims to have enhanced the AI yearly, but it is slim at best because there's really no headway. In truth, the AI in Madden has been stuck on pure dumbness for years (even when the AI slider is at its max) and it continues in the latest installment - and developers at EA haven't done anything to address the problem which is sad.
FREEZE ISSUE
This glitch is the biggest killer. The freezing occurs in Play Now and in every area of the game at random, but where it happens the most is in Franchise mode. It affects the Franchise mode tremendously and happens constantly, 100% of the time.
As a Dol-fan, the team of choice in Franchise was the Miami Dolphins. In Season 1, everything was going fine (including the Training mode) until the latter. Around week 14, the Training mode and games being played started freezing. The freezing in Training mode happens when one leaves the menu to see their players earned points. When one continues to the players two earned points, it just freezes (bringing back memories from Madden NFL 07 and 08).
Frustrating as this glitch was, the console (Xbox 360) was turned off and restarted. The Franchise was loaded and Training mode was tried again, and the same thing occurred. Again, the console was turned off and restarted. Rather than going back to Training mode, it was skipped, opting to only play the game.
From then on, only the games were being played without training any players. Subsequently, the games started to freeze up too. In fact, I played the same team three times because it was continuously freezing; one game froze in the 4th quarter, but I remained persistent with anger. With all of these difficulties, Season 1 was finally completed.
Season 2 is when things really started to act up. The game started to freeze while trades were being executed, while players were being signed, and the whole roster adjustments. After some turning off and restarting the console, my roster was finally set for pre-season. Training mode was tried again, and again it failed via freeze. Instead of wasting time trying to combat this annoying glitch, the entire pre-season was simulated. This is where it gets worse.
I enter Season 2 and play game one. The 15-minute quarter game goes well without any glitch; I return to the menu and attempt to use the Quick Save feature, and it freezes. No longer could my anger be contained. My controller nearly flew out of my hands and into the TV screen. And yes, several expletives were said, especially having difficulties prior. Trying to simulate the week thereafter with the Quick Save feature still didn't help because it froze.
This is when troubleshooting mood took priority. Each game was simulated one by one which worked. However, every time simulation (and Quick Save) was used to advance to week 2, the game froze. This method was tried more than ten times straight and it failed. Trying to save the game the normal way also failed because it froze. In other words, there is absolutely no way to advance to the following week, because it freezes in simulation and during saving.
Trying to find some answers, Training mode was selected again and, this time, the game froze while showing the NFL facts. The Training mode can not be entered, period. The game freezes in every aspect of Franchise. After trying so many things, the conclusion was simple: there is no way to fight this issue. For example, a new Franchise was started and it too froze. Moreover, the game disc was exchanged for another new one, and the same thing continued to occur, proven that the game is, in fact, broken, poorly developed, and has a major freezing bug.
The calendar year reads 2008 and quickly moving to 2009. This is not the year of Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo when games used to freeze when someone walks by the console, when thunder strikes, when rainstorm occurs, when construction is nearby, or when one makes a subtle movement with the controller. Back then, people even had to combat freezing issues by blowing into the game cartridge, and putting it into the freezer for a few minutes. Those years are gone and game discs have taken priority, so freezing issues should not be happening constantly.
This freezing issue with the Franchise is not new at all (EA knows about it), because Madden NFL 08 and 07 had the same problem. This is what makes the issue more troubling, because EA has not addressed this ongoing glitch. How could developers not remedy an issue that was problematic in prior versions? Surprisingly, Cummings article-like blog says nothing promising about the freezing Franchise, nor do developers know the main culprit of the problem as the article states:
On a side note, there is also a Franchise stability issue that we have been investigating, and we are working feverishly to get this figured out. .
The way Cummings addresses the issue with on a side note, shows that EA doesnt care too much about the problem. The article proves that because it touches on little issues (field problems, penalty sliders, etc.) and not the major ones.
The majority of gamers don't care about field degradation or the ineffectiveness of penalty sliders. Those are trivial issues. Gamers want a pure game that plays without freezing. Knowing that the issues mentioned in his blog are not so important compared to others, Cummings states:
There are always going to be folks that are upset if what they felt was a top issue wasn't addressed, but I'll state again (as I have before) that we have to keep balancing this work against Madden NFL 2010.
He is absolutely correct because people do have the right to be upset, mainly for two reasons: First, the most important issue which is the freezing was not seriously addressed; and second, people paid $64.19 for a game that is broken, nearly $100 if they purchased the collectors edition. Clearly, those are grounds to be upset. To bring light to this pathetic situation, he brings up Madden NFL 2010. Who cares about Madden NFL 2010 when the latest version is riddled with bugs?
His following statement is even funnier:
The longer we keep going on patches, the less we can add to the following year's product.
This statement sounds as if the customers are to blame and not EA for requesting a patch to remedy a situation that should have been taken care of before the games release. In regard to add-ons to next years Madden, itll perhaps be limited, with better graphics and an updated roster. In other words, EA will most likely not fix anything and put out a similar game without any major progression.
In reality, the most important and exciting feature in Madden is the Franchise, for it allows the users to play ultimate manager by playing owner of a team of his choosing. Without Franchise, Madden would be useless and boring and the masses would not gravitate toward the game. The Franchise feature allows people to achieve some feats with players and their team, so if freezing makes it unplayable, the game as a whole is fruitless.
What EA is doing to its loyal Madden customers is not only fraudulent, but it seems to be a purposeful act. EA doesnt care to fix the many ongoing problems, because there is no competition. Thus, EA continues to release lackluster games. If competitors had the opportunity to produce NFL football games, some of EAs products would never see the day of light. It would drive developers to put out better games that are free from glitches, rather than defective trash.
Back in the day, people had the options of playing various NFL football games such as the NFL 2K series, NFL GameDay series, NFL Quarterback Club series by Acclaim (defunct in 2004). When these games were around, they obviously had their problems and some were quite terrible, but so did the Madden NFL series. Had these football series stayed alive, they would have made some advancement that EA has yet taken with the Madden series, and perhaps eclipse Maddens superiority and popularity. However, because EA signed an exclusivity deal with the NFL, which runs until 2012, no other company can produce an NFL game.
This represents monopoly at its finest. Why was the Sherman Act even passed in 1890 if this kind of violation can happen? The Department of Justice needs to step in and regulate EA, in some form, because it is breaking antitrust laws. Having to select from only one NFL game due to an exclusive license is an unfair practice. Gamers ought to have the right to have options, instead of having one option of a rehashed game.
This company is slimy. Its sliminess is evident by the harassment of Take-Two currently, a rival game company that owns 2K Games and publishes its 2K Sports titles. Take-Two also develops and publishes the famous Grand Theft Auto series. If EA does takeover Take-Two, not only will it ruin its 2K Sports games but also their other popular titles. This rapacious act is to limit competition. If thats not an act of monopoly, then what is?
(By the way, both ESPN NFL 2K5, released July 20, 2004, and All Pro Football 2K8, released July 16, 2008 by 2K are superior than Madden NFL 09.)
Nonetheless, after evaluating this game and finding so many glitches, it makes one wonder if EA developers even checked for problems. Doesnt this multi-billion dollar company have a quality control department? More important, what do EAs technicians/developers do all day? Sit on their backside and play tic-tac-toe and SOS? Check their MySpace pages and chat with girls? Spend all day on their cell phones? Reminisce about what happened over the weekend? These are some serious questions that need to be asked, because the countless and blatant bugs that are in this game are unbelievable.
The NFL, NFL Players Association, and John Madden should be embarrassed for having their names and likeness involved with this game. The NFL should revoke their exclusive license from EA, for their name is being exploited.
All in all, this game is nice in regard to graphics; the same can not be said for the players. The gameplay is okay, but it needs an overhaul. However, because of so many glitches (especially the constant freezing), Madden NFL 09 is PURE REFINED GARBAGE, for it is unplayable.
EA is a multi-billion dollar company and has conned its loyal Madden supporters by constantly putting out defective products. Moreover, EA uses consumers as beta testers and later releases patches to remedy the problems.
The so-called patch that should be out in about 3 weeks shows how lethargic their work ethic is, and most likely will not remedy the freezing bug. If released through Xbox Live only, what will happen to those customers who have no access to the Internet? Will they be out of luck or will EA come up with a solution?
EA and all of its employees that produced this trash of a game ought to be ashamed for such disaster. Electronic Arts should be renamed to Electronic Faults, because majority of its games are embedded with bugs. EA is known for defecating on its customers and, once again, it has accomplished that with Madden Defective Trash 09. | video-games_xbox |
Don't miss the ledge. From top to bottom, I absolutely love this game.
The artwork is quite beautiful with gorgeous backgrounds, levels that seem to sprawl for miles and characters that look and move so smoothly that you can't help but appreciate their design.
The sound in this game is pretty nice with active surround sound at nearly every step. The music is really nice as well, changing accordingly to what's going on in the world of the game and it sounds like something you'd hear in a film. What may be one of the three best things about the game in general is the voice acting. The Prince character is a bit of a smartass (and there's a lot of dialogue between him and his foil, Elika to be heard) but something about the delivery of the voice actor makes you love the guy. I think anyone else would've been a bad choice as the voice actor, Nolan North, plays it perfectly.
As good as the voice acting is, it only serves to help the story and the story is definitely entertaining enough to keep you glued. It's pretty much a fantasy tale with some serious fantastical elements in it, especially when you take into consideration that the Prince is supposed to be just a normal guy. The man is an amazing bundle of energy and muscle and quite frankly, there ain't no one in the world that can jump, crawl and climb like this guy can. Controlling him is pretty simple and you get the hang of it pretty fast. In fact, it reminded me a little bit of Assassin's Creed, just that the controlling here is tighter and the game itself isn't as monotonous as Creed was, but that's a different conversation altogether. With the help of Elika, the otherworldly beauty at your side, she ensures that you get through the game without too much frustration by saving you whenever you screw up.
Huh?! Are you saying you can't die in this game?
Yes, its true and it seems to be the main problem that some have with this game, the fact that you can't die. Well, in all honesty, I'd just like to say that if it weren't for her, this game wouldn't be too much fun because you'd probably die hundreds if not thousands of times without her help. Because of the Elika factor, I feel that the game is made somewhat more casual and fun to play, simply because you don't get so stressed out from dying repeatedly. Oh, but don't worry, even with Elika at your side, the game's not a total cakewalk. You've got some sword fighting to do and bosses who can beat you easily if you're not on your toes. I don't know, I get a kick just out of seeing the two leads interact with each other and how fluid the animations are when they do things together. This coupled with the constant, playful bickering between the two make the Prince and Elika one of gaming's best team-ups ever.
So yeah, I'd recommend this game wholeheartedly. There's downloadable content coming out in a week's time as of this writing and it promises an extra 4-5 hours of gaming as well as more bonus features. Even without this upcoming add on, I would still say this game is purchase worthy and sure to please even the most jaded gamer. | video-games_xbox |
haters are going to hate...and miss out on an intense and masterful game. first off, alot of people messaged me cause apparently there was some bad review that everyone read. i truely think you could only dislike this game if you where so entirely conformed to COD. i'm sick of everyone hanging on COD's nutts. Yes, COD is good. it has also become the madden of fps's. black ops knocked it up a notch, but still..doesn't anyone want anything new..? interesting? team based? ....just so you know i love black ops and battlefield bad company 2.
i figured i'd write about all i tried on BRINK and give my honest opinion.
story - interesting story from both sides. you really get a feel for your created ninja. but the story is short. yes, there are only at maps right now. but there are multiple objectives per a map.(kinda reminded me of rush in battlefield.being that once you got what needed to be done in an area, you moved to another chunk of map) so a stage might take 30 mins or more. the stages are well done. very layered. you really have to watch all directions. people will jump out of the sky and knock you on your ass if your not careful. i have not finished the story, but what i've seen i liked.
graphics - it is cell shaded. which i enjoy very much. cut scenes are pretty gorgeous...though they are fairly short. gameplay is smooth and intense.
gameplay - the SMART system is a landmark achievement. i kept it on and was still doing movements manually. i loved it. the game gets so intense sometimes your running, slide kicking, stabbing, butting people with your gun, vaulting, all over the place. the objectives are a nice touch too. theres always something to do. this game makes COD's clunkyness look ridiculous.
multiplayer/solo - i played solo for a bit and my only gripes where that the bots could be dumb(mostly your bots it you went off on your own. if you pressed the objective and stayed together the fight was winnable. enemy bots are pretty tenacious at times. but they have there dumb moments as well.). if your going solo you really have to press the objectives yourself. your team will back you up, but you are the man...and i don't mean lone wolf. lone wolfing it just gets you killed. alot. you cannot play this like COD. you will fail and hate on this game. i'd recommend having a friend play with you. i hear theres lag in online play..?.. my buddy played around on line, and there was no lag at all. if there is lag, i have honestly not seen it yet. i play some challenges, and there pretty cool. the way the menu is set up it looks like theres going to be more of everything in the future. which will be very nice.
overall - i really like it. i don't feel confined in movement. i have to pick my shots and battles. i have to be a team player. i get to fully deck out my personal ninja for battle. this game requires a lot from you. sometimes it feels like hard work. but man is it satisfying! i really felt like i couldn't believe so of the crazy stuff i was doing. i don't know what all the gripes are about. the game is fairly short. other than that i think people haven't learned how to "BRINK" yet. they can COD-fish it up. they can battlefield there way to the top. they can even spend a day with team fortress. but this game is different. similar in some ways. but a myriad of difference in others. if your not going to learn to play right, you not like this game. that requires you to; be a team player (becoming unheard of on xbox), move and shoot, conserve and disperse, hit the objectives, aand stick together. don't buy this if all you play is COD. you will hate it and you will suck. plain and simple. battlefield bad company people and team fortress people should enjoy it. to be honest i hate compare this with COD. this game is far from generic and took many steps forward that COD has been terrified to do.
update - i've played everything now. haven't been able to pass all the challenges though. i still love this game. unfortunately the full multi player has some issues. that one dude that posted a video (one of the reviews) wasn't kidding about the lag in full multiplayer. i had moments of awesome-ness, then it was creepy as hell!? but, there is lobbies that won't have lag. if you have to, jump out and find one. so, i mostly have been teaming up with my friends and battling bots....and theres no lag in doing that. i had a total of five people on my team against the bots and it was lag free. so, if you can be patient with the multi player issues, try it. but i'd recommend leveling up some characters and learning to play the game properly. oh, the later stages and what if stages are incredibly intense..
updatet #2 - free dlc on the way! update is now! oh, one thing i didn't talk about is the great sound in this game. its not bfbc2, but its pretty damn good and if i didn't say it before; the guns each have the own thing going on and depending on how you trick them out they react differently. | video-games_xbox |
Excellent Surround Sound from a Wireless Headset. Overall, these are really good headphones. I was quite skeptical about the DTS surround sound claims, but after listening to their demo on YouTube, I have to concede that they in fact do exhibit considerable surround sound characteristics. Using a stereo headset for comparison, the sound was not nearly so appealing. But there was another DTS test on YouTube that did not show much differentiation in the virtual direction of sound sources. But I may have inadvertently turned off the surround sound. Often the surround sound LED on the transmitter remains on after the surround sound button is turned off. I had to keep pressing the surround sound button repeatedly until the LED went off. Only then was I certain which mode it was. Listening to a movie with surround sound was better than stereo headphones.
I own a pair of wired headphones that actually have multiple speakers in each earpiece for true surround sound. They require their own headset amplifier to apply sound delays to the rear micro speakers to make it sound more realistic. But that model didn't catch on and it is no longer available. So I was quite pleased to have a chance to test the Turtle Beach headset, especially since it was wireless and had a microphone, too.
The primary shortcoming is the maximum volume is often insufficient and that is the reason for the one star deduction along with the ear pad material. It is okay for the most part, but if the input volume is not very intense, the volume of the headphones will be lacking. However, with higher amplitude sound input levels, the sound can be very intense - too loud in fact. But there is a volume control on the right ear piece if you need to lower the volume. Other than the moderate maximum volume deficiency, the sound from these headphones is quite good. I used a fiber optic cable to connect to my sound source. It works great. I have not tested the microphone other than to know it works. There is a volume control for it, too.
The pads on the earphones use a course fabric and it isn't so comfortable after a while. It's not terrible, but they certainly could have chosen a better material for the part that touches your head. The headphones are a little tight on my head, but on the other hand, my head is larger than average - size 7 hat. My wife is petite and it isn't too tight for her, but she really doesn't like the ear pad material - says it is too scratchy.
The wireless range is fairly good. I can walk into adjacent rooms and close the door and the reception is still good. I can go upstairs in the bedrooms and it will eventually start cutting out. But I would estimate there is good reception for at least 30 feet and up to maybe 50 feet if there aren't many walls or obstacles.
You don't absolutely need a XBox - I am using a desktop PC computer running Windows 7. However, I believe there may be some features that only work with an Xbox or work better with a Xbox - not that I would know. I'm quite satisfied with it as it is. There is an important update to the firmware available for the headphones, but I haven't downloaded it yet. There is also an update for the Xbox. Whatever the case, it works just fine as it is. | video-games_xbox |
Buggy but Great !!! (See Work-arounds, below. Yes, this game needed a few more months of debugging. Yes, it was probably rushed to market to coincide with the movie, and Bethesda should receive 50 lashes for putting revenue ahead of quality. (Consider buying a used copy rather than a new one!)
But the bottom line is - this game is a Masterpiece. It's a "Five Star" game with one star subtracted for bugs. (See my workarounds, below).
It's all there - the quests, the commerce, the sword/gun fights and of course the ship battles. All done to perfection. I will focus on the ship battles (below), because there simply isn't a game out there that competes with this aspect.
You can be whatever type of character you want to be - it's wonderfully open in that respect. You can be a pirate (of course), a pirate hunter, a merchant (yawn) or follow the main quest thread. I found the quests to be a "sideshow", but they do supplement the open game play.
Ship Battles: You have both a third person "god view" and an on-the-deck, look-over-the rail view. Both are needed. You use over-the-rail to get a sea-level view, with zoom available through your "spy glass" which yields additional information on the ships around you ,e.g., number of cannon, crew, sail damage, hull damage. You get better spy glasses as the game progresses, reveailing more and more information.
You use the "god view" when you're doing tight manuevering and trying to avoid coliding with other ships, e.g., when boarding.
And what are you looking at?... simply the best ship graphics ever programmed in a video game. Wind blowing the sails in the right direction (and wind determines speed if you get the default setting off of "arcade", set if to "realistic"), holes in the sales, cannon flashes in the distance, exquisite water splashes when the shots miss, and your own cannon smoke blowing by your face in the over-the-rail view. You can almost smell the gunpowder!
Refreshingly, the ships move at realitic speeds - in other words, they're very slow. No turbo-ing to avoid cannon balls, you have to play the wind and do what sailors did for centuries, learn to sail.
Like Morrowind, you have 10 Skills and about 25 Special Abilities that enhance your performance and those of your officers. The skills of you officers complement yours, e.g., you typically have high Melee and Leadership, a Cannoneer has high Accuracy and Rate of Fire, a Navigator has high Sailing, etc.
WORKAROUNDS:
1. Corrupted Saves - do NOT overwrite an existing saved game. Always delete it to create a new save location. Problem solved.
2. Missing Officers - this one is annoying. You can only have (8) eight officers in addition to yourself on your own ship. Any officers added beyond 8 will cause one of your existing officer to disappear. So manage that carefully. I lost a lot of good officers in my first game until I realized they were "deserting."
Also, if you hire a new officer, and try to put him on another one of your ships (you can have 3 ships in addition to your own), the program deletes one of the officers on the additional ship. In fact, it creates a duplicate of the new officer on both your ship and the additional ship. The only way to deal with this situation is to avoid putting more than one officer on the additional ships (the Captain). The captain is unaffected by this bug. I typically make the captain a Cannoneer.
3. Difficulty - like Morrowind, this is a very difficult game at first. Many of the complaints about the game are simply a result of not figuring out how to play well. For example, Luck plays an incredibly important role in surviving on the open seas, when sailing from one island to another. With a "Luck" skill of "1", you will be hunted down by pirates and blasted by storms every 15 seconds. With a "Luck" skill of 10, the Carribean turns into your private lake. I always invest heavily in the Luck skill right at the beginning of the game.
Another complaint is that the Officers get killed in sword fights. That occurs when you are outnumbered (use lots of grapeshot before boarding) or send great cannoneers into a sword fights who have a Melee skill of 1 (duh!). Hire enough officer to allow your officers to specialize. You can only have three of your 8 officers active at any time, make sure you activate the ones needed for the current situation. For example, use your Navigator and Cannoneer for the sea battle, then replace them with your Melee fighters to board vessels; insert your Quartermaster when your ship needs repair after the battle, or when purchasing goods at the store on land.
4. Land Movement - this is awkward. You use the left thumbwheel to move in all directions. You use the right thumbwheel to look up and down in the "Forward" view option, and in all directions (independent of movement) in the "Directional" view option. (My guess is they did this to facilitate sword fighting. Evidently the "A" button is better to swing your sword than the right trigger. When your right thumb is always punching the A button, you can't be using your right thumbwheel to change your view.)
You can look in all directions while on land, contrary to some other reviewer comments I saw posted here. You simply have to turn your character around to see that way.
There is also an annoying "feature" with doors and walls. When you stand next to them and turn around, the view changes 180 and you see the front of your character instead of the normal position behind him. This is hard to get used to.
5. Miscellaneous - there is an occasional lock-up, so save your game frequently. (I always save before I board my ship.) This may occur once every 20 hours of play.
The "dissappearing officers" can lead to bigger problems in quests. One of the main quest characters that was supposed to join my crew was lost in my first game. That ended the main quest thread.
Sometimes a merchant will ask you to deliver cargo to the wrong island. You're supposed to deliver it in less than 30 days, so you may have to save it and figure out which island is correct.
Enjoy!!!
TR | video-games_xbox |
DOES NOT WORK WITH THE ELITE CONTROLLER!!' . Review Update 28 Jun,2017:
Increased star rating because they're still working on mine, and also because i ordered one for a friend and she loves it.
I checked the questions and it said they would. I compared buttons from a standard controller and they looked the same. They are NOT!!! I had problems getting them to go on properly. Could not make it stick like the pics.
I'm disabled and my hands aren't that great with fine motor skills anymore so I had my helper give it a try with the other pair. She's a wonder. PERFECTLY installed my glass screen protector to my iPad and fit it into the heavy duty case before I had even unfolded the instructions. True story, bro!
After a couple of minutes of looking and trying, then sticking them onto the other controller she showed me why. The elite triggers are slightly more concave and beveled than the standard ones. Even if the far edge was longer, the material is too thick to properly adhere across the 'curves' . I had to look at each with a spyglass to see what she meant, and, as always, she was correct.
She's beyond 'crafty' . She makes cosplay costumes from scratch and can fashion a multicolour Paracord bracelet or string me a mala in no time. Best she could do was clean the backs and Gorilla Glue them to the the Elite. They still started to peel off from the front edge I mentioned earlier after a month of light usage. :((
The 1st star is for this warning.
The 2nd star is because it is otherwise a good quality product. Thick and with a decent grip surface (tho I really can't tell a difference betwixt the two). They're better than the more slippery silicone ones I'd tried before.
At least they were cheap. Wound up giving two to her. Live and learn. I'll attach a pic if it will work this time.
Heh. Too bad the Design Your Own Controller doesn't have an option to be 100% encased in this kind of textured rubber lol :))
I hope this review helps other Elite owners.
If you have a regular controller, then the other reviews are for you :)) | video-games_xbox |
Mediocre, but has potential. I have played every Battlefield since the original release of 1942, and this is probably the worst release-day game in the franchise.
[ORIGINAL 11-1-2013]
[UPDATE 11-5-2013 BELOW]
[UPDATE 02-19-2014 BELOW]
Single-Player:
The campaign is what you can expect from a FPS, simple A-B-C progression with a "meh" storyline. That's pretty much the only good thing I can say about it.
The ending to the storyline was nothing short of abysmal though, it brings no closure and feels like the writers ran out of time to finish and they just programmed what they had. It really wasn't even a bad ending, because it can't really be accurately described as ending. It's more of an ever-lasting intermission.
Multi-Player:
[See Update Below]
[UPDATE]
A number of the problems with the games multi-player have now been fixed, and my experience has gotten broader now that I've had some more time to fiddle with it.
The release of the first set of patches has fixed the stability problems I previously mentioned, as well as seeming to have improved the progression of the NPC's in the campaign. The updates seem to have resolved both single and multi-player physics problems so that bullets actually fly as they are supposed to now.
Previously, bullets fired from 20-50 meters seemed to find themselves many feet off the mark even when scope was perfectly stable, yesterday I made a 485 meter headshot, clearly the game has been cured of it's initial problems on physics.
Issues that still exist, the inability to alter kits from the main game menu. Changes must be made while in-game from the Spawn Screen, or on Battlelog online. This is annoying since it's much easier to make the changes while on the same system and not in combat. This is the biggest problem I have with the BF4 interface now that a lot of things have been fixed.
[UPDATE FEB 2014]
There continues to be lingering problems that have really started to make this game a nightmare.
While server stability is fine, the entire tracking system for player progression is now completely screwed up. Many of the point awarding elements of the game don't seem to translate back to the main profile. For example, if you earn 1000 points through kills, 400 points through ribbons, and finish an Assignment, only the 1000 Kill Points seem to be awarded to your progression, and often the Assignment resets to an unfinished state.
One assignment, requiring you to kill 10 enemies, I have completed 6 times in 2 days, and it still says I have not completed it at all, and it is not properly recorded on Battlelog.
This is obviously a major factor in a game that exists primarily as a multi-player experience. The resets while on their own annoying, seriously impact game play as accruing points and completing assignments is required to unlock more and better weapons. Clearly this seriously restricts upward movement of players, and is especially harmful to new players who are already out-gunned, but now find themselves unable to catch up. EA/DICE have thus far not responded to multiple player complaints about this issue. | video-games_xbox |
One amazing game. After a few days of playing I finally beat the game (gimme a break, I got a job). After the credits start to roll (and boy do they take their time on that one) and after I messed around a little bit in the lab room, I put the controller down and thought to myself, "Wow...I really really want to keep playing." Very few games have made me feel like that in the 20+ years I've been gaming.
When I first popped the disc in, I was expecting a fun game, but with a lot of faults. Mainly collision errors when trying to find spots to climb up buildings or trying to jump from building to building, but not doing it correctly and just falling. Surprisingly, this didn't happen once for me. Watching Altair (that's you), run into a building and seamlessly running up the wall a few steps and then grabbing either the top of it, or a loose brick, or a nook, or just about anything, and then pull himself up is just amazing looking. Then when I saw something that jutted out a little bit overhead of me, I immediately thought, dang, I'm gonna have to move to the left or...wait a sec...NOPE, he's actually removing himself from the wall a little bit and jumping or pulling himself out and over it. Very nice. Then when I got to climb my first 'high point' in a city, and hit the 'Y' button to investigate the area, my mouth actually dropped open and I said to myself, "Wow, I can actually go anywhere in here?!" Even my World of Warcraft addicted roommate removed himself from his computer to watch me play this game for a few hours.
The story itself, at first was pretty boring for me. Or maybe it was just cause I didn't care about it cause I just wanted to go go go and keep playing. After awhile I started listening in on the story, and it proved pretty interesting, ESPECIALLY closer to the end.
The controls are very very easy. You've got the nonchalant mode where mostly what you do is look inconspicuous by pressing 'A' to look like you are a scholar and praying, or pressing 'B' and gently shoving people out of your way and so on. Then you got our attack mode where you can run 'RT', or attack 'X', sprint 'A'. It's really very simple. Which can be a bad thing and a good thing. Good thing is that it makes it very simple and everything flows very nicely..like the graphics. Bad thing is, well, it's simple. Some people like to be able to hit button combinations to create spectacular moves or really just have their own kind of freedom on how to attack. I'm usually in the latter here, but this time I liked the simpleness. It made it a lot of fun without having to be to frustrating, especially when I would bust up a soldier party (<--future rap title I bet!), kill a couple, and then haul butt to another party, and then another, and then have to kill about 40-50 guys at once. Talk about feeling like a bad ASSassin! Wow..bad pun...whatever.
The missions are fairly simple...and pretty repetitive after awhile. You show up to town, head to your little headquarters, find out what's going on, climb some towers, find more stuff going on, then go pick pocket, eavesdrop, save some people, beat some info out of people, and then go assassinate the 'boss'. That's how it goes. Now don't get me wrong though, it sounds a little tedious, but for some reason it was not at all for me. I enjoyed every minute of it. Ok I lied, I didn't enjoy the eavesdropping and the pick pocketing. You stand or sit there, listen to the convo, and then leave or you have to pickpocket a guy and then leave. That was pretty boring after the 2nd time of doing it. But everything else was fun to me.
Once the ending happened, like many people, I was left a little confused. I checked online and found a lot of info that made me go 'Ahhh..ok'. Plus I found out that this was the beginning of a trilogy. Yummy Yummy! I can not wait for the next installments and go a treasure huntin..YAAAR!
One thing that REALLY irritates me about the game is you can not hit a button to skip through the story. Now if the makers want me to sit through it, then that's fine, but make me do it only once. If I've made those credits roll, give me the option to skip through the dialog the next time I play through. Cause some of these scenes can get pretty long winded. I made a bowl of spaghetti-o's during one scene.. =\
Whatever you do, you must play this game at least once. It's a sight to behold for sure. Especially if you got a 1080p/i set up. | video-games_xbox |
Bleak Horizons. This is a perplexing game. I'm torn between giving it a high ranking or a low one. It's not easy for me to explain the why's of that either. But sit down. We have some time and I have a story to tell you...
Once there was an adventure game called The Longest Journey. It was an intricate tale of approaching doom. Once there was a woman named April Ryan who could live in two worlds. The Longest Day was that unusual thing in games of the time - it was thoughtful, with a rich plot and any number of interesting characters. Long after I have forgotten what happened, I still remember scenes from the game and the pleasure of playing it. That was in 2000, and I had yet to consider adding a game console to the household entertainment.
Now, it's 2007 and my PS2 and XBOX are faithful companions. I was surprised to discover that, miracle of miracles, a sequel had been made, this game - Dreamfall. Dreamfall recaps the style of the original, in terms of a complicated plot that ranges over two worlds and many cities but with some definite differences. We have a new heroine, Zo Costanza, who lives in Casablanca in the 23rd Century. While there is a great deal of technology about, society has a carefully studied not quite technical style. This helps minimize the contrast between the world that is Zo's home (called Stark) and the more medieval world where a good bit of the game takes place - Arcadia.
When Zo volunteers to help her ex-boyfriend out by picking up a package she little expects that this will catapult her out of a state of self-pitying numbness and into an adventure that will turn her life upside down. Soon we are shifting back and forth between Stark and Arcadia. In the former Zo struggles to stop a corporation from taking over the world by making us all dreamers. In Arcadia April is trying to stop the Azadis from completing their own conquest of the world and the magic in it.
Gameplay is a bit awkward, but bearably so, but fighting control is inadequate. However, fighting isn't really what the game is about. Like a classic adventure game puzzles are the order of the day. Most are interesting, if surmountable, but there is one and only one way to pick locks and it happens way too often. But once again, it is a pretty game, with strong characters and it's easy to forgive any number of sins. Except for one.
At best, this is a bleak game with an endless supply of dark moments. Hope, of course, is an important factor in the playability of the game. Unfortunately, Dreamfall leaves you very little of that, and ends in a truly depressing cliffhanger. In fact, there's no indication from the game that there is any hope of a continuation. It took a desperate search of the Funcom site to discover that the Norwegian Film Fund, of all things, was going to pay for some number of continuation episodes that might, if we are all very good, appear as a collection some day. And that irritated the heck out of me. After all, who, in this world, needs depressing cliffhangers with only a faint hope of relief?
Well, there you have it. After a great deal of hanky twisting I've decided to recognize the game's artistic merits and give it four stars. But be warned. Also be warned that there are some moments of gratuitous profanity that add nothing to the story or atmosphere and one wind up giving the game an unnecessary Mature rating. | video-games_xbox |
One of the most fun racing games i have played in a while. First off let me just say don't buy this game for the multiplayer. No one plays online at least on the 360. And no theres not a few people online theres 0. Yes i was kind of disappointed too but i got a few of my friends to buy it and its very fun. It has its bugs but only if you crash into walls purposely. This game is straight up fun. Most of the people who don't like it are the ones hoping for another Pure but this game is completely different. It comes with 12 maps 4 that come free as a dlc. (*THE DLC IS IN THE BACK OF THE MANUAL IN THE BOX THERE SHOULD BE A CODE*)The maps are well designed and are either 1 huge map where you start at the starting line and end at the starting line. Most people tend to like this the best but the other maps are 3 lap races which i love because most of my favorite maps are from there like Railroad. But anyways it comes with a very long Tournament that is a ton of fun. The dlc also includes a new gamemode called detonator which makes you have to pull off stunts in order to keep the bomb on the back of your quad from exploding and passing it to the next racer. Along with the gamemode the dlc includes a tournament with it. You can also create some of your on races when not playing tournament in a quick match style. If your hoping for there being tons of tricks your wrong. This game is based souly on getting turbos. This can be gained by a smooth landing, boosting for x amount of time, flying through hoops of fire, ext. Speaking of smooth landing its kind of hard when your going in these huge vertical slopes. Physics in this game will have you flying through the air on your quad or bike. There is also a no collision option and turbo madness option.
+Great maps
+Great customization
+Long tournament
+Comes with a free dlc
+Just all out fun
-A few minor glitchs here and there
-The multiplayer is completely dead
(4.5/5) I give this game a 4.5 out of 5 because this game will keep you entertained for a while it is a ton of fun and i recommend it to any racer/ quad/ dirt bike racing fans out there | video-games_xbox |
It has its charms. Fatal Inertia is a title whose shortcomings are mostly the product of inaccurate expectations. This isn'ta deep modern racer like Forza or Gran Turismo; tracks aren't very long, and if you're expecting a calm endurance race, you're parking up the wrong tree. This is a 'combat racer' in hover-crafts, on fast-paced tracks that require some well-practiced reflexive play (at least, on the harder difficulty matches.)
The game has lush graphics and an appealing design, though vehicles can feel a little generic until you unlock all the various parts, paints, and decals for them. I find the lack of money a welcome decision, since you can swap parts and cosmetics all you want until you find a combination that suits your style, rather than having buyer's remorse about that engine or those wings that slow you down too much.
Fatal Inertia doesn't have a whole lot of track enironments, but each track has a variety of different iterations, creating 51 in total. Top that off with several different race types (Knock Out, Combat, Velocity, etc) and you've got a package that'll entertain you for a while. Weapons are also implemented in a neat way; all weapons have a secondary fire, which will either fire the weapon backwards, or utilize it in a way that'll speed you up for a short time. There's even a grappling hook, ala The Empire Strikes Back.
However, in the polish department, this game needs a bit of work. Combat races can degrade into an all-out brawl whilst in the mix of other racecraft on higher difficulties, and all the riff-raff going on can disrupt your concentration on the actual racing - causing you to hit bumps in the road or slide off the path. The control of pitch and yaw, while helpful at times, can become too much to pay attention to during the mayhem. At these points, you just want to get up front and forget about the pesky AI, as they beat the snog out of eachother.
Still, this introduces a challenging gameplay scenario. I've been hooked on it because it tests my piloting skills in many ways, and gives me a shiny, stream-lined flying machine to do it with. You definitely get a sense of power and speed, and on a good track, getting that grappling hook snag on the leader's tail, only to attach the other end to a boulder and stop him in his tracks as you fly by him over the finish is a good feeling.
Overall, if you can forgive the developer's inexperience, you'll find a niche game that rewards long-time players. | video-games_xbox |
Trials is still awesome. Trials is still amazing. The disc version is a little harsh cuz you gotta pay $40 up front and still wait a whole year to get all the content your paying $20 extra for. By then you might not even care to play anymore. I payed for the digital version so I got away with $20 only. People are complaining of the future style of it and it not being so dark and gritty. But really it means the graphics are better and more divers. There's ice levels and beach levels. Trees and just more color. It's refreshing and I like it. There are still dark levels with fire and such. So it's not like your missing that. They just have other levels that are at the beach with sand and simply more diversity. The extreme tracks are hard as ever. I do have a complaint that all the hard ones seem to be just different versions of each other. You get past one and it feels like you are at it again with the next one. So it feels like you never got past it at all. I'd like to see more differences from obstacle to obstacle. Also one achievement didn't unlock for me but I looked online and it doesn't seem to of happened to other people. All in all this is a great game. I'd say get the $20 version. You can upgrade later for the same price and wait when the content is actually available. Everyone should get this game. If you've never played trials you'll love it and if you have you know exactly what your getting. It's the same great game with a different environment style. Graphics are brighter and more diverse. If you've never played feel free to get the other games. They have the same gameplay. Nothing different game play wise accept for the new tricks you can do in fusion but it's nothing to write home about. Getting over obstacles is still and always will be what trials is all about. If you get the game you'll easily play for 10 hours minimum. If you get into it at all you'll easily get beyond 20 hours. Plenty of tracks to keep trying to get better times on and some you may never get gold. Great value for $20 and if your a big fan that will play for a year $40 is a steal. Just not for those who will be done in a month way before the dlc comes out. Get the $20 digital version instead. | video-games_xbox |
Very stable wheel platform. Before I get into the nit-picking I'll say up front that this is a good product and I would buy it again.
Overall assembly was fairly straight forward, however the instructions could use some improvements. As is, they're in paragraph form with small black and white pictures. It shouldn't take too much effort to break the paragraphs into a list of steps and either use larger pictures and a few more sheets of paper or print the pictures in color. If nothing else this would leave the buyer with a better first impression of the product and the brand.
Thankfully it came with every nut, bolt, screw, and washer you could possibly need to bolt up the supported wheel/pedal setups. Another "nice to have" that likely wouldn't take much effort to do would perhaps be to itemize and label each type of nut/bolt/washer with A/B/C/whatever and use these designations in the instructions. The nuts/bolts are fairly easy to figure out, but given that there are multiple types of washers I was unsure of which were supposed to go where.
The only "issue" I have with mine is that the sides of the pedal tray appear to be bent. I'm not sure if this was a manufacturing defect or if it was damaged while shipping. At first I thought it was so out of whack that I might not be able to make it fit, but fortunately there was just enough play in the nylon washers that it bolted up fine and rotates smoothly when I put the pedals in the "up" storage position.
For the G27 users, you'll likely find that the shifter bracket will need to be placed in the leftmost position. I'm not sure if this is by design, as there are extra holes which make it look like you can place it further away from the wheel (those holes may exist for other shifter setups), but if you try to use the other holes the bottom of the shifter won't clear the vertical portion of the lap-bar.
The part that matters most, using it.... I'm happy to say that it does exactly what you expect it to do. I'm 5'9" and I have the steering wheel mount pushed in all the way. I like having the pedals close, but if you're under 5'5" you *might* find yourself reaching more than you'd like or pulling the wheel closer than you want so you can reach the pedals. I also have the vertical adjustment set to as tall as it gets, and it's set at the perfect position for me. The setup is very stable and the bars seem to fit the width of my couch cushions perfectly. When you're done using it, simply push the wheel off of your lap, putting the whole thing in the upright position, and easily move it out of the way.
The only real negative I can think of is the smell of the rubber feet, which Google says will dissipate with time.
Overall this is a solid product with a good design; recommended. | video-games_xbox |
Cool. Fun. Buy It. Jet Set Radio Future is the sequel to Jet Grind Radio on the Dreamcast and it is the epitome of a great game.
JSRF is set in 2024. A huge corporation has taken over Tokyo and bought the police. You play the skaters who are taking back the city . . . by tagging just about everything in sight. Okay, so it's not the most sophisticated plot in the world, but this is an amazingly fun game.
The gameplay is pure enjoyment. You pick a skater, then take on various sections of Tokyo, all of which are huge in scope, packed with human and vehicle traffic, and intricately designed. You'll find yourself grinding rails, staircases, power lines, and more. While grinding and skating, you pick up cans of spray paint, then use those cans to tag various buildings, vehicles, etc. Sometimes you are starting from scratch with the graffiti, and other times you are covering the tags of rival gangs.
In addition to tagging and grinding, you will find yourself fighting the corrupt police. You generally will come across the police in specific sections of the level or at the end, once you have completed all your tagging. To defeat the police you have to knock them over then spray paint their white uniforms, leaving them a huffing, puffing, multi-colored mess as they turn tail and run. Trust me--this is great fun. But don't slow down, or else the police will pile on you and drag you down and the chief, Hayashi, will take aim and shoot. (He's a bit crazy, and doesn't like you one bit.) Once your stamina is up, it's game over, so don't let the police drag you down.
In addition to the cops, you'll find yourself racing with fellow skaters to turn them into playable characters and battling with members of rival gangs, which often entails emulating a series of grinds. This is a nice addition to the gameplay and it helps increase the amount of playable characters.
There's so much more to the gameplay. Let me just say this: tanks. Oh yeah, the police want to take you down. And the grinding is not limited to flat surfaces. You can grind UP objects, which adds a nice dimension to gameplay. And believe me, you'll be needing to move up high to find all the tag spots.
The graphics are beautiful. The game sports a graphical technique called cell-shading, and the original Jet Grind Radio is the game that started this much-copied trend. This is also the game that does the technique the best. Cell-shading allows for 3D graphics that have a 2D look, creating something of a cartoon. Except this isn't kiddie stuff--we're talking a much more sophisticated, anime-type design in this game. The graphics scream cool, and you'll never get tired of staring at this game.
The music plays a huge role in the game, and there are about thirty tracks to listen to. The music is top notch, with beats that will stay in your head long after you've turned off your Xbox. The music, like the graphics and game play, is just plain cool.
Jet Set Radio Future is cutting edge, it's furious fun, it's hip and sleek and just flat out cool. Trust me, you will love this game. Buy it. Play it. Learn to love Sega, because they're the company that brought you this blessed work of art. | video-games_xbox |
Resident Evil 4+Silent Hill=THe Evil Within. Well then. Where to begin? Im not going to talk about how excited I was for this title. Lets just get to the facts. Pros and Cons below.
Pros
+LONG game. Usually it takes me 7-8 hours to finished these third person survival horror games. This took over 13 hours!
+Nice Graphics
+Some really well played ideas, monsters, traps, and levels.
+Looks like Silent Hill Downpour (Might be the same graphic engine)
+Easy to play like Resident Evil 4.
Cons
-Extreme wide screen?! And what for? I still don't know, it makes your big screen now chopped in half for no reason!
-Looks like Silent Hill BUT isn't creepy or scary at all. Plays like Resident Evil 4 but has way too much action to be survival horror.
-Boring Characters
-Uninspired story which half way through the game you won't care about anymore.
-texture pops
-Long loading screens even after you pre load the disc.
-Half of the game has poor level design, very lame and boring. Walking through cities in broad daylight. Not scary at all.
-THe camera is too close to your lead player. Like RE4 but really a lot closer to where you cant really see some of his actions when he does them. I never got used to this and bugged me the entire game.
In a nutshell this is what your dealing with. A bad spin off idea of another Silent Hill. Looks like SH and has a kinda SH plot...But has way too much action in it to be SH. Plays like RESIDENT EVIL 5 really more than 4 and has as much action as RE6. Which that game was terrible. Im looking for scares and terror not an action film. Has elements of Splinter cell/manhunt/hitman stealth attacks but doesnt really fit. And even a taste of ODDWORLD with the strange and random bombs you have to handle to shut them down. Seriously? Bombs? Are the Zombie creature things taking time to set bombs? I played the game all the way through once, I don't think I will be picking it up again for sometime. Play Silent Hill Downpour or Resident Evil 4/5 instead. They are more of a solid play through and know what game they want to be. Rent if you can before you buy. Also, big note **If your like me and got fooled into thinking you would be playing another (Resident Evil 1 remake) where your in a haunted mansion type place trying to find your way out YOUR NOT! The trailer, poster art and storyline want you to think thats what your playing BUT its random levels and your not closed in with that tention at all. Each level was pretty open and your not walking through a haunted style mansion.*** | video-games_xbox |
Quite Disappointing - Wish I could return it. The others have done a pretty good job summing it up. But needless to say, I am NOT satisfied with this game. Not one bit. To be fair, I haven't been a huge fan of NFS for a while now, but this one got me pretty excited. A friend of mine kept pressuring me to pre-order because he wanted to play online with me, so I did and got the game yesterday.
After opening the box feeling like a kid on Christmas, I was immediately disappointed in the mediocre opening scene. But hey, that's not all the important. Game play is what I truly care about. First, I spent several hours playing in single player mode to get the hang of it and explore the "open world" which really isn't all that open. The map and the game play is "OK" at best. I was actually getting pretty bored with it but wanted to practice so I could get good before playing multiplayer. The police chases were fun at first, until I figured out the cops magically appear no matter where you go. The cops can literally predict the future and read your mind, knowing exactly which street you will be driving on at any given time, which allows them to set up magic roadblocks which appear out of nowhere. The cops are pretty stealth too, as they can set up entire roadblocks without even show up on my radar. Super lame.
The handling is marginal, the braking and accelerating is marginal, everything is just marginal. Even the surrounding traffic is marginal. At one point, I was racing a Range Rover and hit an incline which brought the speed of the truck down to 55mph - about the same speed as the surrounding traffic. Really?! I know it's a Range Rover, but it's not an 18-wheeler. Let me get some speed! I wouldn't care if that was the only problem in the physics of the game, but the physics in the game leave a lot to be desired in many areas.
Multiplayer is just awful. They had some good ideas, but they didn't hit the mark. It's almost like they rushed this thing into production before it was ready. Instead of regular races, you join a session with a bunch of different mini-games. Some of the mini-games are straight up races, but about half of it includes other tasks you're supposed to perform either by yourself or as a team. In short, they failed at creating a kick-butt multiplayer mode, which it clearly could have been. Multiplayer is what I was really excited about. Once again, marginal at best and very disappointing. It also froze up twice in about 3 hours of multiplayer time.
If I could return this game and get my money back, I would. I gave Need For Speed another chance and they just proved to me that this franchise is continuing to slide downhill.
Save your money and get another game, or at the very least try it out at a friends house before you blow your money on this. I definitely have buyers remorse at the moment.
*** UPDATE ON 11/5/2012 ***
Ok, I had to come back and update my review a bit so that I can expand on the disaster they call multiplayer. I've seen a couple people say they like the multiplayer. I respect differing opinions, but I can't for the life of me figure out how this could be considered a good multiplayer game (the reason I was really excited about it).
First of all, this is not an online racing game. There are 5 events you have to complete. Of those 5 events, maybe one or two will be a race or a team race. The rest of the events are so boring or so confusing it's just a waste of time. Let's look at some examples:
Drift - The objective is to find a small area and drift around and around in circles. You just keep going round and round and round and round. Sometimes you'll run into somebody and you have to start over which is really awesome because you can keep going around in small circles some more. How exhilarating! NOT! After about 2 minutes of spinning the car around in circles, I'm ready to turn off my Xbox, but I don't, because maybe the next event will be awesome.
Longest Jump - A green diamond will appear on your map and you'll be told to go jump. Sometimes the objective is to jump the furthest distance on a single jump, other times they will combine all your jumps into the score while at other times, they will only count the number of jumps and sometimes, you only get one jump. Bottom line is, by the time people figure out what the rules are, the session is half over. And don't even think about reading the instructions that scroll on the bottom of the screen. First of all, they are useless and second of all, if you take your eyes of the road to read the instructions you'll either crash or somebody will take you out.
Jump Over Each Other - The objective in this one is to gain as much speed as you can and hit a jump. At the same time, other players will be jumping from the other direction. The objective is to jump over as many cars as possible. This would actually be fun, except once again, nobody ever understands the rules. Where exactly do you jump? What do you use as a ramp? Which direction are you supposed to jump? The end result is, the top 3 players get maybe 3 or 4 points and everyone else gets zero, because they didn't know WTF to do in the first place. This is extremely frustrating!
Park - Yes, you read that right. In one game, the objective is to go to an area which is always very difficult to find and park your car at that spot longer than anyone else. For example, your map will take you to a general area and then it's up to you to figure out where you're supposed to park, usually on top of a building. So, you get to the top of the building and that's when things get really exciting, because you don't do anything. You sit there. The longer you sit there, the more points you get. I mean, really?!? I'm driving a Ford GT and the objective for me is to park for as long as possible? THIS is fun?! Usually, the top 3 players sit up there for a couple minutes while the rest of the players get a score of zero because they couldn't figure out where to park their car. What a disaster.
Takeouts - The objective here is to ram into people and take them out. This would be fun, except by default, whoever plays the game the most will win this event every time because they will have the best car for it with the best mods because they have no life and play 24/7. So it sucks.
Racing - Every now and then, you'll get lucky enough to race. This is actually fun. Everyone is constantly getting lost because the GPS feature blows. Sometimes, there will be green arrows showing you that you're supposed to turn but not all the time. So people constantly get lost, miss checkpoints, and it's overall pretty frustrating. It doesn't matter how well you're doing in the middle of the race, either. You better pray some cross traffic doesn't get in your way during the final stretch, or else you'll lose. No skill required, just luck. Another epic failure.
This game had so much potential and they ruined it. I'm now finished playing this game and will likely go sell it at Gamestop for a fraction of what I bought it for. What a waste of time and money. | video-games_xbox |
my story. sprinting on pure adrenaline fueled solely by McNuggets and Coca-Cola, i could feel that the awkwardly over-sized box i was holding above my head was shifting all the poorly packed hardware inside the box my parents spent $500 dollars on. Finally just as i'm about to pass out I'm reaching the walkway to my front door and see my front door opening, it was my mom getting the door for me, she must have heard my crotch rocker pulling into the driveway and my excited shrieks. without hesitation as she stands in the way i shoulder check her because she didn't move out the way fast enough. As i make it to the living room i start ripping the box apart, I felt that there was no time to properly open it, it was as if i was acting only on instinct. Finally the VCR.. i mean XBOX that i had dreamed for so long was lying on my living room floor. I grab the user manual and chuck it as hard and as far as i can away from me, no time for instructions! I heard a familiar yelp as the user manual struct my mom across the face. I tear out my RRoD xbox 360 out of my living room and chuck it into the corner with the other pile of RRoD 360s. the next few seconds i must have blacked out because i have no recollection of plugging anything in. Finally with my television turned everything comes into focus. I nervously glide my hand with my index finger held straight out, hands shaking, heart pounding, sweat flowing out of me and i close my eyes and feel my skin make contact with my dream box. I open my eyes and see my screen fill green. "ITS HAPPENING" i scream. seconds seem like eternity while i wait for the console to boot. i lose control and pee myself for a second. a second! another second!!.. it sees like a whole minute passed and i still just see a green screen! i insert my copy of COD: DOGS and i almost cried when i heard what sounded like Predator making clicking noises! "NO NO NO!, please don't do this, you don't have to do this!" every attempt i made at restarting the console yielded me no other result. I bought a BRICK!!
I could hear the faint foot steps.. i knew what was coming, my mom musters as her strength and picks up the heavy monolith. rips out all the cables and with one mighty throw the Xbox ONE was flying through my house it lands smack in the center of the graveyard 360s and the impact was so strong it caused a mini brick avalanche. we both briefly make eye contact, she was fierce.. blood dripping down her forehead from some unknown injury i suppose. I was speechless but she knew, she must have saw this coming... my mom screams "GREATNESS AWAITS!" and points to the brand new PS4 box she had gotten me, we unpack it and ever since that moment i haven't looked back.
Microsoft had ONE chance (no pun intended) and they blew it. | video-games_xbox |
A Hack and Slash/Fantasy Action Adventure Gem. J. Hornbuckle's review compelled me to write my own take here (i.e. he didn't even get to the first dragon summon before he wrote it, which means he didn't even get to the first major battle).
And before I get to my review, I have to highlight this line from his:
"Plenty of gore and brutality for the teenagers to enjoy"
I read that and I just had to write this counter-review. How is that kind of viewpoint helpful in deciding to buy a game like Viking? So here's a review from a 32 yr old metalhead who is into bloody, slow motion limb chopping in video games:
Gameplay: There are 20 or so different moves, and there is a strategy for each enemy type- so you aren't just rushing in and mashing buttons. If a Legion soldier has a wooden shield, for example, you use the shield crusher (hold LB + tap X twice) to splinter his shield first. The highlight of the gameplay for me is the counterattack- hold LT and hit Y to dash backwards- then hit A right when the enemy strike goes by. The timing for this move is excuisite- enemies will time their strikes differently in anticipation of your counter, so you have to watch to time it correctly (sometimes enemies will delay their attack til the last possible moment, making it impossible to counter!).
There are QTEs to kill Legion Giants and Champions. I think they are implemented fairly well (QTEs normally bother me).
This is an open world game, so you're able to pretty much go where you want and complete objectives in almost any order.
Visuals: A feast. There is a wide variety of landscapes and weather/atmosphere. Honestly this game has my jaw dropping as much as any game on the 360. There are some truly epic vistas that will have you stopping to admire the ridiculous draw distance and amazing environments. The artistry and design is top notch.
Sound: A mixed bag. Most sounds are fine, but the voice acting is weak and there are a few really bad sound effects (the rope ladder sound is possibly the worst sound effect ever). The music is typical and used sporadically, but I turned it off and streamed viking metal from my PC (Theudho, Valkyria, Moonsorrow etc make a perfect soundtrack).
Length and replayability: I think I'm close to the end, and I've been playing for around 20 or so hours. I'm going to play through it again on hard difficulty as soon as I beat it- the gameplay is fun and varied enough to keep you coming back.
Large scale battles: When you build up your Viking army enough and complete certain objectives, you can launch an assault on Legion controlled settlements- the battles are huge, with hundreds of participants (sometimes you can't see the ground anywhere into the distance, there are so many guys onscreen- you can even lose sight of which one is you). This aspect of the game is intense and epic, and a hell of a lot of fun. And there are dragons.
The graphics are phenomenal but I would say the strongpoint is the gameplay, it's really well done and a lot of fun to play. I would probably only recommend Viking as a definite purchase if you're into fantasy hack and slash games- it's not a genre crossover hit. But if you like this kind of game, you're going to remember this one for a long time. | video-games_xbox |
Better than the first (if possible. X-Men 2 takes everything the first one did wrong and either fixes or scraps it, and then takes everything the first one did right and makes it better! Now, I'm a huge fan of the first one, so I didn't really think there was much wrong with it, but X-Men 2 is so much better!
The action is very intense and fast-paced, and I also love the customization you can put into your heroes (or villains). This could have been the game's only flaw--you level up so often it becomes a distraction from the action. However the designers handle this by giving you the option of automating level-ups and power allocations, so if micro-management isn't your thing, feel free to just slug it out.
There are a great mix of characters to choose from, although in my opinion there is some imbalance to some of them, such as Scarlet Witch who has NO melee capabilities to speak of, and no way to develop them, or Nightcrawler, who while a cool character is very energy dependant but very slow to regenerate said energy. These are minor quibbles, however. Chances are you'll find a few favorites and stick with them. This is rewarded in fact, because if you switch characters too often, they won't level up very fast and you will doubtless find yourself outclassed at a key moment (unless you spend some time training them up in the Danger Room).
Another nice feature is the unlockable characters. Xavier, Deadpool, and best yet--the uber-hero IRON MAN (why uber, you ask? He has the best elements of all the characters--flying, tanking, melee, and blasting)!!! The PC version contains a couple of additional characters--Sabretooth and Pyro, however these are basically just re-skinned versions of Wolvering and Sunfire. I would recommend sticking with the console versions since the PC version is said to be buggy and controls are a little more difficult. The X-Box version has the cleanest graphics (naturally).
The single-player campaign is a bit short--probably about 25-30 hours to complete, but the replayability factor is huge. You'll want to hurry up and finish the game just so you can go back and replay it with a different set of characters. Also, the multiplayer is a nice touch to increase replayability, with a 4-person online co-op mode.
Overall, this a a fantastic game, and well worth the money for anyone who enjoys fast-paced action, RPG elements, and Marvel. | video-games_xbox |
Outstanding . I absolutely LOVE open world scifi / fantasy games and this game checks all the right boxes ( for me ) that are needed to make a great game.
Graphics & Art : This game does not look as impressive graphically as Battlefield One or Battlefront 2, but what you get here is a huge lush open world with many different environments, a Day/Night cycle and is still an absolutely stunning game. The games mentioned above are very very good looking games but they are hardly on the scale of Elex those games are a very linear type of game and Elex is HUGE and sprawling RPG. It is an absolute joy to just get off the beaten path of your current mission and just explore the Environment/World. I just can't say enough about the art style and graphics, while not the absolute best they are still STUNNING to look at and even more fun to just explore this beautiful world that the developers have created for us to lose ourselves in.
Gameplay : If you are familiar with open world RPG games of this type you will be at home here. The fighting is similar to Skyrim/Oblivion, the Gothic series and Risen. Strike, block, roll, dodge and strike again or sometimes just run away because you may be dealing with an enemy that is overpowered for your current power level. There are other ways to fight as well, unlike some of the previously mentioned games, Elex will allow you to use swords, guns and magic, or a combination of all, and this is one factor that makes this game special and stand out from the rest. You will be told you need to join a faction at the beginning of the game, but in reality you can wait, level up and decide later which one fits your play style the best. This game can be brutal at times, it simply does not hold your hand and leaves it up to the player to figure some things out. There are times your enemy will two hit you and kill you just that fast, and others where you can just pummel them. You need to be tactical about the way you approach a fight, think about ranged attacks, sneaking or even close combat, but be prepared for the fight you are getting yourself into. Make sure you are equipped with enough health regeneration materials, mana regeneration resources or any other consumables you may need, Also make sure you use your skill upgrades wisely.
Voice acting & Sound : The Voice acting in this game is over all well done, the main character ( You ) can seem dry at times but is over all acted well enough. The NPC's in the game are also voice acted well and are most times better than the character you control, but like I said before the voice for your character is just fine and adequate. I've played many RPG's where your character is voiceless, so I really can't find any fault here at all.
Now on to the sounds within the game. It's very, very well done, from the sounds of you running through the grass, asphalt, snow, sand or anything else, it seems authentic and real, to the wind or rain pattering on the ground, it all just seems right on target.
Conclusion : This is over all an amazing game. It's absolutely huge with vast amounts of things to do and places to explore. It can be challenging at times so remember to save your game frequently, and in doing so when you die ( And you will ) you won't get set back to far at all. As a matter of fact the game lets you save at absolutely any point in the game you want, even during a fight ( Although I don't recommend it ). This game is just full of wonder and beautiful sights to see along with and interesting story line and characters it makes for a must play game.
Solid 5 out of 5 | video-games_xbox |
A revolution plays it safe. There are some things that you should know before you go into this game. Even though Team Bondi's L.A. NOIRE has the Rockstar brand on the cover, even though there is some revolutionary technology driving the narrative, and even though 1940s downtown L.A. has been recreated historically to 90% accuracy, this might not be the video game you thought you were buying. I know that it certainly took me by surprise. It's a game that's nothing like Rockstar's previous titles, such as the magnificent <a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/RED-DEAD-REDEMPTION/dp/B001SH7YMG/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">RED DEAD REDEMPTION</a> or the GTA series. Where as those games placed you firmly on one side of the law and attempted to blur the lines, L.A. NOIRE tries the same take from an officer's perspective, albeit with a completely different approach.
Though the main storyline takes a backseat for most of the game, you'll follow Detective Cole Phelps as he makes his way up through the hierarchy of the Los Angeles Police Department. Starting as patrolman, you'll eventually find yourself working cases for the traffic, arson, homicide, and vice divisions, with each having its own subplot and cast of characters. Each of these subplots are then broken up further into "episodes," with their own isolated set of investigations, clues, victims, and suspects. When all is said and done, it feels like playing through a full season of LAW AND ORDER.
The approach to each of these episodes doesn't vary much. The beginning will introduce you to the crime, after which you follow the clues around 1940s L.A. until you have a decent pool of evidence going. To gather this evidence, you'll be asked to walk the crime scene and other places of relevance until your character notices something, at which point you'll enter an examination mode of sorts and take a closer look at whatever it was you've picked up. Sometimes the things you can examine will be junk, but anything that adds to your case will be logged away for further use.
In the natural course of compiling evidence, a list of suspects and witnesses will start to present itself. This is where interrogations come in, what you'll very likely end up spending 85% of the game doing. And it's also where the game's technology comes into play.
Thanks to real-time facial motion capture, the characters you come into contact with in L.A. NOIRE aren't like anything you've seen in any other video game. L.A. NOIRE relies on real, acted performances instead of just voice acting, providing a sense of realism and immersion that few games have managed to attain. When interviewing a suspicious witness, a flick of the eyes and a nervous gulp might give him away, while a firm, eye-to-eye stare might convince you the suspect is telling the truth. This also makes the drama and the character interactions just seem so much more real, like you were watching a very, very good crime series instead of just playing a video game.
But that is where my gripes with the game come into play. For the most part, L.A. NOIRE doesn't really play like your average video game and is more like a TV series with interactive moments. 1940s L.A. has been recreated with astounding attention to detail, but the game doesn't encourage exploration at all. The story is constantly in play, and while diverging away from your next waypoint is definitely allowed, it just feels... wrong. It doesn't feel like you should be driving around at random, exploring things, seeing the sights. That certainly might not be the case for some players, but I tried free roaming a grand total of one time and felt uncomfortable doing so. Like, as an adult, I should know better.
And those playable parts of the game are gradually, over the course of this 20 to 25 hour game, worn down by repetition. Confronting a suspect will usually always end in some kind of dramatic and destructive chase, either on foot or by car, regardless of the suspect's guilt. Interrogations lose some of their shine once you realize that even most of the innocent people will find any reason to lie to you. And since the game doesn't allow you to undo your choices or missteps during interrogations without reloading the game to an earlier autosave, some of the confrontations can get old really fast.
With that, the gameplay stops feeling like the focus of the game and more like a means to an end, because outside all of the driving, the car/foot chases, and interrogations, there is a stellar story going on in the foreground against a realistic setting. The writing is pitch perfect to the point where you'd almost expect the developers had lived through the time period. Events and rhetoric from the time are constantly making their way into the script. Hollywood is beginning is rise as the entertainment capital of the world, the stars on film are brighter than the ones in the sky, and capitalism is in full swing in post-war L.A. Advertisements are everywhere, there's a cigarette in everyone's hand, the beginnings of the Second Red Scare are making its way onto the radio.
Playing the game really did feel like stepping back in time, and that's why it gets four stars from me. It felt like an experience more than a game. In fact, sometimes I was so absorbed by the plot twist and the minute details of the setting and of the script, that when everything eventually stopped and I was back in control of Detective Phelps again, I had to wake up and remind myself, "Oh, yeah... I have to play this thing." | video-games_xbox |
Turn 10 Creates More With Less. Well ladies and gentlemen, grab your helmets, your racing gear and some earplugs because you're in it for the long haul this time, Forza is back. The question is, have Turn 10 created another masterpiece, or made a horrible hash of things?
The answer is a surprising mix of both.
Upon booting Forza 5 you'll be greeted with an update, this update is 6GB and contains most of Forza 5's huge drop from 500 cars. Likewise, while the game installs you won't be able to access anything other than the first season. But that aside, you get a wonderful introduction to the game by Jeremy Clarkson, the first of many intros by the men of Top Gear, who play a much larger role in the game than simply providing a snippet of a review for a small set of cars. May, Hammond and Clarkson walk you through tiers and series races with their own unique flair, Top Gear antics completely intact, and whether you like the cast or not, the passion and the voice work is there, and only adds to the already impressive strengths Forza 5 demonstrates.
So, after the games all installed, depending on your connection that could be hours, and if this was a launch title for you, I do pity you, you poor soul, enduring two long waits to game is no small matter. But once the game is ready to go you'll notice immediately one of those things the Gran Turismo crowd is always going on about, Graphics.
This game is stunning, the leather has bumps, the flake is evident in the paint, the digital bugs spatter the paint, the sun is every bit as annoying and gorgeous as it is in real life, and the cars whether matte or wet looking gloss look so real it's like you could reach into the game and touch them expecting to hear the familiar slight screech rubbing noise your fingers make as you slide them across a real car. I do not joke, the graphics here are insanely detailed, and for once in my life I have seen a computer accurately reflect surroundings on the car paint, which adds a whole new level to immersion and detail. The beauty doesn't stop there, the bodies running about before a race are modeled well enough to be believable, the driver fidgets on the steering wheel after long corners and shifting and the tracks and roads in the game are amazingly beautiful. Prague itself is stunning, and something even a critic, a massive bag of cynicism like myself is FORCED to find wonderful. Each track in the game, a smaller number than the previous game, has this spit-shined beauty, this incredible attention to detail, and I found myself drinking it all in at 140 mph as I battled for the lead. The graphics and mannerisms are just wonderful, but its nothing compared to the sound.
Forza has always had good sound, but Turn ten has done something truly incredible here with this work, from the spitting fireballs from V6's, 8's, 10's, 12's and flat 6's, 4's to inline 4's and 6's, the sound is bang on and incredible, immersing the player in an exquisite symphony of gasoline and testosterone from the greasy, oil fed monsters of motorsport. It's all set to a high beats per minute orchestral music, a score to keep your blood pumping, and something you'd expect to hear watching the last lap of an epic race where the hero of the movie makes 4 or 5 miraculous passes and emerges the victor. Something else you might imagine is the car chases of old movies like Bullitt or Ronin, just epic, beautiful heart and pure driving set to edge of your seat, tactful and warming, spirited music delivered like only an orchestra can. The game makes you feel in the moment, and simultaneously fun, while issuing a great challenge.
Forza hands its challenge out a la carte' like it always has. Yes I'll take a dollop of hard AI with a bit of no traction control and a dessert of a bit of ABS, followed by a swig of the old racing line to wash it down. Allowing you to experience the cars and AI as you're ready and it does it exactly like it did before, no surprises, but how it hand out AI difficulty is vastly different than old generations.
Say all you want Drivatar sounds stupid or it's a lost cause, but until you've tried it out there's nothing in the world that could prepare you for what it does for racing. Imagine you are racing and drivers around you seem to want to win, that they jostle for position, that they attack each and every corner with an unmitigated vigor and fight tooth and nail to every foot they can grab, and you'll have a real race in your head. Forza 5 really does bring that to life. It grabs your driving style, your weird quirky stuff and bundles that into an AI file that gets downloaded by other people. Your Drivatar does its best to act like you, unless you just go backwards or spin people out all of the time, then it ignores those. Then the game emulates you in someone else's game. This not only is cool, it makes the AI seem less like AI, it makes the races more interesting, it makes the opponents seem real. It adds a massive amount of immersion to the game, and it makes you a better driver for it. Such a change in AI is so thoughtful and so game changing you'll wonder why it took this long for someone to do it, no internet? Don't fret they programmed plenty of on disc Drivatar AI for you too from their own testers, how do you like that?
The physics have been improved greatly, surface physics in particular as well as the "feel" for the different types of car layouts. Trust me you can definitely feel differences in FWD vs RWD now, they're completely different animals. No longer will cars behave mostly differently in just the beginning of the race. Power and handling plays a much greater role in racing and driving on the raggedy edge feels better than ever. The menus are more clean and generally more streamlined and I like the ability to customize wile in Forza Vista, a feature showing off cars like Auto Vista from Forza 4 but less personalized from a car standpoint in favor of a blanket for manufacturer, while still allowing all cars to be completely checked out tire tread to hatch cover. But all of this I'm afraid does get tarnished by the rusty body panels bubbling their virus through the otherwise immaculate paint.
Deep down though Forza 5 really is Forza 4 with a lick of nice paint and a lot of shiny bits removed, many cars have been slashed to meet the One's launch deadline and the 50 dollar tab to get the car pass to raise that amount 60 more seems unfair to fans that have been with the series since the XBOX, like me. However well the cars look and feel does seem like a big trade off to lose possibly someone's favorite car. Thank fully all my favorites made it back in, but I did miss some of the new cars recently brought in to the series such as the New Fiat Punto. The loss of several tracks bringing the total down to 14 is also sad as well, again sacrificed for the perfect nature of the tracks included. All content is laser scanned and meticulously created, and again I'm so happy about it, but I feel for the people who's favorite cars were slashed for this.
But I can't dock the score for it, the money grub, the missing cars and tracks, all of it doesn't matter, its simply a spectacular game, and it's an excellent simulator the game contains an amazing number of races, and will give you your 60 dollars' worth and some, just like Forza 4 before it. When you're done with that the online features carry it further with online racing and other fun stuff.
If you enjoy racing games, if you enjoy cars, this game is wondrous to behold and experience and with all of its difficulty mods, it can be enjoyed by anyone who has any passion for racing, it's a hard game to not recommend, even with the shaky financial situation, and the strong drop in tracks and cars from the previous game. Forza 5 really does prove that its quality, not quantity that matters, and it's a 4 star game for me. | video-games_xbox |
Simply Amazing. One warning slash complaint: DO NOT BUY THIS GAME IF YOU HAVE A LIFE. It is best if your a loser like me who doesn't do anything except play his xbox. The reason I say this is because the game seriously starts taking over your life because you can't stop playing it.
Okay with that cleared up, here's the skinny.
Your a bum who just got realsed from prison and was brought to the land of Morrowind. Your on a continent sized island called Vanderfall. You pick your name, your class, your race and the sign you were born under. Choose well! What you pick will determine the way the game will unfold for you. Once you finish your business, your a free man...that means free...as in there are no set guide lines about what you should do... AS IN YOU CAN DO WHATEVER THE HECK YOU WANT. The thought of it kinds of goes to my head.......
Seriously though, there is a main quest, which is to...never mind, I won't spoil it. Okay a short list of stuff you can do. Join guilds. Guilds like fighters, thieves or mages. You can become members of factions like certain temples or healing groups. You can join people's houses. Pick a side in multiple types of feuds. You may choose to become a free ranging hero, helping people in need. Or you may fall to the lure of the
"dark side" (I'm a big star wars fan) and turn to theivery. Whatever you want, the game lets you do it.
The exploring aspect is big. Like I said, the island is about the size of Australlia, and lots of times you'll have to travel in the beast ridled wilderness to get to places. Sometimes, if you're along the coast, you can ride in a boat, which is instintaneous transportation to a new location. If your not along the coast, you can ride huge bugs called silt striders. Same concept of boats, except across land.
People complain about the loading times, but there not really that bad. When you first load your game, it will take a while. But once you get going and are on your way, the loading never takes more than a couple seconds. And when you leave a building, you automatically can leave it with NO loading time what so ever.
The level of customization is amazing. There is no limit on the types of armor you will find. (from iron plated to troll bone) The weapons are awesome, especially the magic ones. Oh yeah, you can find people (or do it yourself) that will actually create new spells from old ones. You choose all of the features about it, even its name! I myself have a "super big fireball" spell in my arsenal. You can also enchant your armor, weapons, rings and amulets using souls you've captured in soul gems.
Along the lines of weapons is the magic. Magic is an aspect where many games seem to stumble. Either the magic is too strong, too week, too corny, not enough, too hard to regain, too easy to regain........The list goes on. Morrowind is the first game I've seen that gets it just right. The spells that hurt others are not all powerful, but they are not wimpy, either. There are plenty of spells that enhance your abilities, as well as spells that unlock doors, paralyze, make you invisible, and a host of others. Magic is one of my favorite parts of Morrowind.
Interaction with the environment is virtually limitless. The world boasts and entire ecosytem of vegetation, all which you can pick and use in potions. You can pick up ANYTHING you find lying about, even in peoples homes. They lock a chest on you? No problem. Just bust out the old lock pick out and (if you have a high enough security skill) you can break into a wide variety of different locked things.
The cities are breath taking. No, not the junky little town you start in, but the bigger ones like Balmoro are sweet. And Vivec is amazing. It is the capital of the island. It is divided into nine sections, each one floating on enormous platoons on the water. Very realistic and cool.
The game is supposed to be like living someone's life. And it is. Things like fewer people on the streets at night, prices that vary depending on how much the people like you and small stuff like that really make the game. The one thing I was very impressed with was the legal system. The dudes who made the game came up with a very original (if simple) system of law and order. If your crime is reported, you must pay a fine or go to jail and serve some hard labor. If you steel something, the stolen goods are returned and the fine is small. If you kill someone, the fine is huge. There are guards a plenty to uphold the law. The bigger the town, the more there are, and the powerful they are. The guards in Balmoro where this totally awesome armor and have spiked swords and shields. Small towns and villages only will have the basic guards, who look wimpy but are really strong. And the largest towns have dementors, who are probably some of the toughest fighters in the game.
That's all I'll say. The rest is up to you to find out. So get out of here and onto the road.
Good adventuring!!! | video-games_xbox |
A refined approach to hack 'n' slashing. Whenever a Dynasty Warriors/Samurai Warriors/Whatever Warriors game comes out there's always its contingent of detractors. And by contingent, I don't mean to imply a small number, as most of the free world does not take this series of games seriously. However, those who enjoy them know that while some criticism is valid, it is certainly overblown.
Warriors Orochi 3 is not a game changer and if you don't have any interest in the Warriors franchises you won't find a lot to like here. But for those fans who spend hours with the various entries in the series, or if you're looking for a fun 3D hack 'n' slash/beat 'em up title, Warriors Orochi 3 is a fantastic game to start.
The general gameplay outline for this game is the same as any other entry in the franchise, but it has a few key refinements. The character models used in this game look beautiful and are borrowed from the most recent games, Samurai Warriors 3: Xtreme Legends and Dynasty Warriors 7: Xtreme Legends. There are also a vast number of unlockable costumes from previous games that one can use. All cut characters that didn't make it into SW3 or DW7 are all back in full force making this an insanely robust roster. Also, WO3 includes guest characters such as Ayane from Dead or Alive or Ryu Hayabusa from Ninja Gaiden.
Warriors Orochi 3 borrows the "main camp" format first used in Dynasty Warriors: Strikeforce, and it resembles that template a great deal. From the "main camp" hub players are able to have banquets to increase the character's relationships, purchase new weapons, or embark on a mission. Another fantastic step forward for the series is the ability for, when playing couch co-op, each player to choose individual teams rather than both having to use the same team.
One of the greatest triumphs of this game is that it has a cohesive story. It centers on a select few characters, so your favorites may not get any screen time, but the game is much the better for the adjusted focus on a single narrative. Every character gets some brief exposition in the form of the sidequests and conversations in camp.
Warriors Orochi 3 also features a very comprehensive stage creation mode where one can turn any mission into their own scenario. There's a lot to adjust and get into to motivate players to investigate that mode, however, the online functionality seems to have some issues. I've never been able to download other players scenarios as advertised.
The online co-op also has some issues. After a single mission with your online partner, you are booted back to the "main camp," which is an anachronistic approach to online in a world of lobbies.
The few detractions one can make from this game do almost nothing to compromise the game's quality. Warriors Orochi 3 is the definitive "Warriors" title and it upgrades the formula in many respects, making it a fresh feeling title despite the gameplay's well-worn nature. Those who know what they are getting into should definitely pick this game up. | video-games_xbox |
Long Time 360 User & wo/ the XB1 Kinnect Its just OK. -----------------------
***UPDATE 9.15.2014***
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After returning this bundle and grabbing the XBOX One with Kinect, I will admit the XBOX One is a much better, more fluid and overall better experience in every aspect. While The $100 was hard to swallow for me, especially I have ZERO desire play any Kinect enabled games, the XB1 with the Kinect is just better. I love the voice commands and multitasking with the Kinect is just exactly what I thought the XB1 should/would be. I am not disappointed by it at all.
Keep in mind, if you get the XB1 w/ Kinect it has an ACTIVE MIC which will be on and let other people hear you in an online game, such as Madden. It annoyed me so I had to disable this feature when playing online via the Settings.
Again, if you get an XBOX One, I HIGHLY recommend getting it with the Kinect as the experience is much better. I am a happy camper now.
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***UPDATE 9.2.2014***
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I decided to return this bundle and get an XB1 with Kinnect bundle as the XB1 experience without the Kinnect is vastly subpar, mediocre, inferior, however you wish to word it. I will get use to the Metro style OS even though its not my favorite. I will not consider a PS4 because I have been using an Xbox 360 for years and all my friends on are Xbox.
As for the graphics, I did try a few other games and they graphics ARE better than 360 without a doubt. Some games, like COD Ghosts MARGINALLY look better but that is due to the Developers not making the game 1080p NOT because of the Xbox One capabilities. Some games look AMAZING, some, meh not so much.
I am going to leave my review 3-stars because without the Kinnect, the experience is just horrible IN MY OPINION. Do yourself a favor, get the Kinnect bundle.
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COMING FROM PS3 to 360 to XB1
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I was an original PS3 user until PSN when out for 3-4 months year back. At that point I bought a 360 and never looked back. I currently have a 360 250GB Slim with no issues and I still love it. I love the 360 interface/software and how easy it is to navigate and use, even as a first time user going from a PS3 to a 360 many years ago I didn't find it hard to navigate and get to know the 360 interface. Now I love it. I love a lot of the games, have played a lot of games but mainly I still play Madden 25, COD Ghosts and COD MW3 (yes MW3 still) most frequent. I am a HUGE fan of Madden series, even though they usually suck each year and I pay $60 for roster updates like an idiot conformist. For my birthday, I decided to buy an Xbox One and just snag the Madden 15 bundle.
Before I start, I first want to say I did NOT assume this came with a physical copy of Madden 15, anyone whom might have thought that is ignorant, no offense. To sum up my experience so far, I am still on the fence about the Xbox One altogether so far.
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SETUP
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The setup was easy and quick. That was good. I hooked it up to a Samsung 55" LED SmartTV via HDMI. Very easy and intuitive guide that walks you through setup.
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INTERFACE - METRO
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The next thing I noticed was the PATHETIC Metro 8.1 style interface/software, its just not as easy and far more cumbersome to navigate compared to the 360. Microsoft, seriously, Windows 8 or 8.1 is a joke, it's more of a joke on a non-touchscreen device, such as a TV... sometimes I wonder if companies ever get the general public's opinion on things before release (they don't).
If you're familiar and like Windows 8/8.1 this won't be an issue for you, other wise, it's different and far less intuitive on a non-touchscreen.
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GRAPHICS
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Am I missing something? I have an HDTV with the XB1 setup via HDMI, I even tried a different HDMI cable than the one that was included, but the graphics, well really NOT that impressed, not initially at least. Madden 15 looks marginally better than Madden 25 on 360. COD Ghosts looks IDENTICAL on XB1 compared to 360 especially since on the XB1 it runs at 720p (wow, pathetic). Titanfal, well that looks GOOD at best. It does NOT blow me out the water like many claim. Sometimes I wonder about peoples hyped up claims.
I have not played any other games, anybody have any recommends?
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KINNECT or KINNECTLESS
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I've never owned the Kinnect on my 360 and I opted not to get it for the XB1, but already I can tell its far less integrated without it, which is a down fall because I believe I have 0 use for a Kinnect. $399 without the Kinnect is a better deal, still not the best and it's still overpriced IMO, but at least it came with a $60-$70 game for free.
I don't need or want to talk to my XB1 but without doing so, so many of the marketed features are useless or extremely dumbed down. Very disappointing IMO. That's what I get for being poor and too ignorant to buy it with the Kinnect.
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HDMI PASSTHROUGH
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I did hook up my Comcast Motorala Cable box to the XB1, well without the Kinnect and it's IR (Infrared) capabilities, this is almost useless as it won't send any IR commands from the XB1 to the cable box without an IR cable or Kinnect. I would have some minor use for the Kinnect after all, oh well, I don't need to snap into TV while gaming. BTW, the snap feature is actually pretty cool all in all.
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IN THE END
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In the end, all I really want to do is game and the graphics have YET to impress me for a new generation console as much as I THOUGHT they would. Maybe give it more time? Maybe my vision will get better? Ha. Maybe I need to give it more time and try more games. Anybody have any recommends?
I guess at the end of the day I could have done more research on the Kinnect-less Xbox One bundle. As of now, I am disappointed more so than I thought I would. I am on the fence and I may even return the XB1 soon if I cannot get into it. I will keep trying the XB1 for another week or so and decide at that point if I want to keep it or return it.
I will update my review in a week or so. | video-games_xbox |
A Good Game With Typical Capcom Flaws (also about the "Blurry Text. First of all, I think that this is a very good game that could have been a great game with a better save system. You can read the other reviews to see why. Much like Devil May Cry 3, this is a very unforgiving game. If you mess up, prepare to spend 5-15 minutes running back through the level to get to where you were prior. Honestly, I don't know why developers still make games like this; it makes old fogeys with full-time jobs and responsibilities (like me) cry when I only have half an hour to play and have to spend it on the "run of shame" to the same boss fight I already lost. At least you can go out, "level up" Frank, and then save your game and start the story over but keep your new levels and moves. This can be very helpful, let me tell you. But even with the terrible save game system, Dead Rising is an excellent game that harkens back to George A. Romero's "Dead" films. If you're itching to kill hundreds and hundreds of zombies then I highly recommend this title.
If you don't care about the "blurry text" problem that people are experiencing, then please stop reading as the rest of this review is about this subject.
I noticed in a lot of reviews that people were not able to read the "blurry text" in the game on standard-definition televisions. I found this very interesting, because I have a standard definition television and the text, while small, was not blurry or impossible to read. And I think I've figured out why. The sad fact is that most people do not calibrate their televisions. The brightness is set too high and this causes the whites to wash out and "bleed" into adjacent areas. You can see this very well in any game that uses bright foreground objects against dark background objects or vice versa. Well, the Dead Rising text is so small that the "bleed" will make the text unreadable. I tested this theory and sure enough, when I turned up my television brightness past a certain point I could not read the text. So if you are experiencing blurry, unreadable text I suggest that you please try turning down the brightness (sometimes called the "picture") on your television. 90 percent of televisions sold today are shipped out with cruddy, overbright pictures and inaccurate colors in order to make them "stand out" on the showroom floor. However the picture quality suffers and this is a perfect example of it.
Sorry to spend over half the review on the blurry text issue, but it's a shame that some people are not able to play this game for such a minor issue. | video-games_xbox |
Max is back with a Vengeance. When I first heard about this game and that Rockstar would be developing it instead of the original developers at Remedy and then saw Rockstar's bald headed version of Max I worried if this game would capture the noir style I so loved in the original Max Payne and Max Payne 2. I'm happy to say that this game perfectly captured what I love about the Max Payne story.
In this game Max has left the United States in an attempt to basically run away from his "issues" surrounding the death of his family and his failed relationship with femme fatale Mona Sax. He's now working as private security for a wealthy family in Sao Paulo, Brazil. This new setting is a lot different than the previous two games, it's not as dark and foreboding as New York but I liked it. Putting Max in the middle of events in the Sao Paulo favelas that he doesn't at first have anything to do with is a nice twist.
One of the major elements of the first two games is back, Max's internal monologues. Those monologues in the first two games are what let players get to know Max. In this game he's extremely cynical and even more mentally messed up than in the first two games. The fact he's a flawed character I think is what made him likable. However I think in this game Rockstar almost over did it with the cynicism.
The missions are linear and straightforward...see bad guy, shoot bad guy. The inclusion of Max's signature "Bullet Time" where time slows down and you get a view of the bullet as it kills the enemy is really satisfying. I also liked the inclusion of a sort of "last stand" mechanic where if you shot the guy who shot you before you died you gained health. Unlike other games, health in this game comes from Max taking a dose of pills. Taking a dose of pills will make the screen get blurry for a few seconds so it's best to try to heal yourself behind cover. Finding does of pills in each level actually was kind of fun. It's a reminder when gamers had to find "health packs" before games all went to a regenerative health system.
The one drawback to this game is that there are some technical issues. I saw pop in and other graphical glitches, including some levels where the entire level would disappear and I'd have to re-start from a checkpoint, more often than I'd ever seen them in a Rockstar developed game. I also wasn't pleased with the MANY non-skippable cut scenes. I can understand forcing the player to go through each cut scene once because they are so vital to the story. But if I had to re-do a CheckPoint or entire level sitting through the cut scenes while the level loaded was really annoying.
Overall, this is one of my favorite games of the year and one that I will replay and even try the multiplayer, which I normally don't do. I hope that Rockstar keeps this franchise going and we won't have to wait another nine years for Max Payne 4. | video-games_xbox |
For beginners. I've always seen DDR games and they seemed fun but I could never get past a few steps before getting kicked out of a song.
When I read that this game has some tutorials for beginners, I thought I'd take the plunge and buy it. I was not disappointed.
The game begins with some tutorials that explain the basics of the game. However, it fails to tell you that you will not be penalized for extra steps or, more important, for leaving your foot on an arrow after you've hit it. The animations show the dancer return to the center position after each step. You will not advance very far if you do that. It's easier to leave your foot wherever it lands and then move to the next step from there.
From there it's on to the game. I was able to complete all the available songs at the Beginner stage in a couple days. From there I moved the difficulty level to Basic. Things started getting even more fun and I was getting more exercise (you have the option to keep track of calories burned each day, which is a great motivator to return to the game day after day.)
Unfortunately there are a couple of songs on the Basic level that are just impossible for a beginner and while I don't want to give up, I'm growing frustrated with them. If you try to skip them and go up to the next level up, the songs are in line with those 2 songs that I just can't get pass.
There is no middle ground. I would have liked to have some songs that are a bit more challenging at the Basic level but not to the point of those impossible songs. In other words, the difficulty level didn't increase slowly, it went from a good difficulty level for a beginner to crazy difficult.
The Quest mode is confusing. You dance to the songs perfectly, and yet it says "Failed." It makes no sense. It's also very repetitive "Dance to 35 songs." I don't have time to dance to 35 songs yet I can't seem to be able to save my progress.
The game overall is a lot of fun, and I'll keep trying to get past those 2 impossible songs. I guess that once I figure out how to master them, I'll be ready for the next difficulty level. It's just frustrating.
The pad itself is good enough most of the time. I don't have much problem with it slipping since the rubbery bottom of the pad adheres itself well to my laminate flooring.
If you are like me, someone who has been wanting to learn to play this game, this is the right version to get. | video-games_xbox |
THE BEST NFL FOOTBALL GAME HANDS DOWWN. In 2015, this is still the best football game. the graphics are adequate enough, and the presentation is beautifully done. The customization settings are great, The gameplay gives you total control of the game. You don't have that feeling that is too prevalent in madden where the plays are predetermined before the snap and will result in a 6 yard loss or 20 yard gain regardless of what buttons you push after the snap.
The game gives you great audibles, player control, a fantastic running game where if you're good enough, you can overcome poor blocking, and a great franchise experience that can feature multiple players and has a very entertaining draft, weekly sportscenter, and a computer that usually deals fair trades.
Eventually, the game shows it's age in a few areas. The AI computer is terrible at covering corner routes and can be easily exploited because of that. Also, the game does not really disguise it's coverage much, making it easy to know who's blitzing and if the computer is playing man or zone.
Still, the running game and presentation is what makes this game absolutely great. It's also much easier to reassign players after the snap than it is on madden, I can usually double a receiver, send some one on a blitz, and shift the line, secondary or linebackers before the snap without having to individually select the players by scrolling through everyone.
The audible system is also much better than madden's. it's very simple and very convenient. you can substitute players with the push of a button instead of having to plug them into a formation every single time, and can make defensive players play offense and vice versa.
The passing game is also fun. Minus the exploitable coverages, it's a fun process of beating the zones or man coverage with options of than corner route. This game is great when it's all said and done. Best football game ever made so far, which is sad because madden has been around way longer. | video-games_xbox |
Ryse: Exposing Jealousy & False Reviews. NOTE: This title is an exclusive for Xbox One, so MOST of the negative feedback will be simply placed here by angry Sony loyalists. Just remember this: Yeah, PS4 is slightly more popular than Xbox One at this moment in time, but just remember that Justin Bieber is the most popular performer in the world, currently. Does that make him "the best?" I'd argue that it doesn't.
That being said, I don't hold allegiance to Microsoft OR Sony, and I'm here to say that this game is amazing!!
It is essentially a "Hack n Slash" type game, like Dynasty Warriors, the LOTR Games, etc, however the plot is better and the idea of unlocking various graphic in-game executions is attractive for people who are fans of such films as "Gladiator," or "300."
You're basically playing as "Marius," a Roman Soldier fighting off Barbarian hoards who threaten your family and indeed Rome itself. The game will tug at your heart-strings early on, and you'll develop a disdain for the Barbarians very quickly.
I find the controls very easy to adapt to, with various prompts helping you issue voice commands and interact with the huge environments when needed. The maps are straight forward....You fight from beginning to end. Linear maps, not the "sand box" style of map. You have to kill and never look back...keep pressing forward!! You will have to climb up some ladders and low roof-tops to move on, and at first this can be confusing, as there are no prompts about what areas are climbable. You'll have to command archers, flank the enemy, topple ships & coaches, and many other things in order to succeed.
Remember the Xbox One is "watching" you (and listening) using the Kinect....the more energetic you are, and the more you rally your soldiers with verbal commands, the better off you'll be!!! Play the game with enthusiasm and you'll be rewarded greatly.
Lastly please note that this title is exceptionally gory, and should probably not be played in sensitive house-holds. Each enemy you encounter on the battlefield can be executed (rather violently) so make sure you're prepared for intense battles full of corpses & disembodied limbs. Using your hands, feet, sword, shield, and environment, hundreds of executions & combos are possible. (RATED M FOR "MATURE") | video-games_xbox |
All Star Lineup. The first game by Mistwalker Studios, the new project of Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi, Blue Dragon also features art by Dragonball/Dragon Quest artist Akira Toriyama and music by Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu. Does this all-star lineup lead for a quality game?
The story's main character is Shu, a young boy from a remote village. Every year, the village is attacked by a massive "land shark". One year, Shu and his friends decide to attack the land shark to avenge those it killed. Catching onto it as it tries to flee, they find a cavern full of ancient machines. The land shark turns out to be the fin of a great airship, which carries them up to a sky fortress. The story's villain, Nene, reveals himself and indicates that he had the land shark attack the village to amuse himself. The heroes are quickly defeated by him and removed from the ship, but an unknown benefactor carries them back up to the ship and grants them each a power hidden in their shadows. The friends work their way through the world, trying to gain strength and find allies to fight against Nene.
The game plays like almost any other RPG, with the same hit points, magic points, and turn-based system found in so many other games. There's a couple things that set Blue Dragon apart, though. Firstly, there are no "random" battles - like a few other games, Blue Dragon has enemies that appear on the map and can be avoided or pre-emptively attacked (or you can get attacked, too). Blue Dragon's main innovation in this part is that you can corral your enemies together in a radius around you before you start a battle, or specifically choose only one enemy when you are surrounded by a multitude. The main purpose of this is that sometimes enemies will fight each other - usually the strong preying on the weak - which means that you can level the playing field by finding monsters that dislike each other and grouping them together so that they fight amongst themselves.
In the battles themselves, Blue Dragon's main feature is the charge system - certain spells and attacks have a bar that, if stopped when they're full or close to full, do more damage but take longer to cast (whereas if it is empty or close to empty it takes less time but does less damage). There is also a class system, but rather than the characters the classes are assigned to the characters' shadows - the giant creatures that fight for them. These classes are nothing special - the usual mix of fighters and mages. There are different spells that can be bought at stores throughout the game.
The graphics in the game are really nice - they're in a smooth, non-gritty style appropriate for Toriyama's artwork. Everything feels "right" - the effects, characters, and environments all seem appropriate, and none of them have the problem that some games have where they feel too artificial. The designs in the game are definitely Akira Toriyama's style, the characters and airships especially are reminiscent of his designs in the original Dragonball.
The sound is nice - as expected of Nobuo Uematsu - but not really exceptional in any way. There were no songs that made me really take notice of them. During some boss fights, there are rock-and-roll type songs with actual singers and lyrics, which was pretty neat. There is voice acting in English, French, and Japanese, which is a pretty wide choice for such an expansive game. Each seemed to be pretty decent in quality, though none of it really stood out as being particularly well-acted.
As a whole, this game is "more of the same" for RPGs. It's good, but it's not different. If you like traditional RPG gameplay, then that's great, but it doesn't bring enough to the table to really distinguish itself. By itself, though, it's a pretty solid package.
8/10. | video-games_xbox |
Great game, even when aged a couple of years. I bought this game the day it was released for the Xbox, and I loved it. At some point, I got rid of my Xbox and all of my games and moved along to the Xbox 360. Now that I have the 360, I bought Forza again. This time, I got it for only $8, the best deal I've ever received on a videogame. I have owned just about every racing sim out there for consoles (every game in the Gran Turismo series, every Project Gotham Racing game, TOCA Driver, etc.). After playing all of these games, the first Forza still stands out as my favorite.
The graphics are good, not great. When under shade, the cars look kind of dull without much texture. However, when under light, the cars look great. The environments of the courses are really great, especially for an Xbox title. After owning Project Gotham Racing 3 for the Xbox 360, I am pleased with the graphics of Forza. PGR3 wasn't the most impressive looking game on the 360, and Forza isn't far behind. Remember, this is a title that was launched a couple of years ago on the original Xbox.
Graphics rating (out of 10): 7
The audio in the game is great, as far as car sounds are concerned. The music is not good, just like most driving games. The music consists of more techno-pop music that does nothing to increase enjoyability of the experience. In fact, I turn the music off completely. The car sounds, however, sound great. A Corvette sounds exactly as it does in real life, and a Mustang sounds exactly as it does in real life. Every car has its own individual sound, and they're all great. Plus, the sounds will change depending on what upgrades you make to the cars. If you place a larger engine into a car, or replace the exhaust with a new system, you'll know it.
Audio rating (out of 10): 8
The controls are great, the best of any racing game I've played. Each car has its own feel. The Enzo grips the road tightly as you speed around a corner at 120 mph, and a '70 Camaro slips all over the place when trying to make the same turn at 120 mph. Watch for understeer and oversteer too, they are present. The difference between a GTR car and a D class car is drastic. There's not much more to say other than Forza has the best controls of any driving game I've ever played.
Control rating (out of 10): 10
Fun factor is the most important aspect of any game. If a game isn't fun, you won't play it. Forza is for a specialized group of race fans. If you prefer the arcade style that the Need for Speed series delivers, you won't like Forza. Forza is a pure sim, that is extremely fun. The choices of customization are great. You can customize just about any part of your car from bumpers, to spoilers, to paint color, to window tint, to decals, to engine, to intercooler, etc. If the car has a part, you can most likely customize it. Don't forget the fact that there is car damage in this game. That's one aspect that I love over the Gran Turismo series. In Gran Turismo, you can slam into an opponent at 200 mph and bounce right off into a sharp turn. You can't do that in Forza. Not only is there damage in the appearance of your car, but the damage affects how your car handles. If your front bumper is hanging off of one side, your car will pull to that side. Also, there is tire wear, suspension damage, engine damage, and a few others. This isn't Burnout by any means, but the damage is realistic enough to make a difference in how you drive. Excellent fun factor with this game. After playing next-gen racing games, I still prefer this one over any of them.
Fun factor rating (out of 10): 10
I bought this game to hold me over until the new Forza for the 360 is released on May 29. I am happy that I once again made the decision to purchase it. This experience will definitely hold me over until the new one comes out.
Overall score (out of 10): 9 | video-games_xbox |
Worth buying. Like many other people, I was cautious about buying this one after I read reviews from the 'critics'. I picked up Warfighter during the Black Friday deals for $30. I just finished the campaign and I have to say I enjoyed it. There were a few big complaints that I read over and over while I was researching Warfighter:
1-Authenticity
2-Lack of emotional connection
3-Length
4-Campaign hard to follow
5-Driving sequences
Authenticity-Overall I thought the campaign was pretty authentic. I enjoyed the fact that it wasn't so fast paced as some other shooters out there. It wasn't all based on 'hollywood' type action(running and gunning). It did take skill and some strategy to get through some sections. The ability to peak around corners or over walls was a great. I really think this made the game feel fluid. On the flip side, you have unlimited ammo for your secondary piece. This, and the fact that you can ask for ammo at any point from your comrade's does detract from the realism. This didn't really bother me too much though. I've never been a big fan of scavenging for guns. The campaign is designed well enough that you depend on your primary weapon enough that you don't spend all your time using your secondary.
Lack of emotional connection- Contrary to what I read in reviews I thought there was plenty of emotional connection. You play as two different characters, Stump and Preacher. There is no emotional tie to Stump, but you do get involved in Preacher's story (and Mother's). Without getting too detailed, I'll just say I was: disturbed, angry and worried over Preacher and Mother's predicaments.
Length- I wouldn't have minded a longer campaign, but it wasn't so short that I felt robbed.
Campaign Hard to Follow- It was hard to follow at times, but the fact that it wasn't a completely linear story isn't a bad thing. The point behind the Medal of Honor series is authenticity. As I see it, Danger Close is giving us (the player) insight into the life of a Tier 1 soldier. Some of the missions nearer the beginning appear to be just that. Almost random in that they don't really connect with the rest of the story, but they do show how chaotic the life of these guys can/could be.
Driving Sequence- The driving sequences were almost refreshing. It was nice to do something a little different. I didn't have a problem with their length as I've heard some people mention.
Multiplayer - I've only played a few rounds of multiplayer, but I'm loving it so far.
To sum it up, the game has flaws, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. There were a few times where my AI teammates were literally walking on air. Sometimes it was inches and one time it was literally feet above the ground. This doesn't happen all the time. I thought the graphics were superb as far as XBOX games go. I would recommend it, but don't expect to be able to 'run and gun' through it. If I were to quantify my rating I would give it an 8. | video-games_xbox |
An addicting timewaster, but nothing to write home about. The title may be somewhat misleading, but this game is fantastic. It'll definitely be one of those you'll pick up to kill 30 minutes, then realize the sun is coming over the horizon. Very few things detract from quality, excepting if you buy the Xbox version, which has a lot of meat cut out of it, and is very fun. The only problem is the storyline has little in the way of originality, and while being retconned well, should've been more about the protagonist rather than follow the plot of The Godfather almost part for part.
Graphics: 8/10: Definitions are good, and the buildings, vehicles, and characters are well rendered. The fires are a little fake, but not obviously so. The character creation screen has great versatility, allowing for very good likenesses of whomever you wish, within reason.
Sound: 10/10: Voice acting is stupendous. Until I read otherwise, I'd thought Marlon Brando had done the voice acting for Vito, which he had, but was later replaced. Other character voices are easily recognized and spot on. The background music is well done, and the sound effects during combat are realistic.
Gameplay: 7/10: Some slight stumbles don't interrupt an otherwise smooth and almost intuitive fighting system. Hand-to-hand tries to emulate Fight Night, a lofty goal, but partially succeeds. Ranged combat is automated but still requires skill to make difficult shots. Relying on the computer is a sure path to defeat. Skill advancement is progressive and challenging without being overly hard to understand. The side missions and storyline missions are put together well, as each is a mini-tutorial for a particular skill set, rather than one monstrous training mission.
Story: 3/10: See above. While being the Don's right hand man is fun in its own right, I'd have liked to have had a more original storyline to follow, interacting with the Godfather story rather than being hammered into it.
Overall: 8/10. A solid piece, with great replay value. Something you can pick up and play over and over for the missions and sidequests. Just don't get the regular Xbox version, which was gutted like a fish. | video-games_xbox |
Awesome idea with a little room for improvement. Overall, I have to say I LOVE this game. I have been using it 3-4 times weekly for 4 months. I wish I could give it 5 stars, but there are just a few flaws that I truly hope are being worked on for a version 2 which I would buy with open arms.
What I LOVE:
-I love that each workout is different, this is the selling point for me. This is what makes this stand apart from exercise videos which get boring, predictable, and impossible to build muscle because you repeat the same moves over and over and over again. With this system, you are constantly challenged, intensity increases building stength.
-The workouts are pretty simple initially, and each workout she adds a new exercise or 2 so you are not overwhelmed with too many new or difficult exercises right away.
-I LOVE that you can use your own fitness equipment with the workouts, it adds variety to the workouts. I recommend having all of the possible equipment (stability ball, step, and hand weights). I plan to also get a heart rate monitor.
-I love the weight loss tips that it gives after each workout and I have encorporated several into my diet / exercise routines.
-You have a "physical challenge" every 10 workouts so that you can see your progress in different areas (upper body, lower body, core, flexibility).
-I love that there are different environments, I can pick an environment (desert oasis, dojo, mountain resort etc. . . ) to fit my mood (but you have to be consistent in your workouts to earn access to these new environments).
-I like the sound options, it's easy to increase the volume of the music and decrease the volume of Maya's voice which is more pleasant to me than the stock settings.
-Maya is life-like, fixes her hair, fidgets, ties her shoes, makes the whole experience seem more real. she even wears different outfits.
-I think it's great that there's a meditation garden for people who like yoga (which I don't).
What could be improved:
-Maya doesn't always start exercises on the same leg (for example marches start with the left leg, but kicks always start on the right leg). So it takes a few workouts to figure out which leg to start on.
-The music has MAJOR room for improvement, most of it sounds like techno to me. It's not music that you can recognize, sing to or want to dance to. It needs real dance music.
-I would like to see a greater variety of cardio / dance moves.
-Every once in a while it will show you that a break is coming up, but the break gets skipped and you have to keep exercising. This can be tiring.
-I wish you had the option to tell it that you'd like more or less of certain moves. Some moves put too much stress on an injured part of my body and I'd rather not do those moves.
-My main complaint with this game is that you cannot customize the workouts to include more cardio. You can choose "weight loss" or "cardio" options for your workout and those workouts will be mostly cardio, but if you choose upper body strength, lower body strength, core, or flexibility, then these workouts have much less cardio and focus much more on those areas of strength training. What I have been doing lately that is working well for me, I choose the 30 min workout which has 10 min warm-up and cardio, 20 min of strength training. That's just not enough cardio for me, so after the 10 min cardio section, the game always pauses and asks how you're doing (and you can answer "no sweat", "I was working hard" or "I couldn't keep up"), I pause the game there and turn on my own work out music and dance for another 10 to 15 mins giving myself an overall much better well rounded workout. I would love the ability to customize the workout, to choose a 45 min workout and ask for 25 min cardio, 20 min strength training. (I have tried the built in 45 min workout several times and it gives still only about 15 mins cardio and the rest strength training).
-So how I use this video: I don't choose what it selects for me, instead I use the game 3 times per week, once upper body, once lower body, and once core body strength. I do 30 min exercises each time adding in my extra 10 - 15 mins cardio each time, this is a perfect regimen for me.
-I wish the calendar to plan workouts was a real dated calendar. It's week by week and since my schedule changes each week, if I don't make sure to update it before the new week, it might think I missed a workout (when you miss workouts she gets on your case which is a good thing, but you also lose ground toward opening up new exercise environments which is a bad thing).
Overall a GREAT product, one that I use every week and I am definitely seeing results, I am stronger and more toned, I have more energy and endurnance. I can't wait for the revised version if there will be one! | video-games_xbox |
This was a regression. Star Wars Knights of the old republic 2 this had so much potential
Introduction
Bioware developed the first Kotor for xbox and pc a Star wars epic That Microsoft should do an hd remaster of no Offense for xbox one
Bioware wanted to work on something new so Obsidan got the chance to make a followup
the problem is the characters and plot
you are a Jedi that has been exiled Fantastic after spending all that time focusing on revan and the last story lets throw it out the window for a generic Jedi no one cares about
who takes like 13 hours to get his lightsaber and be a jedi
whos actions Are pointless
the characters are Generic ripoffs of the last Game
Example
Kriea is malik
Atton is carth
Mandolore is canderous
etc
The problem with these characters is this they lack character
I knew kreia was a villain the moment I Answered the opposite led to her dislike of me and I started moving toward the light side
The exile is not allowed back into the order which is dumb the jedi seem to have no intrest in keeping a watch on him and have disappeared all this comes off rushed and makes the jedi look dumb and the exile incredibly nave
The planets also are more boring this time Malacore 5 is great as is doesn't make up for korriban what happened why was korriban included except for the cave sequence
why is atton and the crew so dumb
how does no one figure out kreia's plan its incredible stupid everyone says kreia is complex no shes not shes a villain who acts like a hero and tricks everyone into being her tool its incredibly dumb
And why Are bastilla carth and malak in this piece of crap it just ruins the chance to tell a new story who wrote this story Theres three jedi all of which are interchangeable Vrook and the nar shadda jedi are the same character
Atris is the only compelling character here and no one else except handmaiden and bao dur
Overall A Huge step down Hopefully there will be a third game that focuses on revan an rpg not online mmo | video-games_xbox |
Great System, No Problems With Heat For Me. I decided to purchase an Xbox 360 after doing more research on the RRoD issue that plagued earlier consoles. I learned that Microsoft has been gradually attempting to completely solve the problem by changing the size of the CPU and GPU with each new remodel they released. The company also began to shrink the power supply voltage in attempts to decrease the overall heat output of the console. So, after learning all of this I went out and purchased an Xbox 360 Arcade. I made sure to look for all of the indicators that point to having the newest chipset, codenamed "Jasper". After purchasing it, and taking it home, I saw the 150w power supply that went along perfectly with the numbers on the back of the console to verify that I had indeed got a Jasper. After playing the console for several hours, and then pressing my hand against the vents that dissipate the hot internal air, I actually discovered that this newer model actually remains cooler than even my 60GB PlayStation 3 does. A shocking discovery for me.
The Xbox 360 features a unique interface for interacting with the console and navigating through its various fields available, such as "music" and other settings. This interface is known as the Xbox 360 Dashboard, and it works marvelously. The Dashboard provides the user with various choices such as "Profiles", "Music", and other settings that allow the player to manipulate the console. By plugging in external devices, such as a flash drive or an external harddrive, the console is capable of streaming media, and can even play songs off these devices while in the middle of gameplay. To access the Dashboard, simply press the centrally located "Xbox" button on the controller. This brings up the menu in which a player can navigate through.
The controller is also well designed. With a nice rounded shape to it, my hands can easily, and firmly, grasp the controller. The shoulder buttons are the perfect distance away from my fingers, allowing for a more natural positioning of my fingers over the buttons when needed. The analog sticks have a great feel, keeping enough grip to avoid unnecessary finger slipping in the midst of gaming sessions. The only major problem with the controller is the horrible design of the D-Pad. The directional pad is designed to be a singular button with all the directions connected in the form of a circle. This design is the exact same one utilized by Sega for the Genesis. This makes gaming difficult at times since hitting a mid-direction, such as down-forward (or as I call them, the diagonal directions) usually results in the wrong input. This doesn't hurt the experience enough to stop the player from using the d-pad though, but it is an annoyance that Microsoft overlooked during the design phase.
The Arcade edition lacks a harddrive needed to download Xbox Live Games, or to play emulated Xbox Original titles that may have been missed. However, these can be found for quite a low price these days, and can be added later on when one has the desire to play old Xbox games such as Halo: Combat Evolved. The included memory is plenty for saving games, and it has enough to even upgrade to "The New Xbox Experience" and still have enough storage free to save additional game saves as well.
The Xbox 360 is a great choice for anyone looking for the most diverse selection of games in this current generation of gaming consoles. From RPGS (Star Ocean, Lost Odyssey, Mass Effect etc.), Shooters (Gears of War, Halo, Left 4 Dead, etc.), Sports, Action (Prince of Persia, Tomb Raider, Ninja Blade), Fighting (BlazBlue, Street Fighter IV), to anything in between, the Xbox 360 has a large enough library to satisfy any genre taste that one may have.
Having owned my Xbox 360 for a while now, I can truly say I have missed out on a lot by not picking one up sooner. Now I use my Xbox 360 on a daily basis, and the large selection of games that I still wish to purchase continues to grow. My PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 both get an equal amount of playing time, and sometimes it's hard to decide which one to play since they are both excellent consoles with their own great lineups of exclusives. I'd recommend the 360 to anyone looking for a next generation console since it has the widest variety of games out of the three currently on the market. My only complaint about the console is the d-pad on the controller. The d-pad is designed exactly like the one used on the Sega Genesis. It features all four directions connected as one solid button, whereas other consoles usually have each direction of the d-pad separated from the rest of the directions. This is a minor inconvenience and can be overlooked since the games are still 100% playable with the d-pad, I just wish it was designed different. I've been loving the hours of playtime I've received from this console, I just wish I had purchased an Xbox 360 earlier is all! | video-games_xbox |
For what they are, they get the job done. I bought a pair of these from gamestop about 4 months ago, I wanted something to use with my PC and my xbox and my PS3. The audio quality is decent for an analog stereo headset, there's minor white noise produced from the analog setup but nothing unbearable. Comfort has been an issue though, as a gamer with glasses I know I'll never find the perfect over the ear set; but with that in mind I have just been bearing sore ears after 30 mins of game play.
Luckily that all changed today, you see I was wearing them wrong FAIL! If you pay attention to the cups you notice they're ear shaped, well the band is meant to rest forward on top of your head not center like I've been wearing them ( like every other over the ear set of cans).And making sure the ear cup was lined up with my ears properly. After discovering this my comfort issue's are pretty much gone completely! Even my glasses don't bother me as much as they had before.
Now the sound is good in Call of Duty on the xbox, you do get some positional hearing; and footsteps are clear as day. But you don't get perfect directional sound, well sense I don't want to fork over $200+ on some other cans I plan to remedy this issue with the <a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Ear-Force-DSS-7-1-Channel-Dolby-Surround-Sound-Processor/dp/B003O0KICS/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Ear Force DSS 7.1 Channel Dolby Surround Sound Processor</a> from turtlebeach. It uses the same chipset as their $200 x41's (also only a stereo headset with surround simulation) so the simulated surround should be pretty good. And the overall sound quality should improve greatly since they'll basically be transformed into a digital headset thanks to the optical connection on the DSS. I hope this review helps anyone out there on the fence about these I highly suggest you try these out. | video-games_xbox |
Lots of gaming for your buck. Color me crazy but I just don't "get" Half-Life 2. The original that is, I just was never a big fan of it yet everyone who talks about great single-player experiences always references the game and yet for me personally I could just never really get into it. So why am I checking out the Orange Box, which collects that, plus its episodes as well as Portal and Team Fortress 2? Well, can't beat that price since I've seen fully brand-new copies at 20$ plus it has 5 games in it so based on that, you'd think the Orange Box is one of the best things ever to get and it is, since a lot of people enjoy Half-Life 2 and its episodes, many LOVE Portal as well as the goofiness and zany qualities of Team Fortress 2 so I'd definately recommend the Orange Box since it's got Portal on it. Sure it's short but I don't care.
Half-Life 2: The game centers on the important-yet-mute Gordon Freeman, a scientist last seen in the mishaps at Black Mesa (the first Half-Life) and is now entering City 17 which is being overrun by the Combine. With Alyx Vance, her dad Eli, Alyx's pet robot DOG as well as your trusty Gravity Gun, "The Freeman" (as called by the vortigaunts) must escape the Combine and hopefully figure out what the Combine are up to.
For starters, Half-Life 2's design is just plain odd to me. Many times I'll be on the run, being chased yet I gotta spend a few minutes putting bricks on a seesaw or getting out of my buggy every 3 minutes to turn off a force field. At least Bungie makes vehicle sections short but awesome, Valve seem to make their vehicle sections long for the sake of being long and it's my one gripe about the game. But the best part is using the Gravity Gun since it can become a formidable weapon as well as a puzzle solver. Grabbing saw blades to cut zombies in two? Awesome. Grabbing energy balls and vaporizing the Combine? Sweet. And unlike other FPS games, all items you find you keep and sure it doesn't make sense how Gordon has the pockets for a shotgun, assault rifle, rocket launcher, 2 handguns, a bowgun, a crowbar, a pulse rifle AND the gravity gun, being able to switch on the fly helps keeps combat fresh. I'd say of the 5 games here, this one's my least favorite.
Half-Life 2: Episode One and Two: After the end of the last game, Gordon and Alyx are on the run from the Combine after they've stolen something of incredible worth. There's not much to Episode One other than sewers, puzzles and helping to evacuate City 17 but it's short and sweet so it's not too bad. Episode Two however is awesome with 2 major events happening to Alyx, another glimpse and slightly more insight into the "G-Man" as well as epic encounters between DOG and a Strider and a 13 Strider attack (the achievement for this is a *****!") It looks the best though it's got its share of dull sections but the better of it as a whole.
Portal: You play as Chell, a test subject at Aperture Science where you go through 19 testchambers involving puzzles and physics, your portal gun, your Weighted Companion Cube and gLaDoS, the Computer AI overseeing your tests. This game is short and I can probably knock it off in about an hour now but there's no funnier or awesome experience than Portal. The lines, the Cube, that SONG! The puzzles are braintesting (at first) but its still one of the top games I've played and definately my favorite from Valve.
Team Fortress 2: Like Killzone 2, TF2 relies on various classes for this multiplayer-only game. Unlike Gears of War or Halo 3 where weapons have to be found or Call of Duty where you can have a specific weapon loudout, you instead choose classes that will act differently on the battlefield. Some can set up defensive turrets, some heal others with their medic gun while you got the heavy, a mini-gun toting big dude (the guy on the right on the box). Then you got favorites like the flamethrower Pyro or the Spy who like to cloak themselves and disguise themselves as enemy players. It's a frantic and fun multiplayer however since this is the Xbox 360 version, it doesn't have the frequent updates, patches and whatnot that the PC version gets and this game still has exploits and cheats so if you want the achievements, I'd say boost this one but for the definitive Team Fortress 2 experience, get the PC version.
The Orange Box is a strange game collection to be sure. The best game on it as it at best 2-3 hours long, the multiplayer-only one is better on the PC but if you don't own a quality gaming PC rig, there's not a lot better than the Orange Box....aside from TF2 updates. Come on Valve! | video-games_xbox |
85 out of 100 is a fair score. I am not a fanboy of any game so I will try to write a review that doesn't show any favoritism for this game, nor hate for another game, such as tekken (there is a no life troll giving negative feedback on all the reviews that are being written, probably a tekken fanboy)
It has been half a decade since the last installment of dead or alive. And with that comes expectation from the fans that the new title will be vastly improved. This game doesn't fully satisfy that expectation, which probably is the reason why there are so many mixed reviews about this game out there.
Cons
1. Fewer costumes (they are probably doing this intentionally to sell costumes for a fee later in the future)
2. Graphic improvements does not justify how long fans have been waiting for this game
3. SOME lag online (pretty standard lag in any fighter titles really. some mathces are lag free, others suffer from lag, i would say 70% lag free 30% lag)
4. Bugs (ex, if you switch system voice to japanese, and you restart the game, the settings are not saved. Game replay save glitch)
Pros
1. Core gameplay has not been messed with
2. Depth and balance within the fighting mechanics
3. Sweat and dirt effect on players
4. Great variety of well designed maps
All in all, this is a good game simply for the deep and balanced fighting mechanics. However, graphics or presentation of the game itself simply has not improved much considering it's been more than 5 years since the last installment. The learning curve has gotten a bit steeper as well, and the countering mechanism has been more difficult to use. Your counter input has to be VERY quick and precise than it was in DOA 4, which makes random counter spams less likely. At the same time, if tecmo were to eliminate the countering system altogether, you basically end up with a fighter with 2 attack buttons. Luckily they realized this and the counter system is still there, albeit alot more difficult to pull off with consistency.
I think my score of 80 to 85 is a fair score. If there are people that think this game deserves a 9.5 or 10, they are obviously fanboys. And to the troll that is giving negative feedback on all the reviews, just go and play your tekken. | video-games_xbox |
Beware of sexist content. I *loved* Titanfall 1, so I was super excited that they were making Titanfall 2 - especially after I saw a video demo of the grappling hook. I really wanted to love this game. I preordered it.
The first evening of gameplay was ok. I explored the settings and customization options for a while. It feels a lot shinier, but maybe a bit too complicated / non-intuitive. I looked for the "training" section for a while. I expected the training to be a top-level menu item like in Titanfall 1. Eventually I decided to see if Campaign mode secretly incorporated the training sequences, and it does. The training itself was more enjoyable. I wish I could access the training section without having to wait through all of the campaign story sequences. After completing basic training I played a little of campaign mode. It's a very immersive experience - until I got called by a dude's name or spoke with a dude's voice and the illusion that *I* might be having this adventure immediately died. I wish they had the option of playing Campaign mode as a woman.
The next day I played a game in multiplayer mode: Attrition. Attrition was my favorite game mode in Titanfall 1. I expected to like it in Titanfall 2 too. During my first game I was able to take down a couple grunts and even a titan or two. As expected, I was too inexperienced to take down other pilots.
Pretty much every time I got killed by a pilot, I was in for an ugly surprise: Along with the name of the user who killed me, Titanfall 2 also displays the enemy pilot's "callsign" banner. Players unlock more callsigns as they progress in the game. I got killed *a lot* during my first game, so I ended up looking at the naked butt cheeks of the half-naked woman in the sexist image called "Lady and the Titan" *many* times. An instant buzzkill.
After my first multiplayer game I stopped playing Titanfall 2. The disk now is buried underneath a stack of Wii U games (with the label facing the wall so I don't have to look at the game). I hate it so much! :( Who wants to constantly be reminded of the objectification of women while playing a game? Who wants to play against people who think that sexist images are cool? Not me...
I'm baffled by Respawns choice to include the "Lady and the Titan" banner in the game [...]. It's 2016. They should know better. Inclusive design isn't a new concept. Why cater to sexist people? Titanfall 1 was successful without that content. They've proven that they don't need this type of sexism in the game in order to be successful. Why sink so low??? Why add unnecessary content that makes the game less enjoyable or even unplayable for a subset of people?
I read that in addition to the sexist callsign banner, there is other sexist content for decorating your titans, etc. I haven't actually seen that content. But it's disappointing to hear that it exists. :( | video-games_xbox |
Worked great for the first charge. <div id="video-block-R27NN9MFWFD1DU" class="a-section a-spacing-small a-spacing-top-mini video-block"></div><input type="hidden" name="" value="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/D1sseKq5SuS.mp4" class="video-url"><input type="hidden" name="" value="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/A1kyHvvI07S.png" class="video-slate-img-url"> Well maybe I got a lemon but these already won't turn on off my first full drain and charge. I have tried to charge them via usb connected to the xbox one, generic wall charger, and laptop to no avail. No matter how long I hold the power button down they will not turn on (and the red light showing that they were charging was on, it is no longer on as they are supposed to be fully charged. Any help or advice would be appreciated (waiting to hear back from TB support).
So while they worked
Setup
I had these up and running in about 10 minutes. The transmitter connects via usb AND optical cable. I used <a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/ViewHD-SPDIF-TOSLINK-Digital-Optical-Audio-Switcher-3x1-with-Remote-Three-Inputs-to-One-Output/dp/B00G188Z7A/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">ViewHD SPDIF | TOSLINK Digital Optical Audio Switcher 3x1 with Remote (Three Inputs to One Output)</a> so that I could have my soundbar and headset transmitter connected at the same time. Works great. There is only one audio optical out on the xbox one so you will need something like this if you have multiple audio devices with optical usage.
The headset paired very easily and sound was working very quickly.
I updated the firmware later on and it took another 15 minutes as you have to download a TB program and then update them.
Wireless?
Absolutely wireless-yes! No connection to controller or console needed.
Comfortable?
I have worn these for about 3-4 hours straight without any discomfort. They are comfortable by my standards.
Sound
I am not an audiophile but I have owned other TB's in the past, and these have the best sound quality I have experienced in headset. Gunshots and explosions in COD AW sound great. I have never owned any other brand so I can't really compare to astros ect.
Now as others have said these don't get CRAZY loud. I probably have them at 75% loudness and it is very crisp and a good volume for me. If I put them all the way up it is too loud for me but honestly I expected them to get louder. I'll put it this way, it is too loud for me but it doesn't hurt my ears.
The presets work well as you can definitely tell the difference when surround is on and when it is not. There is gaming mode (with four different settings like shooter, sports, racing), movie mode (with horror, action, drama), and music (with dance, acoustic, stadium), and SS off.
Charge
I probably played 10-15 hours for the first drain. FYI they beeped twice letting me know that the battery was drained. THere is no capability to use batteries or a charging pack (which would have been nice).
Mic
So I wasn't exactly thrilled with the mic either. It has three settings for sensitivity on the headset. I found myself having to talk pretty loudly for it to pick up my voice even on the most sensitive setting and it didn't work on the least sensitive. It is nice that the mic pics up your voice and then you can hear it through the headset.
The mic does plug in or out so you don't have to walk around with a mic if you don't want too.
Noise cancellation
So I could hear outside noise with these on which is fine by me. I am sure if you had it on the loudest setting though, you would not hear much outside noise.
Different uses
You can use these for PC (mic doesnt work). I have not tried other uses yet but it does have headphone output as well.
So if these had continue to work I would give them 4.5 stars. Sound is very good, could be louder. Mic is a little finicky. | video-games_xbox |
If Youre Passionate About Titanfall 1, Then DO NOT Get Titanfall 2. I would've given this two stars, but there's entirely too much to hate as compared to the original.
I absolutely loved the first TF. When I heard they were launching it, I nearly lost my mind. Then, I played the beta. I was beyond heartbroken. They essentially gutted the spirit of what made TF1 so beautiful. They essentially remade the game into something akin to a Call of Duty: Black Ops in Space
So, against my better judgment, I bought the game anyway. I played the multiplayer for about four hours. I seriously wanted nothing more than to like the sequel. I even tried to force myself to play it for about 2-hours longer than when I became bored.
ARTWORK
Some things are better looking such as the lobby animations. However, overall, the artwork doesnt give that detailed gritty feeling that you got from the original. Theres a lot less detail and the maps are much smaller.
Furthermore, the maps are NOT geared towards the parkour movement of the original. The maps are just not well designed for the feel of what one would expect to be a Titanfall branded game.
In TF-1, the colors are muted and realistic looking. In TF-2, things look cartoony with a loud color palette. You feel like you're at an arcade playing one of those shooters with the toy rifles and everything is just coming at you in all the colors of the rainbow.
GAMEPLAY
Instead of a blanket upgrading system where your upgrades allow you access to certain weapons, theyve added more granularity by making weapons upgradable as well. So, you might start with a Level 1 rifle that can be leveled up and upgraded accordingly. This is while you're leveling up as a pilot which allows you access to more advanced weapons in each class.
The titans weapons and characteristics cannot be interchangeable in the way that we saw with TF1. Some of the secondary abilities can be changed. However, titans can be upgraded within the context of their static loadout. So, what you see is what you get for the most part. I actually like that I could use three different chassis and arm them with customizable loadouts. To me, this seemed like a better way to adapt/develop the choices to ones play style. With TF-2, I pretty much have to commit to a certain Titan vs a certain package of features.
The final straw for me was the implementation of the shield dome. In TF-1, if you called on a Titan, youd have a shield dome protecting the Titan for a short period of time. You could get a Titan customization that could extend this time. Now, in TF-2, you either get the shield dome or the titan warp customization. Why is this important? If you're trying to make a tactical move involving a Titan that you cant immediately jump into, then you're SOL. Your Titan falls and is immediately taking damage.
There aren't as many of the Grunts and Androids to kill. I liked these because it was cool to shoot them. Many dislike the Smart Pistol, but I loved it as a primary weapon. It actually increased the hazard of the warzone. It made you a better player if someone was using it against you and there wasn't a guarantee that you would dominate if you were using it. Now, its been completely neutered as a perk that can only be used with 24 rounds. Wow. Just wow.
Speaking of primary weapons. Heres where the absurdity of the game decisions reaches a pinnacle. Pilots can ONLY carry a primary weapon and wait for it a pistol OR anti-titan weapon!!! So, yeah, you run out of ammo on your primary weapon and no quick switching to a nice pistol if you want to kill Titans also. So, theyve effectively neutered the pilot. [Game developers, what were you thinking?]
CUSTOMIZATION
Theyve added more customization abilities such as the ability to reskin your weapons and your Titan. This includes patches and team names. What I don't like about it is that it seems like they just through this feature on without much thought on the actual UI. Its a bit confusing to implement.
Did I say you can only have two weapons at a time while a pilot? Primary + pistol or primary + Anti-Titan?
SUMMARY
I could go on about other things. This game feels like they fired the original team during early development. Then hired a whole new team that never worked on or played the original. This new team was confused so they looked over the notes of the previous team and then made the best game that they could. Another theory is that since they went multiplatform, they couldn't use Microsoft's Azure cloud abilities to do much of the heavy backend lifting as was the case in the original. Hence, they had to make a lite game and used the COD: Black Ops resources/model to fill in the gaps. | video-games_xbox |
Monopoly of Chaos. If you need a relaxing break from binging on high energy RTS games like Starcraft, try this one. I'll play it before sleeping thinking I'll be at it for a few minutes, only to look up to find the morning birds are chirping, way past my bedtime.
There's nothing particularly innovative here. You'll recognize any element of this game somewhere else: Risk, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Final Fantasy, Statego, Yu-gi-oh, even Monopoly. The point is that these elements all combine into a multilayered system, which I suppose makes it unique in a way. I'll give bonus points to the combat system, much more satisfying than Final Fantasy, which I never understood: take turns and attack? Although, you get only one type of army for each of your commanders (corresponding in theme) and they generally simply charge mindlessly forward. Some strategy will be needed on how to use your commander.
There are some minor issues with the gameplay. The 'undo' on one menu, using an already cumbersome RightTrigger-Select combo, appears to be broken, so that it is far easier to simply exit and re-enter the menu than to try to get it to work.
The font is a bit difficult but you can get use to it. The load times are noticeable going in and out of 'the shop' to buy and sell items. If you've grown up playing playstation rather than nintendo, this should only slightly bother you. 'The shop' is a ubiquitous place fronted by a bunny-girl whose inventory depends on the kind of market place you go to. A liking to RPGs of yore. During the cutscenes, there is a trace of a sound dialogue clip. Seems like its trying to load the sound and the picture ikon at the same time.
The three commanders you create at the beginning of the game are not your playing characters per se. They will be randomly placed somewhere on the map. This can work for you or against you later on, and is also the primary randomizing element of the game.
The GUI uses menus of three letter commands. If you have any history with RPGs, these should be easy to figure out without needing to read the manual. A few will make you scratch your head a bit, but not too bad.
The first few days after getting the game will be spent figuring out the commands (insist on figuring them out yourself) and the gameplay. By the second week, you will be needing to get around to looking at the manual. By the time you get to reading the downloadable(free) strategy guide, somewhere in the middle of the second week, you really won't need it. Read it anyway to see if there is anything not intuitive you haven't figured out yet (like how to build things).
Once you get going, its really about as difficult a game as Monopoly. With 9+1 players.
Overall grade: a pleasing but not brilliant B+ | video-games_xbox |
Potential wasted. Please be aware that my review does include spoilers, so if you are not willing to risk reading them, please do not read further than the next couple of paragraphs:
Allow me some background information first: I picked up the original Assassin's Creed game as a used "Platnimum Edition" title from a local Stop for Games. At the time, I had finished Gears of War 1 and 2, was sick of paying Madden 09 and after reading about AC and looking at it for so long, I figured that it was time to give it a shot.. Hey, it was only $14.99 and I could easily return it if I didn't like it. I immediately fell in love with the game thanks to everything it presented, from the plot, the storyline, the historical inclusions and references, the gross attention to detail and historical accuracies, while still feeling free to take some liberty with details, etc. The graphics were superb and I was overwhelmingly charmed by the map "synching" such that I found any excuse to climb up any tower or high structure that I could find just so that I could drop my jaw and marvel at the view and scope that the game presented. Yeah, the gameplay could be repetitive: eavesdropping on templar agents; pick-pocketing others, and helping citizens around the city, over, and over, and over again. But the game more than makes up for it in the end.
Then AC2 came out in '09 and my gaming world changed forever. Yes, AC2 was THAT damn good! I spent my entire Thanksgiving weekend (all four days of it) glued to AC2 and did not put it down other than for bathroom breaks and meals. My wife must have thought that I had a stroke as she came to check in on me numerous times that weekend. It was just that damn good and was so damn immersive and addictive that I just could not stop playing! Not to answer the phone, not to walk the dog, not to shave, nothing! My jaw dropped to the floor when Ezio's father and brothers were executed and I all but shouted at the screen as the events played out before me; I cheered wildly when I got revenge on the traitor; I was shocked beyond words when Minerva looked straight at the screen and begins speaking to Desmond; I cried when the story/game came to an end and there was nothing more to do but to go back and finish the challenges and continue hunting for achievements.
Unforunately, with Brotherhood and Revelations, I don't feel that level of wonder and connection, and I doubt it's because I've become more cynical over the last several years. It's just not that immersive or engrossing, the game play mechanics changed too much for the negative, and I don't feel that same connection to the story or Ezio as I did with AC2.
Revelations is a good game, don't get me wrong, but it's nothing like what AC2 was, or what Revelations could have, and should have been. Being the end of Ezio's storyline in the series, this game should have been the crowning achievement, learning from the mistakes made in AC2 and Brotherhood; removing anything that took away from those games -although AC2 had so few negative issues to begin with- to make Revelations the best possible AC game that could be made.
I actually feel that the dungeon sequences are dumbed down to allow the kiddie or novice players to succeed more often than the would in the past two games, and it's a shame, because the challenges presented in AC2's dungeons required thought and skill. In Revelations, you need only keep the run button held down, and aim the left stick in the right direction, with a fair amount of leeway for error being provided. I believe this has a lot to do with the complaints received about how Brotherhood took those dungeon challenges a hair too far on the difficulty scale, as for most dungeons, you were provided 6 minutes to complete them for 100% synchronization, which actually required 5:50 or so to finish with no errors. If you missed just ONE SINGLE LEAP or took ONE wrong turn, you failed and needed to try over and over again from the beginning, if you were aiming for 100%. To provide an example of how easy the dungeons have become in Revelations, I completed Vlad's dungeon with plenty of time to spare to open all of the treasure chests, find and open the hidden door, AND get the seal before the countdown chimes even began, and hardly broke a mental sweat in the process.
The inclusion of a bomb system, while it sounds like a great idea on paper, fails miserably in execution. You would think that something as powerful as an actual grenade-like bomb, would be far more challenging to construct and to find the parts to build them with. Instead, parts are provided with every body or treasure chest searched, or available at black market dealers. Worse, I've used only two or three of them so far into this game and can't find a reason yet to use the others. Perhaps they'll be more useful in the multiplayer of the game, but in the campaign, they're just a cute gimmick, whose novelty wears off after a few moments. To really shove the game's nose into the mud even further, these "bombs", while historically accurate in timeliness, are grossly inaccurate in their use, their availability and in their usefulness. I realize that it is just a game, but for a series that puts a lot of time, money and emphasis in historical accuracy, it's inexecusable to take such liberty with such a shotty (get it?? "shotty"?? ... bombs?? hahahahah!) game mechanic which would have been better left out, or scaled back in it's scope and us, and the inclusion of something far better.
Desmond's time in this game could be more involved and indepth than just running around challenge Max-Hendron inspired rooms and video/audio memories. Yes, I have not yet completed the game, but from what I've seen so far, it does not appear that Desmond will have a major role in the remainder of the game.
The majority of the new weapons and combat moves are great, and thoroughly satisfying. I still get such a kick from and dearly love watching one of Ezio's dagger/knife move, where in he falls to his knees and stabs his opponent's foot, waiting for him or her to double over in pain, and then swiftly stands up, removing the blade and disemboweling his opponent with a vertical slash!! It's shamefully gratifying to watch!) The new hook blade feels like more of a 'gimme' addition as an afterthought, just to create a new travel mechanic and not much more: the zip-lines are a neat addition with limited usefulness and quickly wear out their novelty; You could already reach out and stop your fall with a quickly pressed button at just the right moment, so the hook-blade isn't needed here either. The Hook-Theft, Hook-Throw, and Hook-Roll are great and almost as satisfying to watch as other moves, but really just feel like new material to flesh out the blade's usefullness. And for someone such as myself who cheerishs a certain level of realism in his games, understanding how a hooked 'blade' can stab someone is very difficult for me to fathom and believe.
The combat in the series has slowly become more dumbed down since AC2. It's great that you can counter-kill your opponents, and it's nice to be able to chain that kill into another every now and again, but instead of elaborating on that and making counters context button sensitive, Brotherhood and Revelations make it just too damn easy to take out a crowd of 8-10 guards in just a few moments. Simply hold down the block button, and press the attack button as your opponent ends their swing at you while moving the left thumb stick in the direction of your next target, and voila!! Your minced Ottoman Guard is complete! It's way too easy... I get the idea that it's to convey that you, playing as Ezio, are a Master Assassin and a killing machine.. But it makes the combat seem slightly less enjoyable when you only need to hit two buttons during a very wide open window of time. Inspite of this, it's still very satisfying to watch the combat flow and the various attack manuevers of which there seems to be limitless variations of, but it's still just too easy at times.
The den-defense mini-game is beyond ridiculous and I absolutely hate it. I'm loathe to ignore it however because I just can't stand constant reminders popping up on the mini-map, but this is something that should have been rethought, re-designed, or better still, completely RE-MOVED before the game was released. I despise this mini-game so much that I'm not going to spend more time on it beyond this: It sucks. It should never have been included. And whoever thought of it and got it into the game, should be fired immediately.... Moving on.
I'm glad that "Find the... flag, feather, artifact, etc.." collectibles have been toned down on their importance, as it was such a pain in the butt to find all 100 feathers from AC2 -it took me almost 9 months to find all 100, even with the guide book map as reference, as you have to retrace your steps and w/o cheating by using the in game map to show you roughly where the missed feathers are, this can take a long time. I still haven't found all of the Borgia flags either from ACB largely because I'm fed up with re-runnning the same dungeons over and over to get the flags that I missed. Yes, this flag/feather mechanic clearly added replay value, as myself and others were so intent on finding the missing flags or feathers that much time was spent finding them all and gained achievements for doing so are present in all of the titles. In AC2 however, there was a PLOT/STORY REASONING for finding all 100 feathers, and while the reason was a bit campy, it made me *WANT* to find all 100 feathers with no consideration for the achievement. But with Brotherhood there was almost not point in them now as there's really no connection to the story for finding them all, or any value added beyond a very useless cape, a low value achievement for your efforts. In Revelations it seems that after finding 30 of a certain artifact, the reasoning for continually hunting the rest down is gone.
I'm shocked and saddened to find the Glyphs are completely missing from this game. Searching for them and playing their mini-games were such a fantastic part of AC2 and ACB that I really looked forward to them in Revelations... I understand that there is no point as far as the story goes, as you, playing as Desmond, are face to face with Subject 16 in revelations but they still could have been incorporated with great ease and simple story-telling reasoning. I mean, you're reliving Ezio's memories, not Desmond's. Without waxing philosophically forever, there's no reason to have not included them. I feel that A LOT of value in this game is missing as a result of the Glyphs not being included, as they always added to the storyline, and the historical twists and inclusions were amazing. It's just a crying shame that the designers couldn't have figured out a way to include them in the story, as many of us fans, myself included, spent almost as much time hunting down these glyphs and figuring out how to beat their puzzles and riddles, as was spent playing the main story, and certainly more than the other side-missions.
To be fair, I've completed about 40% of the game so far, and have finished three of the five Desmond missions. Ragging on this series pains me, because it's such a great series, with excellent detail and design values, and incredible attention to historical facts and inclusion, which is something that I LOVE in games. I loved AC's explanation for Henry Ford becoming so wildly succesful with his Model T's being a result of the AoE, or the suggestion that all religions are a shame, being little more than illusions created by the Apples to deify the holder. I love how Rodriego Borgia was based on a real and truly evil person; that he was historically Pope Alexander II in life and in the game; and what a vile and loathesome human he was, and how historically accurate his reign was as Pope, truthfully representing the murderous, treasonous and vile life that he led. I mean.. THAT LEVEL of detail and accuracy impressses me, and the fact that the designers went to such great length to include it into the game as accurately as they did and in such a detailed manner as possible speaks volumes of their desire to great a truly great game. And that means a lot to me, as a consumer and a player. It's just as shame that they didn't focus such energy and effort into ensuring that Revelations is superior to it's predecessors.
Revelations promised so much and while it is as good as Brotherhood was (better in some was as some of the bad mechanics from Brotherhood were refined here,) it just can't compare to AC2. Graphically, it's superb and just as good as the others in the series, retaining the minor graphical tweaks made in Brotherhood, and the fine attention to detail that the series is known for. The soundtrack is amazing and includes many of the original scores that are readily identifiable with the Assassin's Creed series. The background noise of the crowd, the hustle and bustle a virtual living city can ALMOST make one feel if they turn the lights out and their tv display off, that they are in a city themselves -from the cries of the eagles over head, the cooing pidgeons on a nearb roof-top, or the banter between a pair of guards as you close in for the kill. The combat is as satisfying to watch as ever, but does feel too easy and occasionally campy at times, which is a shame.
Assassin's Creed Revelations gets an 80% of 100% in my book. It promised so much, and had so much potential to give Ezio's time in this story a truly magnificient and worthy end, but failed to deliver a truly great game. I almost feel as if the designers listened to too many of the novice or kiddie players that wanted the challenge that has made this game series so wonderful, dumbed down and reduced a few levels.... Hopefully the next title in the Assassin's Creed series will wow and amaze on the level that AC2 did... | video-games_xbox |
My two cents. Everyone has already pretty much said what is wrong with this game, so I am not going to repeat any of it and just add my 1 star and my "F you EA, $60 for this piece of crap? Do you even listen to us when we take the time to give you feedback and help you improve your product? This can't be the case because it has the same problems that last years edition had with several new ones thrown in the mix", you know just the general disappointment we feel with the decline of our beloved Madden. Stick with 12, the more of us who refuse to buy subpar Madden games the more likely we will see a change in the product itself; with the feedback that so many of us take the time to give actually counting for something. I'm returning mine and I hope to see you all in the 12 (or better yet 11) lobbies. No beef with anyone who actually likes 13, I hope those who do have hours of fun with it...this rant is just my opinion.
Salud
Edited on 8 September 2012: I did actually return 13 and have been playing 12 since. 12 is still plenty active as far as online play goes, so I encourage anyone who does not think that 13 is worth it to join me and mine in the 12 lobbies. We can't expect EA to change a damn thing unless we refuse to use their (latest) product(s).
Earth to the NFL: A lack of competition will kill a desire for your product...wait, I think that is the point of some of your most effective rules towards that every end... isn't it?!? Let there be a fair competition and let the best "team" win!!!!
Edited on 6 December 2012: The commercials that are coming out recently - that claim "it's the best Madden ever!" - make me laugh so hard I can hardly breathe. We customers, and loyal Madden fans, have clearly stated here on Amazon that it is one of the worst ever; the number of 1 star reviews speaks volumes. I just hope EA's blind-insane-apathetic-denial doesn't affect the next one... I have already heard quite a few people (strangers and friends) on Live say they are not planning to buy "14". Low sales is the only thing that will effect change; so I hope they stand by that claim. | video-games_xbox |
Hey it's the NFL! But...not really. So it's that time again, half way through the NFL regular season and we've been dabbling with Madden long enough to form an opinion.
I don't like it.
I tend to focus on the Franchise Modes when talking about Madden because I think that should be the primary focus of the game - re-creating the NFL regular season.
So this year instead of just 'franchise mode' there are 3 sub categories; Player, Coach and Owner.
Player takes the place of previous versions 'superstar' mode which was terrible at best. Madden 25 does little to improve except now you aren't forced to play a game in an infuriating first person view.
Owner is entirely new and pretty similar to something like Football Manager except no where near as in depth.
Coach is a watered down version of previous Franchise Modes.
So firstly lets take a look at what happens in an NFL season.
Currently Justin Blackmon has been suspended for substance abuse. Brandon Merriweather has been fined a lot, so has Ndamuhkong Suh. John Fox needs heart surgery and the Vikings have started 400 different QBs in only 8 games.
There have been two NFL games held in the UK with three scheduled next year. Coaches players and owners have all been in the media and we've had contract disputes as per usual.
Everything that happens in an NFL season will not ever appear in Madden. I don't know why, it just doesn't. I know their developers watch football for the actual game play (which is pretty much the same as previous years to be honest) but they definitely do not pay attention to anything other than what happens on the field.
For example Owner mode is the only time you can interact with the media. Anybody who follows the NFL through media will have noticed that actually owners are quite secretive and the players are most commonly in the media followed by coaches.
The media plays exactly zero part in player or coach mode...which is ridiculous. If EA want to create an experience then this has to be added in.
It was in Madden 09 (the one with Vince Young on the cover). I know because Terrell Owens was always getting ripped on by EA's random media generator and he had a poor chemistry rating. This kind of thing has not appeared in a Madden game since.
I know it says you can manage your team chemistry in coach mode but this is a lie. There is no feature for it. Nor is there a feature for in-season scouting has there has been in previous Maddens. You cannot even run a pro-day or put a player through drills. If you're a coach, knowing who you want to draft is fairly key and it was also one of the more enjoyable parts of previous Franchise modes, team building.
Player mode is almost as pointless as Owner mode. As a player you control only yourself. You can select an existing one or make your own. Ok, cool. Then what? Then you simulate at least 60% of the game (depending how good your defense is at getting you the ball back or how bad your offense is) and if say you've picked a receiver then you have lots of running about not making catches to look forward to. The only viable position to pick in the game is QB.
So in your home screen what happens? You can practice or you can demand a trade. Practice doesn't actually serve any point other than to familiarize yourself with the controls, you can't show off to the coaches to get higher in the depth chart for example. You can't talk to the media, you can't send your player out on a wild night and miss team meetings, nope you just sim the games.
Coaching is also very limited. You cannot game plan, you cannot adjust your substitutes out of the game. What I mean is when you get to the play book in a game you can choose packages and substitute players permanently into formations but you have to do this within the 20 second play clock. You can't do it before hand so you're prepared in a game. You're constantly trying to manage your formations and packages within the play clock run off. Y'know, because all NFL coaches wing it.
Okay so you can do this thing where you gain xp as a coach. If your QB passes for 300 yards you get 500 xp for example. This xp is used to progress players. Why?
This isn't dependent on your coaching prowess but your ability to play the game. Everything goes out of the window because the AI is so easily beatable (I'll tell you how at the end). The progression is also not related to any in-game impact. Say a Cornerback gets a couple of interceptions and you get some xp to spend. You can put it anywhere! So he gets 2 INTs and his tackle rating can be improved. Why?
Also is this an NFL sports game or a fantasy role playing game? I don't see the need for this xp malarcky and back story stuff. It's best kept to Skyrim and other games that know how to do it.
I'll comment on the game play although briefly because I see very few improvements from previous years. The only big improvement is I can finally see the sidelines!
In previous maddens (08,09,10) you could 'look off' defenders with your QB, this means make your QB look to the left but intend to throw right to fool defenders. You cannot do this any more. It is a huge part of being an NFL QB and it's not been a part of madden since 2010.
Wide Receivers will still prefer to watch the ball rather than stick their arms out and catch it. They also like to run away from the ball whilst trying to catch it. Defenders still love to run towards it. This is fine, defenders do attack the ball but...so do NFL Wide-outs! Have they never seen Calvin Johnson or Brandon Marshall? They are aggressive with their hands.
So, forget throwing a deep ball. It won't work. Ever.
Linebackers are still clueless. I've gone through a whole season with my Middle Backer (usually they get 80 - 110 tackles) getting 25 tackles. They don't attack the run and they just stand there during pass plays. This is quite a dynamic position in the NFL and it is irrelevant in Madden 25. I know we've had superhuman linebackers leaping across the pitch to bat down balls thrown 10 feet in the air but at least they were doing something.
Defensive lines don't work. QBs actually get pressured and sacked fairly regularly. Madden offensive lines are impossibly good and hardly ever miss a blitz pick up. You will routinely get 6- 7 seconds to make a pass even when playing as the Oakland Raiders.
The AI is stupid. There is a formula to beat any team in Madden and has been since Madden 12. Start your drive with a run play up the middle (an iso or blast). Then a slant play. Rinse and repeat until the defense finally gets a clue to step up to the line of scrimmage. Play action and roll out to the right, hit the Tight End on a corner route for at least 25 yards. This strategy works particularly well against the Texans for some reason.
My point is the AI never adapts. Watch an NFL defense. If you call 3 running plays in a row the linebackers will step closer to the line of scrimmage and maybe a safety will come down into the box too. If you call 3 pass plays then they will step back. In Madden the defense sticks to whatever it's 'plan' is with ridiculous stubbornness so as soon as you figure out if they're close or staying back then you can just rinse and repeat a play repeatedly. Yes, certain plays will work against certain teams in real life (take the spread tight end option play that the Bears stole from the Broncos to use against Washington this year - something else you can't do in coach mode by the way) but not for every single play of the entire drive.
I will say this though. The commentary is finally okay. I don't like Jim Nantz and Phil Sims even on the real TV but at least it flows and feels natural rather than the so obviously cut and pasted versions of previous Maddens.
So in summary this years Madden has yet again reduced franchise mode features and split a watered down game mode into three very very weak modes. The game play is barely improved considering the price tag and the graphics are the same, if not just marginally better. It's a lack luster and rushed effort. Also, the famous Madden playlists of real songs has been scraped in favour of some rubbish film-style 'epic' music.
I'm actually going to re-sell this version. | video-games_xbox |
Best gameplay sim out there. As an avid football fan I was always disappointed with the repetitive garbage that I was forced to swallow from EASports and their Fifa franchise. Then...winning eleven 8 came out for xbox. I promptly discarded my previous fifa titles into the nearest trash receptacle and do not regret it (although I had a moment of weakness and bought fifa06 last week...that was a mistake). Anyway, on to the review.
Strengths:
-This is about as good a gameplay sim as you can expect to get out of any sports franchise. The controls are extremely responsive, and the depth of the tactical control and the myriad of types of goals that can be scored leave WE8 head and shoulders above EA.
-You have the ability to alter a player's exact position on the field (no locked in positions like fifa), their defensive or offensive mentality, the direction they will attack or make runs to, who they will man-mark, or rather what zone they are responsible for defending all down the very last inch of the pitch. The great variety and permutations this allows you to experience adds a great amount of depth and staying power.
-Couple the great tactical control with great gameplay and the formula is simple for a great game. Add to that increased gameplay depth with the various ways you can score goals (I consistently score with shots from outside the box, cross to header, cross to volley or side kick, breakaway slotted, breakaway hard shot, breakaway keeper lob and corner kicks...all on the highest difficulty level) Also, unlike fifa, you can beat players one v. one and your A.I teammates actually possess a brain.
Weakness:
The only weakness this game has is really in its presentation. WE8 only has licenses for the Spanish, Italian, and Dutch leagues...So I have to play with Liverpool FC (that's 5, get it right, 5 European cups) in all tomato red plain shirts which kind of makes the experience feel a bit hollow. Also, since they don't have licenses, you have to rename all the stadiums and all the teams in the game as well as some of the players for 'other' teams, such as Boca Juniors (It may seem a painful task, but you can get lists on the internet that help). Lastly, the menus, music and other GUI elements are quite poor (the pokemon music drives me crazy).
Don't put too much weight into my tirade at the end there about the GUI as it only slightly distracts you from the overall beautiful experience of the beautiful game that can only be brought to you by Konami and their Winning Eleven Masterpiece. | video-games_xbox |
Incredibly frustrating, yet amazing. Let me start off by saying that no game has ever made me as angry as [Prototype] did. I borrowed the game from a friend, expecting it to be a quick hack and slash game that I could grind through and just have a heck of a good time.
But I was wrong.
Minor Spoilers:
You get about ten easy missions, and then suddenly, all the powers you've come to love, the claws, whip, hammers, they're gone. You're defenseless, and things go from incredibly easy to nearly impossible. That alone is what made the game so frustrating to me, seeing as how, even after you get your powers back (say, what, 8 missions later?) it's STILL incredibly difficult. Set off an alarm, you're going to have to run for about ten minutes while desperately trying to bash down helicopters. At the same time though, you'll have to fend off Hunters, Super Soldiers, Tanks, Soldiers, and the zombies/infected people. In short, it goes from peaceful to hell on Earth in a matter of seconds. Someone is ALWAYS shooting you, and unless you've upgraded your speed, there's no way you can avoid all the missiles those enemies are going to be shooting at you.
Though, this is all coming from someone who has a seven inch tv and can't see the actual control guide, meaning they can't read what buttons do what and therefore can only use X and Y.
That's right, I went through the whole game on hard without knowing what a devastator move is. Yeah.
At the same time though, it's just SO MUCH FUN doing all of those things. Alex Mercer is an unending well of power, and the environment is totally sandbox, meaning you can go anywhere and everywhere. Said environment is, however, a bit bleak, but nonetheless, quite enjoyable to run through.
All in all, quite a few of the missions (out of about 30) are very difficult. You definitely won't be beating the game in a day. And afterwards, you'll be tempted to do all the events, and, if you're like me, you'll want to get all of the web of intrigue targets.
Because the STORY is the best part. Alex Mercer is an angry, intelligent virus. And one that won't go down easily. His story and the people around him are so in-depth and amazing, making this game one you'll want to play many times, just to make sure you didn't miss a thing.
As an after-note, I had to return the game to my friend not too long ago. But I'll definitely be buying my own copy in the near future.
On another note though, I will be skipping the sequel, I think. At least Alex was attractive. But this new guy... eh. Not so much. Haha. | video-games_xbox |
Simply Outstanding. Alan Wake has a story that puts any recent Hollywood movie to shame. It's incredibly deep and incredibly well-written. I'm usually the first guy who says that I don't care about the "story" in a game. I've often said that I wish games would quit trying to use stories, because they have been irritating far more often than they have been interesting. Just let me get back to pushing buttons! But, in Alan Wake, I eagerly anticipate every cut scene, savor every dialog sequence, thoroughly enjoy every added little information or flavor or fun they throw into the mix, because it is all incredibly good. If you've ever read a fantastic book that you just can't put down, Alan Wake is the same way! You just can't put the controller down, because you really want to see where the story goes next! The story-line constantly comes at you from different angles with new information and keeps you guessing what is going on. It's not predictable. It's not cliche'. It's not Hollywood. It's actually fantastic for once! Graphics are great! You get to run around through the best looking forests I've ever seen in a game. (The car models were clearly not their priority from the looks of them...!) The in-game hdr lighting engine is amazing and beautiful and needs to be seen to be believed! (Best ever, perhaps?) Gameplay wise, it's relatively simple, which I think was a brilliant move by the developer. The simplicity keeps the gamer moving forward through the story, which is the whole point, right? The controls and character actions feel reasonably fluid, natural and pretty realistic with the motions. Just because it's simple, does not mean it's "easy". It's a good game mechanic that works well. I've noticed that if I have to repeat the same battle several times because I keep dying, the game seems to take it a little easier on me after a few tries. That's great for me, because I don't want to get stuck just endlessly repeating one battle because it was too difficult for me. So, the game keeps you moving forward. You'll get to keep enjoying the wonderful story. And what a wonderful ride it is... Easily best written story-line for a video game ever, bar none. Easily. If you like high-tension thriller stories, Stephen King, HP Lovecraft, Alfred Hitchcock, The Twilight Zone, or anything related to any of those, you owe it to yourself to get this game. I have no idea how anyone who loves a good suspense story wouldn't love this game. | video-games_xbox |
Could have been great. At first I thought, This is a fine game with a few annoyances. Then I thought, These things are really annoying but I am determined to finish it. Now I give up. While playing I couldn't help but consider it an inferior Just Cause 2, which is more fun in almost every way. (artwork, scenery, on foot and vehicle control, variety of weapons and vehicles, usefulness of items, mission coolness.)
Your character is slow and gets stuck on everything, and when you try to jump over things I guess your foot hits, and the horizontal distance traveled is usually about one inch. If you are trying to run from bad guys across broken ground they get plenty of extra shots at you. You cant run from the bad guys anyway, whether on foot or in a vehicle, because unlike yours, their automatic rifle fire is so accurate at long range that you will be almost dead by the time you get away (on hardcore difficulty.) Most of the time you cant figure out where the fire is coming from too. There will be tall grass all around with bullets coming out of it. They are so accurate, they dodge all around, your weapons practically cant hurt them, and your health drains so fast, that you might as well give up as soon as you start getting shot. You can even blast them point blank with a mounted machine gun and they are still there returning fire for a second or two.
When you are driving around, bad guys and jeeps chase you everywhere. You cant outrun the jeeps so you have to stop and fight them. The bad guys at camps respawn, so everywhere you go you have to fight your way through. You can get killed ten times just trying to cross a short section of the map. And you can only save and respawn at safe houses, so if you play for an hour but don't make it to a save point, you start all over.
The bad guys drop pistol ammo and assault rifle ammo when you kill them, but since you cant hurt anyone with either of those, you don't get anything off the bad guys, and so there is no reason to fight them. It is best to drive around them and avoid them. So instead of exploring, finding cool stuff, and fighting a tactical battle with gangs of bad guys, you drive through villages at full speed, fight off the jeep that chased you, and start receiving fire from all over the place.
You can only carry four weapons, but the sniper rifle, assault rifle, and shotgun are in the same group, so you cant carry a long range gun and a close quarters gun at the same time, and theres no rifle melee attack. The machete is okay but you cant change weapons and charge at the same time because they both use the left thumb.
The auto look centering while you are driving is annoying. You cant look at the scenery while you drive because it keeps turning your head back. There are a handful of vehicle types but you have to drive the jeep with the machine gun to have a chance against the other jeeps. If you blow up your vehicle then you have to walk for a long time before you get to another (boring) one.
It has this endearing (gag) feature with sprinting and jumping, where if you do it too much the screen gets blurry until you desist. More endearing are your malaria spells, where the screen turns green and blurry, and you have to press a button to take a pill to make it stop. Still more endearing are the vehicle repairs and the first aid routines. When you get below one full bar of health you press a button and you get an animation of you doing various gruesome first aid routines on yourself. The problem is, they're still shooting at you the whole time, and often by the time you gouge the bullet out you need to press the button again. Same with the vehicle repair. It is nice that you can repair vehicles, but only if there are no foes around. Your gun can jam in this game, and unjamming it is another silly task that you are helpless while doing and often gets you killed.
The money aspect of the game is rather weird, and there are all these accuracy upgrades, reliability upgrades, and repair upgrades, all to make the weapon or vehicle the way it should be in the first place
There is a hidden item aspect which is one of the lamest aspects of the game. You can go trekking to find suitcases containing one diamond each. But you get twenty or thirty diamonds for completing a mission. So there is no reason to go hunting for the suitcases. Yet there are over two hundred suitcases to find, for a 100% completion sort of feeling, but given that you will just die over and over trying to get them, getting sent back to your safehouse each time, once again, interacting with things in the game is not advisable.
Play Just Cause 2, Red Dead Redemption, Skyrim, or Fallout 3 instead. | video-games_xbox |
Not a huge fan of 3 and this is a large improvement. I was not a huge fan of far cry 3. I felt like the characters were vapid and uninteresting. The scripted "helpless" scenarios (where they knock you out and take everything away) really peeved me. The button mashing scripted events were painfully jarring and annoying. The bad guys were two dimensional and stupid enough that it actually made your white bread no experience beach trash protagonist more credible. I played the game through once. I had no investment in the characters and hated the good and bad guys equally for their lack of character or believability. I was so emotionally removed from the ending decision that I honestly can't remember which way I went.
Far Cry 4 is a huge step up from this experience. While the gameplay is very similar to 3, the characters are a huge improvement. In addition to a somewhat believable if fantastic protagonist, the main evil of this story is witty, charming, and in general vastly entertaining. I found myself actually laughing at some of his sarcastic radio diatribes about suits (meat pockets) or lancing boils (employ a professional). Troy Baker (his voice actor) very much puts me in mind of Ben Kingsly (so much so that I had to look it up). This is due in part to his excellent voice acting and on the occasions that you see him the animation of his character. In general, the realism of your adventure is awe inspiring at times.
The weapons are very similar to the previous games. You will see a few new smaller weapons and the addition of signatures (unmodifiable but powerful versions of your existing weapons) but everything else is what you'd expect. This isn't a bad thing as the mix from farcry 2 and 3 was pretty well done. I was glad to see the M79 grenade launcher carried over as a sidearm. There is nothing as enjoyable as gliding over an enemy stronghold in a buzzer lobbing grenade after grenade to a satisfying THONK. The enemy AI is pretty good. They will generally react properly to you whether you are stealthy or blasting away full volume. I loved the fortresses (bring lots of grenade launcher ammo and a swear jar) and the vehicles (buzzer definitely a favorite). There are a lot of nice touches with the inventory system that most people will not notice. For instance, I am impressed that the developers would go to the lengths of making sure that the quick sale option also removes crafting items (furs) from your inventory that you will not need to make future items. In other words, if none of the crafting items you need to create in the future (even ones that haven't been unlocked yet) need a certain fur, the quick sale will remove it from your inventory. This is brilliant since it means that you will never have to hold onto a bunch of useless items in case the next level of crafting a holster/bag might require them.
There are a few negative notes though they do not stop me from enjoying the game. The skirmish karma event is pretty silly. Pretty much until you approach directly you will see 3 red guys and 3 blue guys blasting away at each other at point blank with no one taking any damage. Another thing that annoyed the crap out of me was that every time you secure a stronghold, deliver a shipment, or dare to blink your eyes your knucklehead allies with fire their automatic rifles into the air indefinitely. It's super annoying and distracting when there is something else nearby you need to take care of. And eagles. Every time I turned around an eagle was swooping down on humans as if they could possible kill or consume them.
I have to put these issues separate since they're carry overs from farcry 3. Wearing body armor does not make you invincible or even resistant to .50 caliber rounds. You can shoot one of the "heavies" three to four times in the torso with a heavy sniper rifle (on normal!) only to watch them shake it off and keep coming. This is a round that can penetrate a 500 pound cast iron engine block. Your impromptu duct tape jungle armor is not going to make a round the width of my thumb bounce off. Even the fact that you can empty an entire clip of full length rifle ammo (not shortened AK ammo, but full size 7.62x54 or .30 caliber equivalent) into them with no effect is ridiculous. No body armor is that effective against high powered rifle ammo. The number of times I've seen these smug SOBs shrug off ridiculous damage is maddening. I also strongly dislike jumping puzzles. The bell towers are a carryover from farcry 3's radio towers and I was not a fan of them. It just seemed like the same jumping puzzle over and over to increasing levels of annoyance.
I am loving this game very much. I am about 50% of the way through and have really liked what I've seen so far. As critical as I am of 3, I feel like UBI Soft has gotten their collective stuff together and made a memorable and enjoyable experience. Aside from a few annoyances this is one of the best games I've played in last couple years. And while the graphics and gameplay are a large part of that, it's nice to see some better characters and writing.
EDIT: I've finished the game on the first play through now. I have a few more thoughts about the game in general as a result.
Positives: I was very happy to see even more weapons added to the available list as I completed the second half of the game. Many of them (particularly the "buzz-saw") were enormously fun and satisfying to use. I played through the fashion show quests to get my ammo/grenade/loot/etc. capacity upgraded and they tended to be a lot of fun.
Negatives: I started to realize that after the Shangri-la missions that the game was dumping most of my ammo inventory. In other words, when I came back from them I had to spend a ridiculous amount of money reloading my ammo. At this point in the game I had completed most or all of the fashion show side quests so I could carry quite a bit. I know achievements are silly, but I noticed that completing a lot of things (mostly finishing all of a type of side quest) did not provide any sort of achievement. The Shangri-la missions aren't too bad until you get to the boss. I felt like the fight was a bit cheap though after reading up I managed to complete it the third time (standard difficulty).
Replayability: I definitely see myself going back to play through this at least once more to try a different path. I didn't feel like my choices in 3 made much of a difference but 4 gives you enough times to make decisions that I feel it could significantly alter the experience. | video-games_xbox |
3.2 Million Players a Day - Why I keep playing. 3.2 Million players a day? Why do we keep playing?
It seems there are too many overwhelming negative reviews here on amazon for this game. When I find reviews saying "I spent 50 hours and overall I hate it", I find my eyes glazing over like I'm trying to have a rational discussion with a 13 year old. Whoa kid...hate? We are talking video games right?
I think a lot of the polarizing views come from immature console kids (I'll include some game journalists in that description) who are so used to "easy progression" and somehow finding value in saying "I've prestige'd like 7 times" by the end of the first month of play in other first person shooter games.
Youll enjoy:
- The Cohesive world with a fabulous industry leading user interface (you will see mimicked in other games). Seamlessly hop from coop, single player, and competitive content from the orbital layer - a brilliant bit of coding chicanery meant to cover up the technical wizardry of the underlying content. Id rather watch a ship sail through hyper-space or fly over a beautifully rendered aerial planet view then a spinning wheel while servers set up the next match!
- Satisfying shooty gameplay core mechanics of shoot, punch, explode have impact and weight. Add in the chaos of a super- power make things interesting (maybe sometimes hella annoying) but overall so much fun, especially if you are dealing out the super damage.
- Character classes they start off feeling quite same same but over time, high level skill tree unlocks show how different these classes are. They matter in both the Crucible and in the high level Player vs Environment content. Youll need titans, warlocks, and hunters to beat the hardest content. Well, there are those who wish to banish Hunters from the towermoving along. ;-)
- A loot system that matters If diamonds were cheap or free, would we care about them so much? Moderate your expectations of receiving tons of loot for doing nothing (think Borderlands), and realize that the game is somewhat stingy with loot because it forces the rarity of items in its economy. Id rather take less, but more valuable loot, then mountains of garbage.
- Fill in the blank story yes, the actual narrative is forgettable, but the artistic settings and accompanying soundtrack are wonderful. Let your mind fill in the blanks.
- Interesting take on player vs player in the crucible earn an epic new weapon on a weekly strike or from an exotic bounty you labored over? Spend a lot of time getting marks to buy a legendary auto-rifle or strange coins on an exotic helm? Well, you can bring that bad boy into the crucible and take down some fellow guardians in style.
- Progression first 24 levels require little in the way of internet tip hunting and an organized approach to game-play. Just enjoy your first 40 hours of content worry free with friends.
- High Level content outside of the difficulty of obtaining the all too rare ascendant shards needed to really hit the high levels, there is plenty to do, including a special multi-hour RAID just for you. The game will get old after a while unless you find endless enjoyment in the crucible like me.
- Youll grow attached to your character and the worlds In the end youll keep playing because you know more is to come, and you want your guardian ready for that fight!
Youll be frustrated if:
- You play everything alone
- Think you deserve that exotic shotgun you saw in the crucible without any work
- Believe that you should prestige easily by serving your time with the game (there is no prestige mode, Im a bit tongue and cheek about other games)
- Play this game in huge binge sessions (space it out!)
- You cant handle the games random number generator and lose your mind if you see the last place guy get an exotic as a reward for a crucible round
Things Bungie should work on:
- Ascendant shard availability!
- A story with a little more gravitas throw us a curve ball
- Super-generating rate in crucible maybe just a touch more rare would be nice
- How levels play out in PvE content if I want to bring my one level short friend into the mix, maybe he shouldnt be penalized so much!
Wishlist for DLC in Dec:
- New planets I see grimoire cards for Jupiter, Saturn, and Mercury maybe something on an asteroid in the Reef? The Reef is awfully empty.
- At least 4 new crucible maps. I prefer the closer-quarters arena style over the big guys. Lets stay away from Mars. Id like a bigger Mercury map since that map is gorgeous.
- A new RAID even though I haven't beaten VoG yet
- Increased Level cap is it time yet?
- New exotics, or even a new higher class of gear
- Better armor upgrade progression
- Buy an apartment in the tower to show-off your gear a bridge too far?
- Exotic dance moves (ha!) increased non-verbal ways of communicating.
- Prox chat? Im on the fence about that do to the old internet f@cktard theory
Thanks for reading folks! Definite buy. I think this game deserves 4-stars, so I'm giving a 5-star review to pull the weighted average up! | video-games_xbox |
Run of the mill release from a solid franchise. For a long time I was a devout NBA Live player. A few years ago the franchise went stale and little was changed or improved upon from year to year. That was when I switched over to the 2K franchise. Every year I found myself getting excited for October because that's when the much anticipated new version of the 2K series is. It pains me to say it, but it appears that 2K has fallen into the same slump that Live was in a few years ago. Other than minor improvements on a few mundane details, this is the same game as 2K9.
THE GOOD:
- The new NBA Today feature that gives a breakdown of each day's real NBA games and their results.
- The graphics are better than last year, but the difference isn't as profound and jaw dropping as in years past. Nonetheless, players do look more realistic.
- The commentary by Marv Albert and Clark Kellogg is the best of any sports game I've played. While a lot of it is recycled from past years' versions, there is a surprising amount of new stuff (if you're familiar with the NCAA Football franchise from EA Sports then you know how annoying it can be to have the same commentary every year, especially when it doesn't add anything to the gaming experience). The banter between Albert and Kellogg is very believable and it doesn't sound like they are acting.
- 2K has done a total overhaul on the in game menus. This is going to be a matter of personal taste, but I like the way these look.
- By far the best change is the addition of the "My Player" mode. It allows you to create a player of any position who has a specific set of strengths and weaknesses. Here is the general synopsis:
You start out playing in a summer league and try to make it to an NBA training camp. If you get an invite to training camp then you try to avoid getting cut. If you do you head to the D-League, if not then you play in the NBA. Along the way you earn skill points used to improve any aspect of your game - from mental toughness to scoring from the post.
In each game you are assessed a "Teammate grade" for what you do on the court. Taking good shots, setting good picks, rebounds, assists, getting good position on your defender, running a fast break correctly and a number of other things will raise your teammate grade. Turnovers, excessively calling for a pass, letting your match up (the man you guard) score, taking bad shots and not staying with your match up will lower your teammate grade. Before each game you are given three challenges to complete during the game. For each one you complete successfully you get additional skill points. For example, you might be asked to hold your match up to 51% shooting from the field, make 4 baskets in the paint, and finish with a teammate grade of B+.
The My Player mode is a lot of fun if you can get past the idea of only being one player on a team. You have to work to get open and its not a good idea to shoot the ball every time you touch it. If you stick with it then you will enjoy this game mode. It is a good addition to this franchise, but it certainly isn't enough to carry the game. Which brings me to...
THE BAD:
- The online play, or should I say the lack thereof. A quick history lesson: 2K8 had a great online feature complete with leagues, quick games against any random person who was online and ready to play, and game lounges for all different skill levels. After such a great and expansive online option the previous year, 2K9, for some inexplicable reason, did not have game lounges. This meant who you played - and how good he or she was - was totally random. A beginner playing an expert meant the beginner left feeling frustrated and discouraged and the expert got to pad their stats. Not to mention connecting to an online game was unacceptably difficult. In my experience, over 3 out of every 4 attempted online games wouldn't be able to connect in the first place. It was very frustrating.
Well, that was nothing compared to the problems 2K10 has. The main reason I play sports games is to play online. I have owned this game for over a week and I still have not been able to connect to an online game. I have tried every day and every single time it reports a connection error and refers me to a website that offers no help and a FAQ that is blank. I have heard a rumor that 2K is planning on releasing a patch to fix the online problems but I am not holding out much hope; they did the same thing last year and it didn't help.
- The gameplay is almost the exact same as last year. The look is a bit different, but the first time I played it I dominated my opponent because it is essentially the same game I've been playing since October of last year.
- It is unbelievably easy to score inside. Playing as the Hornets, I was able to have Chris Paul post up Kevin Garnett on several occasions and only get blocked once. I had Mike Bibby dunk on Tim Duncan. My jaw dropped as the laws of physics were suspended when Allen Iverson went for a layup and the ball traveled through - that's right...THROUGH - the arm of Shaq as he made a futile attempt to swat the layup into the next zip code.
- In the game manual it claims that you can control the different dunks the players do. It could be user error, but I haven't been able to make it work. I have talked to others who have complained about this too.
- The shot stick is counter-intuitive and largely unnecessary. It has been a feature in the 2K series for a while now and I know they are trying to answer NBA Live's manual dribble moves but not all of the shots work and the one's that do are confusing and take practice to get down. When you're in the middle of a game and you are driving to the basket, you don't want to think about which direction to point the shot stick. It would be better to hold the shoot button and then use the movement stick to control how the player releases the shot. To me that seems like the more natural way to play.
IN CONCLUSION
2K has a great tradition of producing top of the line basketball games. While this newest version certainly isn't a bad game, the game makers left way too much room for improvement. It is a disappointment mainly because I expect better from this franchise, especially considering this is its 10 year anniversary. Instead of taking time to innovate the gameplay itself, the makers of 2k10 spent most of their time and energy on aesthetic details like the menus and commentary. With the exception of the My Player mode, this game is no more than a brightly decorated version of 2k9. | video-games_xbox |
BEST NFL Game for the XBOX 360 (Read: ONLY NFL Game. Similar to my review of NCAA College Basketball 09, I have a Love/Hate relationship with this game. See, I've never played a Madden game in my life. I know. And thinking I can just read the little flyer of an instruction booklet to be able to figure out how to play this game is a bit naive. It's quite a bit more complicated than you think.
1st thing you'll notice when you plop in the disk: This is a beautiful looking game. Really. It's truely a beauty to see. And at first glance, it appears very Polished. The cut-scenes are seamless, the full NFL GameDay experience can really fool you, the realistic weather, the animations, graphics, the voice-overs, the music, crowd noise, the jeers and cheers. It's all there, and it's fantastic to experience. Want to watch a replay? See where you actually had a guy open you just didn't see him because everything was moving so fast? While in replay mode, you can pause and move the camera around in the entire 3-D field. Watch the long pass from the front/side/back - even hovering above the players. It was a blast to watch my Hail Mary pass fly thru the air, fall short of the intended receiver, hit the defender instead, but then bounce off him and a secondary receiver in the vacinity make it over in time to pick it out of the air before it hits the ground and score a touchdown while rolling on the ground when he caught the ball. Amazing stuff.
As a casual player, you'll be mesmerized by this game. It's that great.
The polish starts to look a little less shiny though when you play the game longer and dive into the deeper play of the game. Some little things that stand out for me:
1. You can save highlight videos to remember those great plays. Even upload them to the web under an your xbox account. The problem is, these highlights are from static camera angles, not from the 3-D view like in the instant replay. Halo 3 let me record my own highlight videos from the 3d world (any angle), but not in Madden 10. That great catch sometimes just doesn't look all the great from the camera angles you get to choose from. And the highlight video will often start a little late in the play, sometimes missing something great.
2. The voice-overs are often wrong. I had Madden himself tell me to choose a specific defensive play that was available on the "Madden Recommends" option. I chose it, and the offence scored a touchdown on me. Then Madden says that I should have chosen a different defensive play, and I really read the offense wrong. I learned to ignore him after that.
3. Several of the cut-scenes can't be skipped (measure for first-down, discuss whether it was a touchdown, etc), while during the half-time show, you have to sit there and repeated press the A button for several seconds to get passed it all.
4. The manual is pretty barebones, and you almost need to scavange the net to find out what half the stuff means. When looking at the available plays, what's the white lines vs the blue vs the orange mean? Why would you not always want to sprint when you have the ball? What's a Juke, and when would I use it vs a spin? What's the difference between online and offline franchise? Do I only do an online franchise if I want to play against Internet users? How does the recruiting, the free-agency, the draft, salary caps, etc work? Only a few of the questions I had (some are still unanswered).
5. Online Franchise is great in that you don't have to play against other online players (you can play by yourself just like an offline Franchise), but you get to use your computer to research which players to trade. Much faster (IMO) to use the mouse than the clumsy controller trying to navigate thru the various teams, positions, players, statistics, trade options, etc. The problem though, is that it's not complete. The website shows BETA at the top, and there's several things you just can't do from the website, that you need to go back and do from the console.
6. And just like NCAA Basketball 09, I'm not the smartest when it comes to X's and O's. When should I blitz vs Man-to-Man vs Zone. And I still can't tell the difference between half the plays in my playbook. So many look pretty much the same to me.
7. There are some areas in the game that cost real money. Yes, you read that correctly. REAL money. While playing a game, there's an option to Boost Stats. I wasn't sure if this meant that the more games I play, I get the option to boost stats on various players as I accumulate wins or something. Nope. It means, for REAL money, you can increase your players stats. What? Want to change your teams jerseys to old-style jerseys? REAL money. Want to learn more about people you're interested in drafting? REAL money. I just don't get it. I almost feel ripped off sometimes, like I bought the "lite" version for $60.
When it's all said and done though, this game is a blast. And the little complaints I have don't really take away too much from the game. Alot of them just come from never having played a Madden game before. I'm sure I'll be playing this well thruout the year. | video-games_xbox |
Outstanding Gameplay Experience. I am a long time gamer. I've enjoyed pong variation filled paddle style plug and play systems, several Ataris, Colecovision, Intellivision, Vectrex, Genesis, NES, N64, Jaguar, then I held off until PS3, though I've played earlier Playstations, Neo Geo, TurboGrafix16, and others of the era. The XBox One console truly has recaptured my passion for gaming more than most of the other consoles did when they were new.
It is getting to the point that high speed internet is mandatory for home gaming. Even games purchased in hard copy form require updates at times, and sometimes those updates can run over twenty gigs, which is bad news for DSL subscribers.
The XBox One console is an amazing piece of hardware. I have played my XBox One more in the first month of ownership, than I had played my PS3 throughout its lifetime, no exaggeration. It's just that captivating.
I will not knock down on a PS4 over the XBox One, since I lucked out and won my XBox One from my local Fox broadcasting affiliate through a Gotham/Sleepy Hollow promotion, and got an extra controller and two fifty buck cards and controller charging dock to go with it.
I've examined the PS4, and did my research before all of this, and they are both capable machines; the PS4 has faster graphics memory, and the XBox one has a faster processor. Each has its own advantages when developers target those specific features, but I would have opted for the faster processor anyway, especially considering the controllers. I just love the XBox One controller, as opposed to having both analog sticks configured in the Playstation convention; this was a new thing for me, and I tend to prefer this configuration.
I never thought that I would appreciate the Kinect, but it is absolutely awesome. I use it for login recognition all the time. I find it indispensable in conjunction with Rocksmith 2014, being able to use voice commands without setting my guitar down. Alien: Isolation feels intense peeking over counters, and around corners. The Kinect has amazing tracking abilities in multiplayer games, too. It's a fantasic peripheral.
It took a while for me to get used to using the menu button to do most of what I wanted to do, but once it set in as the primary place to call up menu functions for a selected item, I fell in love with XBox One's interface; coming from Playstation 3, it felt a bit foreign to me at first. I am pleased with the organization of the console's feature set, and with Kinect, it's even fun to navigate the screen, though the controller is quite efficient at performing these tasks.
An XBox Gold membership is fairly inexpensive, yet it includes quite a value with free, and discounted games, in addition to other perks. Early July offered free Assasin's Creed IV: Black Flag, which I already own, but set aside as I ventured into the graphically gorgeous Assasin's Creed: Unity. Microsoft has a huge network of servers that enhance online play tremendously.
I have owned my XBox One for only about a year now, and my library of games is already more extensive than what I had purchased on my PS3 throughout the many years I had it. My mainstays include The Pinball Arcade, for which I've bought all four seasons, and I play them regularly, Mortal Kombat X, which suddenly became multitudes better with its most recent update just prior to the Predator character's release, and Rocksmith 2014, which is my doing something productive software, which I absolutely love, and I am crazy about Alien: Isolation, because it is remarkably intense. I held off on Forza 5, and with Forza 6 just around the corner, I think I'll dive into that as soon as it hits the shelf. The other games, I play on occasion, and even the less interesting ones entertain me more than my favorite games from the last generation of consoles.
Overall, the XBox One is an incredible system. I am excited about the games, and this has been a reliable unit, all along. There is a new 1TB system coming down the line for those who prefer more storage, but for myself, this 500GB console has enough to store all the games I tend to keep at one time. I look forward to the upcoming games, and I would recommend the XBox One to any avid gamer. | video-games_xbox |
2002 falls short. My brother and I have probably logged more head-to-head games than anyone playing EA hockey simulations. We enjoyed the first two versions for the Sega and now have been playing NHL 99 for Playstation since it debued. We were ready to upgrade and went out and purchased an X-box specifically to play this game. We tried it for about an hour and decided that it wasn't worth the investment. (Sold everything at a loss on E-bay) The graphics were certainly much better than the 99 version and the gameplay was pretty good (not [money] better); but the one aspect we just couldn't get by was the horrible color commentary. I have read many reviews that said it was hilarious but we found that it just distracts from the realism of the game. Though the comments in 99 get a bit repetitive (in fact the rink announcer commentary is identical in 2002), at least they are similar to what you could actually hear watching a real game. 2002 turns the game into a joke. It's like having Dennis Miller on Monday Night Football; you don't need annoying analogies everytime someone goes up and down the ice. 99 kept the color comments spaced out much better and more in line with reality.
As for the ability to control every aspect of the game, I find that also takes away from the realism. If I have the option of having an unbeatable goalie why wouldn't I take it? 99 was a great game in that each team was based on the real-life abilities of that team. If you want to win with a weaker team, you have to be a better player, not merely tweak and tune the options menu.
To be fare I'm sure there are aspects of the game that we couldn't pssibly have found in an hours time, but a great game should WOW you right from the get go and make you want to explore more, this game made it seem like a chore to find aspects to like. We'll try NHL 2000 for Playstation instead and see what that brings to the table, at least we'll save a few bucks! | video-games_xbox |
People create way to much melodrama, this is a great system. Well i must clarify that i have both PS3(80gig) and the Elite, both are great in there own ways. I mainly have the PS3 for its exclusive titles like, Reisitance, Killzone 2, Little Big Planet, Motorstorms, and Drakes Fortunes. And yes also its the best blu ray player on the planet no doubt. I use the elite as the hardcore gaming system mainly because i just bout a VIZIO 37' LCD TV at walmart with full 1080P for only 578 dollars and it ROCKS!! The xbox is a far superior gaming system mainly because all the games support full 1080P resolution and the graphics cards 3D rendering is much better along with a few other perks. I love this PS3 and its interface and also all the features that it has, with storing music, photos, internet explorer etc. But as a whole its just not as good for the 3rd party games being that 85% YES that many games only support 720p and occasinally 1080i which to me is crap. Never the less the PS3 games that do support it look great.
So if you want the ultimate gaming system thats more reliable than the pro or arcade edition spend the extra money and get this, its great. Don't listen to the idiots who say ohh this thing will catch on fire(yes someone really told me that)oh yeah i remember on CNN a young boys house burnt to the ground not from brush fires but from playing his xbox 360 for to long, come on GET REAL!. Well if you don't venilate it properly and have papers shoved up against the back it won't catch fire but may burn up your system, uhh yeah thats just common sense. Plus i've owned a few xboxs then lost time to play them and not ONCE did i ever have a red ring of death or any other problems, so guess i got lucky. I think most people just don't take care of the system. Matter a fact i have a friend who has one of the first xboxs from 2005 and it has been drop kicked, knocked over, stepped on, sat on, fluid spilt in it anything you can thing of and still works great! So don't listen to all the negative hype, most of it is just people wanting attention, with the occasional REAL problem here and there. Get it play it enjoy it, i do.
PS-the ps3 is great its just more of a do it all device not a great overall gaming system, although definitely has its perks.:D | video-games_xbox |
A Good Game That Lacked Graphics. When LucasArts began releasing the classic Star Wars games, everyone was amazed. Great graphics, gameplay, story, and games that REALLY got you into the game. Well, unfortuantly, every game in the world can't be a classic, as is the case here, but when I bought it, poped it in to my XBOX, and began playing...I couldn't stop! It was fun, it was creative, and while it may not be the greatest game in the world, it was a game worthy of buying in my book. Here's what I thought of Star Wars: Obi-Wan for the Microsoft XBOX:
1) Gameplay: This game takes you through the life of Obi-Wan. You start out on a planet of gang members, trying to stop them from killing your friends and co-workers. You learn all of the sweet moves: Air jump, force grab (takes guns out of enemies hands), force push (knocks enemies on the floor or off cliffs), and force weapon (uses objects in the area like rocks, or crates, and rams them into enemies). You'll also discover Obi-Wan can do back and front flips, and has one of the coolest toys in the world...a *LIGHT SABER*! You walk around in a 3rd person view controlling Obi-Wan with the left thumb stick, and control the Light Saber (when you pull it out) with the right thumb stick. And the control here is FLAWLESS! Pushing to the right causes you to attack enemies in that direction, pushing up will bring his lightsaber to come crashing down on enemies. Of course if your fighting someone else with a lightsaber, you have to block his attacks, use the force (literally), and get the hits in before your get killed yourself. It's all very challenging and fun once u get farthur into the game...the coolest part being when u learn to THROW your lightsaber like a boomerang across the room, knock out a few guards, that have it fly back for more force flying, back-flipping, light clashing battle.
Now, with these skills, you must somehow beat 15+ missions and help Obi-Wan save the world...again. Very fun in the long run!
And, once u beat the game, you can unlock new characters, arenas, and such for multiplayer. I'll go into that later!
2) Graphics: This is where the game failed. There is no excuse for a game to lack graphics on the Microsoft XBOX. They're better than most N64 games, maybe even most PlayStation games, but any system other than that could have supported this with no trouble at all! To begin with, the faces of the people are...there. They're choppy, small dots for eyes, beards are brown blocks, etc... It's ugly!
The worst part here, though, is all the freezing this game has. It has major glitches. If your in the middle of a big battle, things will start to slow down, the music and sounds will start to get choppy. When a lot is going on, the framerate drops, and everything looks like a game that...in a word...stinks! The graphics, for the most part, are pretty good. But nothing has any detail. There are no faces, no animals in the grass, no real living water. And the framrate gets so choppy at times, you can't even play...really annoying. Counsidering the power of the XBOX, all the glithces and lack of detail are in-excusable. This game might have even worked on the N64, and in today's world, ladies and gentlemen, thats sad (especially on the XBOX).
3) Multiplayer: Extremely fun. As you progress through the game, you unlock characters and arenas to fight in. While it's only for 2 players, it is pretty fun. You can knock your openants down, fling objects into them, have light-saber battles, hop all over the place, fling your lightsaber like a boomerang, etc.. It's all fun and good, but 4 players would have been, in one word, AWSOME. And the fact that they didn't include 4 players is just another blown effort. This, with a little work, could have been a 5-star game. But it seems like the makers got lazy toward the end, and just didn't add what could have been added.
Overall, this is a great game, especially since you can soon find it on the "*Platinum Hits*" lineup (a group of games that, starting soon, you will be able to pick up for less then twenty bucks!). It's a really fun game, and even the multiplayer is pretty cool. More options here would have been better.
Hopefully they'll make an Obi-Wan 2, and put the work into a good game, that could have made this a *CLASSIC* game. A good game none the less, reccomended to all action gamers, and of course, *MAJOR* Star Wars fans. This won't disapoint, as long as your not expecting greatness.
Thx!
obryanstars* | video-games_xbox |
Fun initially but regretful later on. This is a fun game initially but Bungie will punish you for being loyal. I pre-ordered the original "base" game because of how much I loved Halo. I was mildly disappointed with the poor content, horrible story, and extremely buggy PvP and PvE. Yet, I persevered as I believed Bungie when they said they would improve the game and add more content. It turns out that the additional content meant spending money on expansion packs. When the Dark Below was released, I was no longer able to do as much as I did before it was released. I couldn't do the dailies and weeklies anymore. I was locked out of some of them because they were "expansion only." So after a $60 initial layout for the game, I paid another $35 for the next 2 expansion packs. The Dark Below expansion pack added a good raid but it wasn't as good as the Vault of Glass. Also, it didn't add another planet, just rehashed destinations on the planets already in the base game. The added story was also very measly. Then House of Wolves was released but there was no raid. The story was a little better and the Prison of Elders was initially fun but it too disappointed for the money. After $95, I still felt that I wasn't getting my money's worth. The only fun in the game was doing the raid with my friends. But doing 2 raids is not worth $95. I put in a lot of hours waiting for Bungie to fix server issues, network issues, horrible glitches, imbalanced weapons, and other faulty programming as they promised to fix it. They did but it came in the form of the Taken King expansion pack. Without this expansion pack, the game is pretty much useless. In other words, the people that were loyal to Bungie and gave them $95 have been burned for being loyal because the game is now unplayable for them unless they lay out another $40. So after $95, I could no longer do the dailies, weeklies, or even earn legendary marks so I can get new equipment. Why are they taking things away that you've already paid for?
I'm not asking that Bungie give expansion packs for free. They deserve to get additional pay for their additional work. I'm just saying that they shouldn't take away content I already paid for. Expansion packs should be additions; not add something but take something else way. They should also focus on fixing bugs before working on new content. The game was fun at first, but they ruin it each time they release an "expansion" pack. For those that just got into Destiny and have the Taken King, you'll have fun initially...until the next release and then you'll get angry at what Bungie will take away from you. Enjoy it while it lasts. At least, it's a beautiful looking game. The music is good too.
As for the contents in the box, the disc is only the base game. All DLC's are in codes that must be downloaded. And with Bungie's servers, this can take quite a long time so be prepared for 20 - 40 hrs of downloading before you can play. Bungie should've included all 3 DLC's on a second disc. So if you don't like it, you can't get much of your money back cause you can only sell the base game, which is worthless without the expansion packs. The Taken King story may be good. But, getting to light level 320 can only be achieved by grinding with raids and even then it's not guaranteed. And they made the light level worse cause it's now based on all of your gear. Why should your primary weapon's damage be reduced because your heavy weapon's light level is low? Now you have rare(blue) gear that's more powerful than legendaries(purple) and even exotics(yellow). Bungie ruined what was a good game because of their greed. | video-games_xbox |
i recently got back into console gaming on a new xbox one and needed a headset mostly to not bother other people in my house sin. i want to write a review for people new to the gaming headset experience as i was. i recently got back into console gaming on a new xbox one and needed a headset mostly to not bother other people in my house since i actually liked using speakers and just the microsoft headset but it was too loud for the rest of my family.
i did a lot of research to try and go totally wireless so i could set down the controller and get up and walk a little while still staying in party chat. at the time of writing this there is only one wireless headset and its a little lackluster for the price of 200$ for the 500x by turtle beach. i tried them on at best buy and they seemed cheap and didn't seal well on my ears. i then decided to ditch the wireless option until something better hits the market. so i tried on the xo one and xo seven. the one felt like the 500x to me. the xo seven was very comfortable and seemed high quality.
the problem with the seven is that i need active mic monitoring and i couldn't find any specs on the box or online that specifically said that model had that feature so if it does have it they do a poor job of advertising it. the xo one did say it had that feature but for only a little more the polk seemed like it would be more comfortable.
heres my take:
pros: very good sound, some of the best sounding headphones ive owned both for voice chat and game / music sound.
does not squeeze my head like i read in a review by someone else and i think i have a pretty big head.
good fit and finish. seems like high quality and the memory foam cups as well as interior speaker cover is very cushiony and seals well
good sound isolation since the seal is so good
cons:
since switching to this headset everyone has told me that i sound far away
the mic is supposedly omnidirectional, i can hear myself in my headset but can not hear someone 1 foot away asking me a question which is mostly why i needed mic monitoring in the first place.
while i aparently couldn't hear my wife in the same room as me nagging me to get off destiny aparently everyone else in my chat party could hear it. i figured out what was going on when they asked me if i needed to go.
the great seal on the soft memory foam after a few hours starts to get warm and sweaty which leads me to wonder if the seemingly less comfortable xo one or 500x with their fabric cups and lesser seal might actually make for a more comfortable long duration headset but i cant say for sure. if i cant get the mic monitoring to listen to my environment a little better i may end up switching these for a different set because i have tried lowering the game volume and maxing out the chat volume and i still can barely hear people talking right to me. there may be a setting i can find in the xbox i don't know.
the microphone itself is nifty the way it retracts but 7cm is nowhere near long enough when people told me they couldn't hear me i wanted to try to get the mic closer to my mouth but its so short it won't get anywhere near the front of your mouth.
the cord is permanently attatched to the headset which means you cant swap it out for a longer one and it is on the short side. long enough to play comfortably but not to move your arm out to your side holding it.
i give it 4 stars because it sou ds so good and it is cery comfortable for an hour or so but if a good mic is what you need and mic monitoring for your environment is important to you then you might want to go a different way. that is just the opinion of a beginning gamer but hopefully it helps you decide | video-games_xbox |
Some changes from AC:Brotherhood, but ultimately falls a bit short. I should say I'm an Assassin's Creed fan. I fervently defended the uniqueness of the first game, <a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Assassin-s-Creed/dp/B000P46NMK/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Assassin's Creed</a>, which was ultimately revealed to be a bit of a mess compared to the stellar <a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Assassin-s-Creed-II/dp/B00269DXCK/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Assassin's Creed II</a>. When <a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Assassin-s-Creed-Brotherhood/dp/B003L8HQ7S/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood</a> hit the scene, I initially saw it as a stalling tactic instead of releasing "AC 3", with some multiplayer slapped on, but I ended up loving that one too, and the MP, while needing some execution improvements, was refreshingly unique.
When Revelations finally rolled around, I was actually excited about both learning more of the Desmond/Ezio story and also seeing a cleaner, more user-friendly multiplayer experience. I picked up a copy of the game on Black Friday for $35 and have played the game a good amount, both SP and MP, since. Here are my thoughts, starting with the singleplayer:
GRAPHICS - 8/10
Graphics are about on-par with what they were in AC:2, with some improvements in the facial movements during the cinematics. The game still runs the same engine as AC:2 and Brotherhood, so combat and climbing and crowd movement look almost identical. The new city, Constantinople, is different from the Italian cities but I think it doesn't quite show off the graphics like Rome or Florence from prior games.
GAMEPLAY - 7/10
As I mentioned, climbing, combat and moving with the crowd is mostly the same as prior games, which isn't a bad thing necessarily. There are some new movement features, such as the grappling claw and (by proxy) the zipline. Nothing to write home about. Combat and crowd have the added factor of bombs, but as some have already pointed out, they are not exactly essential to Ezio's arsenal. 1-2 recipes are all that you'll need for most of the game. It can be interesting to use some of the other bomb types in various scenarios but again, in terms of combat experience, they aren't that fascinating.
The new gameplay additions come in the form of a tower-defense minigame as well as contracting recruited assassins and remotely controlling territory (I believe it's called the "Mediterranean Defense" minigame). These, honestly, I could do without. I liked the mission-style usage in the past game as a way to level up your recruits and score a bit of extra cash while you collected flags/chests and whatnot, but the new minigames just put too much pressure on you to keep up with what's going on. Tower defense is pretty lame; honestly I'd rather just go down on the ground and melee combat my way through attackers. Overall, I can appreciate UbiSoft wanting to expand their game but I would have done without the new minigames.
STORY - 8/10
I don't want to give anything away. You'll have needed to play Brotherhood to really understand what is going on. The actual pacing of the story depends on your playstyle, but I myself found it adequate and in the same overall tone and style of the previous 2 games.
SOUND - 9/10
Sound quality stays at the usual levels of excellence from the prior games. In my experience the voice actors do a good job all around, and the game's sound effects are solid too.
REPLAYABILITY (SP) - 5/10
A low score here shouldn't be unexpected. Replayability from the single player perspective is mostly the same as it was with the prior games. You're free to roam the city, cause chaos, do the minigames and side missions as you please once the campaign is finished. Is it as fun? In my opinion, not really. I'd rather move on to another game, but that's just me; to each his own.
MULTIPLAYER - 9/10
Here's where the game moves from a 3/5 star to a 4/5 star. The multiplayer is a great experience. Unless you've played Brotherhood, I guarantee you will not have tried something like this before. The multiplayer is completely unique and mostly involves trying to trick other players. Reflexes and coordination is almost secondary to how strategy and deception in this multiplayer; can you make other players think you are just an NPC (a computer controlled character), while figuring out which of the characters walking around on your screen is your player target? That's the gist of multiplayer and, while I can understand it's not for everyone, I find it to be a blast.
The good news here is the MP is MUCH more streamlined than it was in Brotherhood. There is an XP system much like most MP games these days (MW3, BF3) allowing you to level up and spend points unlocking and upgrading abilities to suit your playstyle. I'll admit there's a bit of a learning and leveling curve; high level players will have significant ability advantages over starting players, but the game can still be a lot of fun.
New MP game modes like Deathmatch, Assassination, and Corruption add even more depth to the multiplayer experience. I bought this game mostly for the multiplayer. If it sounds like it's something you're into, I'd heartily recommend giving it a shot.
OVERALL - 7.5/10 (4 stars)
As I mentioned I bought this game for $35. November and October had heavy hitters in the video game world, and this game not only warranted a buy in my mind but the multiplayer has it as the #2 or #3 game that I'm playing now (behind <a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Battlefield-3/dp/B003O6G5TW/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Battlefield 3</a> and <a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Skyrim/dp/B004HYK956/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Skyrim</a> depending on my mood). The fact that it can pull some of my interest and playtime given the other games out there should say something about Revelations.
However, I realize that the appeal of this game to me, personally, may not be something shared by all gamers. Would I pay $60 for this game? No. I would, myself, be happy to have paid $45, maybe even $50. For someone unsure about this game, I would wait until a $40 price point. For fans of Brotherhood, particularly of the multiplayer, however, you are probably like me and would be content with a $45 price tag.
I hope my review was helpful. Feel free to ask me any followup questions in the comments section. Thanks for reading! | video-games_xbox |
In the tradition of TRON. First off, there has been much confusion from lack of information on the web between this game and TRON 2.0. Well, I'm here to let you know- Tron 2.0 and Tron 2.0 Killer App are the same game. The differane being that Killer App has many extra fewatures available for the xbox including more multiplayer options, and of course XBOX Live.
Now, about the game. First off, the story is wonderful. It picks up modern day and continues the storyline from the origional TRON movie. Throughout the game, you slowly unfold the story of what has occurred during the intervening years. Much fun.
Graphics. Nice. Not fancy, but the idea is that it is still essentially the TRON universe, just updated a bit. The result being about what you'd expect.
Gameplay. Interesting. A little awkward with the upgrades, and annoyingly must be adjusted level by level. You can save at most points except during lightcycle races, which doesn't sound so bad, but when you meant to save right before the race and you don't and you want to go to bed or something- well, it gets annoying. Lots of weapons which are fun to play around with. There are 4 basic weapons each with 2-3 upgrades. Smooth gameplay otherwise. The only significant annoyance is the sound, which please see below. There are also one or two glitches. Also, the objectives list to occasionally check is completely unreadable. Completely. I could vaguely make out smudges in the shape of letters. It's probably readable except that the contrast of the letters against a similarly colored background (which is a green box which the objective is printed on) makes awful illegability
Sound. Okay, the voices are pretty low. Annoying at first, it gets increasingly irritating as occasionally you actually don't know what to do because you can't hear what you were told to do. Music and sounds effects are wonderful though, and fans of the movie will recognise many of the sound effects.
Overall. If you like Halo and other first person shooters, you'll like this. This also has the advantage that many people don't like blood- no blood here! Merely derezolution. It usually isn't too difficult to figure out where to go and what to do, and little need to worry about getting lost. Also, for those of you who are sick and tired of beating a game the first night you get it you probably don't need to worry about this. TRON 2.0 Killer App is a very long game, so while you pay a lot of money for it (as with most games these days) the game is so massive, so many multiplayer options (aside form the xbox live) that you actually feel like you get your money for it. And that's a nice change. | video-games_xbox |
One of the most influential games of the last 20 years arrives on the 8th Generation 10/10. I've played all the Resident Evil games
Resident Evil Director's Cut for the original Playstation is a huge reason why i got the PS
I even came across the regular PS version of Resident Evil to see what was done different to even have a Director's Cut
Very little differences between the two original version besides the wrap around artwork and a few scenes cut/re-cut
While Resident Evil Code: Veronica was at the time a impressive title and a major exclusive that should have enticed consumer into buying the Sega Dreamcast!
Code Veronica also under performed mostly due to the over saturation of countless survival horror titles put out since the original Resident Evil
So Capcom made a bold move and in a sense re-booted the RE Series with RE4 and the rest is history
Let's get the 50 foot gorilla out of the way
The disc/psychical hard copy does work
It's gimped who's fault is it for this major mess up??
Capcom or Microsoft
Not sure it might just be a marketing strategy to turn the consumers/gamers off on buying psychical hard copies of games
Hopefully I'm just being cynical
You can either play the game offline (sign out of your Gold Account)
or the major pain the second option
Install the disc onto your HD/Console then uninstall it go into the XBox Store find Resident Evil 4
Tap the install tab and it will over shoot the amount of data on the disc (This is the missing update/patch) I guess
Why does it need a day one patch??? I have no clue
Doing it the second option will take a good 20 minutes (which is crazy since the game is around 10GB of date
But, it does work the disc version will play smooth and with N/P after doing either step
I'd highly suggest the second choice that way you have access to the leader boards
I read on one msg board you need the game to be online to get Achievements to pop
Which I'm not sure.... why gamble
Graphics: Are solid But, to be fair the Gamecube version looked awesome back in 2005
This is pretty much the PC Port with 60fps in full HD 1080p (which i think the XBox 360 and PS3 Digital versions were also in HD)
Once again the Letterbox picture format has been pulled from this version too
It would've been nice to have a choice to pick "Classic" Original version with the black bars
Which was also done with The Evil Within
If you played the game on the GC and then played this version there is a difference it's not massive but, it's a solid HD upscaling
Audio The Original Gamecube version was decoded in Pro Logic
While not the best audio option it was extremely strong
I forgot how the audio was on both the PS2 port and the Wii version
This version is awesome getting the choice to decode in DTS 5.1
DTS 5.1 is the best output of sound for any video game in the 8th Generation
you get Theater Quality sound with sounds and music coming from every speaker
Controls are solid for the most part (It's close to impossible to get the "perfect" feel it had on Gamecube
The PS2 was average at best the Wii was terrible due to the gimmicky controls
The 360 and the XBone are solid but, not perfect
Extras: None The Original Mercenary Mode is here But, the extra content that was on the PS2 version was not ported over (I could be wrong but, there is no evidence of that) I was hoping Capcom was going to do the right thing and add the Resident Evil 4.5 Demo on this release
No such luck
Overall This is a must own for all gamers It changed the 3rd person action/adventure genera landscape forever and deserves all the praise it receives
Despite the massive cluster "F" the psychical version has become on the launch date still a solid 10/10
This mess up should not happen again soon though
MS Gamertag Duckman 1979 | video-games_xbox |
Wimpwulf. The epic poem of Beowulf is once again recreated, but this time in the form of a video game for the Xbox 360. Beowulf has a hack n'slash gameplay similar to the Dynasty Warrior series. You lead a small group of Thane soldiers, while fighting creatures in the kingdom of, Herot. The game follows the movie it is based on somewhat loosely. There are creatures you kill and places to explore not seen in the movie. Fighting new creatures and going to new places in not all it is cracked up to be.
The biggest misgiving about Beowulf is its shoddy controls and bad camera system which fights against you through out the game. In certain levels Beowulf controls fine but other times he moves sluggishly and the button pressing on your controller are not always responsive; just adding to the frustration. As you play Beowulf, the "mighty" monster slayer, you will punch, throw, stab and smash enemies either with your barehands or with shields and swords. Weapons are easy to find as you venture through the levels. Other times you can steal your enemy's weapon by pressing a button sequence on your controller.
And this brings me to another giant flaw within the game, the constant button mashing is tiresome and boring. Your soldiers help you fight off some of the enemies but they expect you to do most of the work. With button delay responses and constant pounding, your hands will ache really fast. There are also several sequences that force you to use the button rythm match game (press x, then y, then a etc...). If you are not good at those rythm type games, you will have a very tough time in this one. You will die a lot and realise that Beowulf is not mighty at all, but more of a wimp.
Pros:
+excellent music
+excellent sound effects
+bloody and brutal
Cons:
-last generation graphics
-cheap animations
-terrible controls
-terrible camera
-boring levels
-mindless button mashing
-my hands still hurt
-the movie is better
-beowulf is wimpy in the game
-special powers are crappy
-PS2's GOD of War still rules! | video-games_xbox |
It's not Uncharted. First off, the graphics (8/10). Graphically ROTR is a small step up from the last Tomb Raider reboot for Playstation 3, I haven't played the remastered version yet but something tells me the remastered version of the reboot will look better than this (at least on a PC or PS4)...something seems off with ROTR on the X1 and it does not play quite as beautifully as the trailers suggested, a bit choppy graphically, I wouldn't be surprised if the trailer footage is from the PC version? Correct me if I'm wrong, but even if that's true, the X1 version still has its moments with beautiful, sprawling vistas and visually stunning cave scenes.
Second, the music score or lack thereof, maybe it's because I just finished the remastered Uncharted, but the sound just feels rushed, it's there and not bad when it's present, but it's missing a lot of moving orchestration to drive certain moments. As a result, it's not as fun when leaping from cliff to cliff. It's just missing something.
This game would have been great with Kinect as well, which would have made me forget all about the sound and watered down graphics, especially considering the fact that there are ZERO decent titles for X1 kinect so far. The option to actually jump from ledges would have been insanely fun while providing ample opportunity to wake up the neighbors. Thank you Microsoft for force bundling a product you did absolutely nothing to support except for one unplayable sports game. You can make it up by making all the 360 kinect titles backwards compatible with the X1 kinect.
As for the story of ROTR, it starts off with an avalanche and then veers into an Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade style adventure. No complaints there.
Apart from my high expectations regarding the graphics, sound and kinect, the gameplay did not disappoint. ROTR is not bad by any means, and while it's not Uncharted, it still is definitely one of the better titles for X1 after Witcher 3 and State of Decay. If you like action/adventure titles, I'd recommend it. | video-games_xbox |
L.A. Noire Delivers!..But know what you are in for. The first thing that absolutely needs to be said is that if you are picking this game up to satisfy your GTA or RDR fix, you are not approaching this game in a way that will make it fun for you. It's not that type of game. It's a detective simulation and needs to be approached as such. The world is yours to navigate, but often you are led to your destinations and having a partner tag along makes it harder to just run around and look for stuff. If you are the type to drive crazy in the streets, steal cars, and shoot random citizens... this is NOT your game.
Graphics wise, this is a magnificent game. The facial details are insanely good, and they really make you second guess your decisions as you interrogate suspects. It's not always cut and dry, sometimes a subject seems like they are lying but they are simply nervous and the nerves evident in their face throw off your decisions. The movement of the characters is very realistic and smooth. It actually takes some getting used to, as in games everything is sped up to impossible speeds. I found myself having a tough time adjusting to walking slow to crime scenes and around the city. Even driving, I had to slow myself down to not cause as much damage to the city and my car.. which would hurt my score.
Game mechanics were great, and for those who don't want the game to tell you where all of the clues are by chiming at you.. this can be turned off to raise the difficulty level. The scenes definitely strain your detective skills, as you struggle to find certain clues and piece together which perp is guilty or seems guilty. Another thing that I had to learn to do was to use the correct evidence to prove my accusation of a lie. This made my first case have a moderate star rating. It takes a little getting used to, but after you figure it out the game really starts to flow.
Some people have said that there is little replay value. I disagree with this statement. For the achievement minded and the perfectionists out there, you can revisit cases to get a 5 star rating and to ace your interviews. There are also film reels, badges, and cars to find. Not to mention the fact that the DLC will make for a lot of replay value in the long run. This game has a lot of potential on that front.
Another thing I have heard is that the 3 discs of the Xbos edition are a problem. This just isn't so. Any gamer worth his salt has played games with multiple discs, and this one is no different. Just like Mass Effect 2, or Metal Gear Solid, or FFVII... the discs are there to hold more game. And having more game is a good thing, especially with a game this great. I only saw a little slowdown during my hours of playing the game, and it was never to the levels of Fable III.
The detail in this game is really amazing. From the city itself, to the cars, the clothing... everything is represented with such a high level of realism that it completely immerses you. If you are a gamer, and can slow yourself down enough to enjoy it.. you really should play this game. It's not Gears of War, it's not Mass Effect, it's definitely not GTA, but this game stands on it's own as a legend in it's own right... and is worth your time. You will regret it if you never give it a chance. | video-games_xbox |
Hop into a Starfighter It's Going TO Be A Long Ride. Star Wars has always featured an amazing cast of characters,fantastic battle grounds so vibrant and colorful let alone imaginative, and a strong story to back it up(Don't forget the MUSIC!).Sadly whenever a Star Wars game is realesed it focuses on one aspect like a flying sim or a fighting game or sometimes has nothing to do with the real original Star Wars! Us Star Wars fans never really get the pick of the barrel and are casted aside with lackign games. Battlefront 2 somehow manages to pull all the great things that make Star Wars so great into one. You are probly thinking didn't the origginal Battlefront already own the feat?The answers no.
This time around you can play as multiple Heroes and Villains spanning from all of the six movies! Oh and many new maps that are waiting to be destroyed and some well maintained remakes of classic levels like Geonosis! It wouldnt be great without masses of soldiers at your disposal pick between good and evil and fight in some of the most couragious Star Wars battles that the siries has to offer. Man an (the classic)X-Wing or a (the modern)Starfighter and blast off into space avoiding incomming missles and gaining turf by taking down enemie ships and shield in the all new Space battles. Every class is destined to hold some significance to the battlefield find whats best for you. Maby your an all around troop or a heavy artillary kinda person, whatever you are fight till the end. The X-Box version supports online/X-boc Live, so the wars keep on comming with intelligent support by either your friends or your new worst enemy. The splitscreen(2-4 player) is still fun too! Choose either Galatic Wars or Clone Wars and see the difference in troops and performance as each is set on 3 episodes.(Clones being the first 3 Galatic being the other 3)
Graphically this doesn't stack up to say Doom 3, or the new X-box 360 titles, but in its own way it's still colorful and powerful. Audio wise whats not to love?You can't deny Star Wars music John Williams composes each peace to perfection! The controls are smooth as can be ,but may take awhilke to get use too. All the new features leave you comming back for more, even if your new to the siries. Make sure to add this modern classic to your collection and let it shine. | video-games_xbox |
This review will save you Fifty Dollars. I have never been so unchallenged by a video game in my life, and since I am no video game pro, that is saying a lot.
I bought the game on Friday, the day it came out, and beat it today, Wednesday. It took me about five hours spread over 3 playing sessions to beat it.
There has been a lot of hype over how realistic the Pearl Harbor scene is in Rising Sun, and unfortunately it was undeserved. Instead of the breathtaking gunfight the ads promise, you basically flee to the deck of the sinking ship and then fire blindly at enemy planes with a rifle. Then you get on a gunboat and fire blindly at some more enemy planes. End of level. They could have done so much more with this Pearl Harbor scene.
After the somewhat unique first level, the game retreats to what is practically a clone of MOH Frontline, except you are shooting Japanese instead of Germans. Rising Sun is identical to Frontline on even the most basic levels. For example, there is a bell tower in Frontline you must go up in, and, guess what, there is one you must ascend in Rising Sun too! As far as weapons go, you get the same sniper rifle and assorted machine guns. Allegedly, there is also a bazooka available, but in the only level in which I found the bazooka missiles, the bazooka itself was nowhere to be found, so I never got to use it before beating the game.
The ending of the game, as other reviewers have pointed out, is the biggest sham I have ever seen in a video game. You make your way through an aircraft carrier, get into a plane, and blow up the aircraft carrier once you have taken off. Even the ending is a clone of Frontline: for those of you who have played it, Frontline ends with you taking off in a plane.
To say I was shocked when the game credits started rolling after I blew up the aircraft carrier would be an understatement. I thought I had at least a few more levels left, if, for no other reason, because I had not yet used the bazooka. Not to mention that the ending to the game was simply anti-climactic.
The people at Electronic Arts must have been behind schedule on the development of the game, and, determined to release it in time for Christmas, resigned themselves to releasing a sub-par product and propping it up with extensive marketing. | video-games_xbox |
Wreckless: The Yakuza Mission. This game is just dripping with fun. Wreckless asks you to perform senseless violence (is there such a thing as sensible violence?) with one of over a dozen cars. You don't have guns, just your car to abuse, bashing into just about anything in your path. Almost everything you see can be run into and crushed.
The game is... pretty. Yes, the graphics are so phenomenally beautiful they require minor swear words to describe. The game runs fast and smooth with real-time lighting effects on everything. Sunlight reflects off office windows and sparkles on the water. The enormous city looks as real as I've ever seen in a game. I can't possibly hype up the graphics enough. Oddly, the cut-scenes aren't nearly as well rendered. But you won't be gawking at the cut-scenes for long anyway, the real game is in the streets.
Missions vary from simple things like chasing down Yakuza cars and crashing into them till they go boom to hunting down and destroying various Dim Sum stands throughout the city. Wreckless is mostly about bashing things with your car. And man is that fun. I cannot get enough of driving along the sidewalk, watching frightened pedestrians run for their lives as I take out mail boxes, fire hydrants, and pesky guard rails. The physics are realistic. You can feel the bumps as you climb the stairs with your old school taxi. As you crash your way through Hong Kong, your car takes damage. It won't be long before you're without a hood, doors, or trunk. No matter how much abuse you place on your car, it will never blow up, never die, never surrender. So smash away!
Controls for Wreckless are as simple as can be. Right Trigger for gas, Left Trigger for brake, B to kick it into reverse, and the Left Analogue to steer.
Wreckless has over a dozen cars to play with. The coolest that I've uncovered is the Delorean. It's got rockets on the back, just as it appeared in Back to the Future. I haven't figured out how to go back in time yet, but I'll keep trying till I'm back in wonderful 1985. Other cars include a tank, an armored dune buggy, and a Hong Kong-style police car.
Did I mention one of the characters you play looks like Elton John? There's nothing like tooling along in a Delorean with Sir Elton sitting shotgun. Especially since none of his... music plays during the game. Instead you get a techno beat that works well with the feel of the game. The game has some mad style, with replays that are worth watching. Several different types of cameras switch back and forth during replays. At one moment you are watching a grainy black and white video and the next the view's switched to an infrared camera and finally to a crisp view. It may sound a bit weird, but it makes for an entertaining replay.
I strongly suggest you budget fifty bucks for Wreckless. Skip a meal a day for a week if you have to. Search through the cushions of your couch for wads of cash or even a few pennies. Every bit will help. You're gonna want this game. Look for our full review next week... | video-games_xbox |
Finally, the right Halo game for me. Spoiler alert! Don't read the review if you haven't finished the Story Campaign to Halo Reach.
I consider myself a "seasoned" Halo fan who started late: I borrowed a friend's copy of Halo: Combat Evolved so that I could march through Halo 2 (before the Halo 3 launch). Halo 3 was good. Halo ODST is what I call "Halo 3.5". If I've read right, ODST was developed simultaneously with Reach.
I generally go through single player campaigns before touching Multiplayer. Reach wasn't an exception. For those who don't know, Halo: Reach occurs before the events of Halo: Combat Evolved. This is about the Fall of Reach if I've been told correctly (I never read the Halo novels). So, naturally, it probably isn't going to end well for humanity. But as Noble Six, you'll set things in motion for the future (i.e. Master Chief, et al.)
Personally I thought that the campaign was excellent. It was well paced with a few "oh sheet!" moments (reaching the base with the spacecraft you'll eventually pilot was one of them). I really like the utility of the updated/new Covenant firearms now.
The cinematics are refined: Bungie now mastered use of handheld camera movements and wide shots, with really excellent lighting in cutscenes. The score is more somber than whimsical. It's not "space age" futurism a la Halo: ODST. Martin O'Donnell and Michael Salvatori shifted gears just a tad to make Reach a darker experience. It works perfectly.
I can't say I was a huge fan of Master Chief. He may have been awesome in the novels, I'll never know. But, really, he barely said anything in the Halo games! With Noble Team I just enjoyed meeting a cast of characters (like ODST) who TALKED. And they played their parts well.
Most underappreciated line in the game: "I know we're losing. I want to know if we lost." - Kat, Noble Team.
I generally avoid Multiplayer in a lot of FPS', or I'll just hook up my headset and let it sit to the side - I don't pay a yearly subscription on Xbox Live to hear a bunch of people talk about human body parts, sexual orientations they really know nothing about and the like. Heck, I can't stand this on ANY online service.
Thankfully, it's pretty easy to adjust Muting options. I've played Reach a ton thanks to muting everyone or just having Party or Team chat enabled. Yes, they had this in Halo 3 and Halo ODST. Having it in Reach, though, is icing on the cake: the amount of game types and playlists is still abundant enough. I find myself trying some new game mode or variation every night with a party of friends online. It's awesome and a heck of a lot of fun.
Bungie puts ragequitters on probation, or tries. "Quit *enough* times and you won't be able to join Matchmaking for 15 minutes". Good riddance. I've played a bunch of games where people have simply quit because it wasn't the game type they liked. That's too bad, it doesn't hurt to try to get better at a game type or level you can't particularly handle. Accept your losses and have fun playing!
All the components of Reach make for a great game. I can say that this is the best Halo game I've played, and I look forward to continue playing online. Bungie's "last Halo" (?) is a great one. Don't miss out. | video-games_xbox |
The new Syndicate pass on it. Well, i tried to get into it twice really hard, but it was just something about it that i just could not get into... I really wanted to like this game but there are some issues.
-The save process is really bad, you save by checkpoints so you can't quit the game at anytime when you get tired of it, and this happens often, this old style of punishing design really hurts this game and keeps you away from it, because it seems like a chore to struggle and push yourself through the boringly long blocks of the game before you can get to a checkpoint, unlike Call Of Duty where the action is better and the settings are more gripping, and the pacing seems better in COD too...
-A lot of people have complained about the ultra bright blue lighting, and yeah it's a pain on the eyes and makes it even harder to play the game. You can probably correct this with gamma.
-There are some actors in the game from real movies but that does not help this game, and in fact it kind of hinders it, because it seems like they spent all the money trying to pay the actors instead of creating a good immersible game.
-I found the gunplay was really hurt by this weird matrix style computer vision that is supposed to make it easier for you to kill your enemies. This i found was a real hindrance to the game because it takes away the graphics and replaces them with this polygonal transparent view, like some sort of thermal vision or something, now this would obviously work in a real world situation where real life and death count for something and impact something, but in a game it seems like a pointless feature, since you could kill or get killed and it has no impact either way...
-Overall i did not like this game, and i bought it because i was curious about it when it was first released. I knew my aversion to the FPS switch over was the right call, i think this game would have been totally different and 100% better if it were in third person at 3/4 an angle like Jagged Edge... | video-games_xbox |
Review Shark -- Max Payne 3. This is one of the few games I pre-ordered in the past 5 years. I have every single Rockstar game for the Xbox 360. I enjoy their games and all of them have captivating stories, amazing effects and graphics, and will keep you busy for hours and hours without getting boring. Max Payne 3 is no exception. If you haven't bought it yet, GET OUT THERE AND BUY IT. You are missing out!
Story: Incredible. Deep. Captivating from the title screen. I have only briefly played the first two so I don't really know Payne's story and background, but I pretty much figured a lot about him from the first few scenes. If you haven't played the first two games, don't let that slow you down. You will understand most of what is going on because he is in a whole other location.
Cutscenes: Better than almost any other game I have played, with the exception of LA Noire. Max Payne doesn't use motion scan, but the graphics are still state of the art, and better than most of the games out there today. The effects during the cutscenes make me feel as though I'm watching a real movie. The voice acting and background noises are amazingly realistic.
Gameplay: One of the best things about this game is, obviously, the gameplay. I don't mean merely playing the game, but I am referring to what occurs during your time playing. The mechanics are very easy to get used to, such as the cover system and special moves Payne can do. You can slow time which is fun, and you can do that very often. You have equipped pain killers so if you run low on health you can easily regain some, and trust me, you will need to. When you shoot the last enemy in an area, you can watch the bullet via bullet cam, and change the speed of it to make it seem like you are in a movie. It doesn't effect the damage or anything, it's just really cool. The cutscenes overlap with gameplay too, so there is always reason to pay attention and stay alert.
Cons: There are just a few things that bring this game down. Don't get me wrong, this game is AMAZING, but something Rockstar games suffer from time and time again is repetativeness. Most shooter games get pretty repetative, and Max Payne gets repetative in certain areas as well. However, the story and graphics are so amazing that you barely even care. Another aspect that some people may have a problem with is it's hard. Of course, there are different difficulties, but even normal presents a good challenge. I am in favor of the challenge, but a lot of gamers are used to easy games without posing too much of a threat on their brain. In Max Payne, you are gonna have to think a bit, because the bullets deal realistic damage, the AI is real, and the effects are realistic as well.
Multiplayer: Definately another reason to buy this game. Like RDR and GTA4, the multiplayer experience is like a whole other game. There are many different modes of gameplay, and basically it's one team against another. It's actually pretty fun, but I haven't gotten a chance to play it that much.
Overall: I give this game a 9.2 overall. While I have never played any previous Max Payne games, this one presents a reason to start playing them. It is not free roam, but it is an amazing experience and I encourage to all to buy it. Rockstar once again proved that they make some of the greatest games of the year. | video-games_xbox |
Well, I'd certainly play this rather than do my taxes. So I didn't like the first one. So then why do a review on this one? Because.
Because I expected better, I guess. Even from a game series I disliked, I expected better. It was only out of my apathy for the series (as in, I certainly wouldn't buy it, but I'd play it at a friend's house) that I gave this one a try.
Is this 2004? Hell no, boyos! Yet playing this game, you'd think it was.
Graphics are never a concern of mine when it comes to game enjoyment, but this time here, the negatives of the game just brought the graphical issue to the forefront. It looks like a game released in 2004, it's just atrocious. Maybe if they did it to handle more model types for zombies and the like, I could understand, but it's hard to stay immersed into the game experience when blasting open zombies with a shotgun reveals blood as red as monotoned and bright as paint and no real lasting gore.
One of the biggest detriments to the game is the sloppy, almost nonexistant friction. For some reason, every time you run/walk, you not only have no indication that you're moving up and down slightly, but you LITERALLY slide. If you stop moving, you'll slide a few inches before coming to a stop. This completely destroys much chance of very quick movements in tight action places where you need to avoid spooking a zombie hiding behind a corner or another room, and you end up skidding out into the open.
Another massive detriment is lack of aiming. You shoot with the right trigger, and melee hit with the left trigger. You can only aim with a sniper rifle---everything else you essentially "fire from the hip", as you experience in Call of Duty games frequently. It's hideous for aiming, and renders weapons like the pistol completely useless save for quick bodyshots when you have no time to reload.
Playing online may be necessary, as singularly, the AI is atrocious. My allies very frequently run into my gunfire, making it impossible to use many weapons for a long enough while without having to move out of the way of shooting your friends.
If I didn't know this was a major game release, I'd honestly think this was some kind of low-budget online flash game or Xbox Arcade game. | video-games_xbox |
It is more versatile than you think.. Not just for xb1. TLDR: The ear pads are glued on and not replaceable with aftermarket pads. I found this out the hard way. I could actually see the lining and the glue seams inside my right ear pad when it came unglued after using for a few hours. Pretty disgusting to charge folks 300+ for something that has glue and plastic. Sound was great, the parts surrounding these cans not so much.
Initially, I got this headset and within 3 days I wanted to return it because of the odd way the pass through works with wireless chat on xb1. Now I have changed my mind because I can use it for wireless 7.1 simulated DTS sound, but not chat. I changed my review to 4 stars because of this caveat. The headset does clamp down somewhat, but noise cancellation and great earpads are help that negative portion. Also, the material is loosening up after a few weeks of break-in time.
First, the look of the headset is definitely in that high end category, it's made to last. The second major thing is sound and of course the sound is incredible. I have other headsets like the g930, hyper X cloud II, px4, Sony golds, and 420x for comparison. This one has much better surround sound with the 7.1 DTS by far and of course the Bluetooth capability to listen to music or take a phone call AND hear game sound at the same time is awesome imo. The sound is also crystal clear with balance throughout the sound field. Also the bass is pretty darn good as well. The presets are many and are customizable via apps or pc downloads. There are over 16 presets set as default with the ability to customize to your liking.
The saving grace of swallowing a 300 dollar price tag is I found a way to make this headset work for my xb1, ps4, ps3, and Xbox 360 after a week and a half of finding the right toslink splitter. A toslink matrix is needed to pull this off. If anyone is interested in that, please leave a comment on this review. Needless to say I have wireless game sound on all 4 consoles and wireless chat on the xb1. I have not tested if I can use wired chat with the ps3 or ps4, but generally sound is the same on XB1 with optical out. The sound was so good that if I couldn't use the optical out then I was definitely not interested in a 300 dollar DTS headset only for one console. My main issue was that I wanted to play MGSV on PS4 and Fallout4 on XB1 and have great sound with some versatility. Having the charging base as an active pass-through into a matrix solved that for me and I love this headset now. Being able to use an android app to control everything is also pretty nifty as well, which is also the only way to adjust the mic monitoring ratio.
Now for a few negative issues I don't like, but for the sound quality I'm gonna live with.
-battery life with noise cancellation active is lower than anticipated, less than 10 hours.
-cannot use chat features on other consoles, but can get DTS 7.1 on PS4, X360, and PS3 once passed through a toslink matrix.
-headset can hurt your ears after a few hours until broken in fully.
-will need a tablet or smartphone w/bluetooth to fully adjust mic monitoring because of the supported Bluetooth app that Turtle Beach has.
-some people may not go for the hidden mics because they are not as good as boom mics, but I was told that over my xb live parties that I sounded fine. Update this headset with the latest firmware from day one to avoid any issues.
-the price is hard to swallow, no questions about that.
-volume levels for some people may not go high enough. I factored this into the fact that it can go uncomfortable depending on the presets, games, or apps being used. For my usage it is very adequate.
Finally, I do think for all the features, great DTS sound, and presets that this is worth the asking price, at least once I got the pass-through working. There are other options available, but this thing has superior sound over pretty much anything I have used up to this point.
EDIT 09/10/2015 rating down to 2 stars...
I had to file a return on these due to the right ear pad coming unglued. Yes, I said unglued because you are stuck with those ear pads on the elite 800 and 800x. Its a shame because I wanted to put some HM5 replacement pads on these. This was my last run at a Turtle Beach product. Throwing down 300 dollars plus for glued ear pads is not for me. For 300 bucks, go grab a Astro Mixamp Pro and Sennheiser G4me Ones or Zeroes. | video-games_xbox |
The standout golf game of the generation. The Tiger Woods PGA Tour series has been solid if unspectacular this generation carrying with it somewhat limited appeal. Hampered by a heavy reliance on downloadable content the justification to purchase yearly has waned considerably.
That won't necessarily change with Tiger Woods 14. People who play yearly may not find as much value as novices. However for those who have skipped recent versions or who would be new to the series it can be easily recommended.
While Tiger Woods 12 had the compelling draw of The Masters for the first time, and Tiger 13 attempted to create a new experience with the Legacy Challenge, it would take travelling many years farther in the past to find a golf game that captured my attention in the way that Tiger 14 has. Any assumption that a gimmicky element would be needed to create interest has been proven wrong by a product that simply delivers realistic and satisfying gameplay as accompanied by a rich and involving feature set. Feel free to check out a few gameplay videos (Career, Legends of the Majors, Live Tournament) on the Pastapadre Youtube Channel.
One very successful element introduced in Tiger 14 is the "Swing Style" feature which gives each current golfer a more personalized feel along with the ability to craft a swing style when creating new golfers. Now each individual is classified in the following categories: Type (Power or Control), Shape (Draw or Fade), Trajectory (Low, Medium, or High), and Handedness (Left or Right). The tutorial helps in getting a feel for some of the differences and the selection screen explains the choices. They can be changed later if so desired. Draws and fades are manageable this year but it can still be difficult to nail that stick movement.
Legends of the Majors is the flashy new mode for this year. It involves playing through events from history within the confines of the time they took place. That means playing with the legends, old course designs, and equipment. The visual filter defines those time periods but feels out of place in a sense given the experience is otherwise all from the golfer's perspective.
Some of the challenges are fairly easy like re-creating a shot, while others take more work such as matching a performance over several holes or a round. Whether they are overly frustrating or just tough remains to be determined. There are 62 challenges overall and most are worthwhile but there are some that clearly could have been omitted. Why am I being asked to play in 1922 as Rory McIlroy against Keegan Bradley? Legends of the Majors is a decent distraction - and going through the history of the sport is a valuable journey - but it's not something that will hold much value outside of the initial play through.
The Live Tournaments online have been enhanced by adding more of the social element that had been lacking last year. There is of course still the traditional ways to play online but the Tournaments now offer the ability to see the shot arcs for up to an active 24 players on a hole and include group voice chat. I have no expectation of ever winning a public tournament, and that can still be discouraging in a sense, but setting them up with Clubs or friends makes for a fun experience regardless of performance level. Country Clubs have been expanded to 100 members and that too now features chat functionality.
Other additions of note are the LPGA tour, "Simulation" difficulty, and varied tee times that include night golf. Playing in nighttime conditions is more than just the darkness as the sound effects from the environment like the chirping birds are gone. It just has a new feel to it like playing on the historic courses provides in Legends of the Majors. EA probably should have taken sunglasses off golfers who wear them though when it turns dark out. I would not be the right person to assess the "Simulation" setting but from all other accounts it appears to provide the experience very talented players have been looking for.
Presentation would appear to be the weakness of Tiger 14. The commentary is bland, overly generic, and occasionally incorrect. The camera angles range from satisfactory to downright horrible. Quite often after taking a shot - particularly when putting - it immediately cuts to a camera angle that makes it impossible to actually tell what is happening. They may be meant to enhance the drama but all they do is remove oneself from the moment. The on-screen informational displays do well to communicate information with the leaderboard, scorecards, and Country Club stats but others seem pretty pointless - especially when the statistical leaders for a category are all the people who have yet to tee off.
Last year's method of being able to earn DLC courses through time spent playing has been removed due to heavy criticism and problems with the implementation on the PS3. Though not necessarily the wrong decision EA should have provided some alternate method that worked instead of falling back on the old way of doing things where the only way to obtain them is by spending significant chunks of money.
While the enjoyment being had with Tiger 14 may be partially attributed to having not invested much time with the series over the course of the generation - and particularly last year which just fell flat and was pushed aside quickly - it can't be discounted due to just that. The addictive nature of the gameplay and strong depth of content could be realized by many. Tiger 14s additions and improvements have the merit to be appreciated by the both the hardcore and more casual crowds and that is a balance that has been tough to come by in the past.
***HISTORIC EDITION*** Includes six courses and a playable Bobby Jones not found in the standard version. For the $10 difference the value is there if the courses are important or would have been bought as downloadable content otherwise as the Historic Upgrade package is $20 through Xbox Live Marketplace/PlayStation Network Store. | video-games_xbox |
A must play Lego game, start here. A classic lego game, epic and a must play.
Strongly recommend if new to lego games start here.
The puzzles and gameplay is magical for young kids.
Newer lego games make this game seem dated when you go back to it.
Other Must get kids games:
<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Cloudy-with-a-Chance-of-Meatballs-Xbox-360/dp/B00242KDA4/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs - Xbox 360</a> (3-6 year old, 2 player, easy and fun)
<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Toy-Story-3-The-Video-Game-Playstation-3/dp/B0038MUCPK/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Toy Story 3 The Video Game - Playstation 3</a> (3-9 year old+, 2 player, FPS for kids)
<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Rio-Xbox-360/dp/B004NB1C54/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Rio - Xbox 360</a> (3-9 year old+, 4 player, 30+ Party games for kids)
<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Lego-Batman/dp/B000ZKBJY6/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Lego Batman</a> (3-7 year old+, 2 player, puzzler, 3rd person shooter)
<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Disney-Universe-Xbox-360/dp/B0051875OU/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Disney Universe - Xbox 360</a> (4-10 year olds, 4 player, fast action w/mini games, pure arcade play)
<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Rayman-Origins-Xbox-360/dp/B0050SYAQ2/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Rayman Origins - Xbox 360</a> (4-9 year old, 4 player, arcade side scroll er)
<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/LEGO-Batman-2-DC-Super-Heroes-Xbox-360/dp/B006ZPAYGE/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">LEGO Batman 2: DC Super Heroes - Xbox 360</a> (4-9 year old+, 2 player, huge world, action-adventure, younger kids need older player)
<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/LEGO-Pirates-of-the-Caribbean-Xbox-360/dp/B003O6E7O2/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean - Xbox 360</a> (4-12 year olds, 2 player, nice variety of puzzle-gameplay, younger kids need older player)
<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/LEGO-Star-Wars-III-The-Clone-Wars-Xbox-360/dp/B0037UCTCW/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">LEGO Star Wars III The Clone Wars - Xbox 360</a> (5-9 year old+, 2 player, RTS game for kids)
<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Lego-Marvel-Super-Heroes/dp/B00B98HF1O/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Lego: Marvel Super Heroes</a> (5-14 year olds, 2 player, younger players need to play with older player to navigate world, gameplay fan-tastic, low puzzles)
LEGO Lord of the Rings - Xbox 360 (6-14 year olds, 2 player, my son at 5 struggles but can play with heavy guidance from me, fun game, dad approved, low puzzles)
Minecraft - Xbox 360 (6-17 year olds, 2 player (can be large multiplayer) creative gameplay)
Rest of Lego games are all worth playing, if it wasn't for lego games XBOX would be a vast wasteland for kids under age 8. :) | video-games_xbox |
An Unforgettable Trip Through the Capital Wasteland. There are some games that come along once in a decade or so, that are must plays. Fallout 3 in my humble opinion falls into that category. At it's heart, Fallout is simply a futuristic RPG that has a definite 1940's feel, but delving deeper into the game's numerous side quests and missions reveals one of the deepest and most personal game experiences available today.
The game starts off rather basically. You are being born and the setting up of your character is based off of what is supposed to resemble a design your own child program. After setting your attribute specials and skills for your first level, you find out you and your family are living in one of the many "vaults" scattered throughout the wasteland. The plus? You were underground during the horrific nuclear explosions. The negative? Your dad has left the vault, and you want to find him.
The search for your dad dominates much of the early main quest line. Leveling up early in the game is a frustrating process, but with each level gained, you feel a little bit more powerful. By the end of this game, you should be close to, or at the level cap, and be almost untouchable. Fallout's main quest line can be beaten in probably 8-10 hours. However, there is so much wasteland to explore, that exploration can eat up hours on it's own. Then there are sidequests. Ranging from things like killing mutant fire ants, to gathering bottles of "Nuka Cola Quantam", there is a little bit of everything. For casual players who breeze through the main quest line and stop there, this game will leave a lot to be desired. For those who go past simply scratching the surface of this masterpiece, lies a great experience. Fallout is slightly hampered by technical issues such as the game randomly freezing, AI getting stuck on walls, running in place like moronic vegetables, your character glitching into walls, etc etc, but those certainly don't hold Fallout back as one of the best RPG experiences available on the market today. If you like games like Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and Oblivion, you will love Fallout. With the prices for this game as low as they are today, you will get lots of game for your money. On my Fallout save file, I have logged 131 hours of gameplay, and I still am missing 3 areas. Don't miss this game. | video-games_xbox |
A Fitting Conclusion to the Current Console Generation's College Football Gaming. The NCAA Football franchise has suffered some lean years of late, especially last year's entry; when the "Infinity Engine" was announced for Madden NFL 13 to introduce physics to its gameplay--a feature NCAA Football 13 would be lacking--fans of college football were left waiting anxiously for this year's release. With only months remaining before the start of a new console generation, NCAA Football 14 has sounded a triumphant cry to unofficially close the current console generation, delivering arguably the best iteration of the franchise since the launch of the PS3 and Xbox 360.
It all begins with gameplay, which benefits from the implementation of "Infinity Engine 2," helping to create more unpredictable play results. The game has also seen improvements in the Option run game--including the addition of new schemes and plays--and basic running controls where the left analog stick controls hard cuts and the right analog stick controls special moves. The "Infinity Engine 2" also brings the Hit Stick and the Truck Stick back to prominence, while making the Stiff Arm a viable tool in the offensive arsenal again.
Blocking has been improved as well, with new assignments and interactions between offensive and defensive linemen to freshen up the running experience. There are still instances of missed assignments and frustration, but the frequency of their occurrence is significantly less than previous games.
Dynasty and Online Dynasty modes have seen new additions through the introduction of XP and Coach Skills. Players in the mode earn XP by achieving goals in gameplay and recruiting, allowing them the ability to level up their coaches and unlock new Coach Skills. Coach Skills are broken up into skills which affect the game on the field as well as skills which assist in recruiting.
The tried-and-true (and tired) system of recruiting from previous versions of NCAA Football has been overhauled this year with Power Recruiting. The system simplifies recruiting, eliminating the time-consuming "phone call" mechanic and streamlining menus to allow the same amount of depth in while allowing you to more quickly complete your recruiting responsibilities and get back to the game.
Presentation has seen some upgrades as well, though not all will be fully embraced. The unique "tradition" introductions to the games were judged to be over-long, and have been replaced by "music videos" which use highlights to lead into each game; people who liked seeing what makes each of the 126 schools on-disc unique might be disappointed with the loss of these pre-game sequences. Less polarizing are the additions of new statistical overlays and a better-functioning "Living Clock" from the ESPN scorebug, which helps the NCAA Football 14 experience look and feel more like a broadcast. The addition of a halftime show with highlights and commentary from Rece Davis and David Pollack also helps to spruce up presentation, though the in-game commentary from Brad Nessler and Kirk Herbstreit continues to feel old.
The game introduces the popular EA SPORTS staple, Ultimate Team, through NCAA Football Ultimate Team. It functions similarly to Ultimate Team from other EA SPORTS titles, though it uses cards for current and former NFL players representing their college years. There's not much here to convince non-fans of Ultimate Team as a mode to commit to NFUT, but Ultimate Team fans will have something to keep them busier than in past years.
There is also a "Play a Season" mode in NCAA Football 14 which strips away much of the newly-introduced XP, Coach Skills, and Power Recruiting and allows players to simply play through the 2013 season. While it will surely have its target audience, it feels strange to introduce new features to the Dynasty experience and then offer a way to avoid using those new features.
Fans of Road to Glory mode and last year's Heisman Challenge mode will be disappointed to find that not much has changed, though the gameplay experience benefits from the addition of the Infinity Engine 2. The lack of improvement for the "single player" career modes is a weak point in the overall package, and fans will be desperate for news about these modes in NCAA Football 15.
NCAA Football 14 is a vast improvement over what the franchise has offered in the past few years. From a personal standpoint, it has given me significantly more enjoyment than any other version of the series released for current consoles. Usually I have to work to stay committed to a Dynasty through a season, leaving me to spend my time in Play Now one-off games; I've already played an entire season in my Dynasty, and the gameplay revisions combined with XP and Coach Skills have me looking forward to many more seasons. If NCAA Football 14 is the last version of the game that will be relevant on current consoles with the series making the jump to PS4 and Xbox One next summer, then at least the series will be going out with a BCS Bowl-worthy effort. | video-games_xbox |
Tomorrow's arthritis today. I finally decided it was time to retire my old Rock Band 1 guitar, with its palsied fret buttons and slackening strum bar, so I picked this up as a replacement. I don't know if this is representative of all the Rock Band 3 guitar controllers, but if so, I think it's time to take a step back.
1. The strum bar. It clicks. I don't care if I'm in the minority, I thought the silent strum bar of RB1 was a vast improvement. But the clicking I could probably forgive if it weren't also punishingly stiff. The click threshold is way at the top and bottom of the stroke, and you must push it absolutely all the way to register. My hand was starting to ache after about 15 minutes.
2. The buttons. Why don't they go all the way to the top of the neck like the old ones? Not that it's a deal breaker or anything, but why that design choice? It's just one more thing to screw up. Again, first impressions don't lie: they hurt, too. They're stiff and unresponsive and lack that positive 'clunk' when you push down on them, so I ended up pushing a lot harder than I had to, because I wasn't sure by feel when I was pressing them right.
3. The whammy bar. God, this thing. I'm all for authenticity, but the spring is so strong it'd need to be moored to a real full-size solid wood guitar not to be awkward. It takes actual conscious effort to work it. On top of that it's huge, and it only rotates about 180 degrees, and it's so stiff (I'm seeing a pattern here) that you can't brush it out of the way like the old ones.
And whereas the parts you're actually going to use are about as durable and ergonomic as the inside of a prison, the rest is cheap. The Xbox d-pad and start button are crummy, and the fancy 'touch sensitive' overdrive pickup thing is flaky and liable to go off if you breathe on it.
Two stars for being built like a g.d. tank, which I'm sure somebody somewhere will appreciate. But after playing on this thing for half an hour, my fingers had had enough and so had I. | video-games_xbox |
excellent gameplay w/ a few glitches. Sega's NHL 2K3 has by far the most realistic hockey gameplay of any video game ever. The player and goalie movement is phenomenal, and you can get very in-depth with the strategizing with your offensive, defensive, power play, and penalty killing. There are multiple levels of controller function, depending on how precisely you want to control your players, and you can switch the button configurations easily. But there are a few drawbacks that keep this from being a five-star game. First of all, there seems to be some bug that occasionally calls a stoppage in play when a player is just skating up the ice with the puck. It's not a penalty, it's not offsides, just a nebulous "PUCK FROZEN" message beneath the little ESPN score box thing. But that only seems to happen about once every four or five games, so I can deal. Another thing: the commentators are LAME. Sega's original NHL 2K for Dreamcast featured Hockey Night In Canada's Bob Cole and Harry Neale, the finest hockey commentators since Foster Hewitt. With the ESPN branding, I knew they wouldn't be present here, but I was hoping for at least Gary Thorne and Bill Clement. Instead, we get a pair of nobodies spouting asinine phrases like "smashmouth hockey" and pontificating about how the (scan pause) Detroit Red Wings (scan pause) really get up for every opponent on their schedule, especially the (scan pause) Calgary Flames. *sigh*... maybe someday there will be a Hockey Night In Canada video game. Until then, it's easy enough to go into the options and turn off the commentator volume, which is a plus even if the commentators don't bug you because then you can appreciate the tremendous detail Sega put into the audio elements of the game as well as the visual elements, including great on-ice sounds, some subversively wacky comments from the PA announcer, and even "That Obnoxious Drunk Guy In The Crowd" who's always yelling "HIT 'EM! HIIIIIT 'EM!" All in all, it's the best hockey game I've played, and hopefully the few minor glitches will be fixed with the next release. | video-games_xbox |
A bigtime step back for NHL games. I am a huge fan of the NHL games from EA and have been for years! I have bought and enjoyed nearly every iteration since NHL 94 on the SNES and after last years edition I was positive this would be an instant classic. After investing nearly 60 hours into the game over the last week and a half since release, I am utterly frustarted and annoyed by the myriad of issues that hold the game back and make it MUCH less enjoyable than years past.
Sure, the new skating, which is now super-physics based, looks great and is an admirable attempt at adding a new level of realism to the game. Heres the major caveat though: the puck physics have not been tuned to match. So what we have is players that CONSTANTLY miss pucks or the puck simply goes way too fast for the skaters. Also, the new physics require far too much controller micro-managment and it honestly juts feels "muddy" in general. The players literally feel like you are skating them through molasses while the puck just zips along and feels like you are never actually in control of it.
The best part about the last several NHL titles have been the additions to the gameplay that have made the game feel much more realistic yet fun and visceral. This years game takes nearly ALL the fun out of actually PLAYING the game and destroys the essential foundation of what made the last few titles so great. These new control additions do give the user more control options, but what good are those if the actual character control is so sloppy that you cannot put the new control options to proper use? I have sunk many hours and given the game many chances, but alas, it is what it is. EA has taken a huge step backwards by not fixing the stuff that really needed fixing while adding things that do not make for a better gamer experience.
Another thing is the touted "realistic AI". I literally watched in horror as my d men passed the puck back and forth between each other SIX TIMES before making an attempt to actually move the puck! What the hell EA! Why lie about this stuff to gamers?! And the goalie AI? I watched as one player scored 5 goals IN A ROW on a computer goalie by shooting glove sidfe high every time! Awesome, right?! Once you factor in the potential lag in online play, the physiscs also reveal how much of a problem they really are. Couple that with the Re-re-used commentary, the online issues that have not been addressed since 09(like the inability to boot players who screw your team over by scoring on their own net, etc), the lack of any real graphical improvements, etc, it just does not add up to a $60 value.
I usually do not even write these kind of reveiws, but I just felt so ripped off and lied to by EA that I had to vent and hope others do not get jipped as I felt I have been. There are some cool additions like replaying moments from classic games and such, but again, it comes back to the weak gameplay; whats the point of any of it if the fundamental gameplay just doesnt add up?! I tried to love it, then when I didn't I still tried to like it and stick it out. But again, it just stinks. Maybe they will fix tings through tuner updates and whatnot over time once more people complain, but as of this writing (9/21/12) it is just a broker game whos last iteration outshines it in may aspects. Ill pass on this one and hope they get it right for NHL 14 | video-games_xbox |
Simply Put, Doesn't Work. Reading the other reviews here, I can only conclude that this is a tremendously hit-or-miss product; in my case, it was a complete miss. It made the Kinect work worse than it did without it.
The Kinect sits on top of the TV, about 5 feet high, and the furthest I can move away from it, with my calves digging into the couch, is around 6 feet. As we're all aware, the Kinect doesn't work very well at this distance -- in my case it's kinda playable, but very borderline (losing track of the player enough to be annoying, and somewhat inaccurate even when it's locked on). I'd characterize the experience as being 70% playable -- not awful, and we can still have some fun with it, but not great. As such, a product like this seemed like it would be a godsend. Pull the field of play in just a bit, maybe a couple feet at most, that's all I need to be golden. And according to the specs, this is precisely what it should do -- Kinect recommends 6-10 feet to play with, the Zoom claims to reduce that by 40%, moving the play area to about 3-6 feet. That's perfect.
Unfortunately, there's nothing really more complicated to say than that it didn't work as advertised. At all. It appears to pull the play area in WAY too far, and even when you get into it, the Kinect can't track you properly.
With the lens on, and even after calibrating/tuning it, it completely lost sight of me at 6'. It started to pick me up as I moved past 5', but not enough that the Kinect was able to recognize my hands/head or create a wireframe. At 4' I started to get flickers of recognition, but nothing consistent. Moving up to 2-3' or so, too close to be usable anyway, it now recognized me, but without any semblance of accuracy; standing totally still, it registered my hands and head as jumping all over the place. For kicks, I tried playing a bit of Child of Eden and Kinect Adventures like this; it was laughable.
So again, it does seem to work for some people here, and maybe you'll be one of those, but I'd never recommend this to anyone unless they could try it before buying it. My one completely unfounded theory, which I have no good way to test, is that the Zoom's lens may not be letting enough light through. The room I'm using it in is far from dark, but the light is on the softer side. If you're using it in an exceptionally bright room, you may have better luck than I did. | video-games_xbox |
Fun gameplay, but an army of Greg Bears couldn't make me care about the Master Chief at this point. The Halo "story" began as a premise for showing off some really cool gameplay mechanics. A decade later they're churning out nearly identical games in order to keep the same weak plot going and I'm not sure why--Halo Reach was a minor storytelling triumph insofar as it wasn't Halo 4. Chief is a decent placeholder shoot 'em up hero but a terrible protagonist. He's incapable of showing emotion, has very little compelling backstory (he met Lasky back in the day, apparently, while doing the same thing he always does, i.e. showing up out of nowhere and killing Covenant aliens), and no real relationships due to the "sociopathic tendencies" instilled by his training. Cortana doesn't do much for the game either. She's supposed to be *thinking* herself to death, so why the sexist, hysterical PMS caricature? In addition to being a moribund cliche ("Hey, let's include a malfunctioning, emotional AI--no one's done that before!"), she's also generally irritating and unsympathetic. I found myself rolling my eyes whenever she'd have one of her fits. The Snidely Whiplash of the piece, "The Didact," is basically Saren from ME1 except he rides around in a massive ship that shoots deadly beams from a cannon that looks like a cyclopean eye--uh...um...right. The good news is that you can help yourself to a bowl of cereal during the cut scenes, secure in the knowledge that you might as well have seen it all before.
Gameplay-wise, Halo 4 is fun (as usual) but it doesn't bring much new to the table except a couple of clone weapons and some COD-style multiplayer gimmicks. You're still killing more or less the same enemies with more or less the same rifles, pistols, rocket launchers, and shotguns that you've loved since Doom and Wolfenstein 3D. However, it was a decent formula to begin with and my thirtysomething self finds the repetition reassuring, even soothing. That's why I gave this game 3 stars. Your mileage may vary. | video-games_xbox |
Versatile Weapons Load, Realistic Tactics and Physical Performance. Pros over Ace Combat 5, 6, 7, and H.A.W.X 2:
1. Versatile, customized weapons load with realistic weapons and number, as well as physical performance: For example, in this game, you can load up an F-15E Strike Eagle with 8 AIM-120C AMRAAMs, along with 6 AGM-65H Mavericks, and 1 2000-pound JDAM or Laser-guided GBU-16, or 1 CBU-103 INS/GPS-guided cluster bomb, or a 600-Galllon drop fuel tank, or if you just want to bomb ground targets, you can load up to 13 MK-20 Cluster bombs or 13 CBU-103s or 5 of 2000-lb JDAMS or Laser guided bombs, and still have room for 4 AIM-120C AMRAAMs along with the 6 AGM-65H Maverick missiles. There's also a published trick of having unlimited ammo by adding the number "1" to the end of the save file name such as: Save1. This helps you save a lot of time by not having to land on a nearby base or aircraft carrier just to reload your weapons.
2. Focused and engaging replay video with camera following missile travel all the way to target impact, as well as great views of aircraft maneuvers. Very detailed, and accurate rendering of combat aircraft, tanks, ships, weapons, and other combat systems in HD quality, much like what you can expect from a computer-based simulation. If you loved PS2's Aero Elite Combat Academy, this game is like a more refined version of that with far better graphics.
3. Realistic physical characteristics of aircraft and weapons type: For example, the AIM-54C Phoenix missile carried by the F-14B Tomcat can actually travel much farther and allows it to lock on to enemy aircraft well before they have a chance to lock on to you. The F-22A's stealth capability actually means something in this game, giving you the so-called "first-look, first-shot, first kill" ability by enabling it to lock on to enemy aircraft head-on with AIM-120C AMRAAMs well before they have a chance to lock on to you, thanks to reduced frontal radar cross section and passive sensor fusion activated by EMCON 1 or the Special Function Key. Even the AIM-120C AMRAAMs or AGM-65H Maverick missiles don't require lock on to fire, you can simply fire and forget after the target has been identified by the radar, and it will hit 9 times out of 10, especially if you aim the reticule properly within the target circle on the Heads-Up-Display (HUD). Sometimes, enemy aircraft will also use this tactic against you, which is how you'll realize why they get to lock on to you first.
4. This game has the first full simulation of the new F-35B's VTOL capability on a video game console. Realistic landing gear deployment, weapons bay door deployment, weapons carriage and performance, attention-to-detail, as well as simulation replay video quality.
5. Reinforces learning effective combat tactics such as high-altitude super-cruise to avoid surface-to-air threats and most enemy aircraft missiles by using gravity to quickly dive to greater speeds during evasion maneuvers, or launch air-to-surface weapons with impunity from high altitudes and strike targets from beyond-visual range using AIM-120C AMRAAMs whenever possible. Developed tactic for killing enemy stealth fighters by diving in from high altitudes of 65,000 feet and approaching their most exposed angle of heat exhaust signature, allowing the AIM-9M or AIM-9X Sidewinder to lock on more easily for a sure kill.
6. Attention to detail: Yes, the F-15E Strike Eagle does have the conformal fuel tank on this game as well as all the right gear such as the LANTIRN Pod, Sniper Targeting Pod, and all the extra weapons pylons for cluster bombs, AGM-65H Maverick Infrared/TV-guided air-to-surface missile with standoff capability, laser-guided bombs, and GPS/INS-guided bombs. The F-22A Raptor and F/A-18E or F/A-18F Super Hornet can both carry up to 4 of the new AGM-84L SLAM-ER Standoff Land Attack Missile Expanded Response , making them invulnerable to enemy SAMs from great launch distances or high altitudes. F-22A Raptor comes with the option to load-out under-wing pylons for a total weapons load of up to 14 AIM-120C AMRAAMs along with 2 AIM-9X Sidewinder IIs, and 4 AGM-84Ls SLAM-ER or 4 AGM-88R Harpoon Anti-ship Missiles for versatile multi-mission capability similar to the mighty F-15E Strike Eagle's versatile multi-mission capable weapons load-out combination of air-to-air and air-to-surface missiles.
CONS:
1. No fancy cinematic movie interludes or touchy story lines like in Ace Combat 5, 6, 7, or HAWX2.
2. Landing precision on manual mode is too perfectionist, forcing you to use autopilot all the time. In other words, there's no room for creativity when landing but plenty of creativity in tactics and air combat maneuvers. The best way to stay out of harm's way in this game is flying high at 28,000 feet or higher. At that altitude, surface-to-air missiles can't reach you or even if they could, you'll have plenty of room to maneuver and use gravity to speed up and away downwards. At 65,000 feet, enemy fighters will have a harder time aiming at you, which is probably why F-22A pilots routinely fly at that altitude.
3. Pilot characters are not brought to life but are just a mere comical picture due to the lack of cinematic interludes that most modern combat flight simulator fans may have been accustomed to in Ace Combat 5, 6 and 7, or HAWX 2.
Overall, great replay value due to custom weapons loads, realism, detail, and ideal simulation replay videos that can be saved individually and watched over and over again for hours of unique combat flight simulation experience and creativity in air combat maneuvers, tactics development, weapons selection, and high altitude experimentation with the broad selection of weapons systems, such as the new extremely long-range AGM-84L SLAM-ER Standoff Land Attack Missile Expanded Response. Don't let the cover picture discourage you, it is not an actual screen shot, just a cartoon picture. Watch the sample replay video instead from YouTube so you can really see what the game looks like. Hope this helps other combat flight sim fans out there. Thanks. | video-games_xbox |
First impressions. This review is specifically regarding first impressions of the game. I'm a huge fan of the franchise, and was really looking forward to seeing what this new title had to offer. I pre-ordered, and paid the extra cash to have it arrive on release day. So far, a half hour or so into the game, I'm terribly disappointed.
First off, the game came with no insert, and is instead entirely tutorial based. I really dislike not being able to at least glance at a paper copy before I jump into a game, but I figured I'd keep an open mind. I will admit to also enjoying the paper maps that often come with RPG games... nerdy as it may be.
I'm also a female, and have always played females in both Fable 2 and 3, and not having that option (at least as far as I can tell) was a real turn off. Making the character look like a girl with five-o-clock shadow doesn't make up for this. Thanks for alienating your female customer base Lionhead.
The controls are entirely kinect based, and while I knew this was a kinect game, I didn't realize it was ENTIRELY kinect. If you've played Fruit Ninja for kinect and can appreciate the arm soreness after a night of drunken Fruit ninja with your friends, you still have zero appreciation for how sore this game has made my shoulders in the first 30 minutes of game play. The controls aren't as responsive as I would like. Want to slow down? Too bad, you're going to gallop instead. Want to gallop? Too bad, you're going to stop. Already stopped and writing a review on how much you hate the controls? Well, we're going to start trotting along while you're not paying attention. I'm going to give this game the benefit of the doubt and assume I will get better at controlling the horse as I play a little longer, but with this sort of negative and frustrating experience this short into the game, it may very well end up on the shelf within a couple of days to begin it's life as a dust collector with all of my other cast off games.
My overall impression is, I wish I'd rented the game before buying because I never would have bought it. I'm an avid and experienced gamer, and I think this a first for me.
I'm going to give it a few days and see if my opinion improves, and update the review if needed. | video-games_xbox |
Unrelenting. Astonishing. A Masterpiece. But be warned... THIS IS NOT A GAME. It's something better. I've never played anything like this.
I downloaded and played through The Walking Dead several months ago, but I felt the need to go back and play it again over the past few weeks (you will too.) Meanwhile, a friend of mine is playing it for the first time. The conversations that we've had truly made me write this review. I think that this "game" NEEDS to be talked about, it needs to be shared from one person to another... because no amount of marketing or advertising can possibly prepare you for this experience. And that's exactly what this is, an EXPERIENCE. No, you can not refer to this simply as "a game" because by definition, a game implies that there is fun to be had. A "game" is about good times and laughs and joy.
There is no joy here.
That may not look like a sentence that should be in a 5 star review, but trust me, it's a compliment. There's no joy here because The Walking Dead pulls you into it's apocalyptic world so completely that the sense of dread and nightmarish doom truly weighs you down. You FEEL these situations... you EMPATHIZE with each character.... you have real REGRET when you realize that you've made a bad decision. I'll admit, as you read that, you're probably thinking "Dude... what the hell are you talking about?? It's just a damn video game!"
No.
Zelda is just a damn video game. This is something else entirely...
That's why there is no way to market this "game" properly. It's been described as "point & click" but it's more than that. Sure there are quicktime events, key moments are multiple choice and technically you click stuff that you want to interact with, but here's the thing... usually, you'll only have about 2-4 seconds to choose between 3-4 options. The brilliance behind that is that you don't have enough time to read each of your options and STRATEGIZE about the "right" answer to "win the game." Instead, you have just enough time to pick the choice that reflects what you'd do in real life. THAT is what makes this experience so special, THAT is what pulls you in (in addition to the overall excellent story.) If the world was completely going to hell around you and people were looking to you for answers, what would you do? How do you try to be their leader and hero when you are hiding a secret that may turn the entire group against you? And more importantly, how do you make these tough decisions, how do you navigate this world when it's not just about you.... there's a little girl that needs your guidance and protection.
I could talk about the perfection of the story for hours, but what also makes The Walking Dead damn near perfect is the presentation. The music propels every scene, the camera angles are cinematic, and the voice work is phenomenal. There are only a few seconds here and there were I looked at the screen and said "wait, what? That's just goofy right there."
The Walking Dead is a character study... of YOU. It will test your humanity and your moral stance. It will challenge not just your reflexes, but your perspective on life, death and all of the things in between. If all of that sounds like "too much pansy Dr. Phil crap" because you "just wanna shoot zombies" then honestly, maybe it's not for you. If however you are ready for something more EVOLVED and mentally challenging, then you need to download this. On a side note, apparently there are some issues with the boxed disc version, and that's a shame because it's the reason for 1 star reviews here. I can only vouch for the downloadable version, which had no bugs or major playability issues.
Everyone that I know that's played though The Waking Dead talks about it the same way... "Oh My God... seriously... you have to play it. The choices that you have to make.... man, it will blow you away."
This is not a game, my friend. You will not have fun. But you will be AMAZED at how much you are pulled in. You will care about these people. You will care about THIS WORLD. You will be shocked and disturbed and frustrated and pissed off and upset.
But you will love every second of it.
*****BTW, I only rated the "fun" at 5 stars because I didn't want people to only glance at the star ratings and think that the game is boring. So just replace "fun" with "engaging." | video-games_xbox |
MUST LIVE WITH ENDLESS LOADOUTS. I can see this is becoming standard for Ubisoft. Think of a great idea, don't spend too much on quality control, and then let it go as a B minus title that should have been an A plus title.
Lets talk about the flaws first, because they never let you go....
You have to download an update from the very beginning, having everything to do with online co-op play. Don't ever plan on playing online? Too bad, you have to update anyway. Funny, because they ask you in the beginning, and if yous say no, the game makes you do it anyway once you begin. Stupid waste of space...
Then the reoccurring error - the endless load of death. Every once in a while, the game will have to load. Fine. But if it looses sync with the Ubisoft servers (i think?) it will load and never finish. And since the xbox one saves where you last left off, you can't just power down and power back up, because it will bring you back to the endless load. No, you have to eject the game, load in an entirely different game, start playing that game, then eject that disc, load Far Cry 4 back into the console, and then it will spawn you at the nearest safe point from where you left off. How did that pass testing? It happened to me all the time!!!
Anyway, back to the errors. The other stuff is small, but still surprising.
Sometimes when you fall, there is anti-gravity and you fall upwards instead of downwards. Sometimes depending on where you are in the mountains, out of nowhere, you see what looks to be Ubisofts computer editing matrix blink in and out.
Other stuff is just just rushed carelessness. There are tons of weapons available in the game, but somehow enemies and ally's seem to only carry a few out of a lot. Weird.
Every vehicle you drive with a stereo is somehow mis-wired with a short, because if you turn it off, get out of the vehicle, and get back in, the stereo is playing again.
The sound, beyond atmospheric, all seem canned.
I'm glad I bought it. It is fun, and the story is good. I just can't tell if I'm all that surprised anymore that ubisoft rushed what could have been an experience of a game to play. | video-games_xbox |
Incomplete Game. Definitely a step back for the franchise. For the record, I loved Forza 3 and 4 and thought horizon was a pretty decent game as well. This game is a turd. The earnings are non-existent, the AI is the worst I've ever encountered, the menu/navigation is horrendous and there is a serious lack of content.
The new "drivatar" idea sounds cool, but it makes for the most irritating racing experience you can imagine. It supposedly mimics real gamer's driving habits, and from my minimal experience with online racing, they nailed it. Basically you'll want to floor it to the first turn and then just before your normal braking point, lock your wheels up, and watch the 10 car pile-up that is guaranteed to happen each and every time. If you actually manage to make it through the first turn without damaging your car too badly, fret not, they'll get you in the next one, or the next one. The AI is really that bad. They brake way too late for every turn, from the inside of course. How else could they slide straight through the turn and smash you out of the race line that you are actually trying to use properly. I thought that by turning up the difficulty (I have it on pro, the second hardest btw) I would race against AI that might actually attempt to hit some proper apexes but it is the same batch of mouth breathers that can now actually blast through all the turns with even less regard and still somehow come out the other side with a better drive than you get with your "perfect turn"...
Now one might think that the graphics could make up for any defect the game might present, and for a few minutes it can, but shortly into your second league in the career mode you'll notice that you are already racing the same tracks again. Turns out, leagues consist of ten races or so and wouldn't you know it? That's pretty much how many tracks there are.. So you'll be doing the same thing, over , and over,... And instead of using good tracks like Suzuka and the Nurburgring they use junk like the bugati circuit at la Sarthe (worst part of that circuit if you ask me) and boring as can be no elevation change having Silverstone and a new one for me, Yas Marina, in which I can't find one thing to like so far. I would have skipped this title if I had known there would be so few tracks. And I see there's already dlc on offer so I doubt they would actually round out the game and your $60 investment with some free tracks. That, and they've incorporated tokens now (read dollars) and coincidentally lowered the pay-out per race, so it looks like they're really trying to milk us now.
As for the menu, when you're in a league and you finish a race the only option that moves you anywhere is to go to the next race. If you want to tune your car, change cars or whatever the case may be you have to first load the next race which takes a ludicrous amount of time considering all games have to load themselves onto the hard drive in the new consoles. Then you have to quit the league and back out to the title screen. Then after you do whatever it was you wanted to do you get to wait while it loads the circuit again. Why can't I exit the league after finishing a race? And while I'm on the subject, why can't I tune my car before each race without exiting all the way out of the career and going to the upgrade menu? Are you telling me cars don't get tuned/geared for every track. How would something like this get past quality control? So, just to be clear here, if you like to fine-tune your suspension or play with the gearing for different tracks it will take around ten minutes to do so. So, mostly I just deal with poor handling characteristics.
I think what really speaks volumes about this game is that I just wasted all kinds of time writing this review while this game lies on my desk, not being played.... | video-games_xbox |
Amazon Insisted I Write a Reivew. Well, I got this game awhile back played it for about 3 days and I totally forgot about it. But, today I got an email from Amazon to review this game.....
I was excited to see this game for 20 bucks with part 2 so, I was like no way is this game junk like some xbox elitist were calling out to it. Well, sometimes they're right... As much as i love butten mashing brawler games this is one of those rare few that goes to the low of the low.
Where to begin?
First every stage is insanely dark at times to where you can't see anything going on and all you can do is mash attack to stay alive. Like ok thats not fun cause I do enjoy seeing what the heck I'm doing eh?
Two sometimes your AI helper is supposed to pull a switch with you or climb up a step and go through a bay door that you're opening for him so, that he can let you in. Well, guess what your helper will be stuck on something cheap like a side part of the step or he'll just do nothing while you pull the switch.
Third just like helper the game at times will not open the next fight scene till you run to right spot in that section and even then it's not guaranteed.
Fourth remember I said this game is dark? Well, in the swear stage where it's extra extra dark and the game makes you run back to spots to do another fight then run back to other spot again for fight you can easily get lost and find yourself wondering around uselessly and if you get that third problem I mentioned extra waste of time....
Fifth I'm not super into acheivements but, to get them all wouldn't be hard if game wasn't glitched and the total kills/combo acheivements can only be had through 1 player so, if you're into those acheivements have fun not having fun beating this game 3 or 4 times.
Sixth Aw, heck I'm tired of pointing out major problems with this game....Just avoid it. Yeah brawlers tend to have their little quirks that can be a pain but, this one has too many that just makes you feel like a choir to play and theres no other reason to cept that you wasted money on it and feel you should play more than an hour and perhaps unlock an achievement....
Oh and last did you know the watchmen when they walk into little derbies such as bottles or other little junk they slow down tremendessly while computer will just beat you up and whats this a little curb no the watchmen cant jump or auto walk up they always use the little step to go up curbs so have fun being always forced to find walkways every 30 feet in the game (ok I exaggerated on how often you find curbs but, theres plenty to make you feel like they're everywhere to kill time...) | video-games_xbox |
2 steps forward, 1 large step back. my opinion is definitly a little slanted because I LOVED the first army of two. and i overall really enjoyed this one. it's alot of fun and the shooter mechanics and general third person interface work really well. they're not spectacular but they are functional, not flashy but good. however in making the sequal here it seems a little design by comitee comenced and the things that made me love the first AOT were determined to be the reason for the mediocre reaction to it. apparently in the era of gears of war and halo AOT of all things was deemed "too meathead" in it's humor and the characters were blasted as over macho idiots. i loved the humor and the characters. so the humor was toned down, Rios and salem are alot more subdued now and they really don't seem to enjoy their work like in the first one. seems to me if your gonna be a mercenary you might as well like doing it. and because it is the flavor of the month they added morality choices, i'm guessing to give depth to rios and salem. the moral choices are kind of interesting and give you some options as what jobs you want to accept but the choices tend to be rather crap.
The "new" humor i have to admit is not a step forward, the game is still funny but one stage is set in a zoo where all the animals have been murdered. it's suposed to set the tone and make you dislike the leader of the 40th day initiative as a maniac. but to me it's just morbid and the morality choice of killing a tiger to get the gun from his pen is really not cool. you can just buy the gun anyway so its not like you have to kill the tiger ever for completion purposes but honestly it's just kinda unnesisary.
for a co-op game the co-op has been toned down alot. i liked that AOT was all about two people, lots of step jumps and back to back moments and situations where you HAD to rely on your partner. in this game they took out the co-op snipe feature, not a big deal when playing with two people but it's just symptomatic of the design changes. there are two back-to-back moments in the whole game, and while one is totally awsome the other is just basic. i wasn't the biggest fan of the back-to-back mode in AOT but mostly because you had no control over it. if they made it so you could back-to-back under the right circumstances anytime. it'd be a great feature. also there are like 5 step jumps in the game and only 1 of them enables you to kill enemies while being held aloft to make it easier when you advance. the most glaring omission in the sequel is the really awsome rescue mechanics. in AOT you had to rescue injured npcs from time to time by slinging them over your shoulder and having your partner gun down enemies clearing a path for you since you could only use a pistol like this. it got annoying at times but that was the idea. and it was far and away better than any other escort mechanics i'd ever seen in a game. instead we have the equivalant of "puzzles" in the form of civilian rescues where you have to reach a highly ranked enemy and take him hostage to disarm the other soldiers. i do like this new feature it's pretty cool but with the ecception of one or two they're pretty straightforward.
now for the good
Rios's new voice actor is pretty bad ass, gives a real body to how he sounds, since he's a big guy it's a good thing. salems new voice actor is a pretty good guy, but not one i woulda chose for salem. the interactions between the two affects the dialoge and if you really piss each other off they more or less decide to go their seperate ways after they escape china. the supporting characters are good in this one, this game coulda used alot more alice murray in it but she is in it enough to make me happy. the new supporting characters are pretty good too, the crazy russian while not nearly as much fun as clyde is a nice addition to the cast list.
the weapon customisation is alot better in this one. once you buy a gun you get all the peices of it to use on any other gun that is similar enough to use it. i have the clip from an ak-47 jammed into an m4 with the barrel from another gun on the end of that. the customisable guns really affect the gameplay. in AOT my friend and i were so agressive the agro meter teetered back and forth and neither of us benefitted from it. in this game by putting silencers and the proper paint jobs on my guns, i build almost no agro and my friend goes in guns blazing with shotguns and hand cannons and i get to pick off guys left and right with my scoped assault rifle or even just run around busting heads with melee attacks. and the melee attacks are just wonderful, with or without the bayonette attachments you really put people in a hurt locker
overall the game has been improved, but i miss the old salem charm and while i enjoyed the story overall, it's the kind of story you'd find in a spin off. the first game was all about completeing paid jobs but since you worked at a company you had no choice over the jobs but you went around the world doing some great stuff. now you have your own company, you get to choose the jobs, you can go anywhere. so they chose to lock the second game with a short job and a long trek home. i really want them to do a true mercenaryish game where you get to choose from a long list of jobs and complete them in whatever order you decide or even in a preset order but have them be actual mercenary work. this is a story of two mercenary bad asses caught in a bad situation not two mercenaries doing their jobs. which is fine, but like i said, would make a nice sidestory.
i can't recomend or not recomend this game because it's got a very specific audience and i just happen to be a part of it. so the best advice i can give you is to rent it and try it for yourself, it's not as bad as people say it is but it's not as good as i say it is either. | video-games_xbox |
Great fighting game that is missing extra thought and effort. Fighting games are not my favorite type of video games. Generally, they get repetitive quickly and lack replay value. But there's been a few that I really liked, regardless: World Heroes, MK Trilogy, Killer Instincts Gold, Dead or Alive 2, MVC2. It was time I added a fighting game to my 360 collection. I went with UMVC3 because it was under $20 and my past experience with MVC2.
To put it simply: this is a great fighting game. Lots of characters, lots of individual moves, great graphics & animations, and very responsive controls. While in a fight, the experience may be the best out of all the games I mentioned.
Outside the battle, though, there is little to no creativity or effort. This is year 2013, and I expected more from a fighting game.
I liked the concept of the story line, but no effort was made to develop it as you fight your way to Galactus. There could have been a cut-scene of him after every victory; at least! The endings for many of the characters make no sense and will have you saying "What?!! Did I read that right?" They set the bar high after the very cool intro, making it seem like there is chaos in the streets featuring epic battles between iconic characters; The world is in turmoil and you will help determine the outcome. Story/Arcade mode drops the baton, though, and everything feels like a straight forward fighting game. It's not till the end when Galactus reappears that you are reminded "Oh yeah. The fate of the world. Right."
Training mode is a terrible experience. It's a major chore navigating through the menus and sub-menus just to see how to do a move. If you forget, you have to go through it all over again...
Heroes vs Heralds seems kinda pointless: Fight to earn cards which you then use to kill your opponent faster or take less damage. This does not add to its replay value. A better reward than the cards would be additional costumes; even having additional colors of the default costumes would be great. Heck, instead of making every color available from the beginning, they should make us work a little for them. They could have also linked some achievements to this mode so you can continue playing the game and add to your gamer score, but none present.
Regarding Xbox live, there is one suggestion. Their quick match system needs to do a better job of pairing you against opponents. It should at least allow you to see their record (wins & losses) before deciding to accept the match. There are players out there that are expert jugglers. More than a few times I simply put my controller down and saw a guy do the same moves over and over again until all 3 of my guys died. I sure didn't have fun. But at the same time how can that guy be having fun if he's doing the same moves over and over and over again. Anyways, being able to avoid these guys would make online play better.
This game leaves a lot to be desired, but there is no question that the gameplay is one of the best. | video-games_xbox |
Major Dissapointment. PLEASE READ BEFORE PURCHASING. I want to say that I am a die-hard fan of the Call of Duty (COD) previous titles. I logged countless hours playing Modern Warfare 2. I thoroughly enjoyed Black Ops.
This game has to be the BIGGEST disappointment.
The single-player campaign, while fun, lasts approximately three to four hours, depending on your level of ability. It goes by in a heartbeat. As such, the vast majority of your playing time will be spent on the multiplayer part of the game, which is why I want to focus this review on that part of the game.
The multiplayer game is an epic -- and I truly mean epic -- fail. There are several things that, when added up, make for a terrible user experience. Here's why:
a) the maps: To say that they are boring is an understatement. Unlike MW2 (Modern Warfare 2), the maps here have little variety in terms of how they're laid out, and how they're designed. Many of them consist of lots of passages or paths, with one or two central squares and/or chokepoints. The result is that you are constantly getting hit from the back and the side. Also, the designers went overboard in two areas -- ensuring that there weren't hiding spots for campers, and also adding tons of cars/barrels/crates. The issue, however, is that the maps feel cluttered and monotonous. As to the camping issue, there are more campers in this game than in any other game in the franchise. Period. I'll explain this below --
b) monochromatic game play and style: the guns in this game are extremely powerful - if you've played MW2, it's as if every gun comes with the "Stopping Power" perk attached. Most guns seemingly kill in one or two shots. It makes the gameplay go extremely quick - the team deathmatch games are significantly shorter than in MW2. It also favors people using guns, as opposed to explosives, such as the grenade launcher (noob tube) which are extremely underpowered. The developers also non-sensically decided to make the shotgun a primary weapon, which renders them useless. Running around with a shotgun trying to blast your enemies more than five yards away from you is a lesson in futility (and it's difficult to get close or duck for cover or even retreat since one or two shots from an assault rifle, etc. will take you out). As such, players will be at a disadvantage if they use a shotgun, or the grenade launcher, (and of course the riot shield, which is still pointless), or really even the sniper rifle unless they are excellent at aiming on an xbox controller. As such, the VAST majority of players stick with one of several guns, playing in the same style, with the same speed. Unlike in MW2 where you'd get a variety of different playing styles (some using marathon (btw, no unlimited running anymore), some with noob tubes (no scavenger for grenades), others with snipers...) here, the gameplay feels, well, dull. The developers simply went overboard at trying to reduce what they considered flaws in the previous games, such as the damage of the grenade launcher. But they've changed the game to make it a boring experience.
All in all, I am selling my game on Ebay after two weeks because of how boring it is. It's bad. And yes, it got wonderful critic reviews, but checkout the metacritic score. It's abysmally low. And for good reason. | video-games_xbox |
Fun game, decent story, hated the main character. Pros? Hunting was fun, climbing radio towers was fun, sniping was fun
Cons? Has a tendency to be tedious, especially later in the game. I hated Jason.
Replay Value? Low.
I've never played Far Cry one or two, so I'm a fresh pair of eyes I suppose. I found the game to be fun, overall, but to me it had a tendency to get tedious if you weren't careful. Taking over a mercenary base could be as easy as sniping every one from a far off cliff to being chased into the middle of a base by a panther and dying under a hail of gunfire. Missions begin, like any game, easy and slowly increase in difficulty, this isn't a problem, what's a problem is when you need to stealth through a particular mission and one misstep sends you in the middle of three heavies with rocket launchers, quite fun. But this isn't an issue very often in the game and I found only two or three main missions were difficult enough to require retries.
Side missions were a lot of "Find me this ___" and you drive to a marked area and collect it and bring it back. Hunting missions are fun and are very beneficial to do, especially early in the game, and assassin missions didn't hold much bearing personally. They were fun, but they weren't my cup of tea so I avoided them for the most part. The best part is that they didn't penalize you for not doing them.
The story, now, here is where part two of my selected con comes into play. I hated Jason Brody and I hated his friends. So it was with mixed feelings that I played through the story. Overall, I personally had a difficult time relating to him, a rich kid suddenly finds himself a modern day rambo sniping through mercenaries like they're fresh out of the academy? It was hard to believe and I kept hoping that I would find the first half of the game a hallucination of some other dying character (look up the article from kotaku on that, they had a really good theoretical story). When it didn't, and the game didn't get any more exciting after one particular event, I finished the story and wiped my hands clean of it.
The experience was fun, but it certainly wasn't worth the $60 fresh off the shelf. | video-games_xbox |
The horizon looks cloudy. I decided to write this review after seeing all the 5 star reviews it has. This game is great, it's fun, best of all it feels like Forza, but it leaves a lot to be desired and brings nothing new to the table.
When you first start playing Forza Horizon you'll be thrown in the great state of Colorado (which is where I've been living for the past 12 years). That's pretty cool isn't it? Well it would be if they actually made it like CO. When they say that Forza Horizon takes place in CO, they really mean it's inspired by CO, because none of the places, none of the streets, none of the towns are real. The only thing authentic about the game is highway I-70 and the part on the map where it says "Rocky Mountains". Listen I'm not asking for them to recreate all of CO street by street, but at least add some real places like the Pikes Peak road. If anyone remembers Midnight Club: Los Angeles you'll remember that they didn't recreate all of LA, but they took all of the iconic places and put them together, not to mention Test Drive Unlimited had pretty accurate renditions of Hawaii and Ibiza (they made the entire maps!). In Forza Horizon however, everything is made up, they might as well have called it "Midwest Town, USA" because it's that generic.
The map is small for today's standards, if I had to estimate I'd say it's about 1/6 of the size of Ibiza in TDU2. There are no official numbers out as to how big the map actually is, but the general interweb consensus seems to point at (or around) 63 square miles for the size of the map. To put this into perspective True Crime Streets of LA (2003)was 240sq miles. Test Drive Unlimited (2006) was 618 Sq miles and 2009s Burnout Paradise was 200 Sq Miles. Size doesn't matter though, after all there must be tons of things to see, explore and surely it's way more detailed than those other games, right? Not. It's possible to explore the entirety of Forza Horizon's map in just a couple of hours, I managed to explore most of the roads in just 2-3 hours. The graphics are great, but not mind blowing. Exploration takes a dip when you realize that there are only a couple of things to do. You can find these pink signs (100 total throughout the world) that give you discounts, you can find classic cars hidden in barns (9 in total) and you can find and complete the Forza Horizon Outposts (they're marked with an "H" on the map and they allow you to fast travel) which have 3 'PR stunts' to complete, the first being a 'speed stunt' in which you have to pass a certain speed trap in the game at a certain speed. Secondly there's a 'photo shoot' in which you have to take a certain car to a certain location with minimal damage (no time limit) and take a picture with a certain background in the picture. Finally there's the 'skill stunt' in which you have to get a certain amount of points in 'x' amount of time.
There are no hidden roads that take you to secret places (except for one that I remember), there are no characters to talk to, there are not shops to find, there are no gas stations, no car washes (your cars never ever get dirty), no car dealerships, nothing. Interactivity with the world is limited to finding those pink signs, finding the barns with the cars, speed traps, and Horizon Outposts. Customization, paint jobs, the marketplace, car club management and all that is conveniently placed in a circle in the middle of the map. For example if you can to customize your car, you go to the customization icon in the map and from there you'll start the 'menu' per say, there is no parking inside a shop, no people to see, it's simply a place you go to trigger a menu.
Speaking of customization; yes it's back. If you're familiar with previous the previous Forza's you'll be familiar with the customization in the game, a little too familiar. The menus are exactly the same as the Forza 4 menus, the rims are ALL the same, most of the body kits are exactly the same (the only 'new' one that I saw was a body conversion for the F150 raptor). I'm not even exaggerating when I say there's the exact same wheels and body kits for the cars.
Also it snows in CO, but there is no snow in this game! This has been one of my biggest gripes since Forza Motorsport 3: No weather elements. It's either daytime or night time in Forza Horizon, but nothing else. Forza Horizon would have been a great opportunity to add weather elements like snow and rain, but alas we get nothing. They did add night-driving this time around so that's a big plus. Nothing brightens my day like seeing that amazing Lexus-LFA dashboard light up the interior, but this is the year 2012 and all racing games should have night racing so why should I even get excited about this?
They added dirt racing, which sounds awesome on paper, but in the wonderful world of Forza it seems like dirt roads affect very little the performance of your cars. You'd think if your car wasn't tuned up for dirt racing that your car would somehow slow down or if it was dropped to the ground that it would struggle on a dirt road. You'd think that a Ford F150 Raptor would out-perform and out-class a Honda Civic on the dirt. Nope, all cars seem to do fine on the dirt roads. My Ferarri FXX, my Lexus LFA, my Lamborghini Diablo, my Honda S2000 all seem like they were just built for the dirt as none of them need to be tuned or upgraded for dirt racing. There are no off-road purpose tires, no special shocks, no nothing, take any stock car in the same class as an F150 Raptor and chances are you'll win.
Did I mention classes? All of the classes from previous Forzas are back and they're a pain in the neck. Most of the races require you to use either a class A,B,D,E,R3,R2 or R1 and it sucks. Very few races are car manufacturer specific, like there's an Aston Martin race in the game but the game has a whooping total of 3 Aston Martins (one of which is from like 1967) so these races can sometimes be annoying rather than fun. There are very few "Exotics only" and the sort. So as long as you have one of the fastest cars in the required class, you'll be good. You may be required to drive cars that are outside of your preference; which is what I found doing most of the time. The races all seem very uninspired (save for the ones that you have to race against an airplane, those are fun!). Classes may be fine in previous Forzas but they just feel out of place in this game. There are night time street races, but there are no cops in the world of Forza Horizon, so the rush of outrunning the cops isn't there because there are no cops to outrun.
OK this review is starting to get a little too long and it's starting to sound a little too negative, but listen up fellow gamers and car lovers: If you've played either Test Drive Unlimited, Midnight Club: LA, Burnout Paradise or Need For Speed Underground then you have played this. Forza Horizon brings almost nothing new to the table, all they did was essentially take Forza Motorsport, get rid of the tracks and replace them with a wannabe Colorado. In many ways I think TDU and MC:LA did certain things better, specially TDU2. For example Test Drive Unlimited's online free roam is much, much better than in Horizon, online free roaming with your friends is limited to a world void of any traffic, any people and the only things to do are collect the pink signs and complete tedious challenges. Listen folks, this game is not bad, but it's certainly not worthy of a 4 out of 5, or 5 out of 5 stars. If you love Forza (like me!) and you like racing games, this is a must play, but please don't tell me this is the future of racing games, because other games have already accomplished what Forza Horizon does. Forza Horizon could have been great, but ultimately they stuck to old formulas and never tried to push the envelope.
My message to developers is this: If you're going to give players a free roaming racing game then you need to start thinking about letting the player interact with the car beyond just racing, if you're going to give the player an open world, then let the player interact and play with it, not just drive on the roads. If you're going to add features like off-road racing then make it feel like off-road racing. Forza Motosport 4 had that beautiful autovista mode, why not merge it with Horizon in the form of car dealerships and let the player 'explore' the cars before they buy them? Please, don't let the racing genre become like first person shooter genre; in which all games have no identity and just end up being copies of copies of copies. | video-games_xbox |
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