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WTF. Soul Calibur V, the latest installment of the SC series.
Backdrop:
V takes place 17 years after IV. Sigfred defeated Nighmare and some measure of peace returned for some time. Now Soul Edge is looking for a sutable wielder, and is found in Pyrrha. (Sophita's daughter, who by the way was murdered by Tira, so, she's not in the game.) Patroklos,Sophita's son, who is on a quest to find his sister, meets Sigfred (who is no longer the wielder of Soul Calibur) and joins his group and becomes the new wielder of Soul Calibur. Plus, You find out Soul Calibur (the sword) is pretty evil in it's own way, sort of a "the ends justify the means" kinda evil.
so there's the jist of what story mode is. Which in my opinon, was lousy. It's the one story...yea, ONE story. No variations of different characters and character specific endings (not even in arcade mode).
Character's....some aren't even in this one:Taki,Zazamel,Rock, and Sophita to mention a few. And some aren't even mentioned or appear in story mode. And there is no extras content (No in game artwork, No bio's,but I guess to save time in production they have an artbook and a making of DVD, yea...'A MAKAKING' OF DVD, with the in game artwork and a paprgraph to discribe the chacters...freakin' lame. And to make it Lamer, it only comes with the colector edition otherwise your S.O.L)
the control system is total crap. It doesn't flow like it did in the previous two games which on of the reasons I loved the series in the first place.
So in sumation, compared to the previous two games (I've only ever played I & II in the arcade) this one was a big let down. I paid for the special collector's edition and I got a water-down fighting game, and pocket-sized art book, a "Making of" DVD and a hard copy of the soundtrack (which both could of been simply put on the game and save a few thousand blank CD's and DVD's) and a Ivy "bobble-head" (which is more like a cheap prize you find in a cereal box)
If your new to the series, you might enjoy it, if your a long time fan...your gonna be mad. IF there is a Soul Calibur VI, Namco has ALOT to make up for
UPDATE: Ok, fixed the spelling errors and my Roman numerals. And I thought I would add something positive to the review. Even though I was disappointed the first day I played it. I did find a few things that made the game alittle more fun.
-The creation mode blows the previous versions away. You can greater customize your own OC. muscle mass, definition,height, make-up, voice variation to create a voice more like a God. You can add extra items like chains, change patterns and colors to articles of clothes you can even change the color of your weapon and the color of the trail it leaves in the air. SO the custoimzation of characters is pretty awsome. Only thing I would add is being able to customize the move set (like being able to create a hybrid move set with Nightmare and Sigfred)
-With Quick Battles, you can earn titles ( plus a good chance to warm-up the the controls system, it's gotten easier, but I still miss the old one)
-The Fact you unlock more items the longer you play is nice, alot easier to get than in previous games I think.
So, this makes for a good "Get on Xbox live and challange people with your OC" kinda game | video-games_xbox |
It's action movie in a box, baby. Wow...what is there to say about Stranglehold?
If Bioshock was your lovemaking session, then Stranglehold would be the cigarette that you need afterwards to recovering while waiting to go another round (Halo 3).
Many comparisons have been made between this and Max Payne regarding the style in which this game is played but also I think a dash of Devil May Cry was added to this recipe.
This game also reminds me of Tomb Raider without all the puzzles.
But most of all the game is balls to the wall action.
Stranglehold is pretty much a straightforward action movie which you control, where you must simply mow down hordes of enemies but in the most stylish way possible; if it moves, kill it.
By doing so, you advance the story. And it so far is a decently told story, not a great blockbuster but if you have watched enough Hong Kong cops and robbers movie, this is what you are getting. The story is simple: Drug kingpins are killing cops....kill all the kingpings until you find head kingpin....does it need to be more complex than that? NO!
You will be too busy destroying everything in sight and I do mean everything. While you are making your merry romp thru the streets of Hong Kong, not only will you find that you can shoot up the set around you but also there are certain peices that you can shoot out to cause more destruction....properly placed baddies can be killed by exploding barrels, dropped air conditioning units, rocks and much more.
And of course as you proceed, you get power ups as you go to slow down time (Tequila Time), hit enemies in certain spots (Precision Aiming) and all out mass killing (Barrage)not to mention the signature Woo Mexican Standoff (which really is a mini game in and of itself).
there are also many weapons including the Golden Pistols which you ca get early on if you know where to look.
Does it get repitive after awhile? Sure...but it doesn't stop the fun. In fact there is one level that you play that lifts the idea from G.R.A.W. where you face attackers from a helicopter.
How well does it control? It handles itself pretty well once you get it down pat. There are no changes to controls once you are dual wielding guns and if you ask me, sticking yourself behind coverage in some aspects handles a lot better than Gears of War. One button push, look and fire and run when done.
Graphically speaking, the game looks pretty good. Tequila looks pretty well refined but the baddies look just like in the movies...a whole bunch of forgettable faces trying to kill you. The scenery also looks great but you won't have time to enjoy it as you are too busy shooting it all up and after you cleared it you get to see what's around you. There is a lot of attention paid to some of the details. You start wondering if these guys are gonna catch lung cancer from all the well rendered cigarettes smoked, the alleys look like some of the most unsafe places this side of New York.
Soundwise, this game is gorgeous. The ambient sound from the city scenes will make you feel that this is a crapmed city. Babies crying, TVs being watched...yeah...you are there....when the guns go off they sound like they are all around you and when things blow?
Well let's just say, turn down your subwoofer if you feel your neighbors paying a late visit if you wake them up. This is one of the most ambient sound sets I have heard since Call of Duty 2 interms of gunplay.
To a point, I think maybe a brief tutorial could have been added to give players a chance to learn and practice some of the moves but on the other hand it's really hard to pull out some fo the moves used when it's hard to exactly get an idea where your enemies are going to appear.
Also, some may complain that the game may be too 'railish' as you can't go everywhere in some sections but think of how much of a good thing that may be...while you are concentrating on trying to pull off a hard combo, you have to worry about sliding off a pier into the water. On the other hand, you can jump off a lot of objects and don't have to worry too muich about dying...whether it takes away from the realism....it's up to you...but then one man going up against 10+ enemies all shooting at him and not dying is a tiny bit absurd too hmm?
To sum it up, if you want some mindless gunplay to tide you over til Halo 3, this is the game to play. This is the closest you can get to being in a Hong Kong flick without having to sign on stunt man. Try it as a rental first but if you really like it, buy it.
Now if we can just get a decent Die Hard game......
8 out of 10 | video-games_xbox |
Huge, fun, impressive. Although there isn't really anything completely unprecedented about this game, it really is a stellar effort that combines a lot of really well-liked themes into a well-integrated and easily playable combination.
Indeed it's on an island. The missions really remind me of Just Cause - which is a good thing, because Just Cause and Just Cause 2 are GREAT games. The only difference is that this one is much, much bigger. I mean, HUGE. I'm sure The Google will know how big the map is (in terms of square miles) but it is properly huge. The ENTIRE thing is packed with missions, things to find, things to hunt and things to gather. The finding, hunting, gathering theme is deeply reminiscent of Assassins Creed (which I just finished playing AC3), as well as a somewhat clunky kill-from-above skill, and patting down bodies after you've killed to find loot.
There's a RPG-like skill tree; you earn skill points as you gain experience. There is a crafting section where you can make medicines, potions, craft new things to carry stuff (holsters, backpack). There's a great array of weapons. There's great voice acting. The action is intense. You can proceed with guns blazing (sometimes) or with stealth. Although, as I mentioned, there isn't really anything inherently new here, it's huge, fabulously well-made, easy to play, and a LOT of fun.
It's still not quite like the first Far Cry. That was one of my top 10 favorites of all time. But it is definitely a hugely entertaining game, especially for folks who love open-world FPSs. It seems like a lot of the big-name games are starting to inherit a similar blend of features, which is good and bad - there is a VERY high standard of freedom, mobility, and fighting dynamics that most or all "good" modern FPS/TPS games have. The down side is that you really only end up having the same mix and style of fighting/shooting, main mission and side missions, big, detailed open-world maps, and character skill improvements adopted from RPGs. The only thing that really changes is the scenery - the environment - and the quality of voice acting, artwork, cut scenes, and engaging storyline. Are we nearing the pinnacle, the 'perfect form' of good/great games on consoles? Limited perhaps by both hardware and the controller layout?
Well, I digress - just waxing philosophic for a moment. The point is, this game is great. Enjoy! | video-games_xbox |
Everyone Should Have this Game. Next to Okage (look it up, it's AWESOME!!) this is my favorite game. And I have played a lot of games in my life.
**Sorta SPOILER** (sorta because it happens in like the first 10 minutes of the game and it's on the back of the box)
So, you are an author and someone else is writing your story for you and it starts to come true. I'm sure that sounds cliche. Like it has been played out many, many times before (in stories more, less in video games).
**END SPOILER**
But this game is far from cliche. It is unique and very intriguing. This game will pull you in instantly. It feels like you have been playing this game for a while, because you are just that into it right from the start.
I have yet to find a single flaw in this game. Not a single one. This is the second most beautiful game (graphics-wise) I have ever played and seen (Eternal Sonata is number one for me).
The controls are smooth and perfect, the weapons are fun and although there aren't very many of them it feels like there is a large selection (their strengths and weaknesses range greatly so there is nothing that extra weapons would add to this).
The maps are ridiculously large and free to explore entirely. The game heavily rewards people who explore every bit of the environment, too, because weapons and ammunition are in short supply and if you find a little chest that is hidden in some bushes, then you will be given a LOT of these items (weapons, ammunition, batteries (also very very important), and flash bangs).
There are side things to do, such as finding all of the thermoses or watching all of the televisions. They are tricky to find, but it is fun to see the creative places they are hidden.
The enemies say the FUNNIEST things. I laughed every single time one would sneak up on me. The first time I heard what one of them said, I was in a basement under some stairs, and one giant guy with an axe jumped at me (in slow-mo) from off the stairs, and he yelled dramatically "omega-3 fatty acids are good for your heaaaaaart!!!" Then they will also say "fishing can be a hobby or a job!!" So they basically just shout random facts, and personally it was really creative and made the game all the more special.
The environment is hard to maneuver sometimes because it is virtually always dark, but I feel like that was deliberate. It makes it creepy and more difficult.
I have never been more amused by characters in a game than the ones in here. They always had something funny to say. It lightened the mood of the game, as well, so that the darkness and depression of it isn't horribly overwhelming.
One thing that I had trouble with was using the weapons and ammunition. I would always try to save them because they were so hard to come across, and enemies sneak out of nowhere and swarm you. Do not follow in my footsteps, try to use them efficiently. Do not use them all at once, but every so often, you will lose everything you had and have to find more all over again. So what I recommend is playing the first part of the game multiple times until you see exactly how much ammunition and flash bangs you should use in one crowd of enemies. I died quite a few times because I was unable to figure out how to spread out the use of weapons.
The bosses were fun to fight and never repetitive. They ending was so thrilling (this "ending" I am referring to includes the location right before the final boss, too, because it was just so beautiful), and the story kept me playing it constantly. I spent all of my free time playing it.
**This was a long review but this game deserves every positive word I have in the dictionary of my brain. Honestly, there is no reason to not get this game.** | video-games_xbox |
The most amazing game I've ever played. Like the title of my review says, this is the most amazing game I have ever played! As usual, bioware has created an excellent RPG.
The most important elements in a great RPG are storyline, character development and at least decent voice acting and Mass Effect delivers on all frongs. The story unfolds at a good pace, revealing just enough to grab your attention drive you discover what will happen next. The game has everything anyone could ever want for a story: action, adventure, mystery, suspense, betrayal, romance, loss/sorrow, everything! All of those elements are masterfully blended together throughout the game to create an amazing dramatic experience that feels almost like watching an amazing movie.
Character development is also a crucial part of any good RPG and throughout the game you get the chance to learn more about your crew and can even go on special missions for some of them. There is also the chance for romance, but it doesn't just happen, you have to develop the relationship and you can even choose between two different love interests. That relationship will finally culminate (IF properly nurtured) in the characters engaging in a passionate love-making scene. Though some people have complained about the brief scene, it is tastefully done and doesn't contain anything more graphic than most prime-time television shows.
The gampeplay is also good. Like any RPG you gain experience and levels and can customize your character and his/her skills while also arming yourself from a wide array of weaponry and armor. You even have the ability to issue orders to your teammates (although this function is somewhat limited). The player is able to switch weapons and powers/skills relatively easily thanks to specialized selection wheels that can be brought up on screen quickly. Perhaps one of the best gameplay features, however, is the use of a conversation wheel during dialogues. The wheel pops up before the other character is finished speaking to give the player time to choose from a list of abbreviated discussion options (rather than having to read everything your character might say) which makes conversations flow much more naturally and without excessive pauses.
The graphics are also generally very good. There are sometimes a few issues, for instance the texturing can be a little slow at times which causes everything to start off with very little texture and then after a few moments the textures are processed and added to the characters/environment. But overall the gaphics are impessive. Facial expressions are amazing and REALLY add to conversations. Even though the cutscenes contain essential the same level of graphics seen in normal gameplay, they are still very well done and impressive.
Overall this is an AMAZING game and is definitely at the very top of my list of all-time favorite games! When I first got it I was practically addicted to it and became immersed in the world and story of the game. I even began to empathize for the characters. This is a MUST buy! | video-games_xbox |
I WAS SOLD 1/2 OF A GAME . I gave Destiny 4 stars when it was first released. However, since a few months passed I have decided to give it 3 stars. To make a long explanation to,
Destiny is fun until you get to level 25. Around this time the story line ends and you find yourself repeating the same missions over and over again. Some
gamers call it 'grinding'. I call it wasting your personal time until Destiny decides to sale you the rest of it game in DLC. It is a shame because the game has so much potential. I am going to leave my past review up so that every one can see Destiny's strong points. It is not a bad game at all. It is just not a finished piece. After I hit level 26 I gave up. I kill the same Bosses about 10 times each. And maybe won a helmet and a pair of gloves... :(
(My Old Review)
It is literally a mix between HALO and Call of Duty. That was the developers' aim. The scenery is great.
And the being able to choose from 3 different classes of character and customize them down to their race and outfits is pretty fun.
The missions are pretty exciting and action packed! A lot of shooting, ducking and dodging. I have not enjoyed a first person shooter this much since Black Ops 2. People want PERFECT...but there is no such thing.
MULTIPLAYER ROCKS: Imagine working through the story mode and unlocking new weapons and abilities, only to use them against other players! This makes multiplayer so different. And I must admit competition can be lop sided against those who troll the game. But I thought this approach was pretty different. And being able to power up in multiplayer and using your abilities to complete a tough board in STORY MODE.
CON: I have only 1 CON. The missions in story mode are a bit repetitive. The missions should include sick shoot outs on motorcycles and tanks. But hey I'm only on level 12. I may not have gotten there yet.
TRY IT: I think the game is worth the 50 bucks. But the game is not for light gamers. It is for those who enjoy long games that are not completed at %100 in 2 weeks. | video-games_xbox |
Save your money for something good . Two observations that are outside of the game. First, do not trust anyone who only writes reviews with 5 star ratings. These people are either idiots or work for the company. Second, do not trust anyone who reviews a product before they have seen or played the product all the way through. Again, such people are either idiots or work for the company.
Now, onto, Dark Alliance. I have played the original Baldur's Gate on the p.c. and have played the first video game version of Baldur's Gate on both the Playstation and the X-box. All of these games I found very enjoyable and would give them between 3-4 stars.
Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance deserves one star. While the graphics are good, they are not as good as the first game and the makers have an annoying habit of making you fight in the dark to (1) make gameplay more difficult (pretty hard to fight when you can't see) and (2) to mask the fact that the graphics are mostly reused from the first game.
Little effort went into originality on this game. The story is incredibly week. You play an entirely different character from the first game. Your character has some secret or mystery that must be completed that differentiates him or her from the other characters. Once you find out your secret or solve your mystery you will be disappointed because of the anticlimactic reaction of your character and your inability to use the information you gained.
Not all monsters (including bosses) give good or any treasures.
All monsters are incredibly easy to beat (you only need to press one button over and over again to beat 90% of the monsters) with one exception. Toward the end of the game you will need to reach the two baddest bad guys. Right before you meet them you ascend a stair case directly into a room filled with monsters who kill you immediately. This part of the game was insanely difficult unless you have stealth.
Overall, a disappointing game with few, if any, highlights. Save your money for a worthy game such as Legacy of Cain III. | video-games_xbox |
Some Drawbacks, But Worth the Money. I bought this at a local Gamestop, but my review will be more useful here. I came to this wheel from a Mad Catz 2 wheel on Xbox 360, after acquiring an Xbox One for free as a gift. I didn't want to spend a ton of money as a) I only play Xbox a couple of hours a week, and b) my wife would complain :)
Unfortunately, this wheel is a step down from the 360 wheel I had. First off, there's no force feedback. That's not a huge issue, but the feature ought not be so expensive. If the wheel were priced between $150-200 with force feedback I might have bought it, but I'm not spending $300 or more on that unless some big money falls in my lap.
Second, both the wheel and the pedals require significant force to operate - not enough that I can't apply it, but more than enough to push the things around. You *really* need to attach this wheel to something... it is *not* made to go in your lap while you're on the couch, as the angle of the steering wheel is too low and (more importantly) there's nothing to hold it in place unless you try to wedge it between your knees. That doesn't work (I tried), so I cut a board to length, applied some wood shims to it to raise the angle up, attached the wheel to it with the included (and very sturdy) clamp, and put it in my lap. That was much better, but then I clamped it to a TV table instead, and put some carpet spikes under the foot pedal assembly. The result was MUCH improved, and very usable, though I will likely attach the foot pedals to a bigger piece of wood (with carpet spikes) so they don't move or tip. As a comparison, in Forza 5, in an R8 in Prague, I was getting last place with the first two methods, and when I switched to the TV table, I shot up to 1st place.
Third, it took me a while to figure out that the button in the lower left of the wheel is a D-pad...until then I couldn't navigate the menus in Forza because turning the wheel only moves you left and right. I didn't notice the little arrows around the button, and it wasn't until I went back and re-read the instructions for the third time that I noticed it on the diagram.
The last issue is the sensitivity. The wheel doesn't turn especially far (around 210 degrees stop-to-stop) presumably because of its bungee mechanism, and the wheel is very sensitive out of the box. With Forza 5, I find you really need to follow the directions and reduce the control sensitivity to 3 or 4. Actually, on setting 4 I'm still crashing into things left and right, but that's probably just because I'm relatively unfamiliar with the wheel, the car and the track... or I'm just a poor driver. I wish the wheel would remember its sensitivity setting so I wouldn't have to set it every time I power up.
Despite all that, the wheel and pedals are well constructed, there's no play anywhere, and the movement is very smooth and translates into precise movement in the game. And the price is decent enough. With the above accommodations, this wheel is a huge step up from trying to drive with the stock Xbox controller, and worth the $99 in my opinion. | video-games_xbox |
I wanted to like this headset. I was looking for something different. The OEM Xbox 360 headset would always become uncomfortable after an hour or so
of use for me. The foam/sponge "ear-speaker cover" would bother my ear and the hard plastic opposite end would dig into the other side of my head.
I had been looking all over (including in Japan) for a cool headset. I didn't want one that also played the sound from the game (ie. stereo or 5.1 audio),
I have an audio system for that, I just wanted a better communicator headset for talking with friends.
I saw this on a "popular game review site" and immediately went and got one.
I opened it. It felt like quality plastic and rubber. It had a durable feel to it. I was excited. Heck, I could even drink and not have to move the mic.
Perfect, right?
It fit a little tight around my lower neck, but I could deal with that. The ear pod was a little big and was deeper than say a traditional iPod ear bud.
It wasn't super comfy personally, but again, I could deal with it.
Problem #1
I plug it into the controller. The plug didn't fit super tight and it did that static thingy in my ear which made it seem like the connection wasn't all there.
it felt 3rd party-ish if you know what I mean. I was expecting it to kinda plug and lock in there, but it felt too loose for my liking.
Problem #2
So I connect with some friends. They say I sounded bad, too much static, so I looked closely and noticed that it came with the mute switch turned "on" (default setting? really?).
But if the mute was on, why could they hear me?
So I switched the mute to "off".
My friends said I sounded fine with the throat mic. I was actually surprised they said they couldn't tell the difference between my voice
with the Mad Catz product and the OEM Xbox headset.
Problem #3
My friends sounded drunk/inebriated. Their voices sounded horrible. I switched over to the OEM Xbox headset and they sounded fine. The ear piece had
horrible audio. It sounded like cheap equipment.
So basically the only good things are I can drink with it on and I sound OK, but the other issues were too much for me.
I can't express enough how bummed I am that this product isn't that good.
Oh well, I will repackage it up and return it.
The search continues. | video-games_xbox |
2K, when I see you in the ring next year brother, it's gonna be a rental. I cannot comprehend how a company that has consistently improved a game that comes out every year, takes a sudden turn into destroying what they have accomplished. This game is more broken than Foley after Hell in a Cell '98.
I'm a huge fan of these games. there have been a few missteps during recent years, but 2K13 and 2K14 pretty much nailed it - these games had everything that make this genre great - Lots of match types, cool 'storyline' modes and best of all, a super detailed create a character mode that let you make a reasonable version of damn near anybody, and trade them online. So when I finally upgraded to current gen, I thought this purchase would be a slam dunk. I have never been so wrong about a game...
I guess it's my own fault for not beleiving the bad reviews. I love the old AKI/N64 control schemes and playstyle, and for the most part people who play these games these days seem to champion the dumbed down PS1 'smackdown' type games, so I felt like I couldn't rely on reviews.
But seriously, This game is completely worthless. 2K absolutely GUTTED everything that was great about the last 4 versions of this game! First, they shouldn't even legally be able to list a character creator in the product description of this game... It is the most limited I have ever seen. No real create a move set, and about 10% of the options that were in the last game.
The gameplay is just awful.. EVERY grapple is settled by a ridiculous rock/paper/scissors quick time event that kills the flow of a match. Reversal timing (which has been one of the admittedly weak aspects of the previous versions) is near impossible in this game. And a completely useless 'momentum' meter which guarantees that no matter how much you beat down an opponent, they will come back at the last minute.
If somehow these glaring, horrible problems aren't enough to make you hate this game, the ridiculously long loading times between every single menu transition / view of a creation option will probably be the last straw.
I just cannot understand how a product takes such a bizzare change of direction / nosedive in quality after so many years of refinement and improvement.. The only good thing about this entire experience is that I got this on a pretty good sale and was able to trade it in for almost what I paid for it. | video-games_xbox |
Great Console with a Few Flaws for Cord Cutters. I purchased the Xbone as a move towards cutting the cord. This is a great device. It's incredibly easy to install and get working. Picture and sounds quality are superb, and once you get used to Windows' tiles the interface is okay. There's a ton of other reviews that pour over the Xbone from every angle, so just a few viewpoints from a cord cutter point-of-review.
First, stop being cheap Microsoft and put in two HDMI ports. In many situations you wind up having to buy a splitter to send the Xbone's signal to multiple display devices. A component output wouldn't hurt either - there are still a few situations where you need that capability. So I wound up with a splitter and an HDMI/Component breakout box - these have worked with very little degradation in signal.
Second, TV options are pretty lame. SlingTV is there for folks who want some packaged TV channels. But SlingTV is perhaps the worst rollout of a product I've ever seen. In addition to useless tech support the app constantly freezes and sometimes just goes offline. If you're watching something interesting expect the app to crash at the worst time. There are few other apps but not many of interest to cord cutters. As we're entering the age of TV 2.0 Microsoft seems to be losing a lot of ground it could be capturing if the Xbone had more content options.
Third, no XBMC integration. Plex is available, but the pay version (at least right now). I've read of ways around this to embed access to your media into the Xbone, but all seemed hackerish and a lot of work. I'm not saying it can't be done, but integrating your media server should be a no brainer.
To me the Xbone is a great device, but not the powerhouse I thought it would be for Cord Cutters. I expect a lot of changes and improvements down the line. I bet that Plex, for example, will become a free app on the Xbone. And more apps to arrive. There's a lot of competition in the TV 2.0 world so Microsoft better move faster. | video-games_xbox |
Not to be rushed through. It's hard to review this game because there is simply so much to it. There is no strict linearity. In fact, you can't just follow a single path from point A to point Z and be done. Actions in one place trigger consequences in another, so you need to go from place to place and place to place to stitch together the different quests and story lines.
This game builds on the first and second Dragon Age games, fleshing out the back-stories and answering many of the unanswered questions. Finally, you find the origin of "Bianca." The continuity testers did an excellent job: everything makes sense in the story lines.
The attention to detail is impressive. When the characters walk under a rocky arch, their voices echo. When they jump, their coat-tails trail behind them. The graphics are fine-tuned. Elfroots look like plants now. Rock and tree textures are finely rendered.
The story lines are complex and engaging and what you say and do really do change the interactions between the characters. It's no longer a case of buying your companions off with candy. The character interactions are more serious now. Instead of everyone being a jolly companion, there are some dark characters, and some turn darker with how you play.
The music plays well and isn't overwhelming. You won't be escorted across the wastelands by a full orchestra, so coming upon the performers in the taverns provides a bit of human warmth and comfort. Some of the songs are downright catchy. "Sera" comes to mind.
Combat is nicely tuned. Unlike earlier games where everything was easy to fight at the player's lower levels and hard to fight as the character level increased, some things are simply too tough to be handled until your character grows in experience, while the nugs are always easy to kill. Unlike the mash the button and keep on swinging play of previous games, the strategic slow-advance is really useful and surprisingly satisfying to give that up-close and personal combat experience and squeeze the best out of each character.
There are all sorts of puzzles in this game, which I find especially appealing. Some of them are very easy, such as a few of the astrariums, but some are challenging until you figure out the tricks, such as some of the tile-walking puzzles.
Probably the best part of this game is that there is simply so much to it. There is always something new to be discovered, some nuance of plot to uncover, some place to crawl into or climb up. This is an ideal game for people who like to do things slowly, explore a lush landscape and listen-in-on a panoply of characters. You could spend two hundred hours on this game and not exhaust its possibilities. In terms of hours of entertainment per dollar spent, I can't think of too many better bargains out there.
There are a few glitches: inaccessible shards; dialog confusion; people blinking in and out of scenes: the occasional lock-up. But these are minor annoyances and none really reduce the pleasure of the game.
Be warned that you will definitely need hi-definition for your screen or else much of the script will be unreadable, and you will need a good sound system to do justice to the game. | video-games_xbox |
It can be so much more, for now it's a mix of ups and downs. <div id="video-block-R27VK4WPVF2D7Z" 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/E13YFm%2B3IES.mp4" class="video-url"><input type="hidden" name="" value="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/710oYTvq9gS.png" class="video-slate-img-url"> his is such a difficult product to review because it includes so many things in one single (and huge) box but I'll try to do my best and I'll also include some comparisons with the PS4 which I also own and have reviewed. I tried to be as objective as I possible while provided a brief comparison to the PS4. A lot of people on both sides (X1 and PS4 are just downvoting the other console because they don't like it when the other one succeeds. Take the reviews as you please but don't believe every one star review you see here.
Hardware: The best comparison (and the most popular) is that the Xbox One basically looks like a futuristic VCR, just as big, not pretty by any means with just the logo and the loading slot in the front. Half glossy and half vents to prevent the box from getting too warm (like the previous gen). One USB port on the side and the rest at the back: HDMI (x2) In and Out. 2 USB, digital audio, network and one for the Kinect, which is surprisingly massive and bulky and will definitely be noticed on top or below your TV. For all of you who are wondering if the big power brick is back, yes, it's back but thankfully it's a thing that tends to stay at the back of your furniture unless you are used to moving it from TV to TV or to a friend's place. X1 vs PS4: PS4's console is definitely better-looking, smaller and if we even get into the technical specs has a slighter edge over the X1
Controller: I'll review the controller separately but in summary. It's a mostly-better version of the Xbox 360 one. The layout is basically the same with the buttons and sticks in the same place. It's slightly heavier and the analog sticks include a grippy texture in the rim that will definitely help your gameplay if you have sweaty hands that slip off them. The bumper buttons are a little harder to press this time, which I don't particularly like and the rumble feature in the triggers feel really weird/funny but once you get used to them and developers focus on them I'm sure it'll enhance the experience while playing. X1 vs PS4: X1 wins, especially with a way better battery life
Software: I'm not a Windows 8 user so I can't say I'm familiar with the interface at all and it's not as intuitive as the PS4 one (which works fine for now but I'm not sure when I have more apps and games in there). As expected, you have your gamerscore, the last couple of apps you've used, and links to other things like friends or other apps. The other screens are the usual sections for movies, games, etc. And there's another screen when you can pin up the apps that you use the most. The multitasking is miles better than the bad implementation of the 360. You can move between a game and the dashboard super quickly, do some other thing and come back with the tap of a button in contrast with the slow and painful process you had to go through on the 360 to message a friend or something like that.
Snap is a feature I don't see myself using a lot right now, but it's there and I can see how some people might make a lot out of it. You can basically "attach" another app to the side of the screen, be it a browser or live TV in case you want to keep track of a NFL game while you play a NFL game :)
In case you don't know, it CAN'T play Xbox 360 games. It's a different architecture so you might want to hold on to your old console if you still play some of the games. what you can do is login with the same account and carry over all your friends and gamerscore.
You can record gameplay just as with the PS4, only that the Xbox provides a more robust editing feature but unfortunately, live streaming will not be supported at launch.
X1 vs PS4: I'll say it's a tie for now, which might be able to change in favor of Microsoft if they improve the experience.
Kinect: After the considerably longer set up than I expected I was able to use some of the commands with the Kinect, which is now included with every console (and explains the $100 price difference between the PS4). It's trying to replace the use of the controller to navigate through the system so you can say things like: "Xbox, on" or "Xbox, play Dead Rising 3" and it should know how to do it (It's "Xbox, turn off" NOT "Xbox off"... silly Xbox). When it works it's fantastic but in my short experience with it, it doesn't work until a few attempts which ruins the experience and misses the purpose of it. Maybe it'll get better with time, I hope it does. I still feel weird talking to a camera but maybe that's the future.
One of my favorite things it does is when you walk into a room, the Xbox will recognize your face and log you in automatically, you don't have to do anything. And the same thing happens if someone else walks into the room. It's a cool feature but overall I don't think they succeeded with it as they advertise it. Forget using it with motion, it works worse than voice commands. I can see the potential. It's there, I just hope they make the most out of it. Thankfully, it's not required to be plugged in to use the Xbox so I'm sure a lot of people will lose interest and just do that.
X1 vs PS4: I don't have the PS4 camera but from what I've read everywhere it doesn't come close to what the kinect can do so if you're into this you'll appreciate the X1 a lot more.
TV Integration: For the record, I have DirecTV with a DVR which I use most of the time instead of watching live TV.
This is one of the features that made me NOT cancel my preorder since I was really excited from what I had seen in the demos and thought I might be using it a lot. WRONG! If you use your cable subscription to watch mostly recorded stuff like me, this is not for you. You can't say something like `Play episode X of show X' which was recorded 1 hour ago. It only works for live TV right now.
What's happening is that the X1 is not just taking control of your TV signal, it's just showing whatever your cable box is sending through HDMI so any menus you get there, you'll get BELOW the xbox menus making a very clunky interface that doesn't look pretty. When you change the channel through the Kinect (as I understand), the xbox is sending an IR signal everywhere in your room in hope that it bounces and makes it back to your cable receiver so it works even if they're side by side. Maybe in the future some cable providers will get into it and give better integration but for now It's a no-go for me, at least until surround sound is here.
At least it has Netflix, Hulu, Amazon plus some sports channels too.
Since I don't have a PC I can't test the media streaming feature it comes with but maybe I'll try to get one to test it and I'll update the review.
Games: Microsoft is saying that the X1's launch lineup is the "best ever" or something like that. I'd say that if we take all the cross-platform games for both consoles you're left with very few options that in no way represent what we should expect from this generation. I can't wait to what developers can make out of these boxes and wow us all.
As with the PS4, you need to install the games before playing them (at least part of it) and man is that slow. Why can't I just insert a disc and start playing like before? I'm sure it can't copy things in the background without having me to wait! | video-games_xbox |
The future is now. The day has finally arrived and the system we will love and cherish for the next 8 years has arrived. Just like the 360 innovated in a lot of ways upon release oh so many years ago, The Xbox One still has along way to move forward if it wants to try and be the dominate system such as the 360 was in the past (Not a fanboy but sales still show xbox outselling ps3 for almost 2 years straight). As of launch date the system has a nice variety of launch titles that can intrigue most gamers but will have the majority of the general public waiting until more titles are available.
On a side note I must say with how impressed I was with the Kinect function! I hated the original yet this version is much clearer, accurate, and all around reliable. It succeeds in a lot of ways that the original flopped.
The control is more or less the same despite the millions of dollars that Microsoft swears they invested into it. The changes are minimal at best, but it still provides a comfortable and sleek controller with enough changes to make it feel fresh but not drastic enough to alienate lovers of the original 360 controller.
Overall the system is a very solid system and yes while not every game runs in 1080p the graphics still look amazing. Stop being a snob about it. We as gamers play for incredible gameplay and exciting story besides the graphics aren't bad they just aren't the best they can be! But regardless they still look very very good. I feel bad for people complaining now god forbid they play such classics as Final Fantasy 7 or Chrono Trigger.
I hope you take a chance on Microsoft and give this system a chance. Everyone complained when Microsoft unveiled all the stupid polices the original xbox one was going to have. But they listened to all the feedback (mostly negative) and worked hard on making a system that they felt confident us gamers would enjoy.
Add me on Xbox live sometime!
PACproject | video-games_xbox |
Very solid game Bungie, but a couple of missed opportunities. I'm about half way through the campaign and have played tons of firefight and multiplayer. I have to say although I've been a Halo fan since day 1, I was very skeptical about this title after seeing the ODST nightmare that they released last year, but they've made up for it--mostly. So far....
The Good
Co-op campaign--these guys started it all with that feature and stuck to it. Huge plus! Great campaign in addition to the co-op element. And when you modify your character out of the campaign, he or she shows up like that in the campaign. Nice touch. 9.5/10
Firefight--DRASTICALLY improved. In ODST, firefight was garbage, plain and simple. Not enough ammo, underpowered weapons, the list goes on and on. But they completely improved on virtually every aspect of it. Massive customizability, options for everything, they fixed the terrible ammo system. I am dinging them just a little because they force you to go into matchmaking to earn any real money, which means playing with some of the worst people in the online community, as we all know. 9.0/10
Weapon fixes--Personally, I hated the covenant weapons in all of the other games. I thought they were beyond lame. But they reworked most of them and now I actually enjoy using them. Nicely done.
THE BAD
A couple of minor complaints. There really are some things they could have improved on for customizing armor. The undersuit is always the same color and can't be changed, nor can you color individual pieces of armor. Not a big deal, but just hoped for a little more polish. Same old limited color palette, which there really is no excuse for.
The Ugly
Two things that really bothered me about this game. The first is the campaign/firefight. When I played Halo 3 they had solved the provlem by getting rid of the Elites, but now they are back. Their movements are erratic and spastic, they hop all over and just look silly. I didn't realize until I was playing just how dated and played out some of the material had become. Half the time the Elites have their back to you but will react when you scope in on them. Time to hang up the covenant. If this franchise keeps going I really hope that they take it in a new direction. But the whole covenant thing is getting pretty tired.
The really big complaint that I have is about the inability of the user to set up handicaps for INDIVIDUAL players in custom games. I know you can power up or power down entire teams or just the leader, etc, but that is not what we need. I have a lot of friends who like to play multiplayer but frankly they aren't very good. But they are my friends and I'd still like to be able to play with them. But they will not play Halo because there is no way to level the field unless you put all the bad players on one team and modify them all. What is really lame about this is that you COULD do all of those things in Halo 2, but they got rid of it and failed to bring it back in Reach as well. It seems that Bungie doesn't want to bring in new players, because their present course is alienating a LOT of gamers. Shame on Bungie for not adding this--and double shame on them for removing it in the first place. NEVER REMOVE FEATURES.
A great game and I'm looking forward to finishing it up. For the reasons I mentioned, I'll probably go elsewhere for my versus gaming, but I can't be too sorry about that since Bungie doesn't seem too worried about it either! Great comeback after ODST. | video-games_xbox |
it has its ups and downs. I started playing this game after I had already completed reach and played hours of online with Reach, so maybe my opinion is swayed by that. Anyway, to this game. It's dark. like super dark, some areas are black with shades of black. That may be overstating it a little, but I think if you go in thinking you won't see anything, then you might feel like it's visible enough. I was not a fan of the new VISR mode. Even when used in blackout situations, it doesn't really illuminate as much as highlight. I got tired of playing wireframe graphics in the 80's so I could really have done with a better night vision. Especially since 70% of the game is played in dark areas.
The mood of the story is tense. I had to think a lot more than run and gun what with the lack of motion tracker and the limited ammo available. It does really change the way you play when you are given such limited options for weapons. Trying to figure out what's going on in the game and in the story worked well enough, after all, you shouldn't always have it handed to you on a platter.
The characters were interesting enough, if a little too comical for what had been a very staid and serious series. But these characters were background jokers in Halo 3, so it makes sense that they are in this game as well. It's strange to have such vocal main characters after playing the other games in this series.
The music is eerie. Not in a bad way, just in a way that sets it apart interestingly from the soundtracks of the other games.
The open environment was cool. I only wish I could have seen more of it. Given more ammo and brighter environments, I could have spent hours just wandering around the maps killing covies. As it was, I just wanted to get to the story flashbacks that occured in the day, so I could see where I was going.
I haven't done much with the multiplayer, since Reach is what all of my friends are playing, but I can see where it would be great if you didn't have reach.
For me $20 was a good price to pay, but I would have been upset to get it at full price. | video-games_xbox |
Another BAD sequal to a great star wars game. Now the original star wars game was excellent in every case. It had that great feeling of actually living in the epic battles of the star wars movies. The second one was great also but not as good as the first. This is not surprising though because lucas arts isn't too good with making sequals.
The campaign in the second is much different than the first. It kept more of a story based ideal. It made you do objectives and missions during the battle. Which isn't that bad, but it wasn't as much fun as just having a war and taking over command posts like the original. It made it feel as if you weren't really in a war but doing missions. The game does have the option of not doing the missions and just taking over the command posts like the original but its more of a board game where you move your space ship from space to space and when you land on a space with a planet then you are allowed to battle there and have the original gameplay. This made it boring because you cant just pick which planet you want to battle on like the first one.
The space battles are very interesting though. They add a lot of fun to the game. It really feels like you are in space and you can even get dizzy by spinning and i love flying upside down. The space battles do get boring after a while and the mssion objectives make it annoying.
The graphics are good but they seem more like there was no improvment from the first. You can fight as a jedi which is fun but once oyu die you cant be him anymore and they are only available in certain situations and only in the campaign so you have to do objectives with them. The game also has new characters and droids to be but lacks the great gameplay as the first.
Overall the game feels more like an expansion pack with a new sort of gameplay that isn't all that good and with a little board game. The game is still good but it isn't as fun as the first and you can get bored of it because it is more of a duplicate of the first. Another bad thing with the objective thing in the campaign is in some planets there can be a lot of objectives and if you get far and fail one you have to do them all over again and if you run out of men to use you also fail the battle so you will end up repeating the objectives over and over again which can make it very boring. In other words there are no checkpoints. The game also mostly focuses on episode 3. So if you don't have the first i suggest you get that one instead of this one and if you have the first and want more battle areas than get this one but don't get your hopes up for it being any better than the first. If you just decide on getting it because you hear all the new things you can do don't get it because its no where near as good as the first. | video-games_xbox |
Oh why did you have to parish. I would Like to begin by saying that this is an average headset. For a couple months I thought that this headset was the best, just because it worked with both Ps3 and Xbox. For a while it worked for me sounded great until a couple of weeks later the cable that connected the puck to the Xbox360 controller broke. So I found a replacement cable on amazon, no big deal. again it worked almost flawlessly.
a couple of months had gone by and i had started to notice that there were signs of the headband cracking, I didn't think much of it because of how thick it was. I thought to myself, "Oh this headband is easily half an inch thick it'll last."
Boy was I wrong because not a week later the right ear muff had completely snapped off. So what did I do?Thinking that the headset was worth it, I went into the kitchen found some old credit cards cut them up into strips and duct taped them to the headband and earmuff where it snapped off because I didn't feel like replacing my beloved headset. And of course it worked but eventually the duct tape stretched and I just ripped the whole thing off. Still convinced that the headset was good I continued on. Now it was just like a regular Xbox360 headset except for two things. One it was way bigger than a normal headset. And two, it cost me almost $80.
I'd say that about a week went by and by this point I had enough of this crap and I destroyed what was left of the damned thing and said to myself "Good riddance, wish I would have never bought you!", as I throw the broken headset into the waste basket.
So this is where I leave you, whoever is reading this review,and say this one final thing. There are much more durable headsets out there that offer the same quality sound and voice for half the price of this headset. Although I loved this headset until its untimely demise I would strongly recommend avoiding this pair of headphones. Leaving it at this I rate Tritton TRIAX-180 AX 180 Universal Gaming Headset a 3/5. | video-games_xbox |
Packs A Wallop, But Seriously Flawed. If Dead to Rights was a movie, you can bet your lucky stars that Mission: Impossible and the other big action movie rejects would be shuffling along the sidewalk in their bathrobe. Namco's latest bullet riddled action title is one of the most cinematic, action packed over-the-top action games I've ever played. The entire game's adrenaline barometer is clicking at full tilt and doesn't dare slow down to lose that eccentric sensation of pulse inducing gun fights that make us feel like Bruce Willis in Die Hard; and its that quality that makes Dead to Rights a worthwhile game, flaws and all.
Yes, Jack Slate (The main hero/good cop/framed man) is a [copy] of Remedy's Max Payne, he plays more like a reject from the drawing board of Bruce Willis wannabe's. Yes, his one liners are cheesy and he fires them off like there's no tomorrow, not to mention his bullet-time/slow motion dive looks odd. Okay, okay yeah, Jack Slate is a complete retard, but when you shrug off that silly smirk off your face, you'll find yourself clenching your burly Xbox controller and indulged in a piece of action gaming bliss. Dead to Rights takes place in a fictional setting "Grant City", Jack Slate is a wise-ass officer who's father is killed (Of course) and he in turn is framed for murder and gets caught up in a dangerous web of corrupt cops, city officials and more gun fights that Clint Eastwood's even seen. Yeah, the story's not going to win any awards, nor was it meant to, thankfully Namco shifts it focus off the story and more onto the game rather than the heavily story driven roots of ones such as its inspiration Max Payne.
Now that the small talk is out of the way, let's talk action. Dead to Rights best feature is the never-before seen action elements that have been perfectly implemented into the gameplay. Jack can disarm foes barehanded, grab enemies and use them as human bullet shields, use his dog to attack enemies and fight hand to hand if things come to worse (which they will). Now before you criticize, believe me these are not some of the useless features in games, all of these elements give players strategy that seriously helps pull you out of dire straights.
Dead to Rights also is littered with mini-games. Surprisingly many of them are fun and add great depth to the action feel, especially when you're disarming bombs and one false move will blow you to smithereens. Others range from arm wrestling, to weight lifting, resisting torture, picking locks and
But where there's the good, there's always the bad lurking off in the corners somewhere; and I say this loud and clear: Dead to Rights is the most challenging, most difficult and sometimes cheapest game I've played all year. It's nearly impossible to play without getting pissed off and it nearly kills the fun factor too. Only play this if you're comfortable blowing your top often as well as dying often because you'll be doing a hell of a lot of it here. Without difficulty settings that are sorely needed in a game like this, you'll be dying many times even on the second and third levels. The biggest problem is hand to hand combat, the fighting system may seem cool at first, but surprisingly every part that I got angry at was a fighting part. I had no trouble overcoming the imposing odds in gun fights, but in hand to hand you're only given one defensive option to work with, and that's block, only thing is, the block doesn't work. Most annoying is the fact that your enemies swarm you relentlessly and their hits do about half the damage of yours. A few bosses can even kill you in mere seconds, one example was a convict in prison eight punches from him will kill you where as it will take nearly fifty to bring him down (He also has two invulnerable sidekicks constantly attacking you to just to make things more cheap.)
Don't expect this game to go easy on you even in the beginning, Dead to Rights won't spare anyone, not to mention some of the hardest boss fights ever, and I mean damn hard. This is another game that a difficulty setting could have promised this game the same stature of Max Payne, but alas laziness must have taken over, if there was a wake-up call to add difficulty settings, this is it. Yet even with its high frustration level however Dead to Rights is a hard as nails, action filled package just bursting at the seems with style and flair, so I am giving it thumbs up. | video-games_xbox |
Buyer Beware. I feel uniquely qualified to comment on the quality of this item as I've now traded in my 6th Onza (yes, you read that right).
First the positive (if you can take any thing positive away from a 1 star review): the form factor and overall ergonomics of this pad are top notch, although the controller does exhibit that feeling of 'empty plastic shell' that plagues most 3rd party accessories. Most all of Razers changes are positive ones:
1) the grips feel more like handles and fit your hand comfortably for hours of gameplay
2) surface testure is soft-touch and seams are mostly smooth-- no unsightly gaps
3) analog sticks are a bit taller and the cups are deeper giving them a bit more sensitivity and a more grippy feel than the std xbox controller-- the adjustable tension might be useful to some but I kept mine in the default loosened position
4) mechanical face buttons are a nice touch
5) triggers take a bit of getting used to but I found I liked the longer travel
6) repositioned back/start is easier to reach for score checks in CoD
A few of the design elements didn't work as well as those mentioned above. Namely, the extra set of programmable shoulder buttons that is a key selling point of this model: I never did find them useful as they're too long of a stretch for my index fingers. Also, the D-pad is pretty terrible-- even when compared to the horrible D-pad on the standard controller-- the plunger style buttons have too far a travel before engagement and the silly layout makes diagonal presses more difficult than necessary.
Now for the negative: this controller is simply not built to last.
One of the culprits appears to be the tension-adjustable sticks. Over time they develop travel issues where the feel won't be consistent in each direction. Eventually this will give way to the sticks 'wandering' on their own and not responding correctly to inputs. Another issue is the L3/R3 buttons which will sporadically fail to register if the stick is in full tilt-- a real frustration in games like CoD where you're constantly using the sticks to run/prone/knife.
Opting for the Pro version over the TE will avoid this issue as the Pro lacks the tension gears-- unfortunately the sticks aren't all that is wrong with this piece. The triggers/bumpers also fail. Before long, 4 of my controllers developed an issue where the triggers would fail to engage or, worse, engage on their own! All 6 units had at least 1 bumper fail.
Finally, the chat port was excessively noisy on several of the units I had: often popping and hissing when someone would try to talk.
I kept exchanging these in the hopes that I would finally receive a good one-- to no avail. I guess I'm stubborn, but this controller works so well for the first couple weeks it's a real shame when the issues start cropping up. At this point, after 6 different units, I'm ready to declare this line a lemon. I've even found a high performance pad to replace it: the Madcatz FPS Pro...
Yeah, I know what you're thinking but my experience thus far has been superb. Only time will tell but the madcatz is already proving itself to be more consistent than the Onza. | video-games_xbox |
Biggest disappointment is Ep2-5 DRM still tied to console/gamertag rather than the disc. Biggest disappointment [besides the Episode 4 issue which seems to be glitched to where it's only free if you download it before starting the game, but once you play a level it shows up as $4.99...known issue that the developer is working on] is that the disc and Episode 1 are good for "any profile/any console" but the follow-up Episodes 2-5 still adhere to Microsoft's whacky DRM scheme requiring it be played by any profile on the first console you download to, or any other console - provided the profile used to download it is signed in.
I specifically bought this on disc for the 360 so my kids could play it at their house as well, but that's not going to pan out like I hoped because over Christmas break the episodes were first downloaded to my xbox....at least 2 & 3 was with one of their profiles, but still, how lazy was it for the developers to not create a different download for the disc season passes that only worked in combination with the disc, but worked in any console.
As for the complaints about short time of play, that's always been the charm of the games from this studio. The nuanced replay value of the game is not to have 20 side quests and 100's of collectibles to artificially create a sense of depth. Instead, every episode presents several pivotal choices along the way, so as parents you may need to encourage the kids that just button-mashed their way through it in an hour to try it again, make different choices and see how the story changes as a result.
Also, with regard to language, it's nothing a 10 year old hasn't heard at school or prime time network television. If you want to buy an E10+ (for Fantasy Violence, Mild Language) for 6 and 7 year olds go right ahead, but don't give the game a bad review because it requires a 4th grade reading level and has some "cursing" from time to time. | video-games_xbox |
A totally new and original kind of First Person Shooter. Bioshock is a FPS game that goes where no other FPS has gone... and Im not just talking about a city at the bottom of the Atlantic.
Gameplay:
Pros:
The gameplay in bioshock is more than just your typical FPS. Aside from what all FPS games do, Bioshock takes it a step further. You progress through a linear set of levels, but each level is anything but linear. You have the freedom to go around each level hacking machines to help you fight your enemies, get new PLASMIDS and upgrade your current ones, get weapon upgrades, invent a new types of ammo for each of your guns, and lots of other neat things.
Cons: While the game has plenty of depth and action, The problem is the difficulty. Not to say that there is no challenge to staying alive, ive died many times. But the problem that I have is that whenever you die, you automatically become revived in a "vita chamber" with half of your health and all of the stuff you had before, and all of the enemies that you killed or damaged before are still that way. This means that there really is no incentive to stay alive. I often find myself loading the game whenever I die just to challenge myself to not get killed.
Story:
The story of bioshock starts with the nameless main charactor that you play as on an airplain in the year 1960. the plain crashes in the atlantic ocean and the surviving main charactor makes his way to a light house that leads to the underwater city of Rapture. The story unfolds through radio communication with friends and foes and tape recordings of the citizens of rapture before things went bad. There are at least two different endings to the game and 3 difficulty levels which gives it plenty of replay value.
Graphics:
Pros:
Bioshock is full of incredibly detailed eyecandy in every corner. The envirnments are all varried so no two places look alike. It has some of the best looking water and ice effects ever made of polygons.
Cons:
However, there is an issue with the graphics that may or may not matter all that much. Once in a while some of the 3d models will appear without rendering the textures, so it looks basic and bland. then it suddenly becomes detailed. I have noticed this in other xbox 360 games.
Controls: Controlling Bioshock is like most FPS games on a console. Dual analog controlls movement and looking/aiming. But the controlls are not as smoothe as they could be. Aiming relys alot on auto aim, wich may sometimes cause you to attack the wrong target. You have the option to turn auto aim off, but then aiming is alot more difficult.
Content: Bioshock is a strictly single-player game. There is no multiplayer at all. Most gamers wouldn't mind playing a multiplayer version of bioshock over xbox live. all there is to do in bioshock is the single plater campaign. but there is still plenty of replay value.
Over all, If you have a 360, buy this game, or You can download the demo off of xbox live market place if you want to try it before droping $60 for it. | video-games_xbox |
Microsoft took a few steps forward, and some backwards. Let it be known that I am a bit of a Microsoft fanboy. If I could, I would buy both a PS4 and Xbox One but I never had that kind of money. That being said, I am impressed with some of the improvements that Microsoft has made, but disappointed with some of the steps they took backwards
The Hardware:
The Xbox One is downright bulky. It takes up a large amount of space and still has a separate power brick. Now that's not necessarily a bad thing since there are many vents to allow air to circulate and keep the console cool. But unless you're moving the console around often or have very little space in your home entertainment system, then size shouldn't really be bothersome. The console placed in my setup looks beautiful in my opinion. Its also very quiet, silent like.
The controller is downright my favorite I have ever held. I've never used a Dualshock 4 but the xb1 controller is a huge step up in comfort and use from the 360 controller The headset though is uncomfortable, though it might be because of my extensive use of Turtle Beach headsets..The kinect is fun to use, but also frustrating. It's always listening but is automatically on for chat in games, so you have to turn that off. The camera works very nice though and has signed me by looking at me almost every time. Beyond that though, kinect is a expensive paperweight.
Software:
This is where I'm disappointed. The system OS feels rushed. Those who designed the OS where not thinking clearly it seems. Party chat, friends, everything is still there, in its own separate app... This means if you want to start a party, look on your friends list, etc. you have to switch from the app your in to the other. This seems like a step backwards, from where everything was organized in one menu on the 360 and you could do this while in game. Sure you can snap the apps, but this causes screen space to be lost. Watching tv also seems odd. It seems that the pass thru can not handle fast pictures. If i want to rewind something, I have no idea where I am until I press play. I'm not sure what's happening since my DirecTV receiver connected independently to an input does show whatever I'm watching rewinding or fast forwarding, I believe this is an Xbox issue. Games look beautiful, a major step up from last-gen (yes the 360 and osps3 are now last gen people) but they will never look as good as PC games. If you're not going for absolute perfect graphics, then the console doesn't disappoint.
Overall:
There's much more I still want to explore and talk about, but I'll add that hopefully soon. If you're looking for an Xbox One, I would recommend it. The OS is not a deal breaker and just like last gen, the OS will be improved upon as many like Major Nelson and the lead of Hardware Development have promised it will be changed. If you're curious about more feedback that people have posted and Microsoft is aware of, you can head to xboxfeedback.com and you can find a nice compiled list of the feedback consumers have had. I believe that in time, the console will evolve just like its predecessor did. Until then, 3 stars from me. | video-games_xbox |
AMAZING - Reviewers are Wrong. I still remember going to Circuit City in 2008 and buying Dead Space with my girlfriend and getting the game based solely on the cover and the title. Its not often gamers blind buy anymore, but with Dead Space I did. To me Dead Space was always a Bioshock ripoff with a horror/space twist as the structure is quite similar. All said and done Dead Space was the best blind buy and quite possibly my favorite game of all time. Dead Space 2 was a terrific follow up; what Dead Space 2 nailed more than anything was the atmosphere. The atmosphere was downright amazing plus a really fun game to play.
That brings us to Dead Space 3. I saw the review on IGN was a 7.8 which worried me prior to playing. But in the review the reviewer spoke about he second playthrough. I'm sorry but a game below an 8.0 does not generally deserve a second playthrough but I couldn't help but start the game with trepidation. However do not fear Dead Space 3 a GREAT game. It lacks the newness of Dead Space 1, and the terric atmosphere of Dead Space 2, but it does have some great new additions:
First of all you actually spend a lot of time in Space, which I always wanted more of, the sound is amazing and there are plenty of scares. The side missions are fun and the frozen planet is something different. There are side (optional missions) which are fun. Another thing reviewers have been complaining about is the story, but as long as you read all the logs you pick up, the story should be pretty straight foward. Something I do miss are the "nodes" to upgrade your weapons, that whole system is gone. You now have a crafting system where you upadate your weapons with crap you find in the game. It didn't make a lot of sense until about halfway through so that was frustrating. Also the save system is gone; After beating the game I actually still don't understand the new save system. The set pieces seem scaled down from Dead Space 2 but the ones included are good.
I did not try the co-op so I'm not sure the impact on the game that had.
Bottom line is if you enjoyed the previous two installments, although different save and weapon systems, not as detailed of atmospheres from dead space 2, I would not hesitate to pick this one up, its fun!!!
"Make us whole" | video-games_xbox |
Massively Effective. In a nutshell, Mass Effect was not only worth the wait, but it is one of those few games that actually lives up to the hype behind it. It simply is the best game that I have ever played, largely because it has every element that I like to see in game like this: It is epic, with a sprawling story arc that covers thousands of years of galactic history, it is heroic- the character you play fits the mold of a hero in every way- depending on the choices you make determines how `light' or `dark' he or she becomes, the art, graphics and music are first rate, and unlike Halo 3 or Gears of War, Mass Effect might actually be the `killer app' the 360 has been waiting for. Above all, it's fun. There were lots of places to go and explore- something I can't get enough of in these so-called role playing games (If you are familiar with Bio-Ware's Knights of the Old Republic or Jade Empire, a lot of Mass Effect will seem instantly familiar). I will grant that the story is not entirely original, and the game borrows a lot from Babylon 5 and Star Wars, though with a pedigree like that, it's hard to go wrong, because they took all of the best elements from both. What it does achieve is an immersive story that provided me with hours of entertainment.
The human race is a johnny come lately to the galactic stage after discovering an alien data cache on Mars that advanced a lot of our existing technology at least 200 years. Namely, the "mass effect" which is created when an electrical current is passed across a material known as "element zero"- a negative current and the object becomes lighter, a positive current and it becomes heavier. That alone would enable ships to overcome the nasty effects of relativistic space travel. They also discovered in the ice on Pluto a small mass relay- essentially a space catapult that transports ships vast interstellar distances almost instantly. A nice little draw back is, relays can only send to other relay. In so doing mankind discovered a host of other races already in place and in charge and promptly went to war with one of them- the turians, a short conflict the humans won. The other races have been in space, some for as long as 2000 years and established a sort of cooperative empire based on an enormous deep space station known as the Citadel. Everything- the mass relays, the Citadel were already there waiting for younger races to find them, having been built by a long-dead species known as the Protheans.
You play as John Shepard (or his female counterpart, Jane), no, not Joe Flannigan from Stargate: Atlantis, a Systems Alliance commander and second in command of a brandy new starship called the Normandy sent to investigate a Prothean artifact discovered on the human colony world of Eden Prime. The Normandy arrives just as the colony is under attack by an unknown alien spacecraft. It's your job to uncover why the colony was attacked, the vision given to you by the Prothean artifact, eventually save the galaxy, and prove humanity's worth. You will be joined by numerous human and alien NPCs, some of which have their own agendas, but all of them are useful in one form or another. For example, if you take on the Soldier class for your character, you will likely take NPCs on missions who are more capable in tech based skills or biotic powers. Biotics are another mass effect product developed when a fetus is exposed to an element zero reaction in-utero, a process that has limited success. Either you get cancer and die or super powers.
Mass Effect is, in my opinion, the killer app that the 360 has sorely been lacking. The Xbox 360 has been out for a year and a half now and most of the games do not interest me and those that do haven't been all that great. Mass Effect is also an RPG that thankfully doesn't fall into Final Fantasy trap of static `wait your turn' combat, but instead allows you to move about the battlefield, issue orders to team mates, duck for cover, switch weapons and more. The game gives you lots of things to do- side missions, exploration, surveying mineral deposits, following up on clues, computer hacking, and lots and lots of bad guys to blow up. There are a thousand points of achievements to boost your Live! Gamer Score. The graphics and sound are first rate, with some of the best character and face modeling I have yet to see in a game. Mass Effect and Halo 3 are two completely different games, but for my entertainment dollar, Mass Effect is better. I finished Halo 3 in maybe 6-7 hours, Mass Effect took me 22 hours to finish and I still hadn't completed all of side missions, which took another 24 hours in my second run through.
I love the fact that you can upgrade virtually all of your equipment. Guns get enhancements that make them more accurate, less recoil, and different kinds of ammunition. You can also improve your armor with better kinetic shields, better first aid equipment and more. There are only four basic weapons- pistol, shotgun, assault rifle and sniper rifle, but there are dozens of variants of each that get more powerful as you gain levels. You also get to outfit all of your NPCs including where they put their skill points, and that doesn't always mean keeping the best kit for yourself, depending on your class, etc. you may find armor that you can't wait because it's made for a krogan or a turian. All in all there are hundreds of upgrades.
The game is not without its problems, however, but most of them are of a technical nature. First, it uses the DVD rom drive constantly- on my 360 it never stops reading from the disc and gets so loud that my girlfriend commented on it from across room. It also fails to load all of the textures, leaving objects as black silhouettes- usually crates, but some of the NPCs on Feros were also rendered this way. Also, the short load times means it takes several seconds to load all textures when the action does start, leaving surfaces with only their primary texture layer. In the end, Mass Effect provided me with over two solid days of play time and I'm still not finished with it yet, I still want to try the other character classes and see how the game changes accordingly. They left it open for a sequel and my hope is BioWare won't pawn it off to a second-rate developer as they did with Knights of the Old Republic II. | video-games_xbox |
Good old Nyko charge bases . I got this based on the reputation that the Xbox 360 version of the Nyko base got. I'm happy to have this again on my Xbox One to keep my controllers charged up.
Pros
1. Easy enough to put together. The batteries have a "this side up" thing to make sure you put them in right. The back covers were cut spot on with mine.
2. The base looks good. It has a Nyko label that's lit up 24/7 and then it'll show each controller when it's plugged in with a red or green light denoting if it's charged or not. The controller lights go away after a bit but not until it's entirely charged.
3. The charge lasts a good long time. With a pair of Turtle Beaches connected, I can get a few days of use before I have to put it in to charge it.
4. The controllers fit right into the cradle. Nothing complicated.
5. Unless I update and let you know, assume this thing is still going strong however many months/years from now it is.
Cons
1. It's not quite as "drop it in" easy as the Xbox 360 version. You may have to put it in an wiggle it a bit (lol, that sounds dirty) to get it to connect. It's no big deal and takes an extra half a second of your time.
Overall, this is exactly what I was expecting it to me. Extremely well done, everything fits right, and the batteries have a good charge. I have an official Xbox charge cable/battery which costs as much for one as this entire dock and it only charges one controller. This is a good value and, hey, if it ever does go, I have a backup battery prepared! Would highly recommend.
*edit*
After several months of heavy use, the issues have begun setting in. The back dock now flashes whenever I put a controller in it, resulting in the controller not charging. On top of that, the green/red indicator lights that show how charged the controller is are no longer working. It charges the controllers for now, but I'll be looking for a replacement. Disappointed, was looking forward to using this for years like the 360 version.
Dropped to 2 stars. The base still works so it's hard to hate it entirely. However, how and when it works is now entirely up to it. | video-games_xbox |
Best campaign since Halo 2. I'm a bit older than the typical Halo demographic, and one of the major reasons I play it is to keep my brain tuned up. As such, I play campaign more than multi-player.
For me, then, the value of a Halo game has a lot to do with how engaging the campaign missions are. The original Halo CE and Halo 2 both had very good campaigns that I was content to play many, many times. Halo 3, Halo ODST, and Halo Reach, by contrast, had campaigns that simply didn't hold my interest past two or three run-throughs. I slogged through them the first time more out of a determination to finish than because I liked them, and only repeated them a couple of times before going back to Halo 2.
Now, at last, Halo has a campaign I have had fun playing the first time. Here are some of the things I liked about the campaign.
- Nice variety of missions and environments
- Engaging story line
- New, interesting enemies to fight
- No Flood to fight (I'm not much on zombie shooting)
- Better availability of weapons and ammo. In Halo Reach's campaign, I felt like I was scrounging for ammo half the time. This one gets back to Halo CE/2 days, where they do a good job of leaving appropriate weapons and ammo at various points in a level.
- Very nice rendered scenery - reminiscent of Halo Anniversary edition, but somewhat better
- Good cutscenes, both visually and in terms of promoting the story. Finally, finally they got the faces right on the human characters. I'll be watching these all the way through the first several times through the campaign.
- Hard to get lost in a level - good signaling about the correct way to go
- Good use of extra capabilities in the campaign, especially the jet-pack
- Smooth vehicle piloting. The Pelican was an absolute piece of cake to fly, for example. The Warthog felt pretty natural.
- Good sounds. The vehicles and weapons have a richer, more natural sound, which makes the experience more immersive.
There are a few less-than-perfect things to note. The variety of weapons can be bewildering, and I'll have to do some experimentation in future campaigns to figure them all out. One run-through isn't enough to master all the weapons, or even to become generally familiar with all of them. As usual, it's all too easy to fall off an edge when fighting - sometimes I wish the entire game had a "guard rail" option to turn on.
I also noticed a bit of glitchiness on one weapon - the boltshot. It seemed to sometimes not fire on a click the way I expected. That might be because it has a "hold and fire" mode reminiscent of a plasma pistol overload, but at times it just felt a bit wrong.
Those are minor issues, though. I'll be putting this campaign through its paces plenty more times, I think. I don't know if I will grow as attached as I did to Halo 2's campaign, but we'll see.
*** Update 16 Nov 2012 ***
I didn't really get into the Limited Edition goodies in the original review, so I'll add a bit about that. The main reason to get the Limited Edition, I think, is the downloadable content. The details on what you get are in the product description, but in terms of tangible, physical items, you basically get a poster and notebook from Spartan Gabriel Thorne. The notebook is interesting to read if you're into the Halo backstory, and includes a mildly useful UNSC weapon summary. I've uploaded a picture that shows the notebook both closed and open. For size reference, it's about the size of a DVD case.
The downloadable stuff includes some specializations you get right away (instead of having to work for them), some spiffs for your armor, some map packs, and access to an extended edition of the Forward Unto Dawn series. If you expect to get the map packs anyway, you'll pay almost as much for them as the gap between this edition and the regular edition. So this isn't a bad deal, but it's not a must-have collectible either.
After playing the campaign a couple more times, I still like it, but I have two more comments about it.
First, but I noticed that the music is pretty dull compared to earlier versions. It sounds like generic, off-the-shelf video game music, instead of the powerful compositions by Martin O'Donnell in Halo 1 through 3. It's not even as good as the Halo Reach music, which I thought was a step down from earlier Halo games.
Also, there is no detectable improvement for the AI that controls the Marines who accompany Master Chief. They will still walk right in front of the player, run him over with vehicles, and other silliness. This detracts at times from the immersive experience of the campaign; you'll be in the middle of kicking some alien butt, and then WHAM, you're run over by a Warthog driven by your allies. But the campaign doesn't have that much fighting with the Marines, and it's no worse than previous versions, so I'm not too upset about it. Ally AI is an area I'd like to see more investment in, though.
*** Update 8 July 2013 ***
When I wrote the review above, I had not yet had time to play Spartan Ops. I've played it a lot since then, and overall liked it a lot.
For practice and replayability (is that a word?), Spartan Ops is as good as campaign, and perhaps slightly better. Spartan Ops does have a story line, but it's told mostly through cut-scenes, and the game play is only tangentially related to the story. It's a good story, involving Catherine Halsey and artifacts on the Requiem Forerunner planet.
Note, though, that Spartan Ops is really optimized for co-op play. You can play it alone, but on the higher difficulty levels, it's rather frustrating. You'll get swarmed a lot by enemies with no real ability to deal with it, and then sometimes spawn right in the middle of another swarm. So on the higher levels (Heroic and especially Legendary), get used to dying a lot if you play solo. I've had a lot more fun playing Spartan Ops co-operatively.
Spartan Ops does have one serious flaw, and it shares that flaw with the campaign. Dropped weapons disappear in seconds. Halo Reach had this problem too, but the times to disappearance seem shorter now.
This is probably appropriate for multi-player, because ordnance drops mean there are lots of heavy weapons that become available. If they all stayed around, that would bias the play against skill with more routine weapons.
However, it makes zero sense in campaign and Spartan Ops for weapons to disappear that fast. If you are holding a weapon, you can't drop it because you want to use a different one for a while and then come back to it. When you drop it and move away to fight, it disappears. You can't pick up an enemy weapon and then drop it so that it will hang around either.
Halo CE, 2, 3, and ODST did not work this way. Disappearing weapons in Halo 4 has been the single most frustrating thing about campaign and Spartan Ops for me. Please, 343, do something about that for Halo 5. It really hurts the replay experiences to be locked in to certain weapon strategies. And I cannot believe that the game performance would be affected by leaving a couple of dozen weapons touched by the player hanging around indefinitely the way it worked in the earlier versions. | video-games_xbox |
Unleash the Dragon (3.5 Stars. Blue Dragon is yet another highly anticipated XBOX360 title. Not completely for hype, however, but more because of the men behind the game. Hironobu Sakaguchi, Akira Toriyama and Nobuo Uematsu. Sakaguchi is, of course, the famed created of the never-ending Final Fantasy series, Akira Toriyama is a famous character designer for the Dragon Quest series as well as Dragon Ball and Nobuo Uematsu is the music composer for the Final Fantasy games and a contributor to several other games. The only man missing from this "dream team" is Yuji Horii, the producer for Dragon Quest. The last time these men teamed up we got what is arguably one of the greatest RPGs of all time: Chrono Trigger. So, of course, with a game like Chrono Trigger under your belt, as well as the Final Fantasy series, expectations for Blue Dragon are high. Do they live up? If you lower your expectations they do, but for the most part, this game is more of an introduction for those who aren't familiar with Japanese RPGs.
You play as Shu, and as the game begins you fight a Land Shark, a monster that's been terrorizing the village of Talta. Shu and his friends Kluke and Jiro have a plan to get rid of the Land Shark by leading him into a trap. Not everything works out as perfectly planned however and before he knows it, Shu is waking up in some ruins alongside his friends. This is where your journey ultimately begins.
The reason it seems as though Blue Dragon is an introduction to Japanese RPGs is simple: Everything about it is simple and basic, and there's really nothing too "deep" here. When I say simple and basic, I'm not kidding. The story is pretty basic. Mostly because you just don't feel like it's going anywhere. The characters don't help either and neither does the writing. However, sometimes simplicity is key. Because of how simple the game is, the learning curve isn't so steep here. And while the story and characters are nothing special, the gameplay elements are.
Akira Toriyama's work here is obvious. The characters look like they were pulled straight out of Dragon Ball, the monsters look like they're pulled straight out of Dragon Quest. The characters are obviously children, and a lot of the game is rather "cute" looking but the game is very beautiful looking. The cutscenes are great, and some of the voice acting is pretty good (albeit at times annoying).
Gameplay wise, Blue Dragon is like most of your traditional RPGs. There are no random battles, just enemies out on the field that you battle upon making contact with them. This means battling is largely optional. There are, of course, times when monsters are in your way and you'll be forced to fight, but for the most part, there are no random encounters and that's a blessing. In battle is rather simplistic. It's a lot like battling in the NES installments of Final Fantasy and the Dragon Quest series. It's entirely turn based. This means that there's some time for strategy, and the game encourages it. You know when your enemies are going to attack and you can plan accordingly. Blue Dragon adds a little something to its field system though. The Attack Circle. Outside of battle you can make a circle to engage multiple groups of enemies at once. This helps to clear out areas faster, but the real gem of this is to get two enemies that hate each other into battle and watch as they attack each other before they attack you. In the long run, this really isn't something you'll do a lot. Blue Dragon is by no means a hard game.
A slight problem with the battle system however is framerate issues. Turn based battles are usually slow as it is, but here you'll find they're even slower and it isn't because you have to spend time watching every action, it's because the framerate dips and the game lags.
The abilities system is quite unique at least. You select a job, learn the abilities in that class and once you learn abilities you can mix and match them all you want. You can change jobs whenever you want as well. It's a great and interesting system that allows for tons of customization. It also a great way to provide some strategy in the long run. This is because certain classes will have a direct effect on your stats. For example, a sword master gets a large boost to his attack and defense. Mages get a boost in magic abilities. The system is very similar to the job system found in Final Fantasy V
Blue Dragon isn't a bad sounding game, but Nobuo Uematsu has certainly done better. For the most part, what you get in terms of music is actually pretty good, though you won't find yourself humming most of it any time soon. As I said earlier, the voice acting isn't so bad, but there are some moments when it can be pretty annoying.
Blue Dragon is by no means a bad game. It's just a game that didn't reach as high as it could. It sticks to simplicity and basics. Basic storyline and basic characters. Certainly that's not always a bad thing, but in this day and age, no RPG can survive on gameplay alone. It needs a good story and good character development. Both of these things, Blue Dragon lacks.
Pros:
+Some nice visuals
+Simple gameplay elements
+Battles encourage strategy
+No Random Encounters
+Job system allows for a lot of customization
+Great cutscenes with some decent voice acting
Cons:
-The story is not interesting
-The characters are nothing special, either
-The game is far too easy for veterans of the genre
-Dips in frame rate in battle are annoying | video-games_xbox |
Nice Movements - Problems with AI. Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon 2 involves you and a small squad of soldiers going out and achieving objectives. The problem is that your squad is usually not very smart.
Let's start at the beginning. You're a fairly realistic modern day soldier. When you draw your rifle, you actually take it off your back. You can see the radio antennae, the pistol at your hip, and every other detail of your character. When you get down and crawl along the grond, it really looks like that. You can roll sideways, sneak, and more. This isn't an arcade leaping game. It's meant to have you feel like you really are a soldier in these situations.
The training is set up like a real combat training course, so that you learn your commands while staying in character. You try out a number of weapon types as well as learn how to climb over and under obstacles. Then you move on to your missions, which are the typical kill-the-enemy and save-the-good-guys style of tasks.
Unlike Splinter Cell and other solo-stalking games, in Ghost Recon 2 you are working with a small crew to achieve your objectives. This is fantastic if you're playing LIVE and have a team of skilled friends on your side, working in a well choreographed ballet of death. This works less well when you're playing single player and having to depend on the computer AI teammates to watch your back. Sure, they might watch your back - they could be hiding behind a box, refusing to actually fight or do anything helpful.
You could say that this is a problem with any squad based game, but I really did find a few situations in this particular game that stood out as being quite silly. Maybe another month or so in QA testing would have helped work out those bugs. Certainly the AI knew what it was supposed to be doing most of the time - so it shouldn't have been to hard to remove those remaining glitches.
The movement graphics as mentioned are really quite good. The fact that weapons don't "appear out of nowhere", that crawling and moving and rolling all looks quite smooth and realistic is impressive. That being said, the *detail* in the graphics is still lacking a bit. The ground often looks like it's a single tile repeated over and over again. The trees look very fake. I've seen other games of the same genre that have much better detail, so it's certainly possible. Again, this was a case where waiting another month or two in design to get those extra details added could have really made a difference.
I did enjoy the game - I just felt it wasn't as great as it could have been. It's as if they had a deadline to meet, so whatever state the game was in when that deadline came around, that's what went out. I hope that for the next version they will be willing to take those extra weeks to get it to that higher quality level. | video-games_xbox |
More of the old, little of the new. With all honesty I can't say I was disappointed as I knew it would fall pretty flat. Not to say that Black Ops II is a bad game, because it isn't its very decent. The single player experience was pretty stale, it was pretty much the same thing I saw in Black Ops 1 and Modern Warfare 3. The main story was pretty short, and despite all the hooplah about important choices effecting the outcome they really didn't. Other than a few dialogue changes. One thing that seemed better though was that it felt like they finally put a cap on the infinite re-spawning enemies. While the story and voice acting are definitely good there are still some very tongue in cheek kind of moments. (Spoilers!) Like charging a double barreled tank on horseback??? really? Another bit that left much to be desired were the side missions with the main story. While I could see that the developers really tried to mesh in a real time strategy feel to it in the end you'll find yourself running and gunning as you would usually do.
The multiplayer was pretty much the same experience I've seen in past Call of Duty titles. With the most frustrating return being bad maps. All maps feel claustrophobic which really effects the overall game play. Instead of using teamwork and strategy to win the day, your reduced to camping or running around constantly only to hope that you come across someone while their backs are turned. The weapons load-out though has some nice new touches. Such as the ability to use more perks or add more attachments to your weapons. With that the leveling is pretty much the same as it was in Black Ops I. As you level higher you unlock more camo, weapons, care packages and so on. One thing that I really liked though was the ability to customize your own in-game gamertag. I've seen some very creative stuff while online. In the end is seems they did everything good, except the maps for multiplayer.
In the end it reach the hype around it and left me unsatisfied. The Zombies bit of the game offered the most fun for me, but wasn't enough to make me like it more. Perhaps next time we'll see something better. | video-games_xbox |
i decided i'd like to write a review for this new release. so i got my pre-ordered hardened edition in the mail on release day (thanks amazon!), and needless to say i was very excited. the hardened edition is massive! i mean it comes in a massive case. i popped it open and say the goodies inside.
the journal is definitely some awesome geeky COD memorabilia.(in the journal there's pictures, notes, sketches, a match book(not real), one of the labels from a captian price cigar....truly nerdy...i dig it) one thing that was a let down was that COD elite had crashed on release day (must have learned from BFBC2 and BF3..no offense to them it just sucks all three had some issues). but its up and running today. COD elite is ok. i don't if its worth the money, but we'll see. the avatar costume is really cool.(nothing like good ol'jugs ruinin' your day..) the steel case is alright. i'm not really too big of a fan of the hardened editions. i pretty much got the MW2 for the free (kinda) COD classic, Black Ops for the Zombies maps, and MW3 for all of the dlc prepaid. usually i just sell the hardened after a while and buy a regular copy. overall nice packaging and good quality. but now for some details folks!
Graphics - 9.5 - still very beautiful. there could have been little things done to make it better, but this looks slightly better graphically than MW2...which was a gorgeous game in its time.
Sound - 7.5 - the sound is nothing special. i guess if you had a turtle beach head set you could appreciate it more, but its lack luster.
Playability - 9.5 - i seriously think the controls are tighter than they in any other COD. the game plays the same (as usual), but feels right on the money.
Campaign - 9.0 - i really enjoyed the story. classic. deep. (for the most part) layered. intense. it feels like the perfect ending to a trilogy. the campaign is still short though. i wanted to run through it and watch the story,so i played on recruit. took me a little over five hours. i'm no COD wizard, but it was short. i could see playing on veteran taking more like seven and half to eight hours. there is a few stages that i could see being very trouble some. we'll see when i get there. i liked it....i appreciated it.
Multiplayer - 9.0 - really no innovation. but a lot of features. spec ops returns, and the new survival mode is fun.(use survival to learn the maps for multiplayer.) if you really enjoyed spec ops, you'll love it even more. if you enjoy difficultly increasing hordes modes survivals will be a blast. i started by playing survival alone, and i really enjoyed it. now for the competitive multiplayer....it really is a lot like MW2 minus a a lot of annoying stuff. there is a ton of maps. there is still some verticality, but there is a lot more tight corners and interesting areas. but i still really like it. there's quite a variety of maps(16), and they fit well with the story and style. the guns feel nice and the weapon progression system is rewarding. the kill streaks aren't too crazy as you would possibly assume from the three strike packages. things balance pretty well and counter each other...and it doesn't make thins boring. the new game modes (kill confirmed and team defender) are really fun. the private match options are pretty crazy. lots of details to choose from. like i said, not a whole lot of innovation but, overall solid and beautiful. if you love COD's mulitplayer you should enjoy this one.
closing statement -
i really don't know why i bought this. i personnel enjoy battlefield games more. but i do love COD(fish?). i crave it. i feel like i need the trade off from time to time. if you want realness; battlefield is the way to go.(also vehicles, massive maps, destructibility, and more team oriented) if you want intense arcade gun battles; COD is by far the best choice. (relentless, fast, solid time and time again, gun on gun infantry warfare) to be honest...i would rather be playing the metal gear hd collection.(metal gear is my all time favorite series) but i don't have money for it. so until then, i will be fishing(COD) and hoping to save money for the myriad of other great games that are coming out or already out. (BATMAN!!! WHY!!!)
(UPDATE)
i haven't played this game in forever. it gets incredibly boring after playing it a lot. if you have friends to play with it keeps some of the excitement alive. i've been having a lot more fun playing mass effect 3 multiplayer. all of the elite drops so far are nothing that exciting. personally, for me it definitely wasn't worth getting the hardened edition. i don't play it enough to justify it. if you love this series get the hardened edition....it you don't and buy it anyway, go for a used copy. there are millions of used copies everywhere. i like cod, but there so many more new and innovative things out now, i can't see it keeping my attention for too long....though i do hope black ops 2 is good. i enjoyed the first one. thanks again for reading and have a good day. | video-games_xbox |
Pads. I bought this because it was cheap and I was mostly looking for pads to protect my Rock Band drums (since they are hard to come by lately). I figured if it sucked, it wasn't a big waste of money. Unlike the other user's video showed, these do not affect my accuracy at all. I have them on and every hit registers just fine (I don't hit too hard when I play, though I don't hit lightly, either).
I refer to them as pads instead of silencers...because I don't really think the silencers are quiet. I'd say it's still almost as loud as before, just with a different sound (albeit a slightly less irritating sound, but same or near-same volume). Though a little disappointed, I was okay with this because I was more interested in protecting my Rock Band drums.
The pads (or rather, the rubber rings) are very difficult to get on. This comes with 4 pads and 4 rubber rings that go around each drum pad. The pads slip underneath the rubber rings once the rubber rings have been put on. I had to get another person to help me tuck on the rubber rings (though once on correctly, the rubber rings have only started slipping off a couple times, and for the most part stay on just fine). Then I slipped each pad underneath the outer rubber rings, and tried it out.
The pads for the toms have reliably stayed in place, despite doing a lot of drumming on them. The Red pad for the snare, though, WOULD NOT stay in and I could not for the life of me get it to stay under the rubber ring for even 1 song. Someone else recommended glue tape kinda stuff, which may very well work, but I didn't bother. After a few days of wanting this to protect my snare in particular, I used clear masking tape, but taping it underneath the pad won't work. After beating the pad even a little bit, in less than 1 song, it will just come loose and fall out again.
So I decided to give up on aesthetics (I think these pads, along with the rubber rings, look nice once on). I went nuts with masking tape all around the red snare drum itself with the rubber ring and pad intact, taping every inch of the pad and rubber ring down, so that none of it was exposed anymore. I taped around the drum pad itself, looping around a few times before breaking it off and looping the tape around in the other direction a few times. It doesn't look good now (in fact, my girlfriend laughed quite a bit at me), but it worked! The pad has not slipped off since, and even with the tape over the pads over the original drum pad, it still does not affect my accuracy at all. This may require retaping every so often, but I've had it on for several weeks and play about 11 songs a day on hard or expert, and I haven't retaped it once.
So, that's the info on the pads. I'm sure there is a better product out there, but for protection purposes, these are really cheap and do that job (with just a bit of work on your end getting them on and keeping them on). I'm overall happy I made the purchase, despite the intial frustration of getting the rubber rings on and of having to tape down the red pad.
The drum sticks are good, and yes, slightly heavier than the ones that come with Rock Band. I never got used to the heavier ones that came with this, and I continue to use the original sticks, but they are nice and some may like them very slightly heavier like this.
I honestly have not needed to use the kick pedal yet, since I already had two original ones, but other reviews cover that in more detail. | video-games_xbox |
A good game but not Goldeneye. It should have been so simple for this game to get a five star review but instead of giving the target consumer what we wanted the developer decided to tell us what we wanted. As far as singleplayer goes they could have done whatever they wanted with the story line, I don't care what bond is in the game (Craig, Brosnan...they could have Connery for all I care) What is important to me is the guns and multiplayer maps/options. I don't want six different versions of the same submachine gun (standard, laser sight, thermal sight, fancy triangle sight?) I want to dual wield RCP 90s and put so many bullets in the air the game lags. I don't want a crappy 2 or three shot underslung granade laucher. I want the six shot grenade gun from the original. I don't want to pick my characters weapon kit (from very limited options), I want to set the gun loadout on the start screen and have weapons scattered all over the map. I would and still do play the original but it you are going to make an update you could have done so many great things besides making the game visuals on par with the current standard.
You could expand the original maps, like the facility, to include the whole map from the single player game. I used to do this way back in the day with my gameshark until it broke and my friends and I had some epic battles in the normally closed off back half of the map.
You could add in bots for multiplayer like perfect dark did. Sure no computer is going to be as challenging as playing against your buddies but if you throw a few computer drones on everybodies team it makes for some wonderful chaos.
Instead they decided to take out the over the top guns and the original levels...at least they kept the characters...but then they really didn't have a choice with that. In the end this game seems more like a knock off call of duty with bond characters than a remake of the classic Goldeneye...I bought it with high hopes but was dissapointed...maybe they will fix it with downloadable content *hint *hint. | video-games_xbox |
Fun and Mature. I bought this game through Amazon Warehouse Deals. The discs were in great condition and looked as if they had not been used. Ill most definitely buy through Warehouse Deals again if I can.
Now, about the game my son loves it of course. I honestly have him to turn the volume down because there is a LOT of swearing I mean A LOT! Other than that, the game is fun and there are some areas of the game that you wouldnt want a child to visit like the strip club. Most of the bad language happens in cut scenes and you can skip over that or turn the volume down and just play music from a difference device and sexual activity can be avoided by not participating.
To get up and going with this, youll need some hard drive space. This initial install will require an Xbox 360 Hard Drive or an external 16GB USB flash drive with at least 8 GB of free space. If using a USB flash drive it must be at least USB 2.0 with a minimum 15mb/s read speed and formatted for Xbox 360 use. A new USB flash drive is recommended to ensure optimum performance.
Honestly, this game is basically an R rated movie in game form. There is sex and nudity, violence, profanity, drugs, alcohol, smoking, frightening and intense scenes.
The player is free to, but is not required by the game, to participate in sexual activities in the game, including visiting the one in game strip club. In the strip club, the player is free (but not required) to view strippers perform erotic dance moves and throw money at them. Here the women are clothed (top and bottom) in lingerie. The player may also pay the stripper money to perform a "private dance" in a back room, during which the woman is completely topless, fully exposing her breasts. She is still clothed in lingerie on her bottom half.
There is a lot of violence and fighting in this game. Much of the violence is played for comedy, although it's also very bloody. People are killed in a variety of ways with bloody results. Players can shoot enemies and to death with blood splatter. Some mission contains torture, and it is quiet intense to watch. An innocent, poor man is helpless being tortured, beaten and mistreated quite harshly and mercilessly. He begs for mercy and is even tortured to the point where he not only bleeds but he literally cries. He can be drowned, electrocuted, his teeth ripped out due to dental torture or you can break his kneecaps or his jewels. Some blood can be seen here. Players are free to run people over with vehicles on the streets of Los Santos with blood emerging from the victim's body spraying, staining and splattering the environment. Moans and screams of death are heard. Players may arbitrarily kill any other person in the game. There are no children present, but any adult may be killed at will.
It's a GTA game, so you expect the same amount of profanity as the other games in the series. There is lots of swearing, literally tons of profanity used in every forms, dozens of times in all cut scenes. Nearly every profane term one could think up is featured in GTA V. About 90 percent of the language is in the cut-scenes and can be skipped at will of the player.
There are a few missions involving drug trades and deals. Scenes in the story mode include hallucinating various absurdities like killer clowns and aliens, getting drunk in bars (bar fights due to intoxication also present), being drugged with a hallucinogenic agent by others, constant alcohol drinking and smoking of cigarettes by most characters, participating in drug deals and large scale drug trafficking, and characters snorting cocaine. The player is also free during free-roaming to drink alcohol to the point of drunkenness and get high on various drugs. These produce hazy effects on the screen and impair player movement. You are not once obligated or forced to do drugs in this game. | video-games_xbox |
I really felt I was 'Living The Dream. Before purchasing I read a lot of the reviews and wasn't sure if I should get this title. I've had it for 2 weeks and I'm glad I got it. Let me say upfront that I only play NBA 2K games for MyCareer and MYGM....I DO NOT play online, so this review has nothing to do with online play/experience.
2K12 was my first NBA game and I loved it! I loved the idea of making my own player and trying to develop him into a HOF level player. My next 2K was 14 and the added aspects of the GM interactions and social media made it fun. I skipped 15 because I wanted to wait to upgrade from a 360 to an Xbox One.
Now, I know a lot of players were turned off by 'Living The Dream' but I thought it added to the game. I will admit that the cut scenes were long but you can skip them and view them later (or on YouTube) and while the only choice you make is your college, I liked the background MyPlayer had. I've also heard some rants about how your player "should be black" and things like that but my response is this.....IT'S A GAME! Do male gamers boycott Tomb Raider games because they have to play as a girl? You can design yourplayer anyway you like, though having a lilly white player looks funny in the cutscenes....but again......IT IS A GAME! I love sports games and RPGs...and this latest 2K game combined them both. I hope they expand upon it in future editions.....giving you more chices that can affect the story. I did think it sucked that you can't earn VC until you're a pro, but again this is something they can tweak in future editions. Like I said, if you hate the 'Living The Dream' story, it ends after your Rookie season...though I wished they could have kept going with story elements...how your off day choices affect your relationships with your twin sister/manager as well as your girlfriend and parents.......but again something that can be developed for 2k17.....
The gameplay is amazing.....so smooth! One drawback to earlier 2K games was the fact that when you dashed on defense to cover someone, you usualy overshot them...."sliding" or gliding out of positon...not the case in 2K16. I loved the different passing options, but man oh man do I have to work on my defense.....even after building up my atributes, i still get schooled.
Overall a superior game....... | video-games_xbox |
An underrated gem that puts core gameplay first. The now-defunct Pandemic Studios had a knack for getting to the core of what made a game experience fun. There might be some missing polish to get a game out in time, and the graphics on the largely multi-platform games might not have wowed anyone, but they knew what made games fun, the very reason people like to play games. Army Men RTS was the best game of a franchise run into the ground and the best console real-time strategy title for years, until Ensemble Studios whipped up Halo Wars (and also, coincidentally, was then shuttered). They also went on to create the successful (and now dormant) Star Wars Battlefront games, as well as Mercenaries, a gleefully destructive open-world action game that The Saboteur takes its cues from.
The Saboteur is set in Germany-occupied Paris at theheight of World War II, where the City of Lights is ground down under the boot of Nazi oppression. The game starts out quite literally in shades of gray, with leaden skies above and dark shadows in every alley. Rain falls, thunder rumbles, and Nazis are everywhere, marked by the stark, garish red of their armbands. There are yellow splashes of light and occasional blooms of blue, but for the most part, the game starts out in classic cinema shades of gray, with an emphasis on darker hues. This is where the player meets Sean Devlin, a stereotypical Irish mechanic who loves women, whiskey, and racing, and the player is treated to some playable backstory while also running a few missions with the French Resistance. The gist of the game is simple, without the bells and whistles that open-world gaming has grown accustomed to adding to the experience. Sean is tasked to blow prized Nazi items up. He can choose to be sneaky and try to pull off his tasks with stealth, he can go in guns blazing, or he can figure it out as he goes. Sniper towers, propaganda-spewing loudspeakers, tanks, and Gestapo generals are all fair game, and it's up to Sean to lighten the load of the local French by removing Nazis like a tick - with flame.
If Sean is seen partaking in his illegal actions, or if he is too close the scene of his bloody work with enemy eyes on him, the Nazis will sound the alarm, and it is up to the player to guide Sean to safety, either by evading pursuit beyond the range of interest or by slipping into a safe location, such as a shack on a roof, a Resistance brothel, or one of a few other locations. In some ways, The Saboteur is like Assassin's Creed, though it lacks the elegance and artistry of movement that Ubi Soft's juggernaut makes its hallmark. Cliimbing takes more work, and Sean is no Altair or Ezio, but he also packs a machine gun and lots of explosives, so the action has its own brand of explosive fun.
There's more to the game, of course. There's a story, a pulpy and melodramatic tale of regret, vengeance, and subterfuge, and the characters, while all screaming stereotypes, are fun to go through the story with. There's Luc, the impassioned, big-picture leader, who understands that the struggle is bigger than any one man, and that sacrifice is the cost of doing business. There's Skylar, the British Intelligence agent who is well-acquainted with Sean. And there's Veronique, a firecracker little sister to Sean's best friend, naturally with more spine than most of the men who doubt her dedication and competence.
As the player continues through the plot, wiping out the more egregious indicators of the Nazi occupation, color begins to return to Paris. While the stylized color scheme seems daring and bold at first, it soon begins to feel like it was no doubt intended to: dark and foreboding, a place without hope or life. As color is returned to the world, the sky returns to blue and the grass to green, and the charm of a varied pallette makes itself known once again. This simple concept adds a sly layer of Pavlovian response to the gameplay. A gray place is not safe; it has more Nazis wandering the streets and rooftops, with decreased chances of evasion once spotted. A place with color is safer, with citizens more likely to enjoy Sean's antics on their behalf and a less pronounced enemy presence.
The story is largely Sean's, though, and he will carve a bloody path through Paris and its outlying areas in a shrunken-down and simplified version of the heart of the nation. Le Havre and Bourgogne are just a short drive down the road, and even Saarbrucken, Germany, isn't too far away. The plot will take Sean to most of these places, and the player can chose to explore and return to these places later to partake in the game's "freeplay" events, a variety of tasks that can be viewed on the in-game map and tackled. Most are just killing important officers or making things go boom, but some are jumps that must be made in a vehicle or are famous monument postcards, while others still are similar to the "eagle" points in Assassin's Creed, though the panning camera is just for the player's benefit, as the maps are viewable from the start. Others still are Resistance drops with black market supplies such as alcohol and cigarettes.
All of these tasks earn Sean "contraband," which he can then use to purchase weaponry and bonuses, such as improved car armor or better resistance support, which can be called upon when Sean gets in over his head. Like most games, there is more money within the game than the player will ever need, and eventually everything that can be purchased has been, but there's a sense of satisfaction in clearing areas of their freeplay points that speaks to the heart of the experience. It's not enough to beat the game, as the narrative is just one story. As characters in the game often acknowledge, it's not about one personal mission or one bad Nazi; it's about all of them, the victims and the oppressors both, and how to free a country from those that would destroy it and its culture completely.
The graphics in The Saboteur are solid if unspectacular. Sean Devlin himself is well-rendered, an everyman type that eschews the "extreme' design elements that often plague gaming heroes. The draw distance isn't as appealing as it could be when taking in one of the game's many scenic points, and the first-person car view exposes some of the game's limitations, but the graphics hold up well enough.
The audio is strong across the board. The period-heavy radio stations set the tone nicely, with "Feeling Good" (with versions by both Nina Simone and Issac Sprintis) featured prominently throughout, from the trailers before release to the game's closing. The song's slinky piano playing and bold brass are a perfect match for The Saboteur's mix of intrigue and frenzied action. The gunfire and explosions are loud and sharp, and the voice acting is delightfully hammy. One of Pandemic's previous games, the otherwise enjoyable Star Wars Battlefront II, had major sound level issues, but none of that crops up here.
The game also has a "Perks" system, whereby the player can accomplish certain tasks to unlock more advance weaponry or other benefits, such as the ability to successfully park a tank for later use at will. Many of these challenges seem daunting at first, but with a bit of perseverence, even the most difficult of them can be overcome, and it adds a nice set of secondary sense of progress to the story missions themselves while also making the game easier as it goes. This
The vehicles that Sean drives around in range from clunkers that seem to top out at 25 MPH to nitrous-capable roadsters capable of much higher speeds. There are even some less-practical options, such as tractors and hulking fuel trucks, but completists will want to hop into every single ride and park it in the garage, to be accessed later at will.
The Saboteur does have nudity in it, in the form of a new copy bonus (or DLC that can be purchased) called "The Midnight Show", which also allows the hero to hid in brothels during manhunts, but this is such a minor thing that it's hardly worth mentioning. It can also be toggled off at will, though it would be curious to consider why a gamer would have no problem with spurts of blood and acts of terrorism (regardless of reason, these are acts of terrorism), yet would blanch at the sight of digital nipple.
At its heart, The Saboteur hearkens back to Grand Theft Auto III, that PlayStation 2 classic that didn't bother much with elements outside the core gameplay. You could go where you wanted and do what you wanted, but it all came back to driving and shooting, two elements of gaming that have been around for decades. And while The Saboteur could probably stand a bit more polish, with a camera that sometimes goes on the fritz in tight spaces and some less than delicate controls when high above the ground, the gameplay is rock-solid, the progression surprisingly addictive, the action tense and enjoyable. Even after the player beats the game, they will likely have many more freeplay targets to hit, more cars to find, a few more Gestapo that wouldn't be missed. It's a testament to the quality of the game that even after beating it, I suspect that many players will still fire it back up and do a little more, as I have done. After all, the struggle isn't just about one man's vendetta. It's about the plight of a country in the face of evil, and until that evil has been purged, our hero's work is not done. | video-games_xbox |
I'm not a regular gamer, but this is what I think. I admit that The Sims is the only video game, on PC or a console, that I have ever played with any regularity. I suppose this review is mostly intended for people of a similar mindset, since I have no idea how to criticize the ease of controls compared to other games, or whether the load and save times are relatively fast or slow. I found the Xbox version of the Sims to be extremely entertaining, with some new additions that were fun and inventive.
First of all, the two-player option. This was just a stroke of genius. I'm sure making the PC version multiplayer would have been impractical due to the difficulty of two people being able to sit within easy reach of the same keyboard. But the Xbox is the perfect place to launch this idea, and it works well. The fact that your Sims can compete against each other keeps the game exciting and creates many new situations.
Also, the fact that you can choose to have goals, in Get A Life mode, is a new addition. This, to me, was the best addition of all. I recall during particular stretches of a Sim's life on the PC game, I would be bored with what was going on: sending my Sim to work every day to try and earn money for a needed item or get a promotion. With the goals, which get progressively more complex through the levels, the Xbox version eliminates those periods of the game. There is always something to try for or work on, and the goals are spread out so that you are generally just about to achieve one of them.
The one star I deducted for the fact that so many of the items from the expansion packs are not here. It seems like these games have enough memory that more options of things to buy could have fit into the game. Maybe not. I look forward to perhaps a later version of this game that will feature all of these missing objects, and maybe another neighborhood like the Downtown in Hot Date. Now that would be a perfect game. | video-games_xbox |
A Snipers Dream. If you have played the past entry ( Sniper elite V2 ) then you will know what to expect here. It's generally the same , different place , time and scenery. Now that does not say much and does not give much reason to pick up this new version so maybe I can give you a few reasons why you should pick this game up.
1 : Co-Op - this game was built around the Co-Op experience , you can play this as a single player game but when you add Co-Op into the mix this game becomes greatness. The spotter creeps around marking enemies for the shooter while the shooter takes the ones out that have been marked from a far away hidden position . Or you both Creep around taking the enemy out when you encounter them while being as stealthy as possible.. I my self like to go loud sometimes and play through the missions with everyone trying to kill me.. It's all up to you how you play but playing with someone else adds a whole new dimension of fun to this game.
2 : Story - While the story is pretty good it's not the best but is very serviceable and will keep you with the feeling of play just a little more to see what happens , but still the main draw of this game is more in the impressive gameplay rather than just a story. some games want to tell you a story and sacrifice gameplay and sometimes the story is great enough to forgive the gameplay. Other times the story is sacrificed over gameplay , well with Sniper Elite 3 you can tell that they kept story and gameplay in mind but made sure the gameplay was top notch and first priority.
3 : Graphics - This was a given , there is most definitely a noticeable difference between last gen till now on the Xbox One. The graphics are not mind blowing but are still very good and certainly much better than V2 looked on the 360. You should not be disappointed with what you see.
4 : Bullet time - I know this was a feature in the past game but it's worth mentioning if someone has never played this game. If you get a precision kill, time will seem to slow and the camera will focus in on the bullet you just fired and you will follow it from your gun to the point of impact as well as showing the bullet slide through a head, heart, leg , etc , etc while breaking bones and bursting arteries as it passes through. If that sounds gross to you just close your eyes for a second and let it play out , it's really not as bad as it sounds though and I feel rewarded when I achieve those shots.
Bottom line - If you love to snipe , creep , run and gun ( although this is a lot harder to do ) or just simply love shooters, this game is for you. You get story and excellent gameplay along with a superb Co-Op experience , what's not to love ? I highly recommend this game, it is most definitely a buy, and with all the DLC and add on content available in the Ultimate edition the price point of 39.99 is a steal ..
Solid 5 out of 5 | video-games_xbox |
Total Beginner's Review. In looking through the reviews here, I have to agree that there seems to be some fake reviews and padding. How many grandparents/parents could possibly be reviewing this and how can they give a review for something they haven't played?! So, here's a real review. I am a total beginner and I've played the game almost every day (except when my fingers hurt) for about four weeks.
But first a tip: turn off voice commands (under options). For those people that are finding this game glitchy...me, too -- until I realized the game was picking up random sounds and interpreting them as commands and switching screens on me.
The Good
For the cost of a couple of guitar lessons you get a pretty cool game that resembles Guitar Hero. There's a boat load of songs and tons of instructional lessons on technique. For the price, that's worth it right there.
Starting out, it's really fun. The strings each have a different color and you can successfully play along and feel pretty good about learning and about your ability to be a potentially good guitar player.
The Riff Repeater is awesome. You can take a part of the song and adjust the speed and difficulty and it will loop over and over to help you really get good. Love this feature.
The Bad
Progression - I would say that there are no songs on here that you can master as a beginner. I suppose that's OK but kinda discouraging. In the beginning, you start out having a song where you have to play a single string every ten seconds - which is a bit too easy for even the worst beginner. And then out of nowhere, a chord will appear. But that's usually OK - you can figure it out. But then, it goes from too easy to too hard in a heart beat.
Buggy Programming - Even if I factor in that I am pretty bad, there is still 10% of the time that the program doesn't pick up that I played the right string. It seems to get worse the more complicated the chord. I even stop the song and make sure I have the string or chord right, start it again so I know I have it right and yet still. What's bad is not having it scored properly means the song won't progress in difficulty for you.
The song list.
I guess this is why I doubt the reviews from "grandma who bought this for the kids and they love it". Who knew grandmas were such big metal fans. The lack of musical variety is pretty pathetic and ultimately will limit my interest in the game. I can't really find that many songs I'm interested in learning to mastery. And I wouldn't even mind the metal and hard rock if the songs were all iconic hits and granted there is Walk this Way. Poison's Pour some sugar on me, BlitzKrieg Bop, Kink's You Really Got Me and The Trooper. But I can't understand why there are so many songs I've never heard of and seem to have no appeal. They could have added really cool songs that are fun to play. How about including a Chuck Berry song as a tip of the hat to the past -- some Hendricks -- Lynyrd Skynyrd-- or some funk or blues? And where is AC/DC, Van Halen or Led Zeplin??!!! And while I'm at it -- female rockers get no respect on here. No Heart (Barracuda would have been AMAZING to learn), Joan Jett, Pat Benatar, Evanescence...no anything. Jeez -- three songs by female groups I've never heard of -- and lame songs at that.
The Announcer - I'd like to meet the person at Rocksmith who wrote the responses to give after you finish the song -- I'd curse him out. Example. Last night I cranked the difficulty up to 100% on a song just to try it. I was going to do the best I could even if I only hit 1 out of every 5 or 6 notes. At the end of the song the game says in a really snotty voice, "Poor performance!". Nice. If that were a human guitar teacher, he'd be fired. The game also says "Bad performance" or "Needs more work" in a nasty tone. Who talks to people trying to learn like that? I guess some jerk at Rocksmith, that's who.
Conclusion
I'm not sorry I bought the game. I like it OK. I would recommend it but only with the caveats I just gave. I'll use the riff repeater and learn the few songs I like. I looked on the DLC songs coming out and even those don't expand the variety. I wish this game was so much better because the concept is a good one. | video-games_xbox |
VERY Poor Design - Look for 3rd Party Alternatives. I have had the Xbox One play and charge kit just over a month now. As other reviewers have stated this is a VERY POOR DESIGN. 1) the cable is too short, much shorter than the Xbox 360 version so I can't even connect it to my Xbox One, I have to connect it to a laptop that is closer to me...this wasn't an issue with the Xbox 360 version 2) the cable itself is made of very low quality materials that stay rather kinked versus laying flat and straight...again not an issue with the Xbox 360 version 3) the connector that connects the cable to the controller is horrible, it is very small and makes a very loose connection with the controller and it has already begun to short out, I have to wiggle the connector get it to charge the controller at all...very frustrating.
I am really shocked at the overall low quality of the Xbox One components. The controller itself is very poorly designed and it creaks and squeaks...it just feels cheap, the headset is total junk...connectors on it went bad very quickly and the mic quit working so I have already had to replace it with a new (in just over a month) and now these issues with the play and charge kit. Microsoft should be ashamed and embarrassed by the very low, low, low quality of these "next generation" peripherals...I am embarrassed for them. The only way they can fix things at this point is to redesign everything with higher quality in mind (and different engineers) and then send everyone who already bought an Xbox One a new set of controllers, headsets and play and charge kits. The "engineers" at Microsoft that designed these next generation components all be summarily fired as should the Microsoft marketing teams that put out all the propaganda and false information about how much time and effort went into the design of the controllers, etc....I mean really who did they think they were really going to dupe with this stuff???
At this juncture I am going to either a) return everything or b) seek 3rd party peripherals going forward.
What a let down... | video-games_xbox |
FUN! (But not for parties. This game is amazing. The graphics are unbelievable. The coreography is "real". Meaning, once you learn it, feel free to take it to the club.
There are a lot of helpful tools in the new game. You can choose to play on easy, medium, or hard modes. These modes limit the variety of moves and difficulty of the moves depending on your selection. During the song selection, it not only lets you listen to a preview of the song, it also shows you a preview of the dance and the difficulty rating. Once you're dancing, if you're out of sycn on a move, your avatar's limb will be outline in red to signal what you're doing wrong. It's so much easier to correct that way! There is also a "break it down" mode, where you can learn the dance step-by-step before performing it.
Of course, there are a lot of things that are just fun. Like, choosing the character you want to represent you and the venue. The voice command is also a nice touch. As well as the avatar's personalities.
To me, this isn't as good as a party game as Just Dance. Because the graphics, characters, and moves are so life-like,they can be a bit intimidating to those who don't really dance. "Medium" and "Hard" modes are both challenging for a beginner...especially a beginner at a party who just wants to jump in and have fun. The game is too "serious" to really just jump up and go with the flow without feeling foolish and completely uncoordinated. And in a party environment, who wants to take time to practice with the "break it down" mode? The "easy" mode isn't the best solution for this problem because the moves become repetitive pretty quickly and causes a 3 minute song to last forever.
The party aspect aside, this is a great game. I'll pull out Just Dance to make sure everyone in a mixed crowd will have fun and not feel intimidated by advatar's dancing better than them. But, when I'm alone or with people who like to "really" dance, this game is my go-to! There is time to practice, perfect the moves and really jam along to the music. Plus, when you master these moves, there is a real sense of accomplishment. The makers did an awesome job with making it both a step-by-step "how-to" dance instructional for the song of your choice and a great gaming experience graphically. | video-games_xbox |
SoulCalibur done right and it is going down in price. Of all the 3D fighters Soul Calibur is pretty high up there. It has only occasionally been outclassed by certain iterations of Tekken by a small margin. Soul Calibur 4 is a "brave attempt" at doing some things better and changing up the formula. I suppose how well it succeeds and how abysmally it fails depends on the tastes of each gamer. Personally shameless "Star Wars marketing" aside I have not been happier with the franchise since Soul calibur 2.
With Soul Calibur 4 you definitely get bang for your buck. There are many characters to unlock and now certain participants are not quite as "cheap" and "broken" this time around. For example I hated Tira in SC 3 but she is oddly endearing in SC 4 both because of her new voice and more balanced less unfair tweaked attack moves. Whereas she is still quick with her lethal metal ring of doom at least she cannot dish out damage on a ludicrous scale.
It would take me a long time to go into each character individually. Rest assured the veterans from the other games return accept perhaps the oddities such as Charade and Necrid. There is a new boss (Isn't there always?) and overall though he is not amazing from a design perspective at least he is not completely unfair and grudgingly unlikable.
Questions you may have
"Does character creation make a return?" Yes it does. As before you can unlock accessories, garments, and gear which will effect the stats of your custom hero. You can even purchase new moves! From what I've seen the "make a character" feature is just as good here as it was in SC 3. You can even re-dress the main heroes, villains, and heroines!
"Is there a quest for souls mode?" No, but there is the tower of souls in which you beat conditions and meet requirements to unlock more stuff. It is a more simplistic mode like the one in SC 2 which I like. Those that liked the complexities in SC3's somewhat strategic conquest mode may feel left out however. Once again it is a matter of taste.
"Are the controls easy to learn?" Yes which is Soul Calibur's biggest draw. Even beginners can jump right in! It should be noted things have been changed a bit. Characters now all have "finishers" though none of these are gory. As before Soul Calibur 4 gets the bad reputation of a button masher but in frank honesty is takes skill and finesse to truly be good at mastering each character. In any fighting game someone can get lucky by exploiting ring outs and button tapping but I find skilled players can more often than not defeat inexperienced players.
"Are there still cheap characters?" In any fighter there are characters that are harder to use or the power houses who seem to have the 1-up. While SC 4 is more balanced than SC 3 Yoda and Raphael's sister Amy are complete Hellions. You also have Rock (returning from Soul Edge, the very first game) who is very slow thus it is hard to be good with him. Let's just say even Asteroth is quicker. But before you lament keep it in perspective every fighter devised under the sun and moon has this problem. Even it Street fighter well rounded characters such as Akuma, Chun Li, and M Bison have an advantage over less conventional more difficult to figure out characters such as Zagnief, Dhalism, and E Honda.
"Is there a story?" Sad to say the branching endings in SC 3 that would unfold in different ways depending on whether or not you would hit the right buttons in time have been cut out. Every character has only 1 signature ending and the quality of each plot progression ranges between mildly decent to plain mediocre. If you have played SC 2 and SC 3 everything makes coherent sense but the game is very unforgiving to newcomers who know nothing about the series including the intricate odd relationship of Knightmare and Siegfried. Still when all is said in done at least a story exists. I've played fighters that completely gutted any semblance of a plot and the end results were usually crappy. (Such as the USA version of Samurai Shodown 5, the first release of Guilty Gear accent core, or Mortal Kombat Armageddon)
"Are the new characters worth while?" Undoubtedly yes! Hildegard is my favorite newcomer because she is a female knight fully decked out in armor who uses a dagger for short range and a halberd for long range. A bundle of neat mythological and anime influenced characters was also done by the artist that worked on the anime series Gantz. Believe it or not their stories were actually well thought out and they did not feel "odd" amongst the regular veterans. Sultry Shura is a guilty pleasure and I also thought the oni ogre girl wearing beads was simply adorable!
"Why do fighting games degrade teh wimmens??" For those of a feminist bent it's true there are bouncy boob physics and scantily clad female protagonists in SC 4. But whereas you can cut up their clothes or armor to reveal more you can do the same to the guy characters. Tell me that a shirtless Raphael or shirtless Mitsurugi do not objectify men as fantasies of desire? Let us also not forget the most kinky hip thrusting cod piece wearing scantily clad super freak is none other than Voldo himself! (a "male" character)
Pros
+ Many characters to purchase and unlock.
+Controls are easy to learn.
+ While not deep at least a story line does exist
+Create a character mode returns
+Each character now has a signature finish move
+Graphics are truly amazing
+Voice acting and music are not great but definitely good enough.
Cons
- A few cheap characters exist despite SC 4's attempt to be better balanced.
-Newcomers entering the arena for the first time are going to be confused unless they wiki the back story.
-The Star Wars gimmick feels like a shallow marketing ploy. Admittedly however playing as Yoda or Darth Vader is rewarding in a guilty sort of way. If you have the 360 version like me you will have to buy vader with X-box points because he is the PS-3 exclusive character. You can however unlock Vader's apprentice.
-Females that detest scantily clad bouncy protagonist girls are likely going to crucify SC 4 without taking into account the men in SC 4 are not portrayed realistically either. All I can say is that it is a game. Have fun with the fantasies provided and do not take it seriously! Besides Hildegard is very respectful as a heroine. It's personal choice to focus on the positive or negative aspects in anything. Always opt for being an optimist! | video-games_xbox |
Setting the bar for First-Person Shooters. I admit, I never had any desire to even buy an X-Box. I was convinced that it didn't have any games that could match, let alone surpass, anything of the same genre on the PS2. Oh, how wrong I was.
First a word of oh-so-obvious warning, this game has been givin a well-earned "M for Mature" rating. In other words keep it away from the kiddies.
Now that that's outta the way here's the skinny. You start as the Master Chief, The last of the Spartan-II super soldiers. The ship you're on, The Pillar of Autumn, is under heavy attack from the enemy, An alien race know as the Covenant. Outgunned and seriously outnumbered, you must fight you way to an escape pod and that's just the first level. It doesn't get any easier from there.
The music goes really well with the levels and is by far one of the best scores ever written. The actors do a splendid job performing their roles. I could swear that SGT. Johnson is the same cigar chomping sarge from "Aliens" but maybe that's just me. The graphics are outstanding. The different enviorments add to the mystery of this strange alien device called Halo.
I must emplore everyone reading this review to remember when this game was released. Naturally this game's graphics can't compare to something like Final Fantasy X, but again check when they where released.
The weapons are very well done. If the enemy get too close you can use you gun for a melee attack and no two are alike. The human weapons have a very military feel to them. Each one built for it's speical use. The Cov. weapons are really fun. Whereas I am fond of the Needler gun, others may prefer the Plasma Rifle. Maybe that's because once you're out of ammo you can find more for the Needler, but you have to find a new gun with the Rifle.
Keep an eye out for ammo cashes and medpacs. There are a few in every level but sometimes you have to find them. Best of all some have different weapons you may need. Perhaps just as useful is the Chief's built-in flashlight. Very helpful in those foggy and lowlight areas. Yes, it does let them enemy (Cov or...) know your postion, so use it wisely.
All in all this Game is the single reason the X-Box is still even on the map, much less the market. Microsoft knows this. Why do you think Halo 2 is so short? Microsoft is gonna need something to get thier X-Box 360(I think That's what they're calling it after all that fuss) off to a good start. I hope this review is helpful. | video-games_xbox |
Welcome to Twin Peaks...er, I mean Bright Falls. Alan Wake sits in that overlap zone between survival horror and shooter/adventure, though a little more towards the shooter end. Gameplay is somewhat shooter-oriented, but requires steady nerves, quick thinking, and conservative resource management. While you will engage and defeat most enemies, you won't kill them all, and in fact taking them all on is suicidal. Escape and evasion are your primary weapons, though this is not a stealth game by any means (mooks spawn with an apparent awareness of your location at all times). If you screw up, take a wrong turn, get cut off from your escape route, etc., you generally cannot hunker down and fight your way out. Enemies are shrouded in a darkness that clings to them like a smoky shadow which you must burn away with a light source before they are vulnerable to your weapons. Primarily you rely on a flashlight for this, though you sometimes acquire flares, flashbangs, or other means. Instead of a reticle, your flashlight beam is your aiming device, which you can focus with the left trigger to more quickly evaporate the darkness, so shooting becomes a two-handed affair that makes firing on the run rather slow and difficult.
Oh, and you have no melee weapon to fall back on, so better watch your ammo and flashlight batteries carefully.
If you are used to FPS, the third-person controls take a little getting used to, but soon you'll understand the significance of that mechanic for maintaining the game's paranoia-inducing atmosphere. The biggest drawback to third-person is the inability to quickly whip around and check behind you, and it's obvious that this is a deliberate choice by the designers. In fact, everything about the game's mechanics that might be a bit frustrating in a traditional FPS--slow turnaround, scarce ammo, limited sprint distance, almost no run-and-gun ability--actually enhance the experience instead of stifling it. And instead of being immersion-breacking, making tactical use of the game's auto save system (which despawns mooks) fits with the story and is an integral part of the gameplay.
In terms of atmosphere, this game has loads of it, but never feels overwrought or repetitive. Beauty and terror are nicely balanced, and the setting (quite deliberately) feels like a playable version of Twin Peaks, with a bit of Twilight Zone thrown in. The narrative is smart and intriguing.
Try this game if you enjoyed: Deadspace, Deadspace 2, BioShock, Bioshock 2, Alien: Isolation, the Ravenholm level in Half-Life 2, most zombie horror survival games
Maybe skip this one if: your idea of enjoyable combat is more Halo or COD oriented; or you're looking for more stealth-based horror survival.
This game has more combat than Alien: Isolation and less than the Dead Space series | video-games_xbox |
Good times with quite a few major flaws. Ultimate Alliance 2 is almost exactly what its expected to be. A 3D brawler featuring a panoply of Marvel heroes from all stripes, playing through the major plot arc of the decade, that being the development of the Superhuman Registration Laws. Your characters level through a combination of fights and locating boxes containing the mystical XP orbs. Surprisingly, also included is a variety of dialogue options that would've been reminiscent of Mass Effect for their variety if not for the fact that you have maybe two dialogue choices per stage.
Graphics are surprisingly bad. While a majority of the problem can be corrected by ramping up the gamma, a large part of the difficulty of play is due to some of the enemies looking like some of your players, making it easy to lose track of your characters in the swirling melee. Aside from, its the usual adulation of crisp, beautiful backgrounds and convincing explosion and fire effects. The only real sad point is the fact that they couldn't come up with effective walls, meaning that you'll try flying over a open canal to look for goodies only to run smack into the wall of we were too lazy to add this part of the stage.
Audio also is surprisingly bad. While the character voices are really very good, and most of the dialogue is above average, you can only tell this when you can actually hear what the characters are saying. Muffled voices and overlapping background and music makes it difficult to hear half of whats being said without ramping the volume up high enough to make geysers of blood fountain from your head, and subtitles are only for crucial cutscene speeches, and aren't present in the pickup audio files, which are more entertaining.
Gameplay is rather hit and miss. While the brawler mantra is followed well, and you wade through enemies like a farmer scything through wheat, some of the cooler effects, namely the fusion attacks, can be awful, as the tutorial to help massage through the various abilities glosses over this section, and trial and error makes you feel like an idiot.
Despite butchering some of the core fundamentals, this game is fun. Dialogue entertaining, storyline solid, characters endearing, side quests and finding missions challenging without being annoying. Better camera controls, maybe a reduction in scope so you didn't feel like you were watching ants, and some better delivery of dialogue, and this would've been four stars going on 5. And they can't easily use the excuse that its too hard, as Batman managed it with style to spare. | video-games_xbox |
Long live Viva Pinata. Alright! Rare actually has given us a sequel to a much loved game and it doesn't disappoint. Lets start off with the basic information for anyone who didn't play the first.
Viva Pinata: TIP is a sandbox style game meaning that you have a small area of a world to manipulate but no more than that. You get a square of earth on pinata island for the purpose of attracting wild pinatas, filling them with candy, and sending them through a cannon to parties where kids will beat the hell out of them, eat their delicious insides, and send the battered critter back to you so you can do it again. Rest assured it is G-rated fun. Each pinata has requirements to appear, wander into your garden, and live in your garden. For example, If you plant a hazelnut tree squazzils will be interested in you all of a sudden. The ultimate goal is to get all the species, following me here?
Now the sequel improves upon the first game by giving us a bunch of new species, new plants, and new garden items, but it doesn't stop there. You can travel to the desert or the arctic to trap special area specific pinatas through a trap system that is mildly frustrating I will admit. You pay for and put down a trap, put bait on the trap that the species you want likes, and now you wait and pray that some other more common species doesn't set the trap off thereby wasting your cash. Probably the least well thought out aspect of the game.
Other new features are aggressive weeds! That's right, you don't watch your garden carefully enough and poisonous weeds will take over! This actually lends a bit of action and tenseness to a situation that was only mildly dangerous before. To compensate, Just For Fun mode allows kids to play through the whole game without weeds, or other dangers. Perfect for the little ones.
The menu system has been tinkered with, and pinata central requests are now accessible from the village instead of as random pop up requests. To complete a request this time around you HAVE to have a pinata at maximum "candiosity" Read as happiness. This can be a hindrance but only on your cash as joy candy is quicker than other methods. Pester and the ruffians work in the same manner, same with sours, so if you've played the first you know what you're getting into.
X-box has given us a plethora of options for X-box Live if you pay for the service, and now Pinata vision! Own a X-box camera? Well snap a photo of special cards and pop! new content for your game.
Now the verdict. Separating modes for kids and for adults was an expert move and both work well. The new species are creative and fun. Trapping is annoying but you'll get it eventually. The menu is better and easier to use than the first games and other new content makes this well worth the cash for it. If you haven't played the first though, I would still recommend you start with it. Remember to watch those weeds! An A+ game for the whole family. | video-games_xbox |
Absolutely Amazing. I'd heard about the hype surrounding KOTOR for years. Yet, I never made the time to play it. Finally, when I upgraded my computer, I thought it was finally time to give the game a try. As a Star Wars fan, I couldn't have been happier. Here are a few key points:
STORY
The game has a very rich story, far better than most of the Star Wars Expanded Universe. Your character is a Force-sensitive Republic soldier who leads an odd assortment of characters to locate an ancient superweapon controlled by the Sith. However, along the way you face dozens of side quests and have to make decisions in how you respond to challenges. You get to influence the story through your choices and can eventually head down the light or dark path. Thus, decisions have consequences - and it's not just the very final decision in the game, but innumerable small decisions when conversing with characters. I played through once, but it's clear that I could play the game again in its entirety and it would be a very different experience.
CHARACTERS
The characters are undoubtedly the best part of the game. KOTOR manages to incorporate a fairly substantial leading characters and dozens of important supporting characters. Many of these have become fan favorites, including Bastila Shan, Canderos Ordo, Darth Malak, and of course Darth Revan. This is because each character has a unique personality and, more importantly, the grow and mature during the course of the game. You end up really caring about them by the time you're done.
GRAPHICS
This game was released in 2003, yet the graphics hold up surprisingly well. Certainly better than most of what I'm used to on the Wii. I'd love for BioWare to rerelease KOTOR with improved graphics, but there's really not much to complain about here. Of course, this might depend on how powerful your computer is and whether you're willing to risk smooth performance for better graphics (fortunately, my computer's really powerful, so I got both!).
GAMEPLAY
I was a bit worried that the RPG-style gameplay would detract from the combat experience. However, it's seamless. Your characters don't pause during turns, but rather keep fighting. If you order your characters to attack and then sit back, it becomes an almost cinematic experience. However, be sure to invest some time learning how the combat system works and about your equipment. After a few hours into the game, you'll find that you have far more items than you'll ever be able to master.
DRAWBACKS
I kid you not, my only complaint is the ending. After such a dramatic quest, it was a bit of a letdown. I was expecting a 10 minute cinematic denouement chronicling the fates of each character. Oh well...
STABILITY
I've read a lot of complaints about stability issues. Fortunately, I didn't experience much of this at all. I played through the entire game (around 50 hours) and it only crashed twice. However, I just got a new MacBook Pro, with the highest performance specifications, so my experience probably isn't typical. You will definitely need a powerful computer, but the game is good enough that you'll be able to put up with the occasional stability problem. Just be sure to save frequently.
After having played and beaten KOTOR, I'm simply left hungering for more. I'm going to try to get KOTOR II, but there's not much else out there. It's sad that Star Wars video games have only declined since KOTOR. <a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Star-Wars-The-Force-Unleashed/dp/B000R0URCE/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Star Wars: The Force Unleashed</a> was a big disappointment. Hopefully, the new Old Republic game will bring back the glory days! | video-games_xbox |
Madden 2013. I wasn't that all excited by the demo. However, having played the full game, I find myself really enjoying it. Now, that's not to say that the game is perfec.
Bad:
1. as much as i do like the new physics engine, it does make for some odd behavior from the players. For example, i was playing as the jaguars and justin blackmon caught a pass streaking down the sideline, with the defender almost right on top of him. When blackmon keeps on running towards the end zone, his left arm was behind him resting on the should of the defender.
1a. also, when the players are tackled, they stand up, only to fall again as they are getting back up as they trip on the guy they just tackled.
2. i could be wrong, but i think they took out the october breat cancer awareness in october where the players would wear pink sneakers or the pink ribbon on the field, or pink gloves. ]
3. even though they are loads better than cris collingsworth, the play by play can get a little repetitive at times.
3. it's not a huge deal, but i wish it could give you a score tracker for other games going on the same time you are playing, like with this years ncaa football.
3a. I also wish that they would also make stats for the computers' teams be equivalent to the time of quarters that you play with. For example, i play six minute quarters, but the computers' stats are for 15 minute quarters.
4. If i challenge a call, please wait until AFTER the reg makes the call aobut the rep
lay. It's annoying to hear the crowd boo right after the ref says the call on......(the field has been overturned) It's messed up in that they already know if they are going to overturn or confirm before the ref even states that the outcome of the challenge.
5. The starting screen is extremely cluttered and it was difficult to find which one you had to go to to play a game.
6. when you line up to kick the ball, other than a punt, you have to press RT. Now, this isn't bad on PAT, but if i am going to kick a 50 yard field goal, i'd like to see how i am aiming the arrow. at least make it an option which way you want it.
7. on a similar note, I wish i could turn off the play art. (again, this might be possible, i simply haven't found it yet.)
Good:
1. the uniforms and the graphics are even better than last years, and they have added more shots to the game, for example, even if you are playing in a dome, after the game, it sill give you a blimp view, and you can see that it is raining, along with cars in a parking lot, and other small stuff like that.
2. I might be a minority here, but i like the ability to use the kinect, but out of habit, i still mainly use the controller buttons (if you say that this cheapens the game, 2k sports nba is incorporating kinect verbal commands too)
there are more good things that what I posted, and i'm not going to say, "this sucks" and not give any reasons. I wish that they would make it to where you hit an official on the field, he slows you down, instead of you going through the official.
I also wish that they would bring back the the chain gang coming out to measure if you got a first down or not. I sort of miss being able to bean a guy on the other team for an unsportsmanlike penalty. | video-games_xbox |
A so-so fishing experience - the good, the bad and the ugly. Warning... before you play this game you need A LOT of patience. In the beginning, as you are learning the ropes, the fish will more likely ignore your lures rather than bite at the line. In a half hour of fishing, you may catch 2-3 fish, if you're lucky. The graphics above water are pretty good for being a 5 year old game. Below the surface, they are fair. The fish try to jump when hooked which causes my TV screen to go into hyper-active mode and spazz out... I can't even watch the screen. Many fish come right to the boat... way too easily. Some fight, and when that happens, the game can be semi-enjoyable. Oh... before I digress any further... there is NO TROLLING MODE! You're supposed to maneuver down these twisting narrow sections of lakes using a 225 hsp outboard, but no chance to move along quietly with a trolling motor! Crazy... The numerous glitches at times can get tiresome. They include: virtually NO tension when reeling in a fish on the 1st round of a tournament... which leads to most fish throwing the hook; the character picking up the fish in a very strange manner - with his/her arm sticking through the body of the fish on some occasions (hard to explain until you see what I mean); and finally you have to basically stop reeling in the lure and make it come to almost a complete standstill in order to get the fish to bite... not very realistic! The number of fishing games for the XBOX is definitely limited, so I'm glad to have this one to try once in a while. However, it is not nearly as good as Bass Pro's The Strike. It is slightly better than the latest Activision fishing game. You may want to rent this before you buy, unless you're an avid virtual fishing fan looking for something else to try. It'll take a few hours to get the hang of it... but there are always some surprises with the constant glitches and all. Not bad... but definitely NOT great. Good luck! | video-games_xbox |
Gears of War Ultimate is the Ultimate Gears game that shaped 3rd person genre. What is there to say? If you loved the Original Gears of War and moved on to X1, its a must have game to own, its really the Ultimate edition, it has the extra DLC the PC version had, polished up the bugs and using new graphical engine, models, textures etc
So not only its the loved classic but has more SP content (Single Player content is the only that matters unlike cheap MP maps that any 3 year old can make), less bugs and its looking the best, yep even better then the original PC version (and I actually played it to know).
BUT ill be 100% honest with you, IF you played the original and IF you are a normal adult person and not MP OCD kid ie you Enjoy Single Player games, game stories, game worlds etc and you don't buy your games to play MP matches for months to come with against pea brain millennial teens AND it happens that you also own a good gaming PC, then DONT buy this game wait for the SUPERIOR PC version (PCMR) that will come early 2016.
If you one of the poor souls that Never played gears one because your too young or too dumb to enjoy one of the greatest last gen games in History that actually and realistically shaped the 3rd person shooter genre, CLICK BUY IT NOW, NOW!
You won't be sorry, i guarantee you'll like the game! AND if it happens that you also own a PC, then buy the Xbox one game now, play the game and then buy the PC version when its on sale on Steam and play it gain.
I recommend gaming in 4K, that will change your perspective on gaming and make you hate consoles, it did for me, so now my X1 and PS4 are EXCLUSIVE machines only, meaning that its for games that have no PC version or won't have one in the next year (Like Rise of the Tomb Raider for example, it was worth the wait to get a MUCH superior, SUPREME version this January 2016)
P.S. I actually own the X1 Digital version, got it on sale here on amazon for 20$, Why you ask? Well the answer is simple: Anyone who got any edition of Gears of War Ultimate BEFORE 2016 and PLAYED it at least once, got EVERY OTHER gears of war game for FREE!!!
Yep, Microsoft sends you a 4 vouchers for all 4 Xbox 360 Gears Games (including Gears 1), and yes these are the Backwards Xbox One compatible editions, not the old X360 versions, just for the games no MP DLC. | video-games_xbox |
Great Build up, Disappointing End to a 5 year series (Spoilers at bottom. This game has many improvements and disappointments. The action part of the game is great and if you're not vested in the overall story of the Mass Effect series, then the gameplay is fun and the multiplayer is a pleasant surprise.
The story and gameplay was amazing through the majority of the game up until the ending. The controls are more streamlined and loading times improved.
With that said, for fans of Mass Effect series, this game is fails at conveying the fundamental idea of past Bioware RPGs (Baldur's Gate, Dragon Age, Jade Empire, Neverwinter Nights): you do not feel like you have control over your character's destiny. The game boosts that your choices, throughout the whole game/series, will make a difference in the game's story and makes you feel like the main character is your own character. However, it fails at that, towards the end of the game, and does not offer closure about the other characters in the story. There are spoilers in the end if you want to know more about the ending. This robs the game of replay value for the story, other than to try out other classes.
This feels like it's the end of Bioware being an amazing RPG developer and the beginning of just another general linear action game developer. I would recommend old fans that has not gotten the game already to watch youtube videos of the gameplay and read wikis to get closure for the game. I would recommend this game to fans of action adventure games that don't care much about the story.
The release day DLC, "From Ashes," also feels like a way for EA/Bioware to squeeze more cash from loyal fans. I cannot imagine the game without the DLC content and character, it adds so much backstory to the universe and integrates seamlessly with the main game. The DLC character is very useful and I use him in all missions. There is also evidence to suggest that the DLC character was included in the core game from the start and you can enable him by modifying a file. This shows that Bioware had the idea to include this character and story from the start and that the DLC was just an excuse to get extra money from loyal fans. In my opinion, it should have been part of the core of the game for at least people who brought any editions of the game.
I would have given this game 5 stars for the multiplayer addition, great voice acting, gameplay, and the fun ride till the end. However, since this game has no singleplayer replayability, a DLC that should be have been given out to all players that brought any new edition of the game, and a lackluster ending, I have remove a couple of stars. The game's hype and Bioware's reputation was destroyed with such a weak ending design.
************** POSSIBLE SPOILERS **************
The Ending:
The last few minutes of the game robs you of the illusion that your choices through the game mattered. The different endings only depend on your choice in the last few minutes of the game. Even then, the ending is the same video sequence with some different filters applied. It feels like Bioware rushed this game to meet the deadline and did not flush out the ending of the game. Or, that Bioware wants to fix the ending by selling fans new DLC. Either way, Bioware's reputation for building quality RPGs is tarnished. | video-games_xbox |
Polk done goofed. On March 7th, 2014, I wrote this review regarding the Polk 4 Shots:
"After going headset-less for the past four months with my Xbox One, the day has finally arrived. Polk and Turtle Beach have released their Xbox One-specific headsets to the marketplace. After not being a fan of past Turtle Beach headsets, I put my money on Polk's 4 Shot line of headphones. Opting for the jet black to match my Day One 2013 console, I impatiently waited for this day to come.
Today was the day. My headset arrived via UPS. I quickly unboxed the headphones, plugged them into my controller, and started the updating process. Once all was said and done, I placed the headset right over my head. It fit like a glove. Not too heavy, but definitely comfortable for long gaming sessions. I jumped right into a round of Call of Duty: Ghosts and the audio quality was exceptional. I was mowing down people left and right, I had killstreaks galore, and cats and dogs were living together in perfect harmony. Despite being a stereo headset, it almost emulated the effect of surround sound. I started to question myself, how did I live this long without a headset for my console?
Then there's the microphone . . .
My friends who just received their 4Shot headphones from Amazon as well started to jump online and and we started a party chat. Turns out, the microphone on the headset is awful. It sounded like we were all getting smothered to death with a pillow. In some instances, there was a lot of static between gaps of our conversation. For those who were not using the 4 Shot, they sounded clear as day. Let it be if they were using their Kinect, their console-included headset, or one of the new Turtle Beach models that also released today. If a Kinect can hear me perfectly from about six feet away, why can't a microphone that's six inches away from my mouth do the same?
For a headset that retails at $159, I am pretty disappointed. Polk has already issued a statement, but I don't feel that's good enough. Where was the quality assurance testing to make sure nothing like this happened on launch? Especially if there's reports that Polk's Melee headset for the 360 had the same issues? If there's not a confirmed fix as soon as possible, I will be returning my headset to Amazon. For such a glaring defect to be apparent one day one is unacceptable. Especially for someone like myself who communicates quite regularly on Xbox Live and on the eve of Titanfall's release no less.
Polk, please make this right as soon as possible. If not, this was my first Polk purchase, my first Polk return, and my last Polk purchase."
UPDATE (April 25th, 2014): Shortly after the entire internet rallied against Polk, Polk issued a temporary solution by providing customers by sending all customers a free Polk Boom Mic Pro to utilize with the 4 Shot (and Melee) headsets. Mine never arrived despite registering the headset prior to writing my Amazon review and after fighting with Polk for two weeks, I finally received the boom mic adapter. In fact, I ended receiving two. While it's a fix for an issue that has not been resolved, the fix comes with its own problems as well. Want to blast the volume from the game your playing? Too bad, because you can't as the mic is too close to the headset that it will create an echo when you're playing with friends. In a week, it'll be two months since the launch of the Polk 4 Shots and there is still not an actual fix for the headset themselves. Shame on you Polk.
I am in the process to switching to <a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/V-MODA-Crossfade-M-100-Over-Ear-Noise-Isolating-Metal-Headphone-Shadow/dp/B00A39PPCG/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">V-MODA Crossfade M-100 Over-Ear Noise-Isolating Metal Headphone (Shadow)</a> with the <a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/V-MODA-BoomPro-Gaming-VoIP-Headset-Headphone-with-Mic-Black/dp/B00BJ17WKK/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">V-MODA BoomPro Gaming, VoIP Headset Headphone with Mic, Black</a>. While the headset and gaming mic adapter are more than double the price of the Polk 4 Shots, I actually get a discount that brings the whole set to $120 (cheaper than what I paid for the 4 Shots from Amazon).
This was my first Polk purchase and will be my last. Anyone want to go in on a class action lawsuit? | video-games_xbox |
Great tank game 5 STARS. Terrible Batman game 2 STAR. This game is very different from all the other arkham games so im giving it two different reviews one a tank game one as the finale game in the arkhum trilogy.
AS A TANK GAME ARKHAM KNIGHT GETS 5 STARS OUT OF 5
The batmobile is a combination between a tank and a high performance race car you toggle between these to modes easily and smoothly as you are involved in dozens of high speed chases and interact battles with tanks and air born drones. There are dozen of puzzles through the game as riddler challenges which give a great contrast to all the tank battles and its very rare for you to exit the batmobile so the tank fun continues FOREVER. I have played many video games that have tanks and I've played many are all about tanks and this is defiantly the best tank game ever.
AS THE FINALE BATMAN GAME IN THE SERIOUS ARKHAM KNIGHT GETS 2 STARS OUT OF 5.
This game has essential half the content as previous arkham games; by that I mean half the characters, half the story, half the originality, and half the fun. The most notable problem is the batmobile which is sad because I've been complaining about there not being a batmobile in all the games but it pretty much killed this game(unless you love tank games and hate stealth games). Everywhere there was a unique and awesome bossbattle is now a tank battle, most riddler challenges need the batmobile, and the first half of the story it feels like batman cant swat a fly without the batmobile.
STORY: The actual plot of the story is weak scarecrow even with the atkham knights help is a secondary villain and it feels weak the whole game without the added distractions of oracle and Joker. Even though joker is dead he is the best part of the game by far and ill try not to spoil things about that. But he is the only reason this is 2 stars not 1.
Game play: The brawler fights are very compared to other batman games the enemies are to simple and boring which is sad because that was the simplest part of the other games and it feels like they dumbed it down big time. The stealth starts of the same as it does in all games but it never gets harder or more fun like it did in the other games and there is half as much of it in the game. The city travel is the same but almost ever mission requires the batmobile so its kind of pointless now which makes street fights a thing of the past.
Characters: There are none... The only characters that matter to the story are scarecrow, ivy, batman, and the Arkham knight which is half as many as what's just in the last scene of arkham city. Catwomen is riddlers damsel in distress which is ludicrous and stupid. Gordon is only in the first couple levels, fire fly is weak against the batmobile, and Harley who had the most face time in the trailer is only in the story for five minuets.
Side missions: They are still fun and there are a lot of them but they have no depth. They amount to drive here, punch this guy, and follow this guy. Unless you get the Harley dlc all the side missions are bland and boring hich is sad because that was the best part of all the Arkham Asylum Games. | video-games_xbox |
The. Ultimate. I was a die-hard Gran Turismo fan since day one. I have owned EVERY Gran Turismo game ever. But I'll probably be skipping Gran Turismo 5...
...because it'll never measure up to Forza.
Racing is a relatively stagnant style of gaming. Pick a car, pick a track, race. Hope to place first. Rinse, wash and repeat. Only the die-hard automotive / racing enthusiast is going to enjoy a racing game. But Forza 3 gives the enthusiast SO much more to enjoy - it's simply unbelievable. At any given time, you could:
Run a race
Buy a car - from over 300 available models
Paint a car, and/or cover it with 4,000 layers of graphics
Share your car designs on your own storefront for people to browse, rate, and buy.
Create images using graphic layers for your storefront - like license plates, manufacturer logos, etc.
Browse the auction house for some good deals, or to sell one of your own.
Search the storefront for photos, replays, graphic designs for specific cars, or separate images to place on any car
Tune your favorite car for optimum performance - adjusting everything from gear ratios to tire pressures
Take photos of your cars and designs at any of Forza 3's 35+ tracks
This is just a taste of the variety that Forza 3 gives you. More times than I can remember, I set out to create a simple paint job, and 2 hours later have created a masterpiece that I just HAVE to photograph and share online. Or a simple test-and-tune of my favorite car has turned into an extensive experiment with Forza's newest ability to add all-wheel-drive to various cars in the lineup. Also new with this version is the "conversion" which, including the aforementioned all-wheel-drive, allows you to swap engines (though only within the same manufacturers lineup) or choose between turbocharged or supercharged add-ons. In short, if you can dream it, chances are good Forza 3 will let you create it.
The online racing isn't as easy to access - it's a major beef with gamers. Personally, I'm an older gamer myself, so I started my own discussion on the [...] website and now have over 30 people to race with! Someone is usually always online, and joining into a race or inviting friends to yours is just as easy as always.
There's a few issues: some paint glitches with various cars, the AI controls your engine speed until a half-second before the race starts, and the "livery editor" can get a little confused when handling large numbers of graphic layers. But these issues hardly hurt the game. If anything - it shows how good this game is - that's all we can find to complain about!
If you enjoy racing - even just a little - you'd probably be pleased with Forza 3. It connects you to the sport, to your cars, and to each race. It is easily the best racing game to exist - at least until Forza 4! | video-games_xbox |
Grand Theft Auto 4 the most overrated game of all-time. First off, i absolutely love GTA!! GTA is one of my favorite video game series'. I even pre-ordered GTA4 and picked it up the day it came out. Alright, now that that is out of the way; we can get to the meat and potatoes.
The Pro's:
-GTA 4 is a long game: Takes approximately 25-30 hrs. to beat. So you get your money's worth.
-The new cover system in GTA 4 is amazing. One of the best cover systems created to date. The aiming is also done very well.
-The graphics are very good.
-solid frame-rate throughout gameplay
-good GTA formula overall
The Con's:
-The story is crappy. It is not very entertaining and certainly not funny. When the game ended i was like, "finally." The stories in the other Grand Theft Auto's are so much better and much more memorable!! This GTA has nothing memorable about it, and the story is rather drab. GTA San Andreas was funny, intriguing and had memorable characters.
-The missions themselves are very drab and repetitive. There was not one mission that i thought was unique and interesting. In GTA San San Andreas you had one mission where you torched a marijuana field with a flamethrower, which was hilarious!! In GTA 4 you get nothing like this.
-most of the customization is gone. No working out, no customizing cars, and no jetpacks.
-GTA IV is GTA III on steroids. This means that Rockstar took GTA III and created a cover system, added new missions, an aiming system and multiplayer and called it GTA IV.
-GTA IV is a Saints Row rip-off. I never thought i would say that, because Saints Row was a GTA rip-off. However, GTA IV took what Saints Row brought to the next-gen and copied it. In my opinion Saints Row was a better game except for the cover-system. I predict that Saints Row II will be much better than GTA IV.
-I frankly was happy when GTA IV was over, because i was sick of it.
Now before you call me a hater on GTA IV, please note: that i am a GTA fan-boy. I consider GTA San Andreas to be one of the best games ever made!! I wanted to love GTA IV so much and i did for a while until i realized that i was playing GTA III again. Is GTA IV a good game? Yes, it is. Is it a perfect 10 and the best game made in the past ten years? No way!!
To summarize:
GTA IV is a slight step-forward and a major step backwards!! Rockstar, in making GTA IV concentrated way to much on making it next-gen, when they should have focused more on making another classic GTA!! This GTA is a carbon copy of Saints Row!! Rockstar stole what Saints Row did and copied it!! | video-games_xbox |
Can I give it 6 out of 5 stars. First off, if you're reading these reviews, trying to decide whether to get this game, stop reading now and BUY IT!! You will NOT be disappointed.
FIRST IMPRESSION
This must be one of the first reviews because I must be one of the few who can tear myself away from playing long enough to write a review. I purchased GTA IV at midnight and only got to play a few hours before the thought of getting no sleep before work the next day caught up with me.
First impressions: does it live up to the hype? Yes! I was afraid GTA IV would be over hyped and would be a disappointment. It has the same feel as previous GTA's. I was also afraid they would change the controls too much in going to a new system, but the controls are very comfortable and feel familiar.
I haven't had a chance to play any of the multiplayer content, but any time during single player all you do is hit up on your d-pad to bring up your cell phone and select multiplayer. (I accidentally did this trying to change the radio)
Based on what I've seen so far I will be spending many hours playing through the single player campaign, playing online multiplayer with friends and beating up hookers when I'm frustrated with either one.
END FIRST IMPRESSION
Update: As impressed as I was with the beginning of the game, it only gets better and better. GTA IV is EVERYTHING you love about the previous GTA chapters, but EVERYTHING is bigger and better. The actions of NPCs are more realistic too. For example you can't pull into Pay n Spray right in front of a cop and get off Scott free. You have to make sure no cop sees you pull in. To start a vigilante mission you come to a complete stop in a police car and access the onboard laptop. From here you can pull up crimes in progress, the most wanted list and even call for backup. Unlike previous games, when you're hunting criminals as a vigilante the police are actually on your side instead of trying to stop you.
You can watch TV, access the internet at internet cafes. You can go bowling, play darts, watch an on stage performance. You can even pick up bricks from a construction yard and throw them through shop windows.
Story: This is a very deep drama. For the first time in a video game I heard the mention of a soul. You no longer come in contact with one dimensional caricatures. All of the main characters are complex individuals. If the GTA III series was a goofy cartoon, then GTA IV is a serious dramatic action movie.
Sound: The song list is awesome! You wake up in your crappy apartment to the sound of Smashing Pumpkins - "1979" or ELO - "Evil Woman" playing on the radio. The internet caf has the song from the first trailer playing. While playing Vice City I would change the station every time the Giggle Cream commercial came on. I haven't heard anything on the radio annoying enough to make me change it.
Graphics: The graphics are awesome! GTA IV won't dethrone Gears of War or Assassin's Creed as the best next gen graphics, but if Gears of War is a 10 then GTA IV is a 9. Of course keep in mind that GTA IV has a HUGE draw distance and NO load screens while in Gears of War you have to wait for relatively small maps to load.
Gameplay: This is what matters the most. Is the game fun to play? YES! You are set loose in a huge adult playground where you can do just about anything you can think of. You want to punch someone for looking at you funny as you walk by? Go for it! You want to steal any vehicle you see? Do it! You want to go on a date? Call up your girlfriend. You want to go shoot darts with Roman? Give him a buzz.
Controls: I played all of the previous GTA's on PS2 so I can't compare the current controls to Xbox controls. (From what I hear you had to have a third hand to do a driveby without the extra shoulder buttons) On foot the controls are about the same as San Andreas. You use LT (L1) to auto aim and RT (R1) to shoot. A cover system has been added, which makes shootouts a lot more dynamic. Blind firing around a corner is really cool.
Driving is a LOT different though. RT is gas, LT is brake, RB is E-brake and LB is shoot. You no longer use L2 and R2 to aim 90 degrees left and right to do a drive by. You can lean out the window and use the right thumb stick to move the camera and shoot cars in front of you and to the side. This is really hard to get used to, but I have a feeling once I figure it out, it will be VERY rewarding later on. (You can pick the classic control setup, but I can't comment on this as I haven't tried it yet) Also all of the cars have REALLY loose suspension and lots of momentum. This means pulling the E-brake to make a turn causes you to do a 180 and slide past your turn. You have to actually slow down to make turns.
The Bad: After singing its praises I have to mention at least one bad thing. I've only noticed VERY minor visual glitches. For example as I crouched next to a building my face went through the wall. Another bad thing about GTA IV is that it's too good. It will totally ruin every other "Urban Shooter" out there. It has set the standard for next gen video game quality. I predict that no other game will even be able to touch GTA IV for a VERY long time.
If you're still undecided about whether to get GTA IV after reading my review and several other glowing reviews, then check out what the pros say. Check out metacritic.com. As of posting this review it is THE highest rated game on there. | video-games_xbox |
Different. First off, I'm not mad about it breaking tradition, because I never played the original. I'm a Battlefield guy, with some COD thrown in because that's what all my friends play. I'm a grown-up, with the slow reflexes to match...so the high-speed paintball feel of COD multiplayer is really not my thing. I like Battlefield, because it's more about staying alive and taking objectives than COD, where it's run, kill, die, respawn, run, kill, die...
That being said, OF:RR is a nice change of pace. It's annoyingly realistic in places; for example, if you get shot, you'll have a hard time returning fire, because you stagger realistically. If you don't patch up, you'll bleed out. As another reviewer mentioned, there are no friendly red boxes over enemies. Waypoints can be hard to find. Sometimes you just have to hunker down and figure out what's going on. You can order your squad to do some cool things, like flank left/right, lay down suppressing fire, and go to an objective...but that doesn't always help when you have no idea where the objective is.
Game mechanics are a fresh change. As I mentioned, damage is much more...damaging. You always have to keep your eyes open and check your corners. Likewise, you don't have to put a full clip into an enemy to drop them (hint to COD:BO) which is nice.
The drop in/drop out co-op works well. I accidentally left my game 'open' while playing the campaign, and had some random people drop in. At first I was annoyed, but it ended up being fun. And the actual co-op multiplayer has some nice twists, like the 'last stand' game mode, where you keep fighting waves of AI until you decide to call for extraction. The twist is that if you hold out for a higher score and don't make it, you get no points for the match. You have to gamble between low-risk/low points, or going for high score and risking a big goose egg to show for all your hard work.
Honestly, I meant to cancel my pre-order for this game, but forgot. I felt pretty burned when I pre-ordered Homefront and found it to be a mediocre cross between COD and BF, and swore off of pre-ordering. But after burning most of a Tuesday night on this game, I'm glad I got it. It's something different from the two Big Daddies of military FPS games, and that's quite a feat these days.
PS: the voice acting is superb. Filthy and foul, but not gratuitously so. I heard some phrases I haven't heard since the better parts of my mis-spent youth.
UPDATE: after a week of playing this, a quick point:
As mentioned by another reviewer, the AI for your team-mates is weak...I think the 'solo' campaign is meant to be played co-op. It's brutal when you play offline, but much better when you open the lobby and bring in real people. The co-op missions are nothing short of brilliant, but don't overlook the campaign co-op mode. It plays much (MUCH) better with real people on your fireteam. | video-games_xbox |
another reason to own a 360. First off this game is a FPS. There has been many, to say the least, and most fail to tread new ground on a platform that has some of the most popular games of all time in its resume ( Halo, Doom, Call of Duty, Counter strike, ect...). The first person shooter and shooters in general, happen to be the most popular style of game for the next generation systems. With all this against you how can you breathe anything new into a format that has everything? Somehow 2K did it and did it in a way that has not been done by any game since Resident Evil. Like Resident Evil the most interesting and entertaining parts of the game are not shooting your weapons, it's the story. This is as close as your gonna get to an interactive movie type experience in a game. The story and characters are great and will make any sci-fi geek scream with glee. I don't wanna give away the plot because the less you know going into this game the more entertaining it is when you slowly unfold the plot.
This I will tell you, it's set in the late 50's and the assortment of weapons are unique and off the wall cool but the best weapons you get to use come from something a bit more...organic, they come from you! Lots of mystery and suspense with tons of little clues and voice over that never make the game dull. What a great shooter that for once doesn't involve the military or zombies, and quite possible the coolest bad guys ever, the Big Daddy's! The game is near flawless and the only downfall is a few glitches and times where the game freezes before you can save it. This did not detour me from starting again and again. Lot's of fun and just another great reason to own a 360, sorry PS3 gamers, you loose again. I recommend this game to anyone who has a job they can blow off or likes to stay up all night because once you get a taste you won't be putting the controller down for quite a while. | video-games_xbox |
I have to say that this is easily the most disappointed I have ever been in a . I have to say that this is easily the most disappointed I have ever been in a game. I still play Vegas 2 terrorist hunt regularly with friends, so I was extremely excited to find a new Rainbow Six in the works. This game is nothing like a Rainbow Six game. True, you run counter-terrorism "missions", but everything that made the other games great is lacking here. First off, there is NO SPLIT SCREEN PLAY!!! Split screen games are a dying breed anymore, and I hate how everything needs an internet connection to barely function. The other Rainbow Sixes were great in that aspect. I don't have a plethora of online friends that have the same console and game as me, and I liked being able to play in the same room as someone.
As many have already described, there is no campaign. Another peeve of mine is how developers create a multiplayer only game, basically half a game, and charge the same money for it. The terrorist hunts are the best part of the Rainbow games, since it's a third game mode with huge replayability. The game modes are chosen at random for you, as are the maps, and the only thing you can choose is the difficulty. Did I mention you need and internet connection?
Graphics are nothing special, which is disappointing in a next-gen game. The only thing I think I like about the game is the destroyable cover. Game load times are slow as well. This basically looks and plays like a multiplayer-only game. There is also no cover-on-a-corner like in the last games. Basically, if you love Rainbow Six games, this will resemble nothing you know, or nothing you love. If you like multiplayer games with limited playability, you may like this one. I, for one, am extremely disappointed for having waited seven years for this. I'm not even sure if I will keep it or send it back. Ubisoft really dropped the ball on this one. | video-games_xbox |
OMG! I thought thing was to help, but it didn't. I got to give it to Nyko for having a great advertising though. The wording and phrasing from the description seems to make this product required for all 360 fat models...but that's not really true. In fact, it's not at all true. This product will kill your 360 faster with it on than not having one at all.
If you're thinking about getting this thing, then don't. I got it when I got my second xbox and within 10 months, my xbox died. It couldn't even last a whole year. Wow! I had this thing plugged in every time I was playing and it seemed to work. But, actually, it wasn't really doing anything and making things worse for me in the long run.
If you really think about it, what it does is suck up air that the 360 fans already blew out. There is no point to doing this. Why do you need a device that sucks in the air that was already blew out from the 360 so that the air will blew out again? Also, the intercooler doesn't suck up more air than the 360's fans didn't already blow out. You would think that's what the intercooler did but it didn't. How could it? Those 2 big fans and 1 small fan could not over power the 2 way bigger fans from the 360 itself? So, they didn't.
All the intercooler did was hold in the hot air that was blow out in itself and then it will slowly blow out the hot air from itself. You would think it was doing it's job because when you feel the air coming out it was cool air. Well, if was cool air coming out because the device was holding back the hot air and when the air finally came out from the device it turned into cool air. That's not good. You want hot air to come out so that the 360 isn't keeping the hot air inside of it. When the device did this it caused more damage to the 360 than without it.
The only good thing that it really did was keep dust out because the thing would stay after the 360 was off and continue to suck out hot air....but still it wasn't enough because the 360 was still hot after that and would trap the hot air in because the Nyko product was blocking the air vents. Doing that also caused more damage to the 360 than without it.
Don't get this thing unless you want to have your 360 to die! | video-games_xbox |
Extremely customizeable and affordable. A great controller to mod and use better parts on! I got this for only $10 more than the F300, and considering it is basically a larger version of that, I am happy with my purchase. Any 30mm snap-in buttons should fit in fine, although I had to brute force my Seimitsu PS-14-G's in. I also lacked the 5 pin wiring harness to connect my joystick, but the wires from the stock joystick were easy enough to solder to the points on my LS-56-01's PCB. The stock joystick also apparently will fit with a Sanwa TP-MA, as well as its square or octagonal gate, and the buttons will work with SW-68 microswitches. I haven't actually tested this as I'm happy with the parts I completely replaced them with, but there is an option to do some more in depth modding if you want to.
This controller is so incredibly easy to take apart that you can actually unscrew the front panel, and the magnetized acrylic panel pops off, allowing you to insert custom art, or even machine a new panel with a different layout or whatever you want. I found that the mounting panel for my joystick wasn't quite the right size, using the SE P=40 for a better fit, so I would recommend taking a look at the holes before ordering.
There is one caveat in that you must use another controller in order to use this on Xbox 360, Xbox One, or PS4. A USB right angle female to female extension adapter can solve the issue of the plug poking you, or you can buy Mayflash's MagicBoots USB dongles that act as keys for each controller. My purpose in buying a universal controller was so I could use it on both 360 and PS4, and I am happy to say it works great on both. Pretty much any non XInput controller works on PS3, and anything connected through USB can be configured to PC.
Search on YouTube "Venom PS3/PS4 Arcade Stick (Mayflash V2) Full Overview and Innards" for an in-depth video on the insides of this controller, though it is going by a different name with some slight PCB changes.
I did have some trouble taking the actual joystick out, because the balltop wouldn't unscrew using a flathead, but if you remove the E-Ring holding it together it is very easy to disassemble. Spare E-Rings, also called E-Clips, can be bought at hardware stores like Lowe's for a little over a dollar, if you want to put it back together.
If you are on the fence about getting this as a glorified case with a pcb in it, remember to check the placement of your mounting panel's holes, get the $0.75 5 pin female-to-female wiring harness to save yourself some trouble, and make sure you have a couple screwdrivers and some pliers at the ready. Below is a photo of mine, although I haven't gone for an extravagant design or flashy art, I am very happy with it it's performance. | video-games_xbox |
Great, even with the batmobile. This game is excellent. After two great Arkham games from Rocksteady and one OK Origins game from WB, I wondered how they could make this game without it feeling stale. Well, with new enemy types, better in-game predator sections, and the batmobile, the game feels different (in a good way).
Graphically, this game is truly next gen. It is one of the few games out there that feels like it takes advantage of better hardware. The fact that there are no in-game loading screens is even more impressive (and there aren't awkward lulls either - like Mass Effect 1's "loading elevators"). In a fully realized Gotham, that feat is impressive.
The mechanics of the game are fluid and refined. This game shows that Rocksteady knows how to take a near perfect gameplay, and make it perfect. One of the new (and slightly controversial) additions to the gameplay is the batmobile. Depending on the review, people either love or hate it. If nothing else, it adds variety, but it does encompass 40+% of the story gameplay, so if you don't like it, it may feel like a lot. The batmobile is more of a tank, and there are both straight-up combat sections, as well as "stealth" sections. (I didn't know you could have a stealth tank section in a game, but they pull it off).
******SPOILERS IN THIS PARAGRAPH ONLY****** In order to write a fair and comprehensive review, I need to mention the story. The game's story is interesting, and a perfect conclusion to the Arkham series. After the Joker was killed in Arkham City, this game went an unexpected direction. Rocksteady, prior to release, promised a completely original story. While this story is "original" in a literal sense, it is closely borrowed from the Red Hood story. However, unlike the Red Hood story, Jason Todd isn't actually killed and then revived through a Lazarus Pit. Instead, he's brainwashed by the Joker and turned into the Arkham Knight. The way they do it gives both a nod to the Red Hood arc, as well as the overall story of the Arkham series - which is Batman's quest for his sanity. From Asylum to Knight, Batman is struggling with his role as a hero, the death of his parents, and his other demons. I actually like how this version of the Red Hood (aka the Arkham Knight) shows what happens when a hero gives in to his fears - and it shows how eerily close Batman himself is to going off the deep end and becoming something akin to the Arkham Knight (which makes the eventual ending all the more satisfying - which I won't spoil here). Also, this is the Scarecrow we've been waiting for. He has a few interesting "nightmare levels" in Asylum, but this game allows us to see the full extent of his intentions (think end of 'Batman Begins' on steroids). All throughout, the deaths of certain characters, the betrayal of others, and so on create a gripping and emotional story to accompany the great gameplay. Perhaps my only complaint is the fact that the TWO fights with the Arkham Knight are both in the tank (err... I mean batmobile). I was looking forward to some hand to hand combat with him - not happening. ******END OF PARAGRAPH WITH SPOILERS****
Overall, this is a great game. Go buy it. it is that simple. This is one of the best games I've ever played and one of the best games available on "next gen" systems. | video-games_xbox |
Fun and unique game but whose potential is never quite lived up to. THE SHORT: Fun to play, with a solid combat system and lots of good humor. Beautiful graphics and interesting gameplay. Brings a lot of new ideas to the genre, but barely develops them or makes them matter.
THE LONG: Spending years in development, this game was touted as going to be the "best RPG ever". It is quite, quite NOT. It's a very fun game, and there's not a lot like it, as it brings a lot of new ideas into the genre. But a great deal of what it brings are ideas that wind up pretty shallow, and which don't affect the gameplay very much.
Your quest is that of a young boy, whose village is burned to the ground and who joins the "Hero Guild" to build his skills for the inevitable day of revenge. The game was touted as giving you complete control of your destiny, with the choice of good and evil affecting everything you do. Well, you don't have much control over your destiny, and the choice of good and evil doesn't affect much of your eventual outcome. Like a lot of the features I read about pending release, these are interesting ideas that wound up being pretty shallow gameplay alterations and nothing that greatly changed the flow of the game.
It's not all bad though by any means. Fable is plain fun, and it's worth playing through a couple times to see what can be done. The graphics are very pretty, and the dialogue is some of the funniest stuff I've seen in a game lately. It's fun and unique, just not as deep as I expected.
For example, wandering in the game is extremely linear. The game is broken up into "areas" that take a couple minutes to wander around in, and then you walk through the gate into the next area (which takes a few seconds to load). There's no wandering off the beaten path into the woods except for the few instances where a hidden path is programmed. It's very linear, and allows for very little exploration.
The whole "destiny/choice" thing that was the basis of the gameplay isn't very deep either. There are the basics, such as whether or not you choose to break windows and punch townspeople. And then there are the specific choices of whether you stop a bully from hitting a kid, or join him and hit the kid yourself. This is basically how you structure your character to be good or evil in this game. It should also be noted that becoming fully evil takes maybe a half hour of doing very bad things, yet you can completely turn around and become holy in maybe twice that time. It just isn't that deep.
Destiny isn't much in your hands either. There's a specific plot that must be followed to finish the game, and the only variances along the way are whether you take the obvious evil or good path during individual quests (ward off bandits or join them, for example). It's fun, it's just that this stuff comes off as undeveloped and diversionary more than some great buffet of life-altering choices.
Lastly, the game is pretty short. You can play through and finish it in around 15-30 hours, and that's considering a lot of screwing around. In a game broken up into linear areas that you walk through one by one, there's not much room for messing around. Aside from the main quests there are "quest cards" that you can accept at the guild, and take those on for cash and renown. You can boast about these quests and offer to do them with more skill than required (such as doing them in your underwear) which is one of the parts of the game that's still shallow yet does affect gameplay a little bit. Outside of this though, the only other stuff you can do as far as adventuring is to break the riddle of about a dozen talking doors who each have a somewhat special item within. Other than that, you'll be doing the story stuff or those quest cards (which your guildmaster incessantly pesters you about, along with everything else).
But then here's where some of the positive stuff comes in: You can mold at least some of your character for amusing results. Your stat menu keeps track of a lot of stuff- how much you've had to drink, how many times you've had sex, what your sexual orientation is (you can shack up with men) and so on. It is interesting to have relationships and get into drinking contests and so forth. But like the rest of the game, this stuff hints at potential that was pretty undeveloped. There are only ever half a dozen different types of people to marry, they all say the same things, and marrying them doesn't really change much. It "feels" cool to do this stuff, but it doesn't really affect the game one way or another. In other words, like a lot in this game, you can skip it entirely and it wouldn't matter. Sure you'd be depriving yourself of some of the fun, but that's all it is, fun. It doesn't really add anything to your overall game besides a more "fleshed out" feeling.
Fighting is cool at least. The system is much more solid than Morrowind for example (however that game gets almost everything else right). The combat has the right "feel" to it, while your character is swinging his sword, throwing off lightning, or shooting with a bow. There's lots of combat, and it's satisfying. Choosing your spells can be awkward, but the action itself feels right. You can switch between your three attack styles anytime, and fighting with any of them earns points to level-up those skills in a multitude of ways. Use more magic to unlockmore spells, use your bow to become more quick and sneaky, etc. It's this kind of stuff that makes the gameplay more thorough and involved, and this is what I would have liked to see more of.
Lastly, the other positive stuff is interacting with people. As mentioned, everyone in this game is somewhat amusing with their cockney british accents and goofy dialogue. Throughout the game you win certain expressions and interactions, and can use them to mess around with townspeople. Become evil for example, and win the "Vulgar (pelvic) Thrust", which you can use to horribly disturb innocent children. Or you can earn the middle finger, which you can use to express disgust at a particular shopkeeper's prices. Being good earns you stuff more suited to wooing partners, such as manly poses and flirtations. But then along creeps another problem with the game- these interactions are amusing and provoke equally amusing reactions from people. But like everything else, it's pretty shallow. Nothing is actually accomplished by doing this, save for the romantic efforts. Give a finger, fart at your wife, it doesn't matter. They'll express their distaste and move on. Nothing changes. It's fun, but ultimately superfluous.
Basically, that's it. The game touted freedom and choice, but restricts you to a linear quest and gives you very basic choices which don't affect much around you. The designers talked about letting you mold your character, yet took out the female option and gave you stuff to do that affects your stat screen and not much else. The biggest issue is the fact that, pure and simple, so much effort was spent making the game funny and pretty and unique that the game wound up being not very deep as a result.
So why after all these complaints do I say it's such a fun and good game? because it actually is. While not really a "faulty" game, it's definitely a disappointing game. But that's only if you had any expectations. If not, then the game's solid engine and glitchless presentation is great when coupled with these little diversions that make it unique. As much of a letdown from the hype that it is, at the end of the day it IS enjoyable to screw around with the various options and character interactions. Once finished, you will remember Fable as a fun experience not similar to really any other RPG. But you'll still be left feeling that the game was loaded with superficial glamours and wasn't really long or deep. If you want a complex, free-roaming, epic triple-digit time questing and role-playing, then Morrowind is still the best bet for the Xbox (or any system, really). But if you want a lighter, funnier, and more glamorous (and MUCH shorter) role playing game, then Fable might be your thing. As another reviewer pointed out, he liked it because he had no expectations. Fun game, but not nearly as deep as you may have heard- so go into it not expecting anything revolutionary and you'll probably have a good time. | video-games_xbox |
Absurd story and characters ruin the game. I am very disappointed with Red Dead Redemption. I have a real love of westerns, and the chance to play this game was one of the biggest motivations for me to finally get an Xbox 360. Having played the game half way through, I finally gave up rather than face more disappointment and frustration.
Despite being billed as a successor to Red Dead Revolver, the gameplay is much closer to the earlier Xbox game <a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Gun/dp/B0009Z3I0A/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Gun</a>. For all of its failings, GUN told an interesting story of a mountain man turned gunslinger turned revolutionary, with a great back story and real motivations. Although Redemption is a much larger and more ambitious game, and successfully creates a world more alive than GUN, it completely fails to engage the player emotionally and is wrought with storytelling and characterization problems.
The character that you play, John Marsten, is cleverly drawn to look like an older version of Red from Red Dead Revolver, but the story makes it clear eventually that he is in fact a different character. Marsten is supposedly a deadly outlaw, who has robbed, killed, and kidnapped his way across the West. You would never know it, though, because he is sickeningly sweet and polite to absolutely everyone he meets. He also claims to desperately miss his wife and son, being held hostage by some shadowy government agency. Having played at least half the game, I have never seen what either of them look like, and don't even know their names. The dialog pushes so hard to connect you to Marsten's tragedy, but fails to make it feel real or to have you care about it at all.
Like many games, Redemption claims to have a morality system to help you craft the type of gunslinger you want to be. However, I could only find one case where there was a clear "evil" option for resolving a task. That involved roping and hog-tieing a woman to take her back to the abusive and cheating husband that she had run away from. This was not only in bad taste, but felt idiotic considering Marsten's sickening politeness.
I was able to live with all this and play on, and through the racist jokes, the indecipherable plots, and the packs of ninja-like cougars that assaulted my horse by the dozen. Finally, as the game took me into Mexico, I encountered a grizzled old gunfighter who told me that "I was lucky to have made it this far" as my gunplay was so clearly inferior. I checked my stats and found that so far in the game Marsten had killed 243 people, much less all the folks who Marsten must have killed in his supposed outlaw days. The gunfighter then taught me a new form of quickdraw that in theory would make me much deadlier. In fact that "improvement" made aiming harder, not easier. I quickly lost interest in the game, and attempts to get engaged with it again have failed.
I will say that Redemption is an absolutely beautiful game. Riding through the desert with the sun setting on the horizon, or in the mountains with the full moon above, looks absolutely breathtaking on the screen. The addition of deer, elk, and other wildlife running through the setting makes it even better. I always get a sense, though, the world in this screen would be even better if I were actually in it, rather than looking at it through the Xbox. Rarely did I play for more than 45 minutes before putting it down to go running, biking, hiking, anything to be out in nature without having to be in this absurd story. | video-games_xbox |
THIS IS EVERYHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT HALO, PLEASE READ. Here is all you need to know about Halo. For any of you who don't know what HALO is, it is a game for the X-Box. It is a game about how you crash land on a man made (or should I say alien made) planet. The whole game you are trying to defeat the aliens, get off the planet, and trying to find out why the planet was made. Halo is a Goldeneye like shooting game and will more than please hardcore Goldeneye players. It is one hell of a ride for gamers who thought games like DOOM or Quake were as good as they come. This game is one of the most addicting games ever, me and my friend played it for hours at a time and it never got boring.
SINGLE PLAYER
Single player on Halo is a hell of a lot of fun. Unlike most games where single player just isn't enough fun playing alone, Halo is a blast to play single player. There is about 10 levels which take anywhere from half an hour to three hours to complete! And putting the diffuculty on different settings is like a whole new game each time you set the diffuculty higher or lower. Trust me, when you beat Halo on LEGENDARY you feel like you are king of the world. This game really feels like it's intense battle after battle and its a game that NEVER gets boring, its all out action.
COOPERATION PLAY
Now, for most of those that don't know what Cooperation Play is, it means you and a friend can both play the actual game together. Now, how awesome is that!? Personally, I think this is the best part of the game. My best friend visited me from California for Christmas break and we played Halo with Cooperation Play, it was the most fun I ever had. What I normally do is bust into a room like Scarface Tony Montana and start quoting lines from "Scarface" and I blow some Aliens from one side of the room to the other. Trust me, Cooperation Play is the best idea they could have had. Before you read what is below first let me tell you something about Halo that is very important, even if you think you have been in that room that "always looks the same", go in there anyway because usually you actually haven't been there. In Halo in the inside levels some stuff starts to look the same, but it is like that will most games.
MULTIPLAYER
Halo is a game that with most gamers, it blew me away. So I got it for Christmas and let me tell you people something, multiplayer is probably the main reason to get the game. It really is that much fun. Remember how much fun Goldeneye was to play with friends and how your one friend always chose oddjob and it was too cheap because he was too small and your other friend who chose Jaws thinking he was going to win because he was so big. Remember? Now...think how much fun Goldeneye is and times that by 100. With Halo Multiplayer the fun really never stops, you can play with 1-4 friends or you could play a HUGE 16 player game with linked x-boxes. Or you could play online and play against someone across the country (I mean you can't becuase online gaming for x-box has not yet released, lol or maybe some people already have it, I wonder who?)In Halo there are MANY Multiplayer you could play, I think maybe the most for any game ever. (Remember I said I think, so Quake III players don't e-mail me)Halo is a game that is just for the X-Box, and that is good. It is not good when games get ported from system to system and one is bad for one system and the other is "ok" and the other one for another system is great, its not fair to other gamers.
ONLINE PLAY
Hopefully by the summer online play for Halo will be released, but still it is not hard for someone to already get online play
on their X-Box.
GRAPHICHS
The graphics in Halo are outstanding, inside rooms it's nothing special because everything looks the same. But! Outside you will be amazed by the amazing graphics of the landscape, the trees,the water,the grass,the mountains,the sky, its all great.
SOUND
The sound in Halo is excellent, the sound of the different types of guns blasting is very cool. The way the aliens speak and scream is very funny and adds some humor to the game. (and its funny in a good way, not like the way they sound is so bad its funny) The music in the game is very cool, and could not have been any better. In some parts its like war music or just music that will pump you up. Like when you are going over a hill and there are aliens are on the other side some great music comes on.
CONTROL
Yes...I know. You hate the controls and like everyone at first you call them "dumb and stupid" and they should have just left it normal. Let me tell you something, the contols could not have been any more perfect. It is designed for gamers who played shooting games on the PC so who used a Keyboard and Mouse. Trust me, you will get used to the controls and you eventually could not be any happier. It really is VERY easy to control. To play Halo and then play Goldeneye...its weird. The controls are so different.
GAMEPLAY
This game is one of the most fun games I have been in years and will stay at the top of my list for a long time. The gameplay is great and the game is nonstop fun. | video-games_xbox |
CoD4 owns Halo 3. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Official Rating: 5/5
Finally, I'm posting my Call of Duty 4 review, I wrote this back in January for a blog I have. Let me start off by saying two things, I will compare this to other top FPS's like Halo, and this is not your father's first person shooter, the guys at Infinity Ward have just about perfected the FPS genre with this installment in the COD series. The graphics and real life effects make this much more in depth than Halo with a texture system that rivals Crysis in my personal opinion. When Halo 3 came out I said nothing will top it; needless to say I was wrong. Modern Warfare includes a driving plotline full of twists that keeps you guessing. Weapon systems that are near perfection, and four difficulty settings to keep you entertained for years. As I've said, you have four difficulty settings: Recruit (for N00bs!), Regular (for a mildly difficult and satisfying experiance), Hardened (for those who like life rough) and my favorite....Veteran (for those who are about to die, we salute you). Its obvious when you take on Veteran you are going to die, alot; its easily two or three times harder than Legendary in Halo 3 which according to myself, fellow gamers, and professional reviewers this is the games only problem, its extrordinarily hard and you die quickly so get accustomed to hiding and dieing, but when you beat it, it is the single most satifying experience in your gaming career that is only trumped when you beat the epiloge mission on verteran and achieve the "mile high club" acheivement. The weapon system is basic yet complete at the same time, you have an array of weapons not typically found in most games, but not fictional weapons like in Timeshift or Halo. They also include two real life gernade types, your standard frag and something called a flashband, which is used to temporarily blind and deffen your enemies so you can strike without getting killed. You can wield two guns, four of each gernade type, as well as whatever else is in your default arsenal that changes from mission to mission such as night vision goggles, airstrikes, claymores, gernade launchers and your standard C4. The sniper system is uniqe in the fact that its not the easiest thing on Earth, in games like Halo and Timeshift, a monkey could get a headshot with its eyes closed, in COD4 you have to work for it because it has a realistic system that simulates movement and breathing while looking down the scope, keeping it fairly unsteady with the ability to steady by holding your breath, much like in real life. Its also unique in the fact that they mislead you in a sense about the games main antagonist and you have two main characters instead of one and several supporting characters. All in all , this game is worth your time, and money. Its challenging, driving, and the absolute perfection of the FPS genre. | video-games_xbox |
Needs work for the next two but a good game. The game covers the first of a three part story about an assassin who is found floating at Sea in Europe and has to unravel his past and the "Conspiracy" around it. This installment is based on the Bourne Identity book with action elements from the movie.
Cons:
1. The game gives flashback into the character's past. Though nice in theory it completely gets rid of any idea of trying to follow the prime point of the plot, Finding Bourne's Past! Because of this if you hadn't seen the movies or read the books then you'd have no real care about the plot.
2. Too damn short. It's a Next-Gen game. Why the does it only cover the first book? and when I say short I mean: All the levels, Extra, and Bonus stuff in less than 10hrs and that's replaying a few missions for find items.
3. I would have liked a little more to the HtH fights. You get 4 actions: Light, Heavy, block & adrenaline. The later needs to build up in combat before it can be used. While it keeps the hand-hand simple it leaves you wondering, "Why isn't an assassin better then this?"
4. For the 360 why do I need Achievements for having less then 10% accuracy? Achievements are supposed to be good, not bad.
Pros:
1. The game keeps you on your toes. Even the when a cut scene happens you better hold onto the controller.
2. Character doesn't look like Matt Damon. That's not a jab. I liked this becuase it gets rid of the idea this is based solely around the movies.
3. The Sound track will get stuck in your head.
4. The extras, when unlocked, are very good for the first game.
5. Even with the combat being as simple as it was I still had several times of holding my breath in a boss fight.
6. After the first few levels head shots will become second nature, and it will need to be.
7. Building up the adrenaline meter to drop 3 targets at once.
I hope the second and third improve on these. If your a fan of the series buy it. Otherwise I'd say it's a rental or borrower. | video-games_xbox |
Incredibly overrated. Honest reviews. That's what this world needs. Someone who is not being bribed to write good or bad reviews.
That's me.
I think the creators read the cliffs notes of an Ayn Rand novel beforehand. They couldn't possibly have read an entire book, or they interpreted the message wrong. Either way, this is the plot of the game. Not a masterpiece of writing, as many reviewers have said, just a rip off of someone else's award winning works.
Not that there cant be a good game in there, many games have used Journey/Oddysey to the West as a starting point and created great games with exceptional characters.
This one doesn't. It's the "Alien" film series, under water. You spend the first half of the game going from dreary room to dreary room collecting objects, taking objects to another area and using the object to unlock the next room, plot point or objective. All the while getting shot at or attacked by crazy people, robots, turrets, etc.
You end up caring less about the story and more about playing collectathon. Even in Mario and Sonic, if you miss a coin or ring, you won't be punished for it. This game does punish you. Collect everything or prepare to lose.
Characters... Oh if there were any... Without giving the plot away, you are in first person, but your character has a pre-set personality, making choices in the game rather generic and redundant. There is one major choice, but it's saved for the very end.
The rest of the cast consists of rambling crazy people... After about 10 minutes you could just turn down the volume. There's the clich voice telling you what to do and where to go. The plot involving this voice is where people shout "brilliant masterpiece" about the game. I have seen The Twilight Zone, The (original) Manchurian Candidate, heck, even an old Star Trek episode used triggger words like the game does. Not brilliance, just the first time it was used in a major video game.
The other characters are learned about by audio logs and notes. Rather boring. Like trying to piece together a person's life story from twitter posts. You can't.
The final characters are the Big Daddy's and Little Sisters. First off, I must've missed something. Why are all the children in the city little girls? Oh well. The big daddy's are huge over powered robots who will kill you over and over again. Enemies respawn after leaving an area, and spend a lot of time attacking like enemies in the original Doom. You have to collect the little sisters, don't miss a single one or the game will warn you that it will be harder to beat if you continue.
I assume if you fear the water, this game could be scary. It wasn't for me.
Overall the game is ugly. The color palette is mostly gray, black and brown. Smashed and broken object litter the world like the Fallout Series, but without the artistic beauty that the wasteland has. The game could have the beauty and wonder of a shipwreck being discovered and explored, instead the game is a shipwreck.
Admittedly though, there is something there. The game has good play mechanics and combat can be fun. It's just the abandoned world theme has been done so much better by other games. Even 2K's other fps game Borderlands seems more realistic and alive. It's too bad Claptrap didn't appear in this game, it might be a bit more tolerable and less morbid and empty.
But if you like morbid and empty worlds, this is the game for you. There really is no character interaction and the characters throughout are all one dimensional. There is no remorse for those who have been driven crazy, shoot em and loot em. Then, at the end you are supposed to make a moral choice? After filling the halls with self cleaning corpses of innocent people driven insane, your character is left to make a moral choice?! I had to say that twice as I still don't believe it. Nor do I believe the choice truly matters or would even be asked of the character in the game. Tacked on to get idiots to say "ooh" and "ahh" and possibly win some game awards for giving you a shocking plot twist choice in the end. (it worked, people are stupid).
Just before that, the big plot twist that could be seen by anyone with an IQ over 70 if they bothered. If you haven't finished the game yet then would you kindly seach YouTube for "the greatest shock endings in video games"? Bioshock is on EVERY top ten list, and they all talk about how the ending was totally unexpected and shocked the world... Again, manchurian candidate, Twilight Zone, etc. Hey, I bet My little Pony even used this shocking and award winning plot twist... (they have).
I still give this game 3 Amazon stars as the gameplay mechanics are good and you do end up wanting to see the game through to the end. But you also may find yourself disappointed, especially if you play the superior sequel Bioshock Infinite before this. Also, be warned that Bioshock 2 is just a full price stand alone expansion pack to this game with no new story or ongoing plot.
Bioshock 6/10. | video-games_xbox |
Excellent headset and great sound quality. First off, I got this headset as part of the amazon vine program, which means I got it for free in return for product testing / review. I put about 10 hours use into these playing Borderlands 2 on my 360. However, I elected not to keep these for myself since they did not fit my abnormally large head. It was too tight of a fit to be comfortable for me. I gave these to a friend to try out and he LOVED them. He has much less of a bobble head than myself. (see product shot of him wearing the headset and the "cool story babe" tshirt) He's a very big dude himself with a large melon and they fit him without incident.
The cushions are excellent quality and I found them breathable even after several hours of play. Design is well thought out. Audio, even though in stereo instead of surround, is crisp and clean. In Borderlands you can actually hear the difference in footsteps on different terrain like rocky ground vs snow.
Bass boost mode is especially good. The 50mm Neodynium drivers are excellent. Bordering on audiophile level sound quality, ESPECIALLY for a wireless gaming headset. That's almost unheard of. Immersive mode is similar to 3d sound, but not quite what I would consider surround.
It should be noted that my regular headset is the wired <a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Ear-Force-X11-Amplified-Stereo-Headset-with-Chat/dp/B003A7HHKG/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Ear Force X11 Amplified Stereo Headset with Chat</a>, which is an exceptional headset in itself. Sound quality on the afterglow is better, which is a bit boggling given that the comparison is to a wired headset.
Pros:
Looks very slick
Superb sound quality, especially in immersive and bass boost modes
Excellent mic (noise cancellation is excellent)
Long lasting charge
Easy to set up
Works on multiple gaming platforms and pc
Relatively well constructed
Easy to integrate mp3/external audio input
did i mention it looks slick?
Cons:
Stereo sound (not surround, but it's excellent quality.)
Won't fit my monster knoggin (probably nothing for you to worry about) | video-games_xbox |
Just Plain Fun. If there's one thing that you can appreciate about Red Faction: Guerrilla, it's for cutting the crap and getting right to the point. It's unlikely that you'll be enthralled by the dime-a-dozen plot line, and the graphics won't make your eyes water, but for the team at Volition, that is completely missing the point. RF:G is about pure, unadulterated fun, and nothing more. It's actually a pretty refreshing breath of fresh air - RF:G doesn't take itself seriously, and doesn't expect you to either. It's the equivalent of a good Arnold movie - it's not going to win any Oscars, but one can hardly stop to care when there's this many explosions.
Yes, Red Faction is back, with some significant changes. It has become a third-person, open-world game, but other than that, it's got the same Red Faction feel. The fight is back on Mars, 50 years after the events of the first Red Faction. Revolution is in the air amongst the planet's miners yet again, and your character, Alan Mason, finds himself unwittingly at the center of it. Through a variety of missions, your goal is to raise morale of your fellow miners and take control of Mars back from the oppressive regime of the EDF.
How you do this is more or less up to you in traditional sandbox fashion - but it usually involves a lot of destruction. RF:G does a decent job of keeping the missions varied, occasionally stumbling into cliche sandbox territory where you can't help but feel Volition felt the need to adhere to missions the genre has come to expect. This is especially evident in "transporter" missions, where you find yourself driving a vehicle from point A to point B - sometimes across the entire map - resulting in rather dull and segmented gameplay. Other missions find you rescuing hostages, hopping in a tank or mech and wreaking as much havoc as possible, and raiding EDF buildings. "Destruction" missions are particularly enjoyable - the player is given simply a building, a limited weapon selection (sometimes as much as three bullets from a pistol), and an puzzle-like objective to destroy the building. Even the puzzles in this game explode.
Indeed, the real star of RF:G is the new "Geo-mod" system, a new take on the engine from the original Red Faction. In RF1, absolutely anything could crumble, but there was no physics engine to the buildings. In RF:G, you aren't allowed to tunnel through the ground, but pretty much everything else begs to be destroyed. Each building on Guerrilla's Mars is governed by a stress system crafted from the ground up by Volition, and the result truly is satisfying. To level a building for the first time by clearing out the supports on three sides and watching the weight slowly shift enough such that the whole thing collapses is truly an experience to behold. The fact that absolutely nothing is pre-rendered when you blow a hole into a building leads to some extremely interesting and fun scenarios.
And really, that's what this game is all about. The single player delivers an experience which will several times tempt you to tell your friends in a fit of joy what just happened (I've found they grow old of this). Volition does a nice job of slowly increasing the volume of destruction throughout the single player by introducing new weapons along the way, which can be bought using salvage. Salvage is the economy of Mars, and is obtained by completing missions and - you guessed it - destroying buildings. A noticeable lack of polish in some areas can mar the experience a bit - a few times I had mission-ending glitches occur, often I'd stumble into an invisible wall when trying to jetpack over a mountain, and a glitch at the end of the game currently prevents players from completing every mission (and getting an achievement). Retrying a mission is inexplicably difficult, and strangely incosistent across mission types. It's possible that Volition will patch these problems in the future, but as they are, they remain only minor annoyances. By and large, the single player is an absolute thrill.
The multiplayer is also very fleshed out this time around, with several online modes and an offline mode (in which you hand off the controller causing as much destruction as possible). Exclusive to multiplayer are backpacks, which act something like perks you might get in CoD if you were a superhero. One backpack lets you see through walls, another allows you to create an earthquake around you, and of course, the jetpack is there as well. Backpacks are littered across each map and can be swapped at any time. The combination of these backpacks with different weapons is half the fun of the multiplayer, and once again, creates simply outrageous scenarios that are an absolute blast to experience. All the destruction is still there, and Volition has crafted some interesting game modes around their geo-mod engine. One mode, titled Siege, tasks one team with destroying a host of buildings the other team has set out to defend. Once the round is over, the teams switch places. The matchmaking system, and the lobby in general could use some work, but Volition has promised improvements to this interface. If they deliver, RF:G sports gameplay robust enough to compete with the best.
Volition has packed a lot of content into Red Faction: Guerrilla. They've clearly spent a lot of time and effort to fill this game with as much raw fun as humanly possible. Some polish and a deeper plot would have been nice, but ultimately it's a game that revels in what it is. Yes, it's unlikely that RF:G will take home any GotY awards, but it's a surprisingly great game and one of the best of the summer. It's the kind of game where a description of the carnage and fun to be had here simply won't do it justice - and if that's not an indication of a must-play, then I just don't know what is.
9/10 | video-games_xbox |
Thinks too highly of itself, ultimately extremely frustrating. Many of the other reviewers have very similar feelings.
At first the game seems interesting, unique, fancy, innovative, and pretty. Not long into it you'll begin to encounter the very real problems the game has. Controlling your character with any precision is impossible. You can select first person, which is painfully sluggish, but the game forces you back into 3rd person most of the time. 3rd person _looks_ really nice, and I can respect the artist's vision of the world. Trying to actually function in 3rd person is a whole different thing: completely frustrating. The camera is rarely where you want it to be looking. At many points in the game you may have to resort to hand to hand combat, which will be forced in the 3rd person, and will make you want to throw your fancy wireless remote right out of the window, followed by the XBOX and TV, still plugged into the wall. At least hand to hand, while completely worthless in this game, isn't like Silent Hill: no stance fighting. But: basically as useless.
The inventory system, while it seems innovative, is actually quite stale once you get a bit into the game. It's also extremely clunky and hard to use under duress. The healing system, too, at first seems innovative, but is actually quite obnoxious. Let's face it, they were neat ideas on a white board in a room full of excited marketing guys -- but in reality they don't work well. The game boasts this open style combination system. Flammable liquid in container, tape, box of bullets, throw at bad guy, shoot, repeat. Put alcohol on bullets, aim for little cracks in baddies, shoot repeatedly because the targeting system is crappy, repeat. There really isn't much too it after you've done it a few times. One little gripe here: the eye blinking spectral vision thing. Yes, push down and hold the right thumbstick which is also what you'd need to use to aim, precisely, on a moving target, to kill it. Who play tested this, and where can I find them? I'd like to have a little dialog with them about this subject.
Vehicle driving... man, what can I say? Nothing like tapping a 3" curb and watching the vehicle fly up into the air and shed all of it's fenders in one motion. You can do some neat things with vehicles... cut open the gas tanks, fill bottles, use them as rolling bombs, all kinds of things. Too bad the interface sucks so bad that it's hard to pull any of that stuff off. Once again: it sounds neat, but doesn't work out that way.
To be fair, I haven't completed the game as of yet. Honestly, while I like to see things through, I may not. Some of the puzzles are, frankly, very annoying. Some of the stuff is very... cryptic and without any real clue of what is happening. Sometimes you'll find yourself somewhere, nothing is happening, and you don't really know what to do next. Other times the solution is so obvious and streamlined that it is a wonder they put it in at all. The story is not engaging. The story doesn't even make sense in a few places.
I could go on and on, but basically I am very disappointed in this game. The fire effects are out of this world, the environments are decent, water is awesome, and there is some definite lighting/atmosphere neatness... but that's about it. Otherwise, the game is very awkward, repetitive, confusing, and above all else: frustrating. It's just not the game it could be, and it's not the game that was advertised. This is no surprise, none the less, it is what it is.
I really wanted this game to be spooky, creepy, innovative, cool, engaging, and immersive. It's not. It's just a waste of time and money. | video-games_xbox |
Addictive but dated fun. If I were reviewing this game upon its release date, I would definitely be entering this review with a different attitude; probably one filled with awe of the game I just experienced. Unfortunately, in today's current video game metropolis of 2014, I have a lot more to compare to this game. As you enter this review, note that I am speaking from a modern perspective with the bias of today's choice in video gaming, although I will definitely give Assassin's Creed props where it deserves.
STORY - Assassin's Creed is the beginning to a story arc that has taken the gaming world by storm. In the present day, Desmond Miles has been kidnapped by a company known as Abstergo so that Abstergo can tap into Desmond's ancestors' memories by use of a machine called an Animus. Not much is done with this story line, but when the player is in control of Desmond, sneaking around the Abstergo offices and discovering the secrets behind the Abstergo company fill most of your gameplay time.
The majority of the gameplay story takes place in the past where the player takes control of Altair, an assassin living during the Third Crusade who breaks the creed of the assassin's and must set out to prove his worth by assassinating Templars that aim to get their hands on a mysterious treasure that not much is known about. Altair will travel among Jerusalem, Acre, and Damascus in order to interrogate Templar allies, gather information from assassin informers, eavesdrop on important conversations, and eventually assassinate the Templars one by one. Each assassin's death brings Altair closer to finding out what is so important about the treasure that they seek.
Quite frankly, apart from the basic skeleton of the plot, the story is difficult to follow and even occasionally dry. It took me a few days of playing to warm to Altair and to care where he ended up and what happened to him. There aren't many characters to get to know in the story and character development could have been much better for the few characters who were fleshed out. The present day Abstergo story was much more engaging, but unfortunately as I said before, hardly any time is spent exploring that story.
GAMEPLAY - This is a third person action adventure game in which the players runs around cities, evading guards and carrying out deeds for the assassin's bureau located in each city. There is a heavy stealth component to the game as well as a fighting component. Frankly, one of the biggest problems with this game is that the gameplay is very repetitive. The same rinse and repeat method is enacted every time Altair enters a city: find the viewpoints in the city, collect the information by tracking down informants/Templar allies, save town citizens, and assassinate target. The game always happens the same way, and though it always retains its fun factor, by the time you're tracking down the fifth Templar, you might be ready for something to be shaken up in terms of gameplay.
Another negative factor in terms of gameplay came in way of the controls. Man, they are completely awful on this game, especially knowing what the game creators did with the controls in later games. It is next to impossible to get Altair to move the way you want him to, especially when he is engaged in battle. Although as Altair progresses through the game he gains extra abilities and "power ups," I rarely found myself using them as they just failed most of the time and got in the way of fighting instead.
Similar to how Altair is consistently gaining extra abilities throughout the game, he also gains additional health bars. Thus, as the player progresses through the story and encounters more competent foes, Altair gains extra health to balance out the tougher fighting. Computer enemies are never particularly impossible to beat, however, even when they gang up on you due to the fact that they will only attack one at a time, so you can easily take them out as they attack. Hiding from them is a bit more challenging as it requires you to break away from them long enough to find a hiding spot and hang out there for a few seconds before running free once more.
For when this game out, the world was definitely expansive and the stealth/action combination was a resounding win, but with gaming competition as it is today, gameplay is a bit dated, albeit fun.
GRAPHICS/SOUND - I get what the creators were going for in creating an old world feel in terms of surroundings, but in creating such a depiction of the game world, they made a very bland environment. All environments are very blah, filled with tan, tan, tan, and maybe light brown here and there. Everything is graphically stunning, but a little color wouldn't have hurt.
Voice acting was OK, but not super great. A lot of lines were re-used over and over again, and some of the main voice actors didn't sound particularly enthusiastic about voicing their characters.
Music was also bland and very forgetful. It never captured my interest or made me want to turn the volume up. Much like the graphics, the sounds and songs in this game were very unexciting and could have been composed better.
WARNINGS - I didn't catch too much in the language department, although there were definitely a few heavier curse words thrown around. No sex was present, but there was violence and blood and merciless killings.
OVERALL - Assassin's Creed is a decent game that holds its own against many modern games. It has its flaws, but if you love the AC series and want to start from the beginning, no con should prove to be major enough to hold you back. This is a worthy title in the Xbox 360 that dated but still fun. | video-games_xbox |
Like a cross between Resident Evil and Where's Waldo. You can barely see anything in this game, even with the brightness turned all the way up and the flashlight on. That's great for creating a spooky atmosphere, but it makes the absolutely linear levels infuriating when you think you've checked all the doors and then realize after ten minutes that you missed an elevator button or something on the grime-encrusted wall.
I walked through the entire town three times (or maybe jogged, but it definitely wasn't a run) trying to figure out where I could possibly go next to fulfill my ridiculously vague objective of "search the town", and finally I broke down and checked a FAQ. Apparently I had been going the right direction half an hour before, but I was in the wrong spot when I pushed A to open a gate and so instead got some text about not being able to go that way because it was too dangerous. Another time, I couldn't figure out where to go because I only pushed A once on an object and got some flavor text and didn't realize I was supposed to push A a SECOND TIME to initiate an action. And yet another time, I couldn't figure out where to go because I only tried pushing one of a dozen identical dressers from one side when in fact the other side is where I should have tried pushing it from. These are not puzzles -- they're walking around watching for the "Press A to ____" message to appear.
In the first half of the game, you barely ever even see any monsters to distract you from the monotony of the ridiculous non-puzzles. It picks up in the second half, but then you have to contend with the clunky combat system.
The story is the highlight here, in that it is marginally more interesting than it is ludicrous, but overall there are much better times to be had for the same price or less.
Edit: I hadn't finished this game when I wrote this review. I've finished it now, because I'm a little OCD. It is absolutely not worth it. This game does atmosphere well, and one of the supporting characters is cool, but it fails in every other aspect. | video-games_xbox |
Great graphics, great story, great gameplay, great game, with a few exceptions. Far Cry 2 is one of the best games I have played in a long time. It has a very engaging story, is one of the most stunning games I have ever seen in terms of graphics (literally approaching the graphical level of Crysis).
There are many game design meants to make the game immersive, most of the time succeeding very well in this. For example you will have to go to an armory to get new guns, because the longer you hold on to the same gun the less reliable it becomes and is prone to jam. You have to repair your vehicle yourself when it becomes damaged, etc.
These are the good designs. Some of the bad ones are as follows: There is no map on your HUD. You have to pull out your map and a GPS device to see where you are. This becomes particularly aggravating when you are driving, since you will have to look down to see the map, meaning you will easily crash into something. Given how HUGE the world is in Far Cry 2, it would have been very helpful to steer away from realism just a little bit and give us an HUD map. Second, the GPS isn't exactly so much a GPS as it is just a compass. You cannot set any waypoints or plan your routes. It does not tell you where to turn or anything, meaning you have to keep on glancing at it.
Another bad design is the malaria attacks. Your character is infected with malaria, and randomly gets a malaria attack, regardless of whether you are driving, or in the middle of a heated firefight. There is nothing you can do other than take out your medicine and pop a pill.
The final bad design that comes to my mind is the endlessly respawning enemies. After you take out an enemy outpost you will only need to drive away for a few minutes and once you return they will be back there. I don't think they should have made enemies disappear permanently after you take out an outpost, but they could have set a certain time or something. For instance they could have made it 1 in-game week before new enemies would spawn at an outpost or other site which you have cleared. If you have taken out all the outposts in a particular area, you should not have to run into patrols in that are either, but you do.
Multiplayer is excellent, and the ability to easily download community made maps is a great addition. The map editor is very extensive, even if a little too complicated for me.
Overall, Far Cry 2 is an excellent game. As long as you can live with the issues I have listed above, you will love this game. | video-games_xbox |
Brink is parkouring its way to the bargain bin. This game is a mess, so it's good it has the SMART system. SMART is a marketing team passing a free-running mechanism as a reasonable upgrade to Team Fortress 2 as recreated from your younger brother's memory. Add the worst parts of <a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Mirror-s-Edge/dp/B00149PCAO/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Mirror's Edge</a> and <a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Shadowrun/dp/B000OLSJLC/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Shadowrun</a> for good measure.
Brink doesn't mess around. They know you don't care about the story, so they decided not to put one in. Surprise! The single player is the multiplayer, just by yourself! There's another feature where the multiplayer is also the single player, since the multiplayer is too buggy to play. Also, level design? What's that? Three levels I remember: a factory, a dump with cargo, and some futuristic outdoor mall. Bland, post-apocalyptic cops vs. rebels searching for its "Zombies mode." There's also a plight-of-the-masses undercurrent in here somewhere. The story consists of "We need x in order to win," followed by: "I'll secure the x" and "Protect/defend the x!" It's like Shadowrun (pick a class, use powers, beg teammates for a resurrection) with TF2 objectives and team spawns, and Army of Two-style weapons and character customization. You'll spend the majority of the game running from the ridiculously far spawns to the remote site of action. Brink got the formula totally wrong. I can only excuse the lack of substance if it has GRATUITOUS destruction.
Gameplay is also a disaster. Do you like menus? Contrary to the box's description, this is a menu game with some shooting in-between. Radial dials for objectives, anatomy diagrams for character customization, horizontal sliders when waiting to be resurrected, columned start menu, etc. Research has shown that RPG fans aren't interested in stats, but menus. So Bethesda made a game that relies on several character classes at once to maximize menu action. Dig into those menus and switch your class several times in a game, even! It'll help compensate for the teamwork your AI isn't smart enough to provide.
tl;dr: Had potential--poorly executed. Buy <a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/The-Orange-Box/dp/B000R0PLK2/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">The Orange Box</a> (for TF2), <a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Mirror-s-Edge/dp/B00149PCAO/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Mirror's Edge</a>, and <a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Shadowrun/dp/B000OLSJLC/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Shadowrun</a> for a better deal with less frustration. | video-games_xbox |
Awesome Headset....That Works for Two Weeks. I was a huge fan of the Turtle Beach X12's for the 360 and after saving up some money and waiting for a little bit of a price drop for the XO Seven Pro Premiums I purchased them. Once I received this pricey headset I played several hours of Xbox One to give them a try. I bet these headphones didn't have 24 hours worth of actual use before they started cutting out and then just stopped.
After following Turtle Beach's troubleshooting method I started getting sound but no mic. I did another troubleshoot and the same thing happened. I had sound but no mic use. I then plugged the headset straight into the controller instead of using the much more convenient adapter, that I could mute the mic with just the press of a button, and what happened? That's right sound and mic capabilities, but now to mute the headset I have to double tap the Xbox button and scroll over to mute mic and select mute. Not the fastest option when my dog starts barking and I don't want to fill the party chat with the voice of an upset dog.
So pretty much I bought a higher end headset that worked for me about two weeks. The adapter is a piece of garbage. And yes the headset does squeeze the head a bit especially compared to my old X12s. Now the other issue is the replacement process. Well, I sent in a Service Request that received a response relatively quickly and after doing another troubleshoot and reporting that the problem still exists I was told that a replacement was authorized. Well, great but they didn't send me a shipping address to send my defective adapter even though everything I have read indicates that I have to return the defective part, at my expense mind you, before they send the "working" replacement to me. From the time I was told that a replacement was authorized and they asked for my shipping address it has been 17 days.
After this experience with a 150 dollar headset I am done with Turtle Beach. I expect the WHOLE headset to work longer than two weeks and I shouldn't have to pay more for their defective product. And I should have a better idea of what is going on with my replacement than "you've been authorized a replacement but we aren't going to tell you a ship date or really anything that is remotely helpful of when you might get it or how to proceed." What a huge disappointment. The worst part was the sudden realization that my overpriced headset was defective and I had just wasted some hard-earned money on something that I had been really excited to get. Sorry Turtle Beach you lost a customer with this mess. | video-games_xbox |
WTF. Okay, first off, if you were a fan of the pre and post game presentation that the past NCAA titles had given you..Do NOT buy this game for the 360..There is no college atmosphere vibe going on in this game whatsoever..
Theres no pre game cutscene where it shows the team roaring out of the tunnel while their fightsong is being played by the band..No cutscene of the captains walking to the 50 yard line for the cointoss, nothing..
Also, if you're a fan of the crowd meter that played a big part in rivalry games you'll be sorely dissapointed..They scrapped that out for the 360 version as well..
During the actual game you will also notice a lack of college atmosphere for the 360 version..Very rarely will you see any cutscenes that display team celebration after a big play unlike the past NCAA on CURRENT gen. systems where there was an abundance of them..There are no cut scenes of fans unlike in the last ones, and overall it makes for a very bland, and boring college experience..
As far as the gameplay goes it's about the same..The running game is a little different to me.. you don't have the cutback abilities as you did in the last one, but it's something you can work with..
What pisses me off is that I pay 10$ dollars more for a next generation title, and I get less..The version for the xbox, and PS2 has the crowd meter..It gives more of a college atmosphere before, during, and after the game..More options on the Dynasty Mode..I don't know why these things are getting left off of the next generation version since it's more expensive, and should be better, but they are..
All in all, if you're gonna buy this game DO NOT buy it for the 360..You will only be paying more for less..The current gen versions offer a lot more presentation, and attitude for a cheaper price..
I will NOT be buying another EA Sports game for the 360 this year..They have proven with Madden 06 , and with this title that they are not fully ready for next generation gaming..They seem to think that they can leave all these key , detrimental things out of the 360 version, and no one will take it as a slight..This game is three years behind in my opinion..That is the 360 version..Buy it for the xbox..Whole lot better game.. | video-games_xbox |
Excellent Star Wars RPG. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic was one of the best games released for the Xbox in 2003. Star Wars games have a checkered past--the story and themes lend themselves well to video games but most have fallen short of the mark. With KOTOR all of that has been changed and it's been placed in a role-playing environment by Bioware, and the results are amazing. The game features hours and hours of play, interaction with a host of every characters, some amazing worlds to explore, and it's just plain fun!
Since your main goal during the course of the game is to be a Jedi you have a lot of choices to make in regards to your actions. Like all RPGs, you go about upgrading your weapons, skills, strengths, and reputation. Be nice and go to the side of Light or be bad and turn to the Dark side of the force. So you must be careful of everything you do or say. You have a force meter to tell you where you stand, apply colored light to dark. One nice feature is that you can define your character by race and sex, so it opens the game up to everybody.
There are plenty of worlds to explore--in what ever sequence you want--and battles to fight. Mini games and side quests are scattered all about the various worlds so there is a lot to see and do.
The music, sound effects and voice acting are all very well done. The graphics on the other hand, leave a lot to be desired. There are some nice moments, but overall the game's graphics sport an unpolished look. The frame rate is a dodgy and there is a lot jag in the graphics. If they had just used the well-known graphics technique of anti-alising, the game would have looked a lot better. At any rate, the game play is so good that you can easily overlook the graphic faults.
I've read the Xbox version is buggy. I haven't had much a problem with that. I did have some areas that would lock up during loading from one part of the game to another, but that was very rare. The "kill save" bug I've read about I've never experienced either, but I saved and saved often. So don't let bug reports prevent you from buying this excellent game. At under $30 you get a lot of bang for the buck with this one. | video-games_xbox |
A Great Improvement on an Family-Friendly Open-World Game. As the 3rd installment of the Disney Infinity open world Game environment, I was curious about the reception it would get from a 13 year old that is understandably enthralled by most every element of Disney. Being a gamer from the early days, I thought the perspectives between us would form an interesting opinion.
Having previously played the Infinity 1.0 and 2.0 games, the expectations by both of us were not extremely high. Infinity 2.0 simply didt deliver the added are value beyond 1.0. Our hope was that 3.0 would change that.
The most notable addition to 3.0 was the addition of the Star Wars universe. As with previous Infinity games, we spent most of our time in the Toy Box, in the true spirit of Disney, allowing our imaginations to lead us to build all kinds of crazy contraptions. Without any exaggeration, it is a blast!. To me, this is the newest generation of an erector set that we had as kids. The tutorials were good, and helped get both veterans and new gamers alike going without any struggle.
Its clear that the Star Wars items in the Toy Box is light in comparison to the vast number of Star Wars characters, vehicles and ships weve been exposed to since 1977, but it is enough to provide a holistic feel for the Star Wars universe. The interesting thing was that the starter set brought two non-classic Star Wars characters in Ahsoka, from Star Wars: Clone Wars / Rebels and of course Anakin Skywalker. I would have liked to seen some more classic elements, but none of this took away from the fun.
Certainly the Twilight of the Republic play set is an improvement from the previous versions of the game. It looks and plays better. I am hopeful that this level of improvement continues without having to continually re-invest in the game with versions 4, 5, etc.
For those of you who have played previous versions on an Xbox 360 or PS3, and now have Infinity 3.0 with Xbox One, you may find some compatibility issues using older bases. I don't know what the differences were, but we found hit and miss success with certain items, like the that the Xbox 360 base will not work with PS4, yet online people were stating that the PS3 or 4 base would work on the Wii U. Im not sure why some compatibility existed between consoles while others did not. I think the hardware should work across any console you have. My advice is if you have upgraded your console and want to use Infinity 2.0 items, check with the store or online first to avoid disappointment.
Overall, we thought the game is loads of fun. It does suffer from some lag at times, and the load times require some patience, but Ive seen worse in games like Skyrim so i cant complain too much. This game sits right in the sweet spot of the Minecraft Generation of younger gamers who love the open worlds play set concept. It takes some of the best aspects of games like the Lego video game series and adds more robust open world playability. If you are looking for a game that adults and young children can play alike and together, this is it. Its a decent improvement from the previous versions, while sticking to the main themes of family-friendly and creative open-world gameplay. | video-games_xbox |
Buy it for $10 or less, or not at all. I was expecting a free-roaming Cabela's where, if you're not careful, your prey will fight back. I can't say any of that is true.
You have a little more room to adventure the environment than some other Cabela's games (Big Game Hunter '12, for instance), but it is not at all free-roaming. There are invisible walls everywhere.
The point system for your kills is just stupid. If you want the most points for a kill, you're best off running up to the animal and engaging it in their "quick" time hand-to-hand kills. These are a complete joke: they give you more than enough time to push the button, and there is no penalty for pushing a wrong button as long as you press the right button within the given amount of time. The animations for these events are ridiculous as well. It feels like you stepped out of the hunter game and entered Assassin's Creed with how this guy fights at close range: flipping wolves over his shoulder from behind his back with the butt of his gun, and immediately smacking the next one in the face. They tried far too hard to make this an action/hunter game.
The animals themselves seem far too aware of your existence. Even crouching in the shadows and using scent-cover, they have a very good chance of spotting you and then attempting to gore your face off. And while some of their behavior is realistic, much of it isn't. Yes, bull moose or elk are incredibly dangerous in real life and will attack if provoked, but in the first real mission, a walled settlement is attacked by a so-called pride of lions that is made up of apparently only male lions (roughly seven of them), who try to drag off men armed with rifles.
These are all very big annoyances I have with this game, but it isn't so awful that I'm not going to finish it. I was lucky enough to pick it up for about $7, and for a price like that, it's not a horrible game. I've certainly played worse.
If you aren't looking for realism, or a hunting game that focuses on actually shooting your prey, then I guess you might enjoy it more than I did. Maybe someone's twelve-year-old kid will enjoy it well enough. But if you're looking for a serious hunting game, avoid this. Pick up a different Cabela's. Even Big Game Hunter '12 is better, and it's pretty much a rail shooter where you control the speed. | video-games_xbox |
MLB2K7 is ninety-percent great. The other half could use some work. Major League Baseball 2K7 is an extremely entertaining game of baseball on the XBox 360, and a vast improvement upon the 2K6 edition. However, there are a handful of moderately serious issues that might caution against purchasing this title. The good well outweighs the bad in this game, but you should be aware of the bad points before purchasing.
The good parts of MLB2K7 are very good. First and foremost, this is a *beautiful* game. Every time someone walks into the room when I'm playing this game, they almost immediately comment on the amazing graphics. The jerseys ripple in the wind, you can see individual grains of dirt on the diamond, and the minor details of player's swings, struts, and general look are all done to perfection. It's hard to imagine a better looking game of baseball. Getting past the visuals, however, the actual game is quite good too. The pitching system is intuitive and really feels like an accurate representation of the way the game works--you aim your pitch, and the harder you attempt to throw it, the more difficult it becomes to hit your target. You'll even notice that depending on your catcher's "Call Game" rating, they may give you better or worse ideas of what pitches to throw and where. Batting also works quite well, although it does take a lot of getting used to. Players use the right analog stick to step back at the release of the pitch, and then either let go of the stick for a contact swing, or slam it forward for a power swing. It takes quite a while to get the timing right, but once you do, it truly does feel great when you slam that stick forward and lift a hanging curve up out of the stadium. Finally, season, franchise, and GM career modes all give the game the kind of replayability that allows you to get months of enjoyment out of this game. There's a lot of good stuff to keep you busy here for months.
However, as good as this game is, there are a couple of fairly serious flaws. First, fielding. It's really awkward. It's often very difficult to avoid overrunning the ball or slamming face-first into the fence, leading to frustrating results as your opponent rounds the bases while your fielder attempts to regain his feet. The cutoff throw system is particularly wonky--players frequently ignore your command to cut off a throw from the outfield, or the cutoff man stands in a terribly useless position to take away all the benefits of the cutoff in the first place. The other major issue is general buggyness. Right now, for me, the game is broken, and from scouring internet forums, it's clear I'm not the only one with these problems. After playing/simulating the 162 games of my first season in career mode, the game cannot make it to the playoffs. My 360 hangs when simming the final day of the season, every time. Apparently for other users this has happened as early as 15 games into a season. This is an unacceptable error, but hopefully 2KSports will patch this through XBox Live sometime soon. Until then, be sure to try to simulate your season through to the playoffs to make sure it's not corrupted before you make this commitment.
While there are a couple of serious flaws in this game, overall it's quite a bit of fun. While fielding isn't great, hitting and pitching are a lot of fun, and the career modes are deep and enjoyable (assuming they work, which is admittedly a bit iffy). This game is definitely worth checking out for any baseball fan, and of course, for the 360, it's your only choice. But given the quality of the game, that's not such a bad thing. | video-games_xbox |
It Should Have Been a Spin-Off. My Shared-Screen Gaming Buddy & I have a very special place in our hearts for the Army Of Two (the first game), and we were waiting anxiously for the sequel.
For the co-op play specifically, they really did quite well for the most part in bringing a similar "tied-together/Depending-on-eachother" feeleing as the first game. Plenty of oportunities for co-op sniping, flush and ambush, and flanking tactics. Overall I would recomend it only for the co-op experience.
As Far as the Story and other design aspects go, its an entirely different matter, and the only reason I can't actually recomend the game. There were three main issues that prevailed for us.
First and the only real "Mechanics: issue; the A button "Hold-to-run" being the same as the "revive-partner" button, leading to quite a few mishaps and deaths.
Second; Most of the games story is revealed in audio clips found in Radios that you need to find and pick up in order to get the full story and make the "right" or "Wrong" decision when it comes time to make your choice in the game's "Morality Plays"; points in the game when you or your partner must make a choice that affects both of you. If you just want to run the game and have fun, the decisions that you make at these points are out of context and have seemingly unexpected results, basically leaving you at a loss as far as story goes.
(***POSSIBLE SPOILERS***)
And finally, at least for us, the game seemed to roll like a square tire. To explain what I mean, when the first game came out I remember all of the complaints centering about a "Lack of Morality", the collegeboyesque "Bro-mance", and the hot-button (at the time) issue of Private contracters making cracks while they kill people. What most Co-Op gamers found out after actually playing the game with a partner, was that is was fun, because it was basically Gun Porn, it was a fun romp, where every bullet was a blast, and you got to high five your parter for making a good kill. Things were dropped out to rush release, which they tried to cover with the three new levels release for free later, and to a certain extent, they succeded.
The problems that I had with AOT: 40th Day is that it seems like they overcorrected, and then to top it off, they left in elements from the Fun Romp first game that now make the Overcorrections they made for the second game stand out even more, and seem out of place. In the new game, you seem to pause every few minutes of gameplay, and you are forced to make a "morality call" as described aboved, or an all to often "save the hostages" scene, both of which bring a halting staggering step to gameplay that should be almost kinetic. The sections in-between where you are able to run-and-gun as with the first game are very fun, and you can still engage in the "Bro-mance", and for-christ-sake you can use a soda can as a silencer or put together the stupidest fun gun you can think of, but these things don't feel like they belong in same game as the morality plays and the very dark-toned cut-scenes, and (*****BIG SPOILERS NEXT!!!*****) not one, but two downer game endings.
It feels like, in all honesty, this should have been a completly different property, and had nothing to do with Salem & Rios, or at the least involved other charachter merely in their world.
P.S. - A whole lot of very customizable guns, yes... but three pistols! Only three pistols! And you can't even do much with 'em. For Shame! | video-games_xbox |
Victim of itself. Unfortunately, the Batman series has been so good it's become the victim of itself. The engaging fighting style, investigate mode, and various features, while only a few years ago were amazing and cutting edge, are now viewed as stale and redundant in reviews.
I played Batman in the order of City, Asylum, and now Origins. Doing so, I found Asylum very boring, whereas I can easily see if I played it before City I'd have viewed it as amazing and seen the gradual evolution. Batman: Arkham City made me exciting about games again and, despite any flaws it may have had, I was addicted to it.
Origins begins with Batman already being on the scene about two years, though Commissioner Gordon and the city as a whole isn't sure to acknowledge his existence or motives, while the underworld does. Black Mask puts up a large bounty for Batman's capture, which leads the player along a progression from trying to get to get Black Mask, which requires getting to Penguin, the introduction of Joker, and as the story goes along attempting to get to Joker with other villians in the way, culminating in Bane, who would easily win Mr. Universe, the Arnold Classic, or any bodybuilding competition.
The most interesting part of the game for me was seeing the evolution of certain characters, like Quinn, as well as Joker's view of Batman changing. While I would have liked to have seen the game start sooner in time, such as Wayne slowly becoming Batman, it was nevertheless enjoyable to see the evolution and references to later games. If nothing else, I found the game overall consistent with what was to come in the Asylum and City games.
The pros of the game are:
(1) Fighting. The fighting style continues to be the same and, similar to Sleeping Dogs, the best combat system I've ever played. It's similar to the previous two and, at least for me, doesn't get old, especially when compared with other games.
(2) Story. The story is interesting and well done. Granted, I was busy playing, but I didn't notice any blatant contradictions and each event seemed to flow seamlessly to the other.
(3) Graphics. The graphics overall are good at and times simply excellent. The reason I gave this game five stars is, having gone through the various hotel scenes (especially with finding Bane and the Joker confrontation), I just find it hard to to really appreciate how advanced games are nowadays.
(4) Length. The game isn't too short or too long. If you choose to complete the side missions you'll be in for a long ride, similar to completing the Riddler challenges in City, which I didn't do.
(5) Challenge. Bosses are hard but not too hard. There are some where you'll probably google it how to beat them but the game is designed in a way to be more about the experience and not be frustrated over trying to get someone for five hours. I REALLY like that modern games are like this. Having grown up during the 80's and 90's, having to beat someone who was almost impossible to beat made me start to hate gaming.
Cons:
(1) Redundancy. The biggest problem with this game is how redundant it is fighting thugs throughout the city. Maybe I missed something, but in Arkham City various thugs did not seem to repopulate, yet in this they do. It's incredibly annoying and takes up enormous amounts of time that, unless you're trying to build XP points, don't matter.
(2) The bridge. There is a large bridge connecting two sides of the city that is a pain to traverse. The first time you do it it's interesting but later it becomes more and more of a bother. This is largely due to the experience of crossing the bridge. You can't grapple to the highest points and glide at weird angles.
(3) Bane. Bane is large, intimidating, and a fun adversary but by the final time you fight him it's gotten a little old and is like fighting Croc from Arkham City.
(4) Glitches. There are an uncountable number of times where you can't climb things, run across things, or do something any able human could do, let alone Batman, but glitches in the game don't allow it. You'll see this a lot when you're on a building and try to run on top of ledges.
(5) Evolution of the game. The various thugs follow the same format. You'll find yourself in areas where there are a bunch of arms guards, you hang out on a ledge, fly down, knock one out, quickly zoom back up, wash, and repeat. It's exactly like Arkham City.
(6) Height limits. A huge point of frustration for me was not being able to grapple or scale the largest structures. There are some where it makes sense (like spikes at the top preventing it) but the majority of the time you just can't do it. You can't grapple to the highest points of the bridge or a lot of buildings and yet you'd think that would be exactly what you should do since it's fun.
I give this game a five simply because of how complex it is, the graphics, the story, and how much work must have gone into it. I grew up during the era of Atari, Nintendo, and games like that so my vantage point is different than younger gamers, but I can't in good conscience give this less than a five. It's definitely a game you should play and I am thankful so many people worked to bring it to existence. Unfortunately, the first two games were so good it's now hard to top them, just like Dumb and Dumber was so good it was highly unlike Dumb and Dumber Too would be as good. | video-games_xbox |
This game is trash, not fun. MULTIPLAYER REVIEW HERE: One word for this game: Trash.
Where to begin with my frustration in playing this game?
I'll begin by comparing it to the FAR superior Battlefield 3.
BF3 rewards teamplay MORE than any other shooter I can think of out there.
Even if all you're doing is healing players, giving ammo or spotting enemies your contribution to the team is vital to their success.
Anyone who plays in a run-and-gun fashion will almost always get punished by an coordinated team on the opposing side.
It forces people to play in a realistic fashion, sticking in groups, calling out targets and taking on obstacles like a puzzle.
Eg; a tank rolls up on a sniper and his friend who both lack explosives to take down the vehicle. The friend pulls out his smoke launcher and immediately starts laying a carpet of smoke toward a building they soon take cover in. Meanwhile a group of team-mates come in under the cover of smoke following the tank, plant C4 and detonate it. The tank operator dies miserable and alone.
Aside from the awesome gameplay in BF3, the game mechanics (although not perfect) functioned beautifully and rewarded players that took the time to learn them and coordinated with friendlies.
When DICE developed Battlefield 4 they took the game-engine apart and put it back together in the wrong order.
The game-mechanics are buggy: Ironsights take five minutes for the textures to load, reloading times are inconsistent, hit-detection is awful (sniping a guy's head doesn't always kill...). And there are so many other bugs I could name but don't have the time to remember or mention.
As well as the bugs, DICE purposely changed the whole mechanic of the game. Some weapons have ridiculous amounts of recoil, shotguns are over-powered and can kill targets from great distances, sniper-rifles are dialed at 100 meters by default (meaning you have to aim below a target instead of above), Long-range scopes are no longer an option for assault rifles (meaning it's difficult as an assault-class to take down those pesky snipers), ladders were removed from several levels because players were complaining about the non-linear combat of Battlefield.
There's so much about this game I hate. It's not even like previous Battlefield, it's a Call of Duty wannabe.
At least Call of Duty can get their game mechanics to operate smoothly and reward a player who's familiar with older COD games. | video-games_xbox |
Gorgeous, but be Patient. Reviews are opinions other people have about a certain items or products. This one will be no different, however I urge you to try this game for yourself...even if its just a rent. You may dislike somethings, but at least you won't miss an excellent game altogether!
I must say the visuals are absolutely mind blowing! The dust and particles blowing in the wind and around the shanty's is downright
amazing. This brings me to my first category:
Graphics/Visuals: (A+) If your a fan of COD4/5 photo realistic environments, RE5 is going to blow you away! The details in everything from the small puddles of water to the wood grain on doors and planks honestly takes you right into the game! The blood, and liquid properties of things are spot on, and really take gaming to a new level! If your into stunning graphics or need something new to show off that HDTV, this game will sell it!
Sounds/Surround: (A+) This is one of my favorite new features of "next gen" games, the surround sound is so important and just adds that level of realism, especially in games like RE! The crunching of sand under your feet, the banging of angry zombies on wooden doors, your partner opening up a fully automatic weapon behind you in the distance...all promise to keep you playing on the edge of your seat! I was very impressed with the sound of this game, hearing hordes of zombies coming right at you (front speakers) and the loud shout of your comrade telling you to "watch out" (rear speakers) all of this combined with snarling zombies, and random 9mm rounds popping...incredible!
Gameplay: (A) Okay I broke this down into two sections multiplayer co-op(MP), and single player campaign(SP)
MP-Playing RE5 co-op with a buddy is something that has never been done before in a RE game, and believe me it is an excellent addition! Having to help a real person playing along side you and vice versa is nerve racking, hearing your friend yelling into the mic "hey I got 3 more coming on my right can you get em" is just something you don't get when the AI player cries for help. Its so nice, helping each other and actually talking about solutions, and what way to go next...however its a double edge sword. (read SP)
SP-While playing with a buddy is awesome, SP has some perks also. You'll be controlling Chris, while Sheva is computer controlled (for the most part) The real bonus to SP campaign is Sheva talks and gives you little "hints" as to whats next. I found it kinda nice at certain points of the game where your just completely turned around with no clue where to go. Personally for me though if you got the internet, and a buddy with RE5...go with the CO-OP, the end experience is hard to beat!
Controls (B/C) This depends on what kinda games your used to. If you find yourself playing strictly first person shooters (CoD, Halo) this game WILL take some getting used to. Its a slower paced action than your used to seeing in FPS games, but if you have the patience to learn your gonna be in for a surprise. You can not reload or shoot while moving, which many people have complained about. While this is frustrating at times (namely when a mob of zombies is headed your way and your mp5 is dry) it adds to the urgency of the moment! Make sure your gun is always reloaded and get some distance between you and the enemy (remember that spade shovel they got reaches a lot farther than your knife also) Watch your partners back and hope for the same from them and I promise you will have a great time with this game.
All in all I give this game a 9.2/10 with the controls being the only thing you need to get used to, but not a deal breaker, or a reason to overlook this amazingly well told story.
Enjoy! | video-games_xbox |
A gamers game. Resident Evil 4. This is by far the best Resident Evil of the behind the back era. Basically what I'm saying is no Resident Evil after this one was anywhere as close to as great as this one was and is. I played 5 and 6 and now 7. They all were enjoyable but 4 tops them all by a long shot. I mean everything about it is better. The enemy's, the bosses, the quality of the game. Puzzles, voice acting, ties to original RE games, replayability. NOW I'm hearing other reviews talk of the controls. Well I played this game back in the day and loved it and have also played it more recently on the 360 and now ONE. I can tell you the controls are exactly the same but they now have alternate options mainly because the original game came out on the Gamecube which doesn't have a left trigger and bumper. So people used to other games using the left trigger for aiming will want the alternate controls while those who want the original controls still have that option. I prefer the original but there's no real difference. Just one uses the left trigger to look down the sites. Anyone complaining about the controls do NOT listen to, they are whack saying that. At worst the alternate controls are default and you have to change it to the original. Which by the way if you've never played this game you'll WANT the alternate controls so thats why they have it at default. I'd suggest this game to anyone who wants to play any resident evil game cuz this one is the best post RE 2 which if you don't know is a completely different style of game and not available on the XBOX. I've beat this game many times and still make it a point to play it again every few years. I'ts THAT good. Often games don't age well and therefore I do not suggest people to play them but THIS game aged well and is one of only a few games I'd tell people of all ages to play. Some games are not even worth getting good at but this game actually gets funner and more enjoyable on your second and third play throughs. If you truly have never played Resident Evil 4 then buy it right now. It was a great game ahead of it's time when it came out and is still a great game some 15 years later. | video-games_xbox |
An amazing machine (from an actual owner of an elite. The XBox 360 elite finally pushed me over the edge. I've been resisting buying a 360 for a while (mostly because of hardware reliability concerns) but recently purchased the elite console. Now that I've done it I can't believe I waited this long--I'm enjoying gaming immensely, have barely scratched the surface of Xbox live, and have linked the console to my Windows Media Center PC and am messing around with the many capabilities there as well. I own (and love) a Wii and have nothing against Sony, but I'm very impressed with the XBox 360.
FIRST, THE CONSOLE: The XBox 360 features amazing graphics and an enormous library of games that, as of the time of this writing, dwarfs those of the PS3 and Wii. Initially I was concerned that the PS3 would perform better, but from what I've read and seen it seems the framerate and graphical capability of the XBox is at least equal to the PS3, though I have no desire to argue the point because I think they're both great machines. My reason for choosing the XBox had more to do with game selection, really, and in that the XBox excels.
GAMES: The XBox's library of games is unparalleled right now. There are many incredible XBox exclusive titles, from the obvious Halo 3 to games like Bioshock, Forza 2, and Gears of War (and this is a very small sampling of what's actually out there). I'm not impressed with the PS3's game library, and while I couldn't live without my Nintendo franchises like Zelda, Mario, and Metroid I'm finding myself craving more games beyond the party type games (which the Wii is great for) and Nintendo's own titles.
XBOX LIVE: The Xbox's online community is second to none right now, and while I can see promise for both Sony and Nintendo in this area neither system offers as much as the XBox does at the time of this writing. Aside from the enormous and well-established community, the XBox live marketplace offers classic games, TV shows, and movies for download, as well as game trailers and demos and a whole lotta other stuff. I love being able to download so many demos of games I might like to try--it saves on some rental fees for sure--and I'm looking forward to picking up some classic games like Contra and the incredible Castlevania: Symphony of the Night soon. I wouldn't say the classic game library rivals Nintendo's Virtual Console yet (not even close, really), but there are some great games nonetheless.
THE HARDWARE: The XBox elite is black, which I personally prefer to the white. It has an HDMI port and comes with a cord, so it's capable of full 1080p HD. I also love the 120 GB hard drive--though I've never been one to fill a game console's hard drive it's nice to know I have the space, and with all the game demos and other things I've been downloading it may become a possibility. The Elite also functions as a DVD player with upconverting capability, and the quality I get from playing a DVD on my XBox is incredible, so much so that I'm not using my old DVD player anymore for regular DVDs.
Hardware reliability has been a concern, and was something that really held me back for a while. Following were a couple of my major concerns and this is how the Xbox 360 has handled them:
-Noise. My 360 is much quieter than many reviews led me to believe. My wife doesn't know its on unless she's in the same room.
-Heat. This was a big one for me. I don't have space to keep the console upright--it has to be on its side--and I've heard horror stories of overheating after very little play. The console has about 18 inches behind it for ventilation and seems to run just fine, though I haven't had it on for more than about 3 hours at a time. There's a lot of heat coming out the back of it but the console itself doesn't seem to heat up much. When it's really hot outside I keep an upright fan blowing the general direction of my TV (where the Xbox is) and plan on getting a cooling system just to be safe, but so far heat has not really been an issue for me.
-Ruining discs - I've heard of the console scratching discs beyond playability and also of cracking. My console lays on its side and I don't move it while a disc is playing, and so far I've had no issues, though I haven't used it enough to say it will never happen.
-Red Ring of Death - Again, no problems yet. The 3 year warranty helps, though the prospect of not having the thing for a couple months while they fix it brings my blood almost to a boil just thinking about it.
Overall I'm tremendously happy with my XBox 360, and my only real concern with it is the potential for hardware failure. Still, this is a great machine, and definitely worth the price tag for me. I'm disappointed that wireless capability was not included in the console (it's a pretty expensive add-on), since both the Wii and the PS3 have that built in. Since I have an HD TV I'd love to have a built in HD-DVD player, but I think it was a wise choice not to force it upon people who don't want it by building it into the machine. | video-games_xbox |
Phenomenal Value and Great Quality for the Price. For a measly $18, this charging station set is a phenomenal deal! You get 2 NiCad batteries that fit into the back of the XBOX one controllers where the batteries are normally stored. Additionally, there is an independent 2 position stand to store your controllers when they need to be charged or tucked away. What is really nice about the stand is the fact that it has independent LED charging indicators. When the charger base is red, it is charging, and when it is green, it is finished. The battery packs do not charge with the USB cable like the Microsoft brand charging kit, because the batteries do not use the same contacts that are in the battery compartment that the original uses. Instead, there are contacts on the back of the battery packs. The covers for the batteries have the XBOX logo, which is a nice touch, and they have a cut out that allows the battery contacts to be exposed. When you need to charge the controllers, you simply put them on the stand and press down on the stand to lock it in and the charge contacts will mate. You may have to adjust the controller on the stand to get it to charge, but you can tell it's doing its thing once the red LED illuminates. Nice and simple. When it's done charging, it will turn green. I highly recommend pressing down on the stand to put it in its storage position, so the batteries can last longer. Never overcharge or keep the batteries constantly charging, or the batteries won't last as long.
The packaging on this product is amazing. It really gives you the feel of a premium product, and the fact that it is officially licensed by Microsoft puts the cherry on top.
I've had the product for a few days, and I have been playing Halo 5 on and off for approximately 10 hours, and the XBOX home screen says I've only used about 1/4 of the battery.
I haven't used the IR extender, so I cannot report on how it works, but it is definitely a nice added bonus.
I highly recommend this product. It is and excellent value, simple to use, easy to set up, conserves space, and looks sharp! | video-games_xbox |
Highly recommended - Most polished 3rd person shooter to date. As someone who has played all the previous Gears of War games and has played a vast majority of well-known and lesser-known 3rd person and 1st person shooters, I have to say that this is one of my favorites.
Pros:
- The campaign is one of the most enjoyable experiences I've had in a long time. The game progressively gets better and more exciting as it goes and without spoiling anything, the game ends in a unique and fun manor as opposed to the traditional "throw everything at them and make it frustratingly hard" type ending.
- The new main characters are funny and relatable in a way that previous Gears games were not. They really nailed the combination of old and new characters and leaving you wanting more.
- The multiplayer is flawless. The dedicated servers help this a lot as there's no noticeable lag since I've started playing. The new game modes are fun and the weapon balancing is on point. In old Gears games, there were times where I wondered how I died and how I didn't get the kill. I can honestly say that when I die in this game, it's because my aim was off and I just straight up lost the battle. The maps are excellent as well and they've also started to implement some of their best maps from previous games.
- Horde mode is now a class based system (although you're not locked into a specific character for each class) and I have to say I'm loving it. It brings an entirely new strategy to the game and forces you to work together as a team. Every 10 levels there is a boss wave that will throw a random boss at you and I have to say, the variety of these is extremely fun. Each enemy has their own "oh s***" abilities and you have to have a completely different strategy depending on which one appears.
Cons:
- Shotguns are more powerful than ever in multiplayer and it may be hard for some players to realize that since the Lancer has always been the staple for the series. Once you learn this, however, the experience gets exponentially better.
- The power in Horde mode is shared between you and your teammates. Therefore if you get one bad apple that just keeps buying useless items in times you don't need them, when the time comes where you need something you may not have it. For the most part I haven't run into this problem too much but it does happen occasionally.
If you've taken some time off from Gears, or are interested in dipping into the franchise a bit, this is the perfect starting point. The game looks incredible, the gameplay is perfect, and it's just tons of gory fun. Highly recommended! | video-games_xbox |
Very short game--maybe okay for a rental. TMNT is the latest of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games and is the companion to the recent movie of the same title. You fight as each of the turtles, and sometimes can switch between them, through several stages (I think there were 14 or 16) that more or less (often less) accompany the plot of the movie. This is a typical movie-based game, short and without anything defining to make it really worthwhile, but not a complete waste of time if you rent it.
The Good:
-Well, it IS the Turtles, so that's a definite plus if you're a fan of either the originals or the new movie.
-The fighting and some of the Turtles' abilities are fun, for a little while at least, to mess around with.
-There aren't many unlockables, but there are a few fun things you can unlock to add variety to the game, including big heads for the Turtles, halloween costumes for the bad guys, and "weekend weapons."
The Bad:
-The game is VERY short. It took me between 4 and 5 hours to complete the game. After completing each stage with an 'A' rating you unlock the ability to play the stages again and find special gold coins in the stage, but there's really no reason to do this and I see little replay value in the game.
-The game is VERY easy with a few really tricky parts. You can die as many times as you want and just keep on playing, and you can fall or miss jumps or whatever and it really doesn't matter. That made me think the game's difficulty was tailored to younger people, but later in the game some of the jump sequences (especially on the last stage) are so difficult they require much more skill than the rest of the game.
-No multiplayer. I understand that some of the stages (like those with Raph as the Watchman) take place with only one Turtle, but what made all the old Ninja Turtles games so great was the ability to play with your friends.
-The camera angle is annoying at times, and there are many times when you're trying to do a certain kind of jump and end up falling to your death because you can't see well enough to line it up correctly or the game just executes the wrong move.
This game is worth renting if you've REALLY got nothing better to do, or if you want some quick Achievement points on the 360, but I definitely wouldn't buy it. It's fun for a while, a short while, but by the time you play the short story mode through you'll be more than ready to move on to something else. | video-games_xbox |
Mature Title - Great Fun for Horror Fans. If you like an action adventure shooting that is full of suspense, give Cold Fear a try. Be warned, this is rated mature, and can get quite scary!
The game is set on a Russian whaling ship in the middle of the ocean, being tossed by really heavy waves. You have heavy rain falling all around you, obscuring your vision and even dripping down your monitor screen. The entire ship lurches from side to side, throwing you off your feet. There are swinging wires and cargo, making it hard to know if a quick movement is a threat or an inanimate object. Faces peer through windows and around corners.
You're a coast guard rescue person sent in on your own to figure out what has happened on the whaler. You quickly discover that the ship is overrun with zombies and your task now is to get through doors, shoot zombies, and save the innocents. Something I have an issue with is that you end up blasting away all the innocent Russian shipworkers. They are afraid of the zombies, and you can read Russian fluently - but instead of calling out "friend!" or something, or trying to show you are a nice guy, you end up in a shooting match and kill them all. Some Coast Guard rescue.
The graphics in general are rather nice, with a very gritty, constantly-in-motion feeling to them. You try to peer through darkness, see in flashing red light situation, get a glimpse of something through the storm of rain and wave.
The sound is immersive as well. You hear hints of movement noise amongst the crashing waves and blaring alarms. It really tests all of your senses, to stay on your toes and stay alive.
On one hand the overall map is small - you're on one ship, with three levels and various rooms. On the other hand, this is in fact a rather large ship, and a lot of the puzzles involve you traversing from one end to the other in a series of 'fetch the handle' or 'find the code key' sorts of missions.
Highly recommended for fans of the horror genre, for some zombie-blasting fun!
Rating: 4.5/5 | video-games_xbox |
Another Great Addition to the AC series. ACR finalizes Ezio Auditore's last journey in the AC Trilogy.
Individual reviews are very mixed. My opinion is that it's awesome and what weaknesses there are (features that I'm not crazy about) aren't enough to spoil my love of this game.
Some of the issues people have can just be ignored by not using things or altering what you do in the game to counter-balance it.
There are 2 aspects to this game for newbies to AC - on the one hand it's the end of a trilogy and since AC is story intensive, it's important to get the backstory to understand what's going on, so I'd recommend picking up the previous 2 games if interested.
At the same time, the Missions and gameplay are not as difficult as previous versions making it a nice intro to new AC gamers - less of a learning curve.
NEW ADDITIONS:
The HOOKBLADE for faster climbing, hook and run maneuvers and zooming down ziplines (fun but there are limited ziplines to use & I found myself unable to use some of them during gameplay due to being at the wrong end of them),
BOMBS are alot of fun and offer new applications for strategy during missions. They seem a little intimidating at first, but there are 4 side missions with a Bomb expert to get familiar with them and a mission tutorial on how to make them. It's not hard.
RECRUITING SYSTEM/MASTER ASSASSINS/DENS
This was a great revamp of the Assassin Recruit system. You now have several Assassin Dens and appoint a Master Assassin over each one.
You also get 2 separate missions with each one which are really good.
Also, Leveling up the Recruits is now turned into a relevant game on its own, so it isn't just random mission to gain them XP. It makes it more enjoyable.
STALKERS were a nice addition. They randomly surprise you from behind and try to kill and steal from you.
Yes, Ezio is 51 yrs old in this chapter but he isn't slowed down any, he almost moves faster than previous games thanks to the Hookblade addition.
What I liked most in this game were the excellent missions. They were less restrictive (better 'sync' objectives & less cumbersome) and they weren't long and tedious. Any longer missions were split into 2 parts.
However, there are a couple very difficult challenges, so it's not a complete cakewalk either.
Alot does depend on your skill level.
Some CONS:
The story is good but could have beem amped up to be more exciting, dramatic and intense even though there are some exciting parts in the later missions.
There are less main and side missions in ACR than previous games so it is shorter than others.
The majority of players didn't favor a new feature, DEN DEFENSE - a mini game where Templars try to take back your Den and you organize Assassins to defeat them.
It's difficult, confusing and there's a learning curve to it.
However at the same time, they've made it somewhat avoidable so you can optionally work to keep from having to play it.
Level your Master Assassins up to Lvl. 15 which will "lock" the den so that Templars can't contest it.
Or keep your "notoriety" (now called Templar Awareness) low by taking out Officials that appear when it raises and/or bribing nearby Heralds.
High Awareness causes the den attacks.
The last Con to add is that there were bugs and glitches for some people and 1 Patch was just released to address that. I had no problems with my game.
Some missions were cinematic and had an "Indiana Jones" feel to them with high action. That was fun.
Some humor and romance sprinkled in with a now more mature Ezio which was done very well and was refreshing.
It made for a very nice, solid, enjoyable game where I didn't end up wanting to whip my controller into the tv screen.
Soundtrack is great (grows on you as you play), some great Characters, Graphics are well done (though less vibrant in color than ACB) and the City was interesting (there is also Cappadocia which you travel to for some new scenery).
Overall it's a very good game that I will replay often just for the fun of the missions. | video-games_xbox |
Pleasantly Pleased. First let me describe a little bit about my background. I own a 32" CRT TV, a Dolby 6.1 surround sound system, a Playstation 1 and 2. My Xbox purchase was a last-minute over-the-budget purchase after I had already budgeted for Christmas. About a week before Christmas I learned that 2 of my brothers-in-law were getting a 360 for Christmas and my wife's aunt and uncle in California already had a unit. So I was under intense peer pressure to say the least to join the Xbox madness.
Up until this time, I was not interested in any of the current gen systems other than a Wii because of some preconceptions that I had. I thought that I would need a hi-def TV to take full advantage of my system. I thought that I would have to upgrade my stereo system if I wanted to use HDMI. As I did a little research, I found this not to be the case at all. In fact, I was really quite amazed at how nice the 360 looks and sounds being connected to an old beater 25" TV that is 10 years old.
So, I decided to take the plunge. My DVD player was dying and I thought Xbox Live might be a good way to keep in touch with remote family members who also have Xbox 360 units. I figured $75 of the cost of the unit I could justify by using the system as a DVD player, at least initially. I decided to get the Elite system for a few reasons. The first reason was for price. In the kit you get the 120gb hard drive, the standard component / a/v cable combo connector, an HDMI cable and the audio out cable to use in conjunction with the HDMI cable. The cost difference alone by including the HDMI kit and the 120gb is greater than the $100 additional cost for the elite system. My current CRT TV has component inputs so I am using the component cable set on standard-def (there is a switch on the side to select hi-def) and optical out for audio to my stereo. If I decide to get an HDTV, I can use the HDMI cable for video and use the optical audio out cable to run to my stereo. I don't have to upgrade my stereo receiver to utilize my stereo in the setup.
Xbox Live has turned out to be a complete blast! I absolutely love all of the features that you can do with it. You can download movie and tv show trailers in addition to supplemental game content and game trailers. You can also download full movies and tv shows by paying for them with points, so you can skip a trip to the video store if you would rather do direct downloads. I also linked in my Windows Live messenger account and I can do text, voice, and video chat with friends on my contact list in addition to players I meet online. It's been a total blast keeping in touch with friends and relatives that the experience is easily worth the $50 / year. You can actually find subscription cards that give you 12 months with 1 free and sometimes they are on sale for $45. My deck had a 1 month trial for a gold level Live account.
I was actually torn for the longest time between a PS3 and an Xbox 360. There were several factors that swayed my decision to the Xbox. The major ones were the interactivity on Live, the ability to play simpler arcade games through live (some of the ones available are the old-school Dig-Dug, Double Dragon, and DOOM, plus countless puzzle, card, and skill games), hardware availability and functionality, comfort and styling of the controllers, and the available library of games.
My unit has had near continual use since I bought it nearly a month ago. We play all our DVDs on the system, we play games at least a couple hours per day, my wife uses it to chat with her relatives out of state (you can chat and communicate with a free included silver level Live account), and we have not had a single problem. One thing I do is I keep my unit on its side (mostly for space reasons) and I make sure there is plenty of space around the unit so that airflow is not restricted.
I love the wireless controllers. The controller has been redesigned from the original Xbox and it couldn't be a more comfortable controller to play with. I have large hands and my PS2 controllers would make my hands hurt after playing for a couple hours. I can play with these controllers for hours with no discomfort at all. The controllers also get great battery life. The included set of Energizers lasted about 3 weeks with heavy use. I have just begun using the play and charge cable with my battery pack. The cord is long, about 6' and has a standard USB connector, so you can actually use a PC or another device with powered USB ports to recharge your controller if you don't want the cord in the way while you play. The controller also has an LED ring divided into 4 quadrants, each with a number. The number of your controller is lit in its quadrant, so it's really easy to figure out what player number you are in a game.
For the cons, there is no included wi-fi adapter. The "official" adapter is a $99 accessory. If you need wi-fi and don't want to use this adapter, you can use a standard USB wi-fi game console adapter, or you can also use an Ethernet bridge connected to the wired network port on the unit. Both items can be found for about 1/2 the cost of the network adapter from Microsoft. I actually prefer the wired connector as I do a lot of downloading now and I get much better performance with the wired port, in addition to better security by not sending the data through the air. Since I haven't gone hi-def yet, I haven't bought into a hi-def format either. I really like how I have the ability to download HD content without having to buy it on disc first. This will let me take advantage of HD content while I wait for the format wars to come to an end, once I get an HDTV. An speaking of content, if you have an HTPC running Windows Media Center, the Xbox 360 can be configured as a Media Center Extender, so you can watch shows, view pictures, and listen to music that you have recorded on your HTPC over the network. If you do not have Media Center Edition, you can still view pictures and listen to music on a Windows XP or later PC after you download a patch to the system.
The unit is also loud. The cooling fans are not as loud as the disc drive unit. I have a good stereo so it's not hard to drown out the noise, but with a cheap TV the system noise could possibly be annoying.
I haven't played a lot of games yet as I blew my budget on the unit itself, but I have played the included Forza Racing and Marvel Ultimate Alliance. The Marvel game was fun to play, because I bought it for my PS2 so I had a title to compare with. The Xbox 360 just blew me away by how great it looks and sounds on cheap supporting hardware. I can only imagine what the experience must be like in HD. My 6.1 system keeps the windows rattling with explosions for now.
While I haven't had hardware issues with this system yet, I have suffered them in the past. It took a class action suit with Sony to give me justice for the pain suffered over my PS2. The fact that Microsoft has a great warranty and is willing to work with us on problems is encouraging.
All in all, I'm really impressed with this system. My 360 is on track to get far more use than my PS2 ever did. I can't believe just how much "fun" this system is to play with. | video-games_xbox |
Tediously Repetitive. The gameplay here is tediously boring and repetitive. I mean, how many different holes and how many types of gaps are you going to need to jump across before you find it boring. And to make matters worse, if you do miss the jump, you have to start back from the start of that area. Usually, this is not too far back from where you were, but I recall fairly early in the game that after failing the jump a few times, I was taken back to a point previous to a boss battle! That's cheap gameplay. C'mon, use some creativity and come up with some fun activities for the gamer.
Ok, the story had promise. But really, such a beautiful story would have been better told in the form of an RPG. Say, an RPG like the old Xenosaga franchise, or Final Fantasy franchise. Now, it does not have to be turned-based gameplay, but you do want to invest in both plot and character development. Here, Enoch's character was not developed well enough. You feel rather ambivalent towards Enoch. And you are never drawn into the story. There was never any flow to the story. All that requirement to jump and repeat yourself at the same spot took away from the plot.
Here, there are very few options available to the player in terms of weaponry and armor. You only get to switch your weapon when you steal it from an enemy, or during points in the game where you get to choose. And then you're stuck with it until you steal another type or get to a switch point. Not much control, and not much fun.
All this platforming is just the kind of game that you want to play in mind-numbing repetition when you have an absolute abundance of time to kill. But, in my opinion, it is not quality gameplay. I can now understand why this game did not sell many copies. And the people who bought it, just like me, were expecting a tightly-told story of Enoch. And that is not what you get. What you get is Enoch "Light". The main character is Enoch, the main premise is that he is given a mission to apprehend the rogue angels (Watchers) and bring them before the Council. Each of the Watchers are given a motivation for betraying God and throwing a monkey wrench on his plans for human evolution. But it never gets any deeper than that. The beautiful story of Enoch should have been given the right treatment.
Ok, is this game totally bad? It depends on the type of gamer you are. If you are a dedicated platformer, then you might like it. If you are in it for the story, then you will be very dissapointed. If you like action, you will be dissapointed. But, there is no denying the artistry that went into this game. The scenes are beautiful. The music is fitting. The drawings are breathtaking. But, the gameplay and the story both suffer badly. | video-games_xbox |
Excellent game, and for the experience it offers it's the game that sold me the Xbox One. Originally I did not know whether I would love this or not but consider my mind blown. It is difficult to quantify into words the exact type of experience I have had with Quantum Break to say the least. Suffice to say though, it has been both one of the most enjoyable - and most unique game experiences for this era of games. After seeing the PC version just doesn't run the same and missing the content that the X1 carries in spades, I took the plunge. Needless to say the detailed story of Jack Joyce planted a firm grip on me that just didn't let go. Unlike Alan Wake, Quantum Break is a very cerebral experience when it comes to its plot. There's even a couple easter eggs paying tribute to Chrono Trigger. It is a game that anticipates the player will already have some knowledge about time travel, or even passing fascination with the 1970's serials that were so infamous. Provided you can comprehend it, the nature of this game's story is quite possibly among the best in its genre. Every single element of Jack's journey with his brother is explained in an eloquent manner through in-game cut scenes. The motivations of Paul to at first use Jack's brother and then later get rid of him to steal the time displacement technology, are amazingly well done. The ideas behind what it is like to be at the head of your game, only to end up like Jack does; as a pawn in someone else's scheme of playing God are well thought out and conceived.
As well the formula of displacing different timelines in order to control the outcome; so that time flows your desired direction reminded me a lot of Farscape for various reasons. Replace parallel worlds with timelines, and the results are eerily similar. One word I would use to describe Jack's journey to fix time: Deep. While the T.V. show movies are more or less B sitcom level material, it did show me the potential a game like that could deliver with an all-star worthy form of the medium. Very glad Microsoft lets you alter the control scheme. Playing it multiple times through and seeing the results as different characters show up such as Chris, was a great touch for sure although it's not as deep as advertised. I really enjoyed the decision junction system and felt a multiplayer add on could be great for this one. All in all, I recommend buying this game if you enjoy thrillers. Because this genre happened to be exactly what I like, this game was perfect in nearly every way for me. I admit I liked the story more than Alan Wake even though AW's a classic. If you are on the fence, it's a definite must buy for thirty bucks as I paid more. Just go into the game with an open mind is the only advice I can offer. Thanks for making this unique AAA title Remedy. Later on I'll definitely review the collector's edition. | video-games_xbox |
Ace Combat 6 Is Awesome. Another great entry in great combat flight-sim series. The graphics and gameplay are better than ever, and the classic gimmicks are present: giant airships, flying through tunnels, flying through valleys, superweapons that need killin', and lots of radio chatter and other atmospherics. The video preview that greets you when you turn the game on is fantastic - dramatic visuals and dialogue and soaring music. I usually sat through the whole thing before starting play. The overall story and cutscenes are well-done, if not terribly deep.
On the graphics, the designers have subtly ramped up the contrails left by missiles to give a much more hectic sense of the action in combat zones.
Overall grade: A-minus.
Nitpicks:
1) I'm still waiting on a mission into space. The exact details of why and how this would happen in the game would be no less cheesy than many of the other elements used in the series. Tip to the game production team: they used specially modified jets to fly into space in an episode of GI Joe. Really, you can just rip off that episode. Think about that for Ace Combat 7.
2) Did the narration at the beginning of the final mission really say that the superweapon, designed to combat a devastating hail of meteorites, was decommissioned because of concerns that it could be used as a weapon? In the story, the meteorite storm destroyed the infrastructure and the economy of one of the major nations while damaging others and killing hundreds of thousands of people. No reasonable person could think that's a logical risk-reward course of action. Sure, it was eventually used as a weapon, but pre-storm the right course of action would be to build the thing, shoot down the meteorites, and work to keep it in check afterwards.
3) There is one high-altitude encounter with a support plane and the tunnel/valley missions, but the game could have used a mission or objective requiring very high altitude, and very low altitude. The designers obviously took a lot of pride in designing the capital city of Gracemeria - they should force the player to have a close look via skimming the waves under the bridge or flying through the skyscrapers.
4) The designers were able to cut costs by having fewer missions that were longer and more intricate, but some more bite-sized missions and objectives could have enhanced the game experience and allowed the player to explore extreme conditions. Perhaps a Trial Mode could be considered for Ace Combat 7.
5) In this politically correct age, it's understandable that the designers opted for such bland, faceless villains, but still disappointing. They partly made up for this by giving us a good look at some of the enemy pilots. | video-games_xbox |
Fun and unique experience with lots of replay value. This game has always been one of my favorites. You can gamble at a casino, take a jet ski into the ocean, go down a spiraling water slide, have a butt battle, play tug of war, race to grab a beach flag, send gifts to the other girls, customize your girl with skimpy or classy bikinis, and of course, play beach volleyball(and more!) This game is definitely taking Dead or Alive gamers to a whole new level. In this game, you go on a vacation and there is no fighting; just games and excitement. Each vacation lasts around 15 days, and it almost seems like it isn't enough time to get everything done.
The only negative part about this game would possibly be the controls. Unfortunately in games such as the butt battle, water slide, and the tug of war, the game seems to be based highly on luck. The water slide is somewhat easy, but only if you have a walkthrough to help you get past the biggest spirals(it would be particularly hard to figure out what to do.)
Other than a few flaws in the controls, this game really is a load of fun. You will find yourself wanting to replay it because there is always more that you can do. You choose from about 8-9 characters, and each girl has over 100 swimsuits/accessories that can be equipped or gifted to another girl. There are also 3 hotels for each girl to stay at, each with a unique style. Additionally, if you like to try your luck with gambling there is a virtual casino you can play at in the night time with tons of games including roulette, blackjack, poker, and slot machines with money that you earn from beach challenges during the day(and you get to play with the other girls!) The game does include sex appeal(bouncing upper parts, REALLY small bikinis, girls rubbing each other down, and even a pole dance option that can be unlocked through the slot machines.) so I don't think it is suitable for younger kids.... unless you're okay with that sort of thing. I really love this game! | video-games_xbox |
Falls short. The game in general is fun to play and is put together pretty well. However it falls short in just about ever corner. The menus are not user friendly and take too long to navigate through. Career mode i pretty good as long as you are not trying to read emails, apply new patches to your shorts or really do anything besides fighting and training. It would be nice if you could do more training camps and that going through those would actually have more of an effect on your players skill.
In actual fights the speed seems pretty good and if you are not a hardcore fan you most likely won't realize that the actual number of moves a fighter can do are pretty limited and that a fighter only has the same generic moves that ever other fighter with the same style has. Also the number of styles you have to choose from is kind of limited and it doesn't really make sense that you only get to choose from only one stand up and one ground style when in today's world of fighting fighters combine several different styles of both standing and ground.
The biggest draw back to the game would have to be online play. Because online play will add to the longevity of game play it is too bad that there are so many short comings in this area. Between taking so much time trying to find a match and then having so many games lagging which I don't understand why this happens considering the simplicity of the game compared to other online games whether you are talking about sports games like madden, fifa, forza motorsports 2, all of which have much more data that has to be synced between the two or more people that are playing, or even first person shooters, like Call of duty, Rainbow 6, Halo, all of which have several more people playing in the same game. All of these games have much less lag in online play then UFC. But by far the biggest complaint I have is even after you go through the slow process of getting to the online section through the menus and then finally finding a game is that for probably 40-50% of your wins the other person will turn off their system before the game recognizes your win thus nullifying the match. Players can do this because there is no repercussions for doing this. Except in my case where that player becomes the newest member on my ever expanding list of avoided players. To the developers I suggest for repeated complaints against a specific user for doing so they lose their ability to play online ranked matches for "x" period of time.
Overall I give the game a C+ it has promise and hopefully in the not too distant future they will create a sequel and build from this point. | video-games_xbox |
PS3/XBOX360 Objective Comparison. Reliability:
I own a video game store. One of the services that we provide is various repairs on most game consoles. In the last year, I have performed around 60 individual XBOX 360 repairs compared to 0 (zero) PS3 repairs. PS3 Wins Hands Down
Compatability:
The 60GB version of the PS3 is FULLY backwards compatible with PS2 and most PS 1 games. The new 80GB version has some limited backwards compatability. The 40GB version has no backwards compatability. All versions of the 360 (Arcade, Pro and Elite) have the same limited backwards compatability. At least PS3 has a version that is fully backwards compatable. PS3 WINS
Value:
The new 80GB version of the PS3 retails for $399.00. This includes an 80GB hard drive (obviously), built in Bluetooth, and built in WIFI. Oh and lets not forget that the DVD player in the PS3 will play all of your regular AND Blu-Ray DVDs. The lowest cost 360 is the Arcade version that retails for around $199. This version does not come with a hard drive which will cost you around $100 for 60GB, nor does it have built in WIFI. The WIFI adapter retails for around $100 also. So for $399 you essentially get 20GB less storage...oh and NO BLU RAY!!! PS3 WINS
Game Selection:
Let's say that most games nowadays are released on both PS3 and 360, but there are some titles that are exclusive to each. Some of the hotest exclusive titles are:
PS3 - Metal Gear Solid, SOCOM, Little Big Planet, Resistance 2
360 - Fable II, Gears of War 2 and of course Halo 3
Overall, since the 360 has been around for a few more years, there are more titles available, but some of the most popular like BioShock have been ported over now to the PS3...most of the others will follow suit (except Halo which will probably always be a 360 only title). 360 WINS (but not for very much longer)
So of the 3 main decision points as to which console to purchase. PS3 scored 3 out of 4 to the 360's score of 1 out of 4.
Let me also say that I make more money selling the 360 because of all of the periphery that you have to buy along with it (more margin in accessories) so I hope people continue to go in that direction. However, when viewed objectively, the PS3 is clearly the way to go. | video-games_xbox |
ES: A Great & Fun Musical Adventure. Eternal Sonata is probably one of the best JRPGs out there for the X-box 360 currently to date. There are some negatives and positives to the game, but over all, the game mixes music and JRPGs together to create something fun and enjoyable.
Story: The story of Eternal Sonata is basically about Frederic Chopin dreaming about a vivid world as he lies on his deathbed. You basically play through his world that crosses between dream and reality. The story is something that piqued my interest when I first saw Eternal Sonata and I thought it was interesting. The only problem I had with the story is that it moved to fast sometimes and that some parts were irrelevant -- like getting water for a flower. Another problem I had is that the game was short --- I finished it in about 29 hours.
Graphics & Music: The graphics and the music of Eternal Sonata are just suburb and beautiful. The graphics is unique and is one of the highlights of the game. Furthermore, the music is just stunning and I could listen to it everyday.
Gameplay: One of the most fun things of Eternal Sonata is the battle system. The battle system is a "Shared-Time/Real-Time Battle System." Basically meaning that as characters attack the enemy, the game moves in real time only in the time allotted to each of the characters. It's pretty easy to understand and has a unique system of light/dark where depending on where you are, your attacks change or the monsters change.
Characters: You have a choice of 3 out 10 characters to have in your party. The characters all have unique designs and have their own story to be said. The sad point of the game is that you really don't get to know the characters, especially the bad guys --- you know them for one second and then that's it.
Others: The game is of a linear aspect, there really is no exploring of the map. Also, there is very little side quests in your first play through. In addition, the camera is a set-view and you cannot change the camera to your liking. These points really didn't bother me though.
Overall, Eternal Sonata is a great game that I would recommenced you to play if you like JRPGs. I had a fun time playing it even with it's negatives. | video-games_xbox |
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