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Observations on the Game. I played the first Halo game in 2001. The campaign was longer. The enemies were more developed. They were led by religious zealotry and hatred of the enemies. They were fighting for control of Installation 04. Some of the levels were larger, like the Library and the Assault on the Control Room. In the latter, there was more than one path to follow. I remember a snowy plain where you had to get to a Banshee. Between you and the Banshee, there was a large number of Covenant personnel and vehicles. The player could do a frontal attack or take a flanking path to the Banshee. Legendary was hard because the enemies were smarter and more dangerous. The character's health was dependent on health packs. The character was, also, protected by a shield. Multiplayer was an option on this game. The backstory on this game was later presented in novels, which not required, did give the player more information on this universe.
Eleven years later, the face of FPS shooters has changed. The campaign is shorter. The enemies are generic mindless killing devices. They have one purpose in life - to stop the player from reaching or accomplishing an objective. There is no backstory, because the developers expect the player to bone up on the books, the comics, the webisode, and whatever else there is. if the player doesn't have the interest or the money to pay for these items, they are left in the cold as to what is happening. As much as this is an attempt to get the player invested in the series, it's a marketing ploy to get more money from the fanbase. The levels are shorter. After having played through the eight levels, I haven't come upon an level as complex and challenging as the Assault on the Control Tower. Mostly, the player is defending an area, pushing a button, or putting in or taking Cortana out. The Master Chief has a replenishing health bar. In this game, the shield is a short-lived hardshell that is carried by the chief. It's equivalent to the shields wielded by the Jackals. There are other devices that the chief can use - a thruster pack, a jet pack, a sentinel turret, an invisibility cloak, and a heat sensor. For me, other than the sentinel turret, these devices were gimmicks. During the game, the jet pack was truly useful in only one scenario. Having played Mass Effect as a engineer, I am comfortable with having a turret covering my back. There are some weird design flaws in the game. You can use a laser designator to take out an objective, but you can't use it on something that isn't an objective.
Vehicle combat has been a mainstay of this series since the beginning. In this game, the player can take control of a Warthog, a Scorpion, a Mongoose, a Broadsword, a Ghost, a Banshee, or the Mantis. The controls are good, but the areas that the vehicles are driven on are small, and this smallness can create a challenge when driving a vehicle. Vehicles are great in large areas. They were great in the first game because many of the vehicular areas were large. My favorite vehicle in the series is the Mantis. It's a well designed Mech, and for me, is the first Mech, where the cockpit can be rotated 360 degrees. I noticed an interesting design flaw; in the first game, a player could fire on a Banshee from a ranged weapon and do damage. In this game, when I attempt to do the same, my weapons have no effect on the Banshee. I attempted this three times, with the same result.
Weapons come in three categories: the UNSC, the Covenant faction, and the Prometheans. I have often found myself running out of ammo on these weapons, and being told that I needed to scavenge a weapon on the battlefield. I didn't need this announcement; I am not blind to the fact that I have run out of ammo. I don't know for sure if running out of ammo is because I am a poor shot, or there is a lack of ammo in this game. I did think often, that the enemies were bullet sponges.
There are seven types of enemies, four Covenant and three Promethean. The Sentinels are not enemies, and appear infrequently in this game. The Covenant are the same from the types from the first game. The Elite did feel to me that they were easier to kill. I am confused about the Prometheans Knights - they were humans who were turned into data streams. How does someone turn a being of matter into a being of data? The best I can determine about the Prometheans and the Covenant fanatics is that they are the henchman of the Didact.
Now, the Didact. He is an ancient Forerunner who was imprisoned by the Librarian, another forerunner. Apparently, he had a beef against Humans, and is now set on destroying them. I think he would fit very well into Bond films. His backstory and motivation aren't as important as that he presents a threat to the protagonist. I did grow tired of his ramblings. He is the type of villain who loves monologues and taunting the protagonist. He demonstrates his hatred of Humans in a brutal scene that may frighten the little ones.
The Master Chief is altered by the Librarian. This change is not explained in the story; the only thing that is learned is that his bioreadings have changed and he can survive the Didact's attack.
A major plot point is that Cortana is rampaging. I feel that her rampages are acting as a plot device to move the plot forward; I don't feel that her disintegration is handled well. The Master Chief is constantly assuring her that she will be fine and that they will find Dr. Halsey. Apparently, Cortana is made from genetic material taken from Dr. Halsey and the only way to restore Cortana is to get more genetic material from Dr. Halsey. I have seen this plot thread before in Star Trek; in one episode, a woman is aged by a virus to an old age, and the only way to restore her youth is by entering genetic material into a transporter, than transporting that woman again. It doesn't make sense to me; an AI is a data stream. Yet here she is treated like a being of matter who has a virus and is aging herself to death. Do the writers understand what matter is and what a data stream is? Its errors like this that plaque the story, and make it incomprehensible.
The allies are canon fodder. I did encounter an unusual situation. During one level, a friendly Warthog began firing on my Scorpion. Though the reticule showed the vehicle as green, it was firing at me. I returned fire and destroyed the vehicle, There was no reaction from the friendly AIs on the tank; in the past, there would have been a comment or two about me taking out a friendly. I did find in one scene that the commanding officer of Infinity acted unprofessionally, and I found this scene disconcerting. This is when he demands Cortana to be deactivated.
The background chatter present in the first game is less in this game.
There are sound issues in this game. I noticed that I would play a level, then die, get resurrected, and lines of dialog that were audible before are not audible now. I now this because I had close caption on. The music was muted in this game; there weren't as many Halo themes in this game during battles.
The graphics in this game are excellent in cinematics. Yet, when the game is playing, there are resolution issues. In one level, I was riding a gondola and I noticed that the graphics looked like something out of Borderlands. There were also frame rate issues; in one sequence, the frame rate dropped considerably.
I haven't played multiplayer nor co-op, so I can't comment on those.
For myself, this game is in line with other games of this generation. It plays like Call of Duty, Battlefield, Medal of Honor, and Fear 3. I consider this game to have better graphics than any of those other titles. The music is on par with those other games. The campaign does its job admirably; most campaigns in FPS shooters nowadays are tutorials for the multiplayer. They define what is possible and what can be expected in the multiplayer. Though I miss the old shooters, I know that the days of long campaigns, complex levels, and intelligent AI are things of the past. If a player wants to compete against an intelligent enemy, they can do so by playing against other players. | video-games_xbox |
Bargain Bin Buy. Bought this to play through the campaign with a buddy - and honestly, I'm pretty disappointed. But first, the positives.
The concept itself is pretty interesting - setting you up as an opposing force for the bad guys in a historically big videogame event - the fall of Raccoon City. The playable characters look unique, the voice acting is fairly decent, and a couple of the mechanics - infection and bleeding, are nice touches.
On to the cons. The biggest con for me was the AI, both of the enemy, but more particularly of your AI teammates. They don't employ their specials in a timely fashion, they won't heal you (with the exception of the medic, and even then, with little rhyme or reason), walk into fire, and won't play with a modicum of intelligence. Several of the levels involve mines with laser tripwires - AI Teammates run into them, and having been blown up, they then proceed to charge into the second row, and then possibly the third. And these aren't hidden tripwires. In one area, there are walls of flame. They will stand in the fire and slowly roast. Honestly, I don't think I've ever seen NPC AI this bad - at least not since the PS1 generation, and even then, no truly worse example comes to mind.
I played through as the stealth character - Vector - which had some interesting mechanics - cloaking ability, motion detection, silent movement, etc, all of which would have been interesting, had the game allowed me to use them. But, the level design wasn't very conductive to it. When it was possible, the AI teammates just charged ahead anyway, triggering every encounter possible. So I pretty much was just another generic shooter guy, except when I could use the stealth ability to revive downed team mates, and occasionally try and outflank or get behind a group of Spec Ops (which often seemed to trigger successive encounters, or pull more into the firefight).
Speaking of level design, it's very straightforward. Point A to Point B, which isn't itself bad. Nothing wrong with it. But they aren't conductive to using the various skill sets provided to the team - few opportunities to snipe (which really makes me wonder what the Sniper, Spectre, is for, given the mobs and zombies appearing out of nowhere), minimal chance to employ stealth, and not particularly conductive to the use of teamwork. The general formula is to overcome waves and waves of more or less identical zombies, generic Special Forces, and the occasional Lictor or other BioWeapon. Enemy AI is simple in the extreme - they charge. That's it, with the exception of Spec Ops, which shoots and ducks.
Graphically, it's a bit unimpressive. Pretty generic, pretty choppy character animation, and fairly forgettable - aside from some of the special effects and the sync kills for hand to hand, it reminds me more of an end of last generation title. Zombies also crawl out of solid walls, solid floors, and various other solid objects. Compared to some of the other recent games - including the rather disappointing Dead Island - ORC just doesn't hold its own graphically.
Story wise, there really isn't one. You interact with a few of the mainline RE characters, very, very briefly - a couple of sentences here and there. And the gullibility of your team in its dealings with Umbrella borders on ludicrous, serving only to move you from one section to the next.
Overall, ORC showed a lot of initial promise - great premise, interesting character types and abilities, big name behind it. I wanted to love it, but I can't. It failed horribly in the execution, poor attention to detail, and monumentally bad AI.
If I could do it again, I'd Wait for it to hit $20. | video-games_xbox |
classic barbarian hero. Starring the classic barbarian hero of Robert E. Howard's stories, "Conan" is a sword-swinging testosterone-heavy hack and slash game that, while not necessarily innovative, is a fun romp in the spirit of the archetypical warrior.
"Conan" is basically a game that wears its heart on its sleeve: it's a game about hacking through legions of enemies and monsters, getting treasure, and rescuing attractive, scantily-clad women. It's a beat-em-up in the same vein as games like God of War. By default, Conan uses his famous Atlantean sword, but other styles of weapons (picked up from weapon racks or taken from fallen enemies) include dual-wielding weapons, two-handed weapons, and sword-and-shield style. Each style has its own moveset, purchased with "red runes" gained by opening treasure chests and killing foes. Unlocked moves function like combos in a fighting game, for the most part; some moves have special traits, like breaking an enemy's block or even stealing their weapon. The game relies fairly heavily on QTEs, which can get annoying quickly and detracts from the overall feel of the game (especially during boss fights).
As the game progresses, players also unlock magic spells in a linear fashion (one per stage, essentially, for a maximum of four). These vary in usefulness - the basic spell is a petrification spell that can basically clinch fights against most opponents, while more expensive spells are arguably less valuable in terms of mana cost. Advancing statistics like health and magic power is done by finding "triumvirates" in each level - essentially a short puzzle that results in a boost to one of those two stats or a lump sum of red runes.
The enemies and obstacles provide the main content in the game. These can range from standard soldiers with different weapons and armor (swordsmen, spearmen, archers, and so on) to wild animals (dogs and gorillas) to outright monsters. Finding their patterns and how best to deal with them is a relatively exciting part of the game, and they're varied enough that it doesn't get old quickly. For the most part, they feel like challenges, too: even a simple soldier can defend himself well enough to be more than a speed-bump.
The game's graphics are reasonably good. They're not worth it by themselves, but the locales and designs are at least detailed and pleasant to look at. The sound is all right, being primarily memorable for the endless stream of one-liners that Conan spouts ("You scratch like a child!" or "My blade thirsts!"), though the music is pretty impressive too.
Conan is essentially a "fun" game. It's not necessarily notable or well-made, but it's the kind of game you can pick up and work your way through without having to think about it too much. If you like hack-and-slash games, you'll probably enjoy Conan.
Rating: 7/10.
FTC Note: Conan was purchased from a game store with our own money. | video-games_xbox |
Incredible. I got this guitar for $59.99, no shipping and no sales tax. I didn't really need it, as my plastic RB3 guitar was holding up nicely, but for that price (even cheaper than my plastic guitar) I just couldn't pass it up. I know that this guitar has been out for a while and that when it came out it was $300. There's no way I would have paid that much for it,especially since the pro mode guitars now out aren't even that much, but if you can get a good deal on it it's definitely worth checking out if you're into guitar-based rhythm games.
First of all the appearance is stunning. The sunburst finish on this thing is absolutely gorgeous. The pictures really don't do it justice. It's actually a nicer finish than I have on my real guitar. As advertised the entire body and neck of the guitar is actual wood. The fretboard and buttons however are plastic with a rosewood appearance (much like the appearance of the standardRB2/3 guitars). This isn't the plastic you're used to from these guitars though. It has a sort of weird "softer" feeling that you really have to feel to understand. And yes, those are actual tuning keys, that do turn. Completely useless on a video game controller, but a nice touch anyway that really adds to the appearance.
Onto how this guitar actually plays. The fret buttons are almost dead silent, which is very nice and they feel very well built and high quality. I've yet to miss a note that wasn't may fault. The strumbar is does make a "clicking" sound. It's not as loud as a GH guitars strumbar, but it's definitely noticeable. I know several people like the clicking, some don't like it, it's just personal preference. I've played enough with both types of strumbars that I really don't care which type a guitar has. Despite the clicking, it still looks and feels more like an RB strumbar, though it feels a little..."stiffer." You have to use a little more force to move it. It takes a minimal amount of time to get used to, but the result is a strumbar that feels more sturdy than any other I've ever used. The back and start button are modeled after volume and tone knobs, but with "back" and "start" printed on them. Despite the appearance, the back button is a simple push button. Like on the standard RB guitars, it's in the perfect position for pressing with your pinky if you're like me and like to activate overdrive that way (though the tilt sensor on this works great too, doesn't seem to be set too low or too high).The start "button" actually does turn a little bit until a little "click" indicates that you've "pressed" it. A good way to prevent accidental pausing. The whammy bar and selected switch are there as well and work perfectly. Nothing really special to note about them other than the fact that the whammy bar is a little longer than on the standard guitars.
A couple final thing to note. First of all, it does NOT come with a strap. If you don't have an extra one laying around somewhere it's probably bes you pick one up. For lefties, there is no strap peg on the other horn of the guitar and no way to put one on it unless you want to modify the guitar a bit. I was hitting the back button on occasion when whamming at first. This required a bit of an adjustment to my play style when whamming, but it didn't take long to adjust. Finally, the headset jack is in a very odd place. There's a plastic panel on the back of the guitar. On the side of this panel closest to the end of the body and the strap peg, there it is. I looked around for it for a while to find it, and at first I was worried I might end up rubbing against the plug of my headset with it's positioning. As it turns out though, it didn't affect me at all and didn't get in the way. Still definitely worth noting as it had me wondering it this guitar even had a headset port.
Overall this definitely gets a 5 from me. If you can find a good deal and you play guitar games at all you owe it to yourself to check it out.
UPDATE 9-21-12
I'm seeing a lot of comments below saying that a strap, as well as a couple other nonessential accessories ARE included, but in a rather unnoticeable and easy to miss part of the packaging. I'm normally very thorough in checking out my packaging, but it's possible I missed it. It's been a long time since this I wrote this review though and I no longer have the box so I can't confirm if this was an error on the seller's part or my part. It SOUNDS like it was my mistake, but again, I can't confirm. Either way I'm not too worried about it, from the comments it looks like it was nothing I really needed and I have too many straps laying around anyway lol.
While I'm updating, I might as well mention that this guitar is still holding up phenomenally well. It plays and looks every bit as good as the day it arrived, and that's after a LOT of extensive use. I went through I don't know how many plastic guitars back in the day, and it still amazes me that I can go on a marathon of some of the most insane songs in Rock Band and at the end of it all the buttons are still working perfectly and the strum bar is still as precise as when I took it out of the box. As these peripherals become more and more scarce over the years, durability is an enormous factor for those who are going to want to keep rocking out long after the controllers are impossible to find. This has served me well ever since I got it and it seems like it's not going to let me down any time soon. | video-games_xbox |
I want my money back. If you're looking for reasons to buy this game please read the few other, positive reviews for DMMM. I'm here to tell you why NOT to buy this game, or...if you're going to buy it, don't pay more than $20 bucks for it, at the most.
If you're looking for fantasy based FPS multiplayer, it has yet to arrive on the Xbox 360. So few people own DMMM that finding a ranked multiplayer match is maddening. To even begin a match 8 people need to join the game BEFORE the match can begin. In fact the main reason I'm writing this review is because my wife and I sat around for a solid hour waiting for 6 other people to join. People would join but after waiting a min or so, would drop the game. A ranked match is the only way to get multiplayer achievements by the way.
As for the single player. DMMM is a weak FPS, and a downright terrible RPG. I've played my share of shooters and role playing games. As you progress in the linear game, you level up linearly. The voice acting is hollow and lifeless, which really detracts from the atmosphere. Also the sound mixers of the game must have tried to make all the sounds as loud as possible. When the game starts up the Ubisoft video blares at you, each time you forget to turn your speakers all the way down. Music is repetitive and uninspiring.
Load times are about 20 seconds long. So if you're in a tough spot in the game, and you die repeatedly, tag on 20 seconds for each retry. And you get to hear the same load music (which is composed of all percussion instruments)
I am a fool. I bought this game for $60 bucks new, so did my wife. ($120) I went to GameStop to trade in this waste of plastic, and they wanted to offer me $9 for each copy. Ouch. Apparently they don't think much of DMMM either.
Now this last part is sad to say. I've had more fun playing the Xbox Live Demo of DMMM than the full game. I've quit the full game, only to return to the demo, Cuz that's where the action is.
If you've stayed with me this far, I ask a favor of you. Please help me make up for my mistake, don't buy this game new. | video-games_xbox |
A waste of money. Okay so we have ANOTHER movie license game and it's just as lame as all the others. It's just another God of War rip off. You go around beating up enemies, unlocking new powers and combos and fighting wave upon wave of bad guys until you get to the next cut scene. Also, I don't care what anyone says, the 3D DOES NOT WORK! I played on a high def TV with 3D capabilities, I had the game playing on my 360 and I had the glasses on and I didn't see any 3D, or feel like it was a 3D experience. Just another excuse to jack the price up. Also, no multi-player option??? I can't play with my friends online? We have to be in the same room to play it together?
Also what happened to Parallax? I want to see and fight HIM! Screw the Manhunters! No one who saw the movie is going to know who they are unless they've read the comics, (which I have for the past 3 years, blackest night rocked!), or they listen to the lame plot exposition. I will admit the soundtrack and the voice acting are pretty good. They at least got that right and managed to get Ryan Reynolds to do the lines for Hal Jordan. However the actual dialogue for the cut scenes left a lot to be desired.
This game is at least more fun than the movie licensed Thor game. In Green Lantern you at least have a co-op option and the constructs that you can use are lots of fun and pretty creative. However from reading the comics, the power of the ring is limited only by its user's imagination. Okay, so why can't I just make a construct of a computer virus and shut down all the manhunters? Granted that would make the game pretty short but come on!!!
Also WHY CAN'T I FLY!?! I'm the Green Lantern!!! In every comic I've read and in all the animated movies and the live action movie, the Green Lantern can fly. How did I miss out on that!?!
The camera controls leave a lot to be desired as well. Things in the foreground get in the way while I'm fighting, in an attempt by the game designers to make it all cool and realistic, but I CAN'T SEE WHAT I'M DOING!!!
The game clocks in at about 7 hours. 60 bucks for 7 hours, with very little incentive to want to replay the game at a later time. Save your money, don't buy this one and just rent it on a rainy weekend. | video-games_xbox |
In Space, No One Can Hear You Get Big-Time Hosed . Wow. I don't know exactly what to say about this one.
However, given the fact that Sega/Gearbox/TimeGate allegedly spent six years developing this game, and given the fact this is the first Aliens-based game for which the developers had unprecedented access to the original production notes, storyboards and set designs of the same-named, classic James Cameron movie, one has to wonder what the hell went wrong here. Yeah, Sega sets the bar low (and I mean low) but I didn't expect this.
When the collector's edition arrived at my house, I was impressed with the packaging. But, I looked it over for several minutes thinking that I have to return this (I already had read all the reviews, and I the 100-dollar price was really harsh given what I had read).
However, like a fool, my love of the first two Alien(s) films, and the fact that this one was based on the rock-solid Cameron movie, with all of the original James Horner musical scores in it, i opened the package, opened the game, threw it in the 360, and gradually became increasingly pissed off.
If you think about it ... and when I say that, I mean when you think the fact that the Xbox 360 came out in 2005 .... and then continue to think that these developers/publishers "worked" on this game more than half the entire console's life cycle .... you can't help continuing to think about how the hell this worked (or didn't work) out.
They say the graphics are Hi-Def, right? I have to say, though (and, despite how I'm writing, I'm highly technical and majored in English Lit..... I just don't care to put much effort into this review because this entire diatribe deserves as much care and effort as this game deserves play time), that the textures, animations, lighting, particle effects, AI and screen tearing seem so incredibly dated, I feel like i'm playing an up-scaled version of a last-gen game on my 1080p flat panel.
And the promotional photos they showed for this game .... what a joke. Clearly, these photos were highly rendered, dynamic stills made exclusively for that one purpose ... the marketing campaign. Or, was this intended to be a game for the upcoming, next-gen systems? Will they try to hit us up again for the next wave? Who knows. Makes one wonder, though.
The game is a joke, and I mean in almost every aspect. I would not be surprised at all if Gearbox/Sega/TimeGate get hit with a class-action law suit over this one ... especially considering how they promoted and marketed this game. All three studios currently are passing the buck as to who's to blame. Always a good sign, right?
Don't buy it. Actually, i wouldn't even rent it. If Cameron has already played this game, I'm betting he hasn't been this mad since he lost his Academy Award to his Ex-Wife on THE HURT LOCKER.
Yeah, this game hurts. Hurts much worse than PROMETHEUS, too. Like I said ... In space, no one can hear you get ... well, you know. | video-games_xbox |
Pretty good low power option for gaming! Good match for PS4. This is the second GAEMS product I've owned. I had the GAEMS G155 previously, which I was happy with until it got broken from a VBIED in Afghanistan. No fault of GAEMS obviously. This little monitor is handy, but not perfect. I bought it to have some portability for my PS4, but I found that the cord is too short for real portability and it's kind of a bulky cord design. You may want to buy a USB hub as this will need 2 ports to run on USB power. This may be where you grumble that the PS4 should have port a couple of USB ports on the back, but what can you do? The other issue I found is that it's an LCD screen that you have an optimum viewing angle, then you have numerous angles where you can still see the screen, but it's distorted and layers are missing because the viewing angle is not quite right. The little flip out feet work ok if you are putting the monitor on top of your PS4. They don't work good if you try to use the monitor on your lap, but the cord is too short to be able to do that easily anyway. I made a caddy that has an articulating mount for the monitor and a place for the PS4 to sit. It's worked really good for me and now I consider it portable, it's real easy to move around now, the whole thing is one complete unit, see included pics. Something else that I wish this monitor had was better HDMI features. Most of my other TV's turn on and off automatically when I power the PS4 up or down. It's a nice feature and the GAEMS M155 doesn't do that. In fact, if you try to set TV off feature, it cautions to shut off on you right in the middle of your gameplay! It can be frustrating if you are playing a multiplayer game that you can't pause.
The single speaker makes for pretty mono sound, it's quite 'tinny' and in my opinion, they could have used a better speaker that was the same size. Bose, for example, knows how to pack great sound into a tiny speaker. It does come with a little remote, which I put some velcro and it sticks to the backside of my monitor, where it sits and waits for the next use.
All in all, this is a good monitor. I do recommend it. I wish the HDMI had more features like auto on/off and I wish the speaker was a little more robust but it's a good monitor and works really good with the setup I made. I use the camera mount on the back of the monitor for my caddy. It's 1/4-20 threads. | video-games_xbox |
I really wanted to give this game a chance since I'm a die-hard Blizzard fan of all their games. I really really wanted to give this game a chance. I have been a Blizzard fan since Warcraft 1 on PC...playing and owning every game (collector's editions) and even collected the figures. Overall, I'm disappointed in this Blizzard title.
The GOOD:
Overwatch has good character design, smooth game play, decent graphics on PC/PS4 but no so great on the XB1.
The maps are well designed for close quarter battles and the game doesn't drag on too long.
The simplicity of it will draw new players to the genre so they can pick it up easily. To me, it seems like they made this game for beginners to the FPS genre. I'm sure vets can still have fun with the characters abilities and the close quarter combat but I don't think this game has enough to pull them away from the ones they are playing now....which I'll explain next. Not too much good it seems.
The BAD:
The "Blizzard" tag might save them even though the game is mediocre at best.
They tried to do the same when they entered the MOBA genre with Heroes of the Storm. They simplified it compared to other MOBA games to attract players to the genre but I got bored quickly. Sure they added some objective modes to all their maps (which already done in other MOBAs). Maybe I'm an old hardcore gamer and I want to get my money's worth but $60 is a lot of money for a multiplayer-exclusive FPS game with barely any game modes There's not even a campaign...and it would make sense to have one with all the story behind the characters. The multiplayer doesn't justify the price alone and you still have the option spend money or 'coins' to by loot boxes. This is the same effect that Star Wars Battlefront had (being exclusively multiplayer) but Battlefront is a much better FPS....like AMAZING compared to boring Overwatch! I feel better spending my $60 on Battlefront now. LOL.
The game mode(s) in Overwatch (hold the area and move the convoy) is not really that exciting to pull me away from better FPS games that have similar modes and more! Couldn't they think of something more creative? Heck! The game modes in Unreal Tournament (especially 2004) still blow Overwatch away. Unreal 2004 still has the most enjoyable and creative progression objectives like Assault, Onslaught, etc. Instead of a boring hold this spot then protect this new spot or convoy. It's more a Team Fortress clone but with characters that have cool special sci-fi abilites. There is nothing epic or memorable with the game modes in Overwatch. I can recall modes of Call of Duty, Battlefield, Castle Wolfenstein, Unreal Tournament and the other greats that bring me great memories of their game modes and keep bringing me back and reminding me how innovative those games were. I would've gladly pay $60 for this multiplayer-exclusive FPS game if it had better modes and features. Amazing modes/maps like combating on a moving train scenario while finding and defusing a bomb, destroy big turret by progressively completing objectives by blowing up walls, etc. Those were so GREAT not this. I normally associate Blizzard with greatness. And they do have great character artists, animators and designers. But their FPS is mediocre at best compared to whats out there. The production quality went more into the characters than the actual innovative FPS experience. With FPS, game modes/features are what makes them more fun and replayable NOT loot boxes and skins.
They are totally riding on their 'name tag' and microtransactions and that's not what will make this game worthy Blizzard.
Overwatch took some good ideas from some FPS but not enough to make it great.
It's just a "clone" FPS with a gorgeous re-skin of characters with special moves...nothing new.
I'm a big fan of Blizzard and have played all their games religiously and even own collector's edition of all the PC games (from Warcraft, Diablo, Starcraft and I even bought the Overwatch Collector's). But I'm sorry I have to give this one a bad rating. Not sure who took over creative directing at Blizzard but this one is a huge disappointment to me. It might do well attracting teeny-boppers and millenials that jump on the hype. And most likely Blizzard will front a bunch of $million dollar tournaments because they can. But that still doesn't help make this a great FPS. It's below average to me. Older FPS games like Team Fortress 2 (which they basically tried to emulate) are still much better than this.
Blizzard should've took more time to create a more immersive FPS....something more worthy to pull me away from my other FPS.
But they fell flat with their first entry into FPS genre for me. I'm actually in the process of returning/selling this as I speak. | video-games_xbox |
Put an end to my boring summer. Dang I don't know where to start. This game is such a nice.. breathe of fresh air kind of. Simply put, these days it's all about sequels and games that are pretty similar to each other. It's nice playing a game that's set in a different area, Hong Kong. I really enjoyed this game and couldn't put it down as soon as I got it. There's nothing wrong with the engrish that's spoken, it's not racist because that's exactly how it sounds(I'm chinese btw). People will FLARE and complain at anything these days. Alright, alright heres a pros/cons list.
PROS:
-Hong Kong location.
-The combat. I know the whole combat system is like the Batman Arkham series, mainly like Arkham Asylum because you can't do double or triple counters like in Arkham City but it stands it's ground because you can level up and learn new moves and such. Also this game isn't really about countering all the time like in Batman, it's about the combos and moves you can do. Plus dragging enemies into various environmental hazards to do some serious harm.
-DRIVING. Damn the driving in this game is freaking well done. I've played a lot of driving games, I love playing driving games, most of the time sandbox games have pretty mediocre driving mechanics. This game does it GOOD. It really feels like a good NFS game. The only thing about it that might bother some is that when you reach top speeds, the car is a bit more difficult to handle.
-Shooting. Man at first I didn't think the shooting looked good from the trailers and I believed the strongest point to this game would just be the melee combat but this game does not fail in the shooting. As you jump over obstacles while aiming, you can go slow-mo and easily take out a large amount of opponents FAST. Each headshot increases the slow-motion time.
-Your own garage with all the cars you purchase. In GTAIV you could only save a few vehicles you find and park them outside your Home but in this game, any vehicle you buy is always there whenever you want at a parking lot.
-Story although generic, it was pretty fun to follow along.
-Karaoke mini games weren't bad. Had some good oldies music.
-Enjoyable radio stations.
-Good characters.
-Car-hijacking. Or just leaving the door open and ramming people.
-Parkour? Its like Assassin's Creed and it does it's job.
CONS:
-You can get 100% completetion SO EASILY.
-No New Game+. Would have been nice replaying the whole game with all upgrade.
-The controls and movement aren't really smooth at first but you get used to it, should've been refined more.
-Can't carry a gun at all times.(For Hong Kong authenticity, guns are illegal so I don't really mind, plus the melee combat is the best part of the game.)
-Graphics are pretty outdated.
-A little too short. Actually very short!
-Need more kungfu moves.
-Certain side-missions are just way too short and end abruptly, like the "dating" missions.
All in all this is one solid game that I extremely enjoyed. But personally I feel, with the added time and switch from Activision to Square Enix, the game could have been updated a bit further and more refined. The character graphics were pretty poor in this game, it looked the same almost when it was still under Activision. The game is basically an amalgamation of several hit games like the melee system in Batman and the free-run in Assassin's creed. All good ideas but the other games still do it better. I mean with the added time why not add double or triple counters like in batman, also the free running isn't as smooth as the Assassin series, the game gets kinda blocky feeling. Other than that the only complain I have left is that, as fun as the game was, I don't see myself replaying the game. It's just an one-time playthrough since you can get 100% completion and achievements with one run.
Still, this game is straight up fun, especially if you enjoy sandbox games. Best game I've played so far this year. I generally stay away from the racing mini-games in sandbox games but man it was so fun in this game. Definitely recommend this game and will definitely buy the sequel, if it ever comes out. | video-games_xbox |
Xbox One ~1 month In. I nabbed a Day One edition and received it on launch day and thought about 1 month was a decent amount of time to log before a review.
I'm really impressed with the Kinect voice command interface. Turning on my XB1 and TV by just voice commands is super convenient and it makes hunting for a remote seem archaic. It doesn't work 100% of the time, sometimes I need to give the voice command a second time to register, but I'm sure that is something that can be patched over time.
The controller took the great 360 controller and tweaked it to be even more comfortable. The texture on the analog sticks is a great addition, no more fingers slipping off in critical moments. The rechargeable battery is lasting between 12-14 hours of use, which is pretty good.
The interface of the XB1 takes some getting used to after living with the 360 for so long. Knowing the voice commands to launch apps, snap things, etc. saves a ton of time once you get it down though. One omission that surprised me is a lack of WMC Extender ability (stream music/video from your PC to your console) that was standard on the 360 and PS3. I do hear that MS is working on an app to add that function though.
Using your XB1 to control your TV feed from your cable/sat box is done very well. Swapping between TV and games/apps is fluid and ultra-convenient. And I gotta say, being able to snap tv to the right side while playing a game is pretty awesome. Also, just saying "Xbox, record that" to save the last 30 seconds of gameplay awesome for showing off crazy kills online to your friends.
The XB1 comes with a very large cooling fan and the console runs pretty quiet. I am glad they oversized the cooling fan because if you run your cable/sat box through it, you are adding many more hours of operation onto your console. I haven't noticed the fan have to work hard yet between games, tv, or any apps.
Does PS4 have more powerful hardware? Yes, marginally. But the TV function, controller, XBL>PSN, and Kinect made me want the XB1 first. | video-games_xbox |
Good but saddening. If you expect to pop in Inquisition and revisit the world of Thedas that you've come to know and love through the first two Dragon Age games, you're going to be severely disappointed. This is not the same place. A shadow of what was, really. It feels like its been so watered down that it isn't the same place. Dragon Age 2 had its issues, but it set Thedas up for so many great potential stories, and you don't play any of them. The mage-Templar war is basically a footnote, the Orlesian Civil War is kind of just background noise, and say goodbye to the Dwarves and Dalish because they are barely represented. Basically its super dumbed down and generic.
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Problem 1:You fight a bad guy that you neither love or hate. You really just don't care, and nothing you do actually matters. This isn't Mass Effect's Saren or DA1's Loghain. He's just there and you need to get rid of him. And since he's a pushover to beat, you don't feel as if you've accomplished anything.
Problem 2: Its a hallway shooter in RPG Fantasy form and the main campaign only takes about five hours to complete if you were to just do those missions. There aren't multiple avenues of attack in battle. Just rush in and swing. If you expected three-dimensional combat, forget about it.
Problem 3: Your companions, while interesting to an extent, are hardly as fleshed out as those in DA1 or 2. And since they don't matter, you don't care if they live or die. Though that is rarely an issue. Don't expect a Mass Effect 2 deal where people are seriously mortal. Also, their AI sucks. Don't expect them to be able to take care of themselves. Archers and mages for some reason try to rush their enemies, dragons especially, and warriors use up your health potions very quickly. Melee Rogues... die. A lot. Play as them or lose them.
Problem 4: Your decisions don't really matter. No matter what choices you make, it basically ends the same. Don't expect any grand consequences for your decisions.
Problem 5: The side-quests aren't "quests". They have no storyline or value aside from collection. They are all fetch quests. Don't expect any neat little side adventures because you won't get any.
Problem 6: Customization is a joke. You basically get to change the sleeves and pants on armors, and the "Fully customizable" castle they went on about is just pointless. It pretty much looks the same no matter what. You really just get to change the dcor.
Problem 7: Mounts suck. If you expected horseback warfare you are to be disappointed. Your mounts just run around. Looking all the same but for some coloring differences. And Dracolisks are just dumb looking lizard horses. They are not mountable dragons or wyverns, despite what you might expect to get.
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There are good things about the game. For one it is a massive game, the combat is pretty good, and there are some great moments. As far as the generic RPG goes, this is a fantastic game. The characters look cool, and some of the action sequences are really fun. I did enjoy the war table element of the game, and the judgment sections where you get to sit on your throne and make decisions regarding what to do with captured baddies. The fighting is fun if you play predominantly as a mage since their abilities are really awesome looking. If this is your first time playing a Dragon Age game, or even an RPG, you'll love this. But for a longtime fan it isn't up to snuff. | video-games_xbox |
Just the Extras. During a time when most special editions are just crappy DVDs from the B side of the development team's production diaries, Rockstar comes through with some high-class swag. In all, a duffel bag, a lockbox with keys and keychain, an artbook, and a 16-track audio CD.
The duffel bag is surprisingly large; to give you an idea you can probably carry two large bowling balls in it. It has a really nice bright yellow/orange lining with a repeating R* logo pattern. It's perfect to take to a gym or to lug around a cache of semi-automatic weapons and ammunition ala Falling Down.
The safety deposit box is well-made and functions as a nice but less than secure storage unit, it is about the size of a flip-flop shoe box. It comes with two keys, a " thick R* logo keychain. This product shows the Rockstar team's pragmatism, they probably debated between giving us an action figure of some sort (which would have been cool) or something people can actually use, like the lockbox.
The art book is OK, the production notes, while somewhat interesting are less than impressive, it is hardbound with semi-glossy pages but in my opinion too small (it is about 1/3 of the size of a US Letter sheet of paper). A larger booklet (US Letter Size) with more pictures would have definitely made this collector's pack worth another easy 10 bucks. But publishers have to make hard decisions and maybe the focus groups were telling them that a 99.99 price point was too high. It does seem that this was the only item in the bundle that really wasn't thought about in detail. I hope that Rockstar will release a full-size art book for this game in the future.
The soundtrack features a great selection of songs from the game. Vagabond by the Greenskeepers is without a doubt one of the catchiest tracks in the game, and the one used for the television ads. Other songs of note are Nickname by Qadir and Liberty City The Invasion by Seryoga. Overall the 16 tracks on the CD are well chosen and represent some of the best music from the game by lesser known but definitely not lesser talented artists. I wish the packaging for the CD was better, it comes in what is basically a cardboard sleeve, but that is merely nitpicking. Rockstar would be well advised to give GTA IV the San Andreas/Vice City treatment and release a full collection of soundtracks from the game's radio stations.
The whole kit and caboodle comes packaged in large box adorned with art from the game featuring the game's anti-hero (the PS3 version features the lollipop girl instead). Also for those of you that care about such things, the game case does not have that hideous gray box reading "Special Edition" as shown in the product photo on Amazon. It is in fact the very same game case that you get when you buy the regular edition game.
Inside are an owner's manual and a large foldout map with points of interest on one side and subway map on the other. The subway map won't make Massimo Vignelli proud but it will let you know which train to take to your destination within the game. It also comes with a 1 month trial for Xbox Live Gold, which augments your subscription by a month if you already have an active Xbox Live Gold account. | video-games_xbox |
As Awesome and as Painful as the Original. I remember the first time that I picked up a PS3 controller and tried out my roommate's new game, Demon Souls. For someone who attacks games with an obsessive compulsive disorder type mentality and who doesn't give up easily, it was a nightmare game. But ohhhh what a deliciously gorgeous nightmare it was. If you are a rage quitter, then this series of games: Demon Souls, Dark Souls, and Dark Souls II is really not for you. They are frustrating, but beautiful. Simple, but complex. It takes patience in order to make it through, even with frequent help from the Sun Bros. But be prepared to lose your humanity and souls over and over again.
Dark Souls II is stunning. The story is just as driving as the story line for Demon Souls and Dark Souls; always revealing just enough to satiate curiosity but not enough to give away the ending. The play style is simple enough, but I will say that Demon Souls is the game that made me switch to being an inverted player. Seriously, I had played Xbox 360 for YEARS with the non-inverted controller settings, but along comes Demon Souls on the PS3 and for some reason the game controls were easy for me when inverted. Ever since then I can't play any game without the controller being inverted.
My advice is as follows: Most of all, don't give up! It will be extremely frustrating at times, but all of us have been there! Use your Human Effigies sparingly in the beginning, but don't be afraid to summon help early on or even throw down your own soul sign in an area you just began so that you can be summoned to another world and find out what is ahead for you in your world. Find a free online guide to use and follow the advice it gives! Don't kill NPC's! If you do then next thing you know, you will be invaded all the time by red phantoms and trust me, they will ruin your day. Finally, those orange-ish/yellow-ish soul signs are for the Heirs of the Sun, and they are there to help people just like you! If all else fails, and you really need help, then add me on Xbox Live and shoot me a message. My gt is Fattyeggroll.
Happy gaming! And praise the sun! | video-games_xbox |
closer to games like Armored Core or Mechwarrior. While Front Mission is normally a mech-based Strategy RPG series, "Front Mission Evolved" is closer to games like Armored Core or Mechwarrior than its predecessors. It tries to keep some of the themes intact, and does a pretty good job about the setting and designs, but also seems divorced as a game. As an individual game, it does a fairly decent job of being entertaining.
Front Mission Evolved is a mech combat game combining action-heavy gameplay with some customization features. Players pilot "wanzers" (short for "wanderpanzer", meaning "walking tank), which are similar to any number of human-shaped giant robots. These mechs can be equipped with different weapons, armor types, backpacks, and so on. Like in the older games, there is a balance of weight and power versus the amount of weapons and ammo carried. However, the core gameplay itself is much different than previous Front Mission games. While these were strategy role-playing games, Front Mission Evolved prefers to let the player pilot a mech themselves.
Each Wanzer has four weapon slots: The right hand is used to hold a gun (usually a machine gun or shotgun), the left hand is used for melee attacks, and the two shoulders are used to hold missile or rocket launchers. The backpack slot is by default used for a jetpack (which allows hovering) but can be replaced with repair gear, extra ammo, jamming equipment, and so on. The game's combat is good, but also sort of boring: you move the reticle over the target, you pull the trigger, you move on. There's not a lot you can do that differs from the basic model.
As far as combat goes, the only real things that stand out as being markedly different from other action games is the gliding mechanic and locational damage. The former is a battlefield tactic; by using a jetpack as a sort of roller skate, the wanzer can be much more mobile than they would be by walking. This is an invaluable tactic, since walking out to shoot an enemy also leaves you exposed. Gliding makes it much safer to skate out, fire a missile, and skate back to cover. The latter refers to the fact that wanzers take damage in their arms and legs as well as their body. If a section is damaged enough, it becomes unusable. The player's mech will regenerate body health, but not limb health (which requires finding a repair kit). Enemy mechs are generally not worth crippling, since it's just as easy to hit their torso as it is to hit their limbs.
Front Mission is a decent game in terms of graphics, sound, gameplay, and so on. However, its biggest failing is that it doesn't really have anything that sets it apart. It's about the same as Armored Core, with perhaps a bit more customization. There haven't been many mech games recently, so it's sort of filling a niche, but the customization isn't good enough to actually fill mech enthusiasts' needs. It's the kind of game that's worth picking up if you liked Armored Core or Mech Assault, but only in the sense that you can chew through its content and its multiplayer and be done with it. There wasn't anything innately appealing about the game itself.
Rating: 6/10. | video-games_xbox |
Interesting premise, but like other post-Genesis Sonic games, lame. 17. First of all, I'd like to say that I've been a fan of Sonic since Christmas of 1991 and have been a fan of the franchise throughout the 90's. Sonic Unleashed, like the other Sonic games that have broken into the "3D" generation of game consoles, is really unpleasant.
The graphics are pretty nice and the whole thing with Sonic becoming a "Werehog" and going around slashing and punching bad guys is pretty fun, but that's all there is to say that's positive about this game.
While it may seem unfair to target this particular Sonic game for this upcoming flaw, but I feel it's legit. The biggest problem with this game is the 3D environment. Sorry, but I truly feel that Sonic wasn't meant for a 3D environment since it's extremely difficult to move really fast while collecting as much rings as possible in this type of environment since it's much easier to die and since it's easy to veer off your desired path, it's much harder to collect rings. While most video games in the last 8-10 years have done away with the "limited life" system so ubiquitous in the first three game console generations, it's still in this game and it gets on your nerves because you're gonna die A LOT.
The tallying system at the end of each level really gets on my nerves because in the "classic" Sonic games, the tallying system just tallied your numeric score and if you got a high score, you'd get a continue. However, the tallying system in Sonic Unleashed is atrocious because the game expects you to accomplish much more difficult levels in a timely manner and has the nerve to actually grade you (using letters A through F) at the end. Isn't it good enough that I came out alive? Just give me a numeric score, don't grade me like a strict university professor.
Aside from the 3D layout and harsh tallying system, I was stuck on one level where you're on top of the Tornado (piloted by Tails, of course) and Eggman has launched a giant robot thingy firing guided bombs at you. I DETEST this level because in order to shoot down the incoming bombs, each projectile is targeted with an icon of either the A, B, X, or Y buttons above them and you have to press the right button in a really short time in order to fire the missiles. This is horrendous because you're in such a panic, you're just mashing buttons, hoping that you hit the right ones since you don't have any time to think. Wouldn't it be more convenient if there was just one button to fire missiles or just have a machine gun and point it at the projectiles? At that point, I quit playing and returned the copy to Family Video.
After playing this and the 2006 Sonic the Hedgehog games, it's no surprise to me as to why the newer Sonic games aren't so popular among gamers and critics alike. Sonic Team should really take their cue from Nintendo concerning the New Super Mario Bros. Wii game and make a game that's essentially a "throwback" of the Genesis Sonic games because those are the Sonic games people tend to remember in a positive way. Just get <a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Sonic-s-Ultimate-Genesis-Collection/dp/B001G3AZS2/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection</a> instead. | video-games_xbox |
I like, ALOT. 03/12/14
If I had to do it again, Amazon would be delivering the same product this weekend, I am very happy with purcahse ... read on if you wish.
First off I orderd these on Monday night at 10:30pm, got them today Wed in Afternoon ... Prime= Outstanding, especially the 30day trial.
The Headset,
PROS
Quality=Great
Sound=GREAT, (disclaimer my run on sentences) I had the X31's before for 360 (my first headset and I loved them) the problem with all the wireless headsets, at least the turtlebeaches that are not bluetooth is that when USB is plugged in, regardless if the console is on or not they knock your WiFi down about 50%, all you tech gurus can check 802.11a/b/g/n don't matter..... maybe its 43% but I know i checked mine and my friends house that has X31's and the wireless, megabits, dropped, BIG TIME!, the second the USB transmitter was plugged in - while the console was on or off .... (do a speed test) about 50% - THAT SUCKS, I like my stuff neat n clean, I hate wires, having to unplug stuff is a nuisance. ........ This Headset does not do that ... no WiFi interferance.
Connection: OUTSTANDING ~~~ THERE IS NO CONSOLE INTERFACE-No Red/White Wires no Optical/Composite Adapter
Batteries=None needed, it runs off of your controller (not a problem for me because I have a few play/charge kits).
So far I have played a few games of TF that sounded great and one CoD that also sounded really good.
CONS
You do have to have the chat cable connected for power ~ Boooo, its ok though because when your friends jump on you don't have to fumble around for your chat cable now.
Like other negative reviews, the chat
The problem is most people (I hope you updated your controllers firmware --- go to settings then to update controller lower left)
like myself don't or didn't understand the new adapter, I thought that the controller icon meant game and the person meant chat and when I clicked that button I was enabling that sound control +/- raising and lowering that specific sound similar to a universal remote for a tv/vcr/dvd/whatever ... WRONG!!!!, at least before they change the firmware which I am hoping and they are supposed to do in the next few weeks,
The Controller/Person-Chat Icon does represent those sounds but they represent balance .... so after screwing around with that, which is a MS component that all headsets will use and jumping on the net i found that
the default is 50/50, if you press the controller to raise game sound it goes up from Game50/50Chat to ex... Game60/40Chat then 70/30 n 80/20 or vise versa ... that may be a HUGE poroblem people are having trying to figure out controls on the new adapter
... till next time, hope this helps anyone trying to descide, I was on the net on Monday for about 1.5-2hours trying to decide, in review after review Polk was > | video-games_xbox |
A revolution in convolution. I would assume this is the last great hurrah in the Storm series for the last gen systems but the hurrah is more like a confused smattering of applauses while the actor on stage just does whatever material he had that wasn't polished enough for the last show or unsure of whether it might be good enough for the next.
To get to the point: It's very similar to Generations with changes to the overall game that are pretty minor but pretty cool (return of anime cut scenes, new characters, new stuff to customize characters, and the Ninja World Tournament, etc) while the major changes to the combat feel sloppy and needlessly complicated. It's not depth, let me be clear, it's just complicated.
Players now are made to choose their play style at the beginning of matches (in a crappy select screen) by choosing whether to select the ability to use Ultimate Jutsus, Awakenings or Support. I think this is a really good idea, but it isn't executed particularly well.
It makes a lot of sense to handicap characters who have very strong awakenings or whatever but the way its implemented leads to a lot of spam and cheap tactics that rely on repetition in a game that is already very repetitive. Those with ultimate jutsu abilities will constantly use it because it wins against any other attack other than an opposing ultimate for example, which the opponent might not even have depending on his choice at the beginning of the match.
There is also the addition of the ability to `counter,' which is yet another addition to the defensive side of combat.
I think all these defensive minded changes are to try to level the playing field in a game where fast button presses make all the difference but again it's just not done well and it breaks the combat more than it helps. With so many defensive abilities to take advantage of, the tired, old tactic of the Storm series, take the lead and then run away for the rest of the match, is going to be exasperated to eye rolling proportions.
As for the Ninja World Tournament, it's mildly interesting and entertaining if you can slog through the boring bits. For all intents and purposes the structure of the free for all battles are a lot like the mob battles from Storm 3 but now instead of fighting minions, you're taking on main characters from the Naruto storyline. The best feature, for me personally, is the cute commentary throughout from Shizune, Mabui and Shikaku. It's just amusing to hear them.
I'd mention character balance but frankly there is none...and no that's not sour grapes, it really is crazy unbalanced. Characters who are crazy powerful in the show, especially later in the show, are crazy here.
In short: below average game but the Naruto license carries it. | video-games_xbox |
No way. No how. Where to start?
- Horrid voice acting especially the Kila Natives. They can barely speak English but can spout 4 syllable words that the average person would never use? Yes, we expect the broken English but once you hear it, it's very poorly done.
- Broken/delayed quests. Example: You are sent to one part of the island to find a specific pearl/gem. They even point you to practically the exact location with enough talking to them. You go there and open every clam and pick up every shiny shell. You go back and apparently you haven't found it. Walkthroughs online say it is in that location. Dead quest. Example 2: On the map it says a missing item is right where you are standing. No, it's not above you or under you. It doesn't exist at this time. You have to leave the area, go to another island and come back at some undesignated time for a building to be rebuilt. Then miraculously, the missing item is there.
- Fighting is lacking. Creatures and enemies can easily knock YOU off a cliff (instant kill many times) but you can NEVER knock them off a cliff. They will hang onto the edge for dear life but guess what? If you kill them, they immediately fall over the cliff and you can't loot the body. OK..WELL PLAYED.
- Plot? I guess that people who are enforcing their will or beliefs onto others, you must befriend these idiots? I'd rather kill them, loot them and move on. But NOOOO.
- NPC's So you found Patty! Yaaay! Every other NPC in my group will leave the stupid island with me but she won't? She never says "I can't leave the ship" or anything. You MUST complete the island/pirate related issues and get the ship before she will leave? Dum dum dum dum dum (Picture South Park and the Mormon Episode).
- Combat: You get a whole 2 sword attacks. Simple button mashing attacks and hold the button and then release for a strong attack. Even that strong attack doesn't do squat when they are blocking. Oooo! Pistols, crossbows and Muskets! But..I can't aim a pistol or crossbow while I CAN aim a musket? What idiot came up with that?
- Character customization. None for your character appearance but you have a very limited set of clothing choices. They even have items that are exactly identical in stats but just look different. Really?
I got it on sale for PC and the only reason I'm still playing is to get my $ out of it. I'm about 1/2 way through per what I hear online.
Only for bargain bin gamers that have low spec requirements (older PC's). | video-games_xbox |
Prepare to be scared. This critically acclaimed game had all of the spooky atmosphere of Condemned with some phenomenal AI, intense action and excellent graphics and sound and gives the opportunity to experience one outstanding game.
F.E.A.R. starts off with a simple enough story. As a First Encounter Assault Recon member, you're sent in to investigate a man named Paxton Fettel who has a taste akin to Hannibal Lector. Since you've got reflexes that are "off the charts" you can employ a SlowMo bullet time power to help you get the drop on enemies that will cause you great headaches. This thin premise for having superpowers also provides reason to send you in alone. As is the case in these games, things don't go smoothly once you're on your own. You quickly jump into a paranormal quest to learn what exactly led to this strange turn of events and how you can put a stop to it.
The story comes to you mainly through searching through the various buildings and offices for blinking lights on phones or laptop computers. Accessing these will fill you in on some of the details, but it is entirely auditory and oftentimes you'll merely get fluff for your exploratory efforts. One of the real strengths F.E.A.R. has is that it is genuinely scary, something you won't often find even in the so-called "survival horror" games. Whether the scare tactic is the classic startling image quickly popping up, grotesque dismembering of unfortunate souls, or lights being played with just to mess with you, you'll find your fight or flight response at full tilt.
The fantastic AI present in the PC version has made its way over to the console world intact. Enemies come in squads and react to their environment, your actions and each other. They'll advance when they have numbers, kicking over bookshelves to create their own cover along the way. Kill a couple of them and they'll pull back and call for backup. Try to hide in a corner while your SlowMo gauge refills and you'll find a grenade bouncing to your feet. On the other hand, rushing out into the open will cause the entire squad to stand up and start firing away with their automatic weaponry. This AI provides for some seriously intense battles where you'll be relying on your SlowMo reflexes in a desperate hope for survival. To fight back, you're given a nice selection of weapons that each behave differently and enable you to approach battles with the right tools for your playing style.
F.E.A.R.'s multiplayer is fun and has some excellent options for tweaking the game, but it has a serious hiccup in the lobby. That being the lack of a post-game lobby. As soon as you finish a game, you'll be kicked back out to the menu screen without so much as a chance to say goodbye. This happens even on unranked matches where you are presumably playing with friends making it more than a little frustrating to get into an extended online session with some buddies.
F.E.A.R. has made it from the PC to 360 with everything that made it an outstanding experience along with a few new additions including the fantastic Instant Action mode, making it hard to lodge any huge complaints against the game. | video-games_xbox |
Entertaining for Buffy fans, but frustrating at times to play. After many months of on-and-off playing, I've finally just finished "Buffy: Chaos Bleeds". It's a melee-oriented game of about 15 levels set in the "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" universe, and throughout the game you are placed in the role of different characters from the show -- primarily Buffy herself, but also Spike, Willow, Xander, Faith, and Sid. Almost all of the fighting is of the hand-to-hand variety, except for Willow's spellcasting (which is fun) and a few ranged attacks: crossbows (which are rare but good) and "holy water" and "hell fire" potions which you can throw at advancing enemies.
My girlfriend (the Buffy fan in the family) bought the game originally, but some of the game's quirks drove her away from playing it (so I had to play it while she watched). First, the floating third-person camera is controllable with the right analog stick, but in confined spaces it will not fully rotate around your character, or will offer too cramped a view to be useful. Second, vampires have a way of spawning right behind your character in a previously empty area and attacking you from behind -- this is quite startling until you get used to it.
Third, combat is the essence of the game, but has an unpolished feel to it. It's quite easy to get out of position so that you're punching air while a vampire attacks you from behind. I guess that's part of the challenge, but it happens often enough to be annoying (and I'm no newbie to fighting games). And I would usually just jam the kick button, which sometimes would do little damage, and other times would result in a spinning roundhouse kick which would knock the enemy to the ground -- it was never clear to me why I'd get one result or the other. There is a "Slayer Handbook" page which shows you the available combos for the active character, but aside from using Willow's spells, I would just use the FBM technique (Frantic Button Mashing) because trying to perform specific combos seemed to get my butt kicked. Throws (which are executed by pressing the A and X keys simultaneously) are effective and well-implemented though -- you're pretty much guaranteed a victory over an enemy once you've thrown them to the ground, but you need to be at the right distance from a not-blocking enemy to pull it off, and you're vulnerable to a counter if you miss.
Another annoying thing as that you can't save freely within a level. In each level you have to fight your way to certain areas where a "Continue Point" is activated. If you die, you can either restart from the beginning of the level or from your last Continue Point. However, unlike in Halo you cannot save the Continue Points and turn the machine off -- you have to keep playing the level until you finish it, or else lose your progress in that level. Now I might be excessively slow and methodical, but some of the levels took me a couple of hours to finish and I didn't enjoy knowing that my xbox would be tied up for such a long time. That's why it took me so long to complete the game -- knowing that I'd have to allocate most of an evening to finishing a level was a deterrent to playing.
I shamefully admit that I had to use a walkthrough to get through a couple of the trickier levels. Usually this was because I just didn't recognize things that I was able to do; e.g. you should note that you can sometimes punch the locks on gates to break through. Other tips for when you're stuck: you should try jumping and holding on to any available ledges, and while pick-up-able objects are highlighted with a shimmery glow, some actionable objects in the environment are not so easy to recognize. Walk around hitting the Y button in front of everything to make sure you're not missing any keyholes or levers.
As you progress through the game, finding secret areas and completing the levels unlocks some of the hidden content. There are short interviews with Joss Whedon and some of the cast members, as well as footage of some of the voice recordings, which is amusing to watch after playing the game. There are also some multiplayer minigames that let you play as different characters and fight against your friends; as you progress through the single-player game you unlock more playable multiplayer characters, including Joss Whedon himself at the very end.
My girlfriend did enjoy the Buffy-ness of the story, and the voice work was good and Buffy-fied in both execution and sense of humor. I did like that the game spanned many different environments, including the Magic Box, a mall, a zoo, and a medieval castle. I had a lot of fun playing Willow and using her different spells -- it would have been nice if the other characters had more specialization to add variety to the combat. And while the boss at the end of each level was often frustrating to beat, once I discovered the necessary pattern, it was a pleasing relief to finally defeat each one, complete the level, and be able to save the game. If you're just looking for a fighty-type game, I'd recommend "Ninja Gaiden" for sweet combat, or "Jade Empire" for cool graphics and an epic storyline, but if you've got a passion for Buffy then this game will help slake your vampire-lust. | video-games_xbox |
Splinter Cell back from vacation. Reaction of a Long Time Splinter Cell Fan
Ok, so I have been a Splinter Cell fan since the beginning of the series. Now let me say that yes if you were an adoring fan of the older games that couldn't possibly conceive of a revamp lest your head explode you will likely hate this game. Why? Simply because this game is not paced or played like the former Splinter Cell games, omitted are the usual activities in the game namely: throwing objects, hiding bodies, whistling to attract idiotic security guards, hacking lock picking, Night Vision and Thermal Vision, and also the choice to knock out or kill your enemies. All this aside Conviction is by no means a bad game, in fact I would say that it is probably one of my favorite Ubisoft games I've played. The purely stealth game play has given way to a very action based (but very well done) cover based shooter platform. Your character moves around the world much faster than in previous games, and you pretty much just kill everyone. While the new shooty aspect of this game does cut down the subtlety quite a bit, this is still very much a stealth game, assuming you play on the normal or realistic settings that is. If you play on Rookie consider it 'Gears of Splinter Cell...War' this I can only assume is to make it more accessible to those 12year old Modern Warfare 2 players who can't go 5 seconds with out killing some random NPC, and also have no understanding of the words "Tactics", "Planning", and "STEALTH". This being said this is hardly an appropriate game for a 12 year old, seeing as the NPCs tend to swear more than my father did when I wrecked the car(not that I actually did). Also the single-player game is short, not MW2's done in 15minutes short, but more like 1 weekend if playing on normal. In addition to the single-player this game offers a fantastic Co-op campaign for you and a buddy, this is a spectacular part of the game(assuming your friends are not those 12year old MW2 players I spoke of previously). Along with the Co-op mode there is something called Deniable Ops, which are quick 10-40min games that can either be played solo or Co-op. There are four deniable ops modes: Hunter, where you have to eliminate enemies and if you get spotted they call reinforcements, this game mode is very fun and I actually found it to be easier by myself. Face-off, is hunter but you can kill your friend and get more points for it (a side note on this: in the game there are hand-to-hand take downs these are 1 hit kills and when playing PvP I recommend you do it Sys link because it really depends on your connection, usually the host wins). Then you have Last Stand, where you or a team mate must defend a destructible EMP, this is probably the least Splinter Cell game mode because there really is no time to sneak up on the enemies or plan because...well...THEY'RE SHOOTING THE THING YOU GOTSTA PROTECT. And finally is infiltration mode, like hunter mode again but if you get detected instead of sending troops they send you back to the start of the mission, again better alone, but the new game play makes staying undetected very very difficult.
In the end if you are a die hard Splinter Cell fan you might not like this one, maybe you will, but it doesnt feel like traditional Splinter Cell. If you are new to the series then give this one a try but for God's Sake don't try anything you do in this game in any other Splinter Cells. Parents: DO NOT BUY THIS GAME FOR YOUR KIDS IF THEY ARE A)Prone to imitating what they see. B)Stupid. C)Easily phased by incessant swearing(btw you cannot turn the swearing off). or D)UNDER 17 IT'S RATED (M) FOR A REASON!
Also for all of you who gave the game 1/5 for having that freezing bug that IS FIXED NOW, and for those of you who complained about the swearing: IT'S RATED (M) FOR A BLOODY REASON. And for those of you who gave the game a 1/5 for not being like the older games: If you don't like it don't play it and go hang with the Fallout fans who hate Fallout 3 because it's not an over head turn based 2D RPG
Those are my 10cents hope you actually read this review and I hope it helps | video-games_xbox |
Is NOT an improvment over the previous titles. I noticed that every Ghost Recon game is practically a completely new game, and although Advanced Warfighter is based on the same basis as the previous versions, this one has has several marked differences. For instance, the controls are very different, also the way you control your team is different. I liked and enjoy the gameplay very much, but that wasn't enough for me to like it overall. Actually, the game is excellent when playing alone in your Xbox, but playing on Xbox Live! is another story.
The graphics are good, but not as good as they should have been for a trilogy of games that have been on the same console (xbox) for a very long time. Everybody knows that when a new console comes out, the games aren't that good because the developers don't know the hardware/software very well yet, but they improve their versions with time. The original Xbox is now an old console and Ghost Recond 3 should have been a very big improvement over Desert Siege, Island Thunder, Jungle Storm, Summit Strike... When playing online you and your teammates move like a fixed bitmap. But, for me, the worst thing that I found with Advanced Warfighter are the awfully long loading times.
Let me tell you how it is how you play a new game with a friend on Xbox Live! First, you select Create Game, then choose the type of game: If you want to play cooperatively, you have only 2 options: a Combat, or a Mission. Forget about respawns, they don't exist anymore. Say you choose to play a Mission, wich you have to have finished before by playing the game on solo mode. You select from the opened available missions, just one (you don't have map rotation or anything else, the one you select is the one you will play). Then wait for an eternity for the map to load. Then the game goes to pause mode and you have to invite your friend to play with you. He/She accept the invitation and have also to wait for another eternity for his/her game to load. Ok, now you both are in the same screen and you may begin chosing your weapons for this mission and go play, but first, you have to wait, again for another eternity, for the game to load for both of you. Finally your playing, and lets imagine the following three scenarios: in the middle of the game your friend dies and the he says "hey, start it over, please, ok?". Or, you both die in the middle of a battle, or you both finish the game succesfully. Either way, the only option available next is to select "Leave game", and that means exactly that: you leave the game!
For the both of you to play again, the same map or whatever, you have to do all over again from the very begining: load the game, select the map, wait for the map to load, invite your friend, wait for your friend to accept invitation, wait for your friend to finish loading his/her game, select your weapons, start the mission, wait for the mission loads for the both of you, and then play. And you have to do that every time, there isn't a room where everybody can wait for more players, to chat, to select missions, combat styles, weapons, difficulty, etc. When one dies, he/she can still speak with the other player(s) (this is a good difference between this game and the other versions), but that is because the dead player can't go anywhere but out of the game, there is no room to return to.
At least I grew tired of this pretty quick, so I just play this game on solo and for now I play Conflict Global Terror online, at least until a new good game comes out. Oh, and I have my 360 console, but since I don't have friends who have one I didn't buy the 360 version of GR3 and when for the original, but now I think I should have bought the 360 version since I will be playing this game just on solo. | video-games_xbox |
Fun but Long. When I got this yesterday (10 FEB 09), I thought to myself on how the fact that there is a scantily clad woman with big swords going around slashing would be fun.
Okay... Firsts things first. They cell color shaded the entire cut scenes of the game. I thought at first it was really cool... but then we actually get into the game. The game at first is simple, and all around just clunky. The first scene kind of skipped here are there, but I think that might be my Xbox (I hope not). So when I began playing this game it is just that a hack n' slash genre. However, it is aggrevating that the character jumps sooo slowly. She glides in the air. Then I remembered the game Devil May Cry. What I didn't know is that she actually had guns for use.
Jeeze, the controls should have been really thought out. The controls seem clunky and clumsy. The forward flip which is a quick flip where you hold forward down and press A at the same time is rediculously difficult to master and has no leway in non-timing experts.
Now the levels, some of the levels are just filled with just too much light or lens flare. I think the creators pushed too much into the scenary when you don't look at it.
Mini-boss... prepare for every mini boss to be a very long and arduous task just take them down. "Unaffected by magic, swords, and your guns." Wait how do you kill him? Kill his minions why he is totally unphased by your attacks...
I find myself using global spells as MASS destruction spells just to keep them off my back. The repetition occurred the second level of the game. "Shoot, shoot, shoot, slash, slash, slash, magic, magic, magic etc."
Okay bottom line the game is fun if you don't care about repitition, laughable voice acting by the only male character in the game, somewhat clumsy controls, and frustrating jumping physics.
The experience point system isn't anything new at all. You gain experience points for killing things, and you spend the experience points to buy spells.
But, the only unique thing I found was that you can use the "Souls" (experience points) to heal yourself over and over and over again. Just be forewarned it gets expensive.
Story line is half decent though a personal friend of mine stated that the "story line" is "good." I didn't want to break it to him that the story line was entirely cliche.
Okay lemme break it down.
Pros:
Half Decent Story Line
Beautiful Scenery
Well done in game graphics (looks almost flawless)
Very little clipping
Just all around fun Hack n' Slash Genre
Purchasing of health with Experience Points
Cons:
Half Decent Story Line
Too much glare in some levels
Clumsy Controls
Poor Jumping Physics
Poor use of controls
Cell Shading Cut Scenes (not-so-good)
Laughable male character voice acting.
Purchasing of health with Experience points.
All-in-all, this game is fun if you like to just go through the game and hack and slash. Simple game mechanics and enjoyable cut-scenes.
Plus the best part about this game is about a hot chick with swords and guns with practically nothing on goes around killing things. What do you expect from a game like this? | video-games_xbox |
A couple upgrades, a couple downgrades, and a lot the same. Most other reviews were accurate with what stayed the same, so i'll just comment on what i've seen as the things that were either upgraded or downgraded when compared to the first.
Things that were upgraded:
- (I consider it better) The ease with which you upgrade your skills. Within the first 3 hours of playing, i had all my skills upgraded to level 3.
- While jumping around, you can now grab on to the side of pipes to haul yourself up. First one you just slid right off and were screwed. Also, as long as your angle of approach is good, if you're still half a foot away from the ledge, your guy will still grab on.
- In addition to all the various orbs all over the place, they've added moving ones that require skill to get. It can be frustrating, but it's something in addition to just jumping around town looking in every nook and cranny.
- They've added a whole lot more ammo refill/drop locations, and spots to store a vehicle you've stolen.
Things that were downgraded:
- Other than the ones mentioned above, it seems like the other aspects of grabbing onto ledges are a little less forgiving. If you're angle is off a little, no luck.
- The auto targeting kind of sucks. Have your reticle aimed directly at an enemy, press the lock on button, and it shifts to an exploding barrel thats half an inch away, but closer to you than the enemy. Or kill an enemy by a car, aim at the next one on the other side of the car, click the lock on, and it shifts all the way over to the engine of the car. You have to run all the way around so the guy is directly in front of you to lock on to him. Makes for some frustrating fights.
And for better or worse, they've added in orbs that can only be gotten through multiplayer. So on one hand you see them, and the announcer says something stupid like "Those online orbs are a no-no while playing solo." But on the other hand, it encourages playing with a friend, and adds more to the game than just blowing stuff up together.
All the other aspects are about the same from the first. Overall, i like it. I'm glad they didn't try to change too much, as most really fun games that get a revamp for a sequel, totally suck. | video-games_xbox |
4.8 out of 5 stars for WWE's latest release. ATTENTION: I am the same guy that recently posted this same review. Just accidentally on my old account.
I reserved WWE 2K14 months ago. Got it yesterday, and I've only been able to play about 3 hours into it so far. But from what I've played, I really like it a lot! It has a expansive roster even without getting the DLC. You start off with 42 playable wrestlers. And 5 (if I remember right) divas available right away. Up to 75 in all once you unlock the others. And then on top of that number, you can get DLC wrestlers too! the controls are basically like that of WWE 12 & 13. The graphics are similar to WWE 13....Maybe slightly better. I love that they cover 30 years of Wrestlemania. And I really like that they incorporated a lot into how it looked back then. I remember watching these matches back in the day! They make matches from the 80's have a gritty look. Like your watching it through older T.V.'s. They make the ring, crowd,ect..look as it did back in the day too! One of the things I don't hate, but think they should have tried to do. Is have Gorilla Monsoon and Jesse "The Body" Ventura, and even Bobby " The Brain" Hennan do commentary on the 80's matches they did. Instead of Jim Ross and Jerry "The King" Lawler doing commentary for matches such as Hulk Hogan vs King Kong Bundy, ect...I understand Gorilla Monsoon has long ago passed. But with the technology these days I would think they could ninja that in. Many of the classic/legend wrestlers are present on this roster. I wish they did have Papa Shango,Bam Bam Bigelow,Hacksaw Jim Duggan,Demoltion,Road Warriors,Steiner Brothers,Hercules Hernandez,Bad News Brown, Bushwackers,Dino Bravo,the Mounty,Doink,Lex Luger,Great Muta,ect..Maybe they will in DLC eventually!?! Two other aspects of the game I don't like. Are the reversals, and climbing out of the cage. Climbing out the cage is more challenging. But annoying at times. Once on the cage, you stop for a brief sec. Then a A button appears. And a bar that has "max" at the opposite end. A red bar slides towards the "max" and you hit A when it is close. Doing so will help you get out sooner. However, you still have to repeat it multiple times! You can unlock a lot of cool stuff! Haven't tried create a character/wrestler,arena,ect..yet. But I am sure it is awesome! This is the best "realistic" wrestling game in many years1 I say "realistic' cause WWE Allstars is amazing, but obviously like NBA Jam mixed with wrestling. I highly recommend getting this game to anybody that enjoys WWE,WWE games,ect..Oh...the cover has The Rock on it. But it is reversable. Not sure if different wrestlers are on each inside/reverse side? But mine has Daneil Bryan on it. And I switched it up. But am actually making a great, authentic looking custom one with Macho Man Randy Savage instea! | video-games_xbox |
The rest of this list is absolute garbage (Katy Perry. I might have been able to give more than one star if I had actually been able to play the game. But GH has behaved very badly selling a game specifically for the XBOX360 that cannot be run on the console without purchasing an external hard drive. Caveat Emptor and all that but that is just straight sleazy.
I spent hours trying to install this 8GB game on my 360 with 3GB storage and completely reformatted clearing off the entire cache and making all 3GB available. I searched the game's case and instructions everywhere for storage specs and couldn't find them. I never imagined they would sell a game that couldn't be played without paying for cloud storage or an external hard drive. I was always a Rock Band girl myself.
When it finally became apparent that I would have to pay for the cloud device @ 9.99 per month, I decided I would do a trial just to see if the game was all it boasted. Was never able to install the software on the cloud device. After 6 hours, I gave up and was nostalgic for the days of my old Wii console and Rock Band game.
Because Rock Band had this interesting concept where you could actually pay for and download new songs for your library. And the songs that came with the game were actually "rock" songs where a guitar was actually necessary. Contrast that with this GH Live..the song list had 2 songs I recognized in their list..2 songs that belong in the genre known as Rock. The rest of this list is absolute garbage (Katy Perry, Rihanna..?). But that didn't bother me..until I found out you can't buy new songs..you are pretty much stuck with that crap I guess.
I have also read that the strum bar is useless.
Alas, this product will be returned and this company will never see another penny of my money. I was so happy that I could get this awesome new game for my legacy console and I'm betting GH folks were banking on that wishful thinking when they decided to start putting it on the shelves. | video-games_xbox |
Very fun and not a bad way to end it. Mind you Halo 3 is one of the most hyped games of all games. Did I have fun playing it? Yes and no. Chapter 7 was very very very annoying. It really annoyed me and made me hate the game but I guess it really needed a hard part because the rest was very simple. I liked the story line but it's short compared to other games. I think it still explained a lot even though many did not like the length. To me it's like a movie and most movies last about 2-3 hours. It takes about 6-7 hours single player first play. 2nd play 5-6 hours because you know what's going on and where to go.
The graphics are not that amazing. Bigger enviroments and a little more detail but nothing heart stopping. I think BioShock had a lot better graphics but still a big step up from Halo 2. The sounds are great with some fun effects but a lot of repeats from the enemies.
Multiplayer is a lot more fun and a lot of added details which make it a full online experience. I love the ability to capture videos of your best kills. I love games that add new ideas and Halo does just that. Online feels just that much cooler with the different elements.
People have said many different things about scratched disks. I work at Wal-Mart in the Electronics Dept and it's true, there are a lot of scratched disks. We received a claim form for scratched disks and there are a lot. Being the faithful Halo fan and dedicated worker I went through all the Halo 3 Limited's and made sure the disks are not scratched. I shook them and found about 40% were loose. That's not very good for Bungie because that means they poorly packaged their title. I took them out of the case and made sure they got sent back so no one went home with a damaged copy. Bungie shame on you! Put out a disk that actually works!
Overall I would say it's a good release but not quite what I was hoping for. The ending felt kind of lackluster and not as epic as was hyped. I still love the game and play it often but I hope Bungie learns from its way's when making Halo Wars and the next story arc of the Halo series. | video-games_xbox |
THE BEST SYSTEM OUT THERE. If you still have not figured out which system is better (XBox, PS2 or Game Cube) let me give you a run down of why the XBox is far superior to the other systems. First off, I have owned all the systems (sold back my GameCube). GameCube is so lacking I have not used it for comparison here. Still play the PS2, but not very much. Here are the reasons XBox is superior:
1. Better graphics. Games on PS2 have slower frame rates and you cannot view scenery off in the distance as well as games modified for the Xbox. This is due to the fact the XBox has a 733mhz processor.
2. Online gaming better. Both Xbox and PS2 have online gaming, but PS2 games you pay each game independently. That gets expensive. Xbox, you pay monthly or yearly and can play all the games you have that are Live. You also have tons of downloadable content and so many other online tools.
3. Data storage. I cannot believe the PS2 still requires you to purchase a load of data cards to save games. No storage on unit. XBox, I have owned mine for 3 years now and still have not made a dent in my hard drive... has said 50,000+ blocks since I bought it.
4. Music. The large harddrive on the Xbox allows you to store you favorite music on the unit and play from you custom catalogs when you are not playing the system. A lot of games for the XBox allow you to customize the game music from your personal catalog.
5. Xbox has Halo. Nuff said. If you have not played it you have no idea what you are missing. If you have, you wouldn't need to be reading this review.
6. Games just keep getting better. Halo 2, Fable, Sudeki to name a few major new releases. What does PS2 have as a blockbuster release?
Both systems are similar in play, both are stable platforms (assuming you clean the eye on the unit). One problem a lot of people complain about is the "disk is not playable" error on the XBox. A friend of mine told me the simple fix is to use a Q-tip wiht alcohol and lightly clean off the laser eye. I did it and not more errors. XBox gives you more for the large amount of money you have to shell out for a system. | video-games_xbox |
Not the cheapest but works great. The Xbox one wireless controller for Windows 10 allows you to play games on your Windows 10 PC with what is arguably the best console controller there is.
In the package you will find an Xbox one controller, the wireless USB dongle, an extension cord for the USB dongle and some batteries. The batteries are standard AA type. You do not get a rechargeable battery pack with this setup.
Setup is very easy. Just plug the wireless dongle into a spare USB port on your PC and it will automatically install the correct drivers for you. Once the drivers are installed, simply press the little button on the dongle and the little button on the top of the Xbox controller to pair them.
There is a note that comes along with the controller stating that the first thing you should do is to upgrade the firmware within the controller so that you can use the stereo audio output on the controller. In order to do this you need to install the Xbox Accessories app from the Windows 10 store and most importantly you need to directly attach the Xbox controller to your PC. You cannot update the firmware wirelessly. Unfortunately, in order to attach the Xbox directly to your PC you will need a spare micro USB to USB cord which does not come supplied. If you already have an Xbox one, you can either use the cord that came with the Xbox one or you can simply update the controllers firmware directly through your Xbox one. Why Microsoft did not supply a micro USB cord when this is fairly much a necessary step I do not know.
Some people prefer using controllers to keyboard and mouse. I use both, just depends on the game. I already have an Xbox one (so this is also a spare controller for that). This is an excellent solution for when I hook my gaming laptop up to large screen TV as I can now play games on my TV whilst sitting in my recliner. The only thing this needs is a direct line of sight to the wireless dongle (the extension cord that Microsoft supplied here comes in handy for this).
This adapter is for a Windows 10 PC and runs with no problems on that platform. I haven't tested it with any previous version of windows as it explicitly states it is for Windows 10.
If you already have an Xbox one, you can buy just the wireless dongle for your PC and use your existing Xbox one controllers.
This isn't the cheapest console type controller on the market for Windows 10 but it is arguably one of the best. If you want a console controller to play with your PC games then this works beautifully however I think it may be more suited to those that actually have an Xbox one as well and can use this as a second controller for their Xbox as well as their PC. | video-games_xbox |
Flawed Great Game. I enjoyed this game, but it had a lot of flaws that decreased my enjoyment of the title. This is still classic Assassin's Creed gameplay, and there's a lot of game here. However some of the most important things are kind of lacking is AC3. This is partially because of the 2 cities it takes place in, as they just aren't great areas to free run around, especially the burned out Boston. Then there's the wilderness, which is simply too large, with too few fast travel spots and nothing really worth while between them. The free running here just doesn't feel right, it either doesn't work, or when it does it just feels so artificial and forced, the opposite of the way you want to feel when you're supposed to be free running. It's also just takes forever to get anywhere, I swear that your character's running speed is slowed down, and the horse is difficult to manage especially in the wilderness. The mountain climbing was another thing that bothered me, as I would keep trying to climb something that looks like it should be climbable, but for whatever reason it isn't and you'd have to run all the way around the mountain to get where you were trying to go. The combat is another thing that could be fun, but I liked AC2's version better. In AC3, I feel like it was trying to be more like the Batman games, and if you want to actually counter anything, you have to wait and then counter, which to me really slowed down the combat. For over half of the game, I didn't wait after countering, and every time I would just throw the person instead of actually countering. This was annoying, but it actually made the combat quicker and much more difficult, and when I finally figured out you had to wait for the counter to complete during one of the fist-fighting mini-quests I kind of missed the earlier combat, but I didn't go back to it because a lot of the later enemies need to be countered in a specific way.
For the story, there are a lot of amazing moments that are really cool, but the character of Connor was a real let-down. I was looking forward to a Native American character, but he's just so flat and boring that I didn't feel for him at all, I'm not sure if I should blame the writers or the voice actor. It was also annoying with how you were a huge bad ass when you could control Connor, but every time after you killed everyone and completed your mission, there would be cut scene where you would be knocked out or something, it was just so frustrating and it really took me out of the game. There were a lot of cool historical moments, but at the same time with how Connor was involved in all of them, it was again pretty unbelievable and took me out of the story. Still, some of the moments especially towards the end of the game were awesome and cinematic, even when they didn't totally make sense.
The sea warfare was probably my favorite part of the game, as it worked well and I'd never really played anything like it before. However, it kind of felt tacked on, and I wish there had been more of the story tied to it, instead of it apparently just being a massive live test of the ship warfare that would be the centerpiece of AC4. I liked the building of your town, where you could gather a bunch of people. My only problem with it is that I wish there was more content, more interaction with all of the people, although maybe that's just because I loved what Mass Effect did with character side-conversations. The mini-games are mostly annoying in AC3, especially the cowboy checkers, which were almost impossible to win, and I swear the computer cheated, or maybe it was just how the game was constructed,
Overall, this is a great game, with many small problems peppered throughout. You can have many hours of fun with this game, so I would recommend it, but not heavily. | video-games_xbox |
Pirates versus ninjas! Wait. I've always been a skeptic of this series. I played the first game and was immediately put off by the ham-handed use of the "ancestor's memory" gimmick. (I also hated the sequences with Fred Savage in The Princess Bride when I was a kid, so I have a history.) It's a video game! We don't need to have a preposterous faux science explanation of why we are running around in ancient times stabbing people. Just say, hey, you're an assassin in ancient times who ran around stabbing people while hiding in the shadows. Got it? Ok, great, here's your controller. Ditto here. I'm prepared to pretend that I'm a pirate. I don't need to pretend I'm a dude in a simulation experiencing the memories of a pirate. It's all too meta. (Spoiler alert: I got over this and you probably will too.)
I also found the stealth dynamics and controls to be a bit lunky in the first game after playing games like Splinter Cell and Batman Arkham Asylum/City where they are so well done.
On the other hand, I LOVE pirates. I am a fan of college football coach Mike Leach, I have dabbled in Pastafarianism, and my xbox live gamer tag is a variation of Black Bart.
So I was prepared to either love or hate this game. Verdict: I may not love it, but I like it a lot.
The ancestor memory gimmick is less hamfisted and more useful in Assassin's Creed IV than in the early game I played and doesn't detract from enjoyment of the game. The controls are markedly improved. Sometimes when you are climbing it is annoying and I've mistakenly leaped to my death a few times, but overall, its smooth as butter.
The voice acting is pretty good once you forgive the accents and the graphics are mostly really good. I've been playing games on Xbox One, but played this on 360 and while there is a bit of a drop off, it isn't jarring. The storyline is acceptable and even interesting from time to time, but nothing on the level of say Mass Effect or the Witcher. That said, set pieces are well done.
Multiplayer I haven't really messed with, but I appreciated the tongue in cheek intro. More breaking of the fourth wall, please!
Things sometimes get a little tedious or feel repetitive, but overall, Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag turned this skeptic into a believer.
Recommended. | video-games_xbox |
An "Obscure" Value. "Obscure" is a slick, enjoyable survival horror game that compensates for its flaws with budget appeal and a high school setting that, while trite by now in the realm of Hollywood feature films, is virgin territory for a video game. Whether or not the setting and characters suit your tastes as a gamer is entirely another matter. Even so, most fans of the survival horror experience will find something to enjoy in "Obscure."
The storyline is a bit contrived and convoluted, ultimately boiling down to the usual illegal genetic experimentation. Predictably, this work results in horrific mutations and zombies that stalk the living. Oh well, at least the fact that all of this takes place within the confines of a high school sets it apart from all the other games recycling that premise. And like 1998's The Faculty, it's ultimately up to a ragtag band of grade schoolers to step up and save the day. Yes, definitely keep The Faculty in mind and see if you can't spot the similarities - the resemblance of the hoodlum character to said feature's Josh Hartnett being almost criminal. Despite the fact that the game's developers are French, the depiction of American high school students is not as offensive as it could have been save for a few misfires here and there, primarily each and every character's obsession with basketball.
Each of the five different characters represents a sort of high school archetype, such as the aforementioned hoodlum (easily the most likable of the gang), the jock (not as bad as it sounds), and the nerd (so irritating it's hard to convince yourself to take on his mantle). They have their own personal strengths and weaknesses, most of which make sense given the nature of their characters. For instance, the jock is the strongest of the bunch while the hoodlum can pick locks. When it comes down to gunplay, however, each and every one of the five is, perhaps disturbingly, quite adapt with a firearm to the point where it's hard to tell if any one is more qualified than another.
When all five characters are available, you can choose to play as one while a second computer-controlled companion joins you - switching back and forth between them is a snap. Unfortunately the rest of the game's interface is a chore. Switching between weapons in times of desperate need is maddening, as is using that first aid kit before you take a final, killer blow. Compensating for this, however, is a game that's fairly merciful in terms of its difficulty on the normal settings.
The game's environments are quite well done, if not very subtle. You've never seen a high school like this one - it looks more like an insane asylum that's been shut down for years than a place of study. Each room and location still has a functionality to it, though. None of them feel like they were designed by guys making a video game so much as guys trying to create a fairly convincing high school setting that just happens to serve as the backdrop for a video game, complete with horrific overtones. All in all, the ambience is perhaps the game's strongest quality.
The monsters in "Obscure" are the usual sort, for the most part, but a few of them do stand out (particularly the nasties that appear later on, very H.P. Lovecraft in appearance). In any case killing them is more interesting than it might have been thanks to some satisfying weapons and, more importantly, the use of real or artificial light. Light actually harms these creatures, so taping a high-powered torch to your pump action shotgun is a good way to even the odds. Each monster comes complete with its own shadowy field, however, and only the strongest beams can break through it, making said creatures particularly vulnerable to physical attacks for a short period of time. This element gives combat a little extra something.
The puzzles in "Obscure" are boilerplate for the genre - nothing really special or mind-bending is on display here. On top of this, the game is a fairly brief affair, so gamers looking for more to sink their teeth into may want to look elsewhere. However, one of the best features of "Obscure" is its budget price. Though it would have been a decent game at normal cost, the added bonus of paying less here equals getting more, and must be factored in to any review. In other words, "Obscure" doesn't break the mold, but it does what it does pretty well, complete with some impressive production values - and at this price, it's hard to go wrong if you've even a passing interest in the material.
(Note: Five stars on a curve given the budget price tag) | video-games_xbox |
What an Experience. I was a little skeptical this game would live up to the hype. Then some diminished reviews came around and I was already feeling a let down. Where could they go wrong? Was my thoughts. Well that didn't stop me from purchasing this game. After 30 minutes I was blown away. All skepticism was gone and I was in Gamer Heaven.
Let me start off from the beginning. Yes there is a plot twist and it's pretty bizarre. Just think that your watching a Michael Crichton movie and it will make sense. Playing in the Middle East several hundred years ago is a different idea. It's hard to say what you could expect with this concept.
So what makes this game amazing. Lets start off with the landscape. It's brilliant and beautiful...Really majestic. You don't understand the scope of this game until you start playing. The world is surrounded by several small villages and three large cities. The only way to travese this open terrain with a horse. Fortunately they are about as easy to find as a car in todays society.
What also sets this game apart is the ability to do what you want when you want. There is no clock on you and your not stuck going into a mission. Everything is open based. The character is amazingly fun to control you can scale tall buildings and make amazing leaps of faith. Climbing up a building that is several stories and then leaping to certain doom is breathtaking excitement. This is what games should be about.
Beyond that is a mission based game. Similiar to Grand Theft Auto in style. You can accept simple missions like pickpocketing and protecting citizens to the more main based assasin missions. You can battle soldiers if you want as you have many enemies but it's not really advised. Following the assasin missions can be complex and involve several steps that make the story very intresting. Obviously a lot of time was put into making this top notch.
For anyone who likes open based games with large environments then Assassins Creed is for you. From the majestic peaks to the clustered cities. This is trully a next gen experience. The storyline and incentive program will keep you playing for many hours. Definately a worthwhile gameplay experience. If you want something to keep you busy that doesn't involve guns go out and get Assasins Creed. | video-games_xbox |
above and beyond the mediocre reviews. i wasn't expecting much from dragon's dogma given its lukewarm reception from critics, but i enjoyed the demo on LIVE (especially the shadow of the colossus-esque ability to climb on enemies) and decided to give it a shot--which is easy with it's budget pricing. the game exceeded my expectations on all counts.
in particular, i think that the game's pawn system (companions--one of whom you create personally and an optional other two that can be rented from other players' games) is incredibly innovative, though not as useful as it could be. an example of how this works is as follows: a random player rents my pawn, Khalia, and takes her on a few quests that i have yet to try. Khalia is still in my game--your main pawn is a constant companion--but the next time i sleep at an inn (synching the servers and downloading data), she informs me that she has new information and sometimes even items. she can then give me advice on how to complete those quests that she completed in the renter's game as well as strategies on how to defeat enemies that i may not have encountered yet. it's all very interesting, and my only complaint is that the utilization falls short of the concept.
the only real shortcoming of the game is its abhorrent save system, which allows you only one save file (meaning both the frequent autosaves and manual saves share the same file). while this helps with the immersion (ex.: if you wait too long, you'll have to live with the consequences of your choices and permanently miss quests), it hinders the degree with which you can experiment in the game. the inclusion of a new game+ mode (whereby all items and stats are carried through to a new play through) and the fact that new game+ is actually integrated into the storyline makes this a bit more forgivable, but still a glaring oversight considering how well the rest of the game plays.
+great action/combat
+innovative pawn system
+new game+ adds length and challenge to an already large game
-camera can be problematic, especially when climbing (which is arguably when it's the most necessary)
-some optional quests have time limits that are not explicitly stated
-terrible save system | video-games_xbox |
Sonic's back. I have to start off by saying Sonic unleashed is what many have been waiting for in a Sonic game, platforming mixed with speed and cool new things with less focus on side characters like Shadow and whatnot. I was both excited and dreading the release since the last few 3D games have been disappointing with gameplay and the number of glitches I encountered (specifically the Next Gen Sonic the Hedgehog game and Shadow the Hedgehog).
The game is fast fun and definitely polished, there's no glitches or agonizing load times seen in the next gen Sonic the Hedgehog, they took out the serious story with realistic looking characters and replaced the story with one of more fantasy with more fitting cartoonish characters. The levels go flawlessly from the behind the back running to 2D style running and they've added a few moves like drifting, boosting and quick dashing and thankfully removed the repetitive talking in the levels. The werehog was a big thing I feared from the start but it turns out it's like a less violant God of War (Literally down to the way he attacks, opens doors and finishes off enemies) and it still manages to be fun, though not as fast but it's okay and I'll say why later. You have to level Sonic and the Werehog up separately, though not to the extent of Sonic and the Secret Rings where you're running horribly slow, you go from fast to mach ten. Sonics day levels are pure speed and fun much like Sonic Adventure just MUCH faster when they have to be and more polished so to speech, the werehogs levels are slower but also more focused on combat and some light puzzles, where leveling with Sonic would get you more speed and boost, the werehog gets more attack moves, power and health, and there's also the Tornado levels where you fly with Tails to take down Robotniks (Eggmans) army which is more or less press a certain button to blow up a certain enemy..
The 360/PS3 versions are almost completely different from the Wii/PS2 in every way, the levels are the same theme but are completely different in design, there is no leveling for Sonic and it's done automatically for the werehog. The werehog is more of a button masher than it is the 360/PS3 version where they have a long move list. There's more of an even spread between Sonics and the Werehogs levels, while the Wii/PS2 seems to focus more on the werehog. There is no towns to explore in the Wii/PS2 version, which is more of a picture/text adventure rather than running around, which is fine, but it's fun to see Segas new art style with the human characters that actually fit in this time around. The 360/PS3 version seems to be larger in scale to the Wii/PS2 versions but that's not to say the Wii version isn't good, it's just not as large as the 360/PS3.
I'm so happy with this game, even if you're not a big fan of the werehog levels, there's enough fun in Sonics levels to keep you coming back for more. They don't try to over complicate a story with characters wierd events and certainly no Final Fantasy looking characters. It focuses on Sonic and his Werehog form and has a very fantasy/silly story, but it's very fitting for Sonic I must say. The game is the best Sonic game I've played in along time, and though I expected it to be not great, it turned out to be my favorite 3D Sonic game. | video-games_xbox |
Just what I expected from Crytek. One of the things that I have learned over the years is that Crytek ( the creators of this game and also the developers for the Crysis series ) Makes some of the best games you would ever want to play.. This game is no exception , from start to finish the game had me so enthralled in the story I just didn't want to stop playing..
If you are one of those people that think this game is just a game of quick time events ( QTE ) you would be completely wrong.. You have to initiate the QTE .. The fighting machanics of this game can be easily compaired to the batman games , they are fast and fluid.. You will need to rely heavily on your blocking/shield , without it you will die very quickly. Once you get the block , stagger , and attack combonations down its pretty much smooth sailing from there on out.. Im not saying it's completely easy from there but everything is alot more managable after you get everything down. YOU WILL STILL DIE THROUGH OUT THE GAME !! You will run into hords of ememies that at some points seem overwhelming , but after you die a few times you will see the things you are doing wrong and correct it.
The graphics are nothing but amazing in this game and simply something that could not be accomplished with the previous generation ( Xbox 360 , PS3 ) . Everything is just so detailed and beautiful to look at. I have found that after clearing an area of enemies I like to stop and just look around and appreciate the surroundings I am playing in..
In my opinion this game is nearly flawless and deserves nothing less than a 5 out of 5.. Don't listen to the paid professional reviews , if you want a real honest and truthful review , just read the user reviews.. There have been so many times I have seen profesional reviews really trounce on a game and give it poor reviews but doesnt reflect the actual user reviews that are much higher. One of the worst reviews I have ever seen was by Adam Sessler from G4 tv reviewing Darksiders.. I can't remember exactly what score he gave it but he gave either a one or two star review.. That was a totally inacurate review of the game.
<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Darksiders-II-Xbox-360/dp/B0056WJA30/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Darksiders II Xbox 360</a>
Look at the actual user reviews. What I'm trying to tell you is to look for yourself and play the games you want instead of listening to the '" professional " reviews.. As a matter of fact Sessler even gave this game a bad review and even admitted in his review he didn't complete the game..
On a final note , just pick up the game and play it if you are interested , it really is an excellent game and one that you will always remember................................................................................................................................. | video-games_xbox |
The way you want it, but not in the way you expect. When I first heard about Dead Island, I was completely skeptical about it. I mean, a zombie game (which had been already made a ton) on a Caribbean Island? That sounds so stupid! Why would anyone want to play that?
I am pleased to admit I was wrong.
I originally bought the original version, just Dead Island (no GOTY edition) last year, and I have to say, I thought it was well worth the $24.99 I paid for it then. I traded in my copy of Dead Island for $12. The price of a brand new GOTY edition is $19.99. I also had a gift card with $2.67 on it. So in other words;
$19.99 (+6% tax)
- $14.67 (my copy ($12) + gift card ($2.67))
= $6.52 out of my pocket.
The only question then was, "How could I not do it?"
It was a complete steal and I couldn't pass it up. I had logged about 6 hours on Dead Island prior to this trade-in and I can completely say that the game is well worth the money.
*Before I start this review, I want to just say that this is MY review of the game. If you don't agree with it, then don't bash me for it. This is just what I, personally, think the game deserves.*
VISUALS/GRAPHICS: The graphics will blow you away. You can actually see parts of your character when you're just looking around. For example, if you look at your feet, you can see them. I love games with this much detail in them, because it just makes you feel a little more like your character. The best part about Dead Island's visuals, though, is the blood/gore. Wanna chop off that zombie's arm? Do it. Wanna decapitate him? Do it! When you kill a zombie, you can chop off its limbs, even when it's on the ground. Dead. It's a bit creepy, but it makes it feel a little more, for a lack of a better word, realistic. When a zombie falls to the ground, it starts bleeding, but that's not the cool part. The cool part is that if you look at it from the right angle, the blood actually reflects sunlight! It's just part of the amazing visuals that this game has to offer. The colors are bright, as they should be in the Caribbean, and the visuals are crisp. The visuals easily get a 5/5 for me.
GAMEPLAY: The gameplay is addicting. Very addicting. It will have you starting at 8 at night and not stopping until midnight or 1 A.M. Ask me how I know. You start off choosing 1 of 4 characters to play as. I chose Sam (the rapper) because his fighting style really appealed to me. Sam's fighting specialty is heavier melee weapons (axes, machetes, katanas, etc.) and it, to me, was a good choice. When you travel all throughout Dead Island, you're not just traveling over a Caribbean island. It literally feels like you are slaying zombies at a Caribbean resort. You can get a new weapon just about anywhere. You can find them in buildings, huts, or pools. Heck, you can even pull pipes off of huts and buildings and use those as weapons! You can also buy new weapons and upgrade them into an ultimate weapon. You get to meet other survivors and travel to unique locations that really compliment the story. There are pools, bars, pools with bars, guest suites, beach huts, etc. For instance, a bunch of survivors turned an ordinary lighthouse into a survivalists' bunker. The character interaction really reminds me of Left 4 Dead 1 and 2. Like L4D, there were many people who were looking for many other people (e.g., a husband looking for his wife, a mother looking for her children, etc.) and it really gives the game a sad feeling, despite you being on a Caribbean island. There are times, though, where there are so many people who ask you to find their loved ones, that it kinda feels like you're always on a manhunt. These missions aren't bad, but there's just a lot of them. The fact that the developers were able to create that feeling of hopelessness and dark, zombie-killer-game attitude on a game that has a tropical island with bright, vibrant colors for a setting is incredible and will have you coming back for more. The gameplay scores a 4.5 out of 5 for me.
VERDICT: There's not much else I can tell you about this game that already hasn't been stated. The graphics are sweet, the gameplay is great, and the replay value is definitely here. If you like to kill zombies, get this game. If you like games with beautiful tropical settings, get this game. If you like games with a high gore factor, get this game. At $20 for the entire game PLUS all of the DLC's, you seriously can't go wrong. | video-games_xbox |
Probably The Best MK Game To Date. I have been a Mortal Kombat fan since the original game and I am always impressed with each new MK game (although I have yet to play MK: Mythologies).
I was a huge fan of Mortal Kombat Trilogy simply because we were finally able to play as some of the characters that we couldn't play as before: Shao Kahn, Goro, Kintaro, Motaro, etc. But it was only available on PS1 and the N64. I had always hoped that Midway would bring out something similar for the Xbox and PS2 consoles. After several more Kombat games, Midway finally did it! Here we get a roster of about 62 characters, four of which still need to be unlocked. But the fact that we virtually get all the characters unlocked when we first put the game in our consoles is absolutely amazing! I was expecting to have to unlock at least half the roster but that's not the case here!
What about some of the features? Well, for starters, like the last two MK games, there is The Krypt where you can use koins you've earned in Arcade and Konquest mode to unlock items. However, there are not as many unlockables in this game compared to the previous two; the reason could be because of the huge roster which took up disc space and a few other odds and ends. Sadly, there isn't much of anything special to unlock here except for alternate character costumes and arenas. The concept art is...well...just that. And the movies are basically test footage of some of the characters and about one or two promo ads for a couple of the newer MK games. What is especially nice about The Krypt this time is that there are no multi-colored koins to collect. There are only gold koins, making it easier to unlock items.
Konquest mode has been redone as well, making it more fun, in my opinion. Anyone who has played Shaolin Monks will easily see the resemblance here. This makes the mode much more fun because you have to interact more with the environment than in previous Konquest modes. However, there is probably one drawback to it, just like with any other previous Konquest mode, it is basically there for you to unlock items and to collect koins.
Another interesting feature here is Motor Kombat. What it is is a simple spinoff of the Mario Kart series of games, only with MK characters. There are ten characters to choose from, each with their one special abilities to try to win the race. There are also five tracks. The unfortunate thing about this mode, however, is that it is small, not offering us many characters or tracks due to the already large amount of disc space the roster takes up. This mode is something just to kill some time with and really nothing more. Some may find it more fun than Chess or Puzzle Kombat, but it is personal preference.
There is also a new Kreate A Kharacter feature. All you need to know about this is that it is, seriously, the DEEPEST character creation engine I have seen on ANY game to date! This mode goes in really deep and what makes it more fun is that you can take your character online and battle with others.
There is a Kreate A Fatality feature as well but it is only within the Arcade mode. When you defeat a character and FINISH HIM is flashing, you have a certain allotted amount of time to due a fatality. It is fairly simple to pull off 1-3 of them with simple button pushing, but you can do as many as you wish. The more experienced you are with the game's controls, the more you'll be able to pull off. There is one catch however, with each fatality you pull-off, the amount of time lessens for you to pull-off the next one. So you have to be quicker about it as you progress. What makes this feature dry is that the individual character fatalities are gone. Disc space, once again, is the reason for this. So the fatalities are nothing more than simple ripping off of limbs, busting skulls, etc.
The graphics are still looking good here. But they do seem to look slightly more bland than in the previous two installments due to the large roster. The arenas and characters, although still very nicely detailed, are not quite as detailed as they were in Deception or Deadly Alliance. Nevertheless, they are still very well done.
The gameplay is still very good here. The characters are relatively easy to control. What I like about this installment is that the boss characters are much easier to defeat than they were in previous games; like Kintaro, Shao Kahn, Motaro, etc. They are not the cheap AI fighters they were in previous MK games. Also, in the two previous Kombat games each fighter had three fighting sets. Two hand-to-hand styles and one weapon. But due to disc space, the max you will see here is two. Some of the characters, like Onaga, only have one. While it seems like a loss, it's not all that big of a loss. Of course it would be interesting to see some characters, like Onaga, have a weapon as well.
Mortal Kombat Armageddon is a Mortal Kombat fan's dream game! With over sixty fighters, everyone is surely going to try beating the game with a vast number of characters. The only drawback to the game are the quality of the unlockables in The Krypt, the extras, and the fact that in Arcade mode, there are only about eight fighters you have to go through before getting to Blaze (the boss). For a game that has a story that points to the coming of an apocalypse, the amount of fighters you have to go through seems very small. Too bad there wasn't an option you could choose like in Mortal Kombat 3 and Trilogy where there were different tiers with a different number of fighters in it. The only way to get a good challenge out of this is to simply up the difficulty level.
The game, overall, is really what we had expected: A Mortal Kombat game with every fighter available for us to use! Sure we were hoping for some extras that would keep us occupied as well like the previous two installments, but isn't the main reason we are buying this game is so we can play as all the characters? That is the main attraction here and it delivers! Armageddon will most certainly go down as one, if not, the best MK game to date and is sure to be a big seller with Christmas right around the corner!
I highly recommend this game to any Mortal Kombat fan! | video-games_xbox |
Sometimes it's just more fun to SHRED. Like many games I seem to enjoy, this game is getting a pretty bad rep. I'm reviewing this to clear up some information for the more open-minded of you that are kind of on-the-line as to picking Bodycount up or not. Remember, this post is entirely of my own opinion, & I happen to prefer games that are not always AAA titles.
First things first, Is Bodycount worth it's $60 price tag? Unfortunately, Bodycount is overpriced. This is a game worth no more than $40. The multiplayer is very typical, and I do not think there will be any downloadable content in this games future. I'm (most likely a little more than half way through the game & playing on the hard difficulty setting) working on the campain mode, and while I'm totally enjoying the game, I expect to finish it within an approx. total of 8 hours. (correction, hard mode took me 14 hours to beat)
Is the gameplay enjoyable? Here is the premise: SHRED EVERYTHING IN SITE! If you enjoyed the demo, you're in for more of the same. I absolutely LOVE the the cover/strafe system, the destructable environments, and the weapons are all tuned up to 20! One of the more addictive elements is the fact that there is no load time between deaths, giving it that, "lemmy just have one more go, I know I can beat it" vibe. The earlier AI (also in the demo) is completely lacking, but as you progress through the game, new enemies are much smarter, will use cover, and will try to flank. This forces the player to be less "Rambo" and more of a tacticle "John McLaine". There are small power-ups based on how much intel (blue orbs that spew out of dead npcs) you gather: "explosive bullets, impervious to bullets, night vision, and an air-strike". Ultimately, I'm loving every last minute of Bodycount. There are enough reminders to Black, but with more of a cartoony/arcade vibe.
How are the graphics/sound: Graphics are decent, sound (as with Black) is incredible.
Replay Value: This really depends on the person. I find this to be in perfect compliment to Fallout New Vegas (which I'm also currently playing) in the sense that, sometimes I just want to let loose and not take a game so seriously! Another one of my favorite games (also unfortunately bashed by the "critics") is Kane & Lynch 2, and I think that Bodycount is going to take the place of it as my new, "throw the disk in, turn up my custom soundtrack, blastfest."
In all, besides the price tag, there is really nothing wrong with a game like Bodycount as long as you know what you're getting into. I find it sad that a game as entertaining as this gets raped by critics force-fed on diets of Halo & COD. Like Serious Sam, Doom, & early Red Faction, Bodycount does what it does really well and brings a few new elements to the table. Personally, I'd give the game a solid 8. | video-games_xbox |
Better choice for product of similar price range. The Rock Pedal is leaps above any stock pedal that is offered between the Rock Band sets and the Ion. It's built on a reputable Pulse Pro pedal that has many advanced features for a pedal of it's price range. It can be adjusted in many places and includes a drum key for that which has it's own little handy holder build on the frame. It's quite stable on a carpeted surface. It can also easily be securely joined with a practice pad to offer a tactile rebound and feel using the beater. Some adjusting is needed for that, but the difference is worth it. No other pedal can offer that as of yet without modifying the sensor locations. Speaking of the sensor, it's craftsmanship and mounting are superb. This pedal will never break either. It's heavy duty and designed for real acoustic drumming. The feel, quickness, and smoothness are the real key advantages that this pedal gives in order to keep your combos without your leg cramping up.
Some of the top RB drummers promote Destroyer, which is quite similar. Though they likely support that pedal as it's been around a bit longer and the owner of that company is more influential in the Rock Band Scoring community. Truth is, those drummers are sponsered by Destroyer, but most don't really use it.
The Omega pedal isn't even really cosidered close competition. The mechanical switch on that pedal has proven to be too faulty and unreliable, among other issues.
Customer service for the Rock Pedal is also top notch. Some of the best you will find in any company, for any product, what-so-ever.
I gave this a four of five stars simply because it's the best pedal solution in it's price range among the others available. Though it's still not the very best pedal solution available.
The best set up is using a real pedal with a kick trigger such as the Roland KD-8 and a Kickbox. Being the best comes with a price tag that is almost triple of the cost of the Rock Pedal, but it really is that much more reliable. If you can't afford the very best, the Rock Pedal is your best bet. | video-games_xbox |
Amazing! (First time for simulation. I have played Forza Motosport 3 and did not enjoy the experience, I find racing got too stale quickly. I have also played Gran Turismo 5 too and found it difficult to get used to. I like to play games for fun, not the steep curve in difficulty and make it utter realistic that is not a game anymore. My first opinion is Forza 4 feels just WOW. After getting for nice low price from Amazon, the racing in the game, felt more significantly smoother than Foza 3. I wanted Xbox Exclusive game and Forza had high rating.
Presentation and Gameplay:
One thing I don't like about games that do not feature full suited career mode but Forza 4 totally nails it here. Career features tons of races and difficulty increases very gradually. The menu navigation are presented in simple manner with one drawback, I would have prefer to directly upgrade the car or do tuning by selecting the car instead you have go menu back to upgrade section. This isn't troublesome but little annoying to my opinion, otherwise as said it easy navigate. Forza is simulation racer, for non-sim racer, I was bit hesitant about getting it but playing and lost track of time, I realized that I got into the game and learned the mechanincs with ease. It starts quite easy and so far (reached level 23 in Expert Division), I find the races to be beateable on first go, providing that no mistakes done and thanks to "Rewind", it surely comes as plus for novice racers like me. I am fan of TV Series Top Gear, and was amazed to see that Jeremy Clarkson provides voiceovers on various vehicles in Autovista Mode. This gives the game a high quality feel. Customization is one thing I enjoy doing and Forza provides quite bit for tuner and some vehicles so you can get that unique look on your ride
Graphics:
Xbox 360 is aged console similar like the PS3 but that didn't hamper the developers to dish out the most beautiful and details visuals that I ever seen in a video game. I have seen Gran Turismo 5 looking great but I from the direct comparison (did myself in own setup running both games). Forza 4 looks more visually superior, shading is right and reflections are real. The car models in Autovista are truly amazing, incredible level of texture and shading level. I was at awe most of time when looking at the cars. I may not have that car in real, but Forza satisfies my inner desire of driving such exotics.
Multiplayer:
I have tried a bit, did some races and see in game player community for clubs (clans), auction house and store. As mentioned before, I am not great racer and not good for online racing yet I will sure give it more try but so far it was utterly smooth, no lag almost or anything weird happening. Cars from Career mode can be driven in Multiplayer too which is good thing as we racers like to show off our ride.
Kinect Features:
I have kinect so I give it a show first time. Racing with kinect can be tiring as you have put hands out like holding invisible steering wheel. Head-tracking is excellent, requires a little of calibration before usage so it tracks more accurately. The Autovista mode of Kinect is absolutely garbage, tracking is horrible, from the looks its more software problem, I disliked the selection menu of cars using kinect, it is so difficult to browse. Thumbs down for Kinect. Great Ambition but requires more improvement.
For any car enthusiast, stop playing arcade racers like Need for Speed (except Shift, whihch is aim and haven't played), go grab of copy of Forza 4 and you will know this game will give the experience to drive your dream in most realistic detail and manner. | video-games_xbox |
Xbox 360 Is The Best Console Out There For The Money. I just bought a Xbox 360 Pro System a couple of weeks ago from my local Gamespot Store along with Call of Duty 3. I later on got Gears of War from Circuit City.
The Xbox 360 Pro System is by far the best console system out there no matter what anybody says for the money. Yes the Sony PlayStation 3 has the Blu-Ray disc media format and the Nintendo Wii system has the new remote controller for 3-D movement. But both the PlayStation 3 and the Nintendo Wii console systems just came out and both systems already have major bugs in them. There are already alot of people out there who regret buying one of those systems.
If your smart, you'll wait a year until all the bugs are fix in both those console systems and then think about purchasing one of those systems. That is what I did with the Xbox 360. Yes there were major problems with the Xbox 360 when it first came out just like there are major problems now with the PlayStation 3 and the Nintendo Wii console systems. I waited a year until Microsoft fixed all the bugs in the Xbox 360 and then I went out and purchased it.
Right now the Xbox 360 has the best selection of games out there. The Xbox Live Marketplace is the best online service out there. Go read the reviews for the few games that are out for the PlayStation 3 and you will see what I mean about which system has better games to play. There are already a huge selection of games to play on the Xbox 360 with a whole bunch of new games for the Xbox 360 coming out next year. Unfortunately, there are not too many new games coming out for the PlayStation 3 or the Nintendo Wii next year.
Also, the Nintendo Wii has very poor graphics and you can't play DVD movies on it and the PlayStation 3 has very few games to choose from to play and it also has poor online service. The Xbox 360 is already one year ahead of the other two systems on being out in the retail market and that, my friend, will make a huge difference on which system to choose from to go out to buy and play. | video-games_xbox |
Rock Band 3 Drum Set. I absolutely LOVE this drum set! It was an upgrade from the Guitar Hero World Tour drum set. It was very well packaged which is expected. The instructions to put this thing together weren't necessarily "idiot proof" but I did eventually get it set up how I wanted it in about 30 minutes. You can adjust the height of the individual cymbals and the drum set as a whole however you like.
This drum set is very sturdy. I like to POUND the drums and this set can take it well. The packaged drum sticks are thicker than the Guitar Hero ones. Its a good thing, but they create a little more noise and I live in an apartment. So I may invest in some Rock Band drum silencers.
Also, I noticed a lot of people complain about the yellow cymbal slowly lowering after a certain amount of hits. I won't sit here and they put it together wrong, but I have never had any problems with my cymbals. As stated before, I hit the drums a little harder than the average person and my cymbals are in the same place I installed them.
Another good thing is that this drum set does not take up a WHOLE LOT OF SPACE! For it to have 4 pads and 3 cymbals you would think otherwise.
One main thing I wondered before buying this drum set was if it was compatible with any games besides Rock Band. I own a few Guitar Hero games myself. But this set does work with all of my Guitar Hero games that have drum capabilities. (GHWT, GH5) They even changed the highway to 4 notes because I don't have the fifth one like the Guitar Hero drums. I assume it will work with all the other GH games. I guess it should if it costs that much.
In Rock Band 3 it is supposed to have a pro feature where the cymbals and bass pads will have their own notes. I'm really looking forward to that and it actually played a big role in swaying my mind to buy it.
I think this drum set is very attractive. A BIG step from the Guitar Hero one, and every time I look at this drum set it makes me want to pop in the game and get my Travis Barker on. So definitely worth the money but ONLY if you like to drum.
I hope I answered any questions in the review. If not, comment and let me know. | video-games_xbox |
When all the rest try to make games a movie, some companies remember what won us over when we were kids. When I was younger I remember games that took dedication and countless deaths. Anybody remember the Contra Code? Those extra lives made the game feel like "normal mode" more than a cheat. Gone have been the days of 100+ hour dedication to an RPG or even most Main Stream RPGs in general, which for the fans of us out there is a real let down. Then came Demon's Souls. Demon's souls was brutally uncaring about your little "easy mode" common place playstyle that has made gaming a subplot to cinematography. I remember how frustrating it was dying over and over elarning how to fight every enemy I encountered and what playstle worked best for me.
That feeling is back. The sequel is everything the first game was and takes that a step further. Granted, there's not as much outright surprise since we know it's a direct sequel but by making the world one open expanse it has upped the feeling of dessolation 3 fold. Instead of going onto a new section and feeling like I "beat an area" I just go further into the realm they've built and feel my nerves fry. My wife watches me looking like a little nervous kid and gets quite a kick out of just what this is able to do. In 3 words; I am Impressed.
This game is not for the faint through. Its difficulty surpasses almost anything thats come out within the last decade and if you are one of the folks who just loses it when you die then perhaps you should go back to Elderscrolls on Easy Mode. Provided you are willing to laugh at the ruthless unfliching combat and tricky set ups of traps or sneaky shots by a boss this just might remind you of what got you started into "punching buttons" in the first place.
Graphically it is beautiful with minimum issues and the occasional hit detection with surfaces (sometimes a wall shouldnt let a sword go through it) but there isn't much else to complain about. Its as grim as it is pretty and the visuals will make you feel uncomfortable with every step.
In closing, if you're willing to watch your character be mangled, destroyed, maimed and can laugh about it you will find a visceral emotional connection with Dark Souls you won't find in many games to date, but it will require your patience, intelligence, skill, and temperment to be as honed as the game itself or you won't make it out alive.
4.9/5 | video-games_xbox |
Lacks Depth. The first Halo was seen as a sort of blockbuster of games, a title that put the Xbox on the map and kept the console from potentially becoming another Dreamcast (sorry SEGA). With slick, albeit repepitive, graphics and gameplay that was more intuitive than any console-shooter before it, Halo simply rocked the house.
The sequel -- anticipated and set upon years later -- falls somewhat short.
Wherein the first game the single-player was astounding, brilliant, captivating and moving, Halo 2's single-player is simply mediocre. The story -- a strong point early on -- spiraled out of its own hands, becoming a bungled mess of characters and far-away ideas that only the truly hardcore will understand, or care to understand. A strange thing to add is that the cutscenes which propel the story are foul. I've never seen this in other games before, but in Halo 2 the cutscenes have this strange tendency to load while you're watching them. This means at the start they can be very low-res and have primitive textures before finally loading up to the typical graphics-fare. It's not an awful mistake on Bungie's behalf, but you have to think that it could have been easily avoided considering the nature of cutscenes.
Sadly, the story isn't the only dull point of the single-player. Level design is reminiscent of the days of early modders for the Unreal and Quake games of yester-years. There is an overall lack of originality and professionalism put into the levels. They are just too bland, with a poor art-direction not helping in the least (get used to seeing mushed colors of greys and greens).
The gameplay itself has lost that precision once felt in the first Halo. Hard to describe, the best word I could put out is that the game feels very floaty, as if you're playing while frolicking in a vat of dough. Okay, that was bad. Regardless, Halo 2 has a, dare I say it, generic touch to it.
There is one thing that saves Halo 2 from falling into that hole filled with the thousands of other "been there done that" fan-fare FPSes, and that is multi-player. Helped out by the hand that is Xbox-Live, Halo 2's multi-player is easy to access and enjoy. There is also a robust statistics system in place for the hardcore (and I do mean robust; you can find very minute details of every match you've played). The game is also very beginner-friendly with a forgiving auto-aim feature and general lack of required accuracy.
Do note, though, that Halo 2's multi-player is quite different from most FPSes, including its predecessor. Where in most multi-player games skill is the most needed attribute, Halo 2 requires more of a strategic approach (such as weapon control) due to a large divide between the strengths of the weapons. Though it is no Counter-Strike, Halo 2's multi-player is perfect for the same mold of players: people who enjoy team-based action will enjoy Halo 2's multi-player. Those who prefer skill and quick reactions may want to look elsewhere (if not simply to Halo).
Something that has to be said, though, that there is something disturbing about Halo 2's online community. This may have little to do with the actual game but it requires noting simply due to the overwhelming nature of it -- Halo 2's online community is rude, simply put. Parents bewarned (and perhaps just the mature-folk): you WILL meet people who are rude, foul-mouthed, racist, sexist, and sometimes, simply too young. I was rather amazed at how I could play a series of matches and not once go without seeing one of the above (often displayed across the board by multiple players). Again, I find this rather disturbing and I make this paragraph out to only be a warning to those wishing to play online.
Overall, Halo 2 is a good game teetering on mediocrity. The single-player is a definite weakness, and a glaring one at that. However, a robust, intuitive, and beginner-friendly multi-player keeps Halo 2's head above water. | video-games_xbox |
Greatest Adventure/Role-Playing Game of this console's generation. A tremendous dragon emerges from an ominous black hole, attacks your village, and plucks the very heart, still beating, from your chest. You wake up days later with a gnarly scar and a crypic, beckoning message from the dragon. You are The Arisen, the chosen one of your era, master of the mysterious sub-human pawns from another world, and the only person that can defeat the terrible dragon and bring peace back to your world.
I can't say enough good things about this game. I have not found a game this enrapturing since my childhood playing Playstation 1 games like Final Fantasy VII and Breath of Fire III. Capcom's found a way to merge a free-roaming, open-world environment with a fantastically innovative and versatile combat system, and backed it all with a deep, compelling storyline that delves into what makes somebody human, and the repeating, cyclic nature of time.
I tried to write about each aspect separately, but my review got WAY too long! Here it is drastically simplified:
- Graphics: Sharp, huge rendering distance! No radius-line where environment detail suddenly jumps. Monsters are visible in the distance long before you approach them. The night sky is particularly attractive.
- Character Creation: As simple or complex as you choose to make it. It's easy to simply pick a set of parts that look great or dive into the editing system and make somebody specific. I will note that there are technically only 4 voices in the game to pick from (2 male, 2 female) however, there are 3 high-pitch and 3 lower-pitch versions of each.
- Pawn System: In addition to the main character, you get to create one "main pawn". This pawn, if you play online, can be shared with others online, and in turn, you can "borrow" up to two other players' pawns to use for a maximum party of four. When you finish using another player's pawn, you have the option of "sending them home" with a review and a gift item. You can also add them to your favorites if you'd like to find them easier later. This creates a online-community aspect to an otherwise single-player experience. Pawns have an fantastic AI in this game. As you complete quests, kill monsters, or explore areas, your pawn learns about them and will offer helpful info to you and other players when appropriate. You can also change the "inclinations" of your pawn to place priorities on things like scouting ahead, collecting items, using healing spells, and many many more. Additionally, you can alter how often your pawn offers their input, and in what manner they speak, be it timid, aggressive, confident, etc...
- Skills/Vocation System: Similar to other games' job systems, along with experience points, you accrue Discipline Points, or "DP" which you then spend on either Physical Skills, Magical Spells, or Augments (passive boosts) or to change to a new vocation. These DP aren't class specific, so you can spend DP you earned as a mage on some Fighter class skills and etc... There are 6 vocations (classes) in 3 teirs. Basic vocations are Fighter / Strider / Mage, Advanced vocations are Warrior / Ranger / Sorcerer, and the 3 hybrid vocations, Mystic Knight, Assassin, and Magick Archer.
- Combat: Easily the most versatile combat system I've ever had the pleasure of experiencing. Fighter type classes can put off-balanced humanoid enemies in "full nelsons" to negate their defenses, or hold beasts against the ground for the same effect. Anyone can latch onto and climb around on larger enemies like Cyclopes and Chimeras, both hindering their movement and gaining access to more vulnerable spots. All monsters have several unique weaknesses, for example, a Saurian (lizard man), along with being weak to cold magic, will drop his spear and be forced to crawl on all fours if you cut off its tail, reducing both it's offensive and defensive capabilities drastically. Being able to take advantage of these different weaknesses can completely turn the table on an otherwise fatal encounter.
So bottom line is, this is an absolutely unique, top-notch gaming experience that you won't find in any other title. If you enjoy RPGs than you're doing a disservice to yourself by not trying this game, and if you don't typically prefer RPGs, this is the game to change your mind! I wish Warner Bros would grow a brain and get with Capcom to make a Lord of the Rings game on this engine. Dragon's Dogma is an original title and therefore didn't catch the hype that it should have. A LotR game on the Dragon's Dogma engine would be a major blockbuster. I guess a man can dream... | video-games_xbox |
great gameplay - miserable premise. let me start by saying that urban chaos as a GAME is awesome! fantastic gamplay, level design, graphics, a.i., and controls. a total sense of urgency befalls the player as masked terrorists begin to torch the city. lots of escort and defend missions ensue while always feeling believable and never forced. urban chaos is heavy on the gore factor (which i love) yet far more heavy on keeping its many levels of gameplay fresh. almost all the weapons are fun to use, (especially the chainsaw and the magnum), and the riot shield has got to be one of the most fun gameplay elements to hit consoles since half-life 2's gravity gun! urban chaos also has multiplayer options via xbox live, which i cannot review simply because i do not have xbox live.
ONTO THE BAD:
HORRIBLE LIVE ACTING!
why anyone would put live actors into their video game is beyond me. it completely takes away from the video game experience. i want to become the character that i'm playing, not envision some crusty actor every time i pull the trigger. even worse is the acting: after every level a debriefing begins as a mock newscast updates you on the story. the actress that plays the newscaster SHOULD NEVER BE ALLOWED TO ACT AGAIN! she is not so bad that she's good, she is just plain nauseating to watch. Black (another really great FPS) was also guilty (in my opinion) of doing the live acting thing- but at least the actors could act!!!!! i must say again, live acting in a video game is lazy and takes away from the overall experience of playing a video game.
HORRIBLE PREMISE
as cartoonish and over the top as urban chaos is- it still should have dispensed with the god awful police state premise. i would never want to be part of a world where big brother is held in such high regard. your character is like a human robocop- judge jury and executioner.
granted that the riot shield is always related to a member of law enforcement, i just wish there was some other way to implement it's uses while not being part of the whole supercop story. ...maybe your character is an ex-cop turned vigilante who finds a way to smuggle the necessary equipment needed to finish the job.... whatever. my idea would destroy some of the in game missions, being that firemen and other officers woud not technically be able to help you or even work with you- but you get my point. the premise of urban chaos sucks!
these two negative factors really brought urban chaos down for me.
overall, i would totally recommend urban chaos to anyone of age and maturity - but i'd tell em to ignore the crap story and live actors. | video-games_xbox |
The Most Accurate and Reasonable Review You Will Ever Read. Here's the reasonable pros/cons in my mind:
Pros
-True MMORPG experience that allows group or solo play with ease
-VERY in-depth crafting system with 9 total crafting areas to expand your experience
-Fluid combat system that's was to learn
-Extensive skill point system to allow a LARGE VARIETY of combat styles (some races/classes are better suited for specific play styles, but any race/class combination can build effectively for a dps/tank/healer/support build)
-Respec skill point shrines to reconfigure how you play (for a reasonable price of gold)
-Different questing lines/stories between the three individual alliances (excluding main story quests, which don't matter much except for gaining skill points and/or elder scrolls lore)
-Large Player-vs-Player alliance wars which takes place in the cyrodil region (some pvp "campaigns" scale all players to level 50 to give everyone a chance, others have little scaling to make it so a level 40 should easily handle a level 10). This includes huge sieges on castles and forts where strategic planning and group cohesion makes the most difference in who wins the battle, however large armies can obviously hold a numbers advantage in any case.
-Numerous other pros (in my opinion) but I'm probably sound like a raving fanboy by now
Cons
-None (jk that's very unreasonable)
-Sometimes you get stuck on loading screens for a long time and see the dreaded "This is an unusually long loading time". Sometimes after 5-10mins it finishes loading, but in my experience things go much quicker if you force close ESO and restart the game, only takes like 2minutes.
-Sometimes the game crashes. In my experience this happens in PVP mostly because of the large battles of 50vs50 that can occur in big sieges (the map is large and individual groups can only hold 24 people to reduce the amount of people in one area, but sometimes multiple groups attack together lagging the game when 50 guys are taking a flag at the same time. This is an unavoidable consequence of large scale battles and good graphics. It only lags when those 50 people are in a tight area). Mostly the game crashes are random and have nothing to do with lag or everyone being by your location.
-Other cons I'm sure I can't think of atm
I have played Elder Scrolls since Oblivion. I absolutely love this game. It has been very addicting and I have not played another game for 2 months. I've been neglecting my Netflix shows too. So lets just get that out there. Bethesda really did an amazing job of creating an MMORPG in the elder scrolls universe that anyone can enjoy. This includes both players new to Elder Scrolls and seasoned veterans. Most of the cons with the game involve performance issues. This is good because I would say most people agree with this being the main negative to this game, because that means they nailed the content really well. This is Bethesda's first major successful MMORPG movement and I am not at all surprised they have performance issues with supporting such a large and growing player base. In time, the performance issues will get handled better if not perfectly fixed. Game content issues would be a bigger concern to me. Also note that any time your game crashes or you get stuck on a loading screen, you get logged off right where you traveled to or where your game might've frozen or crashed. So you don't lose progress. This eases the pain immensely. Aside from my obvious bias in support of the game, this is a very accurate assessment of this game. Not everyone thinks the way I do but this game is really good and has come a long way since the early console release issues. The performance support progress made since release is a great sign of things to come. | video-games_xbox |
Living In Another World. MORROWIND is a sandbox, first-person, role-playing style video game produced by Bethseda. It is set in the fictional world of Bethseda's Elder Scrolls and is the first Elder Scrolls game to be released on a non-PC format. You begin the game by choosing the race, sex, and class of your character as well as when they were born. This is an important part of the game because even if all you do in the game is complete the parts of the core storyline, the way people react to you will vary depending on the character you create at the beginning. For instance, if you create a human, the natives of the land you are at (the Dark Elves called Dunmer) will not view you in a positive light, but most everyone else will. If you choose to be an Orc, most everyone you meet will begin with a lower-than-average disposition to you. If you choose to be a Khajiit (a humanoid race of felines), the Dunmer will not like you and might want to capture you as a slave. After being released, you are given orders to complete the first part of the main quest. Whether you ever complete that quest is completely up to you or not. From that point on, you are pretty much free to roam wherever you want.
Even if you just choose to complete the main quest of the game and nothing else, it'd take a good 40-50 hours of gameplay and that's probably a very conservative estimate because when you take the travel time of the game into consideration (sometimes you have no choice but to walk or swim great distances) and as well as the time it takes to level up some (there are certain parts of the story that you can't complete until you've reached a certain level), you're looking at around 60 hours to just finish the main story.
I purchased MORROWIND back in 2007 and just finished the main quest in 2012. I played the game on and off during that time, spending no more than two or three hours on a time at it. Sometimes there would be a couple of months that went by where I didn't touch the game. However, I kept up at it. I have no idea how much time I played the game, but I know it's well into the hundreds of hours.
What can you do in that time? Well, quite a bit. There are several different guilds you can join. You can join one of the major houses (in this case a house being a particular race or group of people that are stewards of a certain section of the country). While walking along you might run into someone who needs help and you can choose to either help them or steal from them or kill them. You might also run into someone who says they need help, but they really just want to steal from you are kill you. There are all kinds of tombs, caverns, and Daedric shrines just ripe for looting. However, you have to be careful, too. If you get too lost in the game, you might accidently kill someone that was essential to the main quest and the game will ask you if you want to restart from the last save or continue. Or sometimes you might kill someone or steal from someone and then discover later you're not allowed to join a particular Guild because of what you did to that person. The game is just massive. After all of this time playing and even though I've completed the main quest and the two expansion pack quests, there is still all kinds of place on the map that I've never been.
There are some flaws to Morrowind. First, despite being really detailed in many areas, the game isn't as detailed as one might think. For instance, other than having a door, window, or staircase in a different location, buildings in a particular location all seem to look alike. This lack of variation also reveals itself in animals and plant life. For instance, even though Vvardfell is supposed to be the size of Austraila, your adventurer will keep running across the same creatures over and over and over and over; not counting magical creatures and evil humanoids there are only about 15 different types of animals you'll come against even if you play both the expansion sets. Plants are a little better, but you will keep finding the same plants in the same locations. None of this takes away from the gameplay, but it does make one think about how much better the game would have been if MORROWIND had been released later in the Elder Scroll series instead of just before the death of the original Xbox.
The only other two flaws with the game do affect game play. The first is the travel time. Until one becomes more well-known in the game, travel can be a real pain in the butt. Initially, the only ways a character can move around are by a giant bug called a silt-rider, by boat, by foot, or (if you can get your hands on one or learn one quick enough), by spell. There are a few more ways that open up as the game goes on. However, even with all of these different ways of traveling, there really is no quick way to travel from one end of the map to the other. If you're at the northern part of the map and need to get to the southern part, your journey will be more complicated than a person using the public transportation system in Chicago for the first time.
The other flaw of the game are the hang-ups. There are a few times when the game automatically saves. However, most of the time you have to do all the saving yourself. This wouldn't be such an issue except the game is so buggy. For instance, you might enter a different section of the map and go through a door and the game will freeze up. Or you might be swimming around an island because it's quicker than walking around it and you'll get attacked by a fish and the game will freeze. This wasn't just some random occurrence. It happens quite often and it doesn't matter if you're playing the game on an original Xbox, an Xbox 360, or a modified Xbox 360. I know because over the past five years I played MORROWIND on all three types of systems and still had the same problems. Besides freezing up, there's also the occasional quirk such as walking over a mountain then suddenly find yourself falling into an ocean that isn't there or, my favorite, walking along the Ashlands and coming across a fish that is swimming all around the dry land.
In short, MORROWIND is a massive action-adventure role-play game. There are a few shortcomings in the game, but they aren't enough to distract from general gameplay. If you save often, you'll find that the game can provide years of exploration. | video-games_xbox |
unimaginative and uninspired. when i heard that there was going to be a second lego batman,i was very exited.after all,the first lego batman is my 10th favorite game of all time.then i read that a LOT of the super friends/JLA were going to be in it too.so now i was in agony waiting for its release.i read all about the characters who would be there and my mind was abuzz with the possibilities.then i finaly got to play it.
i will now compare it to the first lego batman so you can see how far its fallen.
you cant simply change your various bat or robin suits by clicking the trigger.you have to find them.even in free play.or you have to stop the game and go back to the character list and pick a new guy.this pauses your partner too.it gets annoying really fast.
superman is awesome.flying can be tricky though.speaking of flying,YES YOU CAN FLY,which is great news.you save tons of time,not having to drive or construct things.
green lantern can control green bricks but thats it.he cant shoot lasers as an attack.i had high hopes for him too.
the flash is extremely quick.after only a couple of seconds,he will be a blur.he is a lot of fun.
some of the characters fly when thier comic book counterpart doesnt,such as wonder woman and brainiac.thats obnoxious since thier are so many fliers already.
you don't just get bad guy missions like before,you must travel gotham and find them,battle them and then buy them.but money isn't a problem at all.i frequently earned millions in mere minutes.
in lego batman 1 there were 18 good guy missions and 18 bad guy missions.in this one there were something like 12 good guy missions and thats it.there were 3 times that many in the first one.
but,something new that is something awesome is free roam around gotham.theres plenty of trouble to get into there.
so,this game ,while good is way less good than part 1.its disorganized and has far less content.im not usualy one to complain about the $60 it costs to buy a video game,but i really feel like i didn't get my moneys worth this time.this game would be in my top 40 favorite video games.at about #40.wait for the price to go down and then buy it is what i say. | video-games_xbox |
really bad in some ways, really good in others. i got this game as soon as i could because ive been closely following its development since i first heard about it two months ago. seeing screenshots and reading the previews only brought images of grand turismo and my favorite of all racing games, tokyo extreme racer zero.
the game is beautiful. the courses are gorgeous. the cars are realistic. blah blah blah, youve heard it before and you will hear it again.
the gameplay? its very fun and challenging. Apex, however, is by no means a driving sim. true, the engine sounds are very close to their real world counterparts, and the licensed cars are meticulously cloned, but the driving is very biased, and elementary. but its very fun. imagine ridge racer with grand turismos looks. this is something that will split gamers opinions.
Apex, does have one big, and nearly fatal flaw. its AI. its the one AI in the playground that doesnt play well with others --that means you. ive played the game for 15+ hours now and i gotta say, getting started was extremely tough and the AI can become nausiatingly frustrating. if you show signs that youll ever have to attend anger management classes, consider Apex a rental first...youll save yourself a lot of money, because i was on the verge of throwing my xbox out the window. first of all, the CPU will never spin out. NO MATTER WHAT, THE CPU WILL NEVER EVER SPIN OUT. you may be able to get in front of a car and pin him against something else, but that almost never happens. second, if you're trailing, either the car in front of you will use his nitrous oxide tanks (which you don't get as far as i know) and will leave you in its rear view mirror, or get right in front of you to make passing very difficult. don't think of making the slightest mistake like a late breaking manuver, or the cars you thought were 4 seconds behind you will come out of nowhere (whoever was in charge of creating the AI should me smacked)
the music is boring and forgetable...some sort of generic, ambient, jazz techno...i don't know. but the sound effects are a lot better. their what youd expect, which is good engine noise.
despite Apex's AI with a god complex, you cant deny the unique gameplay, or its enthralling nature. from the start i was immersed and couldn't get enough. you get to name your company and choose a logo for it. the characters you hire for your production company are all charasmatic and quirky (as charasmatic and quirky as game characters get).
personally, i think rallisport challenge is the ultimate xbox driving game. the graphics are very detailed, and even ambiant at times (but you knew this). and the gameplay is a lot better. but what apex has that rallisport doesn't, is a very personal element that more than makes up for the things it falls short on.
oh yea, this game would have been rad with xbox live support.
** i recommend this game to anyone, even non racing fans, but if you are at all easily irritated, rent first** | video-games_xbox |
Fooled Again. I bought this when it first came out. If I had given my review then, I would have given it a 4 or 5. Since playing it, I realized that it is as others have said - a BORING game where you watch, press buttons, watch, press buttons and you keep waiting to PLAY something! I was expecting, hoping that it would be deep but it turned out to be very simplistic and the only thing good were the graphics and they only looked good during the cut scenes.
It's crazy, back in the 1980's and 1990's, the Japanese ruled the 2D gaming world, but as soon as things turned to 3D as the standard (Sega and Namco did their thing early on), the Japanese all but fell off. They use old-school graphics engines which seem to maintain that early 2000's look. Characters and stories are much the same. What do you expect from a country that gives you limitless sequels? After all, this is called FINAL Fantasy, but it never seems to be final. The usual stereotyping of the black man in the game does not help either. The Japanese fell off. In the 3D world, the Japanese fell off and the Americans fell on. In the time frames mentioned, American games used to suck so bad that when I heard a game was by Americans, I looked the other way! I could even tell graphically if a game was American. Now, I almost look the other way for a Japanese game.
Of all of the Japanese games I bought for the 360, I either did not finish them, or they were boring or felt old school - including graphically. This include Resident Evil 5, Lost Planet (I played it once when it came out and I have not touched it since...), Soul Caliber 4 and Street Fighter 4 to name a few. Now compare those games with just ONE game that I and many other STILL cannot get enough of (online anyway) - Grand Theft Auto 4! Everything about that game blows all of those games away, except that FF13 looks to be 1080P or something close to it.
I say rent. The other part is, this game is on 3 DVD's. NOW, we are starting to see separation between the PS3 and the Xbox 360, although graphic wise, they are on par, it is just that the Blu-Ray format is being put to use now. | video-games_xbox |
Both better in some ways and worse in others. I remember playing the original "Knights" a year ago and absolutely falling in love with it. It was the first game where I could unabashedly say it was perfect. The graphics were beautiful, the RPG mechanics were well balanced, and the battles were fun to play. Above all this, however, was an captivating story with the most interesting and deep NPCs I've ever encountered in an RPG. It's a lot to live up to. Mechanically, the sequel exceeds the original with nifty new features like the lab station and some enhanced force powers and abilities. Storywise, the game tries valiently but falls just short of the mark.
It tries really hard to differenciate itself from a typical Star Wars story, and in that in succeeds. It's not just about "light side" or "dark side", there are many shades of grey. Good deeds can have bad consequences, and vice versa. It's a nice theme, and I wish it was carried a bit further.
While the NPCs aren't nearly as deep as the original game, they are still more interesting then most typical RPGs. Where the first game revealed the characters' backstories to you slowly over the course of the game through conversations, this game opts to show you cutscenes where the characters interact with each other. This is a nice touch in some respects, but frustrating as well becauase your avatar is not present during these scenes and you can't act on the information you learn.
The plot in "The Sith Lord" is very deep, although at times it is VERY confusing. Most of the time, I had no idea why my character was doing what she was doing. It was as if there was a huge amount of backstory that was never revealed. I kept waiting for the big revelation that would explain everything, but it never came.
The end of the first game was perfect. Events were moving to a close and building up to a satisfying conclusion. Not so with the sequel. The end of the game comes extremely suddenly, not to mention out of nowhere. When the closing credits blasted onto the screen, I could only stare in dumbfounded annoyance as the controller fell from my numb fingers.
I'm being very critical here. Kotor 2 is an extremely good game, far better than most RPGs out there. As a followup to its precesessor, it fails - although it does try hard. | video-games_xbox |
Completely Underrated. What a complete sleeper-hit and underrated game. I own tons of consoles and tons of games, and I KNOW when a game is a 7.0 or a 9.5. I believe that Just Cause got lost in the sandbox-game chaos and was overlooked by both reviewers and customers. Here's why:
The action in the game is intense and completely ridiculous. If you enjoy jumping a motorbike off a ramp, ditching the motorbike midair to grab onto a helicopter's tail, kicking the pilot out of the cockpit and using the helicopter to blow the government dogs to smithereens then you will love this game! This situation happens much more often than you would think and the action in this game can get ridiculous, insane, and absolutely FUN.
The other touches of this game really bring it all together. It feels amazing to liberate villages while the guerrilla fighters scream "Libertad!!" and "viva la revolucion!" only to return to your safe house where sweet south american/mexican guitar tunes greet you. That reminds me; the music is excellent. You won't find some emo-kid band tracks in here; only local music that completely fits the context of the game. Rico's statements during parts of the game are hilarious too.
Not to mention, the island in the game is HUGE. And I mean HUGE. You will never get tired flying a helicopter up high and looking around at all of the land that you have liberated.
Not to mention the graphics.... I almost died when I saw the full 1080i-motion blurred-high dynamic range graphics showing me the gorgeous sunset on San esperito. The graphics alone on this game (from up high) should be reason to buy (much better than Far Cry or other island games).
The reviewers got overly harsh on this game (it is NOT trying to be GTA, so don't compare it to GTA!!!) The animations are kinda stupid and obviously the missions are repetitive, but it doesn't matter when the action is so intense!
Trust me; buy this game on the X360 and you will not be disappointed!! | video-games_xbox |
A New Chapter, A New Start. Ever since GTA III I've been hooked on the GTA games. For those expecting GTA IV to continue on the with the progression of game play and scope the GTA III games carried out you might be dissappointed but only for a short time. This is after all GTA IV and not "GTA III Return to Liberty City", which means creating a base for a new series.
Rockstar games took a step backwards with some elements that were present in GTA San Andreas but took a step forward in other areas.
New Additions:
+ Cell phones: You can receive text messages, take pictures, receive calls, and even make phone calls. You can even use your cell phone to call a service that tells you the title and artist of a song that is playing.
+ The internet: By going to an internet cafe you can browse through various websites and receive email from people.
+ Friends: It acts pretty much like dating in San Andreas but only more annoying. You will from time to time recieve phone calls from people to do things with and will result in your friendship meter rising or falling with that person. You also can initiate hanging out with your friends if you'd like.
+ TV: Much like the radio stations there are now TV stations. You can watch a TV in one of your safe houses but instead of choosing a station like you would a radio station it is randomized when you change the channel.
+ New Entertainment: Bowling, darts, a comedy club, and a cabaret show. Bowling and darts is just like being able to play pool. The comedy and cabaret show you get to watch and there are various shows or acts to see each time.
+ Intoxication: You can actually get drunk in GTA IV when you choose to go out drinking with a friend and you get the expected results. Walking becomes difficult and driving even more so. Driving while drunk will also bring the police down on you if you pass by an officer.
+ New Wanted Level Evasion: Instead of just running and keeping your head down in hopes the police eventually will forget about you, you actually have to clear the scene of a crime. You are given a area around where you committed the crime and to get rid of your wanted level (you lose it all at once instead of one star at a time) you need to get clear of that area without being spotted by the police. The mini map show your the area and the where the police are around you so you can plan your escape as you high tail it out of the area.
GTA IV World:
Not as big of an area as in San Andreas but bigger than the other GTA III games. The Liberty City world of GTA IV is broken up into three areas that are opened up as you progress through the missions. Each area is a solely metropolitan, so no country areas to cruise around. With these metropolitan style areas it brings alot of nooks and crannies for you to explore.
Transportation:
The new physics engine for driving adds a bit more than in the GTA III games and takes a short time to get used to. It makes for some pretty spectacular crashes though when you clip another vehicle or hit it full on. Traffic also behaves differently and is more sporadic than the predictable placement of traffic on roads in previous games. One annoying factor is when you park your vehicle and go into a place (primarily in missions) your vehicle gets re-parked in a "spawn" spot near by. For flying you only have the choice of two kinds of helicopters at your disposal: the Maverick and the Annihilator (Blackhawk style helicopter used by the police). With only one airport for landing and take off there are no planes available for a person to use. Which also means no parachutes for skydiving fun that San Andreas gave us. Boats are available as is swimming but you can not dive under the water and instead you are stuck swimming on the surface.
Weaponry and Fighting:
Gone are the mini-gun, flame thrower, and heatseeking missles. Instead it's basic weapons: handguns, submachine guns, assault rifles, sniper rifles, thrown weapons, and a rocket launcher. The new fighting setup requires you to lock onto someone to go into hand-to-hand mode other wise you'll just shove the person. Gun battles are bit more tactical and at times you need to use the cover system instead of running and gunning. Ducking behind cover and then firing from behind that cover becomes a must at times since you take damage much more easily and quickly in GTA IV.
Missions:
The missions are what you would expect in a GTA game. This time around though you do have a few missions where you have a choice on what course of action you will take. The majority of them are choosing one of two people to eliminate. And with the new fighting setup big gun battles are a little more challenging and prominent.
Side Missions and Mini Games:
There are few side mini games. Gone are the taxi, firefighting, and ambulance mini games. The vigilante ones remain but with a new twist with the computers you have access to once in a police car. Once in the computer system you can look up crimes in progress to carry out the vigilante missions or hunt down Liberty City's most wanted. For other side missions there are drug delivery missions, assassination missions, and two forms of vehicle theft missions. Gone is the list of vehicles a client wants and you are given each vehicle one at a time either through text message or email. There are only two of the collection style of mini games: unique stunt jumps and the shooting of a wopping 200 pigeons scattered through out Liberty City.
The Little Things:
You don't have the level of customization for your character or vehicles as before. There is only three types of clothing store, there is no barber shop or tattoo parlore, and no vehicle customization. Gone is the buying of safehouses, instead you gain them as you progress through missions with gaining only 4 total once you open up all three areas.
Even though I understand this a new chapter in the GTA games I still can't help but feel that San Andreas is still the best and the benchmark for future GTA games. That doesn't mean I didn't like GTA IV, it is still a good game in it's own rights. | video-games_xbox |
Half as scary, twice as fun. Just a disclaimer: I have not played dead space 1 but I have played dead space 2. I fairly enjoyed the horror third personal shooter, dead space 2.
The following is my review after beating the game solo on normal.
Dead space 3 is overall a fun joyride even though it's less scary. A lot of changes (many bold) were added to the game and quite frankly, they worked. I'll break it down to couple of categories:
1. Gameplay. If you like the way third person shooter worked in Dead Space 2, then you will like it in Dead Space 3. Many of the classic elements like laser aiming (classic or center), secondary fire mode, dismemberment were retained. Others were changed or added. For example, I noticed that unlike Dead Space 2, some enemy spawns are now contingent upon your location. And yes, they will try to spawn as close to you as possible. But this creates more annoyance than horror because the game itself is not as scary and after a while you just get pissed off. Also, you can now combat roll. This kinda makes you wonder how Issac can roll smoothly in that big and heavy suit but that was an good addition to the gameplay nonetheless. Biggest change however, was the weapon crafting system and the associated "resources collection". This is where Dead Space 3 really shines. The system takes sometime to get used to but it offers a great variety of weapon building and selection. You will find yourself never satisfied with the weapon you just built and constantly crafting and trying new stuff. The resources collection is the system that naturally comes with weapon crafting. I don't find it terribly annoying but your opinion might differ. The co-op is also a good addition and now you can play as John Carver who joins Issac in his fight to take down the marker. I cannot say too much about that since I have yet to do a playthrough. But from what I have heard, it's an refreshing experience.
2. Atmosphere. The game is not nearly as scary. This is because of two reasons:
A. The background music did not deliver. Most of time the background music that enhances your horror experience was just not there. There was even one instance where upon finishing up one side-mission, you return with background playing country-ish music. That was just hilarious, like saying: "Issac defeated the bad guy and is returning with the loot. Now have some fun killing necromorphs on your way back!"
B. Aside from the music that ruined he moment, the light had a lot to do with it too. While some parts of the game do give your the claustrophobic atmosphere that you might expect, most of the big battlegrounds are covered with ample light coverage and it's not scary at all. Bottom line: don't expect to find experiences that resemble those from chapter 10 of Dead Space 2 (returning to USG Ishimura which scared the crap out of me).
3. Story. Dead Space 3 did not deliver a story that is as good as dead space 2 did. There are many reasons with it but I will just list three of them.
A. When you travel in space ship to fight necromorphs with a crew you know some of them are going to die and you will not care. This was carefully avoided in dead space 2 but apparently not in 3. There are some moments that you will be like: "well so this character is dead, am I supposed to feel anything?"
B. Much like Dead Space 2 there are two main antagonists. But unlike Maker Nichole who was very deceitful, menancing (overpowered Issac on couple of occasions) and had two dramatically different personalities, the antagonists in DS3 are just pure, generic douche-bags. On many occasions, they talk s*** and do stuff just to piss you off.
C. Ellie. I cannot say anything without spoiling so I will just leave this to yourself.
4. After beating the game on normal. Many other features are unlocked. They introduce many hours of replayable contents and thus qualify as a plus. Yes the classic Hand Cannon (bang bang bang pew pew pew) and Hardcore mode are both returning.
5. Overall I give it 4/5.
Pros:
A. weapon crafting
B. unlockable features after beating the game
C. co-op gameplay
Cons:
A. not scary as DS2.
B. story weak
P.S. I think the EA asked Viseral games to dial down the horror factor because after the Sandy Hooking shooting violent video games are being targeted. As a customer I understand. As a gamer I don't like it. | video-games_xbox |
OK to rent. I'm used to playing NBA Live - which I consider to be the best basketball game out right now... and I truly looked forward to Ballers - the focus on 1-on-1 play seemed like it could enhance Xovers, the ability to completely dominate the opponent - I guess I was spoiled by Live's freestyle...
The major moves in this don't really consist of watching your opponents defensive moves and countering - it's more arcade style where the combos of a couple of buttons easily slide by the defender. It's not an in-depth look at the game and what's possible - button mashing game. Very disappointing....
On top of that, the 'bling' that it seems to advertise do nothing - NOTHING. Mansions seem to be a theme to the menus rather than a real court, friends just stand in the crowd, cars just seem to be something you can win to look at in subscreens. Clothing and ice are about the only items that really count - and that's because they are with your player on the court, and actually worn.
Good points - Graphics - the graphics are incredible, the players are recognizable as the actual players. The gameplay isn't overall bad - the controls are responsive, even if shots don't conform to your stats - examples Backing down a player is a button-mashing showdown, and doesn't seem to match the stats so well, and, even more important to me, whether or not someone is guarding your player (on the court it seems to me that a shot is a lot easier if you are open than if a hand is in your face - which doesn't seem to be true in this...).
Bad points - Xovers are based on button combos regardless of what the defender is doing - with the exception of taking a charge or tapping a button to steal the ball. But it isn't generally dependent on the defender's position - no stayin in front of your man. The announcer - can you pick a more annoying white guy to try and say slang? really... turn off the volume.
It's an arcade game, plain and simple, without any real skill to back it up - suitable for kids. If you want a real simulation of one-on-one, pick up EA's Live franchise (2005 - soon), and play their one-on-one mode. More fun and REALISTIC.
I bought the game based on the reviews on here... I just want to prevent anyone else from soing the same. | video-games_xbox |
NEWER VERSION! CHOOSE ME. this is considered a noire game.when LA noire came out,i asked wtf is a noire?the best answer i got was "an old detective movie where the lines between good and bad are hard to see".they also have all the street poet type talk."the brilliant psycopath lay a junkie the track marks telling his souls destruction rotting from an angels gloomy sadness..."this games talk like that sucks! and to make it worse,theres a ton of it.in fact,old max gives commentary through most of the game.
i noticed at the very beginning there was a dying,severely burned up body.so,i guess rockstar hasn't given up on its "being disgusting for the sake of being disgusting" motto.
there is a new effect in this game.it is a matrix like effect.im not even sure what triggers it.just every so often the enemy goes into slow mo and you get to shoot them up.its way overused and gets old.i mean it was awesome the first 34567898 times but it wasn't that cool! there should be a slow mo option or button.
the main character abuses prescription pain killers and alcohol a lot.in fact,the pain killers are encouraged because they bring back your health.for a tough guy,he has some poor choices in attire.one is the flowered shirt like old tommy vercetti from "grand theft auto:vice city".that doesnt exactly cry out "dont mess with me".and secondly he wears a white muscleman shirt more commonly known as a ...im not supposed to type it but it involves domestic battery. but,i guess,rockstar couldn't care less.thats just the kind of game makers they are.and that attitude is why i like bio ware better.with those clothes on he said he looked like a "street walker in a monastary".He also said it made him "less popular than the clap".
the graphics are all screwy too.words just appear out of nowhere when people talk sometimes.maxs vision is sometimes laced with tracers or is psycadelic.i could see if her were drunk or high on his pills but the graphics just do that now and then.once again,it was cool but got old through over use.
when i heard there was going to be a game set in brazil,i thought about how there are tons of crappy little houses all bunched together with no rhyme or reason.but,i also thought how much fun it would be to run around the community.well,it took all the way until disc 2,but im there!.its all fancy hotels and big cities.and,obviously,no rain forests. i did get to shoot it out in a semi jungle part hideout.it felt a lot like "call of duty".another thing that made this game feel like "call of duty" was a bunch of idiots running around screaming in some other language and shooting at me.im not bilingual so i wonder if they are screaming at me in spanish or portugese.
one fun thing was this crazy ex army airborne ranger gone hippie who likes to blow stuff up.another thing is this funky brazilian song playing at a strip club.there is also a very exiting bus ride.
i realize this game has only been out for 2 day and a half but so far i say wait for the price to go down.its fun but its no "grand theft auto".rockstar just set the bar extremely high with the gta series.all of thier work cant be that good i guess.i say this game is better than average.as far as rockstar goes,i'd put this above "LA noire" but below the 2 "red deads" and WAY below gta :vice city,san andreas and 4.
one thing i hate about any form of entertainment/media is when they put dead children in thier stories.its NOT entertaining and unecessary.however,its all to present.in this game alone,so far there has been 1 child[10-14 yrs old] you have to murder,a pregnant woman who gets shot,and the game is based around max's dead child.thats sick and extremely messed up.
i know people are backwards about prejudicous.in this game they call the main character "gringo" hundreds of times.that is a racial slur directed at white north americans.nobody apparantly cares.they did use a bad word against the other guys ONCE.
after only 2 days,im already onto disc 2.this isn't looking good for content timewise.whatever happened to games that take months to beat because the ppl who put them out like thier buyers.the video game industry is getting more and more greedy all the time. | video-games_xbox |
UPGRADE THE FIRMWARE. To all the reviews complaining about disconnections...they're 100% true. However, once you upgrade the firmware the disconnections stop completely.
Now that that is out of the way...this is an EXCELLENT controller. It sits well in the hand and feels great with the included pad. However I have chosen not to apply it on mine as I prefer the plain plastic. My son applied his so I know how it feels like that as well. My main gripe with the controller is that after 3 months the left thumbstick wandered skyward. It was a bit of a nuisance but I was able to get a replacement controller. I only knocked off one star for that because I am notoriously rough on left thimbsticks. They go bad on ALL of my controllers. Just not after 3 months. So I mapped the left thumbstick press to the back left trigger to alleviate this and have found that I actually love having sprint mapped to the back. I mapped X to the back right trigger for reloading and reviving in Destiny and this setup works wonderfully. I have yet to map the top buttons as I'm trying to find an ideal way of utilizing those extra buttons.
I am very happy with this controller. Some people will refuse to buy a wired controller but that is not an issue for me. The included cable is about 10 feet long & braided. Very sturdy. The a/b/x/y buttons are where you expect to find them and are super responsive. The short triggers don't always work but that is more of a design issue with the game that you're playing. For example, they worked fine with Mida Multi Tool but once I activated Golden Gun I was left hanging. Again, this is no fault of the controller but a game design issue (Mida Mutil Tool is a gun in Destiny that utilizes quick triggers so this makes sense.
I highly recommend this controller for any gamer who wants to take it to the next level and is tired of using batteries. I can't wait until this controller's PS4 version, the Razer Raiju, is released because I will surely pick one up.
If you're in the market for an Xbox One Elite controller for $150 then you owe it to yourself to pick up the Razer Wildcat for only $100 (price at time of review) and use the $50 you saved on a new game. | video-games_xbox |
Not enough games and content (also recieved a Defective unit. First off, I'm somewhat happy with my shiny new Xbox; however there are simply not enough content for it !
-) Not enough games, and you can play the good ones incl. Assassin's Creed and COD on Xbox 360 ! Take those away and there are virtually no games worth playing on this thing !
-) Nearly not enough apps and they are mostly ported from the old platform, e.g Netflix does not support things like voice searches and such
-) BELIEVE IT OR NOT, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO PUT VIDEOS ON A USB STICK AND PLAY THEM ON XBOX ONE !! and this was supposed to be the ONE entertainment center in the house !
-) More on the entertainment ... it has a very limited DNLA support ... it only supports Play To, which means you need another device to initiate the stream !!
Which is funny since, X360 can play media from USB and can browse DNLA sources.
Of course these issues will be solved with time when someone or Microsoft develops a full featured DNLA browser and a decent media player for the platform.
Also, it seems like the QC process for the hardware is severely flawed as I received a defective unit.
The CD drive on the unit I received was not working, it made a grinding noise and put a smudge on the DVDs when inserted !
---
Upon calling MS support I was told that I have two options: 1) ship it back and they'll send me one after they received the defective unit ! or 2) give them my credit card number so they can put a hold for the retail price of a unit and then they'd send me a replacement unit and I could send the defective one back after I received the new one.
Naturally I gave them my credit card number and it took them almost a week to get the replacement to me, they used the slowest shipping method possible !
The replacement unit worked just fine and I sent the defective one back and checked to see if it got there in time (which it did).
Almost a week later I saw a charge for ~560 $ on my credit card and called the support, after about an hour after I gave them the FedEx tracking number proving that they had signed for it a week ago they admitted that they received the console but "somehow" it's not in the system and told me that it would take SEVEN days to investigate that, and after that I'll get my money back !
Which I'm still waiting on.
VERDICT: There are no games worth playing that you can't play on the old xbox, so wait until this platform reaches a little bit of maturity. | video-games_xbox |
in awe, can't think of anything to go here. This was one of the first two games I bought with my xbox, the other being Halo. That was at the beginning of the summer, and I actually played it very little. My brother, on the other hand, sat down and played through in two days.
So, like I said, I didn't play this game all summer, all the while I was playing Halo and Halo 2 and numerous other games. When I came home for break two weeks ago (mid october) I decided to play something different from Halo and put this in, picking up where I had played to the last time (middle of the second level on Geonosis). I do remember having a hard time getting a handle on the controls way back in May when I got it, but now, even with all it's differences from Halo, it came very naturally. And I pounded through one or two more missions in an hour (that's about all that I got to play when I was home, other than a new game I bought, KOTOR 2).
For a Star Wars game this is very unique, unlike other Star Wars shooters like Jedi Knight 2, you are not a lone super soldier weilding an elegant weapon, you are a highly trained clone trooper in charge of a squad of troopers taking on the special missions of the Star Wars prequels. One thing that turned me off to this game at first was the fact that the enemies are hard to hit, due to the fact that the game doesn't make aiming easy. I suppose this adds a degree of reality to a war situation where you panic when you're attacked. Once you get the hang of it, things become much much easier. On top of the stiff aiming, enemies are tough. Battle droid, a good hit will kill them, just like the movies, Super Battle Droids take alot of laser fire to kill, the best way to kill them is an EM grenade and them hammer them till they fall over, and even then they may not be dead. The Geonosians come in standard warriors and them elites. Warriors jump out of the way pretty well and will give you a hard time trying to kill them, the Elites on the other hand, will take a couple of hits to kill, and because they're almost always in flight, they are very hard to kill, the first one you encounter will take you a minute or two with your team.
I know that the one complaint most people have with the campaign is that it's short, there are only three missions, Geonosis, Droid ship, and Kashyyyk. I'm still on Geonosis, but I remember my brother having a really hard time on Kashyyyk, I for one can't wait to get back to beat Geonosis and then the rest of the game.
Gameplay: 9/10
Graphics:9/10
replay: 7/10
Controls:8/10 (learning curve of an hour or so)
overall: 8/10 (welcome to the gritty side of the otherwise elegant world of Star Wars) | video-games_xbox |
fantastic stick, until it died! then lived again. Awesome stick! Except, it died!! I didn't think a fighting stick could just stop working unless it was dropped a few times to many....not the case here. I plugged it in to play Mortal Kombat X, and nothing. The light on the stick to indicate its on, never came on, and checking the connection several times, nothing. So I have no idea how it just, croaked. I've had it since September of this year and it worked fine, until yesterday. And I am very careful with my electronics, especially with the price of this thing. "Sticktality"....I have it for Xbox One, and was gonna get a Hori stick for PS4. So, now I'm thinking...nope!
Well, i'm gonna have to review this stick again.
somehow my fight stick works again. But my theory is that, where the ends of the usb cable is made like the wired xbox controller. Where it was designed to separate if someone tripped over it. Without realizing it at first, the ends if the cable has weight to it, which made the cable to where when you plug it in, over time, pulls down on the connection, making it seems as if the cable has a short in it. So you're better off elevating the cable across the top of the xbox one or whatever, to keep it from "shorting" out. I mistakenly figured this out after plugging it in to see if there was any chance it still worked, especially after paying so much for it, and it worked fine. Like new. Hori needs to make the ends of the stick's cable just like the PS4.
If you owned an wired xbox controller, there's a part where the cable can separate, then about an inch or two, there's another part, it almost looks like a dumbbell, same thing on this fighting stick for Xbox one. But in my case, I can see that when I plugged it in, after 3 months, looks angled instead of looking like it's plugged in straight. Hope I'm making sense. But it now works fine. But I have to keep the cable elevated so that it's snug into the usb port. That's my experience with it. This us the first time I had an issue with hori sticks. And I may be the only person that had this experience. But the stick is really awesome. That cable needs a new design though. | video-games_xbox |
Pure bliss for an intimidated noob. My 10 year old son and 39 year old self are having a blast with this game. Neither of us has ever played a "real" guitar before. We have played guitar hero, but there is just one strum bar and five buttons for frets on those guitars. For Rocksmith we have a 6 string guitar with 22 frets. That was (and still is) extremely intimidating to us.
First thing I had to do was tune my guitar. Rocksmith walked me through it and checked the tones for me (good thing for a tone deaf guy). The cool thing (for me at least) was that the software knew the problem before I did. If I hit the wrong string, it knew and told me to check which string I hit.
So I went through about 5 tutorials and tried to 100% them. The tutorials are excellent. It starts easy...if you can't get it, then it slows it down to get you used to moving across the frets and strings in time. For a noob like me, this was great. The game amazed me when it told me exactly what I was doing wrong in the tutorials (ie: wrong string, wrong fret...it knew). After you get through the first test, it does the same riff with more notes and complexities. It allowed me to practice and have a sense of success before it upped the level.
You can choose to play lead guitar, rhythm, or bass. You can use your electric guitar for bass, but I have not tried yet. I have only tried lead guitar so far but plan on trying the others.
There are 20 or so more lessons to do, but I was interested in trying a song (knowing I would fail). Low and behold, they actually up the level of play on each song as you improve. So the first time through the easier songs was not impossible even for me to achieve some success. I felt like "I can actually do this with some practice".
The part I recently tried was the guitarcade which is awesome. Retro style arcade games that work on your guitar technique. The first game is similar to jet pack joyride, but based solely on how loud you strum the strings and control the volume. The next game is like the old Root Beer Tapper game but you have to hit the right string to "shoot" down the right area. I had trouble with volume and finding strings and these were fantastic ways to practice. It includes high scores, mini achievements, and online rankings. I also tried the slide arcade and a duck shooting game that helps practice slides, frets and strings. There are many more arcade games that I have not tried because I don't know the concept (ie: bending) yet. Some games are more fun than others, but the fun and rewarding way to practice is top notch.
The main thing this does not do is teach you to play guitar by reading sheet music. That was not important to me, but worth noting.
We try and limit video game play for our kids, but this game is so educational that we bend the rules and let our kids play Rocksmith at times when they normally are not allowed to play games.
I highly recommend this game for anyone who wants to learn to play a real guitar for fun. It provides learning, fun, and a sense of accomplishment. It will provide our family many hours of fun time together. | video-games_xbox |
ZARG! Dishonored Review. There's a couple of things I look for when diving into a single player game: solid, intentional art direction and world building through lore and backstory found throughout the game experience. A few quick examples being: Half Life, BioShock and Deus Ex. Fortunately for Dishonored, it borrows heavily from those three games in its world building, yet still manages to create a unique, original atmosphere that can hold its own against those other titles. You may have seen on the internet where people have already offered the same title comparisons, but I want to focus on what it borrows from each of those games, why it's successful, and how the actual mechanics of the game help to define the very troubled city of Dunwall.
What are the ingredients to creating a successful and believable game environment? Well, one ingredient that Half Life 2 and Dishonored share is the wonderful art direction of Viktor Antonov. The Half Life world is instantly recognizable to most gamers and there's nothing else like it out there. The sounds of the Combine, the run-down apartments in City 17, the oppressive oppression of that dystopian "future" and the scale (it still feels massive)...all evokes an emotional response that is unique to Half Life 2 and also industry praise that is incredibly well deserved. Antonov has helped create a new world that while borrowing some of the elements you see in Half Life (such as that "oppressive oppression" and a certain enemy type that's sure to remind some of you out there of the "Strider"), has such much life to it that you quickly forget some of the things you've already seen. I absolutely love that the game's environments and characters resemble that of an oil-painting and sometimes during the game I'd just lose myself to it...and it really does become a living piece of art.
The game takes place in the fiction city of Dunwall (which borrows a lot from London and Edinburgh). Dunwall, while previously a thriving city due to its industrial age and refining of whale oil, has collapsed into ruin due to the Plague and some scheming politicians. Like in BioShock, the beginning of the game really does a great job setting the atmosphere. Within the first couple of minutes of beginning Dishonored you have an establishing shot similar to the "NO GODS OR NO KINGS. ONLY MAN" shot found in BioShock, and it's a hell of an establishing shot.
From there, I knew exactly what I was in for (as far as setting went) and like most good games out there, I was never ripped from the experience due to an annoying tutorial. The game has an evolving tutorial which teaches the player as the player plays the game (very much like HL2 and BioShock).
The core gameplay mechanics of Dishonored are as follows. You're given the choice between sneaking around, not killing people, and taking the moral route...or going on a rampage of mayhem that will cause all sorts of chaos around you. The actions you take in the game impact the story, and because of this "sneak or kill" approach, I'd like to make the comparison to the new Deus Ex: Revolution game. The sneaking feels good though, and reminds me a lot of Thief, minus the annoying shadows and footsteps on gravel/carpet/dirt/whatever (Thief was a great game in its own right, but its playstyle wouldn't have exactly worked in the high action path that you can take in Dishonored). One thing Dishonored has been touted for is the player's ability to execute "creative kills", and boy howdy...there's a lot of ways to kill someone in the game. As the game progresses you acquire special abilities that help you not only get around, but also allow you to pull of some crazy shenanigans when engaging your enemies. The health, magic, and upgrades system are very BioShock. But it works, and I really appreciate that the UI isn't cluttered with a bunch of extra junk.
SO, I like the art style and I like the gameplay...what don't I like? Well, there's nothing I don't particularly not like, but my least favorite part of the game would have to be the story. There may be a slight SPOILER below, but I'll do my best to avoid it. Don't get me wrong, the story in this game is pretty cool, but it suffers from a tiny bit of predictability and something that a lot of really amazing games suffer from, quick climax syndrome. There's a lack of denouement. This is a tough dilemma to tackle, because usually the cause is due to such a game being so fulfilling and climatic throughout, that it's almost impossible to wrap it up without it ending either too abruptly or too slowly ( Mass Effect 3's ending is the quintessential example for this). I recently read that Dishonored will become a franchise and because of this, I'm not too worried about the ending. For new IP's it's hard to wrap the story up because you have no idea whether or not you'll get a series out of it, or whether or not it will become a one-off game. But I think a lot of my unanswered questions and dilemmas about the lore (which remember: "Always leave them asking for more") will be answered in subsequent games.
I clocked about 13 hours to complete the game with the stealthy approach and that's a good length. My final consensus for Dishonored is an arbitrary 91/100. Play it if you liked any of the above mentioned games, because it's pretty damn good. | video-games_xbox |
The 4 Substitution System Ruins What Could Have Been The Best Naruto Game Ever. First off let me say that I am huge Naruto fan (the series and Japanese manga). I've played pretty much every Naruto game made including the games on the PSone.
Now with that said here is my unbias review. You can take this review and pretty much apply it to Ninja Storm 3 but I will focus on Revolution and its Pros and Cons.
Pros:
The extras- As a fan I really enjoyed watching the extras from the Akatsuki storyline and how the group was formed with never before seen footage! They even showed how Orchumaru joined the group which was not shown in the manga or show, and had glimers of it in the show but not the full story. The Uchiha story was fun as well as the Obito bit even though there was no battles within it. More on that in the cons.
The Character Depth: I really like the fact that just about everybody and I mean everybody (Naruto's mother included) is a playable character. If you take this roster and add the feel of Ninja Storm 2 to it, this game would be an instant classic!
The Ultimate Jitsus: The Ultimate Jitusus are unreal and very fun to watch! The team ones were my favorites to see appear! Awesome work on this end!
Cons:
The Substitution System: This is the BIGGEST Con of the game and the reason I returned the game only hours after purchasing it! This make people (mainly kids) button mash with no skill or strategy! People that are not suppose to be good can dominate in this game after you run out of Subs! Thats straight BS! In Ninja Storm 2 you had unlimited subs which made the game faster and much more crisp! I get that they are trying to limit a subbing battle but at least go back to where it takes away chakra (small amounts) instead of only having 4!!!! Maybe a real Counter Breaker system could make subing something special as it use to but now only you run out you can not counter with anything which is unfair! And even if you slip and tap the sub button you lose one! Totally ruins this game for me!!!!
The Story Mode: Or lack there of! Besides the Akakski story, there was no story mode. No maps no nothing! Its like they got lazy and decided not to put in effort to a real story mode. I would not have minded if they went back to how they did on Clash of the Ninja games or something to this effect!
The Battling System: Why are they making you pick between Ultimate Jitsu, Awakening and Guard Type? In Ninja Storm 2 this was all combined! I don't think this was needed!
Overall: There was more bad than good on this game! If you are a button mashing kid you would love this game but for older Naruto fans I would just rent this game! Not worth paying for that's for sure! | video-games_xbox |
A downgrade. The Xbox One is the worst console i've ever used. I've owned mine for almost two years, and since day one it has been a troublesome piece of technology. It advertises itself as a jack of all trades entertainment system, but in reality it is a master of none. I will try to break down all the features and their problems individually.
-The first thing you will notice is the baffling display and formatting of the home pages. Your recently used games/apps will appear dead center and down, to the right is advertisement, and to the left is where your social interactives and settings are. I call this baffling for several reasons, but I think it speaks for itself when you actually try and use it. There's no reason for your user history to take up the majority of space on the screen, you end up needing to scroll down to find your pined apps/games. Why wouldn't that be the first thing you see? Why do I need to open a separate screen to view and use my social interactives? When I turn on my Xbox I would like to see my messages, download progress, what game I have in the console currently, relevant advertisements, things like that. But unfortunately the home screen is very poorly used visual and interactive real estate. Everything ends up being like this, poorly utilized and difficult. For some reason Microsoft has abandoned user friendly formatting, like the Windows start button, or how the 360 OS functioned. Things need to be organized logically and intuitively.
-Now for the clunky OS that seems to be more concerned with advertising than keeping you singed into your account. When you are connected to the internet your account will be signed in and out, sometimes hiding features and not letting you sign in at all. Every time you turn off the console, or ore accurately put it to sleep, you're signed out and need to sign back in. Despite the settings that should prevent things like this, the problems persist. When you finally are able to use Xbox Live, it is slow. Very slow. Simply browsing the games store is a pain. Then if you want to purchase something, the purchasing guide is so clunky and slow that a cautious user might not want to enter their credit card information for fear that it will be charged multiple times or not at all. The OS also need to update about once a month, which takes about 20-50 mins and you have no choice in the matter. You can either update or not use Live.
-Gaming. This is the big one. Does it game well? Not really, no. Frame-rate is a near constant issue regardless of what you're playing. Minecraft has just as many frame-rate drops as Battlefield or Fallout does. It also has a serious problem with sound. Too often does it simply drop certain audio modules, it's distracting and unacceptable. I have also had games crash on several occasions. Now, gave saves are an enigma. For some reason a game won't just save to the HD if you're connected to Live, it will also save in the cloud. Which forces you to sync your game every time you play. So this means that playing offline is very difficult. Overall this is not a good piece gaming hardware or software. I honestly have a hard time believing the manufacturer specs because it functions so poorly compared to a PC with similar specs or the PS4.
-Apps. I would recommend a Roku if you want to use Netflix/Hulu/Prime or other streaming services. They simply do not function well on this console. It does play DVDs and Blu-Ray, but so does a $40 Blu-Ray player. What I ended up doing was using a flash drive to play my own movies/tv/music files through the console. The only saving grace of the entertainment aspect is that it does in fact play ultra high quality video without a hitch, though lacks the codecs for flac files and certain mkv files, and there is no way to update those.
Overall I would not recommend this console. I really enjoyed the 360 and owned mine for many years. I thought the One would be an upgrade, I was wrong. Two stars because It did function, though it is terrible. | video-games_xbox |
Pleasure and pain in equal doses. It's hard to really pigeonhole the the new Prince of Persia game. With a mishmash of gaming styles, it's more of a patchwork quilt of sorts than either a dedicated action or platforming game. But therein lies the problem. On one hand the game is fantastic, on the other I could almost say that I hated it. Epic in scope, Prince of Persia is a well made game with beautiful graphics, sweeping music & incredibly fluid motion. So why am I just so "meh" about the whole thing?
The game's most defining feature without question is its graphics. Few other games take their visuals quite as seriously as the Prince of Persia series and this entry in particular is a remarkable achievement in that regard. Every object, every character, every vista in the entire game-whether minor or epic was meant to be looked at. You can even earn achievements for doing exactly that-and rightfully so. This game is a true work of art. Standing on the edge of a beam from dazzling heights staring out at an enormous vista beneath your feet is nothing short of breathtaking. This game is pure undiluted eye candy especially on a big screen hi-def television. The vivid colors, vibrant atmosphere and sense of scale really make you feel as if you are part of an incredible, magical landscape.
As for the gameplay itself, the platforming segments of the new prince quickly call to mind the POP trilogy of last gen with one big (and somewhat disappointing) difference. Where as last time around a lot more emphasis was placed on careful timing and trial and error to maneuver your way through the game's many obstacles, this game encourages constant movement and forced momentum. That in and of itself is not a bad thing, but here's the real problem- every time you seem to get into the grove of things, swinging along, running across stone walls, climbing ceilings, etc-an enemy shows up to hinder your progress and suddenly the thrilling "ballet" of movement you had been enjoying up to that point comes to a grinding, earth shattering, pavement splitting halt. The player is then thrust into a boring as nails block, attack, block, attack, throw, block attack some more-ad nauseum "battle" which lacks even the slightest smidgeon of finesse of the game's platforming segments. Sure, a game can't be all running through platform areas, but I'm sure the combat could've been handled so much better. Just take a look at the last gen Prince of Persia games for proof of that. The combat in that series was spot on. Half of the time during combat, this game didn't even seem to accept my button presses and the other half, it expected me to "anticipate" which button I was supposed to press to stop an attack. I guess you have to be a clairvoyant to play video games these days. The point is, the combat in this game is an absolute bore. It's frustrating, slow, repetitive and completely lacking in any kind of real strategy and really puts a big fat pungent stink on an otherwise fun-to-play game.
Another real problem with Prince of Persia are the horribly implemented running and flying plates. In a game that just oozes with class and polish, the design of these segments seem like a complete afterthought. It's amazing to me that in a game where technically you can't die-how a large portion of the game still remains incredibly frustrating-these flying and running plates especially. And don't even get me started on the final boss encounter. The whole square-off is one big drawn out frustrating mess-and only for an ending that truly disappoints.
If I were basing my review solely on the game's platforming and graphics, I would say Prince of Persia is incredibly fun and amazing looking game but that I still miss the more strategic movement and puzzling aspects of the earlier games. However, if I were basing my review principally on the combat-I would say that this is a terribly un-fun, repetitive bore-fest-a-thon of a game with frustrating and stupid boss battles. 50% fun, 50% the opposite of fun. Here's hoping that the creators at Ubisoft go back to the drawing board for a sequel. Hint: just look at Prince of Persia: Sands of Time and do everything that game did, but in hi-def. I'd gladly take that game over this one any day. This game is definitely worth a look, but don't expect it to hook you like the last gen games did. | video-games_xbox |
Awesome where it counts, lacking everywhere else. Soul Caliber has been the only modern fighter franchise that I like playing. (I used to play a lot of Mortal Combat and Street Fighter for the Super NES back in the day). I play them exclusively for the chance to beat the crap out of my friends with a bo staff.
What's lacking:
THE STORY.
This game happens to be the first time that I've played story mode. This was rather amusing. The graphics were crazy awesome for about 1 minute. Then I'm pretty sure they must have fired their animators or hit some awful deadline with the production of this game because suddenly they jumped to story board sketches. Then the awesome graphics came back. Then they were gone and we watched an un-animated story board again. I'm quite certain they overshot their budget. After some very short rounds of fighting in the story mode, they thought to themselves, "ah, screw it! We're done with this." And the story ends. I didn't realize it was over until the credits rolled. I thought it was a joke. It was the most unresolved ending I've ever seen.
THE INSTRUCTION MANUEL.
I know that this isn't an area that most people care about. But remember those days when they used to have mini-bios of every character?
In the very least, I'd like some instruction on how to get to the options that I want. This had nothing. Again, I thought it was a joke. The descriptions of the menu fields are just restating their titles. I flipped through 10 pages of the most unhelpful "instructions" ever before giving up and using trial and error to find what I wanted in the game.
THE BUTTON NAMES IN MOVES.
On an xbox controller, you've got the A button, B button, X button and Y button (forget the others for now). Pretty straight forward. But if you're trying to read how to do combo moves, you need to know that the A is G, B is K, Y is B, and X is A. So when they tell you to push "A" what they really mean is push the X button. Make sense? No? Then you understand my gripe. It's the most counter intuitive idea I've ever seen. And it's just an all out pain in the ass.
What's good:
The Graphics. They're fantastic.
The fighting. It's what I love. I have great fun playing this game. I really do. They have a great variety of characters and weapons. The combos are exciting and visually striking. Some of them are rather unexpected.
What's great:
THE CUSTOM OPTIONS FOR A PLAYER. This is probably the most extensive customization I've ever seen. You can change everything from the fighting style to the voice of a character that you create. This area alone can be hours of entertainment. | video-games_xbox |
Resistance meets old-school Tony Hawk but not exactly a marriage made in heaven. From the makers of the <a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Resistance-Trilogy/dp/B009JBFF9C/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Resistance Trilogy</a> comes a jarringingly bright(!) game where you battle hordes aliens - I mean, energy drink mutants and robots - in a post-apocalyptic environment. Sorry, I mean localized apocalyptic. You see, your character was one of the few in this particular West Coast-ish city that didn't drink the mutagen that turned the majority of the population into bloodthirsty orange Chimera - I mean, mutants.
If there is a lot of sarcasm in the first paragraph it's because I realized very quickly that many elements of Resistance actually did transfer into Sunset Overdrive. You have a mix of friendly, "enemy" and cobbled-together weaponry like the Resistance Trilogy. You can also match quite a few of the enemies exactly to their counterparts in Resistance, such as ODs/Grims, self-destructing Poppers/Leeches, giant armored Herkers/Brawlers, and so on.
But that doesn't leave this game without its bright points, some literally. This game is where all the color in the blur-and-brown went, and I mean this in a good way. You've got a city to save, you're the rebel against the Fizzco Corporation with a cause and those hordes of bad guys and bosses are going out with all the colors on the RGB spectrum and then some.
Insomniac deserves a lot of kudos for customization, because you can pick your character's biological sex, body type, race and clothing almost at whim. And did I mention that all clothing options are gender-neutral? The only thing left to put customization on par with Saints Row is voice options.
Your character can also earn the equivalent of superpowers as well as weapons addons all powered by an altered version of the mutagen courtesy of rogue scientist Dr. Malikov - sorry, rogue Fizzco scientist Floyd. Some are earned over the course of the storyline, others are earned by Insomniac actually making the requisite collectibles found in your typical free-roamer useful before you get all of them.
Which leads us to the game mechanics. In order to make the most out of blasting enemies in the most fabulously and rebelliously colorful manner possible, you have to do so while stringing together grinds, jumps and wallruns in a manner not unlike the classic Tony Hawk games. All this is backed by a dynamic Tony Hawk-esque punk rock soundtrack that builds up with bigger combos.
All this leads to the game's biggest pitfall: the grind. The grind for completion, not the actual act of skateboard-like grinding that is. The hundreds upon hundreds of collectibles and side missions/trials become mind-numbingly repetitive after a while. Multiplayer Chaos Squad was also already dominated early on by players with maxed-out powerups who fight among themselves to take the lion's share of the score and objectives.
Would I get this as a rental? Sure. I wouldn't say Sunset Overdrive is a keeper, although there is promise from the post-credits cliffhanger for better sequels later on in the console's life cycle. | video-games_xbox |
Rocky: Legends Scores A Knockout. No doubt that this games predecessor: Rocky, was THE best Rocky game ever! Of course being the die-hard Rocky fan that I am, I had a blast with the previous game!
Now the sequel steps in. Sadly, for those of you, like me, who are big Rocky fans, this title is not as easy to come by. For what reason I do not know. I almost speculate because the game has gotten decent to mediocre reviews from these "professional" gaming sites. But who cares about their opinion?
Anyways, the game, in general, is really nothing new. Although you have more boxers (over 40 that either appeared or were mentioned in the films including alternate looks for some of the main characters), more training modes, a new career mode where you can play as Rocky, Apollo, Clubber Lang, or Drago, better looking menus with some nice alternate music from the Rocky films, and LOADS of unlockables!
The graphics seem to have gotten better with time as well. The characters and environments are more detailed than in the previous title. Sadly, the voice-overs for the characters are not that spectacular. But I guess you would expect that considering the whole concept of the game is to go into the way past of the fighters before they became champions.
The fight engine is not as loose as it was the last game. It almost seems kinda stiff, but not to the point where your fighter will delay his punches. Also, there are some cool combos that can easily be performed by pressing two buttons at the same time. Sounds easy, I know, but it helps out big-time as you move up into the career mode. The cuts, blood, and bruise marks are highly detailed as well. At times, when you or your opponent get a "super" punch, blood spatters onto the screen, although not lots but it makes for a nice effect.
The unlockables are accomplished by, not only completing various bouts in the career modes (to help unlock all unlockables, it's better to go through the career mode of all four fighters). Not only that, you get money after every bout. Of course you earn more money if you win a fight than if you lost it.
You then go to the Shop menu on the main screen and cycle through the different categories of unlockables. Each unlockable has a certain price with the fighters being the most expensive (around $150,000). While that may seem to be a lot, it can easily be obtained in just a few fights. As you move up the ladder and fight the higher ranked fighters, your payout is more, win or lose, than it was in the previous fights.
Overall, Rocky: Legends is a game that definitely needs to be looked at if you are either a casual gamer, a fan of boxing, or a fan of the Rocky series. This title is more in-depth than the previous title and has tons of replay value! The menus are nicely done with colorful graphics, music from the Rocky series, and, in the background, scenes from some of the Rocky movies are played. Too bad, though, this title is not easy to find; at least where I live. | video-games_xbox |
Ok, let's be logical about this. When comparing the Xbox to the PS2, X-Box enthsiasts often pull out a variety of facts, supposedly given to prove the superiority of the E-Box console. Below is a list of said facts and the logical retorts.
1. Fact: It has a hard drive.
Rebuttal: Ok, so you can save files to the drive, this is not necesarily a plus. For instance, consider the inability to take your games with you, whilst this is only a problem in key cases, it is none the less a disadvantage. Also, note that with more and more parts, the chance of said system breaking increases.
2. Fact: It has X-Box Live
Rebuttal: Um, Excuse me, but does the PS2 not have a simmilar multiplayer capability. In fact, you have to pay for X Box Live, Whilst with PS2, all you need is a broadband connection and your set.
3. Fact: You can play your own music
Rebuttal: This is a bit of a laziness factor, with any sort of cd playing device, Ps2 owners can as well. In fact, I think I would prefer just switching a disk than uploading it to the hard drive, stopping the game (assuming your not in the middle of multiplayer) and switching playlists.
4. Fact: The Graphics are amazing
Rebuttal: Yes they are, and they are just as good on the PS2. Truly, I have seen very few games that look so much more Excellent on the X-box than on a Ps2. The flaws just drag this system down and who are these @$$holes who talk about how bad the PS2 graphics look, I'm stunned speachless by there insensebility.
5. Fact: The controller is excellent
Rebuttal: I strongly disagree. There are many games available on both systems, and any game that can make do with the small, easy PS2 controller should not have to use those big monsters. They are cumbersome, huge, and an overall waste.
6. Fact: It can play DVDS
Rebuttal: I am inspired to repeat a line I once heard a comedian utter in responce to Bill Clintons statement that he had raised his schools education from the 49th in the nation to the 48th. You might want to keep that a secret. Yes, the Xbox can play dvds, so can the ps2, the difference? About 20 bucks. Why would people flout around that you can buy something for the X-Box you get on the PS2 for free.
7. Fact- It has Halo, Fable, etc...
Rebuttal: Yes it does, but people, you have to remember that most of this platform runs on a base version of windows, meaning that to take a game from X-Box and convert it to PC takes about... 5 minutes. Therefore, it becomes a matter of patience (Do I want to spend 150$ so I can play these games 1 year ahead of time.) Some people do, I do not. Also, remember that whilst X-box has some (read: 5) good games it just can't stand up to the variety of titles on the PS2. People speak of the X-Box as a Hardcore gamers platform, but what hardcore gamer can go without Grand Theft Auto (I realize it was released on X-Box but it took 2 years) or Final fantasy. Hell, many of us would rather dive for mario or Zelda than dead or alive X-treme beach Volleyball. There are a few good games, but I really feel that this is even more N00bish than the PS2.
8. Fact: It has great innards (processor, video card, etc..)
Rebuttal: Hello, people, it's not that good. My computer (the one I am currently typing on) has a LOT more power than the X-Box. I here people saying to get this or get an alien-ware (a crap company by the way, build your own and save hundreds, if not thousands of dollars.) When there is no real comparison. It has a
pentium 3 processor (as opposed to my pentium four.) 733 MHz Intel main processor (as opposed to my 2.8 GHZ Proccesor.) And, oh damn it, just take my word for it, it's nothing special.
So, In conclusion... Well there is no conclusion, you'll have to draw your own, I just feel that there is no GOOD Reason to own the X-Box at this point. | video-games_xbox |
You'll go dimensional with this game. LEGO Dimensions is amazing, I love the way it works. I hope you enjoy this game as much as I did, so, to help you decide to buy it or not, here are some pros and cons.
PROS:
I love the way the game is set up. It's like LEGO Skylanders, and it literally brings your favorite characters from TV shows, LEGO sets, and movies to life!
I would say this game is for 8-12 year olds, since if you are really into the LEGO movie or ninjago, that should attract younger audiences, but older kids, like me, would be attracted to the popular movie characters like Marty Mcfly (Back to the Future) and Peter Venkman (Ghostbusters).
The idea of having vehicles with rebuilds that you have to build with LEGO bricks is a cool one. It makes the game have that LEGO CREATOR set feel, where everything has to be built. In case you are confused what a rebuild is, it is taking the build apart and having it rebuilt into a better version (Ex: delorean time machine to electric time machine to ultra time machine)
Hub worlds where you can complete quests and explore your favorite places, like Middle-Earth and Springfield. It really adds to the fun of the game.
CONS:
The occasional faulty toy tag. It was so sad. I just got the starter set and noticed right off the bat that the batmobile had a faulty toy tag, which meant that no progress would save under it. Luckily I had Bart Simpsons gravity sprinter, another vehicle, so I was able to make a swap. Unfortunately, this meant I could not use the gravity sprinter.
The in-game interactive keystone puzzles can be a challenge, it took about an hour for my brother and I to realize that the answer to a puzzle on the level Elements Of Surprise was on Lex Luthors armor suit!
They are right about not putting the toy pad on any metal surface. I moved the pad to a metal shelf and the game could only handle one character on the toy pad at once.
The hire a hero function may seem like a pretty good thing for getting gold bricks, purple studs, and minikits, which it is. However, it is a HUGE waste of studs in-game and sometimes, it fails to pop up after you want the character needed.
I really wanted other characters like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man and Doc Brown, but it was disappointing that those characters, and many others, are not out yet. That's pretty tough for me because I find myself having to use hire a hero almost all the time.
Overall, This game is exciting and gets your heart pumping, and although there are some problems, do not let that alter your decision. I may be just 11 years old, but its the kids that know a LOT more about video games. -Tanner | video-games_xbox |
Best of both worlds. AC3 was my first game of the AC series and I fell in love with it immediately. A lot of purists didn't like it, but it got me hooked so after finishing it, I went back to the old Ezio games. Not surprisingly, I really enjoyed those games too. Only then I understood some of the AC3 criticisms.
AC4 merges the great animations, dynamic fights, simpler climbing/jumping, hunting, naval battles and around the corner assassinations of AC3 with usable roofs, bombs, dancers and mercenaries of the AC Revelations. Even the syncronization is old school, so now you no longer balance of the top of the church cross. The chests are back to the old "find and open" and I'm glad they ditched the annoying lock picking. The game play is slightly faster than AC3 and fighting a touch more challenging but still much more fun than the old AC games. The world is truly vast, so it is going to take a loooooooooong time to see it all. The naval battles are an improvement on those in AC3 and significantly more challenging in my opinion. In my first four hours of play, I noticed only a single small glitch when the assassinated guard suspended in the air for a moment before plunging to his death. Considering the rendering required to draw this world, Im not surprised.
The gameplay is a touch edgier with a little more foul language when in the previous games. Dont get me wrong, Im not getting on a high horse here the game revolves around killing, why would I draw the line at bad language. Also the drunk effect is quite fun, although Im yet to figure out if it has a purpose. On a related note, Im a little bit disappointed that our main character (the pirate, mind you) is somewhat of a light weight and starts seeing effects after two drinks. The story line outside of the Animus is a little bit weird, but after the end game in AC3 they didn't have many legitimate choices. You actually play that part in the first person.
Finally, the amazing graphics and sounds of this Caribbean world make it seem real. If it looks this good now, I can only imagine how awesome it will look on the new Xbox One. I know that artistic folks could find some issues with eyes, faces and whatnot, but for me the world created is so real I can almost smell the sea. In Havana, people are actually speaking Spanish. Yes, the characters greeted each other in Arabic in Constantinople in Revelations, but here to be whole conversations appear to be in Spanish including some of the comments to your acrobatics. It all gives a very realistic feel to the game.
There are a lot more to the game that Im yet to experience, but what have seen so far is most definitely worth the full price of the game. | video-games_xbox |
Why get a T-bone when you can do Filet Mignon for the same price. This is not a detailed review. OK, let's be honest here. It doesn't matter if your a COD "fanboy". There is a reason those games are so popular. Wait for it...surprise!...they're great games. If a game is not FUN to play then not many people will play it, plain and simple. MW is a polished and complete package that is actually fun to play. Can it be annoying and piss me off sometimes with it's play mechanics, sure. But it still puts its hooks in me a year later.
Here we have MOH, unpolished and incomplete. It breaks no new ground, instead relying on regurgitating what has come before. But even then it can't even get some things right. It's like the copy syndrome- a copy of a copy is a little worse quality than the original copy. MOH literally steals several moments from MW2's single player campaign. We need innovation guys, not imitation!
Get this: YOU CANNOT GO PRONE IN MULTI-PLAYER AND THERE ARE NO KILL CAMS
Good luck trying to figure out where the sniper came from who nailed you literally 0.5 seconds after you spawned in an open area of the small map. Was DICE trying to be different for difference's sake? I hope not because these two things, in my opinion anyway, hurt the strategy aspect of multi-player big time.
Bottom line, I'll be trading this in for credit against Black Ops (BO) in four weeks time. Let's put it this way: when MW1 came out people came for the single player and stayed for the multi player. With MW2 they came for both and stayed even longer for the multi. Same will happen with BO. I guarantee you, give BO till the end of this year and 80-90% of us will be playing its multi. The rest will still be on MW2 or hell even MW1. I'm not a COD "fanboy". I, like millions of other gamers, know how to recognize the great games out there.
MOH is not junk, it just doesn't stand up very well when the bar has already been set so high before it. It's like why get a T-bone when you can do Filet Mignon for the same price? To be fair, it never really had a fighting chance. Save your $60 and wait for BO. I mean come on...it has zombies and an INSANE amount of online customization. The value proposition is much better with BO. | video-games_xbox |
Classically Immersing. When I bought Dragon Age: Origins, I was usnure of what to expect. More of a fan of open world games, such as oblivion, I was anxious to say the least. However, i was pleasantly suprise. Incredibly so. Dragon age is a game which requires thought, allows for relatability, and is bursting with life and emotion, in an intriguingly deep world outlined by a gritty, story, which if you are a fan of this sort of thing, can't help but get sucked into to. I found that one of the things which makes this game stand out, is the Narrative aspect. Usually, a game undermines story, or any emotional depth, for graphics or action to override everything else. However, i feel Dragon age's immersiveness and it's ability to allow the player to chose what they want, and make moral decisions that actually mean something to them, allows it's less than perfect graphics to be, generally, insignificant. another point people have made, is it's countless bugs and glitches. I know many of these have been solved since the time those reviews were written, but i find the remaining bugs pretty unnoticeable in the overall scheme of things.
One of the other major aspects i loved about Dragon age was is clever, realistic, and endless dialogue (that for me was a good thing). Unlike some games, in which characters have little words whatsoever, the depth of Bioware's script here, is pretty amazing. This also lends itself to some great, memorable companions, some of which are tragically flawed, roguishly loveable, and often complex enough to be believable, rather than most developer's cardboard cutout companions. The reliance of your companions i also loved, and how you could interact with each, different, when you wanted to, and you felt they were just as importsnt as your own Hero, whereas usually you arejust the lone-wolf saving the world.
The fighting is fun and rarely gets boring, and is reminiscent of classic RPG's. It's occasionally a little clunky, but I can imagine it's not as so for PC, as i bought the Xbox verson.
Exploring isn't as fun as it could be, mainly due to the lack of a real open world environemt, though the world is deep and explorable enough, not to mention the great side-quests and companion missions that makes the game last that lovely lot longer than just a linear storyline.
Overall, i was pleasantly suprised, and Dragon Age gave me many a fun, thought provoking evening. I'd the say the amount of talking/ dialogue and character interaction may be offputting for those who want pure action, but for me, i found it one of the greatest perks of all. | video-games_xbox |
A collector's edition unboxing & game review. While the current price gouging on the collector's edition is a little over the top ($120? not worth it), if you can get this for around $80 (the original list price) this is a pretty good deal. Here is a review on what came in the box, as well as a quick, as-spoiler-free-as-I-can-make-it review of the game. Note that I got the Xbox 360 version; the other versions may be slightly different.
The box comes with two DVD-sized cases in it. The first is a metal tin with the male Shepard on one side and the female on the other. Inside are the two game discs (which are a little hard to get out as the spindle to hold them in place is a *tad* too big and rigid), the standard Xbox LIVE page you would see in any manual, and four DLC codes. The first is for a two-day trial of Xbox LIVE Gold for those who don't already have it. The second if for a Normandy prop for your avatar. The third is for the "From Ashes" DLC, which is available to download for $10 to those who don't buy this edition. Finally, there is a code that activates the Online Pass (needed to access any online features of ME3) and downloads the collector's edition exclusive content, which include a suite of N7 weapons, a robotic dog that wanders around the Normandy between missions, an alternate appearance pack, and an in-game hoodie Shepard can wear on the Normandy. The weapons and appearance pack are nice, the other two are just fluff. Once this pass is activated, the user can download the soundtrack from Bioware's website.
The other box contains the bonus physical content. There is a high-quality, velcro-backed N7 patch. The "exclusive lithograph" is more of a postcard of the Normandy in its new blue and white color scheme. The comic is actually a part one of the four-part Mass effect: Invasion series, which takes place between ME2 & ME3 and explains why Aria T'Loak is on the Citadel instead of Omega when you start ME3. Finally, there is a 70-ish page concept art book that I don't recommend looking at until you finish the game, as it contains spoilers both big and small.
Note that there is no paper manual at all, not even the token controller layout. Everything is accessed in-game.
As for the game itself, it gives you enough that you could dive in to ME3 without ever having touched the first two, though your experience will be far better if you import an ME2 save (preferably one that has ME1 data on it) because it will carry over all sorts of major and minor decisions you made, from who lived and died to random people you helped coming back to return the favor. Apparently there is a current glitch that does not let some people import saves, but the only hiccup I encountered was the game not realizing I had played the ME2 Overlord DLC when I ran into a character from there.
ME3 plays more like ME2 than ME1 by default, but there are a host of gameplay options. Besides the standard difficulty options, you can also choose how decisions play out (i.e. whether you choose and make the story or let the game construct the story for you. Powers have also been tweaked, in that their more useful this game (unlike ME2 where you had to whittle down an opponent's protection, use a power, and then wait for a long time before you could use it again) and that instead of a four-tier upgrade path with one choice, you get a six-tier path with three choices, allowing for greater customization. For example, both Kaiden and Garrus have Overload, but I tweaked Garrus so his Overload is devastating against one heavily-armored foe while Kaiden's does less damage but works over an area and is also effective against organic foes.
A lot has been made over the Kinect voice-command functionality. While a neat trick, I found myself quickly going back to the standard shoulder-button controls in combat situations. I found the Kinect commands to have about a 1-2 second delay from when I finished the command to when it happened, and while it picked up on what I said 90-95% of the time, there was still enough unreliability to it that I stopped using it except in non-combat situations. The Kinect was also picking up the game audio at times, or interpreting non-game-related phrases as commands (How "No, I already ate" caused Shepard to throw a grenade still amuses me).
Almost everything you do contributes to the Galactic strength and readiness ratings, which is basically your strength to take on the Reapers in a final assault. Note that it *is* possible to max out your effective military strength bar only in single player, but to get the best ending (and a certain achievement) you actually need to get a boost above and beyond that, either by bonuses from importing, DLC or multiplayer. For perspective, I imported a ME1/ME2 save where only the minimum amount of people died (before you ask, *minor spoiler from the previous games* only my choice at the end of the Virmire mission in ME1) with a maxed-out level, I completed every ME3 mission and scanned every system to 100%, and I've downloaded and completed every piece of ME DLC out there, and I still didn't have enough, so I either have to play some multiplayer to get the readiness rating up (single player never budges it from 50%, and your effective military strength is your total strength times your readiness rating) or hope future DLC bumps me above some magic threshold.
Speaking of multiplayer, it's basically a Mass Effect version of Firefight mode from Halo or Gears of War's Horde mode. In the single player campaign, there are seven N7 missions that take you to areas tangentially related to the main plot. When you beat the mission Admiral Hackett says something to the effect of "We're sending in a team to secure it." That's the basis of multiplayer: you and up to three others are that team, and you fight off ten waves of Geth, Cerberus or Reaper forces before a final get-to-and-hold-the-extraction-point-until-dustoff wave. My completed matches average between 17 and 25 minutes apiece.
While the seven maps are varied, and the six classes all play differently, I have a few gripes. The mission structure gets repetitive; some waves have you defend a terminal, hack a series of terminals, or take out four "high-value" targets, but they don't play much different as you still have to wipe the map clean. There is a noticable, disorienting lag when using shotguns or regular melee attacks in close range; I've had foes take shotgun blasts at point-blank range and suffer no damage, and foes register melee damage a full second after I hit them (registering the shot my teammate hit them with *after* I punched them first). The current level cap is 20, which has the double-whammy of not being sufficient to max out your abilities and being WAY too easy to obtain; I maxed out the Adept class in a single afternoon of playing. I'm just shy of 70 matches in the books, and my six classes are at 20, 19, 10, 7, 6 and 4 - even if I slow down, I'll max out everything within a month. Finally, the persistent unlockables, like new weapons, mods, and half the characters you can play as don't unlock at the same rate as the levels do. I've got 66 out of 100 levels, but only about 15 out of over 550 persistent unlockables (every one of the roughly 30 mods and roughly 25 weapons can be levelled up 10 times), and that's counting me actually buying three packs with real-live MS points (they can also be bought with in-game currency; the contents of the pack are randomly determined). I can easily see players maxing out the class levels and quitting, as the mods come so slowly players won't see them as worth the grind.
Your single-player squad selection is also pretty small compared to ME2, but is comparable to ME1. Four are a given, two (Garrus and Tali) are available if they survived ME2, and one is obtained via the "From Ashes" DLC. However, I found it was hard to find more than one combination that works for most situations. For example, with my soldier-class character, only the Shepard/Liara/Kaiden team had the combination of abilities to tackle any foe. If your class has biotic or tech powers you'll find more options. I also felt cheated out of my previous squad. You're teased with the likes of Miranda, Kasumi and Thane throughout the game, but you only see them for a bit and then they're gone.
For me, the story was great up until the last ten minutes. The last mission contains the single hardest battle in all three ME3 games, but then ends with an encounter similar to the one at the end of ME1, but without the awesome boss fight. And whereas the rest of the decisions you make in the story are either moral (Paragon) or practical (Renegade), the three-option decision you are confronted with in the endgame really has no satisfying conclusion, and one of them is downright implausible for a series that has been so grounded in reality (or at least the realistic sci-fi equivalent; let's just say option three crosses over into the "fantasy" category too much). I would have been far happier with a simpler conclusion than anything I was given the option to select. In the gravest sin of a game based on player choice, I felt like the 200+ hours of decisions I made leading up to the point meant nothing.
In summary, gripes about the ending and squad selection aside, the game stays true to its ME2 roots while improving on the core single-player experience. For big fans of the series, the Collector's Edition has some nice perks that justify the additional cost. Those who are only casual fans would be better served buying the regular edition and then downloading "From Ashes" by itself to save a few bucks; this particular DLC is pretty integral to the whole Mass Effect mythos, and I'm surprised and more than a little disappointed it was not included in the standard game. | video-games_xbox |
Making Cortana the protagonist was smart. A lot of false advertisement. What can I say:
Campaign: Making Cortana the protagonist was smart. A lot of false advertisement. 11/13 missions are starring Locke and it does a poor job developing him. It also shows the blue team in 2/13 missions but it makes no introduction whatsoever on the Blue Team and it rarely shows master chief. I would best describe this series as a spin-off and the plot is not even that good. Halo: Reach was a spin-off but the Noble team was very well developed.
Traditional Multiplayer: The absolute worst experience I ever had in a multiplayer game. MCC was horrible as you couldn't play it (at least it got fixed) but this multiplayer has no excuses. There are virtually no maps and you often play the exact same map multiple times in a row (I literally played 1 map 5 times in a row and another 3 times in a row after that). They completely redid the scopes from the traditional halo settings and the aiming is horrible. If you were a fan of the previous multiplayer experience, you will not like that. Some of the new maps are okay but overall they stole many from the old Bungie maps (which makes no sense as you can play them on MCC) and there appears to be zero options to ride in a vehicle in multiplayer beyond warzone. The Halo experience was all about vehicles and I use to love maps such as sidewinder, blood gulch, etc. None of those maps (or anything similar) exists. Ascension had the banshee, etc. I do like the return of the ranking system. It's not identical to Halo 2 but they did make progress on that regard. Beyond that it's a step down in every way. I am a huge Halo fan but after playing this game I may never play Halo again.
Warzone: This is new and it's an addition. It's kind of like adding firefight or some other mode to the game. It's an addition but I am not a fan of it. It's all about the REQs which you purchase (real money or experience). Overall, it's an add-on but its too gimmicky. If they added this so they can do future DLC for free then its worth the trade. The REQ purchases, etc does not ruin the gaming experience or anything so do not worried. It was a good addition but I prefer the arena modes.
Overall: No split screen modes ruins a large aspect of the multiplayer experience as your roommates or friends cannot play with you. The campaign feels like an undeveloped spin-off as they introduced a ton of characters (all of blue team and all of osiris) but they fail to develop them. Master Chief (who should be the star) is barely playable in the game for whatever reason and is not the star. Easily the worst game in the series. Don't waste your money. My advice is get Halo MCC. They fixed all the bugs with it and it now works great. This game is just not properly developed. If they can fix the shooting, the scopes and add maps it may be decent. Until then, it isn't worth a dime. | video-games_xbox |
Too Short, Too Gory for target audience. Sudeki is a role playing game where you control four different types of characters, battling your way through magic warfare and gunfights.
Your four characters are a swordsman, gunfighter, female spellcaster and female amazon. As in most of these RPGs, each character has their own strengths and weaknesses, personalities and motivations.
You begin as the swordsman, a member of the guard of the Queen's army. Enemies are attacking and you head out to cleanse your land of the enemies. Soon enough you have all four party members on board, and are gaining experience, finding loot, and improving your skills, weapons and armor.
Gameplay is very much like most other RPGs on the market. You have a large world that you explore bit by bit. When you get near enemies, you button-mash to create combos and earn experience. As you explore the lands, you bash urns and break into chests to steal the treasures of your villagers.
While combat is fast and furious, the rest the game can be very slow paced. There are very long cut scenes in this game to draw you into the story. Be prepared with your favorite food and drink to keep yourself busy while these scenes drag on. The people you speak to each have one or two key phrases and simply repeat them over and over again.
The graphics are very nice in a Final Fantasy sort of way - a detailed, cartooney fantasy world of big castles and peaceful villages. On the other hand, you're sort of moving from 'painting' to 'painting' much of the time, which can be frustrating and feel like you're being led by the nose through the plot.
On the true downside, the female characters appear to enjoy wearing the skimpiest of bikinis into brutal combat with a lot of blood and gore. This earns the game its mature rating. It's certainly great to have female party members in a game - it wasn't very long ago that adventure games solely featured male characters. But do they have to all look like prostitues??
The sound is reasonably nice, with music that helps to convey the feeling of the scenes.
In general, the game is a fun introduction to how RPGs work, but with the game being so linear, there isn't much decision making in the game. And with the game only lasting maybe a week or two of average game playing time, it is over very quickly. So those who would best benefit from this type of 'intro' RPG - i.e. young kids and tweens - can't buy it because of its mature rating.
If I were the maker, I would have toned back the blood and skin to earn the game a more kid-friendly rating, which would have made the game well suited to its target audience. As it is, only adults who are just learning about RPGs will really appreciate what this game has to offer. The rest of us will zip through it pretty quickly and be left wanting something a bit more meaty. | video-games_xbox |
good game. I would like to start by saying I never played the first Alice. Despite poor reviews from gaming websites, I enjoyed the game. It got a lot of crap for being repetitive and the graphics being glitchy. As far as it being repetitive, that's true. It's a platformer, what platformer isn't repetitive? If you don't like games where you constantly work through the same obstacles arranged in different ways, you won't like this game. But don't blame the game, blame the genre. That's like saying Madden is repetitive. Duh. Admittedly it was rather long in its chapters, but that's not bad. At least it wasn't like Dante's Inferno which was awesome but left me wanting to play more story.
There was a few times I got stuck on an invisible wall, but it wasn't a big deal. It didn't happen often, and I didn't feel it took away from the feel of the world it created. The biggest thing that bugged me was the key holes. There are various keyholes Alice could shrink down to fit in. It seemed really cool to walk out of one and then pop up... until you went back and noticed the key hole was large enough for Alice to duck through at normal size if she had that ability. Not a big deal, but it did take a little from a feeling of world authenticity.
Pros:
+Awesome world. It was weird and a few times kind of creepy. Not quite at Dante's level though, but what is? Each chapter had a unique feel to it, and even Alice's dress changed each time, and I thought it was really cool to see what she was wearing each time. Judge away.
+Interesting story. It kept me interested and made me want to relook at "memories" collected at the end.
+Cool fighting. I enjoyed the fighting, it wasn't a mere button-masher, it took some tactics deciding target order and weapon selection.
+Controls. Alice moved really well, with double jumps and floating working well.
+Good voice acting. Very British, but very good.
+Pre-Order came with original "Alice" game.
Cons:
-Large key holes.
-Collecting bottles is useless to my knowledge. | video-games_xbox |
Disappointing: Rent don't buy. As a fan of the first Medal of Honor, Frontline on the PS2, I was really looking forward to MOH: Rising Sun. Since so many WWII games take place in Europe against the Nazi's the idea of staging one in the Pacific against the Japanese sounded like a great one. Opening up with Pearl Harbor as the first battle similar to MOH: Frontline's D-Day invasion was also a great idea. So what went wrong? The Pearl Harbor sequence is way too short compared to the D-Day sequence of its predecessor Frontline. I played in normal mode and the enemy is "dumb as dirt". Often waiting until I was practically on top of them before shooting. The shooting was weird, often times it would take 3 or 4 shots to the head before someone would die. I don't remember any shooting problems with the first one. Characters would walk into walls and half of their body would disappear into the wall! The graphics are poor compared to the Tom Clancy games (Splinter Cell, Ghost Recon, etc.). Backgrounds appear and disappear and at times my character would get stuck and I had to either kill myself or start over again to fix it. Doesn't anybody play these things and check for bugs before they are released? While historically accurate, I wish that EA had put as much time in improving the game play as they did in the research for the game. I forgave Frontline for it's graphics and game play problems because it was the first one, but they could have improved it for the sequel and especially with the better graphic capacity of the Xbox. That's not to say that the game isn't worth playing. The story is solid. The different types of challenges from floating down the river, riding an elephant and shooting from a plane is good. I am an average FPS game player but when I can complete a game in normal mode without cheating in such a short time, then the game is either too short or too easy. In this case I think it might be both. Here's hoping that the 3rd one in the series has better game play and graphics. I think I will either rent it or wait for the reviews before I spend another $50. The games seems rushed as if it were released a few months early. I expect better from EA games. | video-games_xbox |
Neither Great, Nor Terrible. This game may not have met some of the loftier expectations of some superhero and video game enthusiasts, but I didn't think that it was just awful, either. It certainly has it's faults, and is not worth purchase as a brand new $ 60 game. At the $ 20 (or less) price point, however, it is a game that offers plenty of fun to be had.
Superhero video games are either a massive hit, or massive miss. Rocksteady really set the bar with the two Batman (Arkham) games that they made, and this game is absolutely nowhere near that level of production and polish.
In Marvel's stable of characters, and in my own opinion, I feel like the game X-Men Origins: Wolverine is the game to beat. It is well made with a grood amount of polish.
This lands right in between. It won't "Wow" you with it's production, but is is some solid "beat 'em up" fun.
Pros:
It is definitely fun to play as Thor.
It has a fairly deep combat system, which is better than you would have expected from it.
Decent enough story line.
Not terribly difficult.
Cons:
The graphics could have been much better. They are, in my opinion, about the equivalent of good XBOX graphics, but not so much "Next Gen".
Some of the character models (their bodies) are drastically misproportioned, but it creates a few good "What the Hell is this?" laughs.
The basic controls can feel a bit wonky at times.
The game feels a bit undercooked and unfinished.
I am someone who doesn't buy the "Short Production Cycle" excuse for lousy movie tie-in games. Especially for such prized characters as the Marvel and DC stable of properties.
They definitely rushed through the creation of this game, and took some glaring shortcuts.
If I was rating it on production value alone, 1 or 2 stars would be what I would give it. But, I like Thor, and had a lot of fun with this game. And I'll play it through again.
There is fun to be had, but moreso for fans of the character to overlook the game's sometimes glaring shortcomings. | video-games_xbox |
Surprised by the Negativity: Great, Not Perfect, Game. Titanfall delivers. Period.
What are the top selling, most played, and highest rated games each year? Battlefield, Call of Duty, Halo. Obviously, there's high demand for solid multiplayer FPS's. These games have defined the past generation of multiplayer online gaming and for good reason, but they've grown stale for many gamers, myself included.
Titanfall introduces an interesting dynamic between hulking mech battles and nimble on-foot dogfights that provides new ways of viewing the battlefield that rejuvenates the online shooter experience.
The vertical nature of the battlefields in conjunction with your ability to wall run and double jump via a jetpack will make you rethink how to go from point A to point B. Why take the stairs when you can bound from wall to wall, double jump, and grab onto the ledge of a three story building in half the time?
What titans lack in agility, they make up for in firepower. Do you run in headfirst with a bullet-sponge Titan that relies on strong melee attacks and a devestating nuclear expolosion when he goes down or do you dodge incoming fire with a lighter Titan that dashes around his enemies, exposing their weak points and riddles them with quick chaingun fire?
Titanfall opens up a host of new, unique options to approaching battle that made me stop and rethink how I played a shooter in the same way Battlefield: Bad Company did when instead of walking around to the nearest door of a house, I could blow a door in the side of a wall with my grenade launcher.
The core shooting mechanics will feel familiar to anyone, but it's the small tweaks and additions Titanfall has made in the form of player movement and mech vs human battles that make it a refreshing change of pace.
I haven't played a solid mech warrior-type game since MechAssault 1 and 2 on the original Xbox. Furthermore, I haven't been enthralled with a multiplayer shooter like this since Halo 3. Titanfall has reinvigorated both my itch to fight online in mechs and also to fight online for a FPS.
There's no single player here to speak of, and that's alright. A lot of people don't buy Battlefield, Call of Duty, and Halo for their single player, so why invest in a short, half-baked single player experience if it's not what gamers are going to spend their time on?
Titanfall is a focused, inventive, solid shooter that sought to be a AAA multiplayer experience and succeeds in that. Is it a revolutionary step for videogames that will forever change the face of gaming? No, but I do believe it has created its own unique niche in the same way Battlefield did with fully destructible environments.
If you're looking for the next definitive online shooter that will keep you busy for months and possibly even years to come, Titanfall succeeds. For me, this is the best a shooter has been online since Halo 3, and that's enough to warrant a 5/5. | video-games_xbox |
Finally a Halo Killer. Combat evolved indeed. When Halo 2 first came out in Nov. of 2004 I fried my brain and eyesight on normal difficulty for 10 and half hours to play it through on the next setting up:Heroic. My but was black and blue from the beating-and I'll be more than happy to do it all over again. You start out as Master Chief on a ship then aliens board it. You have to deffend you ship then you find out that there is a bomb on board. You have to find the bomb and get rid of it. Then you fight on Earth for two levels. And what really suprised me is that you fight as an Elite alien in the game. But the thing I didn't like about the story is that the flood returns and you have to fight them too. The game is much better than the first game. The multiplayer split screen is very fun (my favorite part of the game) especially with lots of friends. There are also new aliens in the game. Here is the Alien starting line up.
GRUNT: The weakest bad guy returns virtually unchanged. These purple midgets aren't much to worry about even on Legendary difficulty; take out the elite leading them, and they'll often run away on there own.
ELITE: Besides the hunters and the later brutes, elites are your biggest threat-kill them first. Still the smartest enemy in the game, these energy-shielded soldiers can now jump on or over obstacles and dual-wield weapons just like you.
JACKAL: The standard version of these punk-rock chicken soldiers makes a bit better use of its shield, but the ones to watch out for are the new snipers. On Legendary, they'll kill you with a single head shot from across the map.
HUNTERS: Now that they can push aside objects you are hiding behind (and it takes much more than a single shot to the back to take them down. If you have a sniper rifle try to shoot them, in the stomach and they will fall hard to the ground), hunters demand your immediate attention-especially when they come in pairs.
DRONE: You don't fight these new insectiod aliens very often, which is too bad. Their ability to fly, tendency to hide in out-of-the-way spots, and erratic movement make for a refreshingly different kind of fight.
BRUTE: Think of these apelike lugs as Elites minus the shield and plus a lot more health. Two things to watch for: their explosive "brute shot" gun, which can do massive damage, and their ram paging charge attack.
My cousin and I have tried to beat it on Legendary but my cousin sux at playing. The first time he died on the first level by a grunt on Legendary I laughed and smacked him up side the head. This game is awesome. It has a few flaws in it, but I think it is the best first person shooter for Xbox, or for any Video game console for that matter. So find a friend with a Xbox or buy one just to play this game. This game is life changing. :) | video-games_xbox |
My Constant Frustration . Ok where to begin? Let me start off by saying that I for many years loved and enjoyed the COD games and have been playing since the release of COD II. As most of you reading this probably already are fans of the Franchise you know how fun these games have been in the past and how they seem to be entertaining seemingly until the next COD where flaws have been patched and a better experience (at least in your mind) should take place, right? Before I say my piece, let me just say that this game was not terrible. In fact, for the first few weeks it was very fun. But their are many, many short comings that I have recently noticed that are giving me a painfully frustrating headache.
So first lets talk about the good news. Ok, so the good news is this people. Treyarch has clearly made the guns much, much better! How? Well for one things if we can remember on a recap back to Black Ops one we can remember the completely random recoil profiles of the guns. Ooooh yes! Our crowd favorite the Uzi was one of our shining examples, as well as the Dragonov, RPK, and so many others. In fact it seems that the only guns people consistantly used were the AK 74U, Galil, Famas, Aug, M16, Skorpian, Spectre, and WA2000 or the other bolt sniper which name escapes me. But considering that Black ops one gave us so many other guns to choose from, one must really scratch their heads and wonder why. Well its very simple; all the other guns had major shortcomings... in the way of recoil profiles! How frustrated were you when you unlocked that UZI the first time on to see how terrible it was. Why was it that the Dragonov, which shot a smaller round than some of the other snipers had such nasty recoil? So much variety, but so little to choose from. No one really tried using the others because they were highly out claseed and often got the users killed quick! Aside from that most of the guns were freakin clones with laser beams NOT attached to their freakin heads!
Well anyways, in this game guns are very well balanced, and while the choices are fewer, each gun has more of its own personality to appease to players of all kinds. and I do praise Treyarch for that! Not only that but many of these guns are Futuristic, as are the innovative kill streaks, which btw I gotta say were the best laid out in any COD game to date! Also the graphics seem improved and their is a lot less strain on the eyes if you intend to play for long hours. I don't want to spoil the campaign for those who have yet to buy it but I will say this....SOOO much better than the first Black ops or MW3 campaign IMHO. You even get to create your class before going on missions and you can actually feel some emotions again in the story for once! That said, for me at least the best Campaign still goes to WAW. But that's just me and to each his own. Zombies btw if that's your thing (not mine) is the best yet!
Sadly that's about all the good I can say for this game. Now allow me to tell you of the Sad and Frustrating truth.....this game is completely...UNFAIR IN MULTIPLAYER! In case you didn't already know the game will LAG, LAG, LAG, LAAAAAAAGGGGGG! I have and excellent connection! Fastest of the fast, no joke! But since others you play with have garbage connections....well guess what that means? As bad as they have it....its gonna be a whole lot worst for you! You get to feel like your back in the age of the Dinosaurs (aka Era of Dial Up) and get to have the luxury of being slowed by this whole lag compensation TRASH! Yep! Its sad and unfair but who cares right? That awesome K/D you once had is gone! Gone with the Wind! For the first 2 weeks I had a K/D of 3.03! That sounds good right? Well actually its because A) They made it harder to camp (Props Treyarch) B) Noob Tubing still gone C) It is very hard to quick scope in this game D) all the guns are pretty much evened out or rather none are over powered. In other words this game takes SKILL (for once, thank you Jesus)! But after all the lags my K/D was down up until today at 1.48.....now its down to 1.42....why? (And btw please keep in mind I pre-ordered and received day of), because the game LAGS too damn much! I cant so much as aim down my freaking sights now with out it getting so glitchy and laggy! It takes almost 5 seconds sometimes just to see down my own sights!
Whats worse, is when you shoot at someone and nothing happens! You just drop dead and are like, "WTF"! After you got a ton of hit markers and they should have been dead but NOOOOOOPE! Also the servers suck! Constantly the hosts are being changed, sometimes as much as 4-5 times! And its not like when the game gets going again its like a 4-5 second count down pause, oh no! Sometimes up to 30 seconds! Thats crazy! Not to mention everyone stuck on the damn load screens for 15-20 seconds before that. So we all get pissed off! You cant leave the game at that point, and even if you could its the same every single other game you go to. Mind you this was not the case the first 3 weeks after the release! It started happening to me early last week! And being that I play every night you can kinda see how one gets thoroughly pissed off by this. I come home after work, make dinner for the family, walk the dog, finally sit down, only to be greeted by this S^&*! I'm done! Unless they patch it, I'm out and I will never buy another Treyarch game, no matter how good it looks, or how hyped up it is! No so long as I do so breathe on this earth!
So let this be a warning to everyone who still hasn't bought this game. WAIT! DO not buy this game as it is right now! Wait another month or two and look up the latest reviews online before even considering this product. If not, just be in store for painful headaches and constant frustration. I for one have stopped playing all together in the last 48 hours and have been coming home to Netflix. I have to admit it is a whole lot better than the aggravtion I have gotten from this game! So I really hope this helps someone out there decide if they want to buy this game. Dont get me wrong the game isn't terrible but I do not recommend playing it until it is patched (if they patch it) or unless you just wanna play Zombies and the Campaign which are both very good! | video-games_xbox |
Starling is the Star for Zombie Slayers. Sooo, I picked up this game to pass time until Borderlands 2. I don't get to play long games these days, so 20 hours and less are the ones I generally stick to.
Lollipop Chainsaw is a lot fun, not just because of the sex appeal. But since that's why I got it, let's start there. Juliet is super sexy, as far as 3D rendered polygons and personalities go. The costumes you unlock from getting platinum coins are arousing to the mind, especially since the cut-scenes are masterfully made to go with Juliet's stripper body language. Her voice (American) is also very well acted. Pretty much how you expect a blonde bimbo cheerleader to sound. But by no means is it annoying, but is jubilant and cheers you up.
The gameplay is lots of fun. There's not much depth, since you got normal zombies, super zombies, flying zombies, and flinging zombies. But the moves you unlock through the shop has really cool combinations you can shred your enemies with. It's easy to execute, but no Devil May Cry complexity. Still good fun though. Plenty of minigames scattered throughout the levels that change the pace and difficulty. I played it on easy and normal.... well hard is actually very hard, so not a walk through the park. The boss fights are admittedly easy and I never died once (on easy).
The graphics are amazing for Juliet's character model. The other textures and buildings are a big ragged and explosions don't look superb. The bosses look great too.
Some people say don't take it seriously... well obviously. All I can say here is that there is hilarious dialogue between Juliet's crazy zombie hunting family and Nick. Plenty of sexual innuendo and fresh jokes. Good writing here in terms of humor!
So the bottom line is that I had fun with Lollipop Chainsaw. It's a great romp through a bloody humorous and sexy zombie world with Juliet Starling. There's replay value, to get all the costumes and upgrades. Each level also lasts an hour at the least, so there is no brevity issue
Buy it to see Juliet work her fine ass on saving the world from the Zombie Apocalypse! | video-games_xbox |
Should have been called "AC: Greatest Hits Sequel. This game is pretty much a direct sequel to AC4, so if you didn't like naval combat from that game, stop reading, because in my opinion they just made it better. Also, after reading the reviews from IGN and Gamespot, I get that they just flat out didn't like the game, however they have some valid points.
This game plays more as a "Best of AC" game than anything else. It uses things from Revelations and Brotherhood, 3 and Black Flag in fun ways. They left out the annoying things from those games and brought back some neat things like capturing a fort and taking down a gang leader. They brought back the zip lines from Brotherhood in a pseudo fashion (could have been a bit more to them) to make crossing a wide street easier from the rooftops. From AC3 they brought back the wilderness feeling. In the River Valley location there is one big island that's slightly smaller than the wilderness from AC3. From Black Flag they brought back the naval combat in a much improved fashion with the puckle gun, exploding shot and a ship that can corner on a dime and is moderately faster than the Jack Daw. For those of you wondering about the "Follow and Listen" missions, there are a few "Follow" missions but no "Listen" missions. You know, because they were annoying.
You can customize your ship and character in a variety of ways, however I dare ask, "Why would you want to?" The stock sales, figurehead and wheel for the ship are far and away the coolest on the list. The stock outfit they give you half way through the game is also the coolest, unless you get the one off of UPlay (it's a whole other level of badassery).
The combat system and free run system haven't changed. There are some new toys at your disposal. The developers made a big stink about the air rifle, however it's just a different version of the blow pipe from Black Flag with slightly increased range. You get the Rope Darts from the beginning as oppose to the very end of the game. You do get a grenade launcher which is very handy and a lot of fun. The swords and pistols are not without their faults. You can buy the second best swords and pistols at the beginning of the game and use them until the very end at which point you unlock the best swords and pistols which is pointless at that rate because there is nothing left to do.
You're under attack! If you raise your wanted level on the seas, Hunter ships will attack and board yours. In the process you'll be stunned and dazed and some of your crew will be killed instantly. On land, if you kill enough citizens you'll be chased and attack by bounty hunters which are really tough to kill. There are assassins hiding all over the place. They are easily dispatched if you see them first. If they see you first and they hit you first they will drain you pretty quick. However they are easily countered. I actually found them to be more of a nuisance and annoyance than a challenge because there are so many of them. Traversing New York took a lot longer than planned because of them. Within the small span of a half hour I had encountered and taken out about 20. They really do just slow down the progress of the game. The naval warfare at the beginning of the game is tough because your ship is relatively underpowered early on, however once fully upgraded, you can sink a frigate with one shot of mortar. You can avoid naval warfare to upgrade your ship because there a slew of supply drops and warehouses to raid thus earning you the materials needed to upgrade your ship. I didn't actually do much battle until after I had fully upgraded the ship.
I did manage to complete all the legendary ship battles in about 20 minutes. They were considerably easier than before. Two of them involve taking down a fleet of ships then taking down the main ship. The other two are direct battles with 3 elite ships. None of them were too difficult.
I did pre-order the game so I got the Fort De Sable pack. This was a huge disappointment. Fort De Sable is the biggest fort of all, however EVERY enemy has their back turned to you making for easy kills. There aren't that many of them either. You unlock the camo-Templar outfit (it's identical to the stock outfit, but instead of red and black it's gray camo) and some pretty weak weaponry. The entire pack takes about 10 minutes to finish. That was a slight disappointment.
The game is considerably shorter than previous AC games. Campaign takes about 10 solid hours to finish. The unlockables are collected quicker because your ship is faster and they made a lot of the collectables easier to get to. There are some disappointing moments, like a flat story and forgettable missions, but I'm still thoroughly enthralled with this game. The locations are engrossing. The ship cool as hell. The character is cool as hell. Some enemies present a great challenge. They brought in cameos from AC3 and AC4 to tie the plots of those two games together which make the story a bit more interesting. Overall, I'm glad I paid full price for this. | video-games_xbox |
Fantastic Game ... BUT . Clearly, this game is the Dungeons & Dragons of this generation, with game play centering on buying little figurines, just like D&D and also buying upgrade missions (obviously many more to come in the months ahead), just like D&D. A lot of people reading this may not understand this point, but those old enough that played Dungeons & Dragons know full well the truth of it. This was a brilliant and long-awaited brain storm by Activision.
First, this is a game for kids to play as young as 4 and as old as 80. Yet another strong marketing move by Activision to create such an incredibly imaginative game for the 4-15 age range. Also this game isn't ridiculously hard at any time and it never gets violent or bloody.
Characters:
Part of the fun, and downfall, is collecting the little characters which there are currently 32 of. Lots of retailers, including Amazon sell them, but as of right now -- everyone is sold out - everywhere.
Everyone is clamoring for these things and people are sadly taking advantage of that and reselling them for almost a hundred bucks on Ebay. It makes no sense that they have lots of the same characters that are available in the combination packages, which are the only ones left. I think you can still buy Trigger Happy and Boomer just about everywhere.
Finding Air Characters - as well as the Legendary Versions? Good luck, we've searched all over Southern California and have come up empty. Activision should've really bulked up before the season. Perhaps they were wondering if this game was going to be a success or fall flat. I think they have an answer.
Glitches & Bugs:
The biggest problem with the game itself, and the reason why I only give the game three stars, is primarily for the reason that there are LOTS and LOTS of glitches and bugs in this game. It's almost as if someone at Activision said:
"Hey, Christmas is coming quick and the testing isn't quite finished and all the bugs aren't worked out yet, but let's go ahead and go to market with it so we don't miss the big retail season."
That scenario seems completely plausible after you play this game for only a few levels. The biggest glitch is the problem that occurs at Level 20, where the 'Weapons Master' is asleep, and shouldn't be and cannot be re-awoken to complete the final stage of the game and beat Kaos.
Just a quick Google of the term 'Weapons Master Asleep' brings up everything and no fixes. Sadly, there is no fix. You can play this game for days only to get to the end and not be able to finish it, which is a big stickler for serious gamers. Nothing like dangling a carrot.
I emailed Activision and they gave their canned response that they've given everyone and the suggestions just don't work at all and you're forced to restart a new game on 'File 2' and start all over. Sad but true.
I've also encountered a lot of bugs and areas where you just can't get out of in the Dark Light Crypt Mission.
Positive thoughts:
I honestly love this game and I play this with my four year old son every weekend and it's all he talks about. You build up each character, making them stronger and collecting stuff which you can then take to a friends house and play and they have the same strengths, which are completely portable.
None of the figures are really scary, none are sexualized and all of them say silly little things that makes kids laugh.
Extras & Missions:
There are currently two upgrade mission packs for sale, each one comes with a character and a magical item or two. We *always* play with the Hidden Treasure item on the platform in order to find the hidden chest on every level.
A healing Vase comes with the other upgrade pack which is also good for restoring your character during battles.
The hourglass slows down enemies so you can wipe them out if you're outnumbered. | video-games_xbox |
AX Pro Initial Impressions. So I picked up the AX Pro headset. I went back and forth for a couple of weeks trying to decide between it, the AX 720, the DPX21 and the ASTRO A30. I chose the AX Pro because it was more in my price range than the Astro and it is true surround. The first thing I will say as I'm not sure that true surround is a good thing. I will explain why later. I bought this primarily for gaming on both my PS3 and XBOX 360.
I will start with the good. The sound is pretty good. For people that want a loud headset that is clear this will do the job. It was pretty easy to set up. It does leave a mess of wires but no worse than any other wired thing hooked to a console. Comfort isn't too bad. When you first put it on you might think it is heavy but within a couple minutes you really don't notice it. The chat is great. The microphone is clear and easily adjusts. It is way better than my blue-tooth headset. Actually it isn't even comparable. It will make a difference in your game play compared to using TV sound or even an actual 5.1 surround system. The main reason is that things coming from the left or right are much more distinguished. You could obviously get that from a stereo headset as well.
Now the bad. The headset seems optimized for loud volumes. When turned down to lower volumes things didn't sound as crisp and clear. The user manual sucks. I would go online and read some of the help files they have on adjusting things before using. This thing also needs massive adjustments to get surround working well for you. A help video on it would go a long way. Now on why I say the true surround might not be such a good thing. With headphones on no matter how many speakers you put in them they are all located fairly close together. So it is hard to distinguish between where the sound is coming from. You can tell with the AX Pro but you have to tune them and train yourself to notice the difference. It isn't like a normal 5.1 surround system where you can tell the difference naturally. For this reason I believe the AX 720 headphones might do a better job of creating surround sound. Rather than using speakers they work by changing the sound. So something in the rear of you they are supposed to change the pitch and level to fool your ears into thinking you hear something behind you. I can't say if this is perfect in the AX720 but I can say that with headphones it is a better method and will ultimately be the way they perfect surround headphones. Lastly you might read some comments on there being a lot of sound. I believe this is also due to them being true surround. The reason is the center channel. The center channel plays right over your ears and without adjustment it is very dominant. Which might be great for movies but isn't ideal for gaming. It creates too much overall sound such as your own footsteps which can drown out the surround noises. It would be better if the center channel sounded a little further away.
Other things. The model I got has an adjustable microphone so it is no longer an issue. The eliminated needing two power adapters by basically splitting one. It would be nice if they could feed the power for the headphones through the mixamp so the splitter wasn't needed. This would clean up the wires a lot. The cord on the power adapter is pretty short so it is kind of hassle to feed through the back of a cabinet. You have to power the thing off on the mixamp and the headphones. There is no hiss or hum or anything on this headset other than when the PS3 is loading.
I will likely not buy another headset as this one is good enough for what I need. It does improve my play but does have some flaws. Even though I gave this a 3 I would still recommend this headset. I just wanted to make sure that people understand that true surround might not be better than virtualized surround. I might update this after using more but those are my initial thoughts.
--Update
So I've been using this headset for a while now. I pretty much always play using the headset. I like having a headset but the more I use it the more I believe I overpaid for this headset. I still stand by my first comments but the thing that continues to bother me even more is that Tritton doesn't have a community forum or anything where owners can post the settings for this that have worked good for them in specific games. This thing has so many adjustments and they are so subtle that it is hard to determine if you are making something better or worse. I've gotten to the point where I just deal with it for the most part and make sure the bass isn't up too loud. If I was going to redo it the fact that Astro has a forum would probably be enough to sway me to buy their product instead. | video-games_xbox |
This game is an absolute DO NOT BUY. Imagine a game where you're a beast like Mel Gibson's character in the Patriot, who plays an integral part in major historical events and gets to explore a vast, incredible version of 1776 New England. That is ABSOLUTELY NOT THIS GAME. This game advertises itself to be like that, and as such draws in people like me: history fans who are casual gamers. I guess, naively, I was expecting something more like Grand Theft Auto: Revolutionary War era Boston.
The idea here really is something very cool. You're supposed to be a rip-roaring Indian killer who goes around playing an integral role in the revolutionary war. Instead, when the game started, I had to wonder if the right disc was in the package.
(Minor spoilers follow, but I suggest you read them anyway because they'll save you time in the long run)
You start off as some idiot binge-drinking college kid in the modern day who has a forearm tattoo and a serious Oedipus Complex. His pops is the leader of his team, and there is some science fiction back story about how "Assassins" and "Templars" have been fighting each other for centuries. I couldn't really figure it out, but the bottom line is its really stupid. Shortly, your character discovers a super computer that lets him run around in and explore history in person (forget that this technology could literally never exist and is completely unnecessary for the game, anyway).
So after an hour of stupid exercises which include jumping around a modern day downtown New York City skyscraper, you get to play the game. But are you a tough Indian killer?
NOPE! TRICKED YOU AGAIN! You're some English guy who does boring things like visit the theater (which is NOT interactive AT ALL) and then crosses over to America on a pretty boring boat trip, and a relatively non-interactive boat.
If you can make it through all of this stale backstory, which fans of the series may understand better/like, you then discover that you're finally the Indian. Only you're a kid, and you have to grow up which takes doing more boring missions like collecting eagle feathers in the wilderness. And as you're navigating these repetitive, stupid missions, you realize the game world you're in isn't much fun, either.
The game play boils down to this:
1) If you can make it through the first ten hours of tedious backstory/gameplay, you're rewarded with incredibly repetitive missions that involve killing British soldiers over and over again with a hatchet. Which is fun for the first 2-3 times, but then gets stale.
2) The world is NOT interactive at all. There are three main areas: Boston, and two wilderness areas. They're all too big to navigate comfortably, and have nothing interactive/fun to do in them (other than hunting, but even the Oregon Trail had that so I don't really think Ubisoft deserves any credit).
3) To mask the fact that they were too lazy to make an interactive world like Grand Theft Auto, Ubisoft decided to make the gameplay INCREDIBLY RIGID. You're constantly on missions that you have to follow.
4) None of the missions develop memorable characters. You bump into Sam Adams and Paul Revere eventually, but all the missions involve killing some irrelevant British Officer at different places in the woods. YAWN.
5) The world is very difficult to navigate. Rather than allowing you to highlight a pathway to follow on the mini-map, Ubisoft just expects you to move in the general direction of beacons. That could be fine, except you often get trapped/lost in different parts of the mountainous terrain. It makes you want to give up, and I did in fact turn the game off numerous times out of geographic frustration.
6) Boston, in general, is very poorly done.
So I made it through about 30% of the game, hoping that it would pick up, and when I realized it wasn't going to, I sent it back to Amazon for a gift card to get my money back.
Take my advice and do yourself a favor: don't waste your time or money. Lets hope eventually, someone takes this idea and does it right. | video-games_xbox |
Welcome to Butcher Bay -- Enjoy Your Stay. "Pitch Black" was a good movie, despite what it obviously owed to films like "Alien," but its sequel, "The Chronicles of Riddick" felt like it took place in an entirely different universe, and traded its predecessor's character depth and moody tension in for choppy, overblown action. In case you're wondering, the Xbox shooter "Escape From Butcher Bay" takes place in the latter setting, but at least it allows Riddick to curse and kill in a non-PG-13 environment (a luxury the edited film didn't have). On top of that, it offers some very fine first-person gaming. Even so, despite much of the recent hype surrounding it, it has more than its fair share of problems - not unlike the movie to which it's tied.
You're cast as Richard B. Riddick (of course), recently captured and imprisoned in the maximum security prison that is Butcher Bay. The order of the day: escape. That's easier said than done, of course, what with the fact that you're virtually unarmed and faced with an army of armed guards and angry prisoners. The storyline does its job well, and the game's to be commended for not trying to merely recreate the movie's storyline (see "Van Helsing" or "The Return of the King"). A star-studded cast ups the production value and manages to make you feel like you're actually playing a pequel movie, but the story never really hits its stride and it scarcely meshes well with "Pitch Black."
Gameplay-wise, "Riddick" is a real winner. Despite the fact that it's played almost entirely from a first person perspective, it feels like a third person action game. Gunplay aside, you'll find yourself going hand-to-hand with some of the game's enemies and performing "Tenchu"-like stealth kills. The FPS stuff isn't half bad either, and owes a serious debt to "Halo" (even if it never attains that game's greatness). I'd go so far as to say that "Butcher Bay" offers the best combination of stealth and action gameplay that I've ever seen. If you've played the recent "Breakdown," you have an idea what to expect - but as far as the game's controls are concerned, it easily surpasses the aforementioned title.
What "Butcher Bay" lacks are unique and varied environments. By choosing to set the game entirely in a prison setting, the developers obviously limited themselves. Even so, the mostly cramped indoor environments are highly atmospheric - it's just too bad you'll feel like you're moving down the same hallway over and over again throughout much of the game. Some creepy caverns and abandoned mines come into play (and offer opponents that are less than human), but there's very little to break up the monotony.
Visually, "Butcher Bay" is a mixed bag. The game's engine allows for some very moody lighting, and its character models and textures are particularly impressive. It's actually one of the best looking Xbox games ever made, but there are problems as well. To keep it from chugging, some distant objects and/or characters become extremely fuzzy, or even pixelated. Sometimes it's hard to notice, and other times you'll find yourself rubbing at your eyes. At its worst, it can be a little disconcerting.
"Butcher Bay" is one of those games that starts off with more promise than it ultimately finishes with, but despite its shortcomings it's easily one of the best video game/Hollywood unions ever. The action and stealth elements make for equally effective bedfellows, and demand that you play this game.
Final Score: B+ | video-games_xbox |
One of the best Kinect Games to Date. If you have played the original Kung Fu Live on the PS3, you will have an idea of what to expect. However, you will want to greatly increase your expectations. Unlike the PS3 version, which relies on the PSEye, the Kinect version does not suffer from finicky lighting and issues separating backgrounds from the player. So if you loved the concept of the PS3 version, but hated the hassle of getting it to work properly (it was a nightmare, but it was fun WHEN it worked), you owe it to yourself to forget the 15 dollars you spent last year, and fork over the 40 for this game. Note: It is not the same exact game as Kung Fu Live, the stages are all different.
Now as to how the game performs on the Kinect. Basically if you come into this blind, the best reference I can think of is to remember NickArcade from your childhood. Within NickArcade, characters would be "digitally" inserted into the game through a "green or blue screen." This uses the same concept, however you don't need any fancy studio equipment, but just a Kinect and some basic room lighting (nothing out of the ordinary, just use the overhead light or lamp that you already have). A live image of you is digitally transposed into the game. Movement and combat are pretty much tracked 1:1 since it is using a live video of you. Only special moves (such as doing back flips, shooting lightning out of your hand, and the like) are mapped to preset moves. You can scan in items, such as the Guitar Hero guitar and swing it around as a weapon as well. Since movement is very much 1:1 they have a movement ratio that is greatly exaggerated. You can travel several feet with a simple "power punch" (basically pushing your two arms forward with a normal spacing) or with a back flip (simply leaning back with your arms up). So play space isn't a huge issue since movement is simplified, however do be careful with punching, kicking, and swinging items around!
The accuracy is tracked very well, the game does seem to think physical jumps are sometimes back flip gestures, but you're usually having so much fun you do not care. The game is also challenging in two ways outside of the occasional missed movement: the first one being that you will work up a sweat, although the missions are short, within 5-10 minutes you may be winded; secondly you will find that the computer can be quite brutal, you MUST learn to block and dodge. That being said, it is quite fun to mix up your attack strategies and try different moves to defeat enemies.
Also worthy of mentioning are the "digital comics poses." You basically from time to time are asked to fit the silhouette or outline of a character and mimic that pose. Your poses are captured photographically into memory and then used in the comic strip and are often rather humorous. Finally there are a few different game modes outside of the main story (which can be completed in 3-5 hours, although you probably won't be playing it in one playthru unless you are a ninja in real life). You can create your own scenario in "Mayhem Designer" and can also play multiplayer matches where the other players use the controllers to control your enemies (I think it would be virtually impossible to play two or more people with the Kinect sensor, somebody definitely would get punched or kicked).
The only real issue I have with the game (outside of the somewhat unforgiving difficulty at times) is the length of the game in general. Although there are other modes outside of the story mode, you aren't getting a lot of game for $40.00. It's generally about the same length as Kung Fu Live on PS3 which was offered last year at $15 and still felt a bit too high. However, since the game is an absolute blast to play and you will likely go to the mayhem designer several times just for a quick workout or battle the main quest length can only be considered so far. Ultimately the game is very entertaining, and in some ways, it may be the best Kinect game I've played. If you're like me and loved the PS3 version but could barely play it because of the unrealistic expectations of room lighting (this works perfectly under average room lighting) this is a must buy. If you have not played the PS3 version, you will likely be even more impressed since it is truly one of a kind and in a genre all by itself.
It's a shame that game media outlets will more than likely trash this game (if they even review it), since it definitely is the best Kinect game I've played this year (IMO way better than Kinect Sports Season 2 and even Dance Central 2). Although it isn't perfect, it's well worthy of being played by every Kinect owner with enough room to punch and kick around your living room (watch out for lamp shades and pets!). | video-games_xbox |
They look great, feel very well made, but changing specs cast doubt on my purchase. Update 03/01:
There is an ongoing thread in the Polk Audio forums ([...]) discussing the Melee vs 4Shot capabilities.
I previously stated in my review that a Polk representative said the Melee and 4Shot would receive simulated surround sound audio from the Xbox One controller. This apparently is untrue. The XBox One controller will only deliver Stereo sound, with no directional audio (other than left and right). This is a significant difference, in my opinion, from simulated surround sound. This is not likely Polk's fault, but Microsoft's changing of the Xbox One specifications post-launch and development of headphones. All headphones that solely connect to the Xbox One controller are going to operate this way.
If you want simulated surround sound, my understanding is that the only option will be one that connects to the Optical Audio of the console and is either tethered with a cable OR wireless audio similar to the X42's. The downside is interference from other wireless signals causing static and popping (as I experienced with a set of X41's).
The Melee's simulated surround sound will NOT work with the Xbox One & Chat. You can have either Stereo audio and Chat OR simulated surround sound. This is due to the in-line mic jack for the Melee not being compatible with the Xbox One controller. Perhaps an adapter can be made but I have doubts due to the position of the male jack.
I hope this helps someone. I'm expecting the Xbox One adapter sometime in the next two or three weeks since the 4Shot will be available on 03/06 with the adapter.
----------------------------------------
Original review:
I picked these up a couple of weeks ago. I have an Xbox 360 and an Xbox One. I sold my last pair of Turtle Beach x41's in hopes of finding something better for the Xbox One that didn't scratch and pop every time we used the wifi (known issue with them).
I've read the other 5 or 6 reviews and I too contacted Polk to find out the difference between these and the Xbox One specific 4Shot headset. They are identical except the Melee comes with the cable that connects to the controller of the Xbox 360 and then to the back of the console. This cable alone is the ONLY difference once you receive the wireless transmitter from Polk in their promotion. Essentially, you can use the headphones (not CHAT) for anything with an optical audio port.
The chat function though won't work since it requires an Xbox 360 Controller - and the plug is made in such a way you cannot make an adapter unless you no longer want to use it for the Xbox 360. There are prongs on the plug that connect to the 360 controller, and they're in the way of the microphone jack.
So I connected the headset using the optical audio cable to my Xbox One. I know this isn't how they were intended to be used so take this with a grain of salt. The Xbox One currently does NOT support 5.1 channel audio from the optical audio support - it's supposed to come in a software update, so all it outputs is stereo sound.
Second issue - chat. It sounds great on the 360. I honestly thought the mic was going to be junk, but it sounds very good.
Using the headset with a phone however. It took a lot of trial and error, calling my wife repeatedly using the included cable. It sounded HORRIBLE and I couldn't figure out why. Then I realized, it's not using the mic on the headset when used with the phone - it uses the tiny in-line mic on the cable. So if this is hanging from your neck like how most everyone is going to use it, you're going to sound like crap unless you hold the mic with your hand in front of your mouth. Why they didn't use the mic built into the headset, I have no idea. So instead of using you're expensive headset with MIC, you're using your expensive headphones with a cheap crappy in-line microphone.
Onto audio quality. I found in Call of Duty Ghosts the audio was low even on max volume. In Battlefield 4, while not jarringly loud it was more than sufficient. So this is going to vary based on the game - good to know! I haven't used them enough to provide an opinion on the directional audio from the game. I would assume I would have to connect it to my 360 which does output 5.1 channel audio. But I don't feel comfortable giving an opinion on something I haven't fully tested, and not how the manufacturer intended it to be used.
Other considerations:
I bought these for the directional audio in my first person shooter games, while still being able to participate in chat. The use of these on other devices with a simple auxiliary cable is an added bonus that I'm sure I will use, though seldom.
The Turtle Beach headsets I had required a base station connected to power (USB from the console) and an optical audio cable. The headset (MIC) then connected to the controller. The headset had it's own power provided by batteries. The Polk headset does NOT have batteries - I'm making an assumption that this is going to have something to do with audio "loudness" since the power is only being provided over the 3.5mm plug to power the speakers. Is this sufficient? I don't know.
Additionally, the cable going from the headset to the console. It's long, and it's annoying. Honestly who wants a 10' cord connected to them. This will change with the Xbox One Adapter, but for the 360 or connected to a PC it's cumbersome.
Back to batteries. Since this is ultimately going to be powered from the Xbox One controller, it's going to get it's power from the controller. So the controller will be providing power to both the speakers and the increased bandwidth to transfer the audio from the console to the controller. I hope you're using a play and charge kit or have LOTS of batteries! I'm sure it's going to cut the battery life in half of the controller. Invest in some AmazonBasics rechargeable batteries, it'll save you a fortune in the long run and be less cumbersome than a cable connected to your console from the controller.
As for if I'm keeping them or not, I don't know. I'll have to decide fast. I find it hard to imagine that a company such as Polk would release a product that is less than stellar for $160 (their 4Shot headset). So because of that, I'm leaning towards waiting for the adapter to show. On the flip side, I'm really disappointed in the phone-microphone issue. I'm honestly torn, and will have to decide soon because the returns period is going to expire before I will receive the adapter.
I hope someone finds this helpful. I'll update it if I return them or after I receive the adapter. | video-games_xbox |
New and improved 360. The new 360 slim with a 250 gig hard drive is a massive improvement from the classic Xbox and it's predecessors with a smaller size, more ventilation, integrated wireless adapter, and larger hard drive space. This improved 360 has been long over due with much needed improvements from the older version. Microsoft shaved off a few good pounds off this 360 to make it look thinner and a bit smaller nothing too radical, but also noticeable compared side to side with an older 360 console. The size reduction makes it feel in a few more compact spots and makes it a bit easier to carry around if you do decide to take it somewhere, with it's sleek and smaller design it looks better than the old ones and very appealing with a nice shiny gloss finish to it. Hark what's that i hear i the background oh wait it's my old 360 sounding like a reved up toy car engine, you will not hear that anymore with this one Microsoft put more vents on this one so prevent overheating and made it run nearly silent. Almost anyone who has had an Xbox before this one can tell you a main reason for sending it back in for repairs is for overheating making this improvements will greatly reduce that problem and reduce the noise the old ones used to produce. Instead of having another wire running to or through your modem or router now with this new integrated wireless card you can connect wirelessly and not have to spend extra money on buying a wireless adapter it is a nice new built in feature. Finally you could get a 4gig hard drive or be stuck with a 20 gig hard drive like with the arcade version or the older models which will barely last your gaming needs. The 250 gig hard drive will last even the most demanding gamers, spend the extra money on the hard drive space and never need to worry about having to delete content to make room for another demo or game ever. The final verdict on this product would be.......... Worth the money a good buy even at the mildly high cost and xbox live is another thing to definitely try before committing to it. | video-games_xbox |
Fun singleplayer, but no Dice. Medal of Honor: Tier 1 was released amidst a fanfare of hype and the underlying theme that this would be a strong competitor to Activision/Infinity Wards bestselling Call of Duty: Modern Warfare franchise. The game only lives up to half the expection, which makes sense when you understand that it was developed by two separate companies, Danger Close and DICE (Digital Illusions CE), both children of EA.
Singleplayer:
Danger Close does a great job at creating an immersive single player campaign that follows a storyline set in 2002-2005 Afghanistan in response to the United States' anti-terrorism campaign. The gameplay is solid, and the graphics are crisp. Fans of the Modern Warfare series will enjoy the added perks of making long-range sniper shots with a .50 caliber sniper rifle and directing airstrikes onto incoming insurgents. The AI is lacking, and similar to previous Medal of Honor games. The game suffers from a weak enemy AI. The friendly AI is also weak, with your AI controlled partners running into the open or staying too far behind you to be much help. There were a few glitches in the version I tested, including your AI partners being stuck behind open doors or walls. Such is life in the video game world, but I would expect the Beta versions would have settled this. Overall the campaign is enjoyable, though short. Played on medium difficulty (there are only three settings) I breezed through in about four hours. It is not hard, I only had to restart a mission a few times (not counting the three times I had to restart due to glitches). It is similar to the campaign of most other modern-day FPS out there, with the usual cast of secret military operators, US Army Rangers, and Navy SEALS. Fun, but nothing new. There is an addition of a new game mode as well, where you play through parts of the campaign against the clock and match scores with others online. This adds a level of re-playability, if you enjoyed your first time through the singleplayer campaign.
Multiplayer:
I tried out the multiplayer on an XBox360 system on the day of the release and was treated to a screen prompting me to enter my promotional codes. I filled out the code and was granted new weapons and uniforms. Unfortunately, as many other DICE games players have found, this screen will continue to pop up every time you play the game. Similar unlockable content issues were seen in the Battlefield franchise, which was also developed by DICE. After waiting a few hours for the server situation to heal itself (opening day most people were unable to play for quite a few hours) I logged into a multiplayer game and was surprised. The multiplayer game is not the same as the singleplayer game. In fact, almost every scene touted in the trailers was from the singleplayer version of the game, and the multiplayer game looks nothing like it. The graphics take a substantial hit and are similar to Battlefield: Bad Company 2. In fact, the game itself feels like an add-on pack to the Battlefield franchise. Why DICE did not collaborate more closely with Danger Close is beyond me, but I found myself wishing I were back playing the single player game. The only truly new concept that I found in the multiplayer game was the addition of "scorechains", or killstreak rewards as other FPS gamers will recognize them. These add some elements of depth to the online experience, but they are almost all directed as "point at this location and blow it up" to varying degrees. It would have been nice to see rewards that are more intricate, but that is besides the point. The area that this game suffers the most in online play is in the selection of maps. The maps are relatively small, given that there are 24 people playing per match in most game modes, and the environment is the same in all of them: a bleak, trashed, Afghani city or village.
I usually don't let the hype create an expectation for a game, but for this one I will admit that I had higher expectations than what was contained in the game itself. Because of this I found myself a little let down. Regardless, it is playable and thousands of people will find themselves having fun playing it. Because of the big difference between singleplayer and multiplayer, though, I have to score each of them separately.
Singleplayer Campaign: 3.5 stars
Multiplayer Online Play: 2 stars.
Bottom Line: If you are looking for something that will blow your mind, this isn't it. If you are looking for another FPS to play until the next ground-breaking one comes out, this will preoccupy you for at least a month. | video-games_xbox |
Great game, inferior collection. Bioshock has long been one of my favorite series and because of this, I held off on writing this review until I had played through, and beaten, all three games that come in the collection. I am glad that I did because while the games are still just as good, poor optimization and lazy work on the part of the developers who ported the collection mar what should be an amazing experience. In all three games I experienced glitches, technical issues, and actual game crashes. I own all three games for the 360 and I can assure you NONE of the problems I experienced on this "next gen" version were present in the initial releases.
Missing dialogue, mandatory auto aim, game crashes, terrible hit detection, the music and sound effects drowning out the all important dialogue; these are just a few of the problems I encountered all throughout my playthroughs. If I had so much trouble though, why is my rating so high you may ask? Well, the fact of the matter is, while the problems I've mentioned are unfortunate, at best, they are mildly irritating. None of these hiccups change the fact that all three of these games are some of the best released for the previous console generations and all of them, save for the first game mechanically, hold up today.
That last note I made about the first game in the series may upset long time fans but facts are facts. The first Bioshock, while a technical achievement and a masterclass example in storytelling, just isn't fun to play anymore. Having to switch between weapons and plasmids constantly is awkward and unnecessary. Reloading, for both the weapons and the special abilities, takes far too long, and all because the developers insist on you seeing every shell be loaded and every drop refill your bar. Bioshock 2 is the first games better, mechanically, in every single category, and Infinite, wisely, copies 2's innovations. I actually wish Infinite would have taken more. Regenerating health and limiting you to two weapons was unnecessary for a Bioshock game, but Infinite is so easy, it never really becomes a problem.
Odd design choices and glitches aside, these are still some of the greatest games ever made and the fact that they have been collected here, including their many expensive DLC packs, makes this collection too good to pass up. On that note, be sure to check out Bioshock 2's DLC "Minerva's Den". It is so good it has been haled by many as the best stand alone DLC pack EVER, and I am inclined to agree. In my humble opinion, it is the best, most streamlined example of what makes the series great, marrying amazing storytelling, complete with satisfying twist, rewarding, challenging gameplay, and a lean run time, clocking in at between 4-5 hours. All in all this is a great game, despite its warts. Most certainly worth playing. I rate it a buy.
(Update) After playing through everything, twice, I am sad to report that the numerous bugs and glitches are serious enough that they do indeed effect gameplay. Oddly enough, the newest games, Infinite, fares the worst in this department. In the main game, on several occasions, Handymen, IE the hardest enemies in the game, would skip idle animations and cut straight to attacking me. Even worse, two different times, with two seperate handymen, they would completely disappear from wherever they were, only to reappear, directly in front of me, already well into their attack animation, making their strikes completely unavoidable.
Even worse, in Burial at sea episode 1, doors that were supposed to open never did, meaning that I was trapped in the room, with no recourse. I had to reload my file, losing twenty minutes of gameplay. Also, the background noise of whale cries, half way through part 1 become so loud they actually drown out every other sound. Music, sound steps, attacks, enemies, even dialogue, are all drowned out. There was no rush for this collection. No one was beating down 2K's door for it to be released. There is no excuse for these types of glitches, bugs, and crashes, ESPECIALLY now that the original games are backwards compatible with the Xbox One anyway. For the best experience possible, I recommend picking up the original versions of the game on the cheap here on Amazon, or elsewhere. The Collection is too buggy to be worth your time, DLC value be damned. | video-games_xbox |
BEST GAME EVER!! I LOVE HALO. Wow where can i start with this awesome game! this game is just a classic that you can play over and over and over again without getting bored. i have always loved the halo series but have been sad at times because i have not been able to find the older games. i was able to find this great game with this great seller and im so glad that i did. It is seriously the funnest game i have ever played and the graphics are just incredible for its time this game arrived without problems and it works really really well so im happy for that. I had no problems and i would totally buy this game again if i had too. It is so freaking awesome hahaha. HALO RULES!!! im glad that i bought an xbox to be able to play this game hahaha. hope that you can have the same amount of fun that i had too playing halo 2. Best of luck on killing the grunts!!!
Is this a well made good quality product? Yes for sure!
Did this product arrive in a timely matter without any damage or issues? Yes it did
Am i confident that this product will be able to last for a long time under lots and lots of use? Yes i am
Would i recommend this product to one of my friends or a family member? Yes for sure!
Is it likely that i will continue to use this product for a long time? Yes without question!
Will i continue shopping for items with this seller? Yes they are an awesome seller and i am very pleased with this transaction!
If you found this review helpful i would kindly ask if you could click the yes box below where it asks if this review was helpful or not. I really enjoy reviewing products and giving my honest opinion because i know how frustrating it can be searching and shopping for products on the internet. I make sure to always leave a helpful review so if this review helped you please click on the yes button below. Also if you have any questions that you would like to ask me personally feel free to leave a comment below as well and i will try and get back with you as fast as i possibly can. I am very familiar with this product so i think i should be able to answer your questions and be a help in your decision on whether or not to buy this product. Im willing to help in any way that i possibly can! Thank you very much for taking the time to read my review and i hoped i helped you in your decision on whether or not to buy this product. | video-games_xbox |
Good old console. The Xbox 360 has been out for almost ten years now, and somehow Microsoft has been able to keep the system relevant that whole time.
Now that the Xbox one is out, and the Xbox 360 is beginning to decline in relevancy, now is better than ever to look back at the console.
The system came out as a direct competitor to the Play Station 3, and it seems to have been able to keep pace fairly well. Compared to the Play Station 3, it is no question that the systems graphical capabilities were not as good, but as the console aged the difference in newer games is barely noticeable.
The Play Station 3 and Xbox 360 both had their fair share of exclusive games, but anyone who truly enjoys videogames would probably agree that the best games were multi-platform.
After ten years, there are THOUSANDS of great games available on the 360 to play.
That being said, there is an issue with the 4gb system when it comes to newer games. A lot of the newer Xbox 360 games, like Grand Theft Auto 5 and Halo 4, require you to install data directly to the hard drive in order to play the game.
This will be an issue with the 4gb system, because the device will fill up pretty quick and you will be left without any room for anything else.
I would recommend getting a 500gb system if possible, they should be going down in price soon since the Xbox one has been out for a while now.
Moving on, the system has undergone several user interface changes over the years, and the new one isokay.
The UI is divided into several categories which have Square sub categories to select.
Starting with the games category, the Xbox 360 always had games separated into two sections: arcade, and On-Demand (Retail games). What it seems to be is the original idea was that arcade games were little fun things like Apps on a phone and On Demand are full retail games.
On Demand games were not a thing when the system first was created, so it made since back then that the little games were not put on disk.
Since then however; arcade games have become much more elaborate than your standard Candy-Crush clones and the like.
So the separation seems a bit strange now, as many arcade games are just as complex as the On-Demand retail games, or vice versa with the On-Demand games being as simple as some arcade games.
The next category I would like to discuss is TV and Movies.
Its prettyoff.
The Xbox 360 has a large selection of Tv shows and movies, as well as apps like Netflix and Hulu, but I have run into issues with it.
I have purchased entire seasons of shows and downloaded them directly to my Xbox hard drive, only to find that if I am offline I cant watch them.
It seems to be some sort of anti-piracy, DRM, system is keeping me from watching the shows offline.
This is somewhat annoying, as the only real reason I downloaded them directly to the drive in the first place is just in case my internet went out
Without the internet the system cant do its check and thus I cant watch my shows, which I bought
The Xbox system is good, its old and has a few issues, but its good.
If you are looking after for a new system, and don't have the cash for a next generation system, going down a generation is the next best thing.
There are tons of great games that all are really cheap. Soon this system will be a thing of the past, newer games are already not being released on it, so now is a better time than any to get one.
Just keep the issues Ive stated in mind before buying, and don't get the 4gb system. | video-games_xbox |
Long time Xbox fanboy: Xbox One blows. I've had an Xbox 360 since 2006. I love everything about it. Naturally, I decided to buy an Xbox One because the 360 is so great. I guess my folly was in assuming that the XbOne would be an improvement on everything that worked about the 360.
It isn't. It's as if the designers of the system and OS have never used a 360 before.
Let's start with the physical let downs:
The USB ports are placed in really stupid places. No ports on the front of the device to plug in your controller. Instead, one of them is located on the side, the rest are on the back. If you've got a setup that makes getting to the back of your console difficult, you'll really appreciate the location of the console's ports.
The controller may have gotten more expensive ($60-$75 each) but the feel of it got cheaper. The shoulder buttons are poorly designed. If you've got to hold them in for any reason, you've gotta push them in a specific spot.
OS Problems:
First, they force you to buy the Kinect. You'd think the Kinect would be worth having then, right? Wrong. It's a frustrating mess. Watching a movie on your XbOne? Don't move a muscle or the kinect will likely interpret your movement to mean "fast forward to the very end" or "stop".
When compared to the Xbox 360, the Xbox One's voice commands are terrible. The most basic and necessary functions have been stripped while a number of superfluous commands are now included. For example: When watching a TV show episode on Netflix or Hulu on the Xbox 360, you could move forward an episode by saying "Xbox, Next episode". voila. Done. ...But now, on the XbOne, to perform the same basic function you have to say "Xbox, select. Stop. Back. Down, down, down, right, right, right, right, right, select 6, play episode" .... and that's IF a) the Kinects' 60/40 recognition rate manages to pick you up for every part of the command string and b) while navigating with "right" and "down" you're lucky enough for the system to stop on the row you need. (It moves down 3 rows for every "down" which means one row is always skipped)
Friends. I would have thought that viewing my friends list would be a simple matter of clicking the "friends" tab on the home screen. Nope. You gotta go through 3 menus to get to the one thing that logic would suggest is behind the "friends" tile.
The feed is useless. I don't care that so-and-so started playing Dead Rising 3 16 hours ago.
Playing a game? Get an achievement? Wanna know what it is? I hope you're down to exit your game and go through a bunch of menus to read the one sentence that explains what achievement you just earned.
When you're playing a single player game and decide to hand it off to someone else the system becomes confused. Sometimes we have to actually open some other random app from the home screen just to kick-start the profile change for the new player. ...and then when it finally does switch profiles, you have to end up selecting the desired profile manually (a second time) from within the game.
Then there are the tons of times the game or app that's being used just stops. No warning, no reason, just home screen and the need to restart whatever you were doing.
Then there are more minor gripes like the fact that you can't customize the system in anyway outside of choosing one of a dozen or so colors. No background images, no avatars, and only 3 tabs. In short, it's a boring OS.
....aaaand there is an epic lack of anything worth playing. I own COD:Ghosts, Dead Rising 3, and Assasin's Creed IV. The first is just another COD game like all the ones you've probably played for the last 5 years. The last two, DR3 and AC4, are basically go-get quest generators. You're a point A. Go to point B. Repeat.
I've owned every major gaming console since the Sega Genesis and, in my humble former-xbox-fanboy opinion, the Xbox One is the worst console I've ever owned. It's a glitchy $500 paper weight. So... why 2 stars instead of one? Some features are interesting. For example, the smartglass app. Using it in game adds a new layer to game play.
And, yes, I realize that the console will likely get better over time... I just wish Microsoft had decided to spend the time they needed to make is a 5 star system instead of selling a 2 star system with grand promises that one day it'll be worthwhile. | video-games_xbox |
Good to look at, not fun to play. This is volleyball? The actual volleyball part of the game is When I hear the title "XTREME" Volleyball, I want solid gameplay, but you get none of that. And what makes it extreme anyway? Sure the bodacious babes are a big plus, but the gameplay relies on just hittin the ball over the net with 2 buttons and hoping you get points. I just felt the lack of interaction. Heck, Tecmo didnt' even bother to apply the scoring rules to this volleyball game. Only A and B buttons are used. There are basically only 2 things you can do on offense, hit the ball up in the air for your partner, then spike it over the net. Fun? Um, not hardly. The computer basically decides the matches and who wins. There is no strategy involved, it's just game for looks and busty babes, nothing more. This is Tecmo, the makers of Ninja Gaiden and DOA Hardcore? Anyway, then after a boring day playing volleyball, you have to go back to the lame Island mode and waste time going through useless and boring places on the island. You try to earn the love of other girls by buying them swimsuits and gifts. Why would one find this enticing? I'm sorry, this game sucks. Sounds like a harsh description, but if it wasn't the redeeming factor of the sweet graphics, this game would be a total disappointment. Is it the worst volleyball game ever? No. But when you pit it against the quality of Sega's game on the Cube, it's just further proof how bad the volleyball engine really is.
The graphics are amazing though. The ladies look better than ever and if they were real I'd defintely want a few dates. It's actually the same engine Tecmo used in Dead Or Alive 3 for the XBOX. You'll recognize one of the beaches being taken directly from the 3, and it looks amazing. Seagulls flying in the background, warm sand curdling your girls feet, and the ocean hitting the sand over the horizon. There are also new beaches, jungles and islands to play volleyball. Once again, lush scenery, fantastic animations and great graphics are nice, but when the gameplay sucks, who cares? For the guys that bought the game strictly for the babes, they might appreciate the "Gravure System" as Tecmo calls it. On days when you want to be alone with your girl, you can take her somewhere alone on the island and just look at her basking in the morning sun. You're thoughts of being there with her might be fun for awhile and mind you it is ultra realistic. You can zoom in on her, change the camera view and take her to different locations. For added visuals, you can also give your girl a nice tan and hook her up with countless bikinis. You can buy tanning oil in the accessory shop and you can watch them over time get a lush golden tan from the sun. If you want to keep them healthy, you can also buy sun block. Sigh. This sucks. I'll say it once and I'll say it again, visual splendor alone, this game rocks, but the game sucks, it really does. | video-games_xbox |
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