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Probably would be better with two. I finally got around to renting Army of Two, and will definitely recommend a rent instead of a buy. While the game is enjoyable, there are some things that hold it back. Your AI partner leaves much to be desired; there are times when you'll tell him to hold aggro, only to find out that he doesn't really feel like it. This is a pain later on when you've got a ton of enemies shooting at you, and a dumb computer doing it's own thing, causing you to restart countless times at the last checkpoint. I imagine that this wouldn't be an issue in co-op, since you and your buddy could talk it out (I didn't play co-op, so I can't say for sure). Along those lines, I had to shoot the computer at 3-4 different spot because he kept getting stuck on the level. That leads to another issue; getting stuck. There were a few times in the game (most noticeably the monorail level) where I myself would get stuck. I would move the stick, and the camera would shake like I was moving, but I was not moving at all. It fixed itself eventually, but it was a huge inconvenience.
If you're expecting a long, engaging game, look somewhere else. It took me five days to beat (due to other responsibilities), with a total of maybe 6-7 hours game time. It probably wouldn't have even taken that long had I actually had a human partner. The story is a little thin, and I felt like it was trying to make a moral point (private military companies = evil corporations). Sometimes the objectives aren't always made clear on your GPS. If you look to far right or left, the red arrow guiding you will disappear...and sometimes there's not even a red arrow to guide you.
At times, the weaponry feels a little weak, and this leads to another of my issues: you knock someone down with a shot (say a sniper round or rifle shell), but you can't kill them until they're going through their get back up animation. If someone's on the ground, and I'm shooting them, they shouldn't be able to get back up.
For parents, you need to know there is a LOT of cursing. I know the game takes place with two ex-Army guys (and I know how Army guys are, being a former one myself) put into some overwhelming firefights. So, like a good soldier, they're gonna curse...a lot, and then some. It's not a problem for me now, but being a new father I'm sure in the near future it will become one. As for the violence, I think it's fairly tame compared to some games (namely Gears where you can chainsaw the locust with blood spattering on the screen)...there's blood, but not an overabundance of it.
I think my final gripe with the game is the menu screens/load and wait times. Just to start playing, you have to go through 4 (if I remember correctly) menu screens. Then you need to wait for the game to load. If it's your first time, you'll have to watch a cut scene (which you'd probably do anyways). If it's your second time, you have to watch the same cut scene...that's right, there's no skipping ahead to the fun parts you sneaky tricksters! During the mission, you can go "mid-mission" shopping, which is a neat idea...only it takes a while to load the screen, then you need to go through even more menu options to get what you want.
Overall, I had an alright time with the game. If not for trying to get the achievements, I wouldn't play through the game again. It's good for a run through, but after that there's not really much to bring you back (unless you're after achievements like myself). | video-games_xbox |
A Let Down to an Iconic Gaming Series (But There is Still Hope. Oh boy, where to begin with this game. (Spoilers, Duh)
First of all, I have to say I didn't buy it, I got it off a friends account. I had low expectations for it already because of what I had heard from a friend, but decided to try to go into it with an open mind.
First Level: Stumbling out of a sleep pod and being greeted by a new and improved animated Cortana while lens flares blinded me actually got me pumped. Dry ice effects swirled on the floor, tons of bright lights and beeping alarms as I ran through trying to discover why the ship was shaking and being scanned. It reminded me of a level from a much better game (Republic Commando). Then..*sigh*. I met the Covenant.
Oh boy. I swear my eyes twitched when I first saw them. My beloved Elites, my favorite alien race in gaming, ruined by a new design that was just..ugly. The Grunts looked like plastic turtles and sounded weird, with strange voice-changers instead of the beloved silly voice-acting we've come to know and love. The Jackals look like Krogan rip-offs from Mass Effect, pretty much every elite class has been changed and ruined. The only alien that really looks the same is the Hunter, and you don't meet them 'till way later in the game anyway.
After escaping the ship while enduring many poorly written attempts at humor by Cortana, you reach the planets surface (a generic jungle), and meet up with the new enemies. They look like an alien that crawled out of a Tron wannabe, and the environments you fight them in are ripped straight out of Tron. Glowing yellow and white guns that make techno noises, floating things everywhere, plastic floors and walls with glowing neon lights all over the place. I didn't feel like I was in a Halo anymore, I felt like I was in Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon (and that was supposed to be a joke on sci-fi shooters). After many more long, un-enjoyable fights, meeting up with generic 2D characters that you're obviously supposed to like but are so annoying and flat you can't wait for them to leave the cutscene, you encounter "The Librarian".
Where to even start with this Voldermort mothers rip-off. First off, she floats around like an angel, she has an echo to her voice, and it's obvious she's the, "I'm the angel here to explain all the plot points you don't understand". After a good 5 minute cutscene of her spouting non-sense about you being the pinnacle of evolution and how "only you can save the galaxy!!!" she buggers off and you're thrown right back into the Tron world to fight hundreds more repetitive enemies.
Before I get to the end of the game, I have to talk about the main villain. The Didact. First off, he looks like a Pale Orc wanna' be from the Hobbit movies, and he talks in a fancy tongue, (the writers obviously wanted you to believe he was very intelligent, but his lines are so horribly written and bad guy generic that you can't wait for him to shut up). He goes the whole game talking in your ear about how foolish and weak you are, spouting large words like he's consulting a thesaurus before he talks.
At the end of the game, you kill him in the least epic way possible (a grenade to the face that doesn't even kill him and he falls into a black hole). The ending cutscene after you nuke yourself to save earth is actually one of the best cutscenes in the game. Cortana has now turned into Hardlight, and touches you for the first time, and very well written dialogue between her and Master Chief actually made me feel emotional. I don't know who the writer was for the whole game but it's like they kicked them out for this ending scene.
The ending of the game was actually likeable for me, it was a nice closer to Master Chiefs story for the first 3 games, getting him back on Earth ready to fight another day (and another sequel).
Now, before I say what I liked about the game, I want to address one of my main issues with it. Everything. Looks. Like. Plastic. That's right, all the enemies, allies, guns, vehicles, and most of the indoor environments all look like they were dipped in large vats of plastic then thrown into the game. I don't know what made them take this design choice, but it really ruined the aesthetic of the game. The visuals of Halo have always been very impressive and enjoyable for me, Bungie took great care in paying attention to detail, and I feel like 343 completely disregarded that and turned a lovable visual look into a generic plastic First Person Shooter (well, they kind of did that to the whole game). One thing to note is they also removed the Theater mode from singleplayer and Spartan Ops for no reason, giving a big middle finger to those who wanted to create Halo 4 story Machinimas (they even banned someone who was able to create a theater mode for singleplayer. Well done, 343).
Okay, what did I actually like about this game? They brought back the Covenant Carbine (one of my favorite weapons from the series) and the Battlerifle, and some of the singleplayer missions were actually enjoyable (the ones that were reminded me of older Halos, that's probably the only reason I liked them). Spartan Ops was a good edition (though it removed my beloved Firefight), I'd say it's better than the campaign in some ways, since you get to play as your own (silent) Spartan, so it feels more like Reach, and that you're forging your own story.
The fact that this is 343's first game can't excuse them for everything, BUT I am excited for Halo 5, and I'm giving them a second chance and am looking forward to the next installment of this franchise. I feel that if 343 does it right, and sticks to the original feel, this game series won't die for another several games. | video-games_xbox |
destroyed hope. When I was young, . . . I'm talking before I was even 18, I played Conker's Bad Fur Day for the Nintendo 64, and I would have a ball in that game. I always imagined how much fun I'd have if I played it online like this. Ya see, I had an idea for online gaming, way before it came out, so when it finally did I was excited. I first layed eyes on this game when I saw it at my local Blockbuster. unfortunatly, the box I needed to rent it was never in. So when I finally remembered the idea to get this product on Amazon, I was most excited. I couldn't wait to play this game for the simple reason everyone else had loved to play this game, and that was the courses in the multiplayer matches. RARELY did anyone ever get this game to play the adventure courses, so I was just like, yeah whatever, lets get to the good stuff. The game finally came in, and I finally go to the multi-player games only to find out, that it was N O T H I N G like the original N64 multiplayer version. Here I am thinking that the only difference was going to be that I'd get to play it online..... I was wrong. . . . . I was wrong, angry, and sad. The stages were remade completly different and told stories that totally threw me off, and the game-play so much worse than the N64 version. you had to choose one character with specific things about it for the entire game, so you couldn't change it during. The only thing about this game that is the same as the N64 version is the one thing about this game that I didn't care about, when I got this game, and that is the 1 player adventure mode. . . . . . oh! that's right.. one other thing, you know that flaming guy you get to see when you deliver cheat codes to this game? Guess what! there are NO cheat codes for this game at all. So after purchasing this game, I just felt so stuck with it. I was so unhappy with this game, that I gave it away to my brother in-law and he, himself played with it a little bit, and put it on his shelf.
If you liked the adventure mode for Conker's Bad Fur day enough to buy it, then I'd recomend this game for you. Otherwise, this game will make you feel as mad as the Youtube famous "Angry Nintendo Nerd" I hate this game, and I hate that I ever spent money to purchase it. If anyone is in Brooklyn, NY and wants to buy a used copy off me, feel free. my bro-inlaw won't mind, and It has only been used 3 times since it was opened up, and is in perfect condition. please... hit me up. | video-games_xbox |
A fun game, but has issues. The Good: Funny dialog, great voice work, using Minions is interesting and fun, nice graphical style
The Bad: Little player involvement, lack of arrow or map makes you get lost easily, way too linear, not enough Minion races
Overlord's main feature is letting you be evil. You can control the direction of the game by being evil or erm...REALLY evil. Your main focus are your Minions which you use to fight baddies, move objects in your way, or get them. You have four races which are Browns (your main fighting Minions), Reds (long distance Minions that are immune to fire), Blues (which are weak but can revive downed Minions and can take down magical creatures and are immune to water), and Greens (they can ambush large enemies and rip them apart). When you acquire all the Minion gives you can summon them via holes throughout the game.
You're main goal is to go from world to world helping the people so you can find parts from your destroyed tower. You can save damsels in distress to have as your mistresses and receive items like smelters for armor and weapon upgrades, blue, red, and yellow objects to increase mana, health, and maximum Minions. You are able to sweep your Minions to specific places with your right analog stick to solve puzzle and what not. All these features are fine and dandy but with the lack of a map or arrow you get lost ALL the time. Without a FAQ you'll have no idea what to do most of the time. You yourself can attack foes but you just mash the A button and it's the same 3 hit combo over and over again. Of course you can use your powers like shields, fireballs, and berserk your Minions but it doesn't help much sometimes. This game could have been so much more if you were more involved in the game. It's like a 3rd person real time strategy.
There is a lot to do in the game but sometimes you just saying forget it and never playing it again. The game is very unforgiving with a lack of checkpoints. The graphics are pretty good and so is the audio but nothing that says next-gen in your face. The voice acting and dialog is very funny here and that helps ease some of the pain. Overlord is a great rental but nothing really more. | video-games_xbox |
Another fantastic headset from Turtle Beach. So, you want to get a gaming headset? Take a look on-line, or at any electronics store that sells gaming headsets and it's like driving past a car lot. Everyone and their grandma seem to have made a gaming headset to try and get a piece of a rapidly growing trend. As with most things, there are headsets for all price ranges. The Turtle Beach XP500 is at the top end of the spectrum in terms of price and features. If you are in the market for a new headset, and want to spoil yourself this rig may be the one for you.
So, let's get the boring tech stuff out of the way. What does the XP500 have to offer? For starters the actual headset has speakers that are 50mm, weights right around 8 ounces, detachable mic, and is completely wireless. The transmitter is a Digital wireless RF (2.404-2.476GHz), 150MIPS Digital Signal Processor for Dolby processing, and connects via a digital audio optical cable. What do all those fancy tech terms mean? Honestly, I have no idea, but I sound smart rattling them off right? Let's get to the stuff you guys really care about, is the headset any good?
Let's be honest, if you're looking for a gaming headset you want the best sound you can possibly get. That's exactly what this headset delivers. This is the headset that gamers dream about. Every sound, every piece on in-game dialog, and never miss a beat or have to say "What?" chatting with friends.
In an effort to not simply regurgitate information that can be found on other sites I'll talk about my favorite features about this headset. First off the 8 presets. If you're playing Need For Speed and want to make it sound like you are inside the cockpit of the car, there's a preset for that (#2 for those curious). Are you playing Skyrim, and want to hear all those amazing ambient noises and dialog between characters? There's a preset for that (*cough* #6). Are you playing Battlefield 3 or Call of Duty and you want to hear those jaw rattling explosions and gun fights? You guessed it, there's a preset for that (Cue #8).
So, you browse through the 8 presets and just can't find one that fits the game you are playing, or you would prefer a preset that is just a little bit different. This headset has you covered. Via an awesome web based tool you can download your very own Sound Editor to your computer. Hook up the headset to a USB port, and you can change, edit, tweak and customize any (and all) presets to fit your liking. On top of that each preset can not only be modified for what you hear via the game sound, but also chat boost, and mic (how you sound). So, if you want to mess with your friends and sound like a chipmunk or a creepy old guy this headset allows you to do just that. The customization of this headset allows you to adapt to any game, at any time. I can honestly say I have not seen anything else like it on the market. The sheer amount of the programmability is simply amazing.
With all these options at your fingertips, you are probably asking yourself how easy is this to control? Yes, there are a lot of options, but thankfully the people at Turtle Beach have made the controls simple and easy to use. The right ear cup has controls for Mic Mute, Blue tooth pairing, and Blue tooth volume. The left ear cup has controls for game volume, cycling through presets and a port to connect the Xbox controller to the headset via a wire if desired. All the controls are simple and intuitively placed. Once you get the feel of them and knowing where they're placed it quickly becomes second nature.
Hold on a second, did I say blue tooth? Yes, I did. This is another feature where this headset really leaps above the competition. The XP 500 has built in blue tooth which offers gamers possibilities that have never been possible. Picture this, you are playing a game that you love, but you just don't care for the soundtrack in the game. If you have a blue tooth MP3 player you can pair them together and stream your music right into the headset. Lets take that one step farther. You are playing your favorite game. You are balls deep into a battle and your phone rings. Traditionally, you either have to pause the game and take the call, or you take the call and crank your neck while playing. Not anymore. If your phone is blue tooth you can pair the two. That means, hit a button, answer the phone through your headset and continue playing.
All the above is fine and dandy, but how's the sound? After all that's why we get a gaming headset. The Dolby surround sound is enough to get this headset, add on top of that the presets, customization, and blue tooth capabilities make this a gamer's dream. A friend of mine asked be about this headset and I simply replied that it was an ear orgasm. It's the top of the line headset. If you are in the market for a headset, have a birthday coming up, or just want to spoil yourself this headset. In my ever so humble opinion, the headset is a little spendy, however all the tech that Turtle Beach has crammed into it and the quality of the sound make it very much worth it. This is a headset I can see myself having for many years to come. | video-games_xbox |
Halo 4, Halo Excellence. To start off, I've been a huge fan of the Halo series since Halo: Combat Evolved. And I must say that Halo 4 takes everything far beyond what I expected.
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Campaign (NO spoilers)
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To start don't worry I'm NOT going to spoil a single thing from the campaign. I have been waiting to write a review until I finished the campaign, and have just done so. I must say that before getting Halo 4 I was very skeptical because of how much seemed to have changed from previous Halos. However, immediately into the game it feels just like Halo. Greatly improved yes, but you definitely feel like your playing a Halo game. In my opinion, more so than even Halo: Reach. There were parts of the campaign where I started to feel nostalgia of Halo 3 (Partially due to the fact that many of Halo 3's weapons return, but also because gameplay feels similar even with armor abilities). And there was so much mystery and serious suspense throughout the whole game that really could draw me into the story. I love every Halo game ever made (Halo Wars included), though the story for most of them seemed rather obvious where you could guess the beginning from half way through. In Halo 4 it was not until the last 15 minutes of the last mission where I realized where this was going, and even then I could not tell it's direct route it was going to take. I would 100%, hands down, say that Halo 4's campaign is my absolute favorite of all of the Halo games to date. (told you there were no spoilers)
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War Games (Multiplayer)
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A quick note I would like to make is that you are REQUIRED to install disk 2, about 3 gigabytes, to play the multiplayer. Once it is installed you play every part of the game on disk 1 and never have to touch disk 2 again. Now the multiplayer is so large and customization heavy that I won't go in to every detail, just highlight my personal favorites. There is actually kind of story to the multiplayer now in the fact that it is a set of "War Games" for Spartan training on UNSC Infinity. I though it was kind of interesting of 343 to try and give a reason to the multiplayer other than just kill each other for no reason. The new armor system is kind of a mix of Halo 3's and Halo: Reach's. You must rank up higher levels to get new armor and load out options. Load Out options must then be bought with "Spartan Points". Emblems now also require ranking up to unlock different ones. The multiplayer is very balanced and very fun to play. Without writing a twenty page essay on all the details of the multiplayer, it is truly amazing.
*****
Forge
*****
Forge quickly became one of my favorite modes in Halo 3, when it was first introduced. Halo 4 does not fail to improve upon everything. It is so much quicker and simpler to make an amazing map with the new features. My top three of the new features would be: Dynamic lighting, Duplicate, Magnets.
Dynamic Lighting is part of the new engine that now make forged objects cast and receive shadows from everything else. Instead of having the whole side of an object with the same shading, the shadows are rendered dynamically. Duplicate allows you to simply press DOWN on the D-pad to make an exact copy of an object with the same settings as the original. If you want to make a large bridge colored green, for example, you could make one bridge piece turn it green and duplicate the whole way down to make all the pieces match. Magnets allow forged objects to stick to each other at certain points. Going back to the bridge example, you would have to use coordinates or a lot of time to get the pieces of the bridge perfectly aligned, the magnets would make the ends of the bridge pieces stick together. There are a lot of other things that are improved in Halo 4's forge, but I don't want this review to be too long.
So to wrap this up; I would most definitely encourage you to get Halo 4. If your worrying that maybe 343 Industries screwed up the Halo universe, don't because they didn't. | video-games_xbox |
Fast, Furious, Infuriating. There are a number of fighting games out there that kind of just toss you into heavy action and hope for the best. Most of those, at the end of the day, are thankfully button mashers, and often times have the full gamete of difficulty options for fighter game weakling like myself. Now I do have my fighting games I'm good at. I'm still a master of the old school Mortal Kombat I and 2, and I'm reasonably good at Tekken, but am only good enough with Soul Calibur 2 to survive the Normal Difficulty. With DOA 2 Ultimate I managed to actually bite, scratch and scrape my way through the hard mode, but it was not an easy thing to pull off, and it was something I swore I'd never put myself through again. You see I'm a hard-core role player, but a casual fighting gamer.
I am a real life martial artist, though, so martial arts based fighting games do hold an interest for me. I was eager to get DOA 4 because even though the screen shots for the XBox 360 games revealed titles that looked a lot like their old Xbox counterparts I had already become aware of an amazing but true little factoid. The 360 looks amazing in High Definition. I cannot lie, the same is true of DOA 4, and it looks breathtaking, though the character models are sadly disappointing at this point. I'd be nice if Team Ninja would have aimed for more realism. I also found the game's Barbie doll like "partial nudity" laughable. I can't believe they got an M rating for Barbie doll nudity. The ESRB must be overly strict...
The music, once more is awesome, and did I mention the graphics are amazing? I did? Oh... well they really are, especially the scenery. There's hardly any jaggies at all, and I only noticed one instance of any sort of graphical flaws.
The fighting system is similar to DOA 3 but revamped so that the moves that worked in the previous version don't quite have the same effect here, but here's where we get into my whining. There is no easy mode. It's true that there is a training mode, but it does little to prepare you for the raw aggression you're going to get from the computer run opponents. Simply put, for me, this game is too hard, even on the lowest difficulty setting possible "Normal" which is "medium" in MK terms. Clearing the game for newbies and people who are only casually interested in the DOA franchise is no easy feat, and for those of us wanting to learn by hands on experience rather than an unmoving un-reacting computer character it makes it difficult. I mean you can pause, and pull up a move list, but when you try to execute it the computer run opponent will pummel you into oblivion. Worse yet, the AI seems fully capable of breaking my combos (and I have learned a few sweet moves) but even though I try doing what the game's manual suggests I find myself unable to stop myself from taking a severe beating.
I'd love to give the single player mode a higher score, but as a casual fan of DOA, rather than a hardcore fan, I can't help but feel like this game was built for the hardcore. Had Team Ninja tossed in an easy mode it would be easier to pull like I did with DOA 2 Ultimate and eventually work my way up to where I'm good enough to bite, scratch, kick, and break controllers on my way through Hard or even very hard mode. Instead DOA 4 starts you in a difficult mode, and expects you to go from there.
That's not to say this game is bad. To the contrary, it's still a great game, and the endings are well worth suffering through the battle with the next-to-impossible-to-beat Kasumi clone at the end, but one thing Team Ninja did that I'm really happy about is make the story much more coherent, and the stories overlap each other so that you have a much better idea of the over all tale from beginning to end, and everything in between. As a player for story, I was very happy about that. And despite the game's increased and insane difficulty the great graphics make the game hard to pull your eyes away from, kinda like RE 4 did on GameCube a year ago, sans the life like characters.
Online I cried. The lag I experienced was absolutely horrible. I am not sure why, I read that the game had next to none. I may be experiencing technical problems, but I got beaten because of lag, and that did not make me happy. I'm sure a number of players may make the same "claim" but rest assured, I'm not the best at the DOA games, but I'm not the worst either, so I was really mad when the game froze up in the middle of a combo I was doing and when it unlocked I had been beaten. Then a similar problem occurred in the following round costing me the match. At any rate, the new lobby sure is weird, and to be honest I'm not sure I like it. I think I prefer the more simplistic approach taken by DOA Ultimate.
In the end, DOA 4 is a great game, but great for hardcore gamers. This game will try the patience of casual gamers pretty bad. I definitely recommend this title for in home multiplayer though, if you have a spouse, or sibling or friend or parent, etc. it can be great. Online seems to have a few bugs, sadly. I'd say hardcore fans of DOA should get this right away; others may want to rent it first and see if they can handle it. I don't regret buying it, but it is trying my patience at the same time. | video-games_xbox |
americans... what you gonna do. having read the 1 star reveiws just to see what a small selection of idiots think about this system I can safley say that the non xbox playing community of america is, as we british say as thick as a brick, and I quote "the most worse console in this world, wieghs almost as much as all of the brans of the people who bi it". GENIOUS.
let me give you a little insight. Think about consoles in relation to people.
The PC. For geeks and rich people only, plays games better than anything else on the planet but costs vast sums of money and is only really found in the bedroom of a person who plays virtually non-stop. If you really do consider yourself a hardcore gamer, forget consoles. buy one of these
The PS2. A worthy advesory which may not have the graphics capability but does have a very different selection of games mainly desiegned for blowing of steam (I make an exception to the final fantasy series), however in my opinion it is still a 5 star console. Just becasue it is different doesn't make it bad. Why do you not see this?
The gamecube. This was deseigned for kids and funnilly enough suits kids better than us. The games are fun, arcadey and not to difficult. It is brightly covered and very uplifting. A five star console from a kids point of veiw. If you are an adult and still playing it, we all know the N64 was great but we really do need to let go and move on. Its like hanging on to your teddy bear until your thirty.
The xbox. My preffered console. The games tend to be more in depth and alot darker. This doesn't suit everyone but I enjoy it. The graphics are generally the best out of the console lot too but really not enough better to care very much. And will you all stop having a go at halo, the game was realeased years ago. You don't see us xbox players sitting here and laughing at you becasue you fell in love with timesplitters 2 all that time ago. Yes time has moved on, do you think goldeneye 64 would do very well if it was released in a week. No. My personal veiw on the xbox is that it is for more serious gamers.
so,
PS2 - casual gamers
xbox - more serious gamers
PC - people whose lives are in an online game
gamecube - perfect for the kids.
there I said it, now sto pall your arguing | video-games_xbox |
Being fair and disappointed. In my recent review history there's reviews for WWE 2K14 and 2K15 (360 versions). I decided to buy an Xbox One and this was one of the games I bought when I purchased the Xbox One. I've been playing wrestling games since Pro Wrestling on the NES and spent way too many hours playing couch co-op wrestling games on the N64. But I'm writing this review mainly to explain why I just traded it back in to Amazon while the trade-in price is still enough to buy a different game.
The most obvious thing I noticed was the graphics aren't that much better than WWE 2K15 on the 360. They are better, but it's not a very big difference, I would say some of the character models look worse even, especially in the faces. I didn't play WWE 2K15 on the Xbox One, but had read all the negative reviews. It almost makes me wonder if 2K knew they could get by with an improved version of 2K15 on current generations then just stopped there.
People say we have to get used to the use of season pass/DLCs, but I don't. I'm a fashionably late gamer. Recently turned 40. And that's my other reason for trading it in, I'll just wait for the price to drop then buy it again and the season pass. It's similar to how I did both of the previous years.
The problem with WWE 2K16's entire setup is it is constantly looking to make more money. You want that 120 wrestler roster? It's there, but you have to unlock it. You can play through the rough/boring modes to unlock the wrestlers or you can buy the accelerator or better yet, buy the season pass which comes with the accelerator. I had also seen where Samoa Joe is going to be in this one and wanted to use him. He's not here yet. Buy the season pass, he'll be in the DLC released over the next 6 months. Want some of the more unique moves to use with your created wrestler? Buy the DLC, there's a moves pack coming in the future.
The create-a-wrestler feature isn't anywhere near the level of the 360 versions of past years, but that goes back to me saying you have to wonder if 2K's goal was to just make 2K16 on current gen better than 2K15 was on current gen. There's no way to morph the face of your created wrestler. You'll pick a preset (roughly 20 available) then try to change the facial features enough that it won't look like a wrestler already in the game. I realized after my sixth match with my created wrestler that I had used Cody Rhodes face. They did put a "deformation" option in the facial creation, but who wants a wrestler with one eye on his cheek, the other on his forehead? You can't alter the neck size, hand size or feet size. I would say, if estimating, 50% of the original creation suite in last generation is in this next gen version. Just get around the face problems by putting a mask on your created wrestler.
There's a serious AI problem. I was wrestling Sheamus with my created wrestler. Hit him with a signature and 3 stored finishers. He kicked out. Worked my way back to 3 stored finishers, hit him with the signature and 3 finishers again. He kicked out. He's bleeding to the max level, has all red body parts. He had pulled off maybe 5 moves over the whole match. He gets up from my second triple finisher, hits the Celtic Cross (no idea how he had a finisher), pins me and wins. By the way, my created wrestler was 100 rated.
I let my 11 year old son play it to see if maybe I was doing something wrong. He lost a match after being punched because he couldn't kick out with the new kick out mini-game. I'm guessing you could go online and win a lot of matches that way. The game doesn't differentiate from a wrestler who has been beaten for 10 minutes straight from a wrestler who has taken one punch. The pin mini-game does make your kick out area bigger if you're fresher, but it won't say, "Wait, he's only been punched once, a pin here is not realistic whether the player clicks kick out in the right area or not". You will lose.
The new submission controls are just as bad about this. I had a submission on an opponent, was able to keep my bar within his bar for nearly the entire move, but he still escaped. He puts a submission on me. I'm avoiding his bar the whole time. He gets his bar within mine for 1-2 seconds, my guy gives up.
Here's the bad part, I like these new mini-games for pins and submissions, but they're still horribly unbalanced.
The biggest fault of the game is one I had noticed, but wasn't for sure what it was. The moves have very little impact. The ring reacts to moves as if it were concrete. Then there's the crowd. I did a top-rope brainbuster, a huge, legendary move from Japan, the crowd barely reacts. I run over and kick my downed opponent, the crowd erupts. This makes the matches feel even more boring than they are.
There's 2K's insistence to have motion-captured moves. It's not a big deal unless you go to make a created wrestler and realize a lot of the moves look like the wrestler is doing them who the move is tied to. For example, do a Rock Bottom with your created wrestler, he takes on the mannerisms of The Rock. Do a handspring elbow into the corner and your male wrestler becomes a Diva in mannerisms because they only motion-captured a female wrestler doing the move. In their effort to make the moves as realistic as possible they've in turn made those moves unrealistic to use for your original created wrestler. This problem has been around in all of the 2K wrestling games I've played, but it's getting worse by the year.
The whole effort comes off as lazy. My thinking is they should consider releasing this game every other year instead of trying to release a new one every holiday season. To make matters worse, they will be releasing DLC for the next 6 months. So it's either already done and they just held out to make more money or they're going to be working on the DLC when they should be working on next year's version. There's a problem when you end up making your created wrestler with the late Umaga's Samoan Spike as your signature move and Haku/Meng's Tongan Death Grip as your finisher, just because you like the combination of damaging the throat, not because it's a move you've never used in a wrestling game.
But with all these complaints, I'm positive I'll eventually buy it again, but its price will be low enough that when combined with the season pass, it will be less than the initial price. I'm being generous on 3 stars. That's more or less what I think the game will be once all the DLC is out. | video-games_xbox |
I called Turtle Beach customer support and the lady who answered my call seemed to have an attitude like she didn't want to be b. Ordered it through the Turtle Beach website with my Amazon account. My order was cancelled without any notice sent to me. So the day my headset was supposed to arrive I was really bummed to find out it was cancelled a few days earlier due to it not being in stock because of demand. Why it wasn't put on back order I have no idea. And why no notice that my order was cancelled? I called Turtle Beach customer support and the lady who answered my call seemed to have an attitude like she didn't want to be bothered. No apology whatsoever! I was being very cordial, not angry at all. But I did get angry (maybe too much) after I got off the phone. I sent a really nasty email to customer support.
Anyway, I finally got my issue resolved and received my headset. I've played approximately 10 hours and so far no issues at all with chat. Everyone hears me just fine. At times I purposely spoke softly and was still heard clearly. The game audio is awesome. I haven't used all the presets yet, mostly played with the Signature Sound setting selected. I'm hearing noises I didn't know was in the game (Evolve). The Bluetooth worked great too. I received phone calls while playing. I could carry a conversation on the phone and keep my headset on to hear the game. The game volume even lowers some too so that you can hear the phone call. That was unexpected, and appreciated.
One final note. I did deal with Turtle Beach customer support in the past and was very pleased with their service. I hope this past experience was just a fluke. It's just that I'm sick and tired of customer support nowadays with various companies treating people like crap. If I did not have a previous experience that wasn't positive I would've reluctantly gone with Astro. So, to Turtle Beach, customer support matters.
Update: Okay, 2 years and I've changed my review from 5 to 2 stars. I can't believe what Turtle Beach has done to a bunch of it's customers. This will definitely be my last Turtle Beach headset purchased. Research and you'll find that a little after two years the rechargeable battery life pretty much craps out. Mine dies in 1 to 1.5 hours of gaming. The only way to get replacement batteries is by buying in huge quantities from China. Turtle Beach is unable to repair the headset either. Their response is basically, "Sorry to hear about your issue. Unfortunately we do not supply a replacement battery. It's just simply a part we do not carry". UNBELIEVABLE! So spend $200 for a disposable headset if you like. I spent $260 when it first came out. Jeez! I feel used and abused. | video-games_xbox |
Disappointing. I have been a long time Resident Evil fan. I have played most of the titles in the franchise and I have to say, RE5 is a low point.
Graphically, it's one of the most impressive games I've played. But all of the visual richness and detail can't cover the fact that this is a boring game. RE5 lacks any of the creepy atmosphere or scary moments that made it predecessors famous. The horror survival concept is completely removed as this game is reduced to nothing more than a straight-on shooter. And among shooters, RE5 is a bad one. As I played through the game, I kept think "I've seen this somewhere before." That's because most of RE5's chapters and sequences feel like they've been stolen from other games -- from "Half Life 2" to "Halo" to even "Tomb Raider," RE5 is filled with stale, borrowed game play ideas. And some of these ideas feel so forced, that the game play just comes across as messy. Stitched together by a paper-thin plot (even by Resident Evil standards), you often don't know where you're going, what you are supposed to do, or what you are even trying to accomplish in the first place. And when the game is all said and done, at is obnoxiously short. When I put $60 dollars down for a game, I expect more than one day's entertainment.
Some of other reviews here have mentioned the PS3 controls for RE5 make more sense. I can't say whether that's true or not, but they certainly are awkward on the Xbox. I found myself wasting a lot of precious ammo or even dying by fumbling with the controls. And nothing will take me out of the game experience faster than having to concentrate on the controller and try to figure out what button I should be pushing. Game controls should be intuitive and for RE5, they just aren't.
And then there's your partner. Throughout the entire game, you're tether to Sheva Alomar as a playing partner. This proves problematic for two reasons. First is the reduced scare factor. Facing the monsters in this game just doesn't feel as scary knowing that someone is covering your back. Which brings me to problem number two: having a partner covering you wouldn't be so bad, if her AI was so god-awful and inconsistent. I found that a lot of lives, supplies and ammo were wasted because of Sheva's AI.
So in short -- bad controls, unoriginal game play and horrible partner AI make this a boring and disappoint installment of the Resident Evil franchise. If you're on the fence about this game, don't waste your money. | video-games_xbox |
Dammit Jim, I'm a Doctor, not a video game reviewer. I like Star Trek. I really do. But I am not one whom you would describe as a rabid Trekkie. I know enough on the subject of Star Trek to make me somewhat knowledgeable on certain facts; Even-numbered Star Trek movies are the best ones, guys in red shirts invariably die anytime they beam onto a planet, and Captain Kirk would kick Captain Picard's tush in a pitched fight clear across the Great Barrier. But again, I'm not a rabid fan, so when my brother picked this game up for his X-box 360 I was only moderately interested in it. I played it over this past week and have come to the conclusion that the game, while fun, is not as good as it could have been.
ST: Legacy wants to be epic, but only partially succeeds there. Individuals and fans of all Star Trek related shows will love the pure dedication that has been given to the ships, who are clearly the stars of this game. Players embark on their trek (pun intended) during the Enterprise series time frame with Captain Archer and the gang up through the post-TNG era. The plot follows the protaganists of the various series in their pursuit of a rogue Vulcan intent on introducing her own brand of the Borg into the Alpha Quadrant over the course of 200 years. The plot seemed a little weak to me, especially considering the visuals that are included in the game, and seemed little more than a vehicle to introduce the starships themselves.
The graphics are impressive, as is the ship selection. Be forewarned that if you're looking to hop into the controls of a Romulan Warbird in the story campaign you'll only find that in the Skirmish or Multiplayer modes. I noticed that many of the TOS series ships seemed to be pulled directly from Starfleet Battles, like the little Apollo Class scout ship, which consists solely of a saucer section and a single warp nacelle slung underneath. The ships themselves are beautifully rendered and match that of what you saw on the screen of all the movies. Every sound effect from the hum of the impulse engines to the unique sound of the phasers has been dutifully implemented into the game. And the larger the ship is, the less agile it is, giving you more reason to put a few Miranda or Steamrunner class ships in your fleet. The little ships are definitely the most fun but it will be the big battleships that you end up using to win, using brute force.
The music is fine, and certainly more than adequate to set the mood. Some of it seemed to be recycled a bit through most of the game a bit too much though. The voice acting was also adequate but I couldn't help shake the feeling that the voice actors themselves, more or less, just phoned in 30 lines apiece and collected their paycheck. There was no real feeling behind the words being spoken, and it was particularly noticeable with Shatner's Kirk, who is supposedly having some sort of blood feud with this rogue Vulcan but speaks about it in the same tone of voice one would use reading the annual earnings report of a mid-size toilet paper company.
The controls are a big detraction from the game and that is just the plain truth. Through the 20 odd hours I spent playing the game I was never really able to figure out at times which button did what. The left thumbpad controls motion, the right the view, while the bumpers and various buttons control everything from energy settings, hailing, scanning, selecting the closest enemy, initiating repairs, etc. And I'm not even including the weapons fire buttons. Furthermore if you have the ability to target individual subsystems on an enemy ship (sensors, engines, etc.) then please tell me how to do that. My brother has played through the game twice on increasingly difficult settings and said he didn't know either and usually elected to just continue firing and blow up the enemy ship. You'll find yourself repeatedly hitting the wrong button in the middle of a fight and about the only one I was 100% sure of at any time was the warp button, which coincidentally is one of the most tempermental ship subsystems on this game as it will quizically work only half the time.
Despite the controls the game is, as I said earlier, quite beautiful. Watching your fleet exchange broadsides with a Borg Cube is really breathtaking and seeing so many types of ships made available to the player is wonderful. I do not have X-Box Live, so I could not engage in a multiplayer battle with anyone, but did tinker with the Skirmish mode for a while. And here I found the single biggest detraction yet. Skirmish mode reminds me a great deal of another great game, X-Wing Alliance. Players don't cooperate on pre-made missions but rather use an editor to "build" a fleet from scratch and then send it towards another fleet. That's fine and dandy but I want to relive the epic space battle of STII: The Wrath of Khan (and who doesn't?), or take part in the giganto space battle over the Earth from ST: First Contact. Heck, even the battle of Wolf 359 would have been welcome. You'll find none of that here and it makes me sad since all the necessary shipsets are there and are obviously begging for it. Another quick note is that collisions should be catastrophic events for any ship but here ships bounce off of each other, planets, asteroids, and a host of other objects without once taking any damage. A "Worf Maneuver" style assault, warping your ship right into the side of a Borg cube for instance, would have been a most welcome weapon to have at one's disposal, especially on the last (very hard) mission of the game.
The game is pretty enough to perhaps warrant playing through it again, and maybe getting to try it out with some more of the smaller ships. But other than that I don't see much replay value in the Campaign mode. This is further hampered with no scenarios to play and a very spartan Skirmish mode. Overall this is a good, solid game but with some flaws attached to it that drag the overall score down. I enjoyed it a great deal and heartily recommend it to Star Trek fans who have ever had a hankering to pilot their own Sovereign class starship at will. | video-games_xbox |
Gears 2. First off, please understand that I am a huge gears fan. Gears 1 was undoubtedly mike favorite game on any system, hands down. Even with all of it's quirks that many complain about, it was still the best game for me. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and that is mine.
As for the second, I think the overall game was good. The campaign was a little longer than the first, but not too long. I personally prefer this over a super long campaign that gets boring during play. I just can't get into games like GTA 4 that take forever and have a lot of boring things to do while you are trying to play it. I know they are different genres of games, but just using that extremely long campaign as a comparison. Gears 1 and 2 have great campaigns and gameplay that I think are unrivaled by other games. Again, just my opinion.
My problem with this game is the multiplayer. That is what kept gears 1 so interesting for such a long time. Even with all of it's quirks(host advantage, glitchy play at times) I think it is the best multiplayer that I have played to date. Gears 2 was supposed to address these issues, but instead changed the feel of the multiplayer and didn't fix anything. Lag still is an issue. I have noticed a drastic difference in gameplay with different hosts. Load times are long, also. On top of that, the overall gameplay was altered a lot. I know this is a new game, but being such a huge fan of the first makes adjusting to the second very difficult. I am sure I will get used to the new feel of the game over time, but it seems to leave the original faithfuls of gears 1 a little frustrated.
In order to be completely fair, they did add a new type of multiplayer called Horde that is very good. I think this is one of the most enjoyable games I have played on multiplayer that involves computer controlled characters. This mode is what salvaged the overall review of gears 2. I would have dropped the overall score down to three if it wasn't for this cool addition.
All in all, I am still a huge fan of gears. Without a doubt, it is my favorite gaming franchise. If this review seemed overly critical, it is only because I am a huge fan of the franchise and am going to critical of my favorite games.
In conclusion, the game is still a must own in my opinion. Great graphics, great campaign gameplay, and some cool new features. If they work on the multiplayer a little, it could take this four star rating to five without a problem. | video-games_xbox |
Not a game, but an experience. When I first started the game, I was astonished to the least. The audio, the graphics, the gameplay, and especially the dynamics of the game blew me away. To start off, the first 1-3 hours are essentially tutorials disguised in missions. After the first beginning hours, the game gets very interesting. You start to hope for the protagonist, and start to develop a personal hatred for the Templars and all of their ties. The moment this personal involvement feels substantial, that is when you get to a damn near addiction of the game. This addiction makes you look past the small but consistent imperfections in the graphics, and makes you marvel further and longer at what the game does perfect. And this game perfects nearly everything. Let's start of with a simple rate for each in game department.
Graphics: 8/10 :The game's graphics never cease to amaze me every time I enter the cold world of Connor. The sunlight shining through the glistening blades of grass on the summer stricken frontier, or the light snow falling gently to the forest floor, you will never see such beauty and destruction throughout the vast and open world of the thirteen colonies. However, the graphics are held back by a series of bugs and glitches that disrupt the immersing experience.
Gameplay: 9/10 :The gameplay is pretty damn cool. The combat engine is fantastic, the character encounters are believable, but getting stuck on a railing while twenty redcoats fire upon you is a bit annoying.
Audio: 9.6/10 :There is nothing wrong with the audio tracks, except that half the game is spoken in the most grotesque and anti-fluid language in the history of the planet. Mohawk.
Content: 10/10 :There is more than enough content to keep you busy for more than 45+ hours. Wow, wow, wow.
Overall: 9.9/10 :Overall this game is not thee ideal game. It is a model, or even a replica. You will feel more than satisfied with this game. Get it, or me, and everyone else who has played this game will make you. Trust me. | video-games_xbox |
The best game of 2015 finally on disc. "Life is Strange: Season One" is a great game. Originally released online as a 5 part episodic series in 2015 the game has now been released on disc in one complete package.
The game is basically a story based point-and-click adventure game. A lot of people have compared it to indie darling "Gone Home" but since I have yet to play to "Gone Home" I don't know if that is fair comparison. The story is basically: Maxine Caulfield is an 18 high school who has returned to her home town of Arcadia Bay, Oregon to attend Blackwell Academy, a prestigious private school. Max is a self described "photo nerd" and who uses an old Polaroid-type instant camera to take pictures. She has a nightmare that a massive storm is going to wipe Arcadia Bay off the map in at the end of the week. She wakes up in her photography class and after talking to a friend and her teacher (and clicking on various items and posters which you have to do a LOT in this game) Max heads to bathroom after seeing an unusual blue-winged butterfly land on a mop and taking it picture sees Nathan Prescott, the son of the richest man in town shoot a blue-haired girl. Max screams and then is back in her photography class after some rather quick experimenting Max learns that she can rewind time and only she retains the memory and knowledge from previous timelines. She saves the girl in the bathroom and is later talking to her friend Warren in the parking lot when Nathan comes up demanding to know what Max saw in the bathroom Warren and Nathan get into a fight when the blue-haired girl arrives and Max learns it's Chloe Price her BBF from when she lived in Arcadia Bay back in the day. Max and Chloe get away and head back to Chloe's house where we learn that Chloe is searching for Rachel Amber her lover who has disappeared 6 months ago. After Max convinces Chloe that she can rewind time to set out to figure out what happened to Rachel and the weird weather and events that seem to affect the town.
The story is pretty topical including cyber bulling, online harrassment, teenage suicide, domestic abuse, sexualtiy, the sexual explotation of women, climate change, security vs. privacy, growing up means making tough choices, and so on. This is a story about things and the game is very blunt about the first 4 that I listed and doesn't shy away from it. There is also the morality of time travel issue: Is Max trying to be a hero or is just using her powers to become the most popular student in school and is there a difference? All this builds to final choice that has 2 different endings that I wouldn't say either one is a "happy" ending they are both at best they are bittersweet. This is a game that demands players to think about the choices they make and why you make them. The story also gleefully acknowledges various time travel stories, movies, and TV shows so expect for some shout outs. The characterization is some of the best even the so-called villains have more depth and complexity than you will find in most AAA games heroes.
The music is pretty damn good with a good mix indie rock and traditional classical music. The voice acting is pretty damn good with fine performances throughout.
The gameplay is pretty simple. you can walk and run, rewind time, take the occasional pictures, and interact with people and objects. While that might sound dull it's actually pretty engaging once you get to use to it.
The game uses the Unreal engine so while the graphics are good it's not exactly breathtaking either, but where it really shines is great character models along with some great mo-cap, that try to go for a realistic look to the characters. The main characters Max and Chloe are not you traditional buxom babes with huge asses the designs are closer to realistic looking women that you don't fine in most games whether from indie or AAA scenes, the overall art design, and level design that are the real highlights. The town of Arcadia Bay feels like a real town and just looking around is more fun. This is gameplay is more about exploration, talking to the NPCs and reading various posters, texts, emails, and etc will gain you more backstory of the town and some of the residents. Their are several really cool puzzles that can be challenging on the first playthrough again this is a game that you have to pay to attention and read and listen to complete it. .
The game being original a 5 part episodic game is bit short even with all the multiple choices you make you can probably beat this game over a weekend but with so many choices it's got a surprising amount of replayability.
In the end this game is not for everyone but if you're looking for a game that has something to say, with great characters and is often thought-provoking and offers a different kind of challenge other than "shooting the bad guys" then this is a game to definitely to try. I thought I wouldn't like it but once I got into it; it was a wild ride. A ride I want to take again and again. I hope there is a season two. This is the best game of 2015 as far as I'm concerned! | video-games_xbox |
Two stars for the two months that the charger cord lasted. I bought these to replace my rechargeable AA batteries that I used to use for my 360 because they wouldn't even power up my Xbox One controller. So I ordered them and they shipped quickly. They worked great for about 2 months. Note: straight out of the box, the battery packs would never go past 75% charged. However, the battery packs are not the issue, the cable is. I play Xbox frequently, so the batteries and cord do get used, but not abused. I started having issues with the charger loosing connection if I moved the controller around while it was plugged in. I thought nothing of it and continued using the cord. The issue only got worse as time went on. I was playing Xbox last night and I had my controller plugged in, charging. I then set my controller down and wasn't playing for a while. As the controller was sitting there plugged in and charging, it died and shut off. Turned it back on, stayed on for about 10 seconds and shut off again. I thought maybe my battery was just really dead, so I left them charge overnight. 18 hours later, the charge light is still blinking indicating that the controller isn't charged yet. So I decide to turn my Xbox on and check the battery level. 50%. About 5 minutes of the controller being on, (mind you, it's still plugged in at this point.) I get the notification "Your batteries are getting low." So I decided to unplug the cord to see what would happen. As soon as I did that, my battery meter dropped to 25%. I then looked at the end of the cord that plugs into the controller from the side and noticed that the metal part is bent downwards, leading me to think that it's losing connection inside the plastic casing. Fortunately, I have a Microsoft cable that came with my second controller, so I decided to plug that into the port on the battery itself (not the controller) and it lit up and started charging. I moved the controller around to see if I lost connection like I did with the other cable. No issues, it continued charging, as it should. I've only had it charging for about 45 minutes now, so I'll have to see if it fully charges the battery. | video-games_xbox |
Weak Start to the Dynasty Warriors: Gundam Titles. I am a fan of the Dynasty Warriors titles. However, I was looking for something to change the setting up for me. I don't have any prior knowledge to the Gundam series, but battling with giant robots looked awesome. While it does offer some fun, it suffers in both re-playability and gameplay.
For the graphics, they look very impressive for an early 360 title. The only complaint I have is the low-res textures on the environments. The mobile suits look awesome and the enemies look decent, but the bad environment effects are dated at best. The colors are also very vibrant when using a sp attack (musou attack).
The gameplay is my issue with this game. The Dynasty Warriors series prides itself on its repetitive but addicting nature of gameplay. This one sure gets repetitive, but it isn't fun or addicting at all.
One of the biggest problems is the partner AI. Your teammates cannot hold their own even against normal enemies that have no face. You will constantly move throughout the rather large maps in order to constantly save your teammates. This is how most of your missions will end up failing since your mobile suit is not a high enough level or fast enough to save everyone.
This forces you to needlessly grind out missions to level up your pilot and your mech suit (which are separate). However, leveling up your mobile suit only applies to that character as if you were to use that suit with another pilot, you will have to level up that suit again. It makes it pointless to use other suits since you will become a high level with your main suit.
As well as the gameplay, the game suffers in replay value. You have two modes: Official Mode and Original Mode. Official mode tells the events of the first three Gundam shows in the Universal Timeline. Original Mode has characters all over the Gundam universe with their own original storyline regarding a planet about to crash into earth. Each character has about 5 missions or so, and that's it. There is a verus mode, but you'll probably rarely play it. There's not much reason to replay the missions (unless you need to grind out your character to level up).
To pad out the game, the missions are excruciatingly long and tedious. For example, Herro's last mission took over 43 minutes to complete. 43 MINUTES WITHOUT DYING! Almost one hour. The mission didn't vary itself as all I had to do was capture bases, defeat certain enemies, defend certain bases, and defend your friends.
As I said before, I am a huge fan of the Dynasty Warriors series. However, this game just didn't turn out well for me. Fighting with giant mechs is enjoyable, but the crap AI, the tedious grinding, the way too long missions, and the lack of replay value certainly hold this game down. I'd recommend to just get any of the Dynasty Warriors games or to just get the sequel: Dynasty Warriors Gundam 2. | video-games_xbox |
Another Fine Game from the Series. I was introduced to this series by first playing the second game, so I can't comment or recommend the first title just yet. However, playing the second game Ty 2 Bush Rescue, I was immediately hooked by the way the game looks, sounds, and plays. It is a platform style game with plenty of exploring and mini games to go with it. Ty is a Tasmanian tiger in the outback of Australia and a part of a rescue squad that takes on missions to rescue various characters (through you playing the mini games) while defending Burramudgee with an assortment of boomerangs against evil plots from Boss Cass.
The graphics and sound although being a cartoon, more than exceeds at delivering an outback feel. Exploring the woods, you will find the foliage to be amazingly lush and detailed. The voiceovers and characters themselves are all modeled after Australian wildlife complete with accents.
The game itself is relatively easy, which might put some players off. Collecting items is simple enough and with the considerable amount of checkpoints throughout the levels, it is actually hard to lose any progress. What makes this game shine is the characters themselves, the humor, and the way the game plays. Exploring the levels is a real treat. While going into aiming mode of Ty's boomerang, it really pays to stop and look around the environment as new trails, platforms, and hidden items become more obvious.
Ty 3, is quite faithful to the second game, so what is said above can be easily applied to the third game. The atmosphere however is more strange, due to the invasion of the Quinkin. Burramudgee is now New Burramudgee and relocated in a canyon, hidden from the invading Quinkin and looks like a warzone. Ty fights more closely with hand-to-hand moves with his new boomerangs or "rangs". These rangs now have spaces to add stones to change the type of rang you carry. For example, a fire stone inserted into a rang makes the rang a fire-rang and so on. Some rangs allow for more than one stone allowing you to customize the types of rangs you can make. The mini games and bosses prove to be more challenging to beat. The Quinkin themselves are more creepy and menacing than the goofy villian Boss Cass. Despite the darker tone of the game, the personalities of all the characters remain intact with the humor to go with it.
If you have played the previous games, I can't imagine it disappointing any expectations. If you haven't played Ty before, expect Ty 3 to be a light game with plenty of action and a fair amount of challenge. Great for any age. | video-games_xbox |
I do enjoy playing it, but I don't feel it's as good as everyone says. The first Tales game that I ever played was Symphonia. I fell in love with that game right away. I beat it 3 times! Then I played Phantasia and enjoyed that one, too. But this one, I couldn't really get into. I'm only about 28 hours into the game. I'm going to compare Vesperia to Symphonia since those are the only two 3D ones that I've played.
One of the most frustrating parts of the battles is the jumping. You jump like you're on the moon! I constantly would jump when trying to do an upward swing attack. And you stay suspended for so long, that the enemies will run up to you and attack you as you hit the ground. And the backstep is almost useless. You jump back a couple feet, and it usually doesn't save you from getting hit. Much later on, you do get a skill that allows you to repeatedly backstep, which is extremely useful.
If you get surrounded in battle, you are in big trouble. The enemies will beat you over and over, and you get stunned from being hit so it's difficult to get out of it. When doing the Yuri tutorials with those two knights, I would come so close to death constantly! They would both keep hitting you dealing a lot of damage. And they're supposed to be really weak, while Yuri is supposed to be an expert swordsman. I would spend 90% of the tutorial running away. Then I'd heal myself, and then attack once. Then go back to running away. It makes him look weak!
When fighting bosses, I feel like Vesperia is a lot more difficult in maintaining your party. If you don't pay constant attention to your party members' health, they'll be KO'd in about 20 seconds. And the party doesn't seem to follow the strategy that I set up. I set the healer and caster to Long Range and Conserve 25% TP, and they still get right up to the enemies.
So far, the story is not very engaging. I don't think it's exciting. The characters just seem to be going from place to place for unimportant reasons. I'm up to the point of the ghost ship. I'm hoping that soon, some kind of interesting plot will emerge.
The visuals in this game are very beautiful. Everything has a soft light to it making it look very nice.
The soundtrack is very good. That's expected from Motoi Sakuraba.
Most of the characters have great personalities. The voice acting is very good. There's good comedy.
I think this game is good, but there are a lot of frustrations. | video-games_xbox |
A fun gritty shooter. The Good: Amazing gritty art style, superb voice acting, great characters, involved story, fun gun play, a variety of events
The Bad: Repetitive after awhile, cramped environments, shallow sword play
WET is one of those gritty trying-to-be-bad-ass-but-doesn't-concentrate-on-other-aspects type games. The feeling of the game is it's strongest point, and ironically, not the acrobatics that the game boasts about. The developers tried to nail the 70's Quintin Tarintino/Wild West feeling and did it perfectly. Everything from buildings to clothing have a bad ass brown dirty scheme to it. There is even an old 70's film reel filter over the screen that adds to the atmosphere. The music is also a big helper in this thanks to its classic indie feeling to it.
But atmosphere isn't anything if the game has bad game play and this game does not. What it does have is unfinished game play that seems rushed. There is a lot of thought behind it, but it seemed quickly tossed together, but also is really shallow. The whole idea of the game play is based on slow motion combat. Yeah I know, we've seen this before in countless game (Max Payne started it all), but to be fair they add a little twist. Whenever your feet leave the ground and you start shooting you enter slow mo mode. In this mode you have a red circle that auto locks onto an enemy then you am your reticle at another. This was executed brilliantly so you don't have to worry about aiming both weapons. You can go into slow mo when you slide on your shins, jump whichever way in the air, shoot from zip lines, poles, ledges; you name it.
Another addition to combat that really felt shallow was the sword play. A simple one, two, three combo and that's it. There could have been so much more to this, bu it seem the developers were more worried about atmosphere and style than actual game play. You can swipe out your sword from a slide, wall run, or dive, but little does this do in turn with guns.
Over the course of the game you get three additional weapons aside from your dual revolvers: Sawed off shotgun, explosive crossbow, and sub-machine guns. Each as their strengths and weaknesses, but overall they are not used as they should thanks to sparse ammo and limited capacity. You can however upgrade all your weapons and buy more abilities via balance points, but you will not be able to by everything through one play through simply due to the fact that points are given in too small of increments.
The is also very linear and acrobatics tend to take a slight tumble thanks to this. You can hand from ledges, jump gaps, swing on poles, and what seems, everything Lara Croft can do, but the somewhat cramped environments hamper this a tad. Some times you will wall run and rump over to a ledge only to find out you can't hand from there. You will some times try to wall run and jump to a different wall only to find out you forgot to keep the L trigger held down during this transfer.
If you think acrobatics are a tad cramped try the arena events. These are what really break up the game too much. Most shooters have "arena areas" where you have a closed off area and must defeat all enemies to advance. WET takes a little turn and has you closing off spawn points before advancing. These seem simple at first, but later on there are so many guys that concentrating on slow mo, acrobatics, and finding the right paths to these doors and get very frustrating and many restarts will incur.
Another addition to the game is Rage mode where Rubi will see in a red vision that kind of reminds me of Killer7 and is faster and stronger. Enemies are weaker and die faster, but there are more of them. Both arena modes and driving modes (explained below) apply in Rage mode. Rubi also gets to get her counter up faster (which I find useless) by scoring more points. The more style you use the more points you'll get that will add to your multiplier.
There are a few other events like turret events, that are fun, and the driving events which are pretty awesome and epic. You ride on top of cars and shoot at enemies while jumping and diving around cars to avoid getting killed. This is both epic and fun thanks to its simplicity and cinematics.
One thing I have yet to mention is story and WET delivers strongly upon this. You play as Rubi Malone who is a hired mercenary/assassin that gets involved in the wrong deal between a father and a son. The voice acting is superb, but the graphics are a little technically under developed. While the art style is top notch the graphics aren't up to par with the most recent next-gen games (Gears of War 2, Uncharted 2, Assassin's Creed 2, BioShock 2...yeah all the twos!!!). However the awesome art style makes you see past this so it's not so bad.
WET is a great weekend rental and has fun gun play, and a few different events to keep things mixed up. With hot eye candy that is Rubi Malone you will want to follow this sexy protagonist through the twists and turns that is WET. | video-games_xbox |
Wildlands is a good game. If the flaws don't bother you. I personally love this game and the typical Ubisoft generated open world quest system is something I really enjoy. In games like The Division and Assassins Creed Syndicate. But it is a completely fair point to dislike this system, pointing to it's repetitive nature and consider it a grind.
But I personally really enjoy it and can get 50-100 hours of gameplay with the Ubisoft system. So yes if you hate the nature of the Ubisoft system Wildlands is a easy game to skip. I enjoyed the story missions a lot and the banter between the AI team mates. But the fact is this game shines best in Co Op* if you play with the right people.
Ubisoft did a great thing and created a match maker in game based on playstyle. Why is that so important? Simply put other playstyles can ruin your experience in a game. I play this game with three friends, one is Overwatch playstyle like me (no, not the game Overwatch meaning you use drones tag enemies alot, more tactical). The other is a raider play style means he rushes in there with guns blazing and never uses his tech.
By the time my overwatch friend and I would get out drones out to scout camps. Our raider friend was alerting enemies and making life hell. It's just not the way I play the game and it is very call of duty. After around 10 hours of player with the raider I officially gave up playing with him. So please consider the people you play with, you want like minded players, this is a big help avoiding problems. Open world is great and this feels like a Grand Theft Auto replacement for many people. It's beautiful as well it never gets old for me driving around. Tons of fun can be had here and is the game's strength the size of the world.
I love the character options because you can customize your wardrobe in some many ways your character will feel very different than others. I wish there was more cosmetic options where you could really make an original face and body. But there are great options here. The skill options are very in depth and I love the fact you can change your weapons anywhere. Instead of at a hub of some kind - the same goes for character clothes change it wherever you want.
But the cash shop added is annoying, this is a game I paid 100 dollars for already. To add a cash shop is just dumb and greedy. It may not affect my experience overall but the fact there is gear, boosts, and weapon skins gated behind cash is annoying. I wanted to earn everything in game.
While I love this game and intend on playing it for a very long time there are glitches that are very funny.
Such as your team mates running miles up in the air, yet killing enemies in front of you. Vehicles that won't let you exist and when team mates drive they sometimes look like they are running on top of a car. Once in a great awhile a mission will get bugged and will fail you for no reason.
But none of those thing ruin my enjoyment because I haven't had this much fun with a shooter since probably Battlefield Bad Company 2. But I can overlook that and admit this is a fun but flawed game.
Pros
+ Open World
+ Character creation options are great
+ Music
+ Voice Acting
+ Great main story
+ best Co Op gameplay in years
+ Skill unlock system
Cons
- Cash shop
- bugs
- repetitive side quest system
Grade B
If you have friends to play with? This is the perfect game for you if you enjoy shooters but this game still holds up in the fun department if you play solo. With the open world, quest system and main story there will be plenty to do for a long while. With future DLC and PVP added the options will be even greater.
But if you are the type of person who dislikes the Ubisoft open world side quest system? Wildlands isn't the shooter for you. | video-games_xbox |
Wordene jacked up the price. OK controller. Save your money. I've used this controller for about a week or two. I'll touch on features later in this review, but for now I want to touch on this:
Wordene jacked up their price on Amazon (not Amazon's fault). So I paid over $80. Then, I saw Wordene is selling them on eBay for less than $60. That = price gouging by Wordene. They cited a supply and demand issue (more controllers available for eBay). Seems kind of scammy to me. I wouldn't do that if I ran the business. I also noticed the prices went up close to Christmas.
Now, as for worth the mods & features....
It's "ok". I play Advanced Warfare (COD). Ultimately, my success rate (# of kills) has only gone up one or two per game - if I am lucky - which doesn't always happen. So, for the money - not worth having a modded controller.
PROs:
You don't have to pull the trigger each time using rapid fire.
Using a dual wielded weapon, you can use mimic mode to only pull one trigger.
IMO- only two of the mods are worth it - unless you play zombies all the time.
CONs:
Rapid fire does nothing for full automatic weapons (which is the majority of them).
Rapid fire with sniping? I can pull the trigger just as fast (only need two shots anyway).
Quick Scope is not accurate. Don't be fooled - you have to actually be "on target/aimed in" for quick scope to work. It doesn't automatically aim for you.
Price gouging by Wordene.
Not really 5000+ mods (there are only 16). There are even less - because they don't all work with your specific game (i.e. AW).
Jitter doesn't work on AW.
Drop shot/Jump shot - same problem as quick scope (you lose accuracy).
Jump shot - only jumps a tiny bit - doesn't activate exo in AW. So it's more of a "hop"!
There are other products that will combine mods (i.e. rapid fire + quick scope + sniper breath) - this one (although they claim 5000+, doesn't do it).
Will I return it? No.
Because psychologically, my son will think it helps him & he plays zombies a lot.
As for me, skill works better than this modded controller. If I play regularly, I do better without the modded controller. | video-games_xbox |
Dancing Bear. I don't dance. At all. Well, I might do a sidestep, and even snap my fingers quietly if a song REALLY moves me. But coordination to pull off even basic moves? None.
As I burn through the Kinect catalog, I'm running out of titles that get me up and moving. I tried Dance Central when there was nothing else at the store that caught my eye. That was fun, but a little too strict in judging my moves, and a lot of starting and stopping. I then tried Just Dance 4 based on reviews, and hated it -- more specifically, hated most of the songs, as well as the rapid fire moves that I wasn't given time to learn (don't hate on me if you're a fan of JD. I'm 45 years old and still stuck in the 80's as far as musical tastes.)
I slowly drifted towards the Zumba games. Since I don't live in a cave, I've heard of Zumba's massive popularity, and decided to dip my toe in with Fitness Rush, and can report I am very, very happy with it. Even though my girlfriend said I looked like a dancing bear (she's right. I have zero grace, as stated).
I don't know any of the songs on it, but there are very few truly obnoxious ones, unlike Just Dance 4. But what I love most about it is the repetition, which gives me a chance to learn the moves, HALLELUJAH. I unfortunately get tripped up constantly by which side I should be moving (and don't get me started on legs and arms moving at the same time), but the game doesn't seem to mind if I get the side wrong. For that matter, it gives you love even if you're barely moving at all, which is unfortunate, but of course you're only cheating yourself if you don't.
Love is in the form of either winning stars or "ecstasy" (bright splashes of lights and different camera angles), but I just did a new song with new moves, and I'm sure I didn't successfully hit a single one, and I think I still pulled off four stars. Everyone gets a medal (but at least I'm moving and sweating, and that's all that ultimately matters).
If you, like me, are a non-dancer, you can probably skip the "tutorial" section as you'll have almost no memory of any of it once the music starts, and you'll pick everything up as you go easily enough.
There's a nice mix of low, medium and high intensity songs, though I do wish you could sort by intensity. I've been doing the short classes. Mid length classes are twice as long, so I'm terrified to know what a long class is. But just tonight I discovered the "custom class" feature, which is fantastic (again, would be better if we could sort the songs). This will let me work up slowly to 10 songs, and also create different playlists to avoid boredom. There's a nice quick break between songs, just enough for a quick sip or two of water, so you don't lose your momentum but can catch your breath.
I don't know if I'll ever not look like a dancing bear, but I'm having fun and getting some great aerobic exercise in my own living room. What more can you ask from a video game? | video-games_xbox |
Sentry vs Vanguard..... Sentry works 4 me. This might just be, the coolest effin thing that I've ever owned. I never even knew that the sentry gaming console existed, up until a week ago. I stumbled on it while browsing Amazon. Now after reading literally hundreds of reviews, I made the decision to go ahead and order the newer and larger vanguard, but wait. The price kept going up gradually over a period of a few days. Went from $299(acceptable) up to $339(out of my price range). This actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise. The price increase made me look harder at the sentry version. I ended up calling my local Gamestop and they had these(sentry) in stock ($199). I decided to take a ride and check it out hands on. Now I was a little skeptical because many reviews on the Sentry related that the screen was very dark, the viewing angles were bad, and the overall screen size was too small. When I saw the system up close, I quickly determined that the 15.5in screen was more than big enough for my needs. Even tho I had previously decided on the Vanguard 19in, I made the decision to purchase the Sentry from gamestop. $218 total with taxes. My main reason for buying it, is to hook it up and use it in my vehicle. And that is exactly what I did the same day I bought it; hooked up my ps4 packed the accessories. Btw, the case design is very nice, sturdy, and perfect size. Looks like something you open up and type nuclear launch codes into. But well made case overall. The screen is a tad dark as mentioned in reviews. But after turning up the brightness settings, problem solved. As far as the viewing angles, I have had zero issues with that. I've sat directly in front of it, off to the side of it, stood above it looking down; unless your hanging upside down and position the system at a 90degree angle from where you dangle, there is no reason you can't place this system somewhere that won't making viewing angles an issue. Simply put the viewing angles are fine. This is not a home entertainment system. It's a portable mobile gaming solution. The picture is gorgeous. I played battlefield 4 and the game was more detailed than on my 55inLED at home. I was very pleased. The volume is also very good, loud. Videos and movies looked awesome as well. One point I wanted to discuss was using the Sentry in a vehicle. Not much info on the Internet. First off, you'll need a power inverter. 400watts is more then enough to handle the screen and ps4 (ps3, xbox, etc). I bought a 400w inverter from Autozone, $39.99; has 2 AC plugins (1 for monitor, 1for ps4) and 1 usb plugin. The inverter included 2 cables: 1 plugs into the car cigarette lighter port; 1 plugs directly up to the car battery. My 1st time trying to use this system in my work vehicle didn't go so well. I plugged it in using the car cig port. The tv turned on fine and stayed on. The ps4 wouldn't even power on. It required more juice than the cigarette port could provide. So I decided I would try plugging the inverter directly to the car battery with the included cable and clamps. Only the cable was too short (appx 3ftlong). I ended up going back to autozone and bought wiring, crimping, stripping tool and electrical tape. I literally have never cut or stripped a wire in my life, but this was common sense stuff. I connected the wires and made my cables 12ft long. When plugged directly into the battery, the system worked perfectly. Now it is important that I add, this specific vehicle is a work vehicle with many other electronic devices hooked up draining the battery. When I used it in my personal vehicle (2009 Hyundai) I was able to plug the power inverter directly into my cigarette lighter port with no issues at all. But keep in mind, to keep the engine running at least 15min every hour to keep the car battery charged. This setup in the car works awesome. Beautiful screen, and great sound. I highly recommend buying this product. And honestly it wasn't worth spending the extra $140 on the Vanguard system. The Sentry is more than enough for me. It's the coolest thing ever!! | video-games_xbox |
WHACKED< Sense of Humor. Whacked is a fun game...with a gory sense of humor. Definantly NOT for kids under 10, this game is a blast...when taken the right way.
1. Gameplay: Extremely fun, and VERY addicting! The basic story mode in this game (titled Game Show Mode) is where 7 contestants go on a game show with a "Whacky" host. You pick a character to fight as (each a little bit...odd in his or her own way) and then pick an arena to fight in. Once everything is set up (Type of game, how long, etc...) you are ready to kicked some major...rear!
...Now, you have a health meter at the top of your screen, a thing to keep track of your "whacks", and a meter at the bottom showing everyones score. The way you wack someone is by either: A) Getting a weapon of some sort (over 30; ranging from baseball bats, egg shooters, rubber ducky grenades, rocket launchers, and even electrical shockers) and using it against your enemy. For example, if u get a baseball bat, you can swing it by pushing the B button. Hitting someone will knock them for what seems like miles. Clearly the strongest weapon in the game, you can knock people out of the playing arena and watch them fly away. Connecting on two or three will boost your score and give you an awsome feeling. Another weapon u can get is an egg shooter, which is like a gun. It shoots dozens of eggs at your oppenant, and eventually, kills them. The whole game is soooo fast and furious, it adds up in the end to be a WHOLE lot of fun.
You can aslo jump and "glide" across the arena, do a sort of ... stomp from the old Mario games and steal your stomped oppenants weapon, and or, use a regular attack (a punch or slide or kick), which just temporarily makes them dizzy and damamages them minimally. The gameplay here is a blast, and with dozens of types of games, characters, and levels to fight in, you will be "Whacking" people for a very long time!
2) Graphics: Cartoony but pretty good. No framereate slowdown or glitches, its all good. You can see all the way across your "area" and pretty far beyond, and water, explosions, dust, smoke, electricity, etc...all look amazingly real. Whenever you hit someone, they usually lose an amount of green or red blood. Though not extremely gory (as the blood looks like globs), this might turn off parents shopping for an XBOX Live game (get to that later) for their 9-year old kid. Overall though, the graphics are good, and there are no "bad" looking parts in the game.
3) Options: Dozens! You can do the regular game show mode (one person takes on 7 other characters in the game show for the BIG PRIZE!), battle mode (take on you and up to 3 other friends on your local XBOX, play system link, or go on Live and take on the world!), Rehearsal (the Whacked tutorial where u learn all of the basic moves), Theater (watch some HOLARIOUS Whacked commercials, replays, etc...), settings (set your Whacked settings and such), and Game Demos (play demos of some of the newest and great XBOX games).
The levels of difficulty during gameplay are: Very easy, normal, hard, VERY HARD. The harder you play, the more rewarding the victory! Are you ready for Whacked?
And Oh, if u beat the Computer, u can take on your friends on your local XBOX and or do system link, and then, when ready, take on THE WORLD on XBOX Live. Chat with your oppenants through your headsets, different types of games (Fragfest, Chicken, Combat, etc...). It's a blast!
Whacked has so many options, it'll keep you busy for a long...long time!
4) Sounds: The whole thing is a commedy...and it works! Each character is holarious in his or her own way. For instance, one of the characers; a 4-year old girl who's a spoiled little brat with rotting teeth; has many lines like: "Ooooo, pretty pile of blood!" or "You got guts all over my pretty dress!" ...All done in a squeky, annoying 4-year old accent. As for the gameshow host (who has HUGE buck teeth and hair dropping over his face, and a head 5 times as large as his body) makes funny comments, and seems to have a HUGE problem with gore (cheers it on). The characters hold grudges, and the whole thing is just fun to watch and listen too!
Overall, this is a fun game for kids 12+ and older who can handle a little blood and cussing. It's funny, it's addictive, and it has soo many options, you will be addicted for a long while! And with the additions of XBOX Live capability and dozens of weapons, you may become "Whacked" for a long time to come!
Hope this helped,
Thx! | video-games_xbox |
who greenlighted this. Scrapland is a really bad game. I just can't find any reason to keep it, not even as a frisby. I wanna go on record as saying that after buying this game, I will never buy another xbox game that gets released under $40.
I'm really excited for splinter cell chaos theory and reserved my copy. To pass the time I figured I'd buy something to hold me over. I saw scrapland and the cover art looked pretty interesting.
The graphics look fine when you're playing and the sound is cool but the lines are just stupid and make you feel like a little kid playing a children's game. I consider myself a hardcore gamer-Scrapland is just not a gamer's game. It's something for the kids. childlike characters, and just really pointless. I can't believe every website keeps saying this is like grand theft auto.
Turning into different characters gets old after five minutes and the missions are really pointless. Its like they didn't even try when they were designing this. And ok, you can get ships and customize them but they either suck really bad or they overkill evrything you come across. Every aspect of this friendly game seems like its designed for kids. But the weird thign is that its got mature themes like watching some organic creature beat some robot to death and break its neck or when they turn this one robot into a sex icon.
Scrapland just isn't any fun for real gamers, its a good choice for kids or people who get offended by violence and language. Looking back at this purchase, I remember the cashier at the store giving me this weird look when I said I'd take a copy, now I know why. Plus, when I went to return it for store credit on a real game: Need for Speed, the same cashier was there and I felt embarassed just having Scrapland on me. I guess I sort of redeemed my name as a gamer by returning it for a real game.
To sum it up, this is a good game for preteens cause its childish enough for them but its also got just a bit of maturity(even though you can hardly sense it)
You'll either love it or hate it. | video-games_xbox |
Do Not Buy. I have been lusting over this product since I had heard about it. I started playing Rock Band drums when the second one came out and my wife got burnt out on them. There were several issues with the Rock Band 2 drums that made me desire this product. The pads eventually started bubbling up (red and yellow at first) and the pedals broke all the time. I have a Rock Band 2 set that is covered in duct tape and it still performs decently. When Rock Band 3 came out, that was it. I had to have this product. I recently graduated from college and my wife told me i could get whatever I wanted. After a month of thinking, I decided on this product. First of all, Amazon shipping is super fast. I got my product very quickly. As soon as this thing came in the mail, I had ripped open the box only to find many smaller boxes inside. My wife and I took out all the smaller boxes and examined all the components. I was super excited to see that all the parts looked like they were high quality. This set is massive, as mentioned in the other reviews. Also, it is very heavy and does take about 45 minutes to an hour to set up. After that, you will spend a great deal of time adjusting until you can hit the actual pads/cymbals and not completely miss and throw your drumsticks across the room. Let me just say that, for a few days, this kit was AMAZING. It was really the most fun I had ever had with Rock Band. I felt like I was playing real drums! I would wake up early just to play with this kit. The problems started a few days in. My wife had went to work and I had the entire day to spend with this kit. After about 1 hour of playing, I noticed that I was missing notes that I shouldn't have been missing. After some testing, I realized that the red pad would trigger all by itself...for seeming no reason. I noticed that there was a LOT of static buildup on the pads. They felt like a CRT TV when you put your hand up to it. Once I noticed this, the ION brain had taken some minor damage from the static traveling to it and it started to perform poorly. The whole issue with this kit (after researching) is that the pedal is made of solid metal and is connected directly to the brain. The kit is NOT properly shielded from electricity. I contacted amazon and they overnighted me a new kit. I was greatly disappointed with my toy at this time but hoped that it was a fluke. I saw so many videos on the internet of people playing this on carpet with seeming no problems. I did not understand why I could not do the same. I will say that it took me forever to package this thing back up. It really felt like I was playing Tetris trying to get all this stuff back in the box. Also, there was a slight sting I felt from wanting this product for so long and then immediately being disappointed by it. Once the new one came, I took my time noting the position of all the boxes. I did not want to have the same problem packaging it back up. After putting the new one together. It had even more problems. The cymbals were double hitting and the red AND yellow pad would trigger for no reason. At this point, I sent both of them back and got a refund. Thank you Amazon for being so awesome. I am very happy that I got my money back. Most of the people on the internet were instead suckered by ION's awful support. I read a common trick of theirs was to have you send back a portion of the kit that was deemed defective. I read that it was very common for it to take up to 6 months(!) for the person to receive a new part. This made the kit unreturnable because it was outside of Amazon's return period. Do not get trapped like a lot of the people on the internet did. Do not buy this product. If you have just recently purchased it and are having problems. Send it back. It won't get better. ION's support will not help you. Just send it back and heavily modify your Rock Band 2 or Rock Band 3 kit and you will have just as much fun without the pain of this awful kit. I wish everyone the best of luck. | video-games_xbox |
Not a great game. I started out playing as a rogue so that I could use duel weapons, got about 5 hours into the game and decided to start over as a warrior because they made rogues useless in terms of damage. The combat style is really a button masher, especially with the dual weapons.
There seems to be a problem will all game sequels that have come out recently: they get dumbed down. Now from from a business perspective, sure this makes sense. The first game was a smash hit, now why not make it so that any idiot can play it without having to think. All the original DA:O players will buy it, and now we can attract people with ADD and thumb-twitch syndrome. They did the same thing with Mass Effect 2, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2, Modern Warfare 2, Fable II & III, all the huge sequels. They specialized the classes even more than the first.
My favorite way to play DA:O was as a warrior heavy armor and with duel weapons (a hand axe and a short-sword). Now rogues can only use dual weapons (almost uselessly) and warriors are limited to 2 handed weapons and sword & shield. The skill trees are a dumbed-down shell of what they used to be. You can't outfit your party members with armor or weapons either.
The game is glitchy. I have already had my characters arms get stuck in the combat position and had to save and reload 4 times. You can run straight through bystanders. Weapons disappear randomly so it looks like you are fighting with your empty fists. The sound doesn't match up at times.
The characters are boring. In the first one you had: the daughter of the witch of the wilds, the future king of Ferelden, A Mabari war hound, a warrior priestess with a hidden past, a Qunari murderer seperated from his people, and then you were the leader of the last gray wardens. In the new one you have your sister, a dwarf con-artist, a pissed off Templar widow, a mage I barely remember from the first game, and you a refugee, hiding while your original character does all the good stuff.
I hate the fact that the story starts at the same time as DA:O. It loses tons of cred right there in my book. It makes the story feel pointless and dull, like you are just living at the same time through the eyes of a less interesting person. The fact that it is told as a story by Virric (or whatever) is also stupid. How can we believe that any of the hard work and hours we are putting into this game aren't going to end with "Oh yeah, I made it all up, it never happened".
If I don't get to become a gray warden I'm going to be pissed. That was the coolest part of DA:O. You belonged to an ancient order of Darkspawn slayers. Without that, Dragon Age is nothing.
All the negative out of the way, this game is pretty visually, and im willing to give the story a chance because im only 5 hours into it. So far, not impressed. It is another dumbed down version of a great game just so that BioWare can make a little extra coin. | video-games_xbox |
MotoGP should brighten up any motorbike simulator fan on a rainy after noon. As the officially licensed game of the MotoGP circuit, MotoGP 06 does ok. As the officially licensed game of the MotoGP circuit, Thq could have gone a bit deeper. The game modes, Grand Prix and Extreme 600, 1000 and 1200, are each simply a string of races, back to back, where you earn points or money and progress through the rankings. MotoGP 06 doesn't make an effort to capture any of the rivalries or team control of the GP circuit like we've seen in EA's NASCAR franchise, and it would have been nice to be pulled further into a sport most Americans are unfamiliar with. MotoGP lacks personality.
In the single player game, you'll start out on the GP circuit and take on either the 2005 or 2006 season, which is basically a different order to the tracks you race. GP tracks are replicas of the officially licensed tracks and require quite a bit of finesse on the brakes. Burnout fans beware -- the MotoGP franchise is simulation not an arcade game, so be warned!. There's no turbo boost or anything fancy, just racing.
After you earn enough money in the 600cc Extreme mode, you'll earn enough money to buy a 1000cc bike, and then, down the line, enough to buy a 1200cc bike. All this earning money stuuf is becoming boring in game, can't they think of something new for crying out loud!
Visually, MotoGP is an improve over the other moto gp games also by Thq on Xbox. though not without a few problems. The road surfaces look particularly good, but I am a sad case like that, and I found myself pausing every now and then to take a glance at cracks in the asphalt, . MotoGP 06 features neat looking clouds. You'll notice some pop-in with bushes in the distance, and far-away objects don't look nearly as good as the riders or the track close-up. Pop up, I thought that issue would have died along with the original Xbox, but I guess not. All in all, MotoGP 06 is quite a good racer just like its predecessor, but far from perfect.
The soundtrack is an adequate blend of techno tunes that is thankfully limited to menu screens by default. The music is one area that Thq really need to work on. So mighty slap on the back to Thq for creating more of the same in the form of MotoGp. It's by no means perfect, although it should brighten up any motorbike simulator fan on a rainy after noon when you cannot go out on the real thing. | video-games_xbox |
I've got the whoooooole...wooooorld...in my PANTS. Oh, I do love the Lego X game series. They've all been quite excellent, but this one really sets the new gold standard. Everything you love about the previous games is here (characters, comedy, collecting), but everything about it is improved.
Let's start with the plot. Brianiac pops up and plans to shrink the world, as he does. Meantime, the various different colored Lanterns pop up to do what they do. At the same time, Lex Luthor, the Joker, and others are scheming their way onto the Justice League Satellite of Love. Oh, and Hawkman is trapped in a gilded cage.
Got all that?
The controls for flying, especially, are vastly improved in this game game over Lego Batman 2. Like flying in the overworld areas is no longer a massive chore. Even better, you no longer have to look around for a changing station for Batman and Robin, as they can change into their alternate suits at a moment's notice. Further, you get to use the B button as a context button for various different tasks, including instantly changing into a different outfit.
That last point I cannot stress enough. It is so darn useful! It's nice to be able to swap on the fly without having to get taken out of the story.
Now I did see a reviewer who mentioned they had problems with their controller. I didn't have any problems with mine, except when I tried to do two-player with a friend and his controller wouldn't respond. A reboot of the game fixed that. For the record, I'm using a wired 360 controller.
Beyond that, there are about 175 unlockable characters, including Shazam (Captain Marvel), all the various Lanterns, Batmite, and several special surprises that I wouldn't dream of spoiling here. The number and variety of characters really shows how aware this game is of its history. In addition, you get stuff from the 1966 Batman TV series, you hear the Superman theme when Superman flies, and, happily, the Wonder Woman theme when Wonder Woman flies.
Really, I cannot think of a single problem with this game. I loved it completely, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. | video-games_xbox |
Improved yet repetitive play. The first game while fun with an interesting storyline got old fast due to how repetitive the gameplay was. Assassins Creed 2 offers much much more in terms of depth but the boring repetitive aspects still remain.
One big highlight to this game was the graphics were excellent. While some of the initial levels were not very memorable, the later levels are very unique and exciting. Venice in particular was flat out awesome. Since 90% of the game takes place in outside environments this aspect really important.
The story was fun and interesting. In fact it was the story that kept me interested in this game because I always wanted to know what came next.
The addition of a home base was also a lot of fun. I really enjoyed the concept here but felt too limited in what I could really do with it or directions I could take. All I could really do is fill things in the way it was intended.
Missions for the most part were straight forward in that it was clear what you needed to do and where you needed to go. The mini map was really well done to help keep you on track to make sure you did not miss anything. I never was left sitting around trying to figure out where I needed to go but rather just how I wanted to get there. Though it was clear what needed to be done it was partly because you had done similar things 100x over.
The combat system while giving some options and a variety of weapons, there really was not much too it. All the enemies are blocking once their guard is up and you either have to side step an attack or do a counter move. Even facing 5-6 bad guys you can just go into counter mode and get through it with ease.
Now the assassin combat however was much improved. You can now jump out of hiding and take people out, you can hold onto a ledge and pounce down on somebody or if the bad guy is on the ledge you can surprise them and yank them off. This was a huge improvement over the first game and made for a lot more fun.
The weapons they give you the option to have are nice but I always grabbed the weapon with the best stats. That would mean most of the time I would never get much action with some of the other weapon types such as maces since you could only carry one at a time.
Money is a total joke in the game as others have said. I ended up buying every single thing I could and never could come close to spending all my money. The villa home base just keeps dishing out crazy cash and there is simply just not enough things to buy. At this point I stopped going for money in treasure chests all together as they were a total waste of time.
Overall it is a much improved version of the first game but still super repetitive and personally I got really bored after a short amount of time. I think a game like Batman Arkham is a much better standard for a mix between sneaking around and fighting in both indoor and outdoor environments. Assassins Creed 2 is good but not great and really not that memorable other than the killer graphics and interesting storyline. | video-games_xbox |
Beautiful Recreation of the Simpsons but terrible game play. The game reproduces the world of the Simpsons faithful down to the humor and the voices. Unfortunately, as a video game it's more a test of memory than a game of challenge and skill. The more times you go through the maze the quicker you get. You can drive mostly any vehicle that comes along but it's best to stick with the assorted lots offered in the menu. I wanted badly to like this game since I love the Simpsons and got this game for the kids. They stopped playing it after running into so many false level-endings. That's where I took over fresh from playing "Need for Speed: Underground". You become various characters driving around Springfield to find clues to a mystery regarding black vans and crop circles. The automatic camera controls are by far the worst. It jumps erratically from chase view to overhead view if you get stuck in a tight corner or running on foot. This greatly interferes with game play. The physic's gravity is terrible. I had my car hanging on the pier edge forever unable to decide whether to fall or not. The graphics is 3-D cartoon. At times, I find myself manually circling the camera several times to see where items are positioned and where the ledges are "really" located to jump on. The vehicle jump cam is also a big problem. It's set to "On" by default but can be turned "Off" in Options. It's no good if I can't see where you're going to land after doing a ramp jump. The task themselves are simple but after getting to a certain location or collecting such and such an items under a time limit, the player is then immediately tasked to go to another location before time runs out to start yet another part of the level. There can be 2-4 parts to these levels and failure at anytime along the way results in the player starting the level all over. There is no way for anybody other than the programmers themselves to get through all the levels the first time. The game is unforgiving making a wrong turn or get stuck by a car will mean doing the level over. There's no room for error. When tasked to go to a location, you have to rely heavily on the overlay map and green arrows on the road to know where to go while dodging pedestrians and vehicles that to me seem to have a death wish to jump into the path of your vehicle. Hitting the items gains you coins. Another problem is that some items you can crash through and some items are solid like the Rock of Gibraltar. There's no way to tell the difference without trial and error. If too many items are hit in a certain amount of time then the police comes in hot pursuit of you. If you're caught; you pay a 50 coin fine. Finally, the game cheats the player by running over your character trying to get to your vehicle, placing your vehicle way down the street or stopping the game with time still left on the clock. I'm sure that the creators licensed the game to the video game developers and may have even wrote a basic story plot but as the video game part it's totally weak. By changing the XBOX's clock to holiday dates like Christmas, Springfield will change it's appearance to match the holiday moods. This is true of Halloween, Thanksgiving, etc. It's good enough just to drive around Springfield and forget the missions. | video-games_xbox |
One of Bioware's best! (No Spoilers. I'm onto the third installment of the Mass Effect series currently and I am appreciating this first game more and more. It is so unique in so many ways and has elements that are still better than their 2nd and 3rd Mass Effect counterparts. The story was very good for one. Drew Karpyshyn is a master with words and the team he worked with at Bioware for this (and the 2nd) Mass Effect lead to an amazing conversational/story experience! The pluses with this game are the: story, weapon variations, weapon upgrades, detailed level up system, and the ability for certain choices to affect ME2 and eventually ME3. The cons: Mineral gathering is a bit tedious compared to ME2. Graphics are great...until you play ME3 and it's almost unfair to compare the two. And that's about it! From start to finish, this game was phenomenal and had some emotional moments. FYI, the ending was reminiscent to KOTOR1- very epic and exciting and could end in different ways.
The story I should keep short, but It was very well made. Assuming you've read other reviews, you probably know what the plot is. Everything in the game had a purpose and everything you interacted with was significant in its own way. Again, the way the story ends in the first game is phenomenal- whatever choices you make. I don't remember if there was any DLC, but I highly recommend buying story/missions DLC when you can for this game.
Weapon variations were great! I don't understand why they strayed away from that in ME2. ME1 hit the nail when it came to weapons you could buy or find. In ME2 you can only find weapons- 2 or 3 per slot. And it goes 1=sucks 2=better 3=best. They're drastic differences that leave you with one best weapon for each weapon type. No uniqueness there. In this game, there are over 12 weapons per style (pistol, shotgun, sniper, assault) and they are heavily upgradeable with mods. Weapon modifications also differed. In ME1 you could apply mods directly to your weapon and they would gain a noticeable upgrade. In ME2 you purchase upgrades- boring. Also, weapons in ME1 had not ammunition- just an overheat gauge. In ME2 they introduced "thermal clips." In ME3 they kept clips. I liked the ME1 system so much better. With enough upgrades for your assaut rifle, you could easily have an assault rifle that would over heat in 10 seconds in the beginning of the game- to an assault rifle that would overheat in 2 minutes and pack a hell of a punch! That was pretty cool. OP, sure, but cool. Can't do that in the sequels.
The level up system was also really nice. You simply had more choices to apply skill points to when leveling up and could easily reach lvl 45-50 in the game (more levels= more powerful skills). In ME2 your level cap is reduced and it becomes extremely generalized what you can apply points to. They seem to have corrected this in ME3 and it is once again more detailed.
The choices you make in ME1 (particularly in the last 2-4 hours in the game (depends how fast you're playing), will carry over into ME2 and affect dialogue/story choices. It's pretty cool. On the xbox, the "import character from ME1" function is seamless and pretty neat. I played ME2 on PS3 and did the genesis story (since ME1 was not available for PS3 at the time). The choices you make in ME2 are supposedly not as impactful as those in ME1. But they both combine and add on to carry over to ME3.
The best game for each category:
Story: ME1
Graphics: ME3
Weaponry: ME1/ME3
Romance Scenes: ME1
Character Level up: ME1 (though close 2nd is ME3)
Gameplay/Combat: ME3 (more...FPS style, movement)
Dialogue Creativity: ME1
Companions: ME2 (much more choices for companions, different breeds, highly interactive, detailed graphics overhaul)
I think they did a great job with ME1 and dragged their foot in the sand with ME2 and tried too hard to come back to what made ME1 with Mass Effect 3. This is a classic. Get it and enjoy what created such a large fanbase. You will appreciate it more as you play the 2nd and 3rd installments. | video-games_xbox |
Very realistic war game. Ok, first of all, this game is NOT supposed to be another arcade FPS game like Modern Warfare 2 or Halo!! This game is an actual war simulation that requires THINKING and skill. I love COD 4 and Modern Warfare 2 games (I even have the MW2 Console) but when I'm tired of just running and gunning at my enemies, and want something a lot more realistic, I pop in Operation Flashpoint 2. I am a HUGE fan of almost all military based games, and being that I'm an Army brat, I look for military realism in my games.
In MW2, and even GRAW 2, you're on a pre-determined path in which to follow. Operation Flashpoint 2 is totally the opposite. Each mission you go on you can choose ANY which way you want to execute an objective. I read one official review of the game in which the island that you're fighting on, Skira, is so massive that it will take you nine (9) hours to walk across - I think it's the first game for 360 to have such massive space to explore. You can easily give your squad mates orders (WIHTOUT HAVING TO USE THE MAP - which comes up when you press the "back" button) by using the RB (right button), and scroll through orders. For example, you can order your squad to cease fire, fire on your lead, return fire, or fire at will. I absolutely LOVE having those choices. I'm not sure why some of these reviewers are saying that giving orders to your squad members is so difficult to do - it's not difficult at all. Just explore all the commands, try to remember them and you're good to go. Once an order is given, they have NO trouble at all following it. Tell them to engage a specific target and they will concentrate fire at that specific target. You can even all in Artillery/mortar/air strikes when allowed!!
Some have also talked about having to hit your enemy multiple times in chest or belly to actually kill them. Well duh, they're wearing body armor just like you! To kill your enemies with one shot, aim for the head!! It's worked for me throughout the game and I'm almost done with it. That goes for all FPS shooters really, aim for the head and they'll die. The military emphasizes two to the chest and one to the head; I'd rather get it over and just aim for the head. I like the challenge, personally.
Graphically speaking, this game is AMAZING. Weapons are realisitc; you have both a flashlight and a laser attached to your rifle, which the laser is also switched on or off and can only be seen through your night vision. The terrain, the smoke, the explosions, are all photo-realisitc.
Overall, I think most of the reviewers who said they're frustrated with the game or that the game was no fun at all are either looking for something easy to play or don't really know how to play an actual war game in the first place. I'm a military buff and I personally would recommend this game to other military buffs who want a realistic, make-you-think kind of game, and not some typical run-and-gun arcadey game like MW2 (though I do like the COD series.) I bought it for $60 and I believe I got my money's worth. | video-games_xbox |
Three guesses. Halo 2 is unspeakably good. The first Halo was a tad mediocre in my opinion, but now we've been treated to what's by far the best FPS ever. Maybe even the best action game, period. The main reasons Halo 2 are so good is that they kept the gameplay of Halo but refurbished all the stuff that wasn't so good (such as the average graphics, the boring music, and the unrealistically invincible vehicles). Now, even trying to figure out which way you're supposed to go next is fun because the enviroments all look as if you could be there in real life.
The graphics and sound are much, much better in Halo 2. By far. The covenant actually look realistic, instead of creatures that look like 3d rendered cartoon characters. The Master chief and the Marines look marginally better, with their faces looking much more believable mainly. the water effects, textures, and backgrounds in the environments look much better as well. The music is also greatly improved from boring neo classic to [...] kicking pumping rock style music. This fits the feel of the game much better to me.
The gameplay remains as violent and brutally addicting as ever, with a slew of new weapons and vehicles to use. The replay value in Halo 2 is much higher because of this. Multiplayer is even better than before, thanks to balance changes that make the game much more fair (destructible vehicles, harder to find rocket launchers, etc) as well as the ability to be an Elite instead of a Spartan (love it!).
The storyline is much better, and the cinematics are so much better that you might forget you're playing a game and think that you're just watching a movie. THe first time I saw some of the game's longer cutscenes, I was kind of dissappointed when they conluded because I wanted to see what happened next (even though in the back of my mind I knew that I was supposed to determine that).
Bottom line, if you like having fun, and can get away with playing an M rated game, buy Halo 2. You'll be glad you did. | video-games_xbox |
Transformational & Epic. I'm writing this review primarily for new gamers or non-hardcore players and especially for those who didn't play the original War for Cybertron.
This is a suitably epic Transformers game that is almost always fun to play and is worth having. The major strength of the game is that it smartly harkens back to the strongest creative and conceptual period of all Transformers lore, namely Generation 1. For that reason, it contains enough touches of the familiar to connect you emotionally to that period of time when most of us fell in love with the concept, while at the same time containing enough of the new to give the game a level of freshness and vitality for the future. By far the game's greatest achievement is its relatively faithful and incredibly detailed re-imagining of Cybertron. The environments feel surprisingly alive and dynamic, give a sense of the epic, and yet seem completely familiar in many ways to what you might imagine would have come out from the best episodes of the first two, and best seasons.
Visually, the game isn't perfect. The "Teletran 1" store is sparse and criminally underdesigned. The animators didn't even bother to include revolving Bot or Con insignias on the screen and there's plenty of empty space on that particular screen. I'm not a major fan of many of the re-designs of the characters and some of the voice acting. Most of the re-designs are overly bulky and awkward. Optimus Prime's in particular is specially unfortunate with an incredibly bulky and awkward frame topped by a ridiculously small head and distracting faceplate design. The vehicle forms also seem somewhat uninspired, with Prime here again probably suffering most. Because of the design of the game play, you never get a full and proper look at the majority of the transformed modes (unfortunate given the time animators put into these things) and some of the designs seem particularly repetitive. Overall though, the studio behind the game avoids the cardinal sin committed by the Bay films of making the designs so alien that we lose identification of the machines as "human like," and in fact one of the strengths of the game is how much I came away after playing with a sense that I could easily imagine this Transformers world evolving out of a very human like civilization on a distant world.
With the exception of the always fantastic Peter Cullen as Optimus and the voices for Jazz and Cliffjumper, few of the voices are memorable or particularly distinct. Megatron's voice here is a particular missed opportunity, striking me more as a generic bad guy voice, which was one of the problems with the choice of Hugo Weaving in the Michael Bay films. There's nothing memorable about it, and this Megatron has little personality. The producers should have stuck with Frank Welker and been done with that. Visually, most of the autobots are a sort of standard red while the decepticons are a mix of greens and purples, which again I found unfortunate. With the creation of the environments, the artists achieved something special, but sadly fell short in the actual realization of the characters themselves - the problem here is too much repetition. It's also apparent in the choice of characters available - not that many given the amazing diversity of characters introduced in G1. For example, Bruticus is used twice for major action, when even a brief appearance by Devastator might have been fun.
In all honesty though, these complaints are small and niggling. The game play for FoC marks it as a standout. It's not quite "Batman Arkham City" level good, but it's quite close, and the main campaign takes you through enough different characters and missions and environments that it's hard to get bored. Every new character has its own charm, and I found playing as Cliffjumper and Jazz to be a particular highlight. More could have been done with Optimus, as his "special" skills aren't particularly impressive. Megatron is a standout in terms of how much more damage you can do playing as him, but slightly lacking in menace and personality, or even memorable dialog. By far though, one of the best characters to play as, is Grimlock, who is unique in the game but who remains almost as compelling and charming as a character to play as he was in the original cartoon, mostly because of the carnage he can cause. But again, for a character famously remembered for uttering memorable lines in the cartoons, this Grimlock is an almost completely humorless one. My one problem was that from trailers and other things, I expected one of Grimlock's abilities to include literally breathing fire. For some odd reason, you can't actually do that with the character in the game, which was a major disappointment for me for some reason. The animators also took things a little too far by making play with Grimlock literally clunky and occasionally awkward. Also, the game perhaps fortunately or unfortunately, shifts you from playing Bots to Cons without a choice, so you do end up playing for the bad guys for long stretches of the game, but on the up side, it keeps things fresh and opens up the scope of the game somewhat. Each character has a "special" ability, although here too designers show their laziness - more than one character shares the same 'special' ability, so that opportunities for even more differentiation were missed.
The game though, is just plain fun to play. Many of the missions are breathtaking, and in some respects, the game is a little bit of a sensory overload, which is both a strength and a weakness. On the one hand, the level of detail and complexity combined with the large numbers of enemies onscreen, makes it both challenging and interesting to play. On the downside, many of the nice visual flourishes and details will probably be missed (again unfortunate because of the time and money invested) and that sense of busy-ness, forces you to move through the game a little too fast. The cinematics are beatuful and dramatic, and the director/s deserve special credit here; the main campaign story contains the right elements of tragedy, desperation, pathos and heroism which marked the best episodes from the G1 cartoon.
My main problem though, is that the game is way too short - 12 chapters which you can get through in a day or two, and while the final act is a breathtaking back and forth between Autobot and Decepticon each with engaging missions, the very final battle ends way too quickly and way too abruptly. The game ends with absolutely no sense of closure whatsoever and frankly leaves you unsatisfied. Designers could also have provided more help to beginners and the uninitiated. It's as if the game was designed and intended only for those people who played the first one. I played on the "easy" setting and found it plenty tough! And while the learning curve was manageble, I found myself feeling cheated in early chapters when I got temporarily stuck with a different weapon inadvertently picked up on a prompt from the game, thinking initially I could switch back and forth at will. Not so!
The takeaway? If you're new to gaming, this is a great game! If you love Transformers? This is a great game! If you liked the movies? This is a great game! In fact, if you're just looking for something fun to play? This is a great game! But what if you're not a big fan to begin with? This game will transform you into one! Pick it up! | video-games_xbox |
Gears of War Needs to be Made Into a Movie. I just went out a few weeks ago and bought a Xbox 360 console along with Call of Duty 3 and Gears of War. I've always been a PC computer gamer myself for years because I always thought that PC computer games had much better graphics than any console game out there.
Personally, I love World War II games and when Call of Duty 3 first came out I noticed it didn't come out for the PC. I just had to have Call of Duty 3 so I decided I had to go out and buy a Xbox 360 console so I could play Call of Duty 3. I ended up playing Call of Duty 3 first before I played Gears of War. I played the single player part of Call of Duty 3 all the way through and I really like the game. I love playing first person shooters.
Well I heard alot about Gears of War and I thought to myself even though this game is a third person shooter, I would still go out and buy Gears of War to see what all the fuss was all about. To be honest with you, I wasn't too sure if I like the game since Gears of War is a third person shooter. But I wanted to be fair and give this game a chance, because lets be honest, most games aren't cheap anymore. So I wanted to out and try to buy the best game for my money out there.
I really like Call of Duty 3 but when I played the single player part of Gears of War, I was blown away by how smart the AI is for the both the enemy and allied soldiers and the amazing graphics. You don't have to tell fellow soldiers what to do, they're smart enough on their own just to go out and try to find some cover. Same goes with the enemy. They will try to use cover whenever they can and they will try to outflank you and try to overcome you with sheer numbers. I thought the battles in this game were better than the battles in Call of Duty 3 and that's saying alot right there.
Gears of War is by far one of the best games out there, period. It doesn't matter which gaming platform it is. No PC computer game, PlayStation 2 or 3 game, GameCube, Nintendo Wii, Xbox, or other Xbox 360 game comes close to this game. I have a top of the line Dell PC computer and the graphics in this game are much better than the computer games on my Dell computer. I honestly thought I would never find a console game which would have better graphics than a PC computer game.
My hat is off to the developers of this game. You definitely have a moneymaker here. I can already picture endless expansion games to Gears of War in the future. If you can't decide which game to go and buy, go get a Xbox 360 and give this game a shot. You won't regret it.
I noticed Gears of War is getting extremely high ratings on all the gaming websites on the internet. It wouldn't surprise me if the developers of this game have already been approach by a movie director out of Hollywood to do a movie on this game. It's that good. If someone does decide to do a movie on this game, believe me I'll be one of the first ones in line to go see it. | video-games_xbox |
First Time Playing Fallout. To be honest, this is my very first time playing fallout. My first impression was really about the graphics. I mean it looks pretty bad and like it was made from 2012 or like xbox 360 version, but after playing levels on the game, I did not really pay attention to it. The story just kept me going just like Skyrim. I was glad that the developers were able to make another fallout game for the new gen consoles. Soon or later, with the backward compatibility on Xbox One, I will probably get the previous versions of Fallout. I just wish that they can get the graphics up to date or make it more realistic. The gameplay is not that bad at all but here and there, I get in trouble trying to figure out which button to use in tough situations but I will know after playing so much of Fallout. You can say that I kinda fell in love with it already because these certain games don't come around like open world type of video games. I knew that I had to get this game so I can understand the stories than trying to kill many players for killstreaks in COD black ops 3. Sometimes, I rather playing single player campaign modes than online modes. I will definitely give this game a '5' because of the gameplay, story, weapons, environment designs, and interacting with other characters. I do have feelings like I was playing Skyrim but with guns :D At the moment right now, the game is still satisfying with me. People think its boring because all you do is walk around and discover new things but I think it is very interesting because you are not in a rush mode all the time. This game is like settled, calm, understanding, exploring, and building your character.
I hope you guys enjoy my review as my first review of Fallout. Really hope they can make little better graphics in the future, not only for Fallout but for their upcoming games but other than that, this was a great job :D | video-games_xbox |
Endless Fun! Find my self coming back with multiple play throughs. I got this game when it first was released! Square Enix did a phenomenal job with Deus Ex: Human Revoultion!! I had played a little Bit of Invisible wars on the original Xbox, and i was immediately hooked, so when i found out about this next installment i couldn't had been happier! Not only was i excited about this game itself, but then Gamestop had the Augmented edition avaiable for sale and of course i was sold even before i had a pre-order payment put down!
The game itself is plain amazing aside from the other collectibles you get with the Augmented edition. The option to choose how you play, whether your game style is one where you go all out and plow through waves of enemies with clips and clips of ammo. Or if your like me and enjoy the stealthy approach, there's plenty to do going that path too. You walk into a room and just take a minute to observe and do you just proceed or raid the room for other viable options? I mean behind crates and other miscellaneous objects you can find vents to crawl through ( my favorite part of the game! ) to get an edge on your opponent by preemptively attacking. Or just dropping in though another vent and startling your opponent before unleashing pounds of lead! I mean you can hack computers which some contain useful info. or hack doors, cameras, enemy turrets and using them against your opponents! Also the augments Adam Jensen is allowed is also a fun way to customize the way you use Adam in certain environments and through game play! The possibilities are just endless with this game, and the environments are SUPER interact-able (which is also a fav of mine!) Not to mention the graphics in the game are vivid and inviting.
Who doesn't like goodies? I am a big fan of Collector's editions of games for all the collectibles they pack into special editions of the games! Now this wasn't a huge special edition but did come with some fun things! First off it comes in a different packaging, it comes in a really compact nicely designed box that's textured on the front with holographics on the front, with a nice plastic sleeve for the box to easily slide in and out off while protecting the box and showcasing the nice packaging. The Augmented edition comes with a separate box for the game and soundtrack that is nicely constructed featuring art on the sides. finally you get a mini game case sized art book, that is of very nice quality highlighting characters, weapons, environments, props, misc items, its a really fun addition to the set!
I really found myself pulled into this game not being able to put it down. Adam Jensen, the character you play as is so customizable and the game is so interactive that i think any person new or fan of the previous games would enjoy this game! There's different difficulties so gamers who enjoy to just explore and run the environments collecting stuff can to the gamers that are all about a challenge bumping up for difficulty for a definite challenge! I hope people pick this title up and have as much fun as i did with Deus Ex: Human Revolution!! | video-games_xbox |
Imagine controlling a major motion picture. Mass Effect was the most cinematic experience I've ever witnessed in a game. Stunning doesn't begin to cover it.
I wouldn't call the game an FPS, RPG, or anything similar. Mass Effect is an epic "choose your own adventure." One of a relatively new genre of high-quality, semi-open-world events (similar to Oblivion, but the story is vastly more solid). Playing will feel like you are writing/directing a science fiction film. There are combat elements, but those moments are secondary to the event. Additionally, I find the combat is best after reaching a high level. Once you hit levels greater than 40, you will become almost invincible (imagine John McClane in Die Hard). Cranking up the difficulty brings back the challenge (the high difficulties are very difficult), but I don't like breaking up the story with endlessly reloading. Mass Effect has just enough difficulty to be challenging without frustration of repeatedly trying to beat the same area. I also played many side quests and reached a high level before I began the primary campaign (it's much more satisfying to reload a side-quest than get distracted from the primary one).
The character interaction is fantastic. You have a full range of options. You can be good, renegade, or indifferent. For example, there is a scene when you get cornered by a TV reporter. You can give an interview, be diplomatic, evasive, or shove her to the ground and tell her to get out of your face. Every conversation has a similar range of options. You want to tell your commanding officer to leave you alone? Fine, go ahead. You want to talk a character out of starting a fight? You can try doing that too.
The casual dialog between the characters is also exceptional. It gives them a sense of being multi-dimensional and having relationships outside of what happens between you and everyone else. The only drawback is their behavior gets thin on side-quests, but that isn't so bad given the richness of the main story (I would have liked to have seen a few thousand lines of casual conversations randomly used anywhere in the game). Some of the lines are also hilarious. For example, one of your team members is a huge, alien, and not-so-tactful mercenary. You'll be surrounded by embassies, standing among beautiful ponds, trees, flowers, and suddenly he blurts out, "I'm hungry, I wonder if there are any fish in there?"
The end of the game was phenomenal. I don't want to spoil the plot, but the music was heroic, the action was non-stop, and the game will cut several times between you and your allies. The entire sequence lasts about 15 minutes, but those 15 minutes will solidify the game as one of the most cinematic ever produced. This is groundbreaking new territory. We've reached a point where the hardware can deliver an experience similar to high-quality animated pictures. I can't wait to see what the future holds. I really hope they deliver on their promise of a trilogy, I'd like to see yearly releases (like Lord of the Rings) until they are finished, but I doubt they had parallel development (hopefully they did).
Mass Effect has some technical problems, but those can be resolved with a patch. A terrible story can't be fixed with a download, which already puts this way ahead of anything else I've played... Normally I would deduct points for technical faults, but this game has a brilliant story. Occasionally reloading (twice during my campaign due to bugs) is a minor annoyance, but I gladly accept a few problems given the quality of everything else.
One *very* important note... You *are* playing a motion picture. As a result, once the credits roll, the game is *over*. Don't expect to come back and work on side-quests after finishing the main plot. RPGs may allow you to wander aimlessly after "finishing", Mass Effect does not. You can however come back with your same character (skills and inventory intact) and make another attempt at the plot. This makes life easier since your effort isn't wasted if all you want to do is examine alternate choices (playing a "win at all costs" character instead of an idealist). However, starting another "career" (new character, class, skills, etc) requires going back to the basics.
My advice... Keep a separate save before starting every main-quest item. When you realize you committed yourself to winning, you can easily branch-off from your prior save and explore more of the universe. I'm sure that seems self-explanatory, but normally I only use a few saves per game. I ended up blocking my character out of several quests I was hoping to re-examine. You will commit yourself to the ending before you think you've actually done it.
Pros:
+ I thought I was watching a movie. The fact I was controlling it was even more grand.
+ Character creation/management, leveling, is quite good. Better than Oblivion.
+ Combat is exciting. It isn't as rich as a true FPS, but is meant to be dramatic and continue the pace of the plot.
+ The music is fantastic. I enjoy orchestral soundtracks and classical music, and this is the first videogame score where I needed to buy the CD.
+ Voice acting is terrific, none of the drama seems forced, and the actors voiced their lines perfectly with the situation presented.
+ Lots of replay value, but this exists as an opportunity to do similar events completely differently. There are not "thousands of things to do" as in an "open world" like Oblivion or something online like World of Warcraft.
Cons:
- Side-quests aren't as richly produced, but I think that would be impossible with a rational budget and time-constraints.
- There are some technical quirks, which I hope get patched (save often and treat the game as if the auto-save feature wasn't included).
- This is not a real RPG. You'll be disappointed if you go into it thinking the environment is as open as others. As I've already said, it plays more like a cinematic experience. You have to follow the basic plot, but you have quite a lot of freedom how you choose to do so.
Other notes:
- If you can find the special edition, buy that instead. It's worth the extra $10 (if available). I ended up ordering the SE after playing for a few hours and Ebaying my "standard" copy. I really want the behind-the-scenes DVD.
- Don't buy this game if you want an FPS or squad-based shooter. There are better games if that's your genre of choice.
- I really wish they included a cut-scene viewer. It would have been nice to re-watch the scenes, uninterrupted, as you had originally played them.
- This game is not suitable for children. Every parent needs to judge what's best for their kid, but there are adult themes present in this game beyond violence and mindlessly shooting things (I'm not just referring to "romance", but the game forces you to make life and death decisions and I personally don't think a child can grasp these concepts). I'd buy this for my teenager if they were 16 or 17, but not 12 or 13. The developers were morality "agnostic", they allow you to do whatever *you* want, as a result you can do some pretty far-fetched things (the game probably contains at least one thing that can offend everyone, however it's your choice if you make those decisions). | video-games_xbox |
Another big, dumb sandbox game lauded for stale design. I will preface this by saying that I am one of the few that seems to have given Far Cry 2 enough of a chance to figure out why that game was great. It is probably one of my favorite games ever made for the way it didn't lead the player by the hand, let you play your own way, rewarded players for slow, careful approaches, and introduced unique dynamic story components that allowed players to make their own experience by presenting them with a series of dynamic mechanics (the buddies) instead of a series of set-pieces, QTE's and cut scenes. Suffice to say, I don't consider Far Cry 3 a bad game, but rather a bad sequel to an ambitious, but flawed title that has really been overlooked in the years since its release. It certainly fixes some of the problems of the previous game, but generally does so by entirely removing entire mechanics instead of making them more accessible (the worst example being the base take overs). I will be focusing on the flaws of the game here, because no one else bothers to. Its strengths have been covered generously and perhaps excessively at this point.
On a fundamental level, Far Cry 3 is an attempt by Ubisoft to remove every single element of the previous game that wouldn't appeal to the widest possible audience and replace it with mechanics lifted blatantly from other games and, quite often, executed worse. The most immediately obvious example being the towers that you have to climb (complete with the terrible, scripted pseudo-platforming that seems to be required in all AAA action games now) to reveal sections of the map. Only, instead of setting it on fire, you rip open a breaker, and instead of jumping into a bail of hay, you use a zip-line. Not only is it a shallow and repetitive way to add "content" to the game, but Assassin's Creed did it better already. And that is just one example of many that prevent this game from being deserving of any Game of the Year awards. It is a prettied up Frankenstein monster of game mechanics that contribute nothing to the cohesiveness and immersiveness of the world (2 things that FC2 focused on that were entirely abandoned here), thrown together for the sake of commercial appeal. And, judging by the widespread, excessive praise for this title, it has clearly worked. If anything has been proven this generation, it's that GTA3 style sandboxes full of pointless diversions, repetitive side missions, and collectibles is the quickest way to everyone cover up a game's flaws in favor of the fact that you can wander around between linear missions. Instead of creating a living, breathing world with interesting inhabitants and engrossing detail, it presents a very large map populated with color-coded mannequins that either crazy sods on your side or crazy sods that arbitrarily hate you the entire game, and stuffed to bursting with piles of inane diversions with no attention to a cohesive setting. Instead of showing how sandbox games can be different, it demonstrates exactly why they need to be.
The game clearly tries to appeal to the very large audience of the Elder Scrolls games, but with very little regard to sense, balance, immersion, or pacing. The hunting system, that is so frequently lauded, essentially boils down to a fetch quest involving going to the location on your map that is marked with the right kind of animal among the ludicrous variety of animals that would not actually live in this environment, getting a certain number of "skins" so that you can make an arbitrary item that makes playing the game a bit less of a pain in the ass. Want to carry more than 2 grand at a time? Worry not, spoiled rich kid with no access to anything like a bank account, you must simply get 4 skins of an animal that is not a pig because that's how getting a bigger wallet works! It's a contrived, gimmicky excuse to pat the player on the head for doing something worthless. Then there's the skill system, which is effectively just a list of "special moves" that they took away from the player to justify this progression and some health upgrades. In the context of the (poor) narrative, it would seem to be a justified by the progression of Jason (who is a self-centered douche) from a spoiled wussy rich prick into the ultimate personification of Rambo by the end (because power trips are cool). Unfortunately, they refused to use any of their mechanics to meaningfully reinforced this growth, because the average player doesn't like to feel weak. The only thing really holding you back at the beginning of the game is your health, not Jason's lack of skill. He has impeccable aim and seems to have absolutely no problem casually jamming a machete into a pirate's neck after the initial opening sequence. In the very first relatively unscripted encounter in the game, I was more than capable of taking out the base with the skill and efficiency of an experienced, trained killer. Jason is an expert with all guns, blades, and bows as soon as he picks then up. Is the fact that they won't let me take down enemies from above supposed to make me feel somehow weak? No. It just feels like a contrived excuse to give me that option later. And this is compounded by the fact that the previously mentioned hunting system is in no way grounded in your fight for survival. There is no vital need to be filled by poaching these animals. It is simply a matter of convenience. Specifically, the developers inconvenienced you at the beginning and you have to kill some goats to fix that problem (i.e. carrying more than one weapon). Another example of the developer taking away things the player SHOULD have so they can turn them into a progression system later. Which is, in my opinion, the worst kind of "RPG-lite" implementation.
And then there's the story. If the interviews with the writer are any indication, it is a poor, cliche-ridden story being justified post release as a satire of those game stories, or it's just a intentional, but still poor satire of those stories. Either way, it is not very well done. The game presents you as a spoiled, rich, white kid stranded on an island with some family and friends. Most of your friends are forgettable stereotypes that fail to develop in any significant way (and then there's the overt implications of rape that they handle incredibly poorly for one of your male friends). While I agree that this story had a lot of potential at the beginning, I think my opinion of when it went downhill may differ from many. It started getting worse after the first missions. Here's why. As I said, at the beginning of the game the developers seem to be setting the player up for an interesting, desperate, and potentially brutal fight for survival. A city kid thrown in the jungle and forced to learn how to survive or die. They seemed to want the player to reflect on the wanton violence and destruction they cause throughout the game, if characters and even Jason's sole redeeming dialogue in one of the endings is any indication, but they never present it as such. In a game like Spec Ops: The Line, combat is presented as necessary, but still evil. In this game, blowing up a couple dozen cars with a grenade launcher from the back of a jeep is described in-game as "awesome." Don't mistake me, I have nothing in particular against violence in games, but if you're going to try to make a thoughtful critique, you can't just throw it in a couple of times throughout a standard, mindless, action game. Every single thing they present in this game as something unique and in-depth is only really implied to be, when the execution is almost invariably shallow, standard, "gamey" s***. They make a point of patting the player on the head for every minor accomplishment and then at the end, they expect you to feel bad for enjoying it. And this happens in the story, the mechanics, and the level design. On the plus side, the VA for Vaas, however poorly implemented the character may have been in the overall story arc, was excellent and certainly a highlight in the course of the game.
Finally, there is the overworld map: a hyperactive mess, stuffed to the brim with loot chests that add literally nothing of worth to the game except to create middle point between the player and spendable currency, a few boring and repetitive side activities that cover the map in nearly endless repetition, some relics to collect for no apparent reason, and the most stripped down, pitiful "quests" I have ever seen. It comes off as an attempt to meld the overused formula from Rockstar that was innovative over ten years ago, with a much, much less interesting version of Bethesda's formula (complete with some of the saddest dungeon design I have ever seen). Like most open world games, it makes a point of emphasizing all that you can do, but aside from the base capturing, which empties the map of enemies because they ran in the opposite direction of each and every complaint ever leveled at the previous title, it's mostly filler put in place so that players don't get bored during their 30 second drive from the excessive number of fast travel points to their objective. Unlike a game like Deus Ex (1 and 3), the content they packed into this world has no context and contributes nothing to the interest of the world itself, but serves simply to fill this big sandbox with cheap toys. It retains many of the dynamic elements of the previous game's combat encounters, but provides only 1 (well, 34) place(s) where the player can actually utilize it, as the story missions are linear to the point that you can get mission failure for something as simple as diving into the water instead of going through their poor excuse for a stealth level. And, as we all know, the key to stealth is magical distraction rocks! The only real variety that is added in the course of the game are your usual "heavies" that do too much damage and make no sense. A 50 caliber round is the only thing that can get through that mask? No, that would remove their head and a good piece of their upper body with it, but I suppose that makes sense given the brick wall that is the edge of weapon range in this game. These elements are decent fun for a while, but get tired and repetitive far before the game reaches its conclusion.
Far Cry 3 is by no means a bad game as it stands, but it accomplishes so much less than it could have or has gotten credit for. It is graphically appealing (though, I didn't bother to get it on PC), the controls are generally responsive, the level design is generally pretty good, the weapons generally felt good and effective, enemies were not bullet sponges, and they paid some good attention to make traversal in vehicles and on foot pretty enjoyable. I mostly enjoyed playing through this game once, but it is not a unique experience, aside from the dynamic wildlife that seems to have been arbitrarily selected from several entirely different places in the world. It is not generation defining. It did not do anything new. It is a game that provides simple, stupid fun on a surface level and entirely falls short of its potential for thought-provoking dynamic experience that doesn't pander to the player on a near constant basis. When games like Dishonored and XCOM have presented hardcore, intelligent game design that remains accessible to wide audiences as well, it's hard for me to hold this game up as anything more than a decently fun, derivative sandbox title and a disappointing sequel to Far Cry 2. This is a prime example of why the medium needs to evolve past its open world roots in Rockstar. | video-games_xbox |
Oh so refreshing. The single player is great, you won't be disappointed! Graphics are awesome, and the backdrops are very nice eye candy. You can switch out your guns for different ones of your choosing when you come across certain "special crates" scattered around any given level, which is nice because that means you can switch up your play style when YOU want too. The single player campaign is short and sweet (prob 8-10 hours play time), the story doesn't grab you like MW2's, but enjoyable none-the-less. Assuming that the bulk of people buying this game are doing so for the multiplayer, i'll move on to that and devote the rest of my review to it.
I downloaded the demo for this game a little while ago and hated it. The controls were completely different then MW2 - i especially dislike that they use the right movement stick for ducking. Can't tell you how many times i try to shoot a guy and ended up ducking and shooting at the same time. So i put it away and went back to MW2, as i was playing i realized that - "i hate this game", i'm at the 4th prestige and have over saturated myself with it. I cant stand the quick kill quick death formula anymore, the horrible spawn system, the team selection system, and especially the lack of team work i constantly come across. There is also the infamous "MW2 law", similar to "Murphy's Law", where anything can go wrong in a match and when it does, it always seems to happen to YOU. Ofcourse MW2 is a great game and a worthy purchase, but i personally have had my fill.
That being said, it was unfair to judge BFBC2 so quickly when i had put such an insane amount hours into MW2. So i picked it up again and gave it another shot...i was hooked! I was playing as a medic and realized that i actually wasn't focused on killing people, i was running around reviving my teammates and dropping health packs to keep them going, ofcourse i took out a few stray enemies here and there. "Wow, this is different" i thought, and when i realized how many points i was racking up i liked it even more. I"m actually HELPING my team and getting a ton of points for it. That brings me to the most important aspect of the multiplayer, you are actually encouraged to work as a team, which is a nice change of pace compared to MW2. I get just the same amount of points for shooting someone as i get for reviving them. It works beautifully.
There is a leveling up system which is similar to MW2, nothing as developed though, but there is enough there to keep you coming back for more and you do unlock different sights, guns, gadgets etc... Some are just for the particular class you use i.e - medic unlocks larger health packs, but others are more general and can be used for any class, i.e - heavy vehicle perks.
The first BFBC had 2 deal breakers for me. One was their crazy health system where you jam a needle into your stomach when your health got low, which ofcourse is something you would have to do 50 times a match. The other was the lack of any kind of kill cam! It's no fun being sniped over and over again and having no idea where the sniper is when you respawn. THANKFULLY, both of those deal breakers have been removed. Your health regenerates (no needle to the stomach required) and there is a kill cam, you don't actually see the enemy kill you like in MW2, but you follow them around until you respawn so you know where they are and can carry out the proper justice.
Also, locating enemies is somewhat unique to this game, when you see an enemy, you have to press the back button on your controller and then a red insignia appears over their head and they show up on your entire teams map for a brief amount of time. I can't express how gratifying it was to spot 3 snipers on a hill, press the back button, and watch them get lit up by my team - rockets, bullets, you name it, it went their way. Also, you get assit kill points for things like that, again, encouraging team work.
BFBC2 is a great game, very different then MW2 but in a good way. If you need a break from MW2, give it a try, you won't be disappointed. Again, one of the most impressive things about the multiplayer is how it rewards you for team work and incourages it. If actually playing a first person shooter AS a team, not just "lone wolfin it" while you're IN a team, sounds good to you, pick this game up, you won't be dissapointed.
I gave this game 4 out of 5 stars because it's not perfect. What game is? I have experienced some issues actually getting into a multiplayer match (can't find a match, busy, error, whatever,it means that their servers are full and they can't handle it, and several matchs have ended abruptly due to server issues. But once you actually get into a match, it's a ton of fun.
FYI: Snipers, snipers, snipers! What is the deal, everyone and their Mom wants to be a sniper. It seems that atleast a third to half of the players in the game are snipers. Not sure why, they always have the least amount of points and seem to stay in one spot most of the game.......i digress. Switch it up!
***UPDATE (03/14/10)***
I've been playing this came for quite sometime (all medic, recon, and heavy vehicle upgrades have been unlocked), i must say that it has held up well, although some of its flaws are more noticeable, nothing major per say, but worth mentioning, 1st one being the most important.
1)It's much easier to be a skilled pilot then to be a skilled engineer w/the rocket launcher.
Apache helicopters with missles are extremly unbalanced. What i mean by that is it is far to easy for a skilled pilot to get an insane amount of kills, to the point of feeling unfair because it's so hard to take it down. None of the rocket launchers "LOCK" on, yes you can guide the rocket, but you can't actually "LOCK" on, which is frustrating. When playing 'rush' on the map featured in the demo (the snow map which takes place during the day), there is a powerful Apache on that map, but you're given a good amount of tanks which help with taking it down, so it's not that extreme.
But......
This unbalance issue is taken to a whole new level on the map consisting of the 3 islands (with an autumn backdrop), when you're playing 'rush', the defenders are given an EXTREMLY OVERPOWERED Apache helicopter when/if they reach the 3rd island. I've played 2 games thus far where my team was about to seal the deal and take the 3rd island when the defenders hopped in that freakin apache and annihilated everyone, it got so bad that most of my team dropped out, including myself. No point in playing any longer when you've died 5 times in a row because the apache is hovering over your spawn base firing rockets at you as you spawn in. I equipped the engineer class and so did half my team and we were shooting rocket after rocket trying to take it down, nothing was working. By my 5th death in a row, of not be alive more then 30 secs, i dropped out.
The first time it happend, it was extremly frustrating because my team was actually good, everyone was playing their role well, that's why it seemed extremely unfair.
The second time, i knew the drill at this point and gave it 5min, if it wasn't taken down in that amount of time, we dropped out. At that point, it just becomes a waste of time.
This is by far the biggest flaw i've found in the game. Basically, you've invested 20-30min to get that far in a match, then putting all player skills to the side, it boils down to who can get to the Apache first. They need to either lower the health of that particular Apache or make the rocked launcher system easier to use against it, ie-better guidance, tracking, more powerful, something! It just seems incredibility unbalanced.
2)Spawning is a lot better then MW2, but could use a bit of work.
I was playing a 'rush' match and my team was defending and we were actually able to jump the spawn base of the attackers and smother them the entire match, they didn't get to set one 'com station' off, seemed unfair for the other team, we shouldn't have been able to do that.
Also, i've spawned into mortar strikes twice (spawning on a teammate), that was purely bad luck on my part though, nothing against the game.
3)Match making protocol can use some work.
I've found it useful to hit/hold the 'back button' when i first get into a match because some of the time i find that i'm put on a team that only has, let's say 7 people, compared to the other team which as 12. Or i'm put on a team where the top player has 500 pts and the other teams top player has 1600 points, usually a good measure of how "good" your team is going to be.
Again, my rating still stands, it's a great game and a ton of fun, just be aware of the 3 island map playing rush, try to get to that Apache first, if not, be ready for game over. | video-games_xbox |
Very impressed with the Xbox One. My first impression of the Xbox one:
The good:
-The controller at first glance has not changed a whole lot. But upon picking it up and holding you notice the change immediately. The thing feels better to hold, more lean and just a sleek design. The home button has changed, the start and select button have changed. The other really big change is in the LT/RT. They vibrate now and have such a fluid motion when you use them. I really love the new controller.
-The entire headset got a makeover and it is for the better. It features swiveling mic and a flat cord to prevent entanglement. The biggest innovation is the new volume control and the plug that fits into the controller. No long will you ever rip your controller from your headset it is kind of locked into place but a little clip that you just undo with a downward motion of your finger. It also features a light that lets you know your headset is muted and buttons to change the volume.
-Kinect: it seems like most hate it or love it. I am in the middle i love that i can tell it to turn the xbox on/off and you can swipe to different apps and you can even close apps. Skype works great with it and is really easy to use the kinect with it. Future talk of implementing facial expressions to change the experience of your game intrigues me and i am eager to see what happens with the connect.
-The general impression of the console i got, first i will start with how it looks and then performance. The thing is pretty heavy and pretty big for a console. It feels solid and operates very quietly unless you try to listen to it in a quiet room your will not hear it.
The bad:
-The system required and update upon setup and here is where i got frustrated. Any apps such as skype and even the blu-ray player had to be installed. Not to say i could not wait but i think those should have come pre installed. Another issue i have is that the xbox one says it is 500GB i look at available space and it says 380ish.
-i also tried plugging my external hard drive into my system and i could not find the "app" to play anything from it. This left me scrolling through menu after menu trying to find it to no avail.
-the kinect while i like most of the feature the voice commands are very clumsy, many times it takes me to place i did not tell it to and the motion is not that accurate maybe i need to recalibrate.
-the headset even though i like the changes the padding is thin and yes i realize it is a cheap headset but more padding please?
-the power brick although it is not really bigger than the xbox 360 but i don't agree with the next gen console to even have one not quite sure it just doesnt seem like such an upgrade from last gen.
Overall i love the console and the fact it came with and extra HDMI cable. I do recommend the console to those new to gaming and want an all around great console that does many things. The xbox one is far more than just a gaming console, it is the complete package for those who are looking to make this the center piece in their home. I did not touch on the use of the the integration of the tv because i have not used it. | video-games_xbox |
three key innovations in gaming. L.A. NOIRE starts with the technological and graphic achievements of red dead redemption and the GTA franchise, and aims to add three new elements -- rotoscoped actors, memory puzzles and seamless graphical flow. these elements are not equally successful, but in combination they create a genuinely distinctive game experience.
in the past i've complained about the waxy, cadaverous presence of computer animated facial graphics and the silly way computer mouths flap along with recorded voices. in LAN we finally get realistic faces with realistic expressions and skin tones -- because these are rotoscoped actors blended into animated bodies. although this can produce a jarring "tin man" effect when the flexible face appears mounted on a computer animated body with boxy movements and cylindrical arms, the rotoscoping of the whole actor is always convincing and welcome. LAN often equals the visual standard of modern cinema, which for many years has combined live actors with digitally rendered environments.
the reason for rotoscoping the actors' facial expressions is that LAN revolves around "social intelligence" puzzles. there are a few maze puzzles, where you have to remember where you are, and there is the maze of los angeles streets that the player must navigate to get from one location to another (first consulting the game map makes this much easier). but the core of the game is in the investigative interviews, which first require the player to read facial cues that indicate truthfulness or lying, then place these facial cues in an understanding of the physical clues and testimony that indicate context and facts. even liars occasionally tell the truth; but the choice between doubting an answer and challenging it as a lie is often subtle, and requires the player to remember which specific piece of evidence proves that a response is false. (gameplay rewards "intuition points", which you can use to find obscure clues or simplify choices in an interview.) across all investigations i only got about 60% of the responses correct -- however i didn't usually consult the investigative notebook, which includes a list and description of all clues, or the transcript, which provides a verbatim record of everything said by every character. (you can also replay all completed cases, to improve your score in the episode, recorded as a 1 to 5 star rating; or you can "free roam" the city looking for random crimes to put down.)
the sense of involvement created by the "social" interactions is enhanced by the careful way that cut scenes are merged with controlled display action. this seems well managed in the early investigative episodes, less so in the later episodes. when it works, the player has the uncanny experience of actually participating in the action rather than suffering an interruption, and this was to me the most interesting and compelling detail of the game play. unfortunately, many cut scenes don't put your car where you parked it by including the car in the cut scene -- a silly and easily avoided mistake.
all that said, LAN is visually uneven: some of the crime episodes rise to the level of art in their use of light and color and in the sophisticated way rotoscoped actors are merged with computer environments; other episodes are so crudely programmed and rendered that actors appear to be heads stuck onto robotic mannikins and the lighting and color is straight out of a laura croft episode. across long stretches, the game is visually compelling: the "black dahlia" homicide investigations culminate in a dark and rainy environment that beautifully captures the mood of the investigator and his grim task. but in all episodes, the way player controlled figures will "moonwalk" when they run into an obstacle, and cannot jump or step over small objects, is consistently annoying. where is the physics engine innovation in rockstar videogames?
the usual thumb twitch challenges of combat action games are minimized in LAN: running your car at full speed causes traffic magically to make way at intersections (and earns you a "leadfoot" achievement), while driving slowly almost always puts you in a traffic jam; the auto aim always nails the villain, but manual aim is difficult; foot chases are not difficult at all, and most driving chases only require you to pursue from a distance until the culprit crashes his car. the aural environment combines superb sound effects with musical cues. all crime scenes are enveloped in a continuous theme music, which stops playing if you leave the area where all clues are located; when all clues are found the theme music stops with a distinctive rising melody; your responses at interview decisions are keyed as correct or incorrect by contrasting musical signatures; the music evolves from haunting and atmospheric music in early scenes of an episode to more energetic and rhythmic music as the episode reaches its climax. the game played without obvious glitches (the QA seems thorough and accurate), and the script (the human problem in modern media) is very well done. both the episodes and the unifying backstory are intriguing.
moonwalking figures aside, the main feature in which LAN appears pathetically behind the times is that it places the credits for the live action actors -- the talent that creates the facial expressions and voice acting on which all the narrative cut scenes and gameplay investigative interviews depend -- below the credits for the texture mappers, QA drones, caterers and public relations flacks. this is merely stupid, and indicates that rockstar graphical innovation only occurs within a conservative media corporate culture. | video-games_xbox |
Steps backward counter the meager improvements. I'm a pretty dedicated franchise mode player, so I'll just list what's changed in 08 for better and for worse for somebody like me.
Improvements:
1. Gameplay - Tackling, running, and receiving are improved. Playcalling has changed, allowing for play selection by formation, by type of play, by recently called, or by asking Madden. This throws you off at first, but you grow to accept it.
2. Style - The menus and backgrounds are sleeker, but definitely not easier to use.
3. Features - Weapons system differentiates great players by individual strengths, even allowing some defenders to read plays. More skill ratings this year are nice (all the old ones plus, for example, elusiveness, catch-in-traffic, stiff arm, route running, pursuit, etc.)
Steps backward:
1. Menus - I liked the old menu options and features. One small annoyance you find in the 2k series that has made its way into Madden this year is that when trying to make trades, once you select the players, if the trade doesn't work out and you back out to try to set up a trade with the next team, the menu defaults back to the Bears (1st alphabetical team). This is a small thing, but really obnoxious when you have to try to remember who the last team you tried was, then scroll all the way up to the next one. Also, the in-game audio and visual options are gone, so no turning on the blue line of scrimmage (you miss it more than you'd think), and no camera options. Normally the default cam is fine, but in 08 I can never see my wide receivers (even with my widescreen TV), so it would have been nice to be able to move the camera back to a wider view. AI sliders aren't available from your franchise mode menu, but I finally found them buried in the main menu, and, strangely, in the in-game pause menu.
2. Gameplay - Too many fumbles and interceptions, as everyone is saying. Now that I found the AI sliders, I turned down INTs and CPU defensive awareness (no fumbling/ball carrying slider), but I still have, in week 15, 27 INTs versus 23 TDs. Next most INTs in the league: Chris Simms with 13. Passing is a joke, for several resons. First, speed ratings seem to have almost no effect, at least for receivers, because I can't get mine to outrun ANYBODY on deep routes. I mean, they're practically JOGGING the routes. Second, as in previous Maddens, it's hard to put any touch on the ball when passing, especially short and medium passes; it's either a bullet or a rainbow. This makes it hard, for example, to get the ball to a tight end about 15 yards downfield over the heads of the linebackers, who can pick it off in mid-flight even if they're nowhere near as deep as the TE. Third, defenders still fight a lot harder to get to passes than your receivers do, since they seem to be the only ones actually paying attention to the pass. Fourth, it's hard to get the QB to do route-based passing. He throws based on what the receiver is doing at the moment instead of based on what the route dictates. Even with "precision passing" (haha), you can rarely get the QB to get the ball out in front of the receivers so they can catch in stride. Especially on long passes, the ball is often thrown at the receiver's hip. It's too easy for defenders who are behind your guys to knock down or pick off passes that should have been out of reach. In-game offensive line play sucks. In 07, linemen with decent strength would end up with like 13 pancakes a game, but now I'm lucky if more than one of my O-linemen get any pancakes. My best lineman has 4 pancakes on the season; most of the rest of the league's starters have between 40 and 80. Remember, this is week 15.
3. Experience - The retarded newspaper and email updates from 07 should have been vastly improved, not abandoned. It would have been satisfying to read about your overachieving franchise in the papers, or to get realistic emails from the coach and players reacting to last week's game. Same goes for the scouting report on the next opponent -- should have been improved instead of cut out. Michaels and Madden no longer announce the game, just a boring radio play-by-play guy. No color commentary = less immersive feel. Player ratings no longer improve during the season and only change very little in the off-season, and there's no more training camp to do it manually. So how do your young players get better? I haven't been able to figure that one out yet.
I'm mostly disappointed (I want to change my star rating to 2 and the fun rating to 1). If EA could have kept some of the features of previous versions with this one's improvements, and fixed the passing, 08 might have been great. Instead, EA continues to show an uncanny ability to tweak their game toward merely different instead of tweaking it closer to perfection. | video-games_xbox |
Perfect for me but on the short side all the same. Brutal Legend is a great game. So great in fact it's only down fall is it concludes very fast. The saying goes "Time flies when you're having fun" and no quote could be more genuine when summing up Brutal Legend.
To be honest I was excited about this game until I found out that in addition to the action oriented hack n slash game play it was also a real time strategy game. RTS has never been a genre that appealed to me. I'm more about being a loner or in a small group as opposed to dictating the actions of up to 50 or so troops with different strengths and weaknesses. Yet somehow Double Fine had me addicted to the RTS "battle of the bands" set up as well as the driving escort missions, gunning death rack tower segments, and even helping my head banger bros score beer and babes. Getting a gamer to be captivated by genres he normally dislikes is no easy feat. As a matter fact to date I'd say Brutal legend is the only title that had me enjoy types of game play I'd normally be insanely frustrated by.
While Brutal Legend is influenced by Heavy Metal I don't necessarily think you have to love that genre of music to be enthralled by what is offered. It tells a decent fantasy tale with its' own unique mythology. Despite the fact Brutal Legend throws Grand theft auto, God of war, Zelda Ocarina of time, and Over lord into a blender it retains being original and non confusing.
Starting off Eddie Riggs is a likable hero. When I saw the first Brutal Legend trailer I thought maybe Eddie would end up being like Kratos aka a dumb enraged testosterone jock covered in leather and spikes. Instead Eddie cares about others, refuses to be a glory hog, and is more akin to that lovable best friend you knew in high school whom despite looking "scary" was very charismatic, generous, and optimistic.
However Eddie does not start out our tale as a happy camper. Pretty much the game drops us into a scene where Eddie's talents as a roadie are being exploited by a tween pop band trying to pass themselves off as the new equivalent of heavy metal. Eddie's awesome stage is referred to as "ironic in a retro sort of way" and one of the rockers gleefully enjoys breaking guitars just so Eddie has to fix them. In a humorous kind of way the scene reminded me of Cinderella only Eddie is a guy and instead of having 3 wicked step sisters he has to contend with three jerk wad step brothers. Most of us would understand if Eddie cussed out the manager and quit on the spot but instead he selflessly saves one of the band members from plummeting to his death. Eddie's heroism is ironically rewarded by having a stage prop fall atop his burly frame. Riggs' martyred blood mingles with his magic belt buckle summoning an angry yet noble monster of yore. With a mighty roar Omigodan the fire beast slays the blasphemers stopping their terrible music than it whisks Eddie away to an enchanted dark fantasy world influenced by the awesomeness that is "True Metal".
Yes, I realize this sounds cheesy. We can draw parallels to it being similar to Wizard of Oz or Alice in Wonder Land. However the rock n roll death metal studded presentation of the tired "Stranger in a strange land" plot device works perfectly.
Upon arriving in an alternative lifestyles version Never Ever Land Eddie slays a bunch of blood thirsty occultists with an axe he finds then meets a sweet yet fierce young woman named Ophelia. She tells Eddie the robed weirdos he decapitated are the servants of the demon emperor Deviculous and that there is a human resistance trying to over throw their evil master. Equipped with his battle axe and electric guitar that can raise relics of ancient power or melt faces Eddie constructs a hot-rod on the spot, riding off into the sun set with the mysterious yet hot Goth girl to save mankind.
You will proceed to interact with the lovable yet eccentric guardian of Metal Ozzy Osbourne, Lemmy the hellacious biker healer, Lita the spirited Amazon, and Lars the golden haired hero who fast becomes your new best friend. If these famous real life cameos were just thrown in to sell a bad product I would have felt cheated. As it stands they are woven in seamlessly with the world they are apart of. Every person in the game has good motivations for being the way they are and they seem more concerned with contributing to a good yarn than with out-staging each other.
Brutal Legend has a sand box world. In truth you can blow through the story line as fast as a guitarist riding the lightning but if you go that route you are going to miss out on a lot of land marks, extra missions, hidden music tracks to play while driving around in your Druid Plow, world folklore, and secret guitar riffs which grant Eddie arcane war-spell techniques whilst battling making victories come much easier. Unearthing these mementos of the forgotten age likewise increases "fire tributes" which you use to upgrade your hot rod and fighting combos within Ozzy's motor lodges.
The thing I really hope developers learn from Brutal Legend is its' perfect balance of campy humor and emotionally driven sincerity. While it can be stated Tim Schaefer's newest offering doesn't take itself too seriously it also doesn't undermine itself with an over abundance of bad ham and moldy cheese. Jack Black whom voiced Eddie walks the delicate line between satire and tragedy with perfect harmony. I honestly have more respect for him now. I'm hoping future movie producers see Jack's true potential and stop giving him roles that undermine his hidden talent.
By this point I've explained enough. I cannot say anymore without edging dangerously close to spoiler territory. This game is one that has to be experienced instead of merely read about. Words alone fail to express the creativity, awe, and mirth packed into this sour yet sweet nostalgic road trip through Heavy Metal heaven!
Pros
+Breath taking twisted yet beautiful world to traverse.
+ Good blend of RTS, driving, exploration, fun mini games, and visceral combat.
+ Acting and sound track are the best in the business.
+ A tale that is not too grim yet not ridiculously silly either.
+ Fun multi-player RTS battles over Xbox live
+ The enemy types are scary yet outrageously hilarious at the same time. Every creature encountered is some sort of parody or tribute to the various kinds of heavy metal music.
Cons
-Game is a bit short but to its' credit the ending brought a smile to my face. (Unlike Fable 2. Cough.)
-The upcoming down-loadable content is "meh" if you are more intrigued by the single player story line than you are the RTS aspects.
-Tim Schafer is not renowned for making sequels. For those like myself who want a sequel we may have to bite off a bit of bad tasting disappointment.
-Side missions get repetitive and there are only around 4 types of them. For what its' worth these mini quests extend the game and they're fun for what they are.
-Though I took to the mish mash of game styles some may be more puzzled than pleasantly surprised by BL's patchwork Frankenstein of genres. | video-games_xbox |
Virtually the ONLY way to obtain a brand-new, beautiful WHITE "Xbox 360 Slim. I've owned this special-edition WHITE "Slim" 360 console for months now, and it continues to function flawlessly. Buying the "Skylanders" edition was essentially the only way that I was able to get a WHITE 'Xbox-360-Slim' console (at an affordable price) to harmonize with my adjacent game-room gear. [Note that (other than its WHITE cabinet and controller) this console is identical to the ubiquitous BLACK Slim 360 console.]
Note: The included "4gb" isn't actually a hard drive; it's "onboard" memory. In order to augment that built-in, woefully limited memory capacity, you'll soon need to do one (or both) of the following two things [assuming you want to "install" more than a tiny handful of your disc-based games (so as to minimize continual accessing--i.e., "wear and tear" of--the optical-disc drive and thereby minimize heat while maximizing your console's lifespan)]: Buy and (easily) install an official Microsoft hard drive (either their 250gb model or, better still, their ultimate 320gb model); and/or buy one or more 32gb flashdrives (temporarily attachable--up to two at a time--to a couple of the console's several USB ports). The "hard drive" approach is preferable to the "flashdrive" approach, but either approach (or both approaches simultaneously) will suffice. [Note, however, that if you also want to play compatible "original-Xbox" (not just "Xbox-360") game discs, you'll absolutely need to have a hard drive (not just a flashdrive) installed.]
If you're going to operate your console in an upright position in rooms warmer than about 79 degrees Fahrenheit; and if you prudently want to maximize your console's lifespan by minimizing its interior heat, consider placing the console upon a (third-party) "cooling stand" of some sort. [I myself use a "PEGA" (logo) stand of the type that incorporates "ducts" (air channels) that (purely passively) conduct cooling air (from underneath the upright console's base) into the console's interior, wherefrom that air will be subsequently, continuously emitted via the console's pertinent "exhaust" fan/vent. If your room's unusually warm, you can augment that "passive" stand's cooling by temporarily pointing a tiny "desktop-size" electric fan at the stand's pertinent air-intake aperture. (Of course, do also keep your game-room floor as dust-free as possible.)]
Note: It was easy to sell (auction) the bundled (unwanted, childish) "Skylanders" thingie (thereby netting around 20 bucks).
I also bought (and stored) a couple of additional specimens of this product to serve as "backups" in case my first unit "dies" before I myself do (I intend to continue relishing my library of original-Xbox and Xbox-360 games for MANY years to come)! | video-games_xbox |
Skip it. First off, I want to point out that this review is for the actual controller shell and not the seller. The seller was polite, courteous and shipped my item relatively quickly, even including an extra set of black ABXY buttons.
However, I cannot speak so fondly of the product itself. Poor craftsmanship definitely went into the making of this product. It arrived with scratches and minor abrasions on it. However, for the price I paid for it, I was willing to oversee that.
Upon disassembling an original XBOX 360 controller and moving everything over to this shell, I noticed the casing was significantly weaker. Again, noting the bargain proce I got on it, I continued.
Upon finally assembling the new, sleek looking controller, I noticed that although it instantly synced with my XBOX, the sync button became stuck due to poor molding of the shell. The only way I was able to fix this was to actually open the shell again and push it back up from the inside with a screwdriver. Hopefully I will not need to sync again as I will have to repeat that process. And although it is only a several minute process, I do not feel that I should have to do that.
I then put a video on my XBOX to test out the other buttons. All of them worked fine (although they do rattle around more than any of my other controllers), except for Right Trigger (RT). This button is completely non-functional, which is a bummer, because it is essential to me, as I play alot of shooters.
In conclusion, I was real excited to finally have a gold controller. Sadly, this product failed to impress me and will surely be put to the side to collect dust, and maybe to control the occasional movie (although I do have 3 other Microsoft branded controllers and a Kinect).
Long story short, you get what you pay for and I should have expected that when purchasing this. When a deal seems to good to be true, it usually is.
Thank you seller, I give you an A for effort and once again stress the fact that my disappointment lies in the product itself and not the seller. I feel that I am being overly generous giving it 2 stars and the only reason for that extra star is it's sleek look and the good customer service I got from the seller. That and I can't give it no stars. | video-games_xbox |
Pure Gamer Not Disappointed. I have both the xbox 360 and ps3. So this made a tough decision for me on which next console to buy as of now. I chose the Xbox One because for me it felt to be the smarter buy.
Pros:
-Great graphics, don't let the slightly better PS4 hardware make your decision, The Xbox One has great graphics that is far better than any last gen console. If you want the best graphics then go PC.
- The OS is not perfect but I like their idea that makes it attractive and less bloated than the Xbox 360 dashboard.
- When it was announced that Kinect would be included and not optional, I was quite irritated but It has come to be quite the futuristic device that shows of Next-Gen type opportunities. Voice commands are not perfect but will only get better as you learn how to use it properly. Nice to command your T.V. or Apps while eating greasy pizza!
- Gameplay is amazing, PS4 says it is the console dedicated to gamers but why are the games on Xbox One such more of big blockbusters (Ryse, DR3, TitanFall, Forza, Halo, ect.) than on PS4? Gaming to me is not about counting pixels but rather the gameplay and enjoyment.
- Controller is basically just a slightly improved xbox 360 control that was already so great. Love the improved D-pad and rotor vibrations.
-Super quiet machine and not the slightest bit of heat, even when running multiple applications and installing games.
Cons:
-Is bigger than PS4 but I do not mind this since of past RROD and this thing has a huge fan so this thing will be able to handle hours on end on even the most demanding video games to come.
- Learning curve to learn the OS but kinect really helps if you learn to use it and it makes for a more in depth experience.
- 3rd party games may be as of now of slightly less quality but in time developers will become more familiar with the system and really show its true potential.
So really what boiled down to my decision was my more favorable experience I had on the xbox 360 and all the sweet exclusives coming out on xbox one. As well as the potential for kinect and the OS to really immerse yourself into games unlike any other experience. However, it is still early and things could change for both consoles. Both are a good next step in technology but this is my thought to those looking to choose only one. I will probably pick up the PS4 a year or two from now because I am a gamer and this are both gaming consoles that have great games. My games I have played so far are BF4, Ryse, AC4, FIFA 14, DR3 and enjoy them all. | video-games_xbox |
Not an open-world game, but chillingly great. From the description on Amazon, I expected that I'd be getting an open-world mystery game. I didn't get anything like that, but I still enjoyed what I got.
I've just finished Episode 4 out of 6, which is everything that comes on the disc. This is what I saw:
Story
-----
Through prophecy and witnessing strange events, Alan Wake must unravel the mystery of what is killing people, turning them into darkness-filled ghasts of the night and, most importantly, where is his wife?
You'll settle on some answers, only to have a plot twist throw things off. It's quite fun to see the story alter and change. It's very well written.
What you Do in the Game
-----------------------
Although the story is niffty, you don't really do anything to move it along. You listen to dialog and read pages of manuscripts. This is not like Dragon Age where you can change the story by your actions. But that's not bad because the story is so well done and the animations you'll see and the voice-acting you'll hear are all quite captivating.
What you will do is run around pre-defined paths with a very occasional split or side-path. Down these paths will be occasional check-points of light. Between the lights are creepy shades of people wielding axes and knives who will say spooky things with spooky voices as they try to kill you.
It would be lame if it wasn't so scary. But you'll get at least a few jumps or chills if you aren't completely numb to such thrills.
In almost every situation, you don't need to kill a bunch of guys and then move on. You've got to keep killing to get to the next safe zone of light. The baddies just keep on coming. And your ammo is severely limited, as are your batteries in your flashlight.
The pace of game-cinematic-game-cinematic is refreshing. The story moves and gives you new challenges while keeping things intense. And you'll actually physically feel relieved each time the sun comes up.
The Bells and Whistles
----------------------
Sound, music, graphics, user interface, load times and every other thing that should immerse you into a game works perfectly in Alan Wake.
The makers of this game have used music and sound to really freak you out. Certain sound cues will alert you to the baddies sometimes. But later, they might just throw a sound cue at you but there's nothing there. Once you breathe a sigh of relief, a black mass wielding an axe jumps out from behind a barn screaming words of caution one might read attached to a lawnmower, like "Keep your hands away from the blade!"
Overall, the game employs enough sound/music/graphics to treat to you an excellent story which, in turn, opens the game up to some incredible gameplay moments.
If you haven't played this yet, I would definitely put it on your list. | video-games_xbox |
A definite classic for every gaming meatbag out there. If you're anything like me, you squirmed in your seat and grumbled aloud as Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman affected onscreen romance during the last cloned movie. Maybe you muttered oaths about George Lucas and reached into your box of beloved jujyfruits for solace--only to find that greens were all you had left. Like me, you'd been duped into giving up your cash for something just because they slapped the Star Wars tag on it. You weak-minded fool.
But a la Han Solo in the first Death Star assault, Knights of the Old Republic has emerged to give us...a new hope. Actually, to say the game came out of nowhere is a definite exaggeration; Bioware has long been known for making outstanding and deep role-playing games, but they have outdone themselves with this first console effort. The first element that separates this game from not only other RPGs but Bioware's previous efforts is that every line of well-crafted dialogue is spoken, and voiced by outstanding actors. Interaction with the many characters who join your party is important and every party member has an interesting back-story that you can draw out of them as the game progresses. Your party members also interact with each other in interesting and somewhat unpredictable ways. In addition, some of the back stories of party characters involve quests and intersect with the game's main quest.
The RPG elements are incredibly deep and balanced. You can customize your character in nearly every conceivable way and develop him/her as you see fit. The feats development tree was one of my favorite elements. Also, you almost always have a number of choices as to how you want to handle a potential quest. You can be the darthest of the darth or Gandhi in a Jedi robe or walk a path somewhere in between. These choices have an impact on experience, money, items and can open or close other quest branches and affect the way people in the world interact with you. For example if you win a swoop bike tournament, everyone in the respective city will be buzzing about it. I am anxious to see how things are different if I play the game as an evil dark lord pawn instead of as a morally ambivalent Jedi.
The combat is also fantastic and stays fresh and involves the perfect level of difficulty. As with the other great Bioware RPGs, there is an important tactical element to the combat. If you simply let your characters rush into battle without guidance, they will not survive the difficult encounters. While combat is turn-based and can be frozen at any moment to allow you time to give numerous commands to your party members, the actions are carried out in the most convincing real-time execution I've ever seen.
While I've only had an XBOX for a couple of months, I found the graphics to be outstanding. Every world felt unique and had terrific detail, including ambient audio and visual effects like water lapping the shore, trees swaying in the breeze, wandering around, etc. The character models looked terrific (I found Bastila to be particularly...ahem, saucy) and the light saber and blaster fire seemed straight out of the movies.
There have been a few minor gripes made about the game, only one of which I found to be legitimate. The first gripe is that the frame rate takes a nose dive in hectic battles and other random sequences. I never noticed this--or perhaps I was so possessed by the force that everything seemed to move in slow motion for me--so I didn't notice. Another gripe has been that the Jedi characters are far too powerful for non-Jedi. I didn't find this to be the case except possibly at the very end of the game when high-level Jedis have so many powers its tough to keep them out of your party. The one legitimate gripe is that you cannot equip characters while on your ship. This is an annoyance since it's your starting point for every new world you explore.
These smallest of flaws do not affect your overall enjoyment of the game. It is a rewarding, balanced and well-crafted game the folks at Bioware have put together and it would be a shame if any XBOX owner missed it. Go on and buy it, meatbags. | video-games_xbox |
One of the best zumba games. One of the best zumba games. Together with core it's perfect. The 4 stars doesn't do the justice. FYI I have dancing background. If you say it's too difficult, then perhaps you should repeat it until you get it. The point is for you to learn the "difficult" steps. Maybe your body is not used to the rhythm and different cultural movements. Some say they're not new to zumba but can't learn it cos it's too difficult. Well perhaps your instructor was not a good dancer. The bad thing about zumba license is that it's available to anyone who pays and there's no filter to it. I wish it's not like that but the reality is it's a big franchise that only cares about money. I wish that real-life instructors are more qualified, that they actually can dance and know muscle workout safety. Out of 20 different instructors that I've tried, I could only stick to 2. Both of them are more towards the younger demographic cos their choreography are similar or same to the zin choreo + fitness movements on top of that, thus making it "too difficult" and I've seen many failed in the middle of the class and walked off. What I'm trying to say is, this game is not for beginners. It's mostly for dancers who are gonna learn movements the more challenged they are. I can't comment much on the gameplay cos my kinect always fail to detect my movements well in my small apartment no matter what kinect game I play. It detects my movements occasionally though. And those who said you don't sweat much, perhaps you don't put enough energy into it. Even though the songs are short, the high intensity songs are very jumpy so you can sweat significantly. I've seen many who don't give that extra little bump when instructors do so. Wanna burn more calories? Do the little bumps. Move your hips more. Arch your back more. Mean your shimmy. I love almost all the songs and the different cultural styles this game offers. It's challenging in a good way. My biggest critique to this game would be where are other Asian songs?? Asia is the biggest continent in the world with 60% population and yet only India is presented. Tschk.. I'd love to see more Kpop and Jpop. Perhaps kungfu and karate fusion too. But I understand you can't make everyone happy with only so much GB on the disc.. Seriously though, please consider those instead of unlocking "videos" that few people would actually watch. | video-games_xbox |
Two steps forwards and one step back. This game is an improvement over the original Rocksmith. The speed at which you can move in between menus and get to where you want to go is much improved. With the right setup, you will not notice any audio lag. This version of Rocksmith is much better focused in helping you practice and learn certain skill sets. The video lessons are much improved with a greater attention to detail and just the sheer quantity of lessons. The mini games are much more fun and varied. There is also a greater focus on learning your favorite songs which is great for a person like myself who just wants to play songs I like. The variety of guitar tunings now available and just the different techniques now recognized and the accuracy of the game (you now really have to mute strings on chords where a string is not supposed to be played).
However, there are some criticisms I have of the game and is the reason why I knocked it down 1 star. I really wanted to knock it down to 3 1/2 stars, but you can't do that and 3 stars was just not enough credit for the improvements. My first criticism is the track list is just not very good compared to the original Rocksmith. There's a lot of Indie songs on here from bands I have never heard of and songs that just don't appeal to me. There are some gems hidden in here like La Sera "Love that's gone" but there's also a lot of misses. The good news is that you can import most of the original songs, but there' s a $10 fee to do that. That would be fine with me, except 5 songs aren't imported (Including 3 of my favorite: Cream, Sunshine of your Love, Seth Chapla Jules and Star-spangled banner).
The other very questionable decision by Ubisoft is that they made you pick whether you want to play lead or rhythm. Then you have to hit select to interchange between the two. If you choose lead, you'll only see lead parts and can't play rhythm unless you hit select and then manually select rhythm (and then you won't see lead parts). The worse part of all this is that it takes several steps to switch between the two and then when you are looking for a song by play count, it ignores what you did in lead if you are in rhythm and vice-versa. Also, it's not easy to see what alternate arrangements are available and is a pain to check because sometimes there isn't but you can't tell unless you choose to view alternate arrangements.
Also a pet peeve of mine is how there is DLC available for songs on Day 1 of the release of the game. And the DLC happens to be very good songs. In fact, a lot better than 90% of what's on disc. This was a pure money grab.
My last criticism has been mentioned from other reviews, but here it is again. The notes are harder for me to see than on the original Rocksmith. Ubisoft also for some reason puts notes and also semi-invisible notes that make you question what you should be playing. Then it suddenly goes into master mode without much notice. Unfortunately, you won't really have the "lick" memorized and you'll do worse than when you played it before. Now, you can turn off this feature but I'm sticking with it in the hopes that maybe I'll somehow memorize what's supposed to be played. It hasn't really worked so far.
However, it's miles above the competition. We'll see what Band Fuse brings to the table, but right now this is the best of it's kind game. So I think it does deserve 3 1/2 stars to 4 stars even if they took two steps forwards and one step back, they are way ahead of anyone else at the moment. | video-games_xbox |
Don't blink. Don't talk. Don't even whisper. It'll hear you. I try never to rate something 5 stars - it tends to suggest the reviewer was blinded by the product and wrote the review in the honeymoon period. But having played the game through once to the end, I'm totally prepared to give this a 5 star review.
Why?
It's the best Alien game to date. It's better in every way than all it's predecessors because it works. It writes an interim story between the original Alien movie and Aliens, where you get to play Ripley's daughter. It does so in such a way that you do feel like you're playing inside the original movie. A lot of reviews of games tend to fall back on that old chestnut but this time I think it's true to say - this is the closest you could get to being in the universe that Alien created.
The storyline is simple enough - travel to an outpost for The Company (Weyland Yutani) to recover the Nostromo flight data recorded. But being set in the Alien universe, you know the story isn't really that simple. There's no point in ruining all the surprises in a review, so you'll have to play it to find all the brilliant set pieces.
Where this game really shines is in the audio design, the graphics design and the AI.
The audio design is hands-down one of the best pieces of videogame work I've ever heard. Truly cinematic, properly engaging, and best listened to on a 5.1 surround system (or more - if you have a full DTS system, go for it!). Because a vast part of the game involves not being found or attacked, there's a lot of sneaking and hiding that goes on, so sound becomes a key component that you'll use to locate other entities in the game. Eventually you'll become completely paranoid about every last creak and groan, and towards the end of the game when the inevitable 5-alarm disaster is unfolding, the audio design will induce a proper state of panic in you.
The graphic design is similarly brilliant, from all the different steam and gas vents, to the lighting, to the level design - you can be forgiven for thinking that the Alien universe is real and that the game designers just went out and digitised all the relevant space ships. The Alien itself is equal parts bloody scary and very impressive. Best not to stand around looking at it though. That always ends badly.
Which brings me on to the AI. A lot of games talk about how fantastic their AI is, how next-gen and cutting-edge it is, and other corporate buzzwords. You can normally fool the AI in most games though - it really isn't that clever. Alien Isolation is different. The Alien does seem to learn. It figures out your tactics - where you like to hide, how you like to move around, how you like to cause distractions. Each time it learns, your game becomes a little bit more difficult. What's really neat is that, if you enable it, the Kinect will listen to your environment and transmit the sound into the game. Novelty? Sure. But if you're properly into the game, you'll get the shock of your life if you sneeze in the real world whilst hiding. I did - I sneezed, or coughed, or somehow made some noise and instantly the Alien spun around and looked right at where I was hiding. If you have your cellphone with you when playing, I suggest silent mode.....
Alien Isolation is best experienced in a dark or light-controlled room, on a big TV or a projector system, with a good 5.1 or greater sound system. That's when it becomes properly immersive, and if you're a fan of the Alien movies, that's when it starts to properly blur the lines between game and movie.
Really - I can't lavish enough praise on this game - I love it. I'm starting to play it again on hard mode once finished with this review. Then there's all the survival sub-games, and the Crew Expendable add-on where you can play as one of the original characters on the Nostromo too. $60 (when new) for a triple-A game is pretty steep nowadays, but this is the first game I've bought in a long time where I thought it was properly worth the money I paid for it.
Full thumbs-up. Just don't cheer to loudly and pray you don't have squeaky floorboards or noisy pets, kids or spouses - they'll all accelerate your demise when playing :) | video-games_xbox |
NEVER BUY A 360 "SIGHT UNSEEN. First off, the XBOX 360 is an amazingly fun system, XBOX Live only adds to it so I would give the console 5 stars easily. My review is basically due to the fact that Amazon is in fact touting this Elite as the "latest version" when, even as others claim, is not the case. The "latest version" as Amazon claims, would then be the "Jasper" chip set. Well, that is what gamers would assume, correct? Most, if not all, of the people reviewing this system isn't for the XBOX 360 Elite system itself, but for the tagline "Newest Version" or "Latest Version". I believe what they are doing isn't intentional, but rather, advertising the system as the latest "bundled" version which it in fact technically is. Hardcore games read it as the latest "chip revision" which would be the Jasper chip set, but Amazon isn't in the market to be able to make these claims, I simply believe they are advertising it as the newest bundle to be released. It is all a simple miscommunication or advertising. What Amazon SHOULD do is title it as "Newest Bundle" or "Latest Bundle" and not use the word "Version".
But simply put, IF you want to save yourself the grief and headaches thinking you may get the latest chip set, simply do not buy an XBOX 360 via mail order. Find out for yourself by going to a retail store and looking through the break away in the back of the box. You may need to slightly jiggle the unit but you want to look under the "UL" logo on the back, for the line of text that starts with "12v". In that sequence of letters/numbers look for the "12,1A" and that will denote that it is the latest chip set "Jasper" (until the next chip set revision is released in either late 2009 or early 2010 code named "Valhalla". The arcade and pro units have this 12,1A already, the Elite systems though appear to be harder to find, however, the Resident Evil 5 Elite bundle recently released, as one poster mentioned, is in fact the first confirmed Elite system with the Jasper chip set. By the time you are reading this though, my guess is the Elite Jasper chip units will be in more supply at local retailers. It is impossible for Amazon or any online retailer to confirm this, as most will have no idea what you are talking about. Simply go to a store and check for yourself, it's the easiest way to determine and takes the guess work out of it for you. | video-games_xbox |
Wow Effect. The teaser for Mass Effect 3 was released by Bioware recently and the gaming community is abuzz with speculation about the style and changes to be brought in the franchise. Not for nothing has the space-opera game franchise captivated the imagination and interest of millions world-wide and has rightfully earned its place as the greatest action-RPG franchise ever told.
When the first game came out everyone took interest because of its promising setting, unusual for western RPGs, a universe so well-crafted and designed that it was almost believable. Taking cues from classics such as Blade Runner and relatively new franchises such as Battlestar Galactica, the action role-playing game had the usual trappings for an epic space-opera. Truly, never had a game defined yet pushed the level of interaction, customization and personalization as Mass Effect had done, and done well. With hours' worth of side-missions, inventory management, vehicle exploration, and NPC interaction, this game would have been un-put-down-able but for several glitches and copy paste textures. This game did not reach the heights of fandom as it should have, yet it was heralded by many as a franchise with a promising future.
Then in January 2011, Mass Effect 2 was released. From the moment you hit the Start button you are pulled in by the relentless opening sequence and the masterful graphics and, well, explosions. From that moment on, the action never lets up. Cutscenes ensue which have been masterfully edited and scored, and Bioware, this time does not shy away from putting you right in the middle of the action from the beginning. Well-timed NPC-interactions succeeded by squad-power control and management make the starting an awesome tutorial which easily suck in those new to the franchise as well as old fans.
If you took issue with the first game, Bioware was there, listening to your grievances. And they have made changes accordingly. The missions are more streamlined, with addition of interesting side-missions which all take place in their own planet or ship, with unique story and purpose. The game-play has many changes, like deletion of overheating guns and addition of the thermal-clip system. The customizable classes are fun to play and add to the replay value. The characters in your team are varied and interesting.
Decision-making returns in all its glory with the addition of an interrupt system where you can do renegade as well as paragon actions determined by the meter, and though renegade actions may cause you to eliminate much of the threat sometimes, paragon actions lead to blossoming friendships and allies that may come in handy later.
Inventory management has been done away with, and though many hard-core RPG fanatics may take issue with this, I personally found that upgrades of your weapons and armour with the minerals you collected by a fun side-game is far better than spending hours customizing your weapons.
The variety of endgames possible is a strong point of this game. Depending on your actions throughout the game any number of your teammates, including you, may perish in the looming suicide mission at the end. Also, save import system lets you import the Shepard and the decisions you made as him/her in the first game to this game and it affects the random encounters you may have with people. For example, if you opted to spare Wrex in the first game, you will find him as an NPC here. Many of the old Mass Effect characters return (provided you didn't kill them or send them to their deaths).
Overall this is the most personal and customizable action RPG around. Renting it over the weekend just is not enough. The different outcomes, the customizable classes, various side-missions and many difficulty levels are meant to keep you hooked for many hours. Oh, and did I mention the DLCs Bioware has been supporting this game with? The whole year, DlCs have been released and have kept us interested in the game the whole time. Not for nothing has this game received almost perfect scores universally.
Going by these standard Mass Effect 3 has some big gargantuan shoes to fill. It is a difficult act to follow. This is like the Empire Strikes Back for the Mass Effect trilogy. Let's all hope we get something better than Ewok-defeat-the-Empire endgame like in Return of the Jedi for the final game in the trilogy.
Chinmay Hota
Author of 'Hits and Misses' | video-games_xbox |
Not bad, not great. I'm not a campaign guy, so skip my review if that's the kind of play you like; I only play multiplayer.
Look, it's just ok. It's not great, it's not awful, and it's certainly not going to make you forget any other CoD game you ever played. It's perfect for the hot-heads who love to complain about campers every time they hit the lobby; there are very few points you can hold for any period of time and too many back doors for the opposition to exploit. If you're one of those guys who loves to run around real fast using high powered weapons to hide your lack of accuracy, and leap on top of buildings and run on walls, this is your dream come true.
But for the rest of us, the ones who like to find a position and hold it (a very different concept from camping), it's not great. And sniping? It's nearly nonexistent, at least until you can get really good at quick scoping - and I do mean you have to get really good at it. And even so, quick scoping isn't the same as sniping - you're really just playing the same strategy as every other class, but with the one shot damage capability of a sniper rifle - such an unrealistic use of that weapon (I find it funny that no one complains about this tactic, but everyone complains about supposed "camping"). Almost all of these maps are made for all-out run-and-shoot. Period.
And lastly, I am sad to report that this is just one more game that sets everything into the future, a dirty ugly future at that. Long gone is the sentimental romance of fighting through the French countryside. Now it's just blinged-out weapons with ridiculous camo and bizarre looking outfits. The new class system is pretty silly and doesn't seem to give much of an advantage over your usual weapon. If find myself not even using it most games - almost like the titans in titanfall.
I will say, BO3 is generally fun in the same way that most of the recent CoD games have been. You have to unlock guns as you move along and add attachments, etc. There's nothing earth-shattering here and it's generally skippable, unless you haven't played a new CoD game in a long while.
SO once again, we will sit here waiting for CoD to finally get back to its roots. Hopefully Battlefield 1 will be a huge success and CoD will finally wake up and release another WWII game....or make CoD3 and World at War backwards compatible?!? | video-games_xbox |
better than Forza 3, but servers problems frustrate. I won't rehash what many others have said about the game, but have a few comments to add.
First, the best addition over Forza 3 is a source of great frustration. The "Rivals" feature is a great idea and absolutely addictive, but server problems badly plague this game (as of 12/28/11) and make this feature difficult and frustrating to use. In order to get to a Rivals race that you want to try you have to make it through some menus entailing several (unnecessary) server queries which offer you races against times set buy other players. These frequently time out and the game dumps you out to the top menu. If you do get to the race you want and manage to start it successfully (game must load ghost of other player which often fails), then you can complete the race but may run into server timeouts again when saving your time or trying to load the leaderboards to see how you stack up.
Since the Rivals feature is so frustrating to use and is often simply not working, I usually try it first but play offline when the problems occur. Offline the game is not much different than Forza 3. There is a new "professional" difficulty level, but even with most assists off this level is thus far not challenging for me (I'm usually a top 10% racer according to the leaderboards), at least in the lower classes. I'm told the race classes are harder. The "World Tour" career mode apparently takes a long time to increase the AI performance to this level, so is a waste of time to me.
Finally, I am playing this game with the Fanatec GT2 wheel. The feedback effect of Forza 4 with this wheel is not at all strong compared to what one gets from the Thrustamaster T500RS on the PS3 with Gran Turismo 5. With Forza 4 and the GT2 you can hit a bump which nearly flips the car but barely feel anything. With the T500RS this could rip the wheel out of your hand (i.e. is close to realistic). Apparently the newer Fanatec CSR Elite wheel is more comparable to the T500RS, but I'm not sure how much of this problem is the wheel and how much is the game.
If the Rivals feature worked reliably, I could give this game 5 stars. As it stands I can only give it 3, since the best feature barely works. | video-games_xbox |
I was skeptical, but this game is the real deal. It's great for all ages. A Tactical, fast-paced, and all-around enjoyable Shooter. Plants vs Zombies : Garden Warfare brings this franchise to new grounds. I was very skeptical about this game before I purchased it, as a Plants vs Zombies fan, I thought this was another franchise getting involved in a genre that it was not meant for, and simply alienating veteran and newcomers alike. However, I couldn't have been more wrong. This game is every bit of fun as any other Shooter right now on the market and the best part about it is is that it's a game acceptable for all ages too.
Before I go any further, I should mention that this game is meant for players who have Xbox Live. If you do not have Xbox Live, this game unfortunately will not even load for you. It's a bummer, but unfortunately more and more games are going to an "Always Online" format to combat pirating instead of other methods. So again: If you are planning on purchasing this game for yourself, a family member, a friend, or anyone else that is not an Xbox Live member, do not bother!
Past that, that is my only real flaw with the game. The game itself is almost always enjoyable with it's cartoony humor that you would come to expect from Plants vs Zombies at this point. The game isn't overly violent, even though it uses guns, none of the effects on any other characters "kill" a target other than making them fall over where you are knocked out until a teammate picks you up, or you respawn. It's not gorey, it's all cartoony, and isn't anything different than you'll find on most cartoon shows for children these days.
At the end of the day, this game is an enjoyable shooter that is similar to Team Fortress 2 in terms of gameplay, but plays out for a game for any gamer of any ages, even if you weren't a fan of the franchise before. I've sunk more time into this game than Titanfall by far and it's been worth every minute. | video-games_xbox |
Awesome Game. The prime difference between what the folks at Harmonix and the people at Neversoft/RedOctane are doing with their perspective games comes down to very important semantics. Neversoft's Guitar Hero series is a franchise. Harmonix's Rock Band is a platform. It's a huge distinction and the truth is that Rock Band's method benefits the consumers a lot more.
So when you're purchasing Rock Band 2, you'll getting a lot more value than you can imagine. Sure there's the 84 song (all master cuts) list and the 20 additional free bonus songs coming really soon, but what's important to note is the promise that Harmonix is keeping with: Rock Band is a platform, meaning every song under the Rock Band umbrella (with a few unfortunate nixes) will work with their games. So not only do all the songs you've been downloading for a year work, but also all but three songs in Rock Band 1 can be ripped to your hard drive (for a nominal $5 for licensing fees). This is a phenomenal value that values the customer more than paying for individual "expansion" packs that have no connectivity to one another. Platform versus franchise.
Alright, so there's a huge value here. But once you dig into the actual game, there's some good and some blah. Harmonix revamped the touring mode so that, regardless of playing single or multi, you have one World Tour. Previously, songs unlocked in solo play would show up in the multiplayer; here, though, regardless of whether you're playing by yourself or with friends, you're unlocking songs as you travel throughout the world. It's a lot more fun and emphasizes group play.
One of the issues I've run into is that the people I play Rock Band with aren't the best of players. We do it for fun and we'd invariably run into a brick wall in the tour where they'd have to move up to the next difficulty and couldn't. So far, we haven't run into that situation and have gotten a lot more out of touring that we used to. I hope this continues as this is the most exciting and fun aspect of the game.
Other game types have been included, as well. Your band can do the "Tour Challenge," which basically throws various set lists at you to get through. These set lists can be songs from a specific band or songs difficult on a certain instrument or songs of a certain theme, etc. A second game type is "Battle of the Bands" and puts your band against another band virtually, with a leaderboard to track your progress.
If you're looking for more character customization options, you'll probably be disappointed. There's a few more new hair types and a couple more faces, but for the most part it feels like the first Rock Band. This is a common thread throughout Rock Band 2: it feels a lot like the first Rock Band. It's more of a slow evolution. By far the best changes are ones that should have been in place the first time around, namely the fact you don't need a band leader and that you can have one character play any of the instruments. This is probably my favorite part of the new game (minus the songs).
But the songs are the real showcase. There's a lot of diversity here with a lot of new bands, some oldies and everything in between. But most of the songs are a ton of fun to play, which is the most important part. If you have Rock Band, this is a no brainer as the gameplay modes are more fun and you're not losing songs. If you're new, this is a terrific place to start. Many many hours have been logged so far and I can't wait for more! | video-games_xbox |
Ugh... it's like this Zumba kicked my dog. Let me start by saying I rarely leave reviews and I LOVE the Zumba fitness games. I started with the Wii versions and have continued with the Xbox versions. I rave about them and have lost upwards of 90lbs playing them (not all at once). Most recently, they helped me drop about 4 dress sizes so I could look amazing at my wedding.
That said I hate Zumba Fitness World Party.
Sure, there are a lot of things to love. The graphics make are insane by comparison and make it much easier to grasp the moves. The songs and dances are all different, which is great since I get really burned out on the old ones after I Zumba like crazy to get down to my ideal size. However, if I wanted better graphics and different songs, I would (and have), bought one of the 1,000 of other dance games like Dance Central and Dance Now to name a few.
The thing I loved about Zumba is that I could strap on weights, still do the moves, lose weight (fast), AND tone up. With Zumba Fitness World Party that isn't possible. I'm not talking lots of weights. Like 2.5lbs on each leg and .5lbs on each arm. I think the Dance Now games are much better than the Zumba Fitness games (plus I know and like the songs on them) IF I just want to Dance. I don't just want to dance. I want to get in shape. So far Zumba has always helped me do that, which is why I love them and swear by them. But for whatever reason they decided to speed up the routines, shorten the songs, and throw out the fitness aspect in this release; making it impossible to toss on the weights and not blow out a knee. This makes it about as worthless (or more so even) as all the other dance games that look better and have songs I like. Believe me, if I thought I could accomplish as much playing them as I do playing Zumba Fitness; I would in a heart beat. I've tried. No dice.
If you are like me, you'll buy it anyway and I don't blame you. I did. I just hope these reviews serve as some kind of feedback so that next time they come out with a game I'll still care. | video-games_xbox |
OVERRATED. I'm sure I'll get lots of haters for this review, but I'm a very experienced and objective reviewer of games, especially shooters, especially FPS, so in my opinion, I know what I'm talking about. I've played hundreds of `em. This one does not stack up and brings nothing innovative to the table. Button (trigger) mashing when you struggle with a Nazi for a gun a couple of times in the game is not a brilliant game innovation. It's a tiny little gimmick.
PROS:
- grenade catch and return is cool (although an exact grenade arc throwing system is not used). We've seen this happen in dozens of movies.
- some minor ragdoll physics
- no bad glitches or something that makes you consult the internet to see what the hell you are supposed to do
- fairly good score
- allows for subtitles
- some decent mass firefights
- some well-placed jeep/tank missions to break up the regular shooter monotony.
CONS:
- when I started playing, I thought I'd put in COD2. looks like many of the exact same bombed out farm houses. Just very derivative.
- graphics are only mediocre despite what anyone else says. Colorless and lifeless. If you think this thing has the greatest graphics ever, you haven't played a lot of games. It simply doesn't. This game uses the rarely known, rarely used in-house developed NGL engine. Not an engine that is used in first or maybe even 2nd tier quality games.
- character physics (movement) is a little jagged, not as fluid as in other FPS and other engines (Unreal3).
- uses the INFINITE HEALTH system of COD2, Splinter Cell DA, GoW, R6Vegas, etc. Get shot a million times, move back, no problem.
- annoying repetitious voice acting (JERRIES!!!)
- cannot bypass cut-scenes. UNFORGIVABLE!
- uses bad grenade throwing system that most next-gen games now use instead of an exact arc system.
- AI = average to dumb, some guys stand there waiting to get shot.
- game is so colorless it's hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys a lot of the time
- vehicle driving is not the intuitive RTrigger = forward, LTrigger = reverse of all other games; it uses some moronic RTrigger = forward and then makes you press a button to go backward. NOT INTUITIVE!
- no real upgrades or innovations from last title other than those previously mentioned
- the WWII game genre is boring, overdone, oversaturated and tired so much to the point that it is one of the only genres that is routinely ridiculed (for example, by the folks at x-Play). It is done to death to capitalize and exploit the last good war the US fought in, which was so long ago (well over half a century) it has no bearing on the current political climate and dirty oil and strategic wars that the US currently fights in, nearly anyone that fought in it is dead, and none of the gen X'rs playing this game have any connection to it at all. The movie industry is no different; churning out 1 WWII film after another (Clint Eastwood even spewed out 2 in 1 year and people laud him for it). In other words, I'm saying it's an easy and convenient softball genre.
My guess is that when EA's Medal of Honor: Airborne and more importantly, Ubi's squad-based FPS Brothers In Arms: Hell's Highway (both using Unreal3) are released, this title will be left in the dust.
Give me the LAST-GEN Halo/Halo2, Doom3, Half-life2 any day of the week over this FPS. For military shooters, give me any Ubisoft title (GRAW, etc) over this. For historical shooters, I guess this is as good as it gets for now on the 360. You have to go into an alternate WWII/sci-fi genre and/or off this platform to get a good one (Resistance: Fall of Man for PS3). | video-games_xbox |
Dig a little deeper. This game has been getting fairly horrible reviews. The problem is not THIS game, the problem is all the other games. See, we're so used to a game holding our hands through every little facet it has to offer us that when a game comes along and gives you little more than a few tips and a control scheme we think it's just thrown together. When you approach your first troll fight the game doesn't pause and provide a detailed tool tip on how to defeat a troll, YOU have to figure it out. The same goes with most things in the game. It's a game requiring alot of trial and error. You know what though? Figuring everything out is a hell of a lot more rewarding than having everything explained.
At first Too Human comes off as a button mashing loot fest. It can be very frustrating getting through the first few hours. On the surface it seems like the enemies are a bit overpowered and SK used the Valkyrie mechanic to avoid having to balance the game. Once you realize that you're not dying because the game is unbalanced, you're dying because you suck at the game, it gets a lot better. This is a game about strategy, each situation calls for more tactic than power sliding into the fray and mashing around the right control stick. It also requires careful planning of your skill point trees to compliment your play style.
Some people claim the game is too short. This is a game where you CAN sprint through it in around 8 hours and have a character around lvl 18. ?However, my first run through I logged 14 hours and had a level 30 character. Exploring the game isn't necessarily encouraged, but it is most definitely rewarded. I faced enough extra mobs by taking time exploring and trying to get the most out of the game to achieve an extra 12 levels over those who just rushed through it.
The story comes under fire a lot as well. First off, if you don't know anything about norse mythology then the story isn't really going to shine. I think it's funny that people are talking about how stupid or corny the story is when it's all actual Norse mythology that's altered slightly to fit into the sci fi world. To say that the story's stupid, is saying that the Norse myths are stupid, so you can't really blame SK for that. I thoroughly enjoyed the story. It was pretty fleshed out, it does take a little bit of walking off the beaten path and talking to the other Aesir even when not prompted to. Before you play the game (or even after if you're not happy with the story) go ahead and Wiki Baldur and Fenrir and some other figures and stories from Norse myths. You'll probably appreciate it a lot more. I thought the ending was great and really set up the rest of the series.
There are some problems with the camera angles as most have stated, but I really only had issues a couple times once I got used to it and trusted it to show me what I needed to see. What game doesn't have camera issues though? Another issue I had was with the auto target on the guns. It's really tough for you to pick out a specific target. It's not a huge deal, usually targeting anything that moves is fine, but there were a few instances where I wanted to pick off a certain mob to weaken the group and had difficulty.
Summation: This is a great game and it's really too bad that a lot of people are going to pass it up due to reviews. It takes a few hours to get used to it and figure everything out, but when you do the game really shines. It clocks in at about 8 to 12 hours depending on how much exploring you do, 10 hours seems to be the norm for most games these days. The story is great, but may get lost if you don't do a little research first. Strong replayability. I'm still working on my Defender class. There's a lot to go back and unlock. If your friend has a copy you can do co-op over live for hours of goblin bashing, loot grabbing goodness. It's not perfect but it's a fresh title that's loads of fun and a unique take on an old story. 4.5/5. | video-games_xbox |
Starts Great and then becomes Average. When I read the reviews of this game it sounded like James Bond Golden Eye set in WWII. What could be better? 20 Missions, 3 Difficulty Settings, tons of weapons - Made this a sell to me.
First thing: The taking of the beach at Normandy is one of the most intense gaming moment I have played thru. Your buddies being shot up, Bullets flying everywhere and total Chaos. Plus this feeling if you don't move quick the mission could end premature. Also for the plus in the game: The Germans A.I. has a little more oomph in this game compared to others such games - They hide behind walls, throw your gernades back at you, and will take cover to shoot at you.
But from there the game turns more and more average. First it's completely linear - You have to take a certain path to objects - no sneaking in the back door, the enemies are set to appear when you step on a certain points - and to appear after so many minutes (A weird thing can happen where if you rush thru a mission quicker than normal you can actually see a enemy materialize in front of you from nowhere), and last there is only one way to finish a mission.
Next the guns are really interchangeable - Either it's a German Sniper Rifle, Sub Machine Gun or Pistol vs. a American Sniper Rifle Sub Machine Gun or Pistol: they both shoot and act the same. Second the missions are pretty easy - Just shoot your way thru, not many side quests plus some missions take less than 7 mins. The different difficulty settings don't really add anything, just a little harder and you don't heal between missions. With a little free time it's no problem to finish all 20 missions on one difficulty in a weekend.
The Multiplayer is fun I must say, or else I would give this only 2 stars. However, when Ghost Recon and Mech Warrior came out at the same time and both had support for Xbox Live. - I can't imagine why they wouldn't with this game - Could have made this a good game at least.
My advise is wait for the better First Person Shooters coming out in May and June 2003. Or rent it for the weekend. | video-games_xbox |
Overall very good value, some issues. I bought this from Newegg, so it won't show up as a verified purchase.
I've had this wheel for about 5 months. I chose it due to the reliability problems with the T300/TX, the high price of the T500, and the old tech of the G29/920. But don't rule out the G29/920 completely just because of the gear driven force feedback / center deadzone. Lots of experienced sim races appreciate the trusted reliability and the build quality of the G29/920. However, if you can only get the G29/920 for $350-$400 or more, I'd definitely recommend the TMX/T150.
Games Played: Assetto Corsa, Rfactor, Rfactor2
*Pros
-Quality force feedback for the price. Lack of a center deadzone is nice (but friend with a G27 said the deadzone isn't too bothersome). Feels great with Assetto Corsa.
-Shift paddles feel incredible, with a satisfying click.
-Pedals have high resolution. Something I haven't noticed yet, but I don't usually drive extremely powerful cars. I guess if you drive something like an F1 car you may notice it.
*Cons
-Wheel has comparatively low resolution, but I don't notice when driving.
-Accelerator pedal has a little deadzone before it registers input. I just put some tape and paper on it. Not a bother in the slightest.
-Brake is a pain in the butt if you want to mod it.[...] This brake mod is amazing and makes the feel of the brake almost perfect, but if you want to use it with this wheel, you have to take it off and and put it back on every time you unplug the wheel or turn off your computer. It is a big pain. [Update] I'm going to try some ways to fix this problem.
-I didn't notice this from the pictures, and didn't think I'd care, but the wheel itself is aggressively plastic. I somewhat wish I had gotten the G29/920, with their nice leather and metal, just because of this. However, the TMX/T150 with the lower price + good Thrustmaster accessories make it worth it if all you care is great force feedback.
*Other
Squeaking when turning the wheel maybe a future warranty claim? The feel of the wheel hasn't changed, the squeaking is not loud in the slightest, and it doesn't present itself all the time, but it is there. I'm keeping an eye on it. | video-games_xbox |
Maybe I was too optimistic. I went into this game pretty excited. I don't have too much free time so I pick out games pretty carefully. I picked up a copy of this game today and was super disappointed.
This game is REALLY slow. I'm a fan of a good intro, but the best part of the game is honestly probably the video before the game starts. There's a cool song, drinking, not sure what it has to do with the game but whatever. It took like, twenty minutes before the zombies showed up. There was some running part, but I didn't see the zombies and then it cut to video. ~sigh~ So, you wait and wait and wait. Even my girlfriend, who wasn't really paying attention, mentioned how slow and boring the game is.
So, you've spent thirty minutes digging through suitcases, 99.9% of which have 7 or 12 dollars in them. Once you've made it past that, you can use the clunky action button to grab a paddle and try to fight a zombie......right before you get uncontrollably knocked down and another video cuts in. ~sigh~
Get past that, and you can find some other weapon and head out on the first of an apparently endless number of fetch quests. Can't imagine why the developers only put in one type of mission, but there you go, take your orders, find gidget A, bring it to me, good boy, here's $12 and some indistinguishable weapon that's going to break after three hits.
The combat, the "best" part of the game, is reallllly clunky. Collision detection is SO poor, it's not even like you're hitting them. Sometimes you hit the ground, occasionally the weapon waves above them, the list of irritating problems goes on. There's a lot of different weapons, but they all seem to do basically the same damage, they break down at the same rates, which is way too fast (you'll go through two or three weapons on medium enemies) and the names are unnecessary and confusing. Yeah, there might be "thousands" of weapons, but it's all "Diabolical Wooden Stick" and "Shattering Wooden Stick" and "Tiring Wooden Stick". <-- not exactly a thrilling selection imo.
I don't understand the inventory. You can have a number of weapons equipped, only use one, and sometimes when it breaks it will automatically switch. Sometimes not. Sometimes you pick up alcohol, and it's equipped. Sometimes it goes straight to inventory. There's no real rhyme or reason to what happens when, and it's a really unattractive, game-killing menu. The abilities tree is likewise unattractive, though it's a little more straightforward because there's not much to it. One gripe about that: if you level up during a fight, your health regenerates (sometimes). If you level up, and get attacked, you will regenerate health, then lose control of the character and get beaten to death while the health bar remains full. This is such a stupid glitch, easily fixed by a Fallout-style level-up, ie leveling up after the fight, and gameplay pauses while you do your ability tree.
I chose the gun girl, don't even know her name because every NPC in the game refers to her as "mate" or "him", expecting to be given a gun, or at least given one early. Not so. No idea where to get a gun yet and I'm like five or six hours in. I have 30 pistol rounds from some NPC I stumbled over (seems to happen a lot, you can just add new fetch quests ad infinitum and do them at your leisure; no need to stick to any sort of plot) but no pistol to use them with.
As for the graphics, I don't know. The whole game is shot through an annoying soft filter so the light is all blown out and dreamy.
There is just really nothing good to say about this game. It wasn't what I was expecting, it has little to none of the features they promised, and everything falls a little short, just enough to make it no fun at all. I wouldn't really suggest it at all. | video-games_xbox |
This game Nails the Trick . Period. This game has got a lot of negative criticism. I agree with the criticism for THP8, but the good things are good enough to take a look at it.
Pretty predictable plot going here, you're some skater, and you're going for something (this time Project 8), and you have to complete a lot of goals to do it. This part will be familiar (and a little boring) for any Hawk nut. However, the goals THEMSELVES have been changed dramatically. Here's a rundown:
Am,Pro and Sick- Instead of picking a difficulty level to begin with, you are given the chance to get a better rating based on your performance. The good news is that if you are new to the game or you just can't get a particular type of goal down on Sick, you can go back to it when your skills have improved or when your character is better.
Bailing- This part is so funny. The first time I actually flew while I bailed, I was literally laughing so hard I thought I was going to tear my ribs. Think about how I felt whe nI got the "break 15 bones" achievement! Best of all, purposely bailing has actually been integrated into the game (A few goals require you to bail through gates, on a target, etc.). This game's physics are SO horrible, you might end up flying across the entire city on a single bail.
Brand New Classic- Instead of having a classic mode seperate from the story, now Neversoft has seamlessly integrated Classic Mode into the story's goals. The good news and bad news is that you have to do at least some classic goals if you want to get onto Project 8 and beat the game, because Classic impacts a lot on your fictional rank.
Nail the Trick- the crown jewel of Project 8 is Nail the Trick. It allows you to go into a slow motion (a la Max Payne) mode where the movements of the two sticks controls the skaters feet as they maneuver the board. If you really know what you're doing, you can string these together in a combo for huge points. Getting what you usually get in THAW should be no problem with this new feature.
So, there you have it, Tony Hawk's Project 8 is yet another game in the great skateboarding series. They keep getting better every time, and this one is no exception. How long will it be before THP8 finally bails? We will never know. | video-games_xbox |
First impression: an exercise in frustration. Got Brink yesterday. This is an update to my earlier review. All I can say is, this is one frustrating game!
Firstly, the deep storyline I was looking forward to - all that potentially rich back-story that was hinted at in the pre-release videos and advertising... well it's not there. We get a couple of sentences from a disembodied voice telling how the Ark was a self-sustaining green vision of the future - and that's it! You don't even get a feeling for which side you identify with more, before the game forces you to choose a side. Talk about lost potential!
Then you get to customize your character. This is actually kinda fun (though weirdly laggy). Still, there are some very nice, unusual-looking characters with some great artwork. Then again, my daughter feels left out because there are no women characters available.
Then you go to the missions. This is not handled in a smooth way at all. If you choose to save the Ark you just choose a mission and you get a cut scene with a guy almost incomprehensible generic African accent babbling on about terrorists. Yes, it's the tired old 'terrorists have kidnapped someone, stolen a data chip, etc.', formula that we've seen in all the worst post-9/11 games.
Then comes combat.
I haven't seen a shooter with combat this bad since... Actually I've NEVER seen combat this bad. It's basically like an arcade 'duck hunt' game with targets that move around as if they're on some sort of futuristic speed-type drug. And you have to pump a clip or two into them in order to take them down. Meanwhile, even on easy difficulty you get killed if you get shot with a few rounds - and the AI have perfect aim. True, sometimes they're too stupid to even shoot at you at all, but when there are ten of them spawning around you, you haven't much hope.
I played on easy difficulty. I don't know anyone who can beat the missions on this game, but I know I can't. Easy difficulty is not supposed to pose a challenge! It's supposed to be easy - that's why it's called 'easy'. When you're developing a game, the difficulty levels are not there for the elite players - they'll choose 'super hard' every time. The rest of us need options that make it easier on us. Starting at 'impossible to do on your first five tries' is not 'easy'. I don't know why so many developers don't get this.
When you respawn (which you do a LOT), there's no option to respawn at a newly-captured station - you have to go all the way back to the start. So you end up spending a lot of time incapacitated, then you spend a long time running back to the action, then you get about two seconds of shooting (because the game's choke points are suicide). Then it's rinse and repeat.
The cut scenes seem tacked-on. None of them flow into or from the combat like other modern games' cut scenes do. So you get a jarring feel which make me suspect that the game just wasn't finished. I'd say this game needed another six months of development before it was ready for release. The developers have the kernel of a good game here, but it's not polished - heck, it's not even ready to be polished. This is a 'pre-alpha' version of the game Brink could have - should have - been.
This is in all ways a 1990s style shooter. None of the last decade's improvements are in this game - no cover, no CoD-style aim assist etc. - it's just run, shoot, respawn. Single player is incredibly frustrating and disorienting - and it only lasts a long time because the missions are almost unbeatable even on easy difficulty. Finishing a mission is virtually impossible in single player.
The smooth movement that was advertised is haphazard to say the least - sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Assassin's Creed does it right - this game, not so much.
The only good thing about this game is the character generation.
I've given this game a fair try. This one is going back to Amazon - assuming they accept opened games. I hate to say this, but it's basically a great character customization game with a Starsiege-Tribes-era FPS tacked on.
I've been playing video games for over 30 years, and of all the games I had high hopes for, this is the absolute worst.
Here's hoping that LA Noire is better, 'cos this, I'm sorry to say, sucks! And it had such potential. Shame! | video-games_xbox |
Sleeping Dogs - The New Open World Standard. Sleeping Dogs is a game that almost never saw the light of day, which is shocking considering how good this game turned out. Starting life as Black Lotus, a new original IP from United Front Games, it starred a female protagonist and had a lot of potential. Then Activision came in and basically said, "Hey, United Front Games, we have this IP called True Crime, so why not take the core parts of Black Lotus and turn it into a True Crime game?", and thus, True Crime: Hong Kong was born. Showing a ton of potential, True Crime: Hong Kong came out swinging with positive press and gamer reactions, then Activision suddenly canceled it out of nowhere, because they said it couldn't compete with other games in the genre, couldn't sell as many units as they wanted, couldn't crack a specific Metacritic rating, and didn't meet the standard for Activision games, even though they put out Prototype 2 this year, which isn't nearly as good as Sleeping Dogs in any category. Activision has also put out games like Blood Drive and has a new mediocre Nascar game in the pipeline. Needless to say, Activision was making up a bunch of excuses, as if their whole catalog is some masterful thing, but they only have two games out of many which are selling well, and those are Call of Duty and Skylanders. Like Tony Hawk and Guitar Hero, Activision will drive those into the ground, if they haven't already. Anyways, after a bunch of upset gamers voiced their concerns on the internet, Square Enix came to save the day, which was the greatest thing to ever happen, as described by one Sleeping Dogs developer. Square Enix allowed the game to get more polish, better publicity via game trailers and commercials, and have shown the game respect, whereas Activision probably would've just let it out into the wild and let it fend for itself. Square Enix has really shown their desire to succeed in the western game market with fantastic titles like Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Sleeping Dogs, and the upcoming Hitman: Absolution and Tomb Raider reboot.
Now onto the actual game.
Story, Voice Acting, Characters - Sleeping Dogs has a lot of talent, all lending to the story, voice acting, and the cast of characters. In many pre-release trailers and previews, they pointed out Hollywood talent like Emma Stone, but just about everyone here contributes their voice talents to make the story and characters interesting and fully realized. While the story isn't original, it's done so well that originality isn't necessary. This is a game that knows what it wants to be and completely succeeds at it. This is a top notch production from beginning to end.
Graphics, Atmosphere - Without a doubt, Sleeping Dogs is my favorite looking game of this kind. To compare, you have Grand Theft Auto IV and the Saints Row games, and I believe Sleeping Dogs is the most impressive looking of the bunch. While the map is smaller and surely allows for more details, it's those details that make the world feel like it's living and breathing, which adds to the overall atmosphere of this beautiful world that is yours to explore and discover all of the little secrets it has packed within it.
Driving, Shooting, Melee, Parkour - The core gameplay in Sleeping Dogs offers a lot of variety. The driving is fun and arcade-like, so the handling is simple and intuitive, but it offers depth, like ramming your enemies off of the road or jumping from your car to another car and jacking it. The shooting is basic, so it doesn't offer much depth, but there is a bullet-time feature, a la Max Payne, which makes gun combat really fun, though it must be noted that gun combat is not the focus of the game. Now onto melee, which is the focus of the game, is similar to the combat in Batman: Arkham Asylum and Batman: Arkham City, meaning it's a ton of fun and pretty stylish. In addition, you can use context-sensitive environmental attacks, allowing you to shove an enemy's head in a fan, throw him in a dumpster, impale him on swordfish, etc. It's all handled pretty gracefully and flows together nicely. Now onto the parkour, which is a real blast. Your character can climb, jump, leap, etc., so your character has real agility and makes you feel like you can get away from any bad situation or chase after those who are trying to escape you.
If you can't already tell, I love Sleeping Dogs. There's some minor draw-in or pop-in when driving at fast speeds, and there may be some tiny little issues like any other game of this scale, but every single thing that's important to the game is spot-on. This is a finely crafted world with a story to keep you interested and the gameplay to keep you having fun. Don't let this dog sleep, get Sleeping Dogs ASAP. | video-games_xbox |
Super Fun Game, But A Shadow of What It Could Have Been - A Good Buy Now That It's Cheap. 3.5 stars if I could (looks like Amazon customers agree). I first must start out by stating that I LOVE playing this game, and would recommend it to anyone now that it's cheap - its mechanics, gameplay, graphics, etc. are fantastic, its a blast to play with friends, particularly since its an exclusive. However, there's always a small part of me that feels disappointed in what the game could have been. I bought this new off a third party seller here for less than $20, which was a great deal. However, if I would have paid the full $60 at launch for it, I would have felt VERY let down.
My issues, which are still very affected by the fact that the game is/was $60 at retail:
A big complaint - there is no REAL campaign. They didn't try to hide it, but still. It seems stupid sometimes, but many people & gamers (including me) would be so much more sucked in by some sort of story. Campaigns in shooters can have very fun unique missions and provide some sort of context/connection behind the premise of the game. Hire a writer to create a clever, even somewhat cliche story for the campaign and spend some more time on the design, and it would have made the game much better, even if it wasn't at a high standard.
Multiplayer is what this game is, and it's fantastic, but even that has its shortcomings. The amount of maps the game comes with, along with some minor customization gripes and missing features like private play, more modes, etc. are unacceptable. You have to pay a little extra cash for more maps, and still hope for more promised DLC, which may or may not come. It definitely borrows heavily from the mechanics/feel of Call of Duty, but not in a bad way. More options would definitely improve the play.
Other than that, its still a fun game, and if you're among others like me who finally got convinced to buy an XBOX One at the end of this year because of the holiday pricing, Master Chief Collection, or whatever, I would highly recommend getting this game. It will entertain you for many hours on end.
Like me, you will also likely find yourself thinking that it is a good, fun game, but that had the potential to be a classic. | video-games_xbox |
Wrestling games still have a long way to go. I swear to this day, WWF Wrestlefest is the only wrestling game I've thoroughly enjoyed playing every time I've given it a go, to this day! I mean playing as in, the actual in-ring gameplay, I've played them all - well, all the licensed WWF/WWE games - since the early NES days of WWF WrestleMania, and this modern 2k14 interpretation provides no more in-ring wrestling entertainment than the dull series of 90's games of the Genesis/SNES era. But, while those were limited by the technology of the day, this is limited by intentional low production values in sound and visuals - possibly to save time and money - and an over-emphasis and over-reliance on a single button, the counter button. Reducing gameplay to guess work and timing.
The 30 years of Wrestlemania "gimmick" is riddled with inaccuracies and poor presentation that leave you deprived of the actual experiences of the matches, from the build-up to the outcome and everything in between, and, considering the gameplay is a few less control options away from being interactive animation - where all you do is press buttons when prompted to - combined with the emphasized importance of the counter button... this part of the game becomes a chore you simply cannot avoid if you wish to unlock the rings, wrestlers, attire and belts available with the game.
If you had any desire to relive the old arcade enjoyment of playing a wrestling game with multiple players, by considering the online possibilities..... there are none here. Online here is a complete joke. It's the waiting game with a screen and a soundtrack and the wait is insufferably long. Good luck finding a host with a reliable connection, or getting others to join your own hosted game... you'll be waiting almost interminably. The amount of players that actually venture into this part of the game always total to abysmal numbers, and practically every one of them is more interest in showcasing their custom creations with ridiculous move-sets to exploit at the expense of those that are actually interested in a fun wrestling gaming experience, than actually having a wrestling match.
The fun with this one lies strictly on customization. That's really the only area where this game shines. You can create your own wrestlers, provide them with custom musical entrances and maneuvers, as well as create stories, rivalries and alliances. That's pretty much it, however. If you're looking for anything other than customizations in a wrestling game, look elsewhere.
Is it worth 60 dollars? Absolutely not. 30 dollars? You could make yourself believe it is, because that's what I paid for it. I don't recommend it, but if you're a big WWE fan and simply must have the latest thing... I'd say try to find a copy of it on sale for 20 dollars or less, or just go for a used version. | video-games_xbox |
Welcome Back To The World of Albion. Fable 2 was feverishly hyped, with so much expectations from its fans and so many conceptions people believe the creators mislead them on how does it truly hold up?
Overall not as breath taking as one would of hoped for, but non the less it's still a fantastic journey. Fable 2 is a action/rpg that crafts elements of magic, skill, and sheer power. Your morality will be tested as one can be pure or corrupt this time around, and not just the one dimensional good or evil.
The game takes place so far after the events of Fable the world has shifted to a new degree. Familiar locations now built up in empires or murky ruins, Fable 2 really upped the size. Although still somewhat linear, the free roaming areas are much more expansive.
Stylistically Crayola colored and cartoony not as much can be said though graphically. The graphics are decent enough, but lack visually popping aw inspiring details. So if the graphics aren't top notch, why must we have such a poor frame rate (even in pause menus)!? Honestly I couldn't answer you that.
Controls are a bit gimpy too, but one will hopefully write that off for the trip instore. Fable 2 offers a wide range of options. One can raise a family, maintain homes and do jobs to earn gold. The game also features a faithful companion, your dog! The dog can aid you on your way to becoming a hero from finding treasure to keeping you from being the lonely hero deep down inside you think is cool.
With new evil taking root, you must ensemble the three heroes. These heroes are all of distinctly different backgrounds, each holing a key trait to the demise of said evil. A golden trail will show you the way to your main goal, but the bread and butter of the game is doing what you want. going at your own pace to complete the game is more rewarding. If following only said bread and crumb trail the game may be another wasted purchase, that was short lived and possibly mediocre at best. No reason to hurry feel free to explore, as maybe one day you'll own much of all you see. The story is great, but not able to emotionally connect one all too well. I found the game really started to pick up the further I went, at first I honestly felt I had been scammed. Now owning the game and having it opened I had no choice, but to play and not waste $$$. The game is definitely worth 60$, that is if they can fix a few of the glitches. Till then maybe a used copy would be a better choice.
While still playable with some of the glitches, many become frustrating. I had a pop up remain on my screen the entire time I played still I restarted it. Some glitches are reportedly said to lock the games progress, or halt much of the fun. Why ship a game in this state? I can tell you it's fun, but with so many issues one should be cautious.
Multiplayer functionality is a mixed bag, as one may find out he or she is not a hero or anything worthwhile! Some might be contempt with this, others will pray for a better option possibly from a future update. The items weapon wise are large, and collecting them is fun. Clothing and hairstyles on the other hand are lackluster. Multiple endings give way to replays of the entire game, and enough settling features to keep you coming back for more.
So with the failed ideals of the limited edition I bring you this the standard edition and all it's worth. A game with a handful of options, decent graphics, and where morals are consequential. | video-games_xbox |
More showmanship than results. I purchased this after reading reviews between this, Your Shape: Fitness Evolved and EA's Sports Active 2. Most reviews for EA's game focused on poor menu navigation and Your Shaped lacked a workout schedule. The end result is we bought the Biggest Looser. It gives you some very good workouts and rotates between a bunch of different exercises each session. You get a good workout with good variety and don't have much chance to get bored. Unfortunately, the drawbacks are so great that it actually demotivates my wife because it's too frustrating to use.
The biggest drawback are the menu navigation, registering your movements, comments provided by the trainers, and showiness.
Its very frustrating to learn the menu because every button is represented by pictures. To find out what it is, you have to hover over it, but if you hover too long it will take you to the button's location. Then you have to click back or continue a ways before you can go back to the menu and continue what you were doing.
Registering your movements is pretty frustrating. I've heard with the Kinect, having it 6 feet off the floor is the best but we don't have anything to set it on above our TV. This means it has to sit under our TV and the picture you get in the biggest looser of yourself is always skewed as if it's at your feet. This means it often doesn't register you're doing the right exercise even if you are. Sometimes it will register you're doing everything correctly even when you're standing still or backwards. I'd say 70% of the movements aren't to bad, but there are certain exercises especially the squatting ones that won't register you no matter what.
The trainer's comments are extremely frustrating because they often conflict with the game's understanding of what you are doing. My wife almost punched Bob in the face because the picture of what she was doing said "squat lower" and Bob kept saying, "don't squat so low." About 2 minutes later, the representation of herself showed she was squatting perfectly and Bob started to say "squat lower." The comments seem to do this alot especially when the Kinect isn't picking up your movement right.
The last thing that's frustrating about the game is the showiness. My wife just tried to do a workout and the game made her play an obstacle course against computer players. After it not registering her movement for 10 minutes and making her do the challenge longer than necessary, it finally ended the task. She was glad to finally start her workout but then it dropped her into the "weigh in." I realize this is a fundamental part of the show but in the game it's useless. It can't weigh you so it asks how much you weigh. This means you have to go find a scale or lie. Then it does the dramatic weigh in part where it acts like you don't know your weight and finally displays the weight you just put in. It's sequences like this that don't add any value to your workout and are just there because it's in the show.
Overall the game seems to be on the right track but needs to focus on why people are buying these games which is to workout. The other frustrations may just be because the Kinect is so new, developers haven't optimized their games for it yet. Without playing other games I can't say whether it's better or worse. But in just looking for a good workout game for someone who needs a little motivation, fun, and good instruction, this isn't what I would expect. | video-games_xbox |
Brilliant, Creative, and Original.... But It. Rise of The Argonauts, is one of the best games I have played in quite sometime. Does it have flaws? Yes. It's a rather unusual hybrid of hack and slash action, and RPG. And for the few first hours of gameplay your not really sure which one it is going to be. Once you become used to the style of Argonauts it's unusual style it becomes devastatingly rewarding. The story is what drives this one home, it does take liberties with the greek myths but you will thank them for it. They tweek the legends but the heart of the story stays the same, and the truth of each of the legends shines through and allows you to see the lessons of these myths in completely new and deeper ways. What they did with Medusa was shocking and terrifying, and completely unexpected. In many ways it played more to the truths of that legend more so than any other reproduction in cinema or gaming. They took liberties with it, but because of this it was suprising and unexpected and the truth of the myth and the lessons of pride and vanity shone through like a beacon.
The Graphics are quite beautiful, and I am not speaking of the environment. The way the dialogue is between characters is orchestrated is very original and extremely effective and feels completely like a real conversation thus making the game far more engrossing and far more realistic.
Although hacking and slashing seems like it would get old and take back seat to the story and RPG elements it doesn't. The ability to wield a spear, mace, or sword means it is hard for the slashing to become repetitive, this was a well designed game and the studio who made this put a lot of heart into it, and wasn't afraid to create something different and carve it's own path.
My recommendation, buy this game and embark on a exciting and unique adventure that completely brings the world of ancient greece and it's myths to life. | video-games_xbox |
2 / 3 controllers did not have a USB port. I had bought 2 of the these so a friend and I could play a game on our computer together. I was excited to set it up, but it took an hour of tinkering around with random settings to get it to work in the first place. I ended up following the direction of 3 youtube videos until one worked. Something about the drivers not updating properly and I had to manually set the controller to pick the correct driver (which was downloaded from microsofts website) in the services application.
Finally, I got it to work and gave it a try with a few steam games to make sure it worked. Happy, I set the controller aside and waited for the weekend. I quickly unwrapped the second one and put it in my backpack along with my laptop to head over so we could play. I unwind my controllers to find the second one didn't have a USB port... it only connects to an XBox!
Did I order the wrong one and was lucky enough to have 1 good controller? Or was it an infuriating blunder that was made on their end? I'm pretty sure the latter since many other reviews say it works fine on the computer.
Unfortunately the game we wanted to play did not support 1 keyboard and 1 controller user.
I dropped a star because the drivers were not easy to figure out for someone that isn't the best with computers.
The other star is actually how comfortable I am with controllers(tried it out on another game). Perhaps it will grow on me over time, but I prefer the feel of a Playstation controller. I like both analog sticks to be at the bottom. Unfortunately they're more difficult to set up than XBox Controllers. My comfort is a personal preference though. I normally wouldn't knock a star off, but having to deal with returning and ordering another one still has me peeved. Half star for each.
Update
I couldn't get the adapter cable to work, my computer doesn't recognize what it is. I didn't want to bother learning how to fix yet another piece of hardware that doesn't work out of the box. I just spent 10 hours getting a mouse, the first controller, and a drawing tablet to work on my laptop. So, I ordered another controller. I checked the back of the box, and it shows an image of a USB port. Again, this one does NOT have a USB port, and it doesn't not come with an adapter of any kind. This is the second time I've been burned ordering from here, and it won't happen again. I may as well just go to a gaming store the next time I have a chance so I can see the thing before hand. | video-games_xbox |
Single player ok but you have to play online-WOW. The single player is short with cool graphics. This is where you get acheivement points for xbox live it sort of says "I am a skilled gamer"
Multiplayer is awesome if your new I want to play with you. Your easy prey. It is fast paced at time it depends what time of day-I have played during the day and more kids are on live "more campers" (people who sit in corners waiting for people to come by. Look up Call of duty 4 on youtube and look at the video's. Then browse presitige medals for call of duty 4. Which alot of people want a emblem on the side of your gamertag- you lose all your weapons and perks(look up call of duty 4 perks also if you want. When I first got the game it was short and the multiplayer server stopped alot so I stopped playing (went back to halo3 but=a friend said "play online again" and now halo3 is collecting dust with all my other new games like asassians creed-guitar hero3-devil may cry 4 and a list of others. I play then to just to give my veriety then-Im back to cod4. I love first person shooters tis why. I can play with just about everyone now since I have been playing for a while Im usually around 3rd or 4th place everymatch. I use to believe kill to death ratio's meant something but I don't anymore there is so many good players on live for cod4. So in the end I just play to have fun-If I want to play with the noob tube(grenade launcher) people hate them I willm use it. It is a complex game meaning which weapons to use to each map or the skills of the people your playing i.e.-prestige metal ranks- but your opponents could have gained their rank by playing another mode of play like headquarters or search and destroy which give out more xp than say free for all which I mostly play.xp is how you gain your rank. So they have less play time as me and in the end the end it doesnt mean they are awesome. Wearing the headset when you are mad killin or using the noob tube is awesome the comments are funny like "why are you using the tube (they see my rank and they know I could use something else).I might go 2nd prestige if I man up and lose all the awesome weapons. If you see to crosses in a room run away. I have been in a high prestige game like day b4 and had low kills just because they are hard to kill. Some people don't like noobtubes or a perk called jugernaunt (xtra health=more bullets to kill u)and if he is running and gunning he has to point his weapon back to you but then he is dead because he is not using it and you needed less to kill him. HE DEAD DUCK-he might mic some words to you but have fun tis only a game. | video-games_xbox |
Great Example of Horror Gameplay. There are horror games that simply try to bombard you with gore and violence - and then there are horror games that are a complex interweaving of music, graphics and plotline. FEAR definitely falls into the psychological thriller category.
First, the situation. A compound is taken over by a military group in full body gear, led by an apparent vampire. Normal attempts to retake the area have failed, so you are sent in alone. It's just you against groups of these quite intelligent enemies. They'll work together, move around to flank you, take cover.
Graphics are very smooth - you can watch as an enemy walks towards you, crouches down to get beneath an overhang, and stands as he continues to seek you out. Peering around corners feels very natural, as does lurking in the shadows. There are dust motes in the air, shadows on the floors, holes shot out of walls.
In addition to the "natural" events, there are also seamlessly built in unnatural ones. Was that a person who moved just out of the corner of your eye, or a ghost? Did you really glimpse something in the shadows or was it a vision? It ramps up the tension until you're jumping at the smallest of sounds, worried that it portends something nasty.
The sound interweaves nicely with this. There are moments which are dead quiet, where every tiny footfall noise stands out. There are other moments when the bullets are flying and music is thrumming, that you know you have to shoot quick or be dead.
Sometimes "bullet time" is awkward in a game, but it really worked in well in FEAR. It really gives the sense that you are caught up in the adrenaline and that your sense of time slows down. Anybody who's been in a real life adrenaline rush knows that feeling!
There are some periods in the game which are just extended gun battles. I imagine that without these, some people would find the game "boring" - not enough shooting. Other people will find these long battles lose the tight-wrapped tension the rest of the game offers. I happen to be in the second camp, but I understand why game makers have to make these trade-offs.
I especially like this being on the XBox 360 - with the combination of a large, widescreen TV and high end graphics. Play this late at night when the rest of the world is asleep, when you can pick out every small creak or strange noise. You can really get emotionally involved in the situation, which is the mark of any good drama.
Be sure you understand this game is rated mature (there is a lot of nasty violence and swearing) and that it is meant to be very scary. This wasn't designed for little kids! If you're a mature gamer who enjoys horror games, definitely check this one out. It's very well done. | video-games_xbox |
Alot better than Doom 3. Powered by the DOOM III engine and developed by the Kings of the FPS - id Software, Raven's Quake 4 assails local retailers in time for the Xbox 360 launch. Boasting next-gen lighting effects, robust anti-aliasing, and Dolby Surround sound, Quake 4 provides the audio and visual power for Hi-Def run-and-gun gore galore.
Humanity is in peril as cyborg aliens (known as The Strogg) continue to clean sweep the universe in search of organic body parts to build more Strogg. Putting faith in 'the best defense is an aggressive offense,' Earth's military leaders mobilize an intergalactic assault on the Strogg home world to end their menace once and for all. As Matthew Kane, member of the elite Rhino Squad of Space Marines, your objective is to storm the Strogg fortifications, secure a landing site for a second wave, and annihilate the Makron (the Strogg leader). Following a decisive victory, the remaining Strogg captures Kane and begins their slice and splice Stroggification procedures. But before a mind control chip is embedded in Kane's cranium, Rhino Squad raids the facility and retrieves their mutilated comrade. Armed with the enemy's weapons but retaining your human mind, you are Earth's only hope for survival.
Though a verbatim port of the PC title (released earlier this year), Quake 4 adapts gracefully to its 360 iteration with fluid and intuitive controls. Aiming, reloading, switching weapons, and crouching for cover respond to the speed of your instinct. The enemy AI is by no means brilliant, nor do they possess any strategic thinking, but what they lack in brains they make up for with aggressive brawn and sneak attacks.
Taking the FPS away from horror, Quake 4 puts more emphasis on military style maneuvering. Kane is often flanked by fellow Marines who are autonomous in their actions (breaking the current trend of every game having some level of squad-based controls). Keeping your comrades alive prevents them from being used against you later in the game (every human that falls eventually becomes a Strogg). Life and armor are replenished by standing near your teammates and they will provide cover for you as you angle for a better shot.
The Strogg are hardcore, grotesque machinations of malice. They don't feel pain and will not go down easily. The game offers a versatile array of weapons that will be very familiar to anyone who played the preceding Quake games. Armed with a pistol, assault rifle, shotgun, grenade launcher, rail gun, nail gun, rocket launcher, hyperblaster, and a lightening gun, players can dispatch their foes with whatever firepower that suits their murderous sensibilities.
Lacking the major innovations expected from a next-generation title, Quake 4 is nonetheless a solid first-person shooter, brimming with blood, riddled with bullets, and heavy with atmosphere. Up to 8 players can frag and brag over the Internet, but there is no option for local co-operative or tete a tete play (unless somebody else ponies up for another console and you link systems via LAN). | video-games_xbox |
A Masterpiece. I remember this game well, i saw a review of it on xplay many years ago, when they dismissed it as a failed attempt to create a standard horror fps, with an unintelligible plot. This is mind i steered away from it but a few months later ran into it in a bargain bin at a local game store. Why not? Starbreeze studio had never done wrong by me, so i gave it a chance. One of the better choices ive made in my lifetime i must say. The game puts you in the shoes of a young hitman working for New York's most feared and established mafias, the Franchetti Family. The cinematic intro immediately immerses you into this startlingly grim world painted with striking visuals and the foreboding sense of dread that awaits. When it does, you are in for a real treat. The Darkness, a timeless monstrosity who takes the first born male of its host's family every generation, reveals itself unto you, with one of the most prominent voice overs i have ever heard. The demonic, thirsting voice commands you to kill, kill to live and kill to feed, every wicked man you devour empowers this faceless nightmare and in so doing gives it more sway over your own soul. the game is entirely story driven, as most Starbreeze games are, and the plot is beautifully written. Jackie sounds like a real ball buster, and his counterpart and love interest Jenny is the perfect foil to his street rat nature. The game is fairly long, lasting around 12 hours and takes you to many locales, each full of wonderful personalities and memorable set pieces. The best part of this game is that it rarely resorts to cheap action thrills; everything seems weighted and believable, even if you are the bearer of Death incarnate. One last thing i would like to point out is the gun play. While it has a drastically different feel than most fps games, but it has a more realistic feel, and what caught my attention is the collision detection. I never had a gun poke through a wall or body; Jackie would raise, bend his arms, or holster his weapons when i bumped into something, making me feel like he actually wielded a weapon, not a sprite. Beautiful game, it will not disappoint. | video-games_xbox |
I really wanted to like this game more. Let me start this review by saying I really wanted to like this game. Being a huge fan of previous Tim Schafer games and a long time metal aficionado I had high hopes. I even pre-ordered the game from Amazon which is rare for me. I give the preface since someone without the same expectations might enjoy it more.
The Good:
Story, Soundtrack, Voice Acting, Artwork, Humor, Metal References and Credits
All of the above are incredibly good. From the introduction through the credits the production values and choices the team made were excellent, within character, and true to intent. I liked the credits which is usually a pet peeve of mine. Rather than drag them out and force you to watch for 10+ minutes (and tempting you to quit out), they went along at a good clip. The soundtrack is well balanced with old and new, major (Ozzy, Scorpions, Black Sabbath, Judas Priest) and less well known but excellent (Ministry) artists, and styles from melodic to death growls (not a fan personally). The Legends and overall storyline are quite entertaining and well thought out.
The Bad:
Length, Flow, Gameplay, and Achievements
The game is very short. Unless you want to spend lots of time after the main story on either hunting through the environment for missed objects (without any map indication or "object finder") or want to play the pseudo-RTS online multi-player, you will be lucky to get more than 10 hours of gameplay out of this game. For a next gen price of $60, the entertainment/price ratio doesn't work out (and is one of the reasons for the 3 stars.) The flow of the game is somewhat disappointing as the major story points are somewhat disjoint and don't always flow smoothly together. The achievements frustrate me as >60% of them are from either the endless object search or the multi-player component. I don't have a problem with some tedium for attaining a full 1000 points, but I really feel a majority of the points should be achievable in playing the main game reasonably carefully. This is one of those games where the achievements feel set up to force the game to be artificially longer rather than to add to your enjoyment. Finally there is the gameplay itself. Another review (sorry I don't remember the reference) stated it best. In having the open-world/action/driving/RTS game models, the game is really a "Jack (Black) of all trade and master of none". None of the modes are bad but none of them are good. Taken together the whole isn't greater than the sum of the parts. The enjoyment in the game is from the story, the world, the soundtrack, the humor, the metal, and the artwork. The mechanics don't add to the game.
Bottom Line:
Worth a rent or buying a used copy, but with all the holiday games there is better value out there. I hope TS continues to make games though and the next one has the publicity/plish of Brutal Legend but is more like Psychonauts/Grim Fandago in fun. | video-games_xbox |
BO2: A game with alot of content. As you may already know Black ops games have 3 modes so i will be reviewing each separate then giving my overall thoughts.
Campaign 4.5/5: this is hands down the best COD campaign ever. while modern warefare 1 and 2 and even the original black ops had great campaigns this is even better than those. the story shifts between cold war era and the future. the future is similar to modern warfare but just a little more high tech. the story is great and will keep you interested enough to beat the campaign. Your ending can be 1 of 4 based on choices you make during the campaign giving you reason to do multiple replays or simply watch all the other endings on youtube. there are strike force missons which play like RTS games but i skipped them.
Multiplayer 3.9/5: The biggest problem with multiplayer is the maps. while theres a good amount of maps there are only a handful of good ones. all the maps are made like mw3 and not black ops 1. that means camper heaven and the other huge downside is one side of the map tends to be better giving the team who spawns there a huge advantage. this can be downright frustrating when playing objective based matches. the guns are ok but no returning favorites from black ops 1. i wanted a futuristic galil so bad. oh well.
Zombies 5/5: this is the best part of black ops 2 and the main reason i bought the game. the new zombies is all about innovation while sticking to its roots much like what the other COD's claim they do. there are 3 modes with 1 large map and 3 small maps.
Tranzit: tranzit is basically the main map or mode of zombies. it feels just like the older games maps but of course adds a bus you can travel to 5 destinations with. you cannot control the bus but sped up or slow down the time when it leaves. the only map with tranzit so far is green run.
Green run (Tranzit only): green run has 5 stops. from the bus stop to the diner to the farm to the power plant to the town you will basically play zombies by defeating waves of zombies. however your old strategys from the old maps will not work as well. the mystery box( box where you can buy a random gun) moves to different stops once its used up making you rethink when you have to stay or go to the next stop.
Survival: classic gameplay with no stops or bus.
bus depot (part of tranzit): the bus depot is small. smaller than the first zombies map ever. its the first stop in tranzit too. since the map is small the mystery box never moves. its a very hard and challenging map.
farm: a farm and is the second largrest survival map. it too doesnt have a moving box.
town: the largest survival map which is a little bigger than the first map ever made. it has a pack a punch machine and is the only place you can pack a punch other than tranzit mode.
GRIEF: Zombies has its own take on multiplayer and you bassically have to outlast another team of 4 players. only town and farm are playable with grief but bus depot is through a glitch somehow.
Overall: with a great campaign, decent multiplayer, and new and improved zombies BO2 offers alot. | video-games_xbox |
The most frustrating game in the series. While I admire the fact that this wacky franchise continues on to a next-gen system, and the same quirky humor can be found in many of the Kings rants and throughout the levels, they have just tweaked this game too much to really appreciate it. I found myself actually saying "I hate this" when I couldn't even complete the third mission. We have played/beaten the first two Katamari games many times, and even we found the controls, camera angles and level goals insanely difficult.
*The king talks way too much. How can you see what you are rolling up with his big hovering face and lines of text in the middle of the screen? It is too difficult to click the button to make him go away without disrupting your momentum.
*The level goals are insanely tough. You fail more mission than you pass, and even then you barely scrape by. This makes appreciating the level design and exploring the nooks and crannies of each level impossible. I'm sure there are many clever things in the game, I'm just frantically skimming past them looking for small enough things to absorb. A difficulty setting would make this problem moot.
*The controls feel even messier than they did before, if that is even possible. I am a tense player, so I find myself clutching the control, thus making my character flip all over the Katamari. I can't really turn corners and I get stuck a lot.
*I find my Katamari gets stuck in between items or walls/corners/shelves a lot more than before. And when the camera gets stuck behind walls and stuff, I literally cannot see where I am on the screen.
I do love finding all the presents and cousins in the levels, but with the problems in this game, these rewards just aren't as sweet when I find myself cursing the King and his stupid demands.
It sucks to say this, but this could have been a lot better. I am disappointed, and will just go back to the previous versions of this game I already own. Maybe the next one will be better! | video-games_xbox |
This game is evil. I've been a fan of horror films for over twenty-five years now and have reached the conclusion that I can no longer be scared by them. I'm not saying that to be macho. I like being scared. I want to be scared. It's the reason I still go to horror movies.
I've of course tried to get my fix from horror video games. Resident Evil, Clock Tower, Silent Hill, Fatal Frame, ect. I've played whatever the critics or fans recommended as scary. To be honest, I found most of them to be laughable and some flat out boring. Playing The Suffering was like hitting the jackpot.
Some things I recommend before playing:
1) If possible play on the Xbox in Dolby Digital with a good receiver and speakers.
The sound FX are what drive this game; they're second to none. Fighting the monsters isn't really scary. It's actually comforting. What's scary are the noises you hear coming from the shadows. Something clawing it's way through the ducts behind you and to the right. The sound of men screaming, shots being fired, then flesh being torn apart to your left. A monster trying to smash it's way through the door directly in front of you which you've just tried to open but found locked. The sounds in this game are phenomenal.
2) Adjust the brightness of you T.V. to a low level.
The game will ask you to do this before you start playing. It's similar to other horror video games. You really need to have dark shadows for all those scary sounds to be effective.
3) Play in first-person mode.
Third-person mode is easier. You have a wider perspective, which makes it easier to move and see around you, but that wider perspective feels like a buffer zone between you and the monsters. You feel like you don't have to watch your back because the camera is doing it for you. First-person is a little more difficult to move around but much more intense. You feel like your really there.
4) Play alone, late at night with the lights off.
You know why.
The game starts off with you in a cell on death row. You've murdered your wife and children but don't remember because you suffer from blackouts. Soon the lights go out and you hear the other inmates being torn apart. Something pulls your cell door off and your set loose into the prison. Eventually, your given a choice of paths to take. You can either be a good guy and work with other survivors or be a bad guy and massacre everyone. Of course, I chose to kill everyone (lets face it, what gamer wont) and soon found myself suffering from horrible, and frequent, hallucinations of my murdered family and other things. And the voices, oh those voices in your head telling you to kill; that the person standing in front of you is just a piece of trash and deserve to be slaughtered by you. Though, those voices are contradicted by the voice of your dead wife telling you not to do it. That she could never love a murderer. God this is twisted.
I guess this is a good point to mention that this is the most masochistic game I've ever played. I recently finished Manhunt (which I loved) and this game blows it away. Some deaths are vivid and brutal. Innocent guard trying to help you: butcher him. Guard locked in gas chamber: gas him. Man strapped in electric chair: juice him. Parents should also know that besides the violence and gore this game also has adult language. Including a four letter profanity used to describe a certain part of the female anatomy.
This game is not your typical survival horror game. Not only is it actually scary, it's also action packed. There are plenty of things to fight and you better move pretty fast or your dead. There's also a good amount of weapons for you to use. The gameplay is more like Doom than Resident Evil (epically in first-person). You will eventually be taught, by a ghost, how to go into psycho mode. After you kill enough things your psycho meter fills up and you can transform into a raging beast. In this form you can dismember your victims with one swipe of your hand.
What can I say? I loved this game. I've looked long and hard for something to be able to scare me again. Playing this game made me feel like a little kid watching a horror movie through my fingers. This mothers intense. | video-games_xbox |
A slight let-down from the brilliance that was WWE2K14 on Xbox360. The previous year's "WWE 2K14" was a better game than this, overall, on the Xbox360. The gameplay is 99% the same. What has changed is that now it's a bit easier to "reverse" moves (when pressing the right trigger as the white indicator appears), which gives beginners a better chance. Also in online games, the gamertag appears over the head of the character you're controlling in game (and in the upper right corner) so you won't forget who you are playing against. The "microphone" icon above people's heads would glow green when the person was talking, so if you had them muted, you'd know they were trying to talk. So little improvements like that were welcome. There are a couple more "character specific" "OMG moments" (basically just a finisher that works in a specific scenario, like up against the corner post or the ropes) and a few other barely noticeable changes. The massive gameplay changes in the XboxOne and PS4 are not here, meaning the gameplay of those titles is going to be totally different. If you've played WWE 13, 2K14, you know what to expect. The speed, moves, etc. is all the same. The moves and animations for many of the existing characters have been changed around, and some moves take longer to pull off, but generally it's about the same and you can configure things so it's pretty close to the previous game (though purists like me will still complain). 2K15 did remove the ability to use custom music tracks for wrestler entrances, which is a huge downer. Of course online, other players would only hear silence for custom entrances (unless you held your mic up to the speaker!). In place of the "juke box" to hear wrestler entrance music during the menus, there's a (very short) list of pop songs, that if you didn't hate already, you'll be sick and tired of before too long and want to mute them, along with the repetitive commentary track (virtually identical to last year).
Sadly, the online cheating is just as bad, if not worse, than it was with the previous game. Tons of players go around freezing people, doing teleporting unblockable moves, etc. with impunity. 2K games support has recently stated that the only way they'll enforce the anti-cheating measures against a player is if you send video footage of them cheating with their gamertag to support.
Community Creations was ruined by 2K placing restrictions on how many items you could upload or download. Previously you could do both as much as you wanted. Now you start at at rank "Bronze" (show me somebody who has actually gotten past that, without just spamming fake downloads) where you can have 5 uploads (period) and download 10 items per day (2K16 allows you 20 downloads per day). There is a glitch wherein the first time you start downloading you can get as much downloads as you want, but as soon as you exit out, and come back, you've got the restriction permanently.
Also, the baseball bat in extreme rules matches is now black (in honor of Sting). Other than that, most of the game is pretty much identical to how you remember from 2K14, except that the Single Player is now a lot of repetative and generic matches focused on the WWE programming of 2014. The Season Pass (that you have to buy separately, at least while it's still online) includes far more content, and makes up for the lack. "Beat the Streak" mode against Undertaker in 2K14 could be beaten by beating up the Deadman using weapons outside the ring, then tapping him out with a submission inside. This time you go against John Cena, but since there's a timer and DQ is on, you can just toss him outside the ring, slam him through a barricade or table, and win via "Count Out." Do this five times (after you play 5 matches with each of the NXT pre-selected guys) and you can now play against John Cena with anyone, and upload your scores online (whoop dee doo!). There just isn't much here to enjoy if you've already played 2K14. The real reason I bought this game at all (and got it used) was because I had enjoyed 2K14 so much and my friends were all playing this game, so it was essentially just a way to keep playing with them online.
I would say, if you love (the male side of) NXT, circa 2014, and what was on WWE TV at the time, you'll love this game, but if you were a big fan of 2K14, you'll wonder what any of the fuss was about. The next gen version is a lot more slowed down, the graphics are better (with the waxy mannequin look given to the wrestlers who now appear to have really wet hair instead of hair made of plastic) and there's a really long, repetitive "MyCareer" mode thrown in, which apart from letting you use a custom character, I'm not sure is that much better than the single player we get in this game. Honestly, I enjoyed the single player in WWE 13 a lot better. None of these games are perfect by any means, the online cheating and the glitches, and wasted potential aside, they are generally some of the most fun you can have with a professional wrestling game these days. 2K16 isn't much different, but again, it improves a few things, and makes some things worse, and ends up being about the same thing we've been getting for years. | video-games_xbox |
Even better than 2017. I bought this off Live almost as soon as it became available. I didn't really get into Insect Armageddon, this feels more like a true sequel. Destroying buildings is more fun, killing the bugs is more fun and the Air Tortoise...is a hair faster and just as useless as before.
EDIT 7/11/14
Just wanted to update this to go into a little more detail now that I have 260hrs into it.
This game has 85 single/split player levels. I've beat every level at every difficulty except for level 85 on Inferno with the Ranger. I haven't figured out how to beat it yet even with 12,000 health. There are three DLC's that add a total of 45 more levels.
I've found that while the Ranger is the easiest character to play with for newcomers, the Wing Diver is much more fun and mobile.
The Air Raider has some pretty great support he can call in such as the Gigantic Artillery, various bombers, the Vegalta Busterlord (artillery mech) and some of the higher level Bazelarts (helicopter). The Proteus is a huge mech and can wreak havoc if you get 4 people in it. I have no idea who was in charge of the motorcycles. If you ever drove the SDL on EDF-2017, this one handles even worse. It does have a side car though. Also the Air Raider can call in no more than two vehicles during a match. If you have two already on the battlefield and call in a third then the very first vehicle you called in will self destruct.
The Fencer is a mixed bag. So far all his ranged weapons seem under powered. The melee weapons seem much more in line but requires you to get up close and personal, which is not always feasible.
Finally, you will be in for a very long haul if you intend to get all the achievements. Take into consideration that there are 85 levels, five difficulties for each level and four character classes. That comes to 85 X 5 X 4 = 1700 levels to beat. That is just offline, then you get to do it again online. I'm about 30% complete in offline and 15% online. | video-games_xbox |
Alternately brilliant and frustrating. This review is from: Red Dead Redemption: Game of the Year Edition (Video Game)
I'll start off by saying I don't like GTA. I've always been frustrated both by its gameplay, and morality, or lack thereof, and setting.
Red Dead Redemption while in many ways similar to those games, fixes a lot of what I hate about those. I love the setting. I love the lead character-he's the requisite cool, but also intriguing. He has a moral compass that puts him at odds with both his own past, and many of the characters he encounters. As the story progressed, I found myself increasingly hoping he'd...accomplish his goal. Hmm, hard to talk about this without giving anything away.
I love the way his back story is doled out throughout the game. I love his quite simple and pure motivations, his small dreams. I love that when you reach what seems to be the climax of the story...it isn't. The story actually ends in a smaller fashion, that's much more powerful than how you expect a story like this to end...well...that's not quite the case.
I love much of the music-the song that plays when you first enter Mexico. Particularly the song that plays over the credits. (I actually just bought the soundtrack.)
The visuals are pretty great too, from John Marston himself to the horses to the vast and often iconic landscapes.
Unfortunately I had issues with aspects of the game too. One of the most major is one common to many of these so-called 'open world' games. The story, rather than happening organically as you travel through the world-such as in the rare game like Fallout: New Vegas (itself western themed, even if it is set in the future)-instead of that, you're actually just triggering story events (missions, if you will) when you arrive at various characters indicated on the map. At any given time you may have 2 or 3 such characters, and have to complete all their missions to progress. It feels very artificial, and makes the "open world" feel kind of pointless. It's also sometimes jarring, given you may be doing something with one of these characters, finish what you're doing, and then start the next event, with that character behaving as though you may not have seen them for days. I have to wonder if games like these could just be restructured so that the story flows along without you having to move through this world to trigger these events. Either that, or make it what to me feels like a true open world ala New Vegas.
Of course there are theoretically other things to do and discover in the world...but as in most of these games I care about next to none of them. I don't want to play poker, or horseshoes, or go hunting...I just want the story to continue. I think this is a flaw with most of these games though, not just Red Dead, but still, I'm surprised there's not more talk about it.
I'm also annoyed by some of the almost farcical characters. Right at the outside of the game some of the characters-Bonnie Macfarland and her father, the sheriff-are pretty great. But after that you're stuck dealing with several incredibly annoying characters. I kept wishing I could spend more time with Bonnie and less with the requisite snake oil salesman. I don't know why they included so many obnoxious characters, nor why they made you deal with them almost exclusively in just one section of the story.
I've also heard some complain about the section in Mexico-that it could have been cut. I think that's probably true. It brings up a larger point though-I was often unsure why Marston was even dealing with a particular character. Several throughout the game seemed to have next to nothing to do with what Marston was trying to accomplish, other than that the game forces you to complete their missions to continue on. At one point towards the end I couldn't remember what connection a particular character had at all with the larger story, nor why Marston was putting up with him.
The "fast travel" system is also a bit annoying. Rather than just bringing up a map and selecting where you want to go, you have to be some distance from a settlement, then set camp, then fast travel from there. I did have more fun with the game when I gave up trying to explore much, and just fast-traveled to the next character with a story mission.
Also detracting from the experience...a lot of the missions aren't actually much fun in and of themselves. Quite a few are frustrating, requiring the game to restart multiple times if something goes slightly wrong. The escort/wagon missions are an example of gameplay that is more endured than enjoyed.
At least the basic gunplay works well...better than it ever has in Grand Theft Auto, both, in cover, and even from the back of a horse.
So...basically there are things about this experience that are actually very mediocre. Things that I wish Rockstar would rethink when making these games. Yet at the same time they've created a very memorable character, and some quite surprising or moving story beats. I think if you're a fan of westerns, it's well worth checking out. Obviously fans of Grand Theft Auto should as well. I'm excited to think what might be possible on Playstation 4 with a spiritual sequel, both in terms of graphics, and hopefully rethinking some of the gameplay, or at least smoothing over the rough edges. | video-games_xbox |
A letter for EA Sports. To whom it may concern:
Here's a hard truth that EA Sports needs to not only hear, but truly understand. What was once a truly great sports game developer that brought fun and entertainment to millions is now quite frankly a complete joke.
I've purchased the NCAA football series religiously since '92 and have looked forward to it every year ever since. This has always been the one game that I've always spent considerable time playing and I don't know how I could have been more loyal to the franchise. Last year's game certainly had its share of issues, so much to the point that I even stopped playing it.
Surely this season would be different.
Then NCAA 13 is released.
I just can't make myself come up with any logical reason the company would release the game in this condition. Surely a company of this size has the resources to do at least some testing before putting it out on the market. I just have to think that if anyone tested the game, they would have been aware of the well documented fact of, "Hey, this thing locks up about once an hour."
Since I know this absolutely isn't the case and the company obviously tests its games prior to release, I am lead to a much more disturbing realization: EA is intentionally ripping off its consumers.
The company has exclusive licensing with the NCAA, so why release a flawed, actually let's call a duck a duck, completely broken game in Early July?? Surely they realize that the season doesn't even start until September right?
The business ethics demonstrated by Electronic Arts are borderline reprehensible. With this level of service to their core consumer, I just can't see the once loyal fans, myself included, standing for much more of this. I will be returning the game. Unfortunately I have no doubt it will be repackaged and sold to some other poor sucker.
I doubt this message will make it past the unfortunate guy who gets paid little to nothing to read these emails as the people who have the power to impact change quite honestly don't give a damn.
But understand this. There's not a soul on this planet who spent their hard earned money on this vast disappointment who does not realize that Electronic Arts just screwed its customer base. I would use the game as a coaster on my coffee table, but the hole in the middle makes it useless for even that.
Sincerely,
John | video-games_xbox |
Currently the Best Wheel on Xbox One. This was the first wheel I ever used. I love Forza Motorsport and have been playing since Forza 1 (but skipped Forza 4). I am fairly decent with the X1 controller on Forza 5. I started noticing how nonlinear turning in and accelerating out of turns was with a stick. Even though I could make the car turn in and turn out fairly smoothly, it felt strange on the pad moving the stick 4-5 times in a period of a second or two. In steps the wheel.
Started looking in to wheels because I am looking forward to Project Cars and F1 2015. With the faster cars (mostly purpose built race cars) finer adjustment seemed like a more enjoyable way to play. The jump to $400 straight away was a little scary. What if I don't like it? What if I waste that much money and don't enjoy it? A bit overwhelming. Well, I am happy with my decisions. It makes the Forza more immersive. My lap times? They seem to be around the same as with the pad. Slightly disappointing, but the benefits of the immersiveness outweigh this. I think with more time I will improve more. The best wheel for Xbox One at the moment. Do not consider the Mad Catz.
Pros:
-Great force feedback. Some may want it stronger, but I think it is perfect.
-Vibration is a nice feature.
-GTE wheel IS A MUST. Incredible quality. Regular wheel is poor quality, and you will know this once you hold the GTE wheel.
-Paddle shifting has a satisfying throw and click (GTE rim).
-Immersive experience that can't be touched by a controller.
-Thrustmaster updates have been steady.
Cons:
-$400+ is tough to stomach (I paid $408 for the GTE combination pack).
-Stock pedals are not the best quality, but decent enough that I did not feel the need to buy another set.
-A dedicated stand or rig is a must. I use the Playseat Challenge and highly recommend it for those with little storage space.
-No way to plug a gaming headset in to base.
-GTE rim does not have button labels, I did not find this as a big negative. It just bugged me a bit. | video-games_xbox |
South Park Meets Mario & Luigi. The first thing to be said about this game is that it lands the South Park humor and, since it's not on Comedy Central, is even cruder than the show. However, the humor never got old in its 14 hour campaign. That being said, some of the game mechanics are a failure. For starters, the combat resembles that of the Mario & Luigi series, with turn based action that requires timed blocking and attacking. The downside is that, once outside of battle, you instantly recover all special attack points and over time regenerate health. This makes a lot of random battles a repetitive action of doing specials over and over again on the Normal difficulty. On top of that, the characters have a low max level of only 15. This made combat pointless in the last couple of hours because just by exploring town and doing the quests, I was completely maxed out with 20% of the game left.
When it comes to customization, you are presented with hits and misses. Although you can change your appearance from clothing to facial features and hair--even more as the game progresses, giving you the option to look like David Hasselhoff--you can find yourself wearing an outfit you don't like, simply due to its stats. Then there was also a glitch that randomly popped up, preventing my character from changing his appearance for the rest of the game.
Glitches. This game is glitchy. I've had instances where I walked into a room, only to have my character drop through the floor, forcing me to load a past save. I've had it before where I finished a boss-fight, only to have to reload a past save because the screen would be stuck between loading and actual gameplay, allowing me to pause and load and everything, but presenting a black screen and dice and the word 'loading.' After encountering that last problem multiple times, I changed the team I was fighting the boss with and the game allowed me to progress. Last glitch, in the games tutorial, I was unable to proceed because Cartman wasn't talking in the background, forcing me to just watch the characters move without any menu popping up or options to attack.
At the moment, this game is a 3/5. When the patches come out, it will be a 4/5. Its humor and story drive the game along, as well as its entertaining environment--especially Canada--through the downfalls of repetition. | video-games_xbox |
This Isn't Consistent With The Previous Games. Title says it all, really. They have a decent start, & the graphics are in deed better as a natural step, but anyone who's played the previous games is quickly going to start asking questions about why people are doing such idiotically inconsistent things - and this will continue throughout the course of the game.
To make things worse, about halfway through and confirmed at the very hated end, you're going to be told that you didn't have to fight the Reapers after all. They're just looking for John Connor so that the Terminator War can end.
There are a lot of things that the writing team got right, and "new" approaches to gaming that the programmers did well. But the fundamental foundation on which this game and its universe are based have been thrown out the airlock, never to be seen again. The ending is as meaningless as the one in the ME novel Deception (Don't Read It).
Worst of all, I could literally write a full length essay on the pros, cons, and how the cons outrageously undercut the pros. I feel cheated out of the time and money I spent on this game, and that Bioware's lack of effort has tarnished the previous, awesome entries to the franchise.
Now, I have some talent as a fiction writer (at least I think I do), and I'll probably come up with my own personal correction to the hatchet job ME3 suffered. So I'll almost certainly play ME1 again, & probably play ME2 again. But it'll be really hard to make myself come face to face with the butchery they've done in the last entry at any time in the future. I take an analytical view of any game story as I play it (for me importance is 60/40, story/gameplay), and in spite of what some people say about changing the end solving everything:
This game needs an overhaul from the time you start on the Quarian missions if it's going to be saved!
It pains me, as it has so many of us, to denounce the shoddiness of this game, but to call it anything else would be to lie to anyone considering picking it up to complete the set. Mass Effect was always intended as a game trilogy, but they really stopped trying with the third entry & it is going to jar, stupefy, and torture anyone who loves the ME universe. | video-games_xbox |
It's a Call of Duty game folks (Non Fanboy Opinion. I've been reading some reviews shouting things like "BEST COD GAME EVER" and "MY LAST COD PURCHASE PROBABLY". While it's fun to write really bad and really good reviews, I wish people would just give an honest opinion. Someone who isn't an FPS video game addict fanboy but just rather a casual gamer that enjoys all video games. The problem with extremely popular video games like this is they are subject to extremely harsh criticism. Anything popular always gets a good blasting on the web for some reason.
I've been playing Call of Duty since the 3rd game, back when it was still in the World War 2 era. From then on I've either rented or purchased games from the series. Now I usually don't purchase video games unless they offer a really good and long campaign or fun multiplayer. I finally buckled in and purchased Black Ops 2 after getting a craving to play Zombie mode again.
The first thing I played in this game was Zombie mode, something to play a couple hours a night before bed. It was the same great, solid Zombie gameplay I enjoyed in the past, no real improvements, but still lots of fun to play. Makes for a great split screen game if you ever have friends over. Something about fighting undead hordes really makes for tense and strategic gameplay.
One day I had a little free time so I decided to try the campaign mode, after playing it I was extremely surprised on how good it ended up being. I know this game received lots of negative criticism on the campaign mode, but I was pretty impressed overall with the story and in-game cut scenes. By the time I finished the game, my eyes were glued to the screen and the ending literally left me at the edge of my chair. Many of the new futuristic weapons also made the campaign mode fun to play. I think they did a decent job portraying the near future.
Finally after beating the campaign, I decided to try the multi-player last. It was this that sold me on the game and ultimately caused me to put all other multiplayer games away. The Black Ops 2 multi-player takes a huge leap in the right direction by adding a large customizable load out screen. It features everything from wild cards to weapon attachments to perks to grenades. The combinations are endless and make for a more tailored-to-you multiplayer game. The customizable options ultimately make you want to constantly revisit this game and play almost every night. It's seriously addicting. As for the "small" level design, as some people are complaining about, Call of Duty has always been a skirmish style game. Call of Duty is about running and gunning, going head to head. Not just with Submachine guns and Assault rifles, but with the Sniper rifles too. It's about not sitting on your ass at the corner of the map and just picking off people as they walk by. I prefer the BO2 fast paced gameplay over Battlefields slow open map gameplay for a just those reasons. I hate when people compare BF and COD, "Oh well, this game is better because-". They are two totally different games, so whatever you prefer, you prefer, don't argue about it, don't compare, you'll get nowhere. Each has it's good and bads.
In conclusion, you're getting a fun COD game with a few improvements, I'm sorry if you feel they're not up to your "standards" so then don't play it, don't buy it, you think anyone gives a crap? Nope. It's popular for a reason because Activision releases a decent game every year that has a solid multi and a fun campaign. It's one of the last video game series I think is still worth buying. Call of Duty will always dominant the FPS market because it has a name to live up to and they do a damn good job keeping their reputation. Yeah Call of Duty has been the same game with some minor improvements, but with this one I feel they're slowly progressing in the right direction.
Remember with Popularity comes a lot of Criticism.
-ODM | video-games_xbox |
Be warned and do your research on this one. DO NOT MAKE A QUICK IMPULSE BUY. This game unfortunately requires additional possible troubleshooting, costs, planning, configuration, & setup.
Based on the variety of reviews that have been posted, there seems to be some question as to whether or not this game will work as is or if you have to take extra steps to reroute your audio signal before it gets to your TV. I wanted to share what the official response is from one of the developers this is from the ubisoft forum http://forums.ubi.com/showthread.php/924044-Rocksmith-2014-PlayStation-4-amp-Xbox-One-FAQ?s=43061b8a674ba5457c445768f08a07b0 ):
When asked if running HDMI audio through the TV will work or not, this was the developers reply:
It might, but we have a hunch it probably won't work well. Some people say they have no problem, but since there are so many HDTVs out there, all with different chips and designs and innards, there is no way for us to predict any individual user's setup. If HDMI audio works for you, cool! But we really, really do not recommend crossing your fingers and hoping you might be one of the very few people for whom HDMI audio through a TV works just fine. (end response)
So depending on how you plan on rerouting your audio to some sort of receiver, assuming of course you haven't done so already, your costs can vary.
From my own personal experience, I can attest to purchasing the game only to experience the same latency issues others have complained about. But, I knew going in that it was quite possible that I would have to spend some additional money and do some additional troubleshooting. Knowing upfront what I was getting into did not at all sour my experience with it.
I've just purchased some equipment to isolate my audio signal from my HDMI cable. It was about $45. That additional price tag may be unacceptable to some folks. Be warned upfront that this is the reality of purchasing this software. .
I think some folks my just say, heck with it and deal with the lag. I would not advise that. The latency issues make some elements unplayable. As for the guitarist who is just beginning, the lag issues could be very destructive as far getting your timing or rhythm down. You should eventually be able to feel (or count) as when to play the next note. The lag can also cause your musical phrases to simply dissolve to nothing or develop into some sort of strange electronic weirdness. I was playing the opening to Ozzy Osbourne's Crazy Train last night (not part of the software I just know the riff) and found the lag simply would just cut off the end of the riff. The lag issue definitely needs to be fixed. Just living with it is not at all an option.
Aside from that, the game is five star. You could easily justify the price tag if you try and quantify it with the cost of taking guitar lessons. There are many reviews that have already highlighted the good parts of the game so I won't into that. But, because of the latency issues, the game is only four stars. | video-games_xbox |
Buy at your own risk. It is disgusting how broken this game still is after a year. I should have known better than to buy this again for the Xbox One but because of the lack of good games I broke down and bought it.
Let me get this out of the way first, the Single Player is fun. It's not the best GTA but it definitely isn't the worst. I've played through it twice and could easily go through it again at some point.
That said the multiplayer is as broke as broke gets while I will admit it can be extremely fun the problems can suck the fun right out of it especially if you have a bunch of problems in one night:
You can't party up in the Xbox one version (at least me and my buddy can't figure out how to)but I was pretty sure you could in the 360 version so when we come out of races or missions we keep ending up on different servers then one has to join the other which rarely works the first time.
The Load times are horrendous, it's easily several minutes of sitting there watching the doohickey spin in the corner of the screen.
Money just disappears. I had 80k deposited in my banking account went and did a couple of missions with my buddy and came out and it was all gone.
Every time I log on I get a $7000 bounty put on me, EVERY TIME. I had not played the game in a year, transferred my character and bam I have a bounty on me. It's getting very old.
When I transferred my character I got to keep my apartment but all of the cars I had acquired (some stolen, a couple purchased) were gone. I don't even have my default car.
Now that Heists are finally here I go to start the first one and Crash, my guy is moving because I can see my triangle moving on the map but all I see is the front door to my apartment. No way to get out of it but reboot my box. Then later the same night the same thing happens after spending $25,000 upgrading my car I crash again. All I can see is the inside of the garage while again on the map I can see my guy moving. | video-games_xbox |
Halo 3: ODST -- An Uneven Hit. (Here are my single-player impressions for Halo 3: ODST. Co-op and Firefight impressions will be delivered separately, and people should be aware those are big parts of this title.)
Brass tacks, Halo 3: ODST is a great game -- and an uneven one, all at the same time.
The game is genuinely fun, has some depth, is genuinely different than the previous Halo games, and has more polish as well.
Those strengths are also weaknesses, though, because there are expectations around the Halo franchise, and losing the ber-bad-mo-fo of Master Chief takes some getting used to, in addition to the gameplay feeling a bit gimped by removing the the Halo 3 "X-button specials" (especially since enemies still have them).
But I've admittedly got a bit of a skewed perspective, because you have to play a bit more cautiously as an ODST than as a spartan (health doesn't regenerate), and I recently started playing on a level above normal on games (so, "Heroic" on ODST), which made the gameplay and "easy-to-die" experience waaay more stark than it might otherwise have been.
And while the engine feels visually tweaked, and for the most part I really liked things like the HUD mechanics, Modern Warfare or the Frostbite Engine are kind of the technical bars for cutting-edge FPS games, so I'm really looking forward to Microsoft's and/or Bungie's making a break from their current tech to do something technically even more exciting.
Going back to the positive aspects of gameplay, there are some intense, almost amazing moments where you have to retrench in intense firefights that genuinely made me feel good when I finally busted loose and wiped the floor with wave after wave of Covenant. My criticism is I wish the checkpoints were more deterministic, because while playing the game on "normal" mode would make replaying inconvenient, replaying on "Heroic" or "Legendary" is a non-trivial time-suck.
And while I said I mostly like the HUD mechanic in the game, it is a bit confusing, and I can't tell whether the mechanic is slightly different for each ODST member, or if it varied based on environment, or what the issue was, but there were times when it felt like both the standard and enhanced HUDs were versions of unusable in the heat of battle. Which sucked a bit.
And ODST falls prey to some sucky escort missions. I get irritated enough at bone-stupid AI either running too far ahead or falling too far behind, but when I'm doing a mission where Buck is my gunner, and it's not an AI, but a pathing issue that gets him stuck for 15 minutes in a box corner? Give me a break.
This a rambly, back-and-forth assessment ODST, but make no mistake, it's a really good title, and I'm glad Bungie tried something variant from their previous formulas, and included a lot of the mechanics from other titles (theater, file share, etc.).
Is it worth $60? No -- no title is. But I would wait until I try out the Firefight and online co-op modes before I decide whether it's any worse than other over-priced sixty-buck games. Not that anyone should pay $60 for games, between promos, Amazon pricing, etc. -- you can get new-release games for $40-50.
And for Halo 3 fans who haven't bought all of the add-on maps, you do get 24 additional maps as part of buying the game -- the 21 previously released, and 3 all-new jobbies. Not bad. | video-games_xbox |
killing zombies with a bunch of stuff.. how could you screw that up, right. oh boy. dead rising.... this game looks so fun, doesn't it? going around in a mall killing a bunch of zombies, it's a no-brainer. the problem is in the execution. the game starts off great, with you flying into a city that's been overtaken by zombies. you're a photojournalist and just want to cover the story. but you wind up having to fight off the zombies. very cool, and the way they do objects here is a great idea. you can pick up, say, a soccer ball which awesomely bounces off multiple zombies, injuring them. or break a potted plant over that zombie's head. the problem is, as fun as it sounds, it just isn't fun when you actually do it. for one thing, you have to go into an aim mode to use a gun or throw something. this would be OK except instead of fluidly going into aim mode in the direction you're facing (like a good game would have you do), you seem to move slightly to the left and then have to move your controller around to find the enemy again. unforgivable!!!
as far as the graphics, they're very nice. however, the text on the screen is very small. this might not be a problem if you have a newer TV with good clarity. mine is older and i had to get close to the TV to read the text. which brings me to the next issue with dead rising... it has a bunch of stories and quests and stuff. to me, this doesn't make much sense. if i wanted stories and quests, i could have played Oblivion. it's obvious they should have done quests in a simplified manner, by pointing out where to go on the map with an arrow and having you fight through zombies to get there. that would have provided simple honest fun. instead, they give you like a quest journal and a freakin' map!! i don't want to press an extra button to follow a map around in a game like this. they should leave the maps to silent hill or world of warcraft.
another thing - they have voice acting in the cutscenes, and then when you start playing, the characters only talk in text. HUH?! this is 2007, this is the powerful 360, and you're telling me we're still using TEXT instead of VOICE?! it screams "this was a rushed game."
there are too many complications to getting into the zombie-killing fun. if they had simplified this game and improved the controls, i would have liked it. but i got bored before 30 minutes of gameplay.
oh yeah, how could i forget the save system!!! as you can see, everyone hates the save system, and for good reason. i'm not the kind of person who has to save whenever i want, but in place of that i at least want a good checkpoint auto-saving feature. instead, when you die here, you have to go way back before the part you were playing, to the dialogue etc. before it. that is really annoying to me. every other game out there has a good checkpoint auto-save system but this one. again, it screams "this game was rushed." | video-games_xbox |
Even after years and years of playing the Xbox, I still could play it everyday. I have had an original Xbox ever since the day of November 15, 2001, before that I have had a Sega Genesis, Nintendo NES, Super Nintendo NES, an Amiga, an Amstrad CPC, a Commodore 64, a DOS, a Game Boy, N64, a Sega CD, an SNES, a Play Station 1, 2, 3, and possibly 4. I've played NBA Jam on my Sega Genesis for countless hours and I've played Street Fighter ever since 1987 to its latest release in 2012, each game for many hours a week. But what consoles are my favorite? Right now, it is just the Xbox 360, I've had both an Xbox and an Xbox 360. I've played the Xbox for the past 12 years every single week. Here are all of the features and how they work.
The Xbox 360 does not require an HDMI cable but I highly recommend buying a HDMI cable immediately after buying the Xbox 360 because the AV cable does not give you graphics that are current gen standard. An HDMI cable is available at any hardware store near you and it normally only costs 5-10$ so make sure to get it after buying the Xbox.
The Xbox 360's online service is called Xbox Live and it does cost money which is not that great in my opinion. But I'm not saying that it wasn't worth it. It can give you so many great features in games when you get a Gold membership that you wouldn't get if you didn't get the Gold membership. It is extremely useful for me since I play with my friends on Xbox Live roughly 60% of the time.
The Xbox 360 features apps where you can get a Netflix app and watch your Netflix movies and TV shows while the Xbox is on. It is a great feature to have. It also has other apps which I have not really used but they must be still useful. I don't use the apps feature since I mostly play with my friends and play games on my Xbox.
I recommend getting a second controller when you get an Xbox 360 so that when family members come by or when friends come by, you can play together and have a ton of fun. Another thing about the controllers is that you shouldn't forget to change the battery of the controller from time to time if you have a Wireless controller like me or it can really start acting up and bothering you constantly shutting off and you have to reconnect it over and over again.
You can download games and/or demos on your Xbox 360 by going over to the store. The downloads are relatively short compared to the PlayStation 3. When downloading a full game it can take about 1 hr 30 min- 2 hr but for a demo, it can take about 20 min- 40 min which I like about the Xbox 360.
The Kinect is a nice thing to have with your Xbox for sure. It can bring exercise into the equation like the Wii but without a controller. I play the Kinect all of the time with my children and we always have such an amazing time together. We play Big League Soccer, Tennis, Table Tennis, and Basketball together. It is essential for an Xbox 360 owner who likes to have some fun to have this wonderful feature.
I have a PlayStation 3 and a Wii as well and both are fun but the Xbox 360 to me is very fun and it is exciting and engaging. That is why I think that the Xbox 360 is an essential console for any fun-loving gamer out there. Have a great day or night y'all and I hope you enjoyed my review. | video-games_xbox |
Just started but I love it! -- Updated after main game play finished. I love most of the Lego video games (Lego Batman 1 and the two Indiana Jones games being the only ones I don't like). I wasn't going to get this game, but every time I saw a commercial I laughed. I decided to get the game at the last second so I bought it in the store this morning. I've only been through a couple of levels but this is a really fun world with a lot of fun characters and some interesting locations right now.
Okay, I've finished the main game play and am now doing "cleanup." My favorite thing about Lego video games is the cleanup. I have a cousin who usually plays them with me -- and he prefers the levels. I'm exactly the opposite. I'm really enjoying this world and I'm really enjoying playing the game. The storyline is pretty much exactly the same as the movie (which makes sense) but the game play is just as entertaining and just as addictive as all the others. So, while I enjoyed the game play I'm really looking forward to cleanup now.
I'm someone that will fixate on this game until I get it up to 100 percent. I do it with all the Lego games -- even if I have to go back months later. I'm still stuck on a few things for Lego Marvel (I have issues with flying, I don't know why). I know I will be playing this game whenever I have time over the next few weeks to mop it up and, from what I can tell, I'm going to enjoy every single minute of it.
I'm still doing cleanup -- and I'm enjoying the adventure of doing it. The truth is, I find a perverse sense of enjoyment of making Batman fight next to a mummy. I can't explain it. The game is such a hodgepodge of wonder, I just can't say enough. So, yes, a week later -- I'm still having a grand time with the game. With a three-day weekend coming up, I'm thinking the game is going to detract from spring cleaning. That's both a blessing and a curse.
While I like the main character, I'm honestly most excited about playing with Batman and Wonder Woman again. I'm easy to please like that.
Now I can't wait for Lego The Hobbit. Bring it on.
Okay, I'm about 75 percent done with the game (unfortunately, real life keeps intruding on my game playing). I do have one complaint -- and that it's there's no gold brick detector. I've come to rely on them when playing Lego games -- and I do miss it. There's no character token detector either -- and as I'm missing three characters, that would come in helpful at this point.
Also, I keep seeing people posting reviews saying they finished the main game play at 35 percent. I think that one person really finished the main game play at 35 percent and posted that and everyone else is stealing that number when they didn't really play the game. The truth is, I finished the main game play at 16 percent -- and that was including buying several characters -- so it wasn't just straight game play. I think that's a big discrepancy from the 35 percent everyone else keeps posting. I think it's too much of a coincidence that everyone keeps posting the same number -- when it would be virtually impossible for all these random reviewers to hit the same number in a game where you have to collect so many things. I'm just saying.
Okay, I thought I would come back and update this before my Lego Hobbit arrives in two weeks and I'm on to something new. I finished this to 100 percent about three weeks ago. The last gold brick was a pain to get, but most of the stuff in this game is really easy to complete. I had a great time with it. My only complaint is that I wish it had more tasks to complete. Right now, I would rate it ahead of the first Lego Batman and both Lego Indiana Jones. I would rate it on par with Lego Pirates of the Caribbean and the original Lego Star Wars (and sequel) and slightly behind Lego DC Batman 2, Lego Marvel, both Lego Harry Potters, Lego LOTR and Lego The Clone Wars -- and that's really only because there's not enough to do. Here's hoping that's not the problem with the Leog Hobbit game. | video-games_xbox |
Not bad, but not what it should have been. When comparing the three systems neck and neck and side-by-side Xbox has taken a while to get up the standards that I'm holding the system to based on Microsoft's over inflated system stats and the rather blatant dishonesty about the systems actual performance. Its still not there yet, I am still at a state of "prove it" with Microsoft, though the games (and controllers, thankfully) have been getting much better since launch, Dead to Rights is a prime example of why I don't think the XBox is the most powerful console of the bunch. Maybe its developer laziness but there is a lot of Xbox games that have these types of flaws. Before I get into what is wrong with this game, however, let me address why I like it despite its many flaws.
The game has a very strong story to it, granted its nothing new or revolutionary, we've seen this good-cop-gets-framed-breaks-out-of-jail-and tries-to-prove-himself-innocent in countless movies in the past. This game is kind of a mix of Max Payne and the Fugitive. Although there is nothing innovative or revolutionary about the story it is still very good, and it flows together very well. It has brilliant dialogue, and great voice acting.
The game play is where this game really shines. The great gunplay gave me a huge adrenaline rush. It's not easy for a gamer of my tastes. I don't play games like this very often, so I'm not terribly good at them, or wasn't. I like how you HAVE TO use your environment against your enemies, from having to hide behind counters, and walls to tossing flammable canisters at the enemies, and shooting them at just the right moment, even taking hostages and using them a human shields. Once you get the hang of how to use your environment to save your hide the difficulty drops significantly. This game is very fun to play.
Sadly it is not the prettiest game to watch. For a game that is so heavily reliant on story and dialogue the fact that the character's lack facial animations during in game real time cut-scenes is a sore disappointment. This, being an XBox game, should not have been an issue. Also, the only good polygon model for this game is Slate and Shadow. Every other character in this game looks utterly terrible. I expect much more from Namco. The cinematic feel of the game that they were trying for suffered greatly because of this. The presentation to this otherwise great game is so bad that I cannot justify giving it more than three stars. It may play like a next gen console game, but it looks like a slightly improved N64 game, blurry textures included! Its sad really because this game could have been much better than it is, especially with its presentation. Thankfully for Namco, the game is still a blast to play. It would have been nice if the characters had facial animation, and lip-synching to back up its story. | video-games_xbox |
True Crime Streets of Hong Kong Lives. You can't look at Sleeping Dogs as a stand alone title
It's the 3rd chapter in the True Crime: series after things went south between the developers and Activision
The third chapter in the True Crime series was doa
Luckily for the gaming community Square Enix bought the license and the original True Crime team also joined Square Enix
And we got True Crime III now re-branded as Sleeping Dogs
In terms of how far True Crime evolved between the Original True Crime: Streets of L.A. up to Sleeping Dogs
it's awe inspiring I think this game does GTA better then the last two GTA did
I bought the last gen version of Sleeping Dogs for the XBox360 the week it came out
i only bought the Definitive Edition mostly cause i got a great deal on it
Is it a amazing Remastering or a cheap money grab ???
It's in the middle
Graphics: Is a mixed bag
at times the game looks flat out stunning (the rain effects are flawless)
other times the game has/had bugs and glitches (by now i'd hope there's been a patch or two?) other times the game looks like the 360 version
Keep in mind last time i played it was March 2015
Audio is awesome DTS 5.1 (i wish they added new licensed music to the radio stations)
as far as open world games this is really bad in terms of music it only works if you live in Asia
They should've jazzed up the soundtrack for more regions imo
The Story is really solid! It's written like a Hollywood big budget film (It's one of the best story driven open-world titles ever!)
The Controls: are a B-
The third person hand to hand combat and gun play is strong
But, the driving seems off to me (some of the races i beat on the 360 are stacked and unbalanced on this version
The Controls are Not balanced if you compare them to the previous version
Lots of bang for your buck!
The one major saving grace for this version you get all the DLC on the disc (plus lots of extras clothes some very cool looking)
the first story driven dlc Nightmare in North Point is still a fun little added chapter
the second major story driven dlc
Zodiac Tournament is a massive broken mess (keep in mind i played this chapter March 2015) during the half way point the game either froze up on me or crashed my console........... i tired to get info regarding this massive bug but, contacting United Front Games was a pain in the neck so i put the game down and tapped-out I'd thinking by now approaching Thanksgiving '15 there has been a few patches for this problem?!?!
Overall is it worth a double dip? that all depends if you miss the previous Gen version my answer to you would be Yes without a doubt
It's a average so-called remastering with all the dlc at most you should pay around $15.00
I love this game but, this version is far from perfect and released way to soon 9/10 | video-games_xbox |
Well that was kind of a let down. I came late to the Mass Effect series. I was given Mass Effect 1 & Mass Effect 2 as a present and they sat on the shelf along with my other backlogged games. Around October, 2011 I started to play Mass Effect 1 and was blown away by the story and overall game mechanics. It wasn't perfect but it was my first experience of Bioware RPG on the Xbox. Life got in the way so I did not complete Mass Effect 1 until January. By this time, hyped advertisements for Mass Effect 3 were everywhere. I decided to start Mass Effect 2 to be able to play Mass Effect 3. Wow, I think I loved Mass Effect 2 more than number 1. I love the optional side missions to pick up more teammates and you can control whether they live or die at the end. By the time I finished Mass Effect 2, I was more than ready to get Mass Effect 3. I bought the Limited Edition of Mass Effect 3 and played it as soon as I got it. I just finished Mass Effect 3 and here is my review:
Limited Edition: The content was not worth the price in my opinion. The best part about the set was the tin box and the Art book which I did enjoy. The DLC in my mind was a bit of a rip-off. I was expecting more content for the extra $10 but all I got was a contained map with a switch or two with a couple of wave of enemies. Then you get Javiks, the Prothean. I was hoping to be able to discover more about the Prothean race through the DLC. I was really disappointed. If I had to do it all over again, I probably wouldn't have bought the Limited Edition. 2 out of 5
Graphics: Amazing graphics. It is not a huge step but I can definitely see the difference between ME1 to ME3. Graphics get 5 out of 5 for me.
Game Play: I do not like that they added the extra level on the Normandy. I hate the fact that if I want to mod my guns, I have to go down there. They should've left the armory on the Galaxy Map level of the ship. Another thing is the cover action they added. It doesn't seem to flow like Gears of War. Sometime you get into cover by accident while you're trying to run away. Other times, you pop out of cover to shoot and then the character just stand there when you release the trigger. It doesn't happen all the time but enough to be annoying. Yet another thing is the mission list. Why oh why did they change it from ME2? ME2 got it right. I want a checklist of things I have done and things I need to do to complete that task. Not that hard when you already have that exact system in place in your previous game. AND the running in this game is freaking annoying. My Sheppard was waddling more than running. I have more to rant about but for now Game Play get a 3 out of 5 for me.
Controls: I don't think ME3 controls flowed as well as ME2. I think they tried to do too much and the end result was an OK control setup. Again, the cover system did not work well 100% of the time. I don't know if it was the game mechanics or the actual controls but it seemed broken at times. Melee combat was ok. Jumping over obstacles did not work correctly all the time. When the controls work, it is fine and similar enough to ME2. I do like the Kinect voice control. I did use it for the first couple of missions but the slight lag got annoying. I do have to give Bioware props for being innovative enough to integrate this function. I can see this being a nice feature if they can somehow reduce the lag. 3 out of 5 for me.
Story: Finally the story. I actually enjoyed the story until the last couple of minutes of the game. Some part of it was actually emotionally gripping. The curing of the Genophage mission was great in my book. I'm slightly sad how that mission ended. I was so invested in this trilogy it wasn't even funny given the fact that I didn't even touch it until last year. I was so very disappointed on how the game ended.
***SPOILER***
First off, I picked the destroy option and it went through the cut scene and ended. Now the Normandy crash landed and out comes Liara and Javik. They were part of the ground forces trying to get to the Citadel with me. How in the world did they get on the Normandy when the Normandy was in space fighting the Reapers? Another thing, there was an entire galactic force right on the doorsteps of earth fighting the Reapers. Did they make it home when the Mass Relays got destroyed? How can Shepherd survive at the end when the Citadel blew up? Who in the world is the kid that created the Reapers? What happened that cause him/them to create the Reapers? Is EA/Bioware giving us this crap ending so they can sell us more DLC? After that crappy ending, I decided to go on to YouTube to watch the other two ending because I did not want to play it again. They're pretty much the same like all the other users mentioned with slight variation of colors and movie sequences. The story gets 3.0 out of 5 due to the crappy ending.
Overall, I am giving this a 3 out 5. The game itself was not bad at all but coming off the high of playing ME2, ME3 just dropped the ball in so many spots. On top of that, the ending was a huge letdown for the amount of investment I made in time and effort across the three games. Like Chrono Trigger back in the day, I was hoping ME3 would have endings more like that with 11 or 12 possible variation. Sadly, ME3 couldn't come close to my childhood's favorite RPG. | video-games_xbox |
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