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Is it worth it? In short, yes. In long. Let's face facts: if you are a fan of Halo 3 and the Halo series in general, you probably already have this game. You probably preordered the game the day it was listed. In fact, you're probably not even reading this review because you're playing the game right now.
But if you're a more cautious fan, or someone not familiar with the series, you're reading the reviews to see if it's worth it. That is, after all, why reviews are created and why people read them. So here I am; a person who went out on the frontlines, bought the game, played it, and is here to influence your buying decision.
Halo 3: ODST is actually two products in one: ODST itself, and the "Halo 3: Mythic" disc which includes the entire multiplayer portion of Halo 3, with all downloadable content and three new maps. Neither product is worth $60 alone, but then that's the point. We'll talk about the actual ODST first, as that's what you're really buying the package for anyway.
ODST is a new campaign for Halo 3 that takes place during the events of Halo 2. By the name, you can tell that you play as an ODST trooper, which is basically the SWAT team of the Halo universe for those who don't know. Specifically, you play as "The Rookie", who is a mute (because he's supposed to be you! Get it? I'm sick of this). You wander about the destroyed remnants of New Mombasa in an open-world fashion, finding objects that trigger flashbacks of what happened while you were out cold for six hours after a drop. How one person is supposed to gather all that from a single object is beyond me, but hey, whatever works. The atmosphere of the non-linear overworld is not that of a Halo game, and it's pulled off very well-I especially like how it is tied in with the last part of the game.
The actual levels, however, feel just like a Halo game and can get a bit repetitive at times, consisting mainly of shooting stuff. This is not to say that it's boring, not at all, and the gameplay occasionally ventures into new and different territories, but none of it is especially unique or new.
The graphics are improved to the point where you can notice a difference if you play the original Halo 3 after playing ODST, but they still aren't exactly terrific-the terrible face models come to mind. However, the lighting is good, and the art design makes up for the outdated engine.
All of the multiplayer in ODST is co-op. This may disappoint some people who wanted to kill each other as a new character, but the work put into everything else probably explains its absence. The main campaign can be played co-op with up to 4 people, but the main attraction of co-op is Firefight. The premise is simple: you and three other people kill as many enemies as you can in an arena. Matches last long (2-3 hours) and can range from ridiculously easy to impossibly difficult. You can only play with friends/friends of friends, but this isn't a setback as long as you have good friends. This is the main reason you'll be popping in this disc after you're done with the campaign.
Now, let's talk about the Mythic disc. The Mythic disc is basically Halo 3 without the campaign, as the 360 even says you're just playing Halo 3. It includes Forge, the theater-everything. The good thing about the disc (and the reason it's included) is that it has all downloadable maps on it, plus three new maps that aren't on Xbox Live yet. The inclusion of the disc is a mixed blessing: for those who don't own Halo 3, it's a godsend, but it just makes the people who paid for and downloaded the maps feel bad because they have to buy them again. And for those people, it's really just three maps that they're getting. For thirty bucks. That's ten bucks a map. It's The Orange Box all over again.
All things considered, you should buy this game if you don't have Halo 3 and like FPS games. If you do have Halo 3, and you have all the multiplayer maps, it might feel like a ripoff, but just think of it as a bonus. But then again, if you have Halo 3 and all the maps, you probably already have this game.
Halo 3: ODST certainly isn't the greatest game of all time, nor did it live up to the enormous pre-release hype. But what it is is a game that is worth what you pay for (which is only fifty bucks here on Amazon), and in this day and age, that's about all you can ask for.
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video-games_xbox
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Xbox One Generation, A GAMER'S CONSOLE INDEED. Ok, so the main point of this review, besides confirming Xbox One as a Heck of a Fun Video Game is also to make perfect clear to all of the fanboys, doubtful ones and competition partial intrigues that Xbox One is A GAMER'S CONSOLE among other things. So let me begin this review by stating that I have mine for almost a month and that I preferred the PS3 compared to Xbox 360 which will help my case of not having a fanboy opinion. Now here is what I have to say about the console features:
PERFORMANCE AND EXPERIENCE: The Xbox One performance did not let me down. Games are loaded fairly quickly and it never stood long for Downloads. The console is SOOOO silent and the Blu ray drive works like a charm. Regarding the specifications of Xbox One, in my opinion there is no difference despite people saying that is "a landslide victory to PS4 for RAM" and other stuff. I am not a graphic engineer, but people love to speculate how PS4 has a "magically" superior performance. NOT TRUE, I played Fifa14 for both and there is no difference, and for the other games will be the same, if not now, in the near future.
GRAPHICS: That's the controversial part of the comment that complements the above topic, mainly because of confused opinion of other's regarding particular aspects. Let me explain. There are games that were designed for the same pixel fulfillment (1080 p NFS Rivals, Fifa 14 and NBA 2K14) for both consoles and there are some that were not (BF 4, COD Ghosts, Assassins Creed 4), so for the first 3, there are no differences and for the last 3, the minimum differences will disappear with time when both consoles consistently launch games at 60 fps and 1080p and, in a distant future, 4k ultra HD quality. So in summary, differences are almost imperceptible and will disappear after the launch era.
GAMES: That's a major factor that made me choose Xbox One. There are really great expectations for some games exclusive for Xbox One that I could not resist. Namely, Killer Instinct, Titanfall, Sunset Overdrive, Forza 5, Quantum Break and Ryse. The games that I have now is Fifa and Killer Instinct. Killer Instinct it has been so well designed that I am actually learning how to develop long combos because of Dojo mode. It is an approach of a fighting game that really teaches you go all the way and I am enjoying this. It is still waiting Fulgore to enable Arcade mode, but this mix of Beta test and actual game is still fun. Regarding Fifa, either you know or you don't know what I am talking about how fun this game is.
CONTROLLER: The controller of Xbox One is really great. People are even commenting that is better than PS4. I have used both and don't think there is much of a difference, I just like the Xbox One better by personal preference. But the most impressive improvement was compared to the Xbox 360 controller. I hated that controller, maybe because I had a ps3 and when I changed to 360 in fighting games I could not do anything, but when I used the Xbox One, I adapted in SECONDS. There is the matter that it does not come with built in batteries and that's a downer. But here is what almost no one is thinking, if you buy rechargeable batteries you gonna fix your problem forever. They cost 14 bucks 4 batteries with recharger and you don't have to spend 30-50 bucks with Microsoft's built in batteries. So there is my money saver for you guys ; ). It comes with mic headphones to talk on line, which I felt it does the job just fine. Oops, almost forgot. Did I mention you can navigate with your Smartglass app? Yeah you can, and when you have to type some message to friends, just use your keyboard from your smartphone, that is soooo neat.
KINNECT: This might be the main reason why I went for One and not PS4. I used to think it was worthless on 360, but the home entertainment synchrony is really the way of the future. The voice commands to navigate and get in and out of games without having to quit is next gen stuff that we saw in "Minority Report" or "I, Robot". You can snap and do 2 things at the same time and you can navigate without your controller using your voice. The self configuration was quick and precise for Kinect commands. The only issue is sometimes turning On, but that affects very little my experience. The navigation using Kinect added to the output port to switch to TV makes an "all in one experience entertainment system" that seems to perk people up, although I haven't connected myself.
But here is the Cherry on the top: GAMES COMES DESIGNED FOR IN VOICE COMMANDS. That's an advantage that you can attribute to a next gen console. In Fifa you can say "Pressure on the ball" and configure to be ultra defensive, change formation and make the players press who has the ball or whatever combo set up you want. There are several individual tactical voice commands that can save you miss a play while tapping analog directional to change your tactics. In BF 4 for instance you can say "engage" and your peers will literally "drop the bomb" with choppers and the whole Shebang. The last example is in Dead Rising 3, if your dog barks in the basement, the hordes of zombies will discover you and feast you to the bones. You're NOT GONNA FIND THAT IN PS4 games, even if you purchase the eye.
PRICE: That can be the only actual con of Xbox One. That's a little pricey. They probably should have it at $450-480 to make it reasonable, but Bill Gates is already giving money so maybe he does not need to fine tune the perfect profit ration by lowering the price and selling considerably more. But people, lets cut the crap that I want to wait to lower the price to buy a next gen VG. THAT WILL TAKE A COUPLE OF YEARS, so be smart and use your amazon store card and pay within 6 months to go smoothly, but don't give me that bullsh*t of is too expensive ... If you don't like the game library that's acceptable, but frankly, if you don't study or don't work and had lots of money and free time, you might be able to purchase almost 30 games that are out there and play them until 10 more are launched spread this year, so good luck with your lack of option problem!
ONLINE FEATURES: I can say that paying Xbox Live (Please people, pay $40 her at amazon for Gold and not 60 someplace else) it works well and maybe doesn't have as much as free games as PS +, but it might have in the future, who knows? The other aspect that PS + have an advantage is the game streaming. Apparently you will be able to pay and access old console games and playing them by stream. However, my friend Bill will not watch that parade and do nothing to be part of it. That will probably be part of Xbox One any time now.
So, in summary its an awesome console, that is similar to PS4 with the advantage of having in voice commands in games and fun home entertainment control by Kinect. Smartglass is an app that makes even more fun and can save controller batteries while navigating out of games. The downers are the price and does not comes with built in batteries, that can be ameliorated by spending 14 bucks or less with rechargeable batteries + charger. I would only also purchase the PS4 if I had most of my friends with PS4to play on line with them.
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video-games_xbox
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The best way Bungie could have made their final Game. I will start out by saying I am a 17 year old who plays with his friends and family online. I have always been a First Person Shooter fan. Modern Warfare 2 was the best, But recently laggers and glitches have ruined the game. I looked for a game to play until Black Ops comes out. I will start out by saying the console in it self is AMAZEING and I find it a great deal for 400 bucks. I had a old Arcade with a 20gb hard drive. So the 250gb is a great upgrade.
Console:
For 400 bucks this bundle is a steal you are getting..
. A 250gb Xbox Console (300 Bucks)
. 2 Halo reached themed controllers (They Look amazeing) 50 dollars per controller = (100 Bucks)
. A copy of Halo Reach. (60 bucks)
That adds up to $460. While you are paying $400. Virtually you are saving 60 bucks. Which is the price of a new game!
Gameplay.
Forge: Forge has faced a graphical overhaul since Halo 3. All of the common things that were tricks and hard for some people to do in Halo 3, have now been built into the game making it much easier for these tasks to be performed. You can allow objects to float (phased) Normal ( Halo 3 style ) And one other that allows you to put objects through the environment.
Forge ***** (5 stars) It is going to be insane what the community comes up with.
Multiplayer:
I have yet to play much Multiplayer but the games I did play were much more relaxing than Modern Warfare 2. My first game I thought there had to be a lag! Because Halo Reach is much slower paced ( In a good way). And all the people that thought Jet Pack noobs would rule the game? Honestly very little people were actually using them. I rate the online. *****(5 Stars)
Campaign: After reading reviews and playing the first level with a friend I must say. This is Bungies best campaign for any Halo game to date. Your spartan you create for multiplayer is taken into campaign. And any cut scenes show the except spartan you create (its awesome) . And the story I have read is a great prequel to the Halo Series.
Console: This is the new Xbox 360 Redesign it looks amazeing with the silver paintjob. The Custom sounds I thought would be annoying are actually pretty epic. Im not a massive halo fan but they are a great addition to the console. Its whisper quiet and I would highly reccomend getting it. Build in Wifi is a plus. I had no connection issues whatsoever.
Overview
Graphics 5/5 (Much better than Halo 3)
Online 5/5 (A big change from Halo 3 but a amazing change)
Firefight 5/5 ( EXTREMELY fun with alot of friends)
Campaign 5/5 ( A great prequel to Halo)
Game Overall 5/5 The Greatest Halo Game I have ever played.
Console Overall 5/5
PS: Sorry for the bad review this is my first game review.
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video-games_xbox
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The Game That Should Have Been. The NBA Live series has evolved as everyone's darling, ever since the inclination of Live 03 that introduced Freestyle play. Sure, it changed video game basketball, but it also put the franchise a step back from realism, from the old days of Live 95, 98, and the best one I still think overall, Live 2000.
In Live 06, we still see too many hyperactive glitches that should have (and could have) been fixed. The game engine, although still good, seems a bit tweaked out: in Live 04 it was the "pro hop," in Live 05 it was the Freestyle Air, and now in Live 06 it is Freestyle Superstar. Although fun and interesting to play, I found it NBA Streetish. I was also disappointed in the lack of creativity EA has done. Compared to its competitor, they could have gone the extra mile and done more.
Steve Kerr and Marv Albert do a good job in the booth, but why couldn't there be a female reporter on the sidelines every now and then? And what's up with the intros? Pretty lame. The current rosters loaded on the game are way out dated. It's a good thing we can update them through Xbox Live network.
The Slam-dunk and All-Star Weekend is basically identical to last year's version, with a few exceptions of dunks and setting. Kenny Smith provides a good voice for this event. The games themselves, including the Rookie game, is an all out "run and gun" game without any ability to change the settings.
The Franchise mode is excellent. However, I still can't understand why EA has cut off the ability to import college players from March Madness. Their competitor does it with ease on their pro and college game!
A positive aspect of Live 06 is the smoothness of the graphics and game play. It does not play like a basketball game should be played, but it is still fun. The dunks are finally inspiring this time around, and sound like real dunks.
A last after thought on this game is that we have something better as basketball gaming junkies: we get a whole new version with the Xbox 360 in November. I can't wait! Live 06 for the current gen is an improvement over all the other series, but it is what NBA Live 05 should have been if worked on just a little bit longer.
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video-games_xbox
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It really is supposed to be an RPG, folks. I had my doubts about this game, because of the pro reviews. But it's a bit older now, and the price is way down, so I picked it up. I gotta say, I'm finding it to be a lot better than I expected.
Lows:
- Graphics are NOT awesome.
- Combat system is hit-and-miss.
- Conversations sometimes force unknown reactions.
I really like the way Obsidian did the conversation elements in the game, giving you multiple options, and timing you, so that there is a level of tension. It makes it feel like the conversations are at least as important to the game as the action levels, which is as it should be. Unfortunately, frequently the options for replies are vaguely labelled, and occasionally you are forced to choose a response before you even are sure what the question will be. Overall, though, it is great to feel like everything you say to any given person can affect your relationship with them, and ultimately the outcome of the game.
Combat controls are clunky, and the shooting is frustrating. That said, I keep in mind that I'm not playing a First Person Shooter, and work around the rough spots as best I can. For example, my first character was spec'd with points in Pistols and Rifles, so for most gunfights I can shoot it out close range or long range. But when I've got three or more guys after me at once (FREQUENTLY), it is simpler to just take cover, wait for one to get close, and then take him out hand to hand, and then sprint over to the next guy and do the same. There are a lot of specialized skills available for each weapon type that make it easier (Chain Shot!), but to switch skills you have to basically pause the game and work your way through a menu to find the skill you want to execute. It takes away from the action and tension to the point that I'd rather just duke it out or toss grenades.
Highs
+ HEAVY storyline driven espionage drama
+ Non-linear gameplay with multiple endings
+ Relationship-heavy focus on every conversation
Basically, you play this game for the story. It is supposed to be an RPG, so if you are playing it as an action game or a shooter, you might be disappointed. Mostly, I try to think of the action sections as a means to get to the next plot point. Developers should have spent more time polishing the action aspects, and this would have been a much better game.
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video-games_xbox
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Overall Experience Enhancer. Cons: The wire. I figured I would get the cons out of the way first. That is the only one and of course I knew it had a wire when i purchased it.
I game on a Benq monitor since it has a very fast refresh rate. So I sit rather close to my Xbox which means a wire is not an issue. Prior to the A40, I had the A50, then most of the different variants of Turtle Beach over the years. Turtle Beach does not let their headsets get loud enough like they once did years ago, so even though I try them once in a while, I most likely will never buy them. I like loud on some game types.
Why switch to this? Well, on the Xbox One, most of these headsets are notorious for having mic problems. Mostly due to the horrible puck that plugs into the controller. They would cause echos for everyone in the lobby, stop functioning at all requiring an Xbox restart, etc. This A40 works via the USB connection to the Xbox for the Mic, so even if the controller is powered down, you still have MIC abilities. The wire from the A40 goes directly to the Mix Amp. Not once in a few weeks has it cut out on me, stopped working, etc. The only issue is that once in a while, when you power up the Xbox, you have to recycle power on the MixAmp if you left it on the entire time. I suspect that is more a Xbox issue not detecting the USB connection. It does not happen often enough to complain too much about.
Sound is just as good as any TB. Better technically because since it is wired, there is no wireless interference causing pops and static.
It is a lot of money. Then again, if you are looking here, you already spend a lot of money on games, consoles, etc. Great gaming is about the overall experience. Both site and sound must be in sync. I still do not fathom how people can game on a nice TV, but not experience directional sound. Success at a first person shooter requires this.
Anyway, I think they are worth it. At least until something better comes along.
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video-games_xbox
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Everything a Metal Gear fan could want (almost. Metal Gear Solid is a series that still holds up because Hideo Kojima is a master of his craft. Plain and simple. The story telling is harder to defend of course, but the actual GAME is rock solid. One thing that has always stuck out in my mind is the attention to detail that goes into these games. There's just so many hidden little extras and bizarre jokes mixed with in with seriously good stealth that feels well thought-out. The game's never seem rushed or under-done, everything is right where it should be.
Here's a small wrap up of each game:
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Metal Gear Solid 2: A lot of fans didn't like this game on release due to the main character swap that occurs early in the game. And to be fair Solid Snake is a hard (near impossible) act to follow... but in retrospect Raiden is solid character who grows a lot throughout the course of the game, and when it's all over you'll grow to like him. Well I think you will. The boss battle are not as numerous, but they're as great as the original Metal Gear Solid (except fro Psycho Mantis of course) and overall I truly believe this is an amazing game with some genuinely awesome twists. That crazy final sword fight, those underwater sections, the weird stuff that happens when the computer virus takes over... there's just so much to love. Plus the attention to detail in the confined areas you constantly find yourself in is brilliant. No corner is ignored, not detail overlooked - Kojima and his team put a lot of effort into this game and it shows. And that final after the credits twist... simply excellent.
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Metal Gear Solid 3: While the core gameplay remains the same in the third game the differences are also pretty significant. Set in the 60s the overall feel of the game is that of a Cold War paranoia, James Bond outlandishness and surviving in extreme isolation. While you always fight against the odds in a Metal Gear game, here it feels like Snake is truly alone. You have to manage Snake's wounds (treating burns and broken bones), switch camo to match your environment and even collect food (which can spoil!) to maintain your energy levels. But don't this fool you, there's still plenty of lighter moments and nice little winks at the camera mixed in with the extreme scenes of violence and torture. What make Metal Gear Solid 3 so great is how badly Snake is beaten down and how much it makes you want to get revenge. And then, after all that, that unforgettable ending... I WON'T spoil it, but it's just brilliant.
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Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker: Out of all the Metal Gear Solid games I've invested the most time in this one. The story is quite possibly the strongest in the series - it's like the transition from Anakin Skywalker to Darth Vader (but done SO much better than those crap movies). A man without a country and nothing to lose finds something to fight for and becomes the number one enemy of a country he nearly died for. Snake hit rock bottom here, more than he did in Metal Gear Solid 3, but his rise to power is made that much better because of this.
The game itself is your fairly typical Metal Gear Solid fare, but the added option of recruiting soldiers and managing your own mercenary squad is a lot of fun. Like collecting Pokemon you'll find yourself trying to secure stronger team members and using them to build your army. The core gameplay alone is great, but this addition pushes this game over the edge and makes it truly great.
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So what's missing? The original Metal Gear Solid. I understand there may be emulation issues or something like that, but seriously, it's sorely missed in this otherwise great collection. If you think about it you only play as Solid Snake for about half an hour in Metal Gear Solid 2... the rest is all Naked Snake/Big Boss or Raiden. That's a shame, but hey, it's not a deal breaker.
This is an amazing series. If this is your first time I truly envy you (it would so great to play it again, but start with Metal Gear Solid 3, move on to Peace Walker and finish with Metal Gear Solid 2) and if your a returning fan you'll love these games all over again. HD or not, these games are awesome, but the fact that they look this good and come with so many extras (like the original Metal Gear games from the MSX) just solidifies this collection as a must have.
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video-games_xbox
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VERY Fun! Just make sure you have at least 6 feet or more space. Kinect with Kinect Adventures Bundle
In this bundle, you get the Kinect sensor, a wiring adapter for older Xbox 360 consoles which also includes the wire you need for the newer Xbox 360 S(Slim) console, and a sealed Kinect Adventures game.
Installing the Kinect sensor on my Xbox 360S 250GB took a few moments, as the cable fits into the console directly without any fuss. Although I purchased my Xbox 360S over 2 years ago, it still had to download an update to the software to work with the Kinect sensor.
I decided to buy the Kinect after seeing all the TV advertisements for Nike Kinect, Fitness Evolved, and Zumba Fitness. I took measurements all around the house to figure out a way to have the Kinect work properly. I had to reorganize my office to fit the Kinect sensor. The minimum space requirement of 6 feet is not a joke, although it is able to see most of my movements about 4-5 feet away. However, make no mistake 6 feet is a solid minimum for single player mode. I have not attempted multiplayer, but I hear 8 feet is required along with ample lateral space.
Luckily the cord length of the Kinect is more than enough even for more remote Xbox locations. I have my console located farther from the display due to my office layout and the Kinect cable length is more than long enough.
The tracking of the Kinect seems ok. I find it unintuitive to navigate the "Metro" menu interface, and it often confuses itself as to which of my hands is going up to command it. For instance, in Zumba Fitness Core, if I want to change my speed or step lesson, it will take a moment to see which hand I am raising and it isn't always accurate.
I definitely recommend a larger room for the Kinect, you will need at a minimum of 6 feet of space between yourself and the Kinect, and preferably 6-8 feet of width as well. Make no mistake though, it is still a very fun way to play active games and burn some calories in the process. Just learning a few steps in Zumba Fitness Core, I was breaking a sweat! I normally run and cycle outdoors to burn an average of 3000-4000 calories a week, and I wanted to play the Kinect games to work other muscles and have some fun indoors. I have yet to be disappointed.
Overall: 5/5 stars, a lot of fun! The drawbacks are that you need a decent size room to play in. Also note that with the next-generation Xbox coming out in late 2013, the Kinect may be obsolete and replaced by new accessories. Either watch for deals later on, or wait for the next generation of hardware and software.
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video-games_xbox
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Great game, one flaw in the story though. I thought this was a great game, if you ask me its up at the top with Halo and Halo 2. First of all there is a flaw in the story, the first level takes place two years after all the other levels like a prologue. one of the people in your squad (im not gonna say his name or i will ruin it for you)one of the guys in your squad died in the last level, but yet hes still in the 1st level with you wich takes place after all of the other levels.
I thought the AI was alright but in some parts of the game you see your guys trying to shoot the enemy but all they're shooting is the wall in front of them. i noticed sometimes they were standing right by the enemy and weren't even shooting at them, so some of the time i found i had to kill the enemy by myself. But most of the time your squad is pretty effective. I really got into the story and when people in your squad die you actually kinda feel sad and you feel like you want to inflict as much pain and casualties on the enemy as possible.
Some parts of the environment annoyed me, for example you cant jump over a log or a short wall, you always have to walk around. there are some plus's though, you can see dust come off of where your bullet hit and when you shoot water the water actually reacts like it would in real life. The game was visually stunning it really brings you into what war is all about. All the time you hear bullets wizzing by your head and then all of a sudden a mortar round blows up the guy next to you. This game is so realistic, sometimes i thought i was in the game shooting nazis.
I think this game is the best WWII game ive ever played, and yes i have all of the MOH's.i don't have Live so i wouldnt know much about online play. I would definitely recommend getting this game, its worth the money, you won't be dissapointed. I just wish there were some more checkpoints in the game. But overall a great game!!!
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video-games_xbox
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Lightning Returns: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. In Square Enix's much anticipated conclusion to the FFXIII trilogy, Lightning Returns gets some things right and some things wrong. First up, the good:
1. Combat system - fun, fast-paced, highly customizable with many great outfits, weapons, and abilities.
2. Blow-you-away graphics and a big, beautiful world with cities and wildernesses to explore.
3. New Game + feature allowing you to keep the gear and items you acquired in previous playthroughs so subsequent plays are either easier or harder, your choice.
Then there's the bad:
1. Constantly ticking in-game clock keeps the game fast-paced and urgent, but forces you to prioritize your activities and interferes with leisurely exploration.
2. Boring MMO-style fetch-this-type side quests featuring bad writing and cheesy voice-acting. Most of the cutscenes for these were very boring and tedious, and frankly, made little sense. You can't really skip them, though, as they are your main way to level up Lightning's parameters - i.e. HP, strength, and magic.
3. Killing mobs in the game is something of a formality, as you get nothing for doing it but some gil and items you need for the aforementioned side quests. With such a great combat system, why would they do this?!
And finally, the ugly:
1. C'mon, Square Enix, we're all familiar with your staff's love affair with complicated metaphysical plots and themes, but the constant religion and God-bashing is officially overdone. Can we please get a story soon that doesn't involve tons of religious imagery and demon deities that need to be destroyed? Read a couple of books, guys. There's a ton of creative options out there.
2. Will the real Snow and Hope please stand up? So many of my fave characters from the first story are all but unrecognizable in Lightning Returns and unfortunately stay that way. We get it that living 500-1,000 years with regrets sucks, but there should have been at least a glimmer of their former personalities somewhere. Take Hope, for example. Adult Hope from the second game was way cooler than the whiny one of FFXIII or the robotic one of Lightning Returns. Give him back!
3. 99% of the adornments in the game for Lightning to wear to customize her look. All I can say is, seriously? An afro and a beard? Also, why the heck can't I sell the ones I don't want so I can at least see at a glance what I might actually give her to wear.
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video-games_xbox
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Comparisons are futile. PDO = good. Don't stop reading yet. Comparisons are futile because PDO is what Halo and Splinter Cell are not. PDO is an on-rails shooter. Asking "which is better" is like asking which is better out of FIFA Soccer 2003 and NHL 2003. It all comes down to waht style of game you'd rather play. (For my vote, PDO)
Anyway. PDO.
Great graphics, complete with showing-off-for-the-hell-of-it water effects. Sound is... different. Remember, Panzer Dragoon is trying to be its own world. This own world has its own style of music (as opposed to "cheesy 90 videogame" as someone decided) and its own language, Panzerese. (No, it's not Japanese. The Japanese people playing this game will get as much out of the commentary as you do. Infact, less, seeing as Panzerese is made chiefly of parts of ancient Greek and Latin)
Gameplay... wow. This is a difficult game. Any XBoxers expecting a Smilebit game to be easy (after JSRF) can think again. It does get a bit easier once you master what dragon you should use when, though. At any rate, this is where it loses half a star for me . Not because of the main game difficulty, which I think is perfectly placed (and I suck at these kinds of games normally), but because of the Pandora's Box subgames. GUH. Some of these things appear to be programmed specifically to frustrate. Short, yet almost impossible. So, you find yourself replaying the same 30 seconds of gameplay. Over. And over. And OVER.
As for longevity. Well. Pandora's Box is there to come back to even once you beat the story. Those frustrating extra missions are spiced up with the inclusion of the original Sega Saturn Panzer Dragoon game (1995), some more tolerable subgames, picture and movie galleries, and text encyclopedias. These last three, though, I think you need to be a Panzer Dragoon nut to really appreciate. And I am not.
Other half a star lost here.
Anyhow. Good game, not best ever. Certainly best rail shooter ever. Certainly my favourite shooter on the Xbox. But not best game ever. Ah well.
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video-games_xbox
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Great Idea, Poor Quality. I was lucky enough to find this controller at BestBuy when it was backordered, came back home very excited, and the controller was a bit of a disappointment from the start. Just as several other reviewers had noted, some of the buttons aren't very responsive especially when you hold it down for a couple seconds. All I play is black ops, and whenever I am in the chopper gunner holding down the trigger, the gun will "skip".
After 10days of using this controller, I was feeling pretty comfortable with it. However, the right stick decided to act up. I usually play on 7 sensitivity and whenever I have my sensitivity over 6, my screen would jitter downwards. This doesn't happen when I'm at sensitivity 5 and lower, but what's the point of the controller if I can't even play at my normal sensitivty? It gets really annoying when you start losing gunfights because your aim goes from upper body to the ground.
The programmable buttons are a good idea, the placement and design of them are questionable, and the responsiveness is just terribad.
The dpad is definitely better than the standard 360 controller, but nothing else. My suggestion would be to buy the microsoft controller, save $10 and grab a pizza or something. I say I was lucky enough to find this controller at BestBuy at the beginning but that is because BestBuy has a 30day return policy...
EDIT/ADDITION 5/9/2011: I was able to exchange my controller for a second one, which now had a defective left analog stick. My character would strafe to the right slowly. Which made me question the quality of this controller. I am now on my third controller, about 10days through. I will post another update if this thing decides to malfunction as well. Note that I am a fairly calm player and have never thrown my controller out of frustration lol. How I've been able to get a hold of three of these controllers, I will never know, but I hope everybody gets their order pretty soon.
EDIT/ADDITION 6/26/2011: My third one has been officially dead as of 6/5/2011. Honestly, I don't know why Razer isn't getting a lawsuit against them for scam. It appears that all the good reviews on the controller were made several days after the purchase and the rest are bad reviews from people who saw the actual quality of the product (e.g. broken). This company has some serious QC issues and I don't really care what they do about it because I will never buy anything from Razer again.
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video-games_xbox
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Sticking with my px5 for now. After 4 days of tinkering with these headphones, I'm sad to say I will be sending these back to amazon. I specifically bought these headphones with excitement I may add, thinking of all the new upgrades and a new headset to play call of duty black ops 3. But I have some issues. First and foremost the mic issue has not been addressed even with the firmware update. People have stated that I sound like I'm talking through my Kinect. Second of all the presets that are available for this headset did not suit my needs even with superhuman hearing, the sound quality on my px5 outshine 800x. I spoke to a turtle beach representative to see if there was setting that could help with the sound, so they tried to help but I cannot find an audio preset that can match the sound quality of my px5. I so wanted to keep these headphones for its wireless capabilities, but after comparing the audio on both headset, the PX 5 audio was clearly superior to the 800x. I found that the bass drowns out much of the sound on many of the presets the sound did not seem Balance to me. This defeated the purpose of having "superhuman hearing" or I cannot here the small nuances of my surrounding especially in a game like Call of Duty, that I can clearly hear on my px5. the 800x does not do good job with small sounds like footsteps and reloads even with the so called superhuman hearing and footstep setting. I cannot justify having paid $300 for these headset and not being completely satisfied with this product. I have quite a few Turtle Beach headsets and this is the first time I've ever had to return one of their products. The customer service and their products in the past has always been exceptional, this is the first time that I've ever had to say anything negative about Turtle Beach. Please keep in mind that I was using my headset specifically for gaming and specifically for games like Call of Duty. The audio for movies and music was awesome.
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video-games_xbox
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The replay ability for this game is amazing. Some have complained that this game is short. I personally did not find it short and here is why. This is one of those games that you can replay over and over and over again and never get bored. Why? It's because there are multiple ways to do each mission. The decision on how to carry out each mission is entirely up to you. For example, some buildings may have 5+ entrances. You can choose to enter the building any way you wish. Maybe on your first play through you'll want to enter the sewer first in order to get up into the building. Then maybe on your second play through you'll change it up by entering the front door. Then on the third play through you may decide to enter through one of the windows up top.
There are multiple ways to kill people too. You can keep it simple by killing them with a sword or other simple weapons. Or, you can get creative with your powers (these powers get upgraded by you as you make your way through the game) and do something such as create a swarm of rats to kill your target. You can get even more creative by having your target shoot themselves. This involves freezing/slowing time just as they shoot off their gun, giving you just enough time to then possess them so you can walk their body right in front of the bullet and then toss them into it, thus killing them.
As for things such as safes, which require you to figure out the combination, the game automatically changes it with each new mission. So if you think you'll just memorize it from your first play through, guess again. You'll have to figure out the code a second time because they will change it on you.
Anyway, I think you get my point on why the replay ability is amazing. I could go on and on, but I'm sure you have the point by now. As for other pros for this game the graphics are fantastic, the game itself is a ton of fun (challenging at times, but fun). One thing you should also be aware of is chaos levels. If you want the bad ending, you're free to kill as many people as you want (the bad ending is much easier to achieve). If you want the good ending, you'll have to be more careful by doing your best to be stealthy and not kill anyone or to kill as few people as you possibly can. This can be done by choking your victims or putting them to sleep with a sleep dart. When you do, you have to put them in a safe place so this way other guards won't see them and rats won't reach them and kill them.
Overall, it's an amazing game. Get it if you enjoy stealth games!
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video-games_xbox
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Favorite game of the last five years. I purchased this game after resisting the temptation for a very long time. I was a Final Fantasy XI addict for awhile and felt that this was not the type of game I should be purchasing! At the time I figured it was one that would take 100+ hours to beat.
I play the game and finally get out of the vault. Once I get into Megaton I'm a bit confused as to what I should do first. I wander around outside for awhile and eventually run out of ammo and have problems finding money to even buy things. It seems that at the start of the game I was always low on ammo and money. Later on I finally realized that's kind of the point! You just get out of a vault and are trying to survive out there in the wasteland.
I gain a few levels and get my ammo stocked and finally decide to head to DC to meet "Three Dog". Of course I have no clue about the map markers (I guess I don't read manuals!) and wander around trying to find where I'm supposed to go and get completely lost and almost murdered. Of course by this time I'm almost out of ammo and need to find out how to stock back up and start over. At this point I'm thinking I'm terrible at the game and was not having any fun at all. It took a lot for me to keep going.
So another day comes and I finally decide to use the map directions more precisely. Once I get the quest to repair a Satellite, things become fun. Once I got to Rivet City I started to finally love the game.
Maybe I'm dumb, but for me this had a somewhat high learning curve at first. Once you get a few days into it, it gets easier. It takes awhile to figure out how things work in the game. I would say it took me about 10 levels to really have fun with the game. Once I got to Rivet City I didn't stop playing the game every day until it was finished.
Sadly, the main quest is very short. If you don't explore the world you can finish the main quest in 35-40 hours. When the ending comes, it's not really over. There is so much to do and explore.
After beating the game I did about 75% of the quests in the game and at that point I was already up to 67 hours! Unlike some games, the quests are actually pretty interesting. My favorites were "Blood Ties" and "Reilly's Rangers".
Some say the graphics are terrible, but I'm very impressed with them. It really depends on the location. I played the entire game without any radio stations and that was perfectly fine with me. What sound there is, is just about perfect.
The one thing I like about this game the most is that there's just so much to do. You can go out exploring and find things to do. You can even start the game over again and focus on a different skill set. I maxed out Lock picking, Repair, Small Guns and Energy Weapons. Next time it might be Science.
Later on in the game it's much easier to find weapons, money and ammo. It starts out hard and gets easier as you advance in the game.
There are a few minor negatives about the game:
1: Followers often get hung up on things, but this is rare. It's only happened 4-5 times.
2: Sometimes when a NPC is near it won't let you target an enemy.
3. Some extremely over-powered followers. Getting Fawkes turns "Normal" mode into like "Very Easy".
4. Maps directions not always accurate and/or confusing. Easy to get lost in the game, but that's ok.
5. Amount of ammo for some weapons is extremely hard to find. I can find dozens of missiles, but it's even harder to find .44 Magnum ammo!
6. Some equipment breaks way too fast. I had to repair my "Terrible Shotgun" four times.
7. Some armor can't be repaired well, if at all, making that two hour quest a waste.
8. Excessive blood/gore. It doesn't bother me, but seeing a person blown up in twelve different pieces is a bit ridiculous and not very realistic. This isn't even with the "Bloody Mess" perk. Sometimes it looks cool and I laugh at some shots, but it gets old fast.
9. Normal mode is a bit too easy, but no big deal. During the main quest, I rarely died. Usually when I run low on ammo. Evergreen Mills was very difficult for me when I was on my way to a vault. I was at a low level though.
10. Difficult to resell weapons. My house is piled high with them. Buyers usually don't have enough money.
11. Most annoying thing in the game by far is the weight limit. It's way too low even with STR.
12. By the end of the game money isn't really important. I have about 4,000 and there's not much to buy.
13. Some characters sound EXACTLY alike. Do they only have 6 voice actors? I think so! I'll admit that they're all mostly good actors, except for Doctor Li. I liked the old guys and the drunken scrap metal man in Megaton.
14. Some lockups. I don't think it's my Xbox 360, but maybe. In 70 hours this has happened only 3 times.
15. In that 70 hours, a few areas run a bit slow/choppy for 30 seconds max.
16. In game local maps can be worthless at times. The world map is good.
My favorite game in the past five years has been Half Life 2, but this one is close to topping that. Fable 2 was a bit more fun to play through, but I consider this a better game. This has 10 times more to do.
Currently I'm at 72 hours and just finished the first DLC (expansion). Hopefully I can start the next ones soon. I'm having so much fun with this game that I probably won't be done for another 50 hours!
6-23-2009 UPDATE:
I'm still playing this game. I've finished the first 3 expansions and have been playing for 91 HOURS! I haven't played a game that long since Final Fantasy XI and 7. I'm currently level 28 and just downloaded "Point Lookout" and hope to play that on my next day off of work.
There's a few things in the game I'd change, but the biggest one is the weight limit and being "over encumbered". I know it's not realistic to be able to carry hundreds of items, but they should remove this limit. It does nothing for the game.
Hopefully they keep making expansions until the sequel comes out.
9-13-09
I still play this game every day and it never gets old. I finished Mothership Zeta and found it to be a chore and felt it was just an average DLC. Immediately after this I started a new character on Very Hard. It's not as bad as expected. I'm currently at level 28 and my character is already way better then my last. Due to high INT in the game i've capped much more skills due to more points after every level. Overall for my characters I will always cap Lockpicking, Repair, Small Guns and Energy Weapons. Maybe Big Guns next. I'm at about 65 hours on my 2nd character and 105 or so on my first. That's pretty amazing for a $50 game!
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video-games_xbox
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A better title would have been Advanced Mediocrity. Or maybe - Your Blood Helmet Has Expired. A shooter for the twitchy mind. Gone are the days of having a plan, teaming up with friends to control territory and winning with a plan and tactics. Here today is the speed match where jittery fingers are all that matters, he/she who can zip through an area and draw first wins, all that matters is speed and sensitivity. Well that and quick-scoping.
The maps are all square with almost zero choke points, and definitely no place to put your back to a wall. If you think you are safe for a moment then you are dreaming, there are always at least three different ways that your nemesis can come at you no matter what you think. The only way to own opponents with a sniper is to quick-scope because there are damn few long shot maps. Honestly I dream of a day when that stupidity is removed, yes it takes skill to quick-scope, but less skill than it takes to actually use the other weapons as intended successfully.
The weapons are completely out of whack when it come to power, a submachine gun beats a heavy weapon at almost any range, imagine a world where a machine pistol can be used with the same accuracy as a long rifle, and packs more power - a shotgun can shoot through concrete walls (even when a the equivalent of a Squad Assault Weapon (SAW) has problems doing so) - the same SAWs take at least 5/6 or more bullets to kill someone when in reality they should pack enough power to shoot through the entire map and anyone that gets in the way. The heavy weapon carriers are already penalized with slower movement and reaction time to aim down sight, so you are going to make them weaker as well? And what happened to armor piercing rounds? Claymores?
The kill-streaks, sorry, can't call them that anymore, the score-streaks are a joke, with only a few having any real impact. The missile strike is a perfect example, if you get killed by it you were just unlucky because it is near impossible to aim. That they made the kill-streaks modifiable was a genuine stroke of brilliance, but modifying scat just turns it in to fertilizer.
Oh, and thank you for the ability to move up the rank of 12-15 after I prestiged by selling back all the useless hats and gloves that you gave me, gone are the days of actually having to work to get there. And please stop telling me that the blood helmet has expired, I didn't want the damn thing in the first place.
The only way this game is still popular is that there just isn't anything else out there that allows people to compete in the on-line play modes that COD allows, Battle Field has far too many multilplayer quirks and problems to be competitive, Halo has even more problems than either COD or BF, so it boils down to lesser of the evils.
Henry Ford said If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses. and I agree, update the COD 4 graphics and kill streaks, then reissue it and it would outsell any of the last 3 or 4 iterations of the game. Because people want something that works, and very few of the last COD offerings have worked.
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video-games_xbox
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Tries too hard to be funny. Unlike many of the reviews that blasted EA on its rights management, I am going to blast this game on its game play.
Maybe it's just my memeory but the previous Red Alerts have a curious mix of grimmness and camp. Einstein goes back in time to prevent WWII and instead sets off a series of events that causes another WWII between the Allies and Soviets who both have far more sophisticated weapons. In Red Alert 3 the grimmness is gone, leaving just the camp. The really bad thing is that in terms of actors EA did not skimp on getting talent (no I am not refering to Jenny McCarthy). I don't know if by dissatifaction stems from the story line being so short, or that the script relies on very tired Clichés. If you read any of my previous reviews my mantra is that a great story line is what makes a good game great. Red Alert 3 misses that mark by a mile. The cut scenes should immerse the player in the story and make you want to finish the mission in order to get to the next cut scenes. To be honest I just skipped though the cut scenes because they became irratating.
That said, the game play is not all that great either. The graphics are sort of a manga, cartoonie (is that even a word), bubblegum kind of motif that does not work. If the story were better maybe that visuals would grow on me, but I'm not playing it again in order to find out. The AI is terrible, terrible, terrible. The campaign missions require you to have a human or AI co-captain and the AI was dropped too many times on its head as a baby. Sometimes it all but finishes the mission for you, other times it easily gets it's AI butt kicked, and sometimes just sits there and does nothing. There is a little command that lets you designate a target but effective use of units is not an AI strength. If it were an option I would have truned the co-captain off and gone it alone.
I just relized how long this review is so bottom line, game is terrible. If you haven't already, play Tiberium Wars instead or the entire Dawn of War series. This game is probably destined to become a really expensive coaster.
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video-games_xbox
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TONS of fun, even with the game release jitters. I am a pretty avid gamer and I play all types of games, but the one type of game that I just can't get hooked on is MOBA... Until now. I LOVE this game! It plays like a very well made fighting game but is set up as a MOBA. This creates a feeling like you are actually a legendary fighter fighting in a war alongside fellow warriors. The gameplay is very technical and has quite a learning curve, but once you get it it is not hard to go toe to toe with almost anyone. And that brings me to my favorite part of this game. Because it is so technical, it requires skill to get good. Just because you level your character does not mean you will slaughter everyone like in other games. *Cough* Call of Duty *Cough cough* If you get good with a character you can easily beat a higher level player. Thus, the overall online experience is pretty great.... Granted, you still have your dumb players of the game who do childish things like try and Tea Bag you or taunt you to make you lose focus, but you can't blame the game for that. There is also a rather large amount of customizing you can do as well and you can do this with all the 12 playable characters. That's pretty impressive.
Now, there are a few things that could be improved or changed. It requires you to be online so you can't even play the single player mode without a connection. Several of the customization parts are so high priced that you almost have to do micro-transactions in order to get them (Which is super annoying). And worst of all is the matchmaking is pretty bad right now. It is not uncommon to be completely booted from a match several times in one play session. This is EXTREMELY frustrating and needs to be fixed ASAP. However, I am chalking this up to game release jitters and will be fixed shortly.
Overall, there are some frustrating things that you have to overlook right now, but the times when you are kicking ass and taking names makes up for that.
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video-games_xbox
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OUSTANDING game with plenty to do for both kids and adults. After DC received two Lego titles, it was only a matter of time before Marvel would jump in the fray with their own brick basher. After the bar was set ridiculously high with Lego Batman 2 and its superb voice cast and soundtrack, would Marvel's offering be able to match up? The answer is yes yes yes a thousand times YES.
Far from shrinking from the high mark set by DC's last Lego offering, Marvel instead meets the challenge head-on and succeeds. This is a game that is the best Marvel offering since Ultimate Alliance. First big plus: The voice cast. After Lego Batman 2 upped the ante with spot-on voice casting, Marvel raises the bar by using the entire voice cast from its "Avengers Assemble" cartoon. Adrian Pasdar is here as the snarky Tony Stark/Iron Man, Roger Craig Smith brings Captain America to (Lego) life, Travis Willingham thunders as Thor, and Fred Tatasciore just kills it as the Hulk (at this point, is there anyone who can voice the Hulk for any Marvel property BESIDE Fred?). Not only that, but in a nod to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), Clark Gregg reprises his role as S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Phil Coulson, acting in the "advisor" role that Alfred had in Lego Batman 2. Kari Walghren reprises her Marvel anime role as Maria Hill, and Nick Fury is voiced by John Bentley, who does a SPOT-ON impression of Samuel L. Jackson. How this guy is not doing Fury for the Marvel cartoons is beyond me. He is amazing. Other notables include Dee Bradley Baker as Reed Richards, Troy Baker as Loki and Steve Blum as Wolverine, all reprising their roles from the various cartoons. Marvel did not skimp on the voiceover budget, that's for sure, and it adds to the overall familiarity across the differing Marvel media. Additionally, the music aboard the S.H.I.E.L.D. Heli-carrier and on some of the missions sounds like an adaptation of Alan Silvestri's score from "The Avengers", lending more gravitas to the game (or as much gravitas as you can lend to a game made up of Lego bricks).
The gameplay itself is outstanding. With the HUB/sandbox being concentrated in and around Manhattan, there's plenty to do in the Big Apple. Every corner of the city is alive and teeming with different challenges, from random encounters with the various denizens of the Marvel Universe like J. Jonah Jameson, Heimdall and The Punisher, to races with the likes of Ghost Rider and Blade, to puzzle-solving with Ant-Man and Reed Richards. There is never a shortage of main story and side-missions to immerse yourself in. Additionally, the controls are identical to the Lego Batman controls, and the puzzles, land races and challenges are not too difficult, so that younger children (like my 6-year old) will find themselves challenged and not frustrated or upset. The map of the city is big but not clunkily so, enough to keep children immersed in the experience, and the mapping is superb, not too far from the amazing job Rockstar did on Liberty City in GTA IV. All the major landmarks are there (The Empire State Building, Central Park, Grand Central Station), as well as the tried-and-true Marvel Universe landmarks (The Stark Tower, The Baxter Building, The Daily Bugle, The Oscorp Tower, Dr. Strange's Sanctum Sanctorum, The Avengers Mansion and the X-Mansion).
Did I mention the insane amount of playable characters? This is quite frankly the largest number of characters ever employed in a Lego game to date. There are 132 playable characters, not including pre-order characters and DLC (An Asgard DLC pack is rumored to be in the offering once "Thor: The Dark World" hits theaters). As a result, there's a little bit of everything for everyone; Avengers fans can play as any one of their favorite heroes, X-Men fans have their merry band of mutants to use, Fantastic Four fans have theirs, etc. Even Rocket Raccoon and the Guardians of the Galaxy are available! Not a fan of the good guys? You can play as any of the evil mutants from The Brotherhood, or as the Sinister Six. Characters both big and small, from Abomination, the Red Skull and the Heroes For Hire, to minor characters, like Howard the Duck, Union Jack and Squirrel Girl, are playable. Even Stan Lee shows up, playing the Citizen in Peril throughout the game.
As per the norm, there are 45 Xbox achievements in the game, and some of them are a doozies. Adults who have spent time reading Marvel comics and watching the various films will recognize a lot of them and have a knowing smile when uncovering them, from the "Fastball Special" to "Welcome to Level 7" to "It's Clobberin' Time!". There are also a few in-jokes that will have the adults chuckling if not outright laughing, from Nick Fury paraphrasing Jules' "Avenging Angel" speech from "Pulp Fiction" to a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent cracking a joke about "Snakes on a Plane", making a point to use clean language (since it IS an E10+ game).
Now, all the above being said, the game is not flawless; no game is ever flawless, and Lego Marvel Super Heroes suffers from many of the similar issues that plagued prior Lego offerings. The split-screen during multiplayer sessions is still frustratingly uneven, leading to some situations where certain missions necessitate one of the players dropping out because it is otherwise impossible to reach certain areas of the screen. An example: There was an outlet that a charged-up Thor needed to activate in order to uncover a brick, but because of the split screen when I would get near the spot the outlet would just DISAPPEAR. After some head-scratching between me and my daughter, we finally realized that if she dropped out of the game the outlet would reappear. It was unreal, and I could just imagine the confusion if 2 children are playing the game together and this happens to them.
The flying mechanics are also still annoying, which is unfortunate since a lot of the gold bricks require some sort of flying challenge to uncover them. Making matters worse, a number of the flying challenges take place in and around Manhattan, which just adds to the frustration as there is literally zero room for error. After trying to complete a flying challenge and failing time after time after time, I wanted to throw my controller across the room. And if *I* have a problem doing the flying challenges, you can imagine the difficulty my 6 and 10-year old have. It's just a damper on an otherwise superb game and is going to make 100% completion of the game extremely difficult.
Despite the aforementioned (which I consider minor) issues, this is a game that is as fun for adults as it is for kids. Lego Marvel Super Heroes has earned each and every one of its 5 stars and is a must for Lego and Marvel enthusiasts alike. Excelsior!
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video-games_xbox
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WOW! Just WOW. Yeah, it's just like the last one, but don't forget how good that one was. Everybody talks about the acion and the sheer number of characters to level up (over 40, each with unique moves), and new items and weapons, and customizeable characters (almost useless when you consider how few options you have), but they leave out how unbelievably FUN this game is to play. I play the same levels over and over and they never get boring. There is a ton of action, but what separates this game from other hack-n-slashers is the strategy. In each level you are but one soldier in an epic battle with thousands of combatants. What you do and where you go decides the outcome. Maybe you can spearhead an all-out assualt on the enemy commander to finish the battle at once, but as you do that, you leave your own commander open to a sudden suprise attack from the rear. As you charge through one group of enemies, sending bodies flying everywhere, you may realise you're isolated just as a trio of enemy generals (who are often each as individually strong you are) rides up on your flank to eliminate you and your bodyguards. This game can be incredibly hard at times, but that just makes you rise to the challenge. When your whole allied force has been all but wiped out and your enemies are closing in around you and you bodyguards, you feel the pressure to fight like you never fought before. Stories within stories unfold during the mousou (story) mode both inside and outside of battles. You gain new characters and receive reinforcements and special items during battles if you do the right thing. You can also be challenged to one-on-one duels by the enemy generals and those are always fun and challenging (but the short time limit is ridiculous). The elemental orbs and special items are really awesome and help turn your characters into super-warriors. The combo system is the most accessible to date, and I love that now you can choose a different general in every battle of mousou mode. I love leveling up my favorite generals (they have six unlockable costumes) and bodyguards (you can now name them). I just wish you could have a sub-general like in DW3 as well as or instead of your bodyguards. Oh well, that and the occasionally horrible slowdown are my only complaints. This game is going in my hall of fame.
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video-games_xbox
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Simpsons Road Rage will just make you angry. My roommate just bought this game for the XBox, and it clearly explains why our society has road rage. Don't get me wrong, as I do love the Simpsons and regularly TIVO it. However, this game is not exactly user-friendly. Let me start off with the graphics in Road Rage. For the Xbox, they are rather disappointing and the animation felt out of touch for the cartoonish Simpsons. Regarding the gameplay and the storyline, it isn't exactly written like one of their TV episodes. Mr. Burns' desire to open a transit system is just too bizarre. As for the gameplay, it is equally frustrating. You will find yourself stuck on awkward objects (water fountain, corner of building) and irritated by over-frequented obstacles (school bus, etc.) A lot of the storyline elements sadly don't add up. The missions are out-of-place in order of difficulty and don't add much of a reward value. Some of the missions seem downright impossible. Running over 12 mascots in 45 seconds is too difficult of a game that is marketed to children. Using the map to even help yourself in this mission or others is boggling also. There are no markers or targets shown on the street map (displayed in the corner), which leaves the player to memorize where the targets are or simply have incredible luck. Also, changing the difficultly level only makes the game easier in certain ways and not overall. Additional time (seconds) are not added to all levels of play...
On the upside, I do love the character voices in this game. Almost every Simpsons character is presented in the game and has their own unique car. All the familiar Springfield locations are on the map and easy to see. Road Rage is also 2-player and makes the game a little more exciting in case you feel like throwing the controller. If you are happy about spending 9.99 and comfortable driving to a gaming store only to be irked, I will hesitate and suggest Road Rage.
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video-games_xbox
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The First Game I Have Ever Returned. I bought Watch Dogs expecting a fun and intelligent game to play when I recovered from having my wisdom teeth out. It turned out to be so uninspired and un-fun that I just stopped playing it after a few hours, and now I am trying to return it. This game looks good, but it isn't. Here are my main complaints:
- Uninspired writing: as other reviews have noted, the main character in this game is really, really uninteresting. It is a drag to play as him. The supporting cast is a little better, but not good enough to save the game. The plot is dull, focusing on this solemn guy's quest to avenge his murdered niece. The cut-scenes were so melodramatic (sister: we don't need your help!; hero: I will protect you!; nephew: [says nothing because he is traumatized and has not spoken for over a year]) and dumb that I ended up skipping over them. They were also ridiculously incongruous... When you spend a whole game in a sandbox running over hundreds of innocent people and generally being a fire truck-driving psychopath, Aiden's nobility looks very silly. This is why GTA has never had a "morally good" main character. Speaking of GTA, I really missed that series' sense of humor and nuance. This whole game is very on-the-nose and joyless. I saw one in-game advertisement reading "You Should Get A Mortgage". Really? That is the best the writers came up with? It's just a dull world. You don't want to explore it.
- Its unique selling point underwhelms big time: I was really excited about this game, because it promised this big new post-Snowden world where you could do really cool and interesting things by exploiting data and hacking anything "on the grid". The game fell short big time. Basically everything is a simple little mini-game... You want to hack somebody, you press b and listen into their phone conversations and then you can take their money. You want to hack stoplights so you can block traffic? Press and hold b. I don't really know what I was expecting from this "modern hacker" promise, but I was definitely expecting something better than this. This game takes a really cutting-edge and complex premise-- a world where everything can be hacked and everyone's information is stored on a big database-- and reduces it to a series of repetitive mini-games. I was very underwhelmed. The thing that was supposed to make this game so cool does not work.
- You can't fire out of cars: This is a smaller point, but as a practical matter it is a pretty big deal. A lot of the game is car chases, but you can't shoot at the cars you are trying to "take down". So chases take forever and they are boring and kind of hard (but not in a fun way). Why wouldn't you let the player shoot from cars? Not for the first time, I thought this game was unfinished. Like its makers were trying to do so much but they didn't have time to add even relatively basic features like this to make the game hum.
- How do the cops find you? Another small thing that bugged me... Whenever you commit a crime and someone calls the police, these yellow circles follow you from all over and you have to try to evade them. It just felt like another dumb mini-game in a game full of dumb-minigames, and this one was particularly time consuming since police chases are long, tedious affairs.
Other things also annoyed me about this game, but those are the main ones that spring to mind. To be fair, it does have good graphics and its mayhem driving mechanics are actually pretty fun. So I'll give it one star for each of those. My recommendation, though: wait for this game to go down to about $5 before buying it. In the meantime, if you are looking for an excellent sandbox shooter with nuance and intrigue, bring out an old copy of GTA.
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video-games_xbox
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Great Game. Good, Not Great, Collector's Edition. First, the game.
Skyrim is probably the best Elder Scrolls game so far. With vast areas to explore and random encounters with criminals, fauna and other myth creatures, this game will keep you busy for a very long time. As with other Elder Scrolls, there are countless side missions and factions that serve as an alternative to the main story. You begin the game in the back of a horse carriage, a prisoner about to be executed, you lay your head down on the chopping block, the story takes a turn when a dragon is spotted and you begin one of the longest journeys that a game can possibly have...the rest...you'll have to see for yourself.
Graphics are beautiful. The flora, sky, seasons and passing hours are visible with extreme detail. Buildings and locations are just as breath taking. I often found myself, just standing there, taking it all in. It is obvious the game artists put a lot of time into this project.
Creatures are just as nice. You will see and encounter a variety. Humans on the other hand, as in previous titles of the series, are recycled; you will often see the exact same face in different locations and sometimes at the same location. This always bugged me, but was understandable, with a game this big, I can't imagine having to draw a different face for every single character in the game. The main and side mission characters however, are mostly different; the ones recycled are mostly citizens walking around.
Spells and shouts are part of your arsenal. Shouts can scare off enemies or give you the ability to move at ultra speeds for a short period of time. Spells range from healing to fire to ice damage. You can also mix potions, again for healing and for spiking your weapons to induce more damage.
Weapons look and sound beautiful. The metallic clink of swords clashing gives this game a degree of realism that many other games lack. Shields are useful during combat, but will take damage over time, so you must learn to fix your weapons and forge new ones. Skills that you will learn as you advance in the game.
The voice work, as always, is nothing but perfection. Each character has his/her own unique tone, which makes this game that much more dramatic and real. A great voice work for a great story. A script well executed.
At first, the game had numerous bugs and glitches, but patches have been released to address these issues. For Kinect owners, a new patch just added the peripheral's functionality. I usually play the game late at night, so I'm in no liberty to be shouting, without a shoe being thrown at me, but others will take advantage of this feature and enjoy it.
In conclusion, if you are a fan of the series, this game will not let you down. It has the good old formula we all know, but has been polished and a ton of new features added. Plus, fighting dragons is something every gamer should do. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is a must for new and old comers. A game, that like its predecessor, sets the standard for role playing games. A great game consisting of beautiful art, outstanding voice work, dramatic FX sounds and a musical masterpiece.
Now, the Collectors Edition Goodies..
The dragon...this thing is huge and detailed. From his red eyes to every single spike on his body, this dragon is one mean, good looking beast. It sits atop a wall with some stone written script. The entire set-up looks pretty amazing. However, looks do not necessarily mean quality; the dragon is detailed and well made, but the pedestal or wall it stands on, is made of hollow plastic that feels cheap, it still holds the dragon without tipping over, so I don't really mind the material, but it is something you should know before you buy this version of the game. As others have metioned, the dragon does not stand on the wall as shown on the picture, it is a bit off and one of his feet/claws does not really grab onto the wall.
The map is made out of thick paper. It's not lythograph thick, it's basic, thicker paper. The ink has a 3D sort of feel to it, not a smooth surface as found in game instruction booklets, etc. I was dissapointed that the "cloth" map they promised never became a reality and quite honestly, at $150 (initial retail price), it should've been a reality.
The game case was also dissapointing, a common, simple paper/cartboard case that feels more like a sleeve than a collectors edition case. A tin case would've been nice and should've been included.
The Art book on the other hand, is one of the nicest I've seen. Thick fake leather hard cover with the enblem dead center. It also has some details that make it look "old" "ancient". Full size, colour art pictures and sketches, a very nice book.
The DVD, your standard behind the scenes and making-of type of material. If you've seen others, this won't be any different. But it is nice to have to better understand how a game like this is created.
That's it. At its current $98 price, this is defenitely worth the extra dough. The Dragon (not the stand) and the art book alone, make this a collectors must have. Hope this helps.
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video-games_xbox
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A review from a seasoned Halo fan. ...Yes I do take some pride in being a halo fan even before the series was on Xbox. Originally, Bungie was working on a third-person sci-fi game for the mac when Bill Gates goppled it up like an obese lion on a geriatric gazelle. The rest, as they say, is boring history to jaded people such as myself.
Alright, let me specify when I say "jaded". Honestly, my first reaction to hearing about Reach was "Redundant Cash-In". The series was over: Covenant destroyed, The Flood wiped out, Master Chief saves humanity, blah blah blah blah blah blah back to the cryo tube with you. So it didn't make sense to me to bring up a barely mentioned aspect of the series; that of Reach and it's total and complete destruction. So I ranted to all my friends how I wouldn't buy it, and how Bungie is cashing in one last time on the Halo name before they move on to Oni 2 or a damn Marathon re-make.
But then, on a whim, I saw Reach on sale for thirty bucks, and bought it with a sense of "what the hell."
And it was worth it. This is the best Halo yet, and I say that as a person who thought the sequels, while decent, did not capture the same essence that the original Halo did. Reach still doesn't have quite that same feeling, but it comes so close they can practically hug like a long-separated couple at the airport. And what's wrong with that? Of course, this outting maintains Halo's issue with characters more stiff then a viagra overdose, but it atleast makes an attempt to add some depth to the characters. You play in a six-person squad of supersoldiers originally sent to investigate a downed communications relay. But of course the Covenant are here (weirdly enough, no one acts really shocked or surprised, not even the tall guy who's a Reach native and cries a lot) and very quickly the defecation impacts the rotary oscillator. The game follows the "Predator Method" of storyline, as your squad is systematically picked off one by one in increasingly desperate manners; all except the one female member who is rather unceremoniously sniped.
The game has a tagline of "From the beginning, you know the end." and it couldn't be more true. Every deep Halo fan knows how reach was beaten to a pulp and the Pillar of Autumn was the lone escapee, carrying with it a supersoldier in a motocross helmet and a virtual purple naked chick that can do everything. So it's not really a surprise when Emile is stabbed in the spine, or Jorge blows a ship up with himself inside, or Carter slams his ship into a Scarab, all done to give the main character (You, playing as Noble Six) just a little bit more time to kill one more measly Grunt, Brute, or Elite. (By the way, those of you who wish to not suffer any spoilers should refrain from reading the previous sentence)
But, while rather predictable, the game does these things in a well-thought-out fashion. I especially like the very end of the game where you, having delivered Cortana to the Pillar of Autumn and supplied covering fire on a MAC cannon while they abandon the planet like a jilted lover, are left all alone as your sole objective is "Survive" while a never-ending swarm of Covenant ram down on you mercilessly until you finally fall. As soon as your health reaches zero, the game cuts to a video of your character's last stand, whereby he (or she) impressively kills six or seven elites alone before the last couple elites stab you in the chest. Don't worry about me spoiling it, it's still as bone-chilling even when you expect it. I myself got the heebie-jeebies, as it was a rare visceral moment for the series. The game also has a nice little tidbit of dialogue from the very first Halo cutscene, which I thought was a perfect touch to end a series (until Microsoft releases Halo 4 or some BS).
Moving away from killing AI aliens to human people, the multiplayer is now my topic. And it's good. dual-wielding is gone, but I didn't care as the weapons are perfectly balanced already without doubling up on stuff to get in the way. There is a lack of levels, in my opinion, but with the upgraded Forge there are limitless capabilities (I myself made remakes of Lockout and Hang 'em High). Players may still play as an elite, but only in certain playlists as they are larger, stronger, and faster then their SPARTAN counterparts who have only read to about chapter six into the "Master Chief's Guide to Always Winning Everything: Even When You Have a Shoelace and They Have a Shotgun" book. Firefight also makes a return, and I think it's better then ODST's, as you aren't a wimpy little normal soldier. I like being a beefed-up supersoldier, it's what Halo is all about. If I want to be a fleshy little wimp, I'll go play Call of Duty.
To be fair, I still think that the original Halo: Combat Evolved is the best one, by far. And the reason is simple: nostalgia. When Halo was released, there was not a single FPS that came even close to the cohesiveness and orginality of Halo. But coupled with that memory of my first time finding the flood in that subterranean prisoon, or realizing Halo's real purpose, is the real reason Halo was so popular to so many. It didn't do any one thing amazingly well - the story is told with one-dimensional characters, there are relatively few weapons and even fewer vehicles, some locations are repeated ad nauseum, and the lack of any boss-type characters can be a letdown to some people, especially me. But what Halo: CE did was so mind-numbingly simple it's amazing how little it's mentioned: it did nothing amazing, but everything excellently. Everything was complimented and complimented in turn by everything else. The weapons balance the enemies and the vehicles, the vehicles merge well with the levels, the levels draw you into combat and even a bit of exploration, the enemies challenge you to think a bit with your tactics, having only two weapons forces you to pick if your arsenal wisely, and it boasted a difficulty level so high you practically needed to play in co-op for the extra body. This is why Halo was so great, and people forget that. Many hate on the series, and remain seated in their convoluted mess of a game called Call of Duty (for when you know you need to poop). But those people are the fickle fans, who want instantaneous pleasure and probably touch themselves too much. And let's not forget that Halo was also simple, and simplicity begets accessibility, and accessibility begets fans, and fans begets sales.
Halo: Reach seems to do a good job of harkening back to the old glory days of Halo - the Elites' armor, while updated, has the more angular look of Halo 1 (along with the Grunts), the armor you wear is Mark V (before the Mark VI armor introduced in Halo 2), and even the vehicles have a palette more reminiscent of Halo 1 (e.g., the warthog has the more green look like in Halo 1, rather then the more brown look in Halo 2/3), Captain Keyes makes a brief appearance, and they finally freaking answer how they found Halo in the first place (not counting the books which, to me, don't count).
So it was nice for the memories. Normally I am so much more critical, I don't think I even have a five star review of a game yet. But the Halo series deserves it, in my opinion. Okay, so the sequels kind of peed themselves in some places. But like a cut little kitten, you can't bring yourself to kill or abandon it because of all the joy it brings you when it isn't pooping on the bedsheets.
So for that, Thank you Halo - for the endless hours of online play and, more importantly, for the memories.
Now end it now before you get REALLY redundant. Five Stars.
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video-games_xbox
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A very expensive coaster. I have played FIFA games since 1995 with a new one every other year or so. I also have played PES 2012 and 2013 which I enjoyed for something different. I decided to try PES 2015 and I have to say I was very disappointed.
The biggest flaw in this game is that the AI defense is just too good, even on the easy levels. Put a great through ball pass that cuts through the defense? The Stoke CB will outrun Messi and cut it out. Try to run down the wing with Robben (who has 100 speed)? The Burnley defender will stop you. Try to put in a cross to Crouch? The CB WILL head it away. Try to take a shot from outside the box? They WILL block it, or if you are lucky the goalie will save it.
Basically this game is setup so it wants you to be like Barcelona and playing the passing game, and move the ball around to pass the other team into submission, no fun allowed. The problem is that the passing mechanic isn't good enough to accomplish this. You get closed down very fast and finding an open man AND getting the ball to him quickly is difficult. I find the passing movement on FIFA to be a lot easier to move the ball around and actually keep the ball. In the settings, moving the pass assist bar up or down didn't seem to make any difference to the frequency of misplaced passes. FIFA will allow you to select semi-assisted, or fully-assisted if you are having trouble with keeping the ball, if PES insists on passing being the most important part of the game, then they needed to get this right but instead it just feels clunky.
Next, the defending is equally bad. I have heard the term warp defending used frequently. Essentially, the defender will WARP through the player with the ball. The ball is basically glued to the player and you go right past, or if you are lucky you will just foul him, repeatedly. Actually winning the ball is very difficult. You pretty much have to resort to slide tackling to get the ball, and that is just too risky to use consistently.
In addition to the obvious annoyance with the lack of player/team licenses, the final nail in the coffin is the unbearably slow load times. The supposed good graphics is likely the issue here, but not only waiting for the game to start, but during the game the many fouls, yellow cards and if you are lucky enough to score a goal, replays, prompt multiple cut scenes and additional replays, that lag, and either cant be skipped or are frustrating to keep skipping. It really interrupts the flow of the game, much like the frequent substitution cut scenes on some FIFA installments.
The only real excuse I can give is that PES 2015 put all of their development into the Xbox one version, and the Xbox 360 version was just slapped together, so you just get a clunky, lag-filled frustrating experience.
Overall, I spent more time setting up the team names, giving Arsenal a proper badge and kit, and making some transfers than I actually did playing this game. I wish I had played some matches before I bothered doing all that setup, and I will certainly be going back to FIFA 15.
If you have an original Xbox 360 and have encountered the issue where the disk tray gets stuck closed if you don't leave a disk in there, leaving your PES 2015 disk in there is about the only real use for it. Dont waste your time actually playing the game.
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video-games_xbox
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Solid title...if nothing else but to kill time. What's a good 360 game library without Grand Theft auto IV, right? Despite all the hype and long wait I bought this game thinking it would be pretty much like Vice City, only set in a new environment with new characters, with maybe some improvements to the gameplay. At least I wasn't disappointed.
I have to admit the team at Rockstar put some serious thought and effort into creating a realistic, beautiful and interactive city when they created this game. Maybe too much. I bought the limited edition version which illustrated the concept art and the design of Liberty City and I was truly impressed. I showed this to a friend who made a good point. Who cares if a little soda can on the sidewalk actually has a dent in it when you're running from the cops at 90 MPH because you just killed a prostitute.
The only real additions to the actual gameplay from the previous GTA titles are things I don't want to do anyway. I don't want to go on dates. I don't want to go bowling. If I wanted to see stupid stuff on the internet, I would just watch YouTube.
The missions are fun and seem to have relevent tie-ins to building the storyline. But please don't fail! You may have to spend another 15 minutes of your life trying to get to a point to retry it. That's always been my peeve with the GTA franchise, and is so with GTA IV. Some things never change.
For people like me that have a short attention span this is a good game. Getting sidetracked is always an issue in any GTA game. So many times, I was simply trying to get from point A to point B and ended up as Public Enemy #1, as if in some Murphy's Law continuum. This must have been what happened to OJ. However, if you get stuck or frustrated on a mission, just forget about it and do some side missions for a while. I own so many games that have such linear gameplay that I refuse to play them anymore because you get stuck and irritated and there's nothing else to do.
The characters in the game are great. I actually seem to care what happens to some of them. The biggest problem with them is some of them get in your car, and they just will not shut up. I think everyone has a friend like this. I have two. Even the random people on the street are original. I rarely remember seeing the same person twice. There's always that person that swears at you or gives you a dirty look. Needless to say, that person must die.
I read a few of the other reviews that this game is overly buggy or that it repeatedly crashes or even bricks their console, but I have not had any problems while playing. Also, despite the mature rating and negative press (or good, free advertising as I like to call it), I feel like the content is not unsuitable for any reasonably minded teen. It's pretty much things they're going to see and hear everyday, anyway.
Oh, and as a side note to Rockstar Games. I just killed 38 gang members with a submachine gun. Do you think I'm going to stop and pay a $5 bridge toll?
All in all, if you like the GTA series or just enjoy a game that doesn't end in disappointment after a few hours, GTA IV is a good choice. If you buy it new, I do recommend spending an extra thirty bucks for the limited edition version. It comes with some really cool stuff!
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video-games_xbox
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EA Apparently Forgot Why A Chunk of Their Fans Play Madden. Fans of the Madden franchise have taken the good with the bad for years now. Like many, I've dutifully forked out my $60 each year to get the newest version of the game. Each year there are drawbacks (middle linebackers that can leap and intercept every pass over the middle, players being sucked into tackles, receivers that try much less than the defensive backs to catch a ball, the fact that you will be sacked nearly every time you try a play action pass - the list goes on and on) and each year EA addresses an issue or two (whether they actually fix them or not), updates the rosters, and convinces us to spend another $60 for the newest edition. Even with the drawbacks, for those of us who love Madden, we start our franchise mode, use the fantasy draft to assemble a team that can overcome the shortcomings of this year's game and beat the competition, and import our draft classes from EA's corresponding annual release of the NCAA Football game. I am one of those players who not only enjoys all of that, but continues playing the same team I've built from the ground up for multiple seasons at a stretch.
This year?
No franchise mode.
No fantasy draft.
No importing of draft classes from NCAA Football 13 that many of us dropped an additional $60 on - in some cases, primarily so we could import draft classes for multiple seasons of Madden.
To some customers, those omissions may not seem like a big deal. But for many of us, it's like buying a new car and being told what color you will receive, having all of the radio stations preprogrammed and locked in place, and only being allowed to drive the vehicle on certain routes. Does the car work? Sure. Does it drive better than last year's model? It does. Can you roll down the windows, crank up your favorite song, and drive wherever the road may lead you? Not a chance.
For many of us who have faithfully played each and every annual release of Madden for years now, they took everything we love about the game and trashed it. It's not that they kept flawed pieces in place, EA actually took portions of the game we've eagerly looked forward to and embraced for countless years and ripped them out. I've played literally thousands of hours in the Madden series and if you broke that time down between teams I've assembled through fantasy drafts and teams that EA assembled for me (the latter being the only option in Madden NFL 13), I'd guess that ratio is somewhere close to 200:1. I've been playing Madden since the SNES days and while I've had my share of complaints with past editions, Madden NFL 13 was the first time I've ever found myself regretting that I had purchased the latest release.
I'm giving Madden NFL 13 a one star rating - not because the game is worthless, but because EA literally ripped out what for many of us was the heart and soul of the game and sold us an empty shell instead. For me, it's no longer "Madden," it's just a football game. It's bad enough that I returned the game shortly after purchasing it, losing a good chunk of money in the process. The omissions, which we've relied on and enjoyed in countless previous versions of Madden, are truly that important to the game.
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video-games_xbox
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A Polish Game of Thrones That Will Win Game of the Year. In a word, this game is stunning. I thoroughly played and enjoyed Witcher 2, but did not play Witcher 1. Neither is necessary to play Witcher 3 (W3). That said, the world of the Witcher is complex, dark, and mature, especially since it is based on a Polish book series called Witcher. This world is best described as a Polish Game of Thrones. I used one of the many online recap summaries of the world leading up to W3 to get back up to speed for W3. You can just google it to find one of these many recap guides, which are available both in written and video form.
Because this game has not been out long, and is estimated by the developer to be at least 200 hours long, any review up as of my writing this will not realistically have completed everything there is to do in the game world. I spent hours in what turned out to be just the prologue/tutorial section. (think Hinterlands in Dragon Age: Inquisition). When I finally left that area and entered the full game world, I was a bit aghast. Where to start? It is just that big.
Like any great open world game, you can wander or start following the branching main quests. The gameplay itself is a combination of sword combat, signs (magic), and alchemy. The swordplay is real time, with parrying, and fast and strong attacks. The combat system is very nuanced and sophisticated. Sure, you can just button mash and try to bulldoze your way through (especially at lower difficulty levels) but on higher difficulty levels (which I recommend) you need to really use strategy and combine your swordplay effectively with your signs and alchemy. Case in point I used a dedoction, which is a longer lasting potion/buff that increases your damage output. I now had the higher damage output, but it also raised my toxicity to 100% - which meant that I could no longer guzzle another potion that more quickly restored my health, which was being lowered by taking damage. Because each potion in W3 has a toxic effect on your character, you can't just mix your drinks without bad effects. (just like real life. . .) So, when I drank my health regeneration potion, I exceeded my 100% toxicity and keeled over dead. In W3, all decisions are tradeoffs. You use one buff at the expense of another, the same as when you unlock/upgrade traits. Same for signs and combat damage.
The world of W3 feels alive, vibrant, and like it continues on without you even being necessary. I was fighting a group of enemies on a river bank. As I was backing away, I was attacked from behind by a pack of wild dogs that had just happened along. They killed me and several of the group I was originally fighting. This wasn't scripted the dogs were around when I reloaded but didn't travel close enough the second time to attack me. The whole world is like this its very well done.
The story and voice acting are top notch, as are the graphics and fluidity. My PC wasn't up to snuff to run this, so I bought it for my Xbox One. I was concerned how it would look, play, etc., and I am happy to say it looks and runs very well. This game world is just beautiful. Desolate scenes of left over battle field carnage make me feel like I am playing a Game of Thrones episode. The sunsets alone will make you wish you brought a camera along. (or you can just say Xbox take a screenshot if you have a Kinect)
OK enough gushing. You get my point. There is a reason this game has some of the highest scores ever on Metacritic. Dont be surprised when it gets multiple Game of the Year awards. Its an amazing game you should already be playing.
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video-games_xbox
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Return of the King turns out to be a fine game. I'll be honest. When a movie is made into a video game I don't usually enjoy it. They always seem to miss something or the developer gets lazy and doesn't put enough effort into the game. "Return of the King" is a different game. It has its frustrating moments but many a time you can deal with it.
The game begins where The Two Towers left off at Helm's deep. You start off as Gandolf and you play through the first level and you'll note the feel of this game is much like Dynasty Warriors. The game will tally up how many kills you get and it will also score you on how well you killed an enemy.
In each level you've got three guages at the bottom, one for experience (EXP) one for your health and a combo guage. Depending on the combo you do (Fair, Good, Excellent or Perfect) will determine how much EXP you get. When you've aquired enough EXP you can buy abilities for whichever character you're using or even for the entire fellowship at once. Just note that for the fellowship the abilities cost more.
After the completition of each level you can choose a different one frome either "The Path of the Wizard", "The Path of the King" or "The Path of the Hobbits." It doesn't matter which route you choose eventually you'll end up having to do them all. "The Path of the Wizard" let's you play as Gandolf but there aren't any other choices until you've completed the game. "The Path of the King" lets you use Legolas, Gimli or Aragorn. "The Path of the Hobbits" only lets you use Sam until you've unlocked hidden characters.
The game has a nice co-op which actually brings me to the first con. When selecting co-op the only path availible in the beginning is "The Path of the King". Since on the Wizards path and Hobbits path you've only one character to play. You must complete the Path of the King to use co-op on the other paths. It's very sad that the Path of the Hobbit consists of Sam and Frodo yet you don't get to use Frodo. Actually, you don't use Frodo until the very last level of the game, and the only way to unlock the last level is to complete all the paths.
The other cons with the game stand out to. When you return to a level you may only play it with those you haven't completed it with. So if I complete a level with Aragorn and go back to it, my only choice would be Legolas and Gimli, considering I'm on the Path of the King.
The gameplay is simply hack and slash. There are moments where you must perform actions in order to progress. However, there are several levels where all you have to do is just kill and last for a certain amount of time, or to put simple, stay alive. This makes the gameplay somewhat boring at times. There are other things to do at least. You can pick up spears and throw them, you can shoot arrows, spill pots of molten lava at some points, throw torches and plenty more.
The game falls a little short in replay. After you finally beat the game you can go back to any level and select any character. The problem is that you'll probably have too much EXP so the level won't present the same challenge, second you just won't want to play through the levels again.
The graphics are rather nice in this game. Visually they're striking though there are points where the game looks really blocky but the animations of the characters are stunning and at times it feels like you're in the movie.
The sound comes directly from the movie so I'm sure you'll love it. The music and sound effects are brilliant. However, the voice overs are quite annoying. I like how they got the voices from the actual actors. There are times when I didn't want to hear them. Lots of times your characters will say stupid comments that otherwise should've remained unspoken. Not only that but they talk too much.
Lastly, if you haven't seen the movie "Return of the King" I'd recommend you play the game after you see the movie. It ruins a few key points, even-though it's nothing major.
Overall, "Return of the King" turned out to be a fine game. It's fun to go through at least once. It is relatively short and the extras unlocked don't stand to be high (Mostly a making of the game) but "Return of the King" is a good game nonetheless. If you're a Lord of the Rings fan you owe it to yourself to try this game.
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video-games_xbox
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A very good game that lacked a few things. I, like millions of others, flocked to see Spider-man, the movie, back in May of 2002. I loved it! I saw it a total of 4 times in theaters. So when I saw the game, I HAD to pick it up. And pick it up I did, and played through the entire thing several times. But something was missing. Here's what I thought of Spider-man: The Movie!
1) Gameplay: Its a very fun game, and this is it's strongest point. You can, in 4 words, "Do Anything Spider-man Can!" You can swing around the HUGE cities, beat up thugs with over 40 different moves (you unlock new ones buy getting Golden Spiders), crawl on any wall, etc... You can shoot web, do web domes (protect you from enemy gunshots, etc...) You can also crawl anywhere you can get your fingers on, hang down from a sort of web rope and spy on unsuspecting enemies. The whole thing is really quite fun, and while I've owned this game for 4 months, I still pop it in and swing around Spidey style every once and awhile. Thats how good the gameplay is.
The problem here? There are only about 12 levels, most fairly easy. And while going back and playing them on the harder setting is fun, its not half as fun the second time around.
As for playing it on the harder settings (there are 4: Easy, Normal, Hero, Super Hero), its almost IMPOSSIBLE on just Normal. Easy you can beat in 2 days, but the rest... The enemies strenth twice as strong, the enemies atacks are twice as strong, your web supply goes down by almost half. It's just WAY too hard. It gets to a point where your almost scared to go down and fight a thug because you'll lose so much of your health. Hard-core gamers will find the first 3 settings difficult (while casual get stuck on just normal), while even Hard-core, awsome, never die gamers will get stuck on Super Hero. It's added depth, but its also really annoying. I'd give gameplay 4 stars*
2) Graphics: Fairly good. You can see the web perfectly, Spider-man looks awsome. The worlds are beautifly annimated, and each are fairly large. The problem? The faces look terrible, and there aren't enough character designs (too many of the same people)! When you tie up enemies, the webbing jut looks like...there. It doesn't rap around, it just looks really bad... When your fighting thugs, or people, or whatever, you'll find yourself fighting dozens of people. Yet there are only 2 common types of thugs, two types of business men, two types of guards, you get the point. If your sitting there, fighting off 12 people, you'll notice that 6 look EXACTLY the same, and the other 6 look EXACTLY the same. Its like your fighting an army of clones. Very dissappointing, otherwise the graphics are very good. But counting that last comment, I have to give it 3 stars*
3) Options: Probably the game's weakest point. NO multiplayer or 2-player cooperation (would have been really cool!). No real bonuses or un-lockables. There are some mini-gamers, like Pin-head bowling, or "The Big Brawl", but NOTHING that will keep you playing the mini-game for more than a few minutes. And the freedom that this game could have built upon...just isn't there. Being able to look for crimes and stop them, seeing HUGE cities from Spider-man's point of view, and getting to explore a full New York City. That would have been cool!
But they didn't, they just went by the story. And while the story in this game (to go with the movie) is great, I think it would have been cooler if u could have had some freedom in between missions. The way it is, you are confined mostly to the insiden of buildings, having to go a SPECIFIC way, with no freedom. It's still a fun game, but didn't take advance of what (in my mind) could have made a GREAT game. 2 Stars*
4) Sound: The game's strongest point. Voice acting by the actors from the movie, it really adds to the experience. As for the characters not in the movie, EXTREMELY well done. Even the casual "Look mommy, there's Spider-man" from a little girl's perspective is done to perfection, as you often feel like you are living in Spider-man's world. The villains sound evil and menacing, the thugs sound...like thugs... And everyone really clicks to a sort of New York feeling, which adds to the game.
The web makes sounds: swish, swash. Really cool! The gunshots sound real and scary, the fighting scenes sound...convinving. Other than that, this game's SOUND was awesome! 4.5 stars*
Overall, I really liked this game. Its fun to go back and play, and there's enough positives to compete with the negatives. I'd definantly recommend this game if u can find it for a good price.
As long as your not looking for perfection, you WON'T be disappointed. A pretty good game compared to past Spider-man games!
Thx!
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video-games_xbox
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I like and don't like this remote after trying the Talon . I like and don't like this remote after trying the Talon media remote. It's smaller size, larger buttons, and overall layout is more appealing than the Talon. However, the bottom of the remote is rounded and kind of rolls on flat surfaces. I imagine trying to have it on the edge of the couch or chair would be impossible. (On the Armrest.)
Seems like the backlighting is overall a little better on this when compared to the Talon. All the buttons light up including the top "dashboard" button. It feels a little heavier than Talon, I'm not entirely sure why since they feel the about the same without batteries in. The buttons are nice and responsive, it's okay in the hand if a bit short feeling because the main media controls are on the bottom (Play/pause, forwards and back, etc...)
Because this review is a lot shorter than the Talon's (a lot of comparisons have been drawn between the two.) I won't do a pros and cons to simplify it.
The dimming function is better on this remote in that it's more than 2-3 seconds before it's completely dark. The dimming feature is also a lot slower than Talons giving you more chance to bring it back or finish looking for the button you need if your searching. However, it has fewer buttons so it's also less of an issue than on the Talon remote. Seriously, I'll take a bit shorter battery life to have the backlighting up a few seconds longer. And again this remote does not turn the volume of the TV up or down without going through the Cable setup process and having all that. Since I don't have that right now I cannot test it. Though, I really wish I could control the volume (in the very least) with the remote as well.
I've included some photos with other remotes, including the Talon for size comparisons and everything.
Be sure to check the mold for the battery in the box for the batteries. Felt like they were a bit hidden.
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video-games_xbox
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The sound isn't the greatest, but it does the job. I ordered this throat mic and made the mistake of overlooking the fact that it is a GEARS OF WAR 3 accessory, which means that it works exclusively with the XBOX 360 and NOT with XBOX ONE or any variants of the XBOX ONE. The headphone connector is 2 mm, which means that, for the XBOX ONE, XBOX ONE S, and the XBOX ONE X, the throat mic would require a 2mm (FEMALE) to 3mm (MALE) adapter to plug into the XBOX ONE, XBOX ONE S, or the XBOX ONE X game controller. Once I purchased the adapter, the throat mic works similar to a military one. However, military throat mics are way more advanced and ruggedized, compared to that of Mad Catz. Although not as advanced, the mic works along the same concept, using your vocal chords to transmit your voice. I have a 16 inch neck, and the mic fit snug. Throat mics are not meant to fit the entire circumference of your neck, since the mic points will most likely be positioned somewhere near your vocal chords. The sound isn't the greatest, but it does the job. The ear plug is meant to be worn upside down to correctly fit the inner ear canal, while the cord wraps around your ear towards the back. To me, the ear plug fit perfectly, despite the rubber fitting being a bit flimsy and thin. Overall, it serves its purpose without causing any discomfort. Moreover, you really cannot beat the price of this mic. If you're a GEARHEAD like me, this would be the perfect accessory to complete your ensemble.
UPDATE: The mic portion of the throat mic communicator no longer works, and I have only had this product for a few weeks. Upon further inspection, I noticed that the throat mic connector is a bit flimsy, which may have caused the mic portion to stop working. So, now I can only use the earpiece to hear the sound from the XBOX ONE S, without being able to speak to other players with the throat mic portion of the communicator. Guess you get what you pay for, since the price is extremely cheap.
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video-games_xbox
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WARNING: Do NOT play this game on Perfect Agent or above. As an early 360 launch title this game has not aged well. Still worth a few bucks if you can find it cheap in 2017.
Graphics are so-so (but art direction is strong), framerate starts off fine but gets choppy in the later levels. Story is trash. Dialogue is funny (except for Jack Dark). Enemies say funny things when you shoot them like in the original. Soundtrack is awesome, might be best part of the game. It is actually worth purchasing separately.
The shooting mechanics are seriously flawed. As mentioned above, framerates are choppy on later levels. There is plenty of screen tear. The cover system does not work nearly as well as in game like Gears of War. The way the right stick handles aiming is bad. It responds sluggishly and makes aiming harder than it should be. Often when you are in cover and targeting an enemy the targeting moves when actually taking the shot. Also, there is some kind of artificial difficulty where the enemies often move when you place the aiming cursor on them, even when they can't see you. Another thing about the cover system is that sometimes you are hit by enemy fire despite being in cover. That should not happen.
The escort missions are terrible, just terrible. Computer controlled allies get themselves killed and you lose the level. They also get in your way and you end up shooting them (and yes you do damage and can accidentally kill allies).
The checkpoint system is awful on the higher difficulties. Do NOT try these levels unless you are a masochist. It becomes a matter of memorizing levels and enemy locations rather than a test of skills. Especially the Jungle mission.
Ending on a positive note, the game has tons of multiplayer options and coop (both local and Xbox live). So, 2 stars for the single player, and add a star due to the variety of multiplayer modes.
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video-games_xbox
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I love it and the amazon seller was amazing and fast. There are now several Xbox One bundles to choose from over the holidays, and this Assassin's Creed bundle is one of the better options in my opinion. But just in case another one will be a better match for you, here is a comparison with holiday price drops:
Xbox One, no Kinect: $349
- Barebones, nothing extra, not a great deal, don't get this one.
Xbox One with Kinect: $449
- Same as above, but includes Kinect. No other bonuses, don't get this bundle.
Xbox One Assassin's Creed Bundle, no Kinect: $349
- This includes both Assassin's Creed black flag (digital version), which is playable immediately after download, and Assassin's Creed Unity, which you can pre-download, but it is not playable until release date, which is still 1-2 weeks away (UPDATE: Available now!). As you can see, this is the same price as the barebones XBO, but includes 2 free games, making it a pretty sweet deal if you don't care about the Kinect.
Xbox One Assassin's Creed Bundle, with Kinect: $449
- Same as other AC bundle above, but also includes Kinect. It also includes a free Kinect game: Dance Central Spotlight. The Kinect sells separately alone for $149 MSRP, so this is an *extremely* good bundle. The standard MSRP prices would put this value at $399 console + $149 Kinect + $30 AC Black Flag + $60 AC Unity + $20 Dance Central Spotlight = about $650 total. Even if you believe the separate prices are kind of inflated, or they go down further over time, still a great deal.
Xbox One Sunset Overdrive Bundle: $349
- This bundle does not include a Kinect, but includes the new Sunset Overdrive game for the same price as the barebones bundle. But what makes this one stand out is that both the console and controller are white, which is pretty cool. Color preferences are subjective, so you'll need to look at it and decide if this bundle is right for you, or if SO is the type of game you'll like. It is currently the only way to get a white XBO. If you really want the Kinect, you'll have to buy it separately for $149, which makes the deal less awesome. But if you don't care about Kinect and like the look of white, this is a great choice.
Xbox One Call of Duty Advanced Warfare Bundle: $449
- This bundle is priced the same as the normal Kinect bundle, but this one does not actually include the Kinect. Instead, that $100 premium gets you Call of Duty Advanced Warfare (digital version, not physical), a custom Call of Duty themed console and controller design, and a 1TB hard drive. This is the only way to currently get a 1TB hard drive, which to me is the biggest selling point of all. But again, if you want the Kinect, you'll have to buy it separately for $149 which makes it not as great of a deal. But that 1TB is great, and with how large full games are, will quickly become necessary. I'm hoping 1TB becomes a standard hard drive size very soon for this console, but for now, you'll have to get this bundle to get that extra space (or get a separate external drive).
Since this review is on the AC bundle, which I actually did purchase, I will specify in a little more detail what it includes. The design you see in the product description picture is a cardboard sleeve over the normal green Xbox One box. Inside that box, is completely identical to the normal Xbox One + Kinect bundle, except for those extra cards with download codes for the two AC games. There are no actual physical games or discs included in the bundle. The console is the standard black with the standard 500GB hard drive. Prepare to spend a few hours waiting for the games to download and install. Xbox Live definitely does not utilize my full 50 megabit connection, it seemed to download at around 10mbps consistently, which meant a long wait to actually play, since these game files are HUGE.
After the last few system updates, the Xbox One has become an even better gaming/media device that I am still using and enjoying just about every day. So pick the bundle that works best for you and you won't be disappointed!
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video-games_xbox
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Amazing for the money. Absolutely LOVE these. I'm a HUGE fan of "low-end" turtle beach headsets, and I bought these to replace an aging pair of Ear Force PLa's that had served me faithfully for a long time (and still function very well, albeit thanks to a ton of tape work on damage I caused myself stupidly). Considering I paid only ten dollars more for these, the difference is staggering.
As others note, they're not a top end headset, but for $40, do you really expect that? Sound is clear and crisp. Mic is clear and loud, without being overly sensitive (and the windscreen performs very well), and connects/disconnects easily... I'm actually using Dragon to type this with the mic in my laptops mic port! Some complain that the mic is inflexible, but I haven't found a position yet that it won't accept and stay with. I do, however, wish they had used the jacketing from the PLa line (ribbed, semi-metallic covering that allowed for total freedom of position) instead of the semi-hard, plastic-feeling overmold on this one.
Leather-feel ear cups are VERY well designed and generously padded, they feel very natural on my head and surround my ear with an almost hermetic seal... pressing on the sides of the cups while wearing them yields a noticeable increase in pressure in my ears (you probably shouldn't do this).
Entire system is very light (due in part to plastic construction, which doesn't come off feeling as "cheap" as other plastic headsets).
At 4ft, the cord doesn't give a ton of room, but it was designed to be used with a console controller audio jack, so it doesn't need it... but for use with an mp3 player or laptop, it's great for those that don't need the extra length getting in the way.
Some cons:
In-line volume/mic control is small and hard to grasp (almost too smooth), and in turn, the volume control knob is very narrow and set deeply in the control box. When you do locate the volume blindly, it's somewhat difficult to roll, but I'm going to assume it will loosen in time. I would suggest moving it closer to the wire's splitter to make it easier to locate blindly, but it's a personal preference some may disagree with.
The mic only inserts into the headset in one direction, having a cut out on the mic itself that must be aligned with a tab on the mic jack. It's difficult, though not impossible, to insert it while wearing the headset, so I suggest you choose in or out before you begin using them. I see no reason why this design had to be implemented, and hope future models will omit it.
The connecting band has very little in the way of padding across the top of your head. It's not only a very small fill, but it's the same low density, very soft foam used in the ear cups, making it almost ineffective. It's not uncomfortable once you get the fit right for your head (though mine is shaved, your mileage may vary), but it still seems no thought at all went into this design point. Increasing the fill or using a higher density foam could fix this in future models.
Each ear cup is connected to one half of the wire, which I personally don't enjoy the feel of, though its double connection design does prevent a lot of twisting that could lead to a single wire design pulling out of it's grommet. The wire(s) itself is very soft and flexible, which while offering comfort, I'm afraid would be easily abraded or pinched.
All in all, you would be hard pressed to find another headset that offers more or performs better at or near this price point...it may even be an impossibility. Though PLa's are cheaper and more than adequate, for any looking for an entrance point into the headset market, these are without a doubt the only headset I will ever recommend again. If you need higher performance, just move up the price scale in the turtle beach line, each offering will blow you away.
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video-games_xbox
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The very definition of a must play game. I think most everyone knows about Fallout 3 by now- but for the few who don't...
This is a game that defies explanation, it's truly just an experience that you have to take part in to understand. Gameplay appeal is going to always be subjective, so there is no need trying to convince someone they will like how this game works or not, they either will or will not. Some may complain about the technical shortcomings- yes, the character models are not that great, yes, the animation is not the most cutting edge motion capture you will ever see, yes, there are occasional bugs and glitches- but- these are nothing compared to the overwhelming positives Fallout 3 brings to the table.
Personally, I find the gameplay very engaging; the combat never gets old, the amount of things to collect and discover keeps you coming back, and it offers enough overall depth to sustain investment over what can reach triple digit hours.
I first played through this game in early 2009 when it was first released. I did so with no help or guides, and I enjoyed it immensely. Recently, I picked up the GOTY edition, which is a fantastic value, and read up a little to be sure I wasn't missing as much as I did the first time... and boy, does this offer an epic journey! I would say the average player will miss an absolute minimum of 50% of the game's content the first time through, and even then this is a huge game. The amount of depth to the world in Fallout 3 is staggering, and there are simply so many fantastic moments, places, and characters that it is hard not to place this as one of the most memorable games ever.
The setting is brilliant, with a the-past-is-the-future 50's theme, the humor is great, constantly poking subtle fun at 50's idealism and the views of the future at that time. There are also some thoughtfully serious undercurrents; really the art design is very clever, as it juxtaposes upbeat, old time appeal against the stark horror of a nuclear holocaust; it is all very well executed.
All I can say, is on every level, this is about as perfect as a game can be. This is a big, complicated game too, so the fact that this all came together so well is a huge accomplishment, and is definitely worth your time.
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video-games_xbox
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An Interesting & Enjoyable Zombie RPG. Dead Island is a huge game that pushes a new genre in some ways. While at its heart it could be compared to other open world role-playing games, like Borderlands or Fallout 3/Fallout: New Vegas, it's also the first zombie role-playing game set on an incredibly lush island that turns into a hellish paradise once you dig further into the madness.
Pros:
- Terrifying Beauty - The island of Banoi is soaked in atmosphere, from the most beautiful of locations, to the most horrific, this is one vacation that is a pleasure assault on the eyes. Pack your bags, and make sure to include a machete and spike baseball bat, because you'll be needing both. This is one huge island packed with a lot to both see and do.
- Top Notch Atmosphere - The sound design, the environments that come to life, etc., really put you into the experience.
- Undead Meat - A cool feature in Dead Island is the analog control option in the menus, which allows you to aim for any part of a zombie's body. Is the zombie swinging its arms wildly at you? Target each arm and begin to chop away. You can break the bones and make them just hang there, or you could just chop them off entirely. After chopping off a zombie's arms, the zombie may then try to headbutt you, so simply target the head and chop it off. The tech here is very cool and allows you to play around with the zombies and kill them in numerous gruesome ways.
- Tons of Content - Dead Island will take the average player around 35 hours or more to see everything there is to do on Banoi.
- Role-Play Depth - Level up, unlock skills, find loot, get tons of quests, go through your inventory, etc. Dead Island isn't some easy way to make a buck, this is a game packed with a lot of depth and it shows that the developers wanted to give players a rich experience.
- Fun Melee Combat - As I already mentioned, I can't recommend the analog option enough. It keeps combat from feeling repetitive, as it gives you various ways to defeat your enemies.
- Co-op That Redefines What Co-op Should Be - This game is an absolute blast with some friends. Did you enjoy Borderlands with a few buddies? Now take that, ratchet up the fun factor even more, and this is exactly what Dead Island delivers. The focus on intense melee combat is a nice change of pace from other co-op games out there.
Cons:
- A Few Hiccups - You'll experience a few flaws and oddities, but the Xbox 360 version is generally pretty good in terms of overall performance. In addition, a patch was just released on Xbox Live that gets rid of the majority of technical flaws.
Dead Island is a game with depth, beautiful environments to explore, and some really enjoyable melee-focused combat, so it should come as no surprise that I'm definitely recommending this to anyone that enjoys a meaty single player campaign or 4-player co-op. As long as you like a deep and rewarding role-playing game, you'll definitely get your money's worth out of Dead Island.
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video-games_xbox
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Could have been more. Gears of War 4 could have been many things, but in the end it chose to play it safe. if you had told me 10 years ago I'd be playing a nearly identical game to the original Gears in its 4th iteration I think it would be hard to believe. 10 years is a long time. From 1990 - 2000 you had the snes era to the release of the ps2. Gameplay innovation has slowed down as a high level of graphical fidelity has become the norm.
Is the game fun? Sure. It's about as fun as any other Gears of War, but is that really enough at this point? When I switch over to play some Titanfall 2 it makes Gears of War feel like an antiquated novelty from a by gone era. Even the multiplayer has barely changed in 10 years. Yu still have people running around using nothing but shotguns.
The game is at its best when you are facing the more monstrous enemies. The creatures that jump around the map and have to be dodged are a nice change of pace. Otherwise, most of the game you are just hiding behind cover and blasting enemies that take a load of bullets. You walk into the next arena and repeat the same thing. You pretty much do this for the 8 or so hours until the credits roll. There are some new heavy weapons that are mostly just a novelty. Weapons like the saw blade launcher require careful aiming and are slow and cumbersome to use.
The game is very beautiful. Given the length of the game they do a commendable job introducing a variety of arenas. The game has beautiful architectural design and it is nice to see new colors other than grey and brown introduced to the palette. The places you visit tell a better story than the actual game manages.
Speaking of the story...while it is nice that there is a decent amount of light hearted banter between the new cast, and you aren't playing only gruff roided out war heroes, it would have been even better if they had bothered to actual tell anything close to a complete story. The game basically just stops. As if you can hear the execs behind the curtain saying, "Thanks for the $60 bucks,seeya in a year or two!" Great, thanks.
Speaking of shady practices, of course the multiplayer is filled with microtransactions. This is the scummiest business model imaginable in a full priced game and basically reeks of greed.
Long story short. This is a competently made game. It is even genuinely fun at times. But, it's just not enough. I absolutely loved the original Gears, and I sunk a pathetic amount of hours into that and its multiplayer, but to feel like I'm playing a nearly identical game all these years later just doesn't cut it. I won't be buying into this series. Maybe I'll try again in 10 years and see if they've actually taken some chances.
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video-games_xbox
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Classic game design meets modern consoles. Eschatos contains three games: The main game is, of course, Eschatos itself, but we also get the WonderSwan games Judgement Silversword and Cardinal Sins. (bonus points if you know what a WonderSwan is)
This release is region free, and works on a North American 360 just fine.
Eschatos:
The cover art is very good representation of this game. Eschatos is a shmup, where you fly a space ship, shoot down alien invaders, and dodge bullets to stay alive. You get two shot types, a rapid fire straight shot and a shorter ranged spread shot. Using both shot types at the same time activates a shield that can absorb bullets or ram smaller enemies until power runs out.
Eschatos has a very cool sense of style. With flying-saucer style UFOs, giant Hollywood-movie mother ships, and subtle references to the origins of video games, it's very different looking from most modern shmups. The best comparison would be to the Earth Defense Force games. Music is also very suitable, with screaming synthesizers set to an aggressive pace.
Level design is very slick. Each enemy attack wave is basically a mini-level, scored separately from the rest. You get points for destroying them as quickly and completely as possible. Each of these levels leads directly into the next, thus the game progresses in a smooth transition from cities, to orbit, to outer space, to the invading fleet's center. This gives the game a good feeling of consistency, and helps give it a sense of escalation as you go from defending the planet to attacking the enemy head on.
About the only downside to this game is the occasional perspective change mid-level. Every once in a while, it decides to swing the screen around for dramatic effect, which makes dodging bullets more difficult than it would otherwise be. I tend to use the shield in these sections as to avoid unexpected hits.
In addition to the original version of Eschatos, we also get an "advance" mode, which adds more game mechanics. More powerups are added, which give you stronger weapons but weaken your shield. This means you'll have to balance offense vs. defense, with either stronger weapons or stronger shields. Using the shield is also integral to scoring here, and bonus items are awarded for absorbing large numbers of bullets or enemies in a single sweep. Since the shield regenerates slowly, this allows score-oriented players to push their luck right to the limit.
I prefer the Advance mode over Original, for the extra gameplay options. Some players may prefer Original's simplicity though, so definitely try them both out. New options are unlocked as the game is played more, so take another look around the menu every once in a while to see what's new.
The difficulty settings are well balanced for any skill level. Easy mode is easy enough to get a single-credit clear in a short amount of time, while anything hard or above will challenge even the best players.
Judgement Silversword and Cardinal Sins:
As previously mentioned, these two were originally released on the WonderSwan. They can be played faithful to their original version, or with enhancements to make the games look cleaner (for example, you can disable the original's sprite flicker).
While yes, these are low-resolution 2D games that visually show their age, the gameplay is smooth and fun to play for score. Shot and shield options are very similar to those found in Eschatos. Judgement Silversword is a longer game, however Cardinal Sins has some really unique designs. Scoring for Cardinal Sins is particularly interesting as each area (named after one of the deadly sins) has its own objectives and scoring based on how well you complete that objective. These games also let you track your progress in each level, helping show which ones need more practice.
Note that if you use a rotated screen, go online and grab the latest patch which fixes some tate issues in the WonderSwan games.
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video-games_xbox
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Get MORE then you PAY FOR Impeccable, Awesome Customer service. UPDATE may 2015 the mic fades out and issues with connection staying on
Pretty, comfortable, noteworthy battery life, Use for 8hrs and no sign of quitting.
Exceptional differential so immersive you can tell were the enemy is even from behind, and react with accuracy. I was amazed at this i could hear if i should turn left or right to engage quicker. The sound is clear and a touch heavy on bass in a good way. I heard sounds i haven't heard before. The mic works according to other players just a little deeper tone, however no fading or feedback. My friends gave positive feedback about chatting during a game. The headset allows you to control the volume of the game independently from the Chat. I have only seen this on premium headsets. AMAZING-better then my wired Turtle Beach set @ 1/3 the price. Super easy set up and trouble shooting guide. These are a must get skip the pricey alternatives The truly sound quadraphonic if not 5 way.
Problem:
Had an issue mentioned before in reviews the sound cuts in and out, as if the sound is being turned on/ off. I went to exchange them for another set (they are great). I could continue to heap complements about the sound. BUT none of that matters if they don't work. *****************This problem really became the strongest reason to buy the HUHD set.
You Get MORE THEN YOU PAY FOR
3 days latter. I'm beyond impressed. HUHD has called my phone to apologize and offered to correct it. They also emailed me their regrets and willingness to make it right. Three responses from a bad review, I never contacted them only amazon. They proposed a fix that is downloadable to upgrade the head set. I have never seen customer service like this..EVER!!!!! I was compelled to log in and update because of HUHD reaction and willingness to help. It unbelievable-the true use of AWESOME. I will update my review to 4 star just because they took the initiative contacting me. I have updated my review the download fixed it I KNOW THEY STAND BEHIND WHAT THE SELL.
IMHO
Get the HUHD i bet my reputation that IF there is a problem they will make it right. If a bad review entices them to call, email, and offer a number of options to resolve the issue you know your covered. The customer service leaves me speechless i cant find the words to express how awesome they are GO FOR IT they got you covered.
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video-games_xbox
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This Game Sucks Balls - If You're Impatient. I tried to give this game a chance. I truly did. I would typically play it for about a half an hour at a time because I kept turning it off in frustration. The controls are not fluid, objectives are blurry and the graphics are sub par for a next gen console (I played it on the PS3). The original Splinter Cell, Pandora Tomorrow and Conviction are all great games. This installment sucks major balls.
UPDATE - Ok, so I'm the type of reviewer that will definitely admit to making a bad call on any review I publish. My initial review of this game was a bad call. Yes, initially I did continuously turn it off in frustration. However, I kept hearing about how good the game was, so I decided to sit down and work through my frustrations and really try to get into the game. Well, that was a great idea. It took some patience, that's for sure. But once I got over a few initial frustrating points and actually got into the game, I couldn't put it down. It really ended up being a great game. I played through it all the way to the end (which took quite a while) and I must say, it is now one of my favorite games. Just goes to show that sometimes you just have to be a little patient when a game has promise but starts out a little more difficult than you're used to. Now, I stand by my comments about the graphics - they could be better. However, once I got used to the control scheme, it worked great. I'm a huge fan of this series, with Conviction being my favorite. Double Agent is now my second favorite. A must own...if you're a patient gamer.
PROS
- Great story line
- Superb voice acting
- Controls are good
- So fun that the replay value is high
CONS
- The graphics for the PS3, while not atrotious, could be better
- Some missions have relatively vague direction and can be frustrating
Bottom line: a fantastic game that you should own.
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video-games_xbox
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Don't Shoot the Lute Player. I'm not sure that there is a good way to do a review or a game that a large number of others have reviewed. Especially if the game is as well done as Assassin's Creed II is. There are any number of things that amaze me - the quality of the animation and illustration, a plot which creates a perpetual state of mystery. And so forth ad infinitum. In a year where there have been an unusual number of fine action/adventure games (RPG or otherwise), Assassin's Creed 2 is remarkable. Ubisoft has put everything they had into making this a landmark game, and they have succeeded.
Rather than go on and on about each flash of brilliance I just want to touch on a couple of details - one positive and one negative. And then I'll leave you at peace to do what you should be doing -- playing the game.
The positive is one that is often overlooked - the amount of effort into making the game accurate from a historical point of view. The Italian Renaissance is one of the most complex and rich periods of European history. Rather than simply glossing this over, Ubisoft has put effort into making out assassin an active participant in the events of the time and in depicting live in some of Europe's most beautiful cities. Art, culture, politics, you name it and it is represented here. This is one of those rare games where the player is richer for having played it. There should be a special prize for this kind of effort a Nobel gaming prize, if that doesn't sound too outlandish.
My criticism will reveal my own weaknesses as well. As a 60 year old desk jockey I am lacking in the finely honed fighting reflexes that this kind of game demands of the player. I fumble, and my fingers spaz out at critical moments. To be really effective at this game one must have strong controller skills. What Assassin's Creed demands of the player is a high level of accurate control, or a great deal of luck - probably both. Very slight differences in thumb position or timing can produce frustratingly different results. Since game saving is left to the whims of the machine it is possible that a string of actions will be wiped away by a slight misstep. I had to reminds myself not to throw the controller at my brand new flat screen television on more than one occasion. That being said, though, I did finish the game and almost all the side quests so the issue is hardly insurmountable. Rest assured, if I can play it, anyone can.
Assassin's Creed II is a treat to play and participate in. Since it is a violent game with more than a little rough language there will be those who take exception to it. But for the rest of us it is well worth the purchase price.
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video-games_xbox
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Terrific Shoot Em Up. I'm a lifelong (34 years) shmup fan, so I thought it would be appropriate for me to write a review on Caladrius seeing as nobody else has yet. First off, the game is region locked to Japan/Asian XBOX 360's, make sure you have one or you won't be able to enjoy the game.
Now, for the game itself. What a terrific little surprise this was. The game plays like a cross between the developers other shooter Raiden IV and (in my opinion) the excellent Radiant Silvergun. Instead of just a shot/bomb system, you also have three unique elemental shot types for each character, essentially making this a six button shooter (rare these days). Score multipliers depend on the use of these elemental shots so it's important to manage each effectively (they run out/auto replenish once they drop to zero). Chaining shots together while keeping an eye on your resources is part of the excellent gameplay challenges you can experience if you are a more hardcore shooter fan. The boss battles are lengthy and feature some of the best visual designs I've seen in a long time. Bullet patterns change and sweep across the screen and require you to use your elemental attacks in creative ways to protect yourself. The music is beautiful (sort of upbeat/classical/goth) and the graphics are superb. Lots of color and unique environments. For less hardcore players, the game features a cute storyline and easier difficulty modes if you aren't concerned with scoring and just want to play to see the "end".
Also worth noting is a separate DLC music pack featuring a total redo of the game's music (even menus) in an old school 8-bit soundtrack. It's AWESOME. a little pricey but definitely fun for people looking to customize a bit.
Moss created a great little surprise here, Caladrius definitely flew under my radar but I'm very glad I picked it up. My only complaints about the game are that you can't switch to a vertical orientation for vertical monitors (like you can with most 360 shmups ala Dodonpachi/Mushihimesama). But it's a minor gripe.
If you are interested in the shmup genre or are a hardcore fan, this is a great title. (I bought mine new on EBay for far less than Amazon is charging...look around before you plop down the cash).
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video-games_xbox
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Racing fun at it's core. I can first start by saying that there is no doubt that this is an awesome game. This Need for Speed is developed by Criterion, a developer that has a long history with racing games and are well known for the Burnout Franchise and Need for Speed Hot Pursuit.
Driving in the open world of Fairhaven, its simply a pleasure to just free roam the city and periodically be chased by police. The events in NFSMW (Need for Speed Most Wanted) are different and fun. With challenges like getting the highest jump, drift challenges, and others makes NFSMW stand out. No its not realistic jumping off a ramp and then subsequently landing on a hanging platform without your suspension being toast, but thats not what this game is about. ITs about fun and racing at its core, and I think thats awesome.
The multiplayer in this game very innovative, especially for this genre. Yes, you can race opponents online, have drift or jump competition online, but whats most innovative is that even if you're friends aren't online to race you can still compete with them during single player. With speed checkers that check your speed at a certain point on a road, you can compete with your friends to see who can be the fastest on that road and it automatically goes to the leader boards without accessing a single menu. There are also bulletin boards through out the world that you can bash through and your game tag/picture is posted on it there after. So the multiplayer is very competitive and practically can run in the background even when no one is online.
Another cool aspect is that every car is unlocked from the beginning. One could say that "oh that means its going to get boring quickly" That I would say is very untrue. To get a car you simply have to find it in the open world. And yes you have access to find all of them from the start. But the real control over your car comes with mods. Modifying your car drastically changes the dynamic of the vehicle and makes it even more fun. You can even do it in real time using the dpad. So you could upgrade your chassis while in a car chase to better defend yourself while your being chased, with no pausing. This is definitely an innovative idea of customizing on the go.
If you are looking for a game with great cars and constant action at every turn, this is your game! Since it is made by Criterion is makes sense that it controls and has a similar feel as Burnout Paradise (Criterion's last Burnout game (which is also a great game)) I don't think this is a bad thing. Many critics of the game would argue its not Need for Speed Most Wanted, it's "Burnout Paradise 2" I'm not going to argue about that, yes it literally could be a successor to Burnout Paradise, but you have to remember that when developers make a game they want to have their own spin/control over their game to differentiate themselves.
This game gives you a great racing game that doesn't constantly focus on realism and wants to urge players to have fun. In a genre that lacks in great, fun, arcade styled racing, Need for Speed Most Wanted stands out from the rest.
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video-games_xbox
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The worst of the entire series. If I could use three words to describe JD2014, it would be this: a complete misfire.
Why would I say that? It has some of the best choreography of the series. The graphics are a huge improvement over the previous versions. The navigation is finally easy to scroll through. So what's the problem?
I don't know what went wrong, but it seemed as if Just Dance 2014 was trying to go in a radically new direction. Whatever the case may be, it was an experiment that failed badly. The first mistake it made was getting rid of its eclectic soundtrack. If you've played any of the other JD editions, you know that they always have a little bit of something for everyone--some Top 40, some Eurodance, some golden oldies, some country and some world dance. This edition seemed to get rid of the more eclectic genres and stuck with generic Top 40 garbage, so no country music, no Eurodance, no anything else--just bland pop and dance with the same sound and beats. Every time I play this version I have to struggle to get at least a half hour worth's play out of it because the playlist is so bad.
The choreography is wildly hit and miss, running the gamut from absolutely brilliant to abysmal. I have a feeling it was because the choreographers were uninspired by the large number of insipid song choices they had to deal with. The choreography for "That Power" by Will.i.am is jaw dropping amazing, but for every one like that in JD2014, there are at least five that are boring or inappropriate, like the choreographers didn't care for the song or didn't know how to work with it. For example, "99 Luftballoons," an anti-nuke song, is choreographed as a cute couples dance. "Feel This Moment" is just bland and repetitive. "Roar," the free DLC, is a particularly a huge disappointment, as Katy Perry songs have always had the strongest choreography in the JD series.
Another huge misfire for JD2014 is the "feedback" that you get when you finish a song telling you how well you did. I forget all of them but they were particularly obnoxious in this edition. For example, there's one called "Agitated" and another one that I think is called "Exhausted", which tells you that you started off strong and then started getting worse as you went along. (Thanks, I really needed to hear that.) The worst one, I think, is "Creative," which is a backhanded way of telling you that you did well enough to score well, but probably weren't following the moves exactly.
Then there's this other problem with JD2014--the audience. In terms of who it was going for, it seemed as this edition was having an identity crisis, like it didn't know if it wanted to cater to the 18+ crowd or grammar school set. On one hand, it has these sexually suggestive songs like Blurred Lines and I Kissed a Girl. Also, much of the choreography is sexually suggestive, with pelvic thrusting and butt slapping. But on the other hand, it has kiddie friendly songs from Disney's Aladdin and two children as one of the dancers. It was like the people behind the scenes were completely torn about how to make this game work for both a more mature crowd and little kids. You can see the conflict play out in the family dance version of "Blame if on the Boogie." In that one, the little girl grabs her crotch like Michael Jackson! That moment said it all, of, "Hey, we want this to be a game that the entire family can enjoy. But wait, we don't want to lose the college age adult partying crowd, either!"
With all the negatives I have to say for this game, you're probably wondering why I'm giving it two stars instead of one. Well, it's because there are a few really good dances in this edition, enough to merit this edition an additional star. But overall, it's the weakest out of all the JDs in terms of playlist, choreography and direction.
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video-games_xbox
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Not a single feature works perfectly. Should have been perfected before release. Seems like a very rushed product. Seems like this product is a few years off from being what I would consider good enough for general release, and if I had to do it over again I would not purchase this product. The camera is essentially crap. It's recognition of my hands is abysmal, face recongition is a joke, and voice controls are mediocre (at best). I'll start with what I consider the the worst part which is face recognition. The Kinect only sometimes recognizes my face due to the fact I wear a couple of different pairs of glasses and sometimes wear contacts.. Only when I wear the single pair of glasses that I set up the Kinect up with does it pick up my face, then its still only around 70-80% of the time. When I wear contacts or different glasses I would say I'm recognized maybe 30%.
Hand gestures are terrible. My hand, while being perfectly still, vibrates and moves constantly on the screen, so much so that it constantly selects the wrong thing. Its pretty much completely useless based on how bad it performs, so I have stopped trying completely. I only use the voice controls now, which are 'decent'. I say decent as even the voice commands fail to understand what I'm saying, I would estimate, around 10 - 15% of the time.
Overall it seems like they were really rushed to get this out. I don't know if that's the case or not, but it just seems like its almost a beta version. So much stuff "barely" works that I really believe Microsoft should have waited for the release and perfected the coding before releasing this product. As I said earlier, if I had to go back and do this again I can say with absolute certainty I would not purchase the Kinect again. The only thing that works "mostly" as intended is the voice controls, and that is certainly not worth anywhere near the price Microsoft charges for the Kinect.
Also as you probably assume, Dance Central is terrible, but no one buys a Kinect for the free game. I think I would have settled for a $5 off coupon for this not to be included though.
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video-games_xbox
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The grand-daddy of FPS is back and better then ever. Wow, wow, wow. This is one incredible, scary ass freaky game. I only have an older labtop so I can't update it or anything, so I thought I'd never get the chance to really play Doom 3 since there was no way I could ever get it to play on my PC. But low and below Id announced that Doom 3 was coming to X-box and I was as happy as could be. It took a little while, but it's finally here and it's awesome.
First off, the graphics are incredible. These are probably the best graphics that I've ever seen on any console. Better than RE 4, Splinter Cell, and I'd say even a little bit better than Halo 2. This game showcases the power of the X-box at it's fullest, and why it's my favorite of the three systems. The lighting, bump textures, backgrounds and monsters just look spectacular. I was worried that the graphics would be nowhere close to its PC brother, but I wasn't let down. While the PC version obviously looks better, this version comes pretty close. It's about the mid to low res of the PC version. These graphics will blow you away. I don't think I've ever seen lighting as good as this. It reflects of the surfaces and characters extremely realistictly. Lights sway and the shadows follow. There's the contstant use of your flashlight which looks great too, as well as strobe, fire, muzzle and grenade explosions. All of it is seamlessly intregated. The textures in the game are so life like you feel you're actually there and can reach out and touch any of it. Id did such a wonderful job designing and making these monsters too. You can see beneath their skin the muscles and veins pulsating underneath when caught up close and personel in your flashlight. They look and act realistic and all of them are incredibly frightning. There's also a lot of variety in them, which is always welcome.
The sound in the game is also great. If you have surround sound like I do, the sound will amaze you. The creature sounds and ambient noises that fill the game are all masterfully done, and sound even better when they're coming from all around you. Not to mention it scares the crap out of you that much more. Each monster has its own kind of sound and you can learn to pick out what kind of monster you're fighting by the sounds around you. I often found myself stopping in the dark and listening, trying to decipher if something was about to jump me around the next corner. There's no music in the game except for the beginning and that works really well, because the lack of a soundtrack keeps your level of anticapation up as you wait for what happens next, rather than hearing the musical cue that something bad is coming right at you.
Gameplay is exactly what you'd expect from a Doom game. You run throught clastophobic corridars on a Marine base blowing the crap out of bad things while you get scared out of your wits. Ocasionally you need keys so you find them and continue on. Its classic Doom and I love it. A lot of people have complained that it's too simple and doesn't really evolve the game past dumb shooter. I tend to disagree. This game isn't a dumb shooter. It's an action oriented horror FPS that you can't just run balls to the walls through. I found myself constantly stopping and moving slowly ahead so I wouldn't be killed. I explored hidden areas that I found and tried to decipher codes to doors and cabinets by searching through my PDA. There's lift systems to figure out and computers to locate and use. The game is essentially a remake of the first Doom, and I'm astounded how 13 years later Id was able to make a new Doom and also make it feal so much like the old Doom even with slick new graphics and gameplay. This game really feels like the old series. Walls still slide open behind you and to the side and hoards of enemies pour out. Most of your favorite demons make a return, in some form or another, ready to rip you to shreds. The old weapons are back to, from the shotgun to the wonderful BFG. And my favorite one of all, the chainsaw, which sprays wonderful blood across the floor when you dig in to a shambling zombie. There's a thinly veiled story here that's not to in depth, but that's okay since this is a Doom game. What really brings you into the game though is your PDA and other characters PDA's that you discover along the way. You get video kdisks to watch, e-mails from people to other people to read and audio logs to listen too. All of these show life in Mars City before all Hell literally broke loose. We get to pear into these people's daily lives, from the mundane of annoyance of getting spam mail to the more serious, how one person feels about another and how some of the UAC employees are beginning to act weird, pre invasion. You find codes to weapon stashes and hints on where to find things when you listen to these and they really draw you into the world of this game.
Warning though for the weak of heart. This game will scare the living crap out of you. I just got done playing RE 4 and I thought I got scared during that a lot. That was nothing compared to this game. Here I was scared every moment of the game, even when I cleared out a room, because almost always there was at least one more demon that I had missed which would then be trying to rip my head off. The monsters are scary to the max, but what really makes this game creepy is the lighting. You'll be traveling and suddenly the lights will go out and you'll be surrounded. You have a flashlight, but do you use it because you won't be able to fire if you do. Or do you use the gun and hope to see where the demons are by the muzzle flash. I've heard a lot of negative reactions to the flashlight and how you have to use it through a lot of the game, but I think it's a great addition. It adds realism to the experience and really amps up the freak out factor. Demons crawl along walls warp right in front of you, come through vents and out of ceiling panels. There's nothing like two imps smashing down broken doors and throwing them out of the way like toothpicks to kill you to get the adrenaline flowing. Where in Halo I always felt like I was the badass master chief wiping out entire alien races, here I feel like no matter what I do, or how big my gun is, I'm still being hunted like the weakest link in the food chain. And that's a good thing for this game, because you're supposed to feel uneasy and scared the entire time, it all adds to the atmospher of the game. Also, the physics engine in this game is just killer, even better than Halo 2. All of the items you can shoot or hit or kick along the floor act realistically no matter what you do to them.
I bought the Collectors addition because it include Ultimate Doom and Doom II which is worth the extra money right there. But it also includes interviews with the makers at Id and a segment from G4 about the making of Doom 3. Plus it comes in a nice metal case like the Halo 2 case from last year. All of it is well worth the extra money, and I only paid five bucks more at Target, so I'd diffently reccomend getting the bonus version. Plus, with the two original Dooms you can play deathmatch and two player co-op.
There wasn't much I found that I didn't like in this game. The sound was superb,except for some of the weapons. A lot of them, especially the shotgun sounded muted, which was pretty odd. Like I said, I just got done playing RE 4, and those guns sounded spectacular. So they should have taken a page from the old Capcom book for that. Another disappointment was lack of co-op splitscreen, which isn't that big of a deal since you can still do it by system link or other live, but still, it would've been nice. And probably the one thing that really angered me about this game was the lack of head shots or realistic body shots. Once again, in RE 4 the enemies all react to where you shoot them. They also die faster if you shoot them in the head or torso and have their own animations depending on where they get shot. Not so in Doom 3. Foot, hand, head or groin, it doesn't matter. Wherever you shoot them they go down after so many shots. I heard they did this because the consoles controllers aren't as precise as a keyboard and mouse, but I think that's a load of crap. I play tons of FPS's and I've never had a precision problem with any of my console games. Even Return to Castle Wolfenstein, another awesome Id port had head shots. So I don't know why they left it out of the X-box version.
Overall, one of my top three FPS's and X-box games. This game will show you the true power of your X-box while scaring the living daylights out of you. It's a must buy and an excellent port. Just make sure to pay the little bit extra and get the great collectors edition of this top-notch game.
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video-games_xbox
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A great story drive slow burn.....(If you lust after TWD games give it a try. If you love Telltale Game's The Walking Dead games you should check this title out!
I think it runs circles around those two games
If you are a fan of WGN's Salem gets this game you'll appreciate it more and understand a great deal of it
The Story: is the selling point
It's a very competent story driven game...... (If you have a.d.d. this game isn't for you)
It's a story about Witches, Ghosts, Serial Killers, and being a newly murdered homicide detective
That can't move on until he solves his own murder
Controls: are pretty straight forward very responsive, easy to pick up and play
Graphics: it's a weak next gen title mostly due to Square Enix putting it out on cross platforms
the XBone and PS4 version's of this game suffered from that alone! It's a straight port from the 360 version the only major positive is the great audio
The audio is A+++ all the voice over cast is really good plus you have these cool "Ghost Stories" you collect pieces of them then when you get all off them you play the story and all of it's told to you from a different actor/actress (every one of these stories are flawless mostly due to the v/o actor/actress selling the story they could've gone the cheap route and had these be text) plus the game is decoded in DTS 5.1
The concept/idea of this game is very unique it's a point and click adventure but, it's not it's very easy to dismiss this game
but, you can't say it wasn't ambitious and tried to be different
I really enjoy this game even though it has minor flaws it's a real buried treasure! That deserves a second chance there's a hell of a lot there if you take the time to look for it! 9/10
P.S. If any gamer says this game sucks but, the two Walking Dead games are poetry in motion then they are a complete hypocrite and a W.D. fanboy that just has to gush over anything with that brand on it! This game isn't a series of down endings
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video-games_xbox
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Innovative and Fun At First, Tiresome After a Couple Hours. It's always been extremely "hit-or-miss" with LucasArts Entertainment's long running series of games based off of the Star Wars universe. On one hand, they've brought to life several extremely successful arcade-style flight simulators, but on the other they've stumbled and bumbled their way through countless platformers and shoot-em-ups. In more recent years, even their greatest strength, the flight sims, have taken a nosedive with poor showings on the PSX, N64, PS2, GameCube and Xbox. So when I finally sat down to have a go at this one, it was with a fleeting hope to see more of what once was and less of what's most recently been. I remember when things were good, and it's very hard to forget when they were bad.
The basic premise of this one is quite simple; you alternate playing the roles of Adi Gallia, a young Jedi Master and Nym, a typical gung-ho, brightly colored alien pirate, as they battle to save the republic from the looming threat of the Trade Federation. Both fly easily recognizable ships, and each come fully equipped with their own set of unique special weapons and secondary firepower. While Adi can use the force to aid her in the battle by slowing down time, reinforcing shields or striking enemy ships with force lightning, Nym's vehicle carries a heavy load of blunt firepower. Adi's ship is faster and more maneuverable, but Nym's packs a much stronger punch.
The entirety of the controls themselves are very easy to learn and deceptively simple to master. It's nowhere near as complex and customizable as the keyboard-based system introduced by X-Wing and Tie Fighter, but it still accomplishes many of the same tasks without the necessity of another sixty buttons. The left analog stick controls the direction of your ship, and the right analog handles the roll, which is more of a luxury feature than anything else. In space you won't need to put this to use at all, except perhaps to dodge enemy fire, but when you're battling near the surface of a planet it's easy to get disoriented by your surroundings if everything isn't level. The left and right triggers handle the speed of your craft, with the left your brake and the right your speed boost. I miss the ability to set my thrust to 40% or 60%, or to match the speed of my target and ride his tail until he's dead, but the lack of so many confusing buttons here is a trade-off I can live with.
The story, unfortunately, isn't nearly as inventive nor as easy to follow as the weapons or control systems. What story there is shoots by at such a blazing pace, it's nearly impossible to comprehend what's just happened before you're right in the thick of another fight. At one point, I didn't understand that I was dogfighting with Jango Fett himself until the second or third time he killed me. Efforts were made to tie this title in with the events going on during Episode II, but you could blink and miss the connections. Samuel L. Jackson's character, Mace Windu, is directly involved with everything you do, but it's hard to tell when that's his voice you're hearing over the comm-link, because the voice actor they cast for his role sounds NOTHING like his movie counterpart.
Another thing that bothered me about the way this game played was its straightforward series of goals. While one of the coolest things about Tie Fighter was its variety, Jedi Starfighter puts you in a new location, shakes up your odds a little bit, and tells you to do one of two things; protect something or kill something. Gone are the reconnaissance missions that made the pace of the PC flight sims so strong. You'll never be asked to retreat from a battle after holding off enemy fighters long enough for backup to arrive. It's kill or be killed, every single time.
While the gameplay itself is quite realistic in appearance, with tightly-rendered ships, daunting scale and believable obstacles such as asteroids and hidden enemy bases on small moons, the characters in the important scenes are flamboyantly cartoony and unrealistic. The regal, pompous air exuded by the tall, green members of the Trade Federation in Episode I is rendered null and void when they flail their arms around, swivel their hips or throw their heads around in strange ways during casual dialog. It seems like the animators grew bored with what they were being asked to render and overcompensated on the body language.
The audio, to its credit, is very well done from start to finish. Though the voice acting is pretty much universally terrible, the sound effects and music more than make up for it and then some. Laser fire is easy to trace, each different ship sounds crisp and distinct, and the original John Williams score works every bit as well here as it does on screen.
This is a title that had all the elements of a great game, in the same vein as its vaunted predecessors. It was overflowing with ingenuity, featuring unique new elements that made even the harshest battles exciting and entertaining, an enormous stage upon which to play, a steadily rising level of difficulty and several well-developed unlockable features. The gameplay is most certainly spot-on but the story, mood and motivations have got it all wrong. It's hard to get into a game like this, no matter how original the weaponry, if the story feels like an afterthought and each stage is just a new skin wrapped around the same old set of goals. Extra features help add a little spice to it, but on the large it's a perfect example of what could have been. I wish they'd taken another couple months on this, finished it properly and concentrated more on adding some peaks and valleys to the missions themselves.
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video-games_xbox
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Simply, a must-buy for any fan. I haven't played the aforementioned ROTC, but I have heard about its numerous flaws. I must say that this game simply cannot be compared to ROTC; it really is very good.
The main menu leads you to: play now (generic exhibition game), 2006 World cup, other game modes (practice, global challenges, penalty shootout). You can also check out video clips of all the German cities and stadiums in the actual world cup, but they're pretty boring unless you really like seeing trains move around through Stuttgart or something with really bad music in the background. Anyway, you can also buy certain things with points you earn in games like different balls, classic players (like Beckinbauer, but Pele is missing sadly), cheats, and uniforms (only for Germany, England, France, Spain, and maybe someone else... I forget).
On generic games: These are really customizable. You pick your team, opponents team- there are 127 playable countries, uniforms, half lengths (the default setting is fine), cheats, ball, starting lineups, sttadium, and a bunch of other stuff which I usually leave alone. The loading screen pops up with a fact about one of the countries like the fact that Liechtenstein has no female prisoners (!!!) and the World Cup records for the country.
The game starts and the countries national anthems play, but it's unrecognizable for whatever reason. I find that the game has the ability to be played like a real soccer game- if you want to lose. The real best way is to try to get on fast breaks so its 1v1 against the goalie, or run up the sidelines and cross it, and hope that one of your guys can head it in. The reason for this is that normal shots from far out don't work too well, because the goalies are too good. You can hit an absolute cannon to a corner and the goalie will dive and save it. However, if you get up close, the goalies are absolutely worthless and have a range of about 3... Yes 3, not 3 feet, but about 3 inches in the way they feel like flopping on the ground. But, for the most part it is fine, since in a real life situation, the player will almost always score in a 1v1.
On Practice: This is pretty helpful, but not really fun. If you start a game, and find yourself getting the ball stolen from you a lot, or you can't score, just go into practice, make the other team play shorthanded and try to make some plays.
On Global Challenges: These are historic scenarios from the World Cup or other cups/qualifiers. These range from absurdly easy to seemingly impossible. Be aware that you cannot change the difficulty. For instance, one scenario has you, New Zealand, attempting to score 5 goals in the final 30 minutes against Figi. This seems really hard, but it isn't, because Figi is made into trash in this scenario. You can run up with the ball and nobody will really try to stop you. Others like the infamous Australia-Solomon Islands are impossible. Solomon Islands is a terrible team, but they somehow have amazing skill in everything in this scenario. These scenarios are really fun overall though and give you experience with certain teams.
On Penalty Shootout: Easily my favorite part. It's just a penalty shootout, like the name would suggest. You pick the teams, and the order of the kickers and it starts. It's very simple with a power meter on offense with a little bar moving. If you fill up the power meter past the bar, your kick will miss (unless your guy has good accuracy, then you can afford to go a little above the bar). On defence, you move the analog stick to where you want the goalie to dive. These are really fun! Try to get yours to last as long as possible. Once, I had it so long that my goalie had to take kicks twice.
On World Cup: You can decide whether to use the actual world cup, or start your own. Pick a team(s) in a region and play in the qualifiers in the actual groups the world cup was in. I find that, generally, the same teams seem to qualify, so it's pretty accurate for the most part. Once you qualify (I always have), you will be sorted into groups and play in the World Cup! I have won with Spain in my first Cup, and I have just qualified with Cry-naldo and Portugal, and Israel in my second cup.
Don't get frustrated with the global challenges, just have fun!
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video-games_xbox
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NBA 2K7: As sluggish as dribbling with your fingers. NBA 2K6 was, without a doubt, the top NBA basketball game last season. 2K Sports put together one of the best basketball games I can even remember, and no one put out a more impressive next-generation sports title for the Xbox 360 launch. Everything in terms of presentation, gameplay on-court and even off the court was nearly perfect. After such an impressive season in 2006, I expected a lot out of Visual Concepts' 2007 offering and I came up quite disappointed. NBA 2K7 is like watching your team fall behind in the fourth and lose by a few points-it's not a total bomb of a game, but it's still a loss.
NBA 2K7's miscues are almost all on-court. In fact, I'd go as far as to say the only miscues, with the exception of 24/7 Mode, are on-court. 24/7 Mode makes its return this year, and it's basically a street ball story mode where you create a player and try to enter a pro-am tournament at Rucker Park in New York City. Haven't we been down this road a few times before? Not only is the mode unimpressive and unoriginal, the presentation is a joke. I'm not being sarcastic, it's laughably bad-you've got a buddy who tags along to watch you play, and his comments and gestures throughout the cut-scenes in 24/7 Mode made me want to take NBA 2K7 out of my Xbox 360 and shatter it into pieces. If the sidekick wasn't being annoying, the gameplay was-street ball isn't fun when it runs at a simulation pace, and 24/7 Mode felt as sim as The Association, NBA 2K7's other deep offering. The Association hasn't ever been deeper, and this season you can do all sorts of different things-set up and participate in team practices, trade players, manage team finances and staff, all while balancing your team's chemistry. Team Chemistry is an integral part of the mode, as it affects your players on and off the court-but that's nothing new, it's been done for years in the franchise. All said, I wish 24/7 Mode was as impressive as The Association.
As I said much earlier, the miscues found here are all on-court. Last season, the biggest complaints were that blocks were tough and driving the lane was far too easy. This year, I'd quadruple that list. The opponent A.I. was been tightened up about ten notches and I found it so difficult to drive the lane that I eventually quit trying. It's not only the A.I., but at times I felt like there were invisible walls keeping me from getting close to the hoop. It was absurd to see Dwayne Wade fail to pierce the interior defense of the Portland Trail Blazers. Free throws were a strong point last year, though many people found them to be very simple. This year, since every single player has his own specific animation, free throw timing depends on that specific animation. This makes free throw percentages drop from last year's 90% to about 40% or so. The overall field goal percentages have been forcefully lowered, meaning that oftentimes you simply won't make shots because you're not supposed to. Good luck having a lights-out night with your fantasy team filled with superstars, it's not happening here. As I said, the A.I. was worked on, and you can tell-defenders will collapse and switch targets very often, but when you're on defense and this happens to you, it's nothing but annoying. Mismatches are created so often that it's free points for the CPU.
Where did it go wrong? Last year when I thought about gameplay, I couldn't hardly complain about anything. This year, I would sit, play the game, and basically loathe the experience I was having. The game is now so slow that I forced myself to use the sliders in the pause menu, and even then it didn't help much. If it's any indication, I played a game with 10-minute quarters and scored 104 points as the Miami Heat, one of the most potent and deepest offensive teams in the NBA. Anyone who's played other basketball games knows that playing a game with 10-minute quarters should yield more than 200 points from both teams. I guess you could consider it realism, but I consider it boring for a video game. Think about it-I scored an average of 2.5 points per minute. I know that Visual Concepts wanted to create a game with realism but there comes a point when realism isn't fun, it's boring and tedious.
As I mentioned earlier, almost every single player in NBA 2K7 has his own animations. You'll see the world's ugliest jump shot from Adam Morrison and the free throw that takes longer than pregnancy from Shaquille O'Neal. These animations are nice and make NBA 2K7 one of the most impressively animated video games I've seen. You'll notice other little touches, like players jumping and squaring up for long air passes or sliding and squaring up to the hoop to take a jump shot. There are a lot of improvements to the presentation. For example, you'll see all sorts of broadcast camera angles and instant replay effects. Otherwise, the visuals remain largely unchanged from last year. I noticed that the cloth physics were toned down a little bit, and I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing, but it doesn't make the game look worse. Ah, if only NBA 2K7 was as nice to play as it is to look at. The audio also remains mostly the same, and I noticed that the commentary was even more repetitive this year. It's a big fault, since I heard some lines several times in the same game. For shame, Visual Concepts Get those boys back in the booth and record some new, interesting material. I will credit the on-court chatter and crowd reactions, although the crowd can become very quiet at times.
It's a shame that NBA 2K7 is such a disappointment. It's like watching the underdogs in the NBA Playoffs lose a close one in game seven. The 2K series has come a long way, but it's a good thing that Visual Concepts has a year to work on some of the gameplay flaws that they arbitrarily created this season. They need to stop worrying so much about realism and start thinking about the entertainment value-NBA 2K7 is the most realistic basketball game you'll play, sure, but it isn't the most fun and that's what matters.
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video-games_xbox
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Huh? Why all the hype? This game is too limited. I just spent 6 hours in frustration. I think this game came out too fast, in a rush to beat the release of "Return of the King." The graphics were very good, but...
First off, I had trouble with being forced to watch the movie clip at the begining of the game. You can't stop it or skip through it. If you try - you merely go back to the begining of the clip and watch it all over again. After the real movie footage there is EA's computer generated movie footage. You can't skip that either. Then the game starts off with no warning. You are Isildur and you must start right in the thick of battle. Again, you can't stop or change settings or anything. If you try, you can only restart and then have to watch the movie clips all over again without being able to skip it. That is truly cheesy. The movie wasn't that great. They ought not be so proud of it.
Next, more movie footage and more computer generated movie footage. You can't skip through it either. You are Aragorn. No choice in the matter. You are stuck on the hilltop, battling Ringwraiths, protecting Frodo - you cannot leave the tiny little circle. You must defeat the Wraiths to move on. Next, you can decide if you want to be Aragorn, Legolas or Gimli. Don't get your hopes up. More movie footage that you can't skip and more computer generated footage that you can't skip. This is the case every time to move to another area. Only after you defeat the level and go back to replay as a different character can you skip the movie footage. You can never skip EA's computer generated movie footage. That alone is cheesy enough to make me give this game 2 stars. But that ain't all...
The action area is always way too small. You are woefully limited in how far you can move around. The character moves are very hard to get control of - even in the easy mode expect to die a lot. I was able to get pretty far, but the frustration and contempt proved to be too much. I quit the game at Balin's tomb and returned it to Target for a different game. The furious attempts at getting the character to move around properly and face the right direction almost completely destroyed one of my Xbox controllers. It is now in very poor shape and needs to be replaced. This happened in less than 6 hours of play. I've played Halo for days and days and did not experience this sort of difficulty. I play Halo in the "Heroic" mode and can kick butt and move around like a screaming demon. "The Two Towers" proved to be too frustrating. I mastered the moves, but often times the character failed to recognize the commands from the controller. The transition between melee weapon and range weapon was too poor. You cannot aim range weapons either. You have to face in the general area of the monster and just hope your weapon hits. Often times the monster can hit you, but you can't hit it. Again, frustrating. It's very hard to block an incoming arrow then fire off a ranged weapon. Gimli is especially slow with equiping and firing ranged weapons!
That's not all. Every few minutes of gameplay is interrupted by EA's computer generated movie sequences. Frustrating and annoying. You can't move 50 paces or fight for 5 minutes (oftentimes less than that) without the game interrupting you for some more uninterruptable footage. God, that got very old.
When you finally get to Balin's tomb, you are stuck in the tiny room where the Fellowship battled the cave troll. You cannot leave. You cannot wander around. You are stuck there. After battling orcs for a few minutes, the cave troll comes in. Here the transition between EA's computer generated movie and the action is very jerky, with gaps in the video and sound. The game actually pauses several times during this. You fight the troll for a very short time, get in a few hits, then another interruption and poor transition into CG movie footage.
Now it's time for the game to stick you up on a short and narrow ledge where you have to run back and forth and avoid the troll's chain. Very hard to do and fight back. Very boring. Very limited. I don't know what happens after that. I kept getting killed because of the before mentioned trouble with using the ranged weapons. I had had enough. I yanked the game out and put it into its case and took it back to where I got it.
I should have rented this game first, but I trusted the EA name on the box. Big fat no-no. I don't know if the game is even available for rent yet or not. If not, please wait and rent it before buying it. This game keeps getting great reviews, but I can't understand why. I bought Halo and that game rocks! The Two Towers comes no where near the freedom that you have in most games. And that's what it really comes down to. The Two Towers gives you very little opportunity to move around on your own, to make your own decisions. Limited. Frustrating. EA should have made a game about the First Age of Tolkien's Middle Earth. That way they would have been able to give gamers more lee-way and options. That, and they should have avoided all the game-play interruptions.
After only 6 hours, I will NEVER play this game again.
Gary
Florida
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video-games_xbox
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Lego Batman redeems the Lego themed games. After Lego Indiana Jones, I was a little hesitant to play this one. I don't know what happened to the controls in that game, but they made the game unenjoyable to me. So I was worried about that. Plus, what kind of story was Lego Batman going to have? There is no easily identifiable story as there is for Star Wars or Indiana Jones. However, both of my fears were alleviated when I started playing.
The controls are much better in this than they were in Lego Indy. I haven't had anywhere near the frustration here as in that one (not to say that I haven't had any; there have been a few times when the controls frustrated me, such as trying to land on small platforms). And the story is told in a very interesting way; you play through the levels first as Batman and Robin, and then you can go through (almost) the same levels from the villain side (I say almost, because it seems like there are no vehicle missions on the villain side). The Riddler, Penguin, and Joker are the main villains, with each working with four other villains (famous, and some less-so). There's no real story here (just really villains being villains, with Batman stepping in and saving the day), but the story that there is fits and makes sense.
The graphics for this game are what I've come to expect from a Lego theme game; Lego-ized versions of well loved characters interacting with a nicely done background environment filled with destructable Lego pieces. The sound is also well done, from the Batman theme at the opening and also throughout the levels.
There are a few issues I have with the game. The first is lack of online multiplayer. A game like this would be ideal for play over X-Box Live, and not including it is kind of surprising (especially since it was in Lego SW:TCS, but less so since it wasn't in Lego Indy). Another issue I have involves multiplayer as well, but it's been a recurring problem since the first Lego SW; one person can inadvertantly kill their partner if one of them is standing still by going to far to the edge of the screen. Should be a simple fix, but after five games, it's still a problem. Another issue I have (but could be a personal thing) is that some of the puzzles are a little confusing (the biggest example of this was in Poison Ivy's level, where there's a room filled with toxic waste, and you need to cross the room; this had my wife and I stumped until we looked online to figure it out, and felt like idiots afterwards). The final issue is that sometimes it seems like the enemies just keep coming and coming and coming (also evident in the same area as the toxic waste mentioned above).
Overall, this game is a definite improvement over Lego Indy, and, to me, this is the best Lego theme game that has been made.
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video-games_xbox
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Falls short in many places but has potential. From what I have seen people either love this game, or they hate it. Well I am sorta in the middle. This game has been in some form of development for the past 10 years. To be honest I was expecting a masterpiece. What I got was something that felt unfinished. Even so the game has some great ideas behind it and with two sequals promised for the future Silicon Knights can definitely fix the issues and polish the next game so that it will be a masterpiece.
So, bad points in the game...there is no camera control besides centering it behind your character. I had few problems with the camera but when I did have it go wrong it normally resulted in my quick death. The death sequence is about 20 secs. long and looked really cool the first time, after that it just got a little annoying. The developers knew that you were gonna die and you die alot. Theres even an achievement that gets unlocked after you die 100 times. Thats kinda depressing if you ask me. The story is rather short and has poor voice acting, like I said it feels like there could have been more to it. The actual gameplay can also get really repetitive really fast. I thought it was cool that you dual wield pistols no matter what class you are but the whole idea about aiming at two enemies at the same time needs to be fixed. You can aim at two enemies but when one dies, I could rarely get that gun to stop targeting that enemy. There were also quite a few graphics bugs but none that affected gameplay, just kinda ruined the visual aspect for a few seconds but then everything goes back to normal. This game was frustrating, but if you can get past all that there are quite a few good things as well.
This game wants you to collect loads of loot. I mean there seems to be no end to all the stuff you can get. Well until your level 50 and you can't level up past that so theres not much more that you haven't seen already. You can equip different styles of armour to your character and change the color with cool little color runes you buy. Before you freak out the things cost about 100 bucks for the most part and you almost always have a ton of money from gettin rid of old armour and weapons. There are weapons and armour that come into you're possesion as blueprints that you have to craft before getting it. These tend to be the best items available to your character level and often look the coolest. Crafting is easy though, you select the blueprint, pay the crafting fee and bam the items in you're inventory. This can be done anywhere as long as you have the cash. Weapons come in quite a few different styles and can effect how you play. Of course you can customize the color of you're weapons as well. So what i'm getting at is that you can customize to you're hearts content. The combat is fast paced and at times you really get a sense that you're some super powerful warrior god. Thats an awesome feeling seeing you're character flash across the screen killing everything in his wake. Though the story is short there is a lot of room to expand on character relationships and to develop the main character into someone you can really start to like. As it is he just seems kinda blank, but that also seems to go with the story so I guess its up to you to see if you like him or not.
So to be honest, I enjoyed the game and gave it four stars because I see great potential. But I also have already beaten it and leveled three characters to fifty and I feel bored with it. If you're planning on taking the game online to play co-op then there is definatly more fun to be had but I didn't get a chance to try that part yet, but I have heard good things. All in all, you should definitely try it first to see if you like it. If it works for you then definitely pick it up. The thought of a Too Human 2 with all the issues fixed has already got me eagerly waitng for the chance to bring my level 50 characters into a new experience. If you do pick it up, just have fun. There really is a decent game in there, it might just take you an hour or two to find it.
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video-games_xbox
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not bad, just unfinished game that should have stayed in production another few months. Forza horizon 2 is not a bad game for the 360 when taken by itself.
I love the cars added. The la ferrari and p1 are amazing. The world is nice in places.
However, i feel like i have been tricked and slightly ripped off in many ways. While there are creative decisions that also do not like, first I will focus on the facts.
The claims on the back of the game case are not true for one. Next, the game is not finished. What i mean is that there are some serious kill switch bugs. One such bug causes the Xbox to freeze about 50 percent of the you change your car. This means you will be restarting your xbox many times unless you stay in one car. Also the suggested driving line, which has always been accurate and helpful in forza games is glitchy, and randomly wrong. Sometimes it will tell you to start slowing down way too early or too late. This is my opinion based on every race completed, hours of free roam with 10 different cars. Occasionally, the suggested line will have a pattern that makes no sense and is obviously an unfinished area. Sadly, the AI who follow this line become easy competition when swerving and breaking all over the highway like a bee were in the car with them. If you would like to see an example, the first championship (horizon finale) you unlock after completing the road trip has this major bug. At the part with the long stretch of highway the cars will sudenly serve around and stop. This means that it is virtually impossible to lose the championship match on any difficulty. Sad. Another major problem is invisible walls. No not to keep you out of places. I am taking about invisible walls randomly in the middle of the highway, in the middle of roads and dirt tracks. Many times i have suddenly slammed into a wall in the middle of a road and lost a high skill chain.
Artistically i disagree with a few things.
The campaign is legendarily bland and boring. The characters are crazy and completely forgettable. I have been playing for 4 days and i am still confused about how the championship system works. You are forced to sit through a British man at the end of races occasionally, telling you that you have to drive with style to get more experience. This gets frustrating as it makes the screens inbetween racing and driving much longer. You will be forced to sit through many of these "explanations" like when you first decide to customize a car. The perk system is lame. Most of the perks your unlock only help you unlock perks faster... once you have them all driving with skill counts for nothing. No more rewards for getting your pop back to 1st.
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video-games_xbox
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Not even worth the $60 sale price. I bought this headset as a replacement for a three year old pair of turtlebeach X12s, I must say my experience has been a stark contrast to that of the other reviewers.
Below I'm going to list the points that this headset let me down in both sound, and design.
Firstly Sound:
From all the other reviews, one would be led to believe that this is one of the best sounding headsets in the $50-$100 price range, I highly disagree.
This is one of the grainiest pieces of audio equipment I have ever heard. From the sound I would think they were a pair of headphones you picked up from the gas station for 15 bucks.
The graininess is due entirely to the fact that the audio runs from the back of your console, then through a Dolby surround audio processor, then connects to the chat plugin on your controller, and then finally connects to your headset through a detachable cable. Anyone who knows the first thing about audio equipment knows that the more things you have interrupting the signal from the audio source and the receiver, the more likely it is for the audio to incur distortions.
The amount of connections this thing has really makes me question if Polk knew what they were doing when they designed this headset.
The other major audio let down is in the Dolby Surround Processor, the surround this thing lets out is nothing short of horrible.
The processor severely degrades the sound in it's failed attempt to give you a feeling of surround sound, the sound seems almost like it's coming through a can on a string. I tried playing Bungie's Destiny, in both PvE and PvP, and I found it easier to pinpoint targets with the stereo setting than with the digital surround. The surround sound distorts the sound to the point that it's hard to tell where an enemy is coming from. Even when you can tell which direction the enemy is, their audio sounds the same when they're 30ft away as when they're 2ft away, of course this lead to many a death for me...
I should also mention that the "audio presets" that come with the headset are the only bit of sound tweaking that can be done to the headset. Due to the way the headset connects to your console there is no way to externally change the EQ, not even through your TV, so if your a person that really cares about the EQ of their in game audio, this headset should be off your list.
I eventually as a last ditch effort to try and use this headset decided to plug the headset into my TV with the included 1.5' audio cable. (I should note that my old Turtlebeaches were connected in this exact same manner and I had no issue with the sound.)
I was even let down in this scenario the audio that I received was very muddy, with the bass and the treble blending into a mess of mediocrity. It was after this last ditch effort that I decided these were the worst bit of audio equipment I have ever purchased.
Design:
I have a hard time believing this thing was made by such an experienced audio company as Polk.
Cables...As I have already mentioned this headset has several components connected to the audio cable, all of these components lead to a pain of a setup and a mess of cables strewn across your room. In addition to the mess the cables also create a hassle when trying to get up and move around with your controller, since all of these cables are required to be attached to your controller.
The mic...What in the world were they thinking? The mic is a tiny thing that ejects from the side of your headset, due to its stuck location at the side of your face it is hard for anyone to hear you in-game. Its so quiet your like a whisper in a gun fight.
Earcups...The headset is nearing on being an on-ear rather than over-ear headset. Being stuck in these tiny closed in boxes can quickly lead to ear strain, and also causes your ears and the sides of your face to get rather hot to the point of sweating.
Headband...The headband is just a piece of leather wrapped around plastic. I had a hard time finding any padding on the headband, this wasn't an issue for me but I could see this quickly becoming an issue for anyone with thinner hair.
I'm also worried about the long term durability of the headband, it really is just a thin bit of plastic wrapped in leather, I can easily see that thin bit of plastic breaking under a bit of strain.
I wish I could find things to like about this headset, but I'm hard pressed.
The color is nice and not very flashy, the look of the headset I must say is very stylish, and if you really hate reaching for a volume knob the volume knobs being on the controller is very nice.
Ultimately I'm returning this headset and buying another pair of Turtlebeaches. I would never recommend this headset.
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video-games_xbox
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Dissapointment. First off, Id like to state I am a long time fan of the Soul Calibur game line. That is why it hurts me to say that this game really let me down. Let me also say, that while I did hope good things for this game, I did not have my expectations at an insane level. I thought this game would be a good continuation of the series, but I didn't think it'd be the best game ever or anything of the sort.
Let me start with the good. If you are just looking for a fighting game to play with friends, this is a good choice. The graphics have certainly made the jump to next gen in a big way. They are smooth and crisp and yet still retain the look of the other games in this series. The roster is once again large, with a diverse line up of fighters. This is a plus as it keeps the casual player from getting burned out, while letting true fans of the game continue to play as their favorites, letting them build up their ability as one or two characters.
Now for the bad, and sadly, there is a lot.
The biggest problem for me is the new story mode. SC has typically included massive story modes. In SC2, Story Mode took hours to fully explore. I say explore, because the mode involved you moving from point to point on a map. Scattered around were secret ways, dungeons with levels of fighting, and more. In SC3, you had more of a "Pick your own adventure" type deal. But, it was still large, and had replay value so you could see all the different ways. In SC4, you play through five fights. The cuts scenes are nothing more than a look at a landscape(literally, they pan across a background, your character not even in the scene) up until you beat the mode, at which time you get a very short, unsatisfactory video of your character doing something. On top of this, the handling is not nearly as good as the last few games. Instead of skill and practice meaning something, it seems this game is a button masher. People who have never played a Soul Calibur game, can pick this up, and manage to beat vets by simply smashing the horizontal and vertical hit buttons. Response time is slow sometimes to the point of it being frustrating as it seems like the game didn't even notice you pressed anything.
In closing
(+)Large Roster
(+)Great Graphics
(-)Shoddy Controls
(-)Leaves you feeling like the game was rushed
(-)Pitiful Story Mode
Final Say: If you want a good fighting game to keep around that you can play at a party or with a bunch of people, this one isn't that bad. But if you are a die hard Soul Calibur fan, your hopes will be bashed in harder than it is to kill Night Terror on expert.
A very generous 3 out of 5
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video-games_xbox
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Fun game, weird set up. Final Fantasy XI is Square Enix's first major foray into the MMORPG market. And, just as you would expect with most Final Fantasy games, its pretty fun and pretty challenging. The gameplay is addictive, and being able to work with other players, friend or foe, just makes the experience better. As well, the Xbox 360 version does not require a Gold membership, but even if you do, you still must pay SE $12.99 (I think) a month. Its not a bad price at all, and you can add additional characters for $2 more.
PlayOnline is the "billing" service, as I call it. Its meant to be more like Xbox Live, but, since there's only 2 games so far that take advantage of it, there's not much more to it. It does come with a friend list and friend chat, opting to use its own lists vs. Live's, and it does offer a full fledged e-mail service, though it only supports plain text. Navigating the software is easy, you can use the D-Pad to select in a menu sort of way, or, use the analog stick to control the Chocobo cursor (Like the mouse in Windows).
Along with the software, the PS2 and Windows versions allow you to play a standalone version of Tetra Master, the card game from FFXI. I can't really review it, since it is not supported on 360 yet, but it does look fun.
The pain is getting to actually play the game. When Microsoft released the New Xbox Experience, many people began experiencing problems getting PlayOnline to load. SE even acknowledges this fact by stating that the problem is caused when you use the Xbox Guide to exit the game, rather, you should use the PlayOnline Viewer's Exit option. If you don't do it correctly, POV refuses to load, and in order to play FFXI, you need to be able to launch the Viewer. The NXE has been out for over a year now, and there's still no fix, and its pretty bad when it takes me 5 days to get the disc to even read, when I NEVER played the game on my Xbox before. As well, to install POV, FFXI, and all the updates, it takes up to 10-16 GB of HDD space, and a few hours total, what's worse is that when you want to install FFXI, it forces you to watch a video before install starts.
As I said, the game is very enjoyable, and its easily worth the money. The PlayOnline Viewer needs to be fixed and updated, and needs more games on it, its becoming a bit outdated, and many people feel that its time to move on. If you have the chance, and a PS2, PC, or Xbox, get this game, you'll like it.
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video-games_xbox
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From a beginner. I thought I'd give a review from the point of view of someone completely new to the guitar, for those of you out there like me who are wondering if this will really teach you or if it'll be a frustrating waste of money. First off, I'll say that it isn't easy. As someone completely unfamiliar with the frets and the strings, I had a tough time starting out - very slow and clumsy. BUT, you'll see improvement REALLY quickly. I've only been playing for about two hours and although I still suck, I'm having a great time and I'm already loads better than I was when I started out. The only reason I stopped was because my finger got sore from holding down the strings. So far, for someone who's wanted to learn and either never had the time or money to take lessons, or found practice to be tedious and dropped it, or just doesn't have a mind for reading music, this is a definite recommendation. If anything changes as I get further along, I'll update this review. But as of now, I love it!
UPDATE 10/21: The good news first - I'm still absolutely loving the game and steadily improving. I'm only able to play about one to two hours a day, but even though that's all the time I'm able to put in, I'm already to the point of being able to play along with a song. But (here comes the downside), with my improvement audio lag has become a real issue. Before I was so horrible that I couldn't hit the right notes at all, let alone on time, so it didn't make much difference. But now that I've improved, it's a problem. To be fair, they warn you about this in the form of a pamphlet inside the game box, so it wasn't out of nowhere. I was just hoping that since I wasn't using HDMI, the lag wouldn't be too horrible. Wrong.
For those of you out there with a stereo or home theater system, you'll be fine as long as you run the audio directly from the xbox through that. But since I have neither, I was stuck. I ended up bringing down my old CD player from my bathroom, just to see if that would work. SO much better. But since I didn't want to leave that ugly thing sitting under my TV in my living room I went out and checked around for speaker prices. After the money spent on the game and the guitar, I didn't really want to put too much more money into this. I ended up with a Turtle Island headset for $40. It seems to be doing the trick. Just be prepared for this extra expenditure if you don't have an external speaker system in place.
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video-games_xbox
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A blast to play, but not enough play testing beforehand. In line of the new superhero boom, Prototype and Infamous has graced us with there presence, and the nightmarish days of Superman Returns and Superman64 are all but forgotten. Alex Mercer, a seemingly normal science nerd, awakens on a mortuary slab to suddenly find himself hunted by GENTEK scientists and a special forces paramilitary organization, trying to piece together his life and memories for those he consumes.
Visuals in this hold up greatly, and the feel of Manhattan, though they were prohibited from using some of the facades is so real its almost visceral. Building heights and skyscapes are well detailed and accentuated even from the highest points, and gliding down doesn't produce more than the most forgivable lag in visual detail. The only problem is seeming to becoming almost endemic: TYPEFACING.
You notice how these black letters contrast rather well with the stark white background. Eevn wehn I pourspely mipsslel eevry wrod in a sneetcne you can udnretsnad waht I'm syanig. Thats because you can actually read them (And because of an interesting brain chemistry quirk in which, at least with jolly 'ol English, you only need to have the first and last letters in the right positions, but I digress). Having a blood red scrolling text against a midnight black background is a one way road to what did that say? Even though this game has the magical ability to reread a page of scrolling text, in itself a miracle, its almost as illegible the second time. I'm not sure if all of these recent games with a few rare exceptions are being playtested on $5500 Plasma-hi-def-laser-inscribed-holo-uh...nano-based? televisions, but the uproar over Dead Space should have gotten the message across that you need to be able to read text to enjoy it, and read it on a gamer salary television.
Audio, as should be expected, is top notch. While the main character has the expected problem of having smoked since kindergarten, and never speaking with anything other than a near-emo vengeful hiss, the characters fill their roles well. Memories that you consume are told from a first-person, in-voice style, and radio intercepts vary from more than three messages, and are done with multiple voices.
Gameplay is where the game hits its finest points and its most groaning misses. The game is fantastically fun. Pounding tanks into scrap, carving enemies up like turkeys being filleted with chainsaws, ripping industrial air conditioners out of roofs at throwing them at apaches never loses its charm. The side missions are your basic cookie cutter, but there well put together and intelligently thought out so that, even from the first try, they're actually games of skill and intelligent upgrading rather than nonsensical trial/error chores. The web of intrigue, which is essentially your logbook and movie storehouse, while a bit of a strange design, helps flesh out the story nicely, and the links between the various parties become apparent even early on and mesh together well. Best of all, you're not spoon fed any of story, and have to fight for just about every scrap, at least to start.
Powers are varied and have their own uses, and though the fall into the standard templates, are creative and have varied uses.
But there are too many points where the game stumbles and falls flat. Running fast creates pothole like craters behind you, which you'd think would be the proverbial trail of breadcrumbs that the delta force would use to follow you and place a 50 cal round in your head. Jumping from a high rooftop will create a concentric explosion that blasts cars around and creates a general panic, while having your flesh ripple and gurgle like a lava lamp as you turn into someone else garners nary a raised eyebrow by crowds of passersby. Commanders seen by dozens of men grabbed, consumed, and then flown away with are welcomed by the same soldiers that were trying to fill the obvious clone with lead not ten seconds prior. "Evading" the military consists of running around a building corner. And the difficulty is like a wild roller coaster. Monsters encountered in the first real story mission can tear you to pieces within a few heartbeats, regardless of approach. Healing becomes a problem quickly, as you can consume enemies while being pummeled from behind. The standard button configuration make combat on the fly difficult(left stick to move, left d-pad to change powers), as you can't move while activating or deactivating a power without an extra knuckle on your thumb.
But, as most of you are probably thinking, these are nits. And while some of you probably pound the desk and either agree wholeheartedly or think I need to find something better to whine about, these are the only nits. A few control issues are present, but not enough to bear mention, though the lack of a ledge grab ability is a bit curious. The game overall, is fantastic, entertaining, and actually playable on a higher difficulty setting without sending normal players into fits, though some of the 360 achievements are laughable pipe dreams. But all told, this, like Infamous, is worth full market price, as it'll encourage more of the same.
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video-games_xbox
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Reinvigorates the Multiplayer First-Person Shooter Genre- and it's Glorious. A single gameplay video is worth a 10,000 word review when it comes to Titanfall. There are plenty of well-written reviews already available that explain how the game works, how the Xbox 360 version compares to the Xbox One version, etc. So this review won't include a lot of detailed explanations that other review contain. Instead, I'll focus on specific aspects of the game that I find particularly excellent:
Player Movement:
Titanfall is a breath of fresh air for a genre that has been Call of Duty'ed, Battlefield'ed, Killzone'ed, etc. nearly to death. I quite enjoy the FPS genre, so I'm guilty of buying each year's new recycled iteration in hopes that it might be different this time. Each year, I have felt dissapointed. But not this year. Not with Titanfall. Titanfall might share graphical, control-scheme similarities with other FPS games, namely Call of Duty. Yes, you run around with a gun and shoot at bad guys in a fast paced environment. But that's where the similarities between Titanfall and Call of Duty, Killzone, Crysis, Killzone, etc. end. Titanfall's gameplay is fast and vertical. As a pilot, your jump pack lets you move across large gaps between buildings, run along walls, and even scale high cliffs, all accomplished by timing when you push the "jump" button. The freedom of movement ensures hectic but balanced battlefields. It's easy to get behind camping snipers, easy to get the drop on an unsuspecting opponent, but also easy to find creative ways to navigate the battlefield so that your opponents don't get an easy drop on you.
Balance:
Titanfall is brilliantly balanced. There might not be a huge variety of weapons, but that's because each weapon is an ideal, perfected version of what that class of weapon should be. All pilots have anti-titan weapons that are very effective at taking down armored monstronsities. Titans are strong and powerful enough to be formiddable opponents, and a real treat when your own Titan falls, but Titans aren't over-powered, and a coordinated effort with quickly reduce a brand new titan to scrap metal.
Focused on gameplay, not cinematics:
I can tell that, due to how small and new Respawn is as a company, their somewhat limited development dollars were poured into gameplay, leaving something to be desired of the campaign narrative and exposition. But really, Titanfall is so fun to play, that any extra campaign narrative would just get in the way of bouncing around the battlefield shooting and blowing stuff up.
Just plain fun:
The highest praise for Titanfall that I can give is this: I haven't had this much fun with a multiplayer shooter since Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Halo 2. I loved playing those games. When I wasn't playing them, I thought about how much I wanted to play them. I played them with friends; I played them alone. I had fun when I won a match, and I had fun when I lost a match. No, I wasn't addicted. I would never forego necessary responsibilities, or dodge actually human interaction to game. But at the end of a long day, nothing would relieve the stress and clear my head like a couple rounds of Call of Duty or Halo. The same is now true for Titanfall. And frankly, I can't wait to get home and fire it up. Cheers!
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video-games_xbox
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Awesome game if you do these things first. Please read before buying from Amazon. Please read this before you purchase it here on Amazon. Here's things you need to know.
** This digital download is cheaper than on the XBOX store for a reason. It's because if the code doesn't work on your XBOX live account for some reason, there is no way to get your money back. XBOX tells you to go to Amazon, and Amazon clearly states no refunds. Be careful, you're taking a chance that it might not work if you buy it here.
** Here are steps you absolutely need to take to do everything you can to make the code work.
>> Seriously look at the system requirements, and make sure you meet every part of them. This game is really high res, and your computer needs to be a gaming system. Don't think you can buy a nice video card and stick it in your 3 year old machine and get by. Google Forza Horizon 3 system requirements, and find one that will test your PC. I had to upgrade pretty much everything(Ram, video card, CPU, hard drive). An SSD hard drive is a big plus, but not necessary.
>> Make dang sure you have the latest version of windows 10 upgraded. Go to "start", "run", and type in "winver". You should have 1607 (anniversary edition). You should have this anyway even if you're not installing the game. If you don't, your code will be activated, but you won't see the game to download it.
>> DO NOT click on the link in the email amazon sends you. Instead, log on to you XBOX, or go to you windows 10 store and login. Make sure you're logged in as you. Redeem your code by entering it manually in the download section of your account.
If you do this, get a bit luck, and the game works on high setting for you, you will have in my opinion the greatest looking and most fun realistic racing game on the market. So beautiful.
Look at the attached picture. Can you tell it's not real?
Please, if this helps you click on the helpful button so others see this before buying the game and losing money because of their own system.
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video-games_xbox
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Rent this game first, please. I'll be honest, I haven't completed this game yet. I'll start off first by saying that I have enjoyed what I have played so far. I'm new to the Halo series, Halo 3 being the first game I've played, so I can't comment too much how how it measures up to previous titles. What I can say, however, is something I found very important and feel it should be shared with those of you who are looking into this game (or Halo 3).
I'll start by saying that I recently ran into problems with my copy of Halo 3, it simply won't work. The place I got it from was kind enough to replace my disk for me today and I snagged a copy of ODST in the process. Halo 3 still won't work. It's not a used copy, by the way. The upsetting thing is that ODST is giving me problems too! So I decided to do some research.
I googled "ODST disk read error", and found that there is a major problem here. I don't know exactly what's wrong but this game won't load in some xbox's. What's crazy is that lots of the complaints I saw about this error also applied to Halo 3. From what I gather, Bungie and Microsoft are being very tight-lipped about this and there are lots of very irritated customers who can't play a game they spent 60 dollars on. Just a few days ago Halo 3 worked perfectly, now my xbox "rejects" it, saying it can't read the disk. ODST does the same thing, though sometimes it works fine. There's no telling if I'll be able to actually play the game when I want to.
Microsoft support says to send your xbox in to get it checked, which I disagree with. All my other games work fine, it's just Halo 3 and ODST that give me problems. I will not spend money on repairs for this since it seems clear to me that my xbox is not the faulty product here.
Please rent this game first, make sure you can actually play it. Again, do a google search for "ODST disk read error" or simply go to Bungie's website and check out the thread there regarding this issue, it was at 83 pages the last time I checked.
I would like to mention, again, that what I have played of this game has been fun, which is why I gave it a 4 star rating for fun. The 2 stars comes from the crazy errors this game can generate.
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video-games_xbox
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So cool its cold. Lost Planet: Extreme Condition - Circa 2007
GOOD:
- Tight fitting responsive controls (which can be adjusted).
- Great looking graphics and effects, also the animations are done very well.
- Shooting feels spot on, with more then a few guns (a grenades) to choose from (like rocket launchers, energy guns, ect... - as for different types of grenades, you get ones like sticky and EMP to name a few). It should be also noted that while on foot you could pull weapons off mechs (only when the mechs are not in use) and use these over sized weapons.
- Grappling hook -Shot (like the one in the Legend of Zelda Series or like the grappling hook from Tenchu), which lets you scale tall buildings, and fly across the landscape.
- Online Gameplay (versus other players), this really helps extend the life/fun of the game long after you have beaten it.
BAD:
- Enemies can be pretty cheap, Example, after you get hit with a powerful weapon like a rocket you go into a fall and have to get up to recover, during your recover animation many enemies will strike at you making you fall over again. What ends up happening is you get stuck into a cycle where you fall over after getting get shot at or hit and while getting up it happens again (enemies shoot you or hit you) so you never fully get back up and fight back, you just fall again. It is very hard to break this cycle after it starts; usually it only ends if the enemies miss or you die.
- Using mechs or any energy weapon uses up you reserve of "Heat Energy". If your "Heat Energy" runs out you can't pilot any Vital Suit or use any energy weapon. It should be noted that in this game "Heat Energy" ties directly into your life bar if you run out of this "Heat Energy" your life will slowly drain till you die. This makes prolong use of any Vital Suit (Mech) or any energy weapon a risk to your health.
- Pretty confusing story which many people will not get nor care to understand.
IF IT FITS YOUR TASTE:
- Sci-Fi 3rd Person Shooter (camera behind the player).
- The game takes place on a world covered in ice and snow, lots of levels have snow and winter theme.
- Life energy or Heat energy plays a big role in this game, this energy ties directly into your life bar if you run out of this energy your life will slowly drain till you die. It should also be noted that this happens even while in doors and underground not just outside in the cold. The only way to refill this energy is to kill enemies or destroy objects in the game, by doing so you'll see a pool of gold colored substance when your characters body touches it your energy bar will refill.
- Fight lots of "Bug" like enemies as well as human enemies.
- Lots of mechs and Mech Combat - mechs are robotic suits of armor you pilot, in this game they are called Vital Suits, they can also equip their own weapons.
- Game is broken up into 11 levels (so essentially this a fairly short game).
- Shoot at to collect "markers" for a higher score (there are "markers" in every level and the look like big spinning coins).
- Wining matches online unlocks new character dress options for your online avatar.
- Online portion of this game has your standard set-up with Death Match, Team Versus, ect...
GAME ITS MOST ASSOCATED TOO:
- Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction (Xbox, PS2)
- Armored Core: Last Raven (PS2)
ADDITIONAL NOTES:
- This is the Special Edition of this game that comes in a metal case and comes with an Art book as well as a Mixed media CD (that contains Videos, Wallpapers/Photos, Music, and windows icons for your PC). This Special Edition also comes with a new multiplayer level (Battleground), which will be available to all Xbox Live players for free a few more months from now (people who got/get this Special Edition can play this multiplayer level early).
- There are already a few new multiplayer levels available to buy over Xbox Live. The 4 new Levels ready for download and use in online multiplayer action they are called Radar Field and Island 902, which come in one pack and then there is Hive Complex and Trial Point which come in a second package. Both packages sell for 400 Microsoft Points or $5.00 USD each.
- The Korean actor Lee Byung-Hun is the model for the main character named Wayne.
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video-games_xbox
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Im having more fun playing GTA chinatown wars on my DS than this game. Of course I bought into the hype for this game and laid down $60 big ones for it... wow what a big mistake! I will cut to the chase here. The game has almost everything to make an outstanding experience and its missing the most important key element to why we all play games in the first place.
Graphics: pretty impressive for an open world sand box game, some of the best I've seen
Controls: easy to get used to once you understand controlling the horse.
Sound: sounds like it should: weapons, people, nothing seems out of place
Story: this game has better acting than most movies and the characters are all diverse and entertaining, not bad at all.
GAMEPLAY: here is where the game fails miserably. Most of you (like me) will be in awe for the first few hours of gameplay. Roping some horses, shooting some animals, doing some bounty missions and main missions will be entertaining FOR A WHILE. Then I started to realize how repetitive everything gets. Start a mission, ride your horse from point A to point B while talking to someone on the way. Get to point B, take cover behind a rock, shoot some guys (auto aim makes it way to easy to win, i turned it off) then your pretty much done. About 85% of the missions are like this, and it sucks. Shooting animals gets old after about an hour, roping horses is boring. "Random" events that happen along the trail are repetitive. I found no real reason to stray from the conveniently placed trails all along the landscape because there is really nothing to see off the road. Im sure these things won't bother a lot of people but I can't stand this type of gameplay. Like I said, Chinatown wars is a game that is always keeping me engaged with tasks to do and challenges that are fun to complete. This isn't a review of chinatown wars, but when I have more fun playing a Rockstar game on a 3 inch DS screen than I do playing on a 32 inch hi def flatscreen; something is definitely wrong. Red Dead Redemption would do better as a movie than a game. Rent first or borrow from a friend, you be the judge.
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video-games_xbox
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This was worth the wait. I have been playing Assassin's creed for about a week. I'm not finished with the game, so I cannot give an expert, overall review. What I can do is describe the game for what I've seen thus far.
Graphically, the game on XBOX360 looks utterly amazing. The landscapes, the NPCs, the birds flying in the sky and every being in the game look amazing. The feel of the terrain and the light of the sun are perfect. Nowadays, most "next-gen" games look very good anyhow, but the frame rate you get even with hundreds of characters on screen is simply breathtaking. When you go into a viewpoint cut scene, which opens up map areas, you'll be simply stunned by the outlay of the world beneath you. Even after doing it a twentieth or thirtieth time, it never gets old and always stuns.
The gameplay itself is very good. As an assassin in 1191AD, you must carry out orders and kill 9 people. Each assassination requires an investigation to be performed and a city to be explored. The cities, Damascus, Acre and Jerusalem are based on their real life counterparts throughout the years of the crusade. As you conduct your investigqation you'll need to pickpocket people whom carry documents you need, eavesdrop on conversations and interrogate people in private where you cvan beat a confession out of them. All of this takes place under the watchful eyes of the cities guards, whom will attack at the slightest criminal offense. When you carry out your kills, a deep, dark story unravels and even incudes portions taking place 1,000 years in the future. Yes, the future, as there is alot more to this story than anyone expected at release.
The mechanics of the game are fluid and responsive. Fighting is not difficult and certain assassination manuevers look very pleasing and satisfy your thirst for the revenge that you'll eventually seek on people such as guards, beggars and henchmen. You'll acquire a bunch of moves each time you progress the story, try them out in the battleground and off you go to carry out your next order.
The game has been fabulous for me thus far, and if the next half is anywhere near as good as the first half, I have a lot to look forward to. Being that this game is supposedly part of a trilogy, I'm sure the anticipation for the next chapter is going to swell unbelievably as I get closer to completing it.
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video-games_xbox
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Strange driving physics and no added material besides broadcast presentation UPDATED. As a fan of F1 and past player of Codemasters' F1 series (F1 2012, F1 2014), this game was ultimately a disappointment to me. They had a chance to really improve this series above what it already was but missed the bar. You would think that these companies would listen to their customer base to give them what they want to see but yet again, we get a mediocre game at best.
What's new/different from 2014?
The physics engine is very different from the previous game. It feels very "Forza 5". Some times it feels almost like your driving on ice which in an F1 car, you should be sticking to the tarmac like glue. I do race with all assists off and AI on expert difficulty but that's the same setup I did in the previous games and it was perfect. I think the issue is (and this goes for many racing games) that the right trigger for the throttle is extremely sensitive and doesn't utilize the full travel of the trigger. You start to pull in the trigger to increase throttle and it literally goes from 0% to 75% throttle in about 1/8" of travel in the trigger. This causes you to spin the rear wheels out of every corner. You literally have to wait until you have zero degrees of steering left or right until you can begin to give it ANY throttle. Forza suffers from the same issue in my opinion.
One positive about this next generation version is the frame rate is --better than the 360 versions - but not by as much as I thought it would. The problem with it to me is that it almost makes you feel like your going a lot slower than you really are and makes judging braking points very tricky.
The audio seems strange to me as well. I had to really tinker with the audio profiles to even hear anything the team tells you. The new "broadcast presentation" is a let down to what I thought it was going to be. I thought it would be more like hearing announcers broadcast the entire race while you drive but it is really just a guy saying "welcome to (track) maybe we'll be in for a really great race this weekend" and that's it. Then when you start the race you are on the grid with the crew members all around you and I thought, Oh! well they're going to let me do a warm-up lap and then you hit start race and the screen goes black and the teams are gone and the lights start to light up.
If it was up to me I would much rather they spent effort in adding: an optional parade lap, full control in the pits (this is something that seems will never happen in any video game for whatever reason), more modes including co-op and career, and way more accurate damage visuals).
It seems like companies can not change games enough in one years' time to justify charging $60. If that's the case then rework the game every 2-3 years and send out a $10 update to update drivers, teams, tracks, and other statistics. It is crazy to me how I can spend $60 on a game like GTA V and then have to pay the same amount for something like this but that is the world of gaming we live in.
UPDATE ** 7/29/15
After playing the game for about a week I have raised my review from 2 to 3 stars. I have found that it helps to have all assists off and really focus on your corner exits and you can lay down competitive times. In F1 2014, I always played with AI difficulty set to Expert and could win using even the Williams or Mclaren cars but in F1 2015, I can't even come close to the Mercedes in a Ferrari on expert. But the "Hard" difficulty, I lay down laps 2-3 seconds faster than anyone in almost any car. I wish the AI was a percentage control from 0 -100 so I could fine tune my difficulty as it seems to be a large jump from "Hard" to "Expert". The handling is definitely more realistic ( I am assuming since I never have driven an F1 car ..it's on my bucket list though)....
I still am keeping my review at 3 stars because instead of adding and improving the game, they have taken away many features from the previous games. For instance, you can't customize how long you want practice, qualifying and race distance. You have to pick from preset setups like short, normal, etc each having unchangeable settings. Crashes and pit stops are often buggy and sometimes when I enter the pit lane the computer takes control and hits invisible walls and knocks my off my front wing. Hopefully they will send out updates soon to fix the bugs and then it might be worth 4 stars.
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video-games_xbox
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odst which comeplety sad!! Halo is known from is glory and . This game is not a 1 or a 2 star or a 4 or 5 star anybody who gives it a 4 or 5 you have no idea what the h$ll you're talking about this game looses and forgets what's halo all about with even took out one of there main core Wich is split screen and even having an awful campaign and shortest in the series even shorter than halo 3:odst which comeplety sad !! Halo is known from is glory and awesome campaign coop or split screen with friends or family take that out your down two points and now moving on to my opinions, cons: the art style in halo is now confirmed by the community that they missed the Classic and disliked this new one or atleast merge the two art styles together with they did with halo wars 2 hopefully they do that with halo 6 and halos armor customizations options are soo limited really sad halo reach had tons of armor options for your spartan this terrible and 343 needs to step it up with more options, lack of game modes need to bring back classic modes , big team battle or head hunter or juggernaut king of the hill or oddball and come on bring back playable elites !! Invasion !! Plus halo is starting to be less bloody ! Not even bad language, how they gonna complain about some game back in the bungie day, say it was cartoony or childish when it had language or violent horror scenes when now halo is a dam T for teen game lol come on 343 halo was built on a little language and blood and gore there not as violent as doom or gears of war but halo had its violence there and soo on and halos is missing that in here :pros okay forge is amazing !!! And multiplayer is fun but maps are bad don't even remember not even one now mulitplayer and how it flows it certainly up to you I enjoy the tasty paste and sprinting but I hate the spartan charge or ground pound I think that's stupid overall this game is a three stars and a 6/10 or 5/10 this game is not an 8 or a 9 not even a 7 this game lacks alooot and this far most the hated and lowest sale and least played halo in the halo community and the rest of the halos, halo is Kent and known for its campaign but this is a big blow to halo and a big dissapoint to fans and classic fans and even to new fans who are confused and bored overall don't even bother with the campaign just go straight to mulitplayer or round up some body's and go on forge
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video-games_xbox
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Alternatives to Disposable Batteries. This product does what it says it does rather well, and this is a great option for those who don't mind having to turn their wireless controller into a wired controller every so often. However, I would humbly suggest an alternative to this product for those of you who want to always play wirelessly.
Buy a pack of NiMH rechargeable batteries. They have a couple of advantages over the Play & Charge Kit.
ALWAYS WIRELESS: No more having to connect your controller to your console whenever your controller runs out of juice.
LONGER BATTERY LIFE: Please excuse the technical jargon ahead. Strictly speaking, Microsoft's first-party battery packs have a relatively low energy capacity of 1800mAh. You can buy rechargeable batteries with a capacity of 2500mAh, which will last up to 50% longer than the Play & Charge battery pack. There are also some 2700mAh batteries out there if you must have the maximum battery life possible. So in the end you get more play time, less charging time, and, ultimately, your batteries will serve you longer.
CHEAPER PRICE: You can buy a pack of 4 rechargeable batteries (enough for 2 controllers) for the same price as one official Xbox 360 battery pack. You can also get 4 batteries plus a charger for a price comparable to that of a Play & Charge kit (I paid $20 for my charger and 4 batteries).
The only real trade-off between using the Play & Charge kit and using rechargeable batteries is that instead of plugging the controller into the Xbox 360 you have to physically replace the batteries by hand. But that takes, what, 30 seconds to do? I'd rather do that than turn my wireless controller into a wired controller for the next couple of hours.
HELPFUL TIP: I suggest you buy 4 rechargeable batteries for every one wireless controller you own, and keep the additional batteries charged. That way when your controller runs out of juice you will ALWAYS have a fresh pair of batteries ready to use, and your drained batteries can be put in the charger while you continue to enjoy your wireless gaming goodness.
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video-games_xbox
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Awesome shotgun/rifle and a few humble pointers. OVERALL
The rifle, in my opinion is a very capable piece of hardware. Contrary to what most people apparently think about it, I like it! It probably depends on a number of different factors - pretty much whether someone would enjoy it or not lies within the default brightness of your TV and the patience of the gamer. In the end, it really can work like the arcade game without so many disappointments experienced by other gamers. Also, keep in mind that the brunt (or all) of the problems are associated with Silent Scope Complete for the XBox. If you are playing House of the Dead III, for example... All of the brightness level, scrolling, and detection issues disappear!
ASSEMBLY & PREPARATION
The assembly's easy and the manual guides you through the calibration. I actually didn't have to turn my brightness up really high. I used the game option in the silent scope complete xbox game to increase it slightly. Say, if the normal brightness is 20, I notched it up to 30 or so. It was enough to gave it a slight tint of white.
Still, the brightness wasn't so high that I was blinded or anything. On some stages, I really didn't notice it. And the accessory is so cool that adjusting to a little bit of increased whiteness (the few times I did notice) is insignificant for the performance increase you gain. It's really not that bad of a trade-off.
The trick is to get the level of brightness (game settings NOT your actual TV settings) to just the exact threshold of being faulty and being smooth. I humbly suggest you crank up the brightness to the point where the crosshair detection is silky smooth and ignore how freakishly bright your screen is... THEN you start decreasing the brightness while testing your crosshair movement at the same time. Continue to decrease the brightness until your crosshair starts jumping and skipping all over the place. THEN return the brightness to the last level of silky smoothness (which should just be back one digit) and tada! You minimized the amount of brightness on your screen while maintaining your maximum detection level. Note that this is for the GAME's brightness setting. It's probably not a good idea to begin fiddling around with your TV's brightness levels until you absolutely think that's the last draw. If you adjust the game setting brightness (rather than your actual TV's brightness), you won't have to re-adjust your brightness on your TV everytime you want to watch it or play something else. The xbox will save your settings so you won't be messing with the screen everytime.
Still, the fact that you MUST adjust anything to your existing game settings does count against some gamers. Therefore, overall this accessory is limited to a four star score. But that's still pretty awesome. It all depends on whether or not you're willing to fine tune your instruments. Don't expect this thing to perfectly tuned right out of the box. Once you get the nasty brightness dilemma out of the way, you can start tweaking it for a headache-free experience with the game. Granted, the gun will work satisfactorily now, but it'll probably leave a mediocore taste in your mouth... That's why I resorted to some small adjusting with the scope settings...
Now, I like to fine tune anything that's possible. And that's fortunate for me, because I recommend you go to each game setting of Silent Scope Complete and enter the "adjust scope speed" option (or just do it when you get to whatever game's your favorite, I did it all at once so I didn't have to worry about it later). There you can manually adjust the zoomed scope movement -- which REALLY HELPS YOU AIM BETTER. It was very slow to aim at different targets while zoomed in with the scope. Don't look into the scope while you're trying to adjust the zoomed scope speed (under "scope zoom on" option) because that counts as pressing a button and will make you exit the adjusting screen. Instead, do exactly what it says, press "A" which is the trigger and then you'll be able to adjust the zoomed scope scrolling speed with the joypad to your left of your trigger hand. Keep adjusting it with the pad while you scrolling around and test the speed of the zoomed scope.
Note that if you didn't adjust your brightness properly, you probably won't see much improvement in adjusting your scope movement, since your base crosshair detection is already faulted. However, even at it's maximum speed, some gamers are bound to find the zoomed scope movement still too slow... Well, that's really a personal problem at that point, because the arcades didn't have lightning fast zoomed in scope either. Meaning, you should zoom out if you want to swing your crosshair across the screen AND THEN zoom in when you actually want to shoot something between its eyes.
Again, if you are playing House of the Dead III. There's absolutely nothing to worry about. Just plug the gun in (ignore all the attachments) and start calibrating it then play!
WEIGHT
Now with all the technical stuff outta the way (hope it helps)... The actual weight of the rifle gets cumbersome of you're holding it for long periods of time -- but that's just common sense. Besides, it was meant to be an arcade game, not an rpg with terrorists. It'd be nice to mimic the arcade and have your rifle propped up on something. This is assuming that you're playing Silent Scope Complete. If you're playing House of the Dead III, then you don't need ANY of the attachments. Without all of the extra parts, the gun is much lighter and easier to handle. PLUS, you CANNOT deny the coolness that is the pump-action reload built into the barrel of the gun. If anyone's played House of the Dead III in the arcades, then they know how cool it is to have light gun SHOTGUN for an accessory. Note that House of the Dead III features an inescapable auto-reload feature (meaning you can't turn it off). But still, what kinda fps gamer EVER waits to run out of ammo before reloading? (the auto-reload will kick in everytime you run out of ammo)
So there you go. My two cents on this whole thing. It's a good deal! You just need to make sure you know what you need to do before you can enjoy the product. Make sure you set yourself up for some simple fine-tuning and patient experimenting for a half an hour (that's how long it took me to fine tune everything, it may differ for you) or so. You might as well tweak it to your finest points, you paid for it! It'll give its love back to you.
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video-games_xbox
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The best adventure game I've ever played. It took me long enough, but I finally played the Tomb Raider reboot in its Xbox One version, and I was not disappointed. Though there has been some talk that the PS4 version is visually better than this one, that doesn't change that this is the best looking game I've ever played. Tomb Raider nails every important aspect of an adventure game and a video game in general. It has a great balance of exploration and focused level design. It gives plenty of optional areas to find and explore, with lots of tools to locate where you're supposed to go, and very clear indicators of what the game will let the player interact with. It also features thrilling fights, with multiple ways to approach combat.
The mechanics of the platforming are amazing. The game is very much on the player's side. In so many games, if you don't do a jump with unrealistic precision in the exact way the game expects, you tumble to your death and have to try again. Tomb Raider, on the other hand, assumes you're not an idiot and tries to do what you wanted to do. If you jump toward a ledge at a slightly wrong angle, the game is going to smoothly turn Lara and latch you onto that ledge regardless of your being slightly off center or whatever. The game is clearly doing its best to interpret the player's controller inputs in a way that makes sense. It never feels like it's too much, either. It's not like if you try to jump off a cliff the game won't let you die. You'll die, and you'll die a lot. It's just that you won't die when you did the right thing in a slightly different way than the designers expected. If you did more or less the proper jump, chances are the game will let you land that jump rather than being a jerk about it and making you redo sections for a slight error in interpretation. It's a 3D world presented on a 2D screen, so there's no way you can be sure of the depth of the jumps. It's nice when games realize this and don't judge the player too harshly for making a slight miscalculation of the exact space of the jump. Tomb Raider is the best game ever when it comes to this. I appreciated it a great deal.
In combat, you can try to be stealthy, go in guns blazing, or even try hand to hand combat. The great thing is that all methods of combat are viable. I took out the final boss primarily with dodging and counterpunching, with the occasional shotgun blast. If the game lets you do it, it's probably worth doing. That's the greatest achievement a game can have, really. Everything in the game is just absolutely worth using.
I was also impressed with the voice acting and sound. The story is presented just beautifully, and the storytelling is incredible for a video game. Video games usually don't handle this aspect anywhere near as well as they should, even in story-driven games. Tomb Raider's story isn't exactly a replacement for a big budget movie, but it's told well, and it breaks a lot of cliches. You're a strong woman surviving, overcoming, and saving others. The people who survive alongside you are not the ones you'd expect, either. I wish I could spoil it here, but let's just say that this game will surprise you.
This game has virtually no negatives to speak of. The only thing even remotely less than stellar in this game is the multiplayer, but that's not the main draw of the game. Even so, the multiplayer is still on par with other third person shooters on the market. It's certainly playable and fun in its own right. I give this game my highest recommendation. If I could choose to give one game 6 stars, this would be it.
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video-games_xbox
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Thoroughly Enjoyable Action/Adventure Series in One Set. The Darksiders Collection is a combination of the original discs for both Darksiders and Darksiders 2 in one case along with a DLC voucher for Darksiders 2's DLC content. The voucher did not work for a while but was recently fixed, so now fans can enjoy the whole game if they want.
Before going any further, I'll note that this review attempts to be as objective as possible in discussing both games. I will criticize those parts that are flawed and I will praise the positive aspects of the games. Read the following paragraphs with this in mind: I liked both of these games very much personally, and I think they are both excellent additions to anyone's PS3 collection.
DARKSIDERS
The first of these games tells the story of War, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, who unleashed the apocalypse on the world. The gameplay of this title is an amalgam of several other games. The combat resembles God of War, with a combo system, primary and sub-weapons, etc. The game is functionally a Zelda-style game wherein War traverses a number of dungeons, all laid out like Zelda dungeons with switches, chests, etc. strewn throughout. Lastly, there is ample platforming akin to Prince of Persia. The game also tosses in RPG elements allowing you to level up your character as you see fit.
This blender approach means that the game is a jack of all trades in a sense, but it fails to overcome any of its inspirational sources. The combat system is fun, certainly, and very functional, but it is not quite as good or deep as God of War. The dungeons are all well-designed, but there is something about all of them that is lacking when compared to Zelda dungeons. Zelda series dungeons often have a feeling to them that the dungeon does not just exist to be a video game level. The various temples are more organic in Zelda, giving off a feeling that they exist for some in-game purpose. Thus, compared to the Spirit Temple in Ocarina of Time or the snow dungeon in Twilight Princess or countless other examples, the dungeons in Darksiders feel like they were specifically crafted to be video game dungeons. The wall-running and parkour elements lifted from Prince of Persia also generally work, but the camera can sometimes be a problem.
All of those complaints aside, though, Darksiders is a very good game. It's a lot of fun, it can be quite the challenge, and the story is enjoyable if perhaps a bit over-the-top. One particular character, Vulgrim, is especially enjoyable, voiced extremely well by the brilliant Mark Hamill. For any fan of Zelda or God of War games, Darksiders is worth playing.
DARKSIDERS 2
The bigger, badder sequel to Darksiders puts the player in control of Death, another of the Four Horsemen. The story of Darksiders 2 runs concurrently with War's endeavors in the first game and while there are nods to characters and events from that game, the player does not lose anything by skipping to this game.
Darksiders 2 improves on the formula in some ways. Death is agile and nimble, allowing him to maneuver quite lightly around the battlefield and traverse the various dungeons. The combat is enjoyable, but somewhat less balanced overall. These sorts of games generally start off fairly easy and work their way up in terms of difficulty. In Darksiders 2, you'll be cruising right along just to hit a massive combat wall. During my playthrough, I encountered a handful of exceedingly frustrating sections. The worst offender was a battle that takes place outside one of the game's dungeons. You have to fight a relatively small number of stronger-than-average enemies. It took quite a few retries before I finally dealt the finishing blow, but after doing so, the dungeon was a breeze with barely any enemies and its boss was a first-try effort. Subsequent areas had other similar situations where the bosses are easy but standard-fare enemies obliterate Death in seconds.
Another issue with this game is that it manages to be a bit over-long. It feels like there are too many dungeons, and even at about 20-25 hours, it feels extremely dragged out. A lot of that stems from the setup, and this carries over a problem from the first game. Many of the dungeons require that you find 3 thingamabobs in order to advance. It becomes repetitive and a little boring. Compared to Zelda or the stylistically-similar Okami, the dungeons in this game are a lot of the same thing over and over again, and they all look fairly similar to one another. While the underworld is not expected to have a vibrant art style, the second 1/3 of the game has a series of VERY similar-looking dungeons, one after the other. Not to beat the Zelda comparison to death, but compared to the 3D Zeldas where each dungeon has some unique color scheme and theme (grassy dungeon, lava dungeon, water temple, etc.), these are largely somewhat bland. The game does have a few standouts, such as the level where the player first acquires the voidwalker item toward the end of the game. More dungeons like that one and less like the series that precede it would be welcome.
Additionally, the first game was the right length, and it didn't wear out its welcome. This game has 3 major overworlds, two with a hefty amount of primary and secondary dungeons and one with only a couple. That makes for a lot of dungeons; while I did not count, there are probably 12-15 longer dungeons plus another maybe 5-10 short ones. Sometimes, less is more.
With all of the complaining about Darksiders 2, I feel it is appropriate to balance the criticisms with the appropriate praise. Generally, the game controls very well. The characters are well-voiced even if there is no one standout like Vulgrim from the first game. Some of the puzzles are unique and creative, and the game has a great fast-travel system. The fast-travel system deserves special praise because it has an approach where you can be at the end of a dungeon right before the boss and realize you do not have any more health items. You can fast travel to the nearest merchant, buy all of the health potions, and warp directly back to where you were in the dungeon, a welcome addition for the handful of difficult boss encounters. The soundtrack is also pretty enjoyable, creating a good atmosphere while you explore.
In sum, Darksiders 2 is in some ways an improvement over its predecessor and in others, a misstep. In an effort to make a much bigger game, the game became arguably longer than it needs to be. Some might enjoy the lengthy content, which is perfectly fair. As a point of comparison, when I played Dark Souls, I poured approximately 105 hours into getting the 100% platinum trophy and it never got old. Dark Souls is a different game in terms of its gameplay, but its world is less spread out and a lot more dense. The world of Dark Souls feels extremely organic, no matter where the player is exploring. The world of Darksiders 2 feels like a video game, which is fine, but it does not cause it to excel. It is a perfectly fun, enjoyable game, and I would welcome a third game in the series. However, in complete fairness, it is not perfect, and some of its flaws are noticeable.
Of final note, the DLC included in this set is a voucher for all of the content ever released for Darksiders 2 to the best of my knowledge. It adds some side quests and a couple of new dungeons and bosses. None of it is necessary for trophy hunters seeking the platinum and the 100% mark (aside from access to the Crucible, which seems to have been patched in directly rather than as DLC). That said, it tends to be more padding than anything. For those who REALLY love this game, it's more to do in the world and that's great. For those who feel the game is already long, the DLC adds little to the experience. I make reference to it because the DLC inclusion is an argument in favor of buying this collection rather than the individual titles, and it is therefore important to be very clear about what the DLC is for this game and its relative merits to justify buying the collection.
SUMMARY
If you have never played either of these games before and you enjoy Zelda-style dungeon traversal games, this is a great collection to pick up. Likewise if you like God of War; Darksiders ups the ante on puzzles, but the combat is fun and pretty similar stylistically. The DLC for Darksiders 2 isn't anything special, and it serves to pad out an already long game. If you can get the collection cheaper than its parts individually, the collection is worth buying. If, however, the component parts are cheaper individually, get them separately because the DLC included in this set is nothing special.
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video-games_xbox
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This is a great 1/2 of something. I'm late to the party when it comes to the Burnout franchise; admittedly, until Burnout Revenge (which I picked up for it's low price point after picking up my then "hard-to-come-by" Xbox 360 and wanting something to play,) I knew nothing of the titles. But after a good ten minutes with Revenge's unparalleled sense of speed, completely unforgiving collisions at 200mph and explosions worthy of any high-budget "shoot-em-up" flick, I was hooked. When this sequel was announced, I was thrilled.
Now that I've played it, I can't say I'm disappointed, but some of the choices they made this time out make for a great game, but also make me glad that I've still got Revenge on the shelf to fall back on.
The high points: the free-roam format was simply made for this type of action based racing. Even at the insane speeds of the previous Burnout, one felt safe in that all you had to do was learn the tracks and the handful of shortcuts. When you literally have an entire city as your "track," and no invisible barriers or arcade-style directional arrow walls to guide you, every turn is a frenetic, heart-stopping accident waiting to happen! The crash mechanics are amazing. High-speed impacts send cars careening realistically in every direction leaving trails of debris in their wake. The mixture of events and lack of traditional "courses" make each and every time you rev up at the start line a unique experience which is something no other racing title could ever hope to boast.
The low points: where the hell are my explosions?? The ability to use your "boost" not only as a "nitrous" but also as fuel for explosions made Burnout Revenge a terribly sadistic and satisfying experience! Just because you wrecked didn't mean you were out of the race and everyone feared your wreckage until you were well away in the rearview mirror; every burning pile essentially became a proximity mine waiting on anyone to pass too closely. Revenge and Aftertouch takedowns were oh-so-sweet, but they're no where to be found in Paradise. Why? Another staple they all but removed are the Crash Junctions. It's been replaced with something called "Showtime" which lets you (unrealistically) hurl your car into the air at almost any given moment (no need of a ramp or anything,) and toss yourself down the street into traffic bouncing off the cars in complete defiance of gravity, inertial law and, hell, physics in general. No, Burnout is not touted for its realism, but some things are so far gone, they have no place even in fantasy, especially when they're replacing something as key and signature as the Burnout Crash Junctions. Not to say "Showtime" isn't fun, it's just far more "novelty" than "essential game element." Add to this the fact that there's no puzzle element as presented in the Crash Junctions, and it quickly loses its flair and simply feels stupid and pointless after the fourth or fifth time out.
All in all, Burnout Paradise is a great game with a couple of blatantly missed opportunities remedy by a mere $20 investment in its older brother Burnout Revenge; Paradise for the racing and Revenge for the carnage!
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video-games_xbox
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Very fun and addictive, but way too short/way too easy. i'm so glad that i rented this title because i beat the game in 6 hours. The first reviewer is right when he said it took him 5 hours to beat it. it took me 5 hours to get to the 2nd last mission before i went to bed that night. the next day it took me about 30 min-1hr to beat the last one.
the game is REALLY fun, and very addictive to play. i love the weapons in it. so much better then Dead Men to me. shooting is much better in this one, then dead men.
i found the graphics to be a bit grainy though.. not too top notch like some other titles. that bothered me for about half of the game, before i got use to it.
this game really deserves like 3 stars from me, but i am giving it 4, cuz i had alot of fun playing it, but i beat it really fast... so i am glad i only spent $6 to rent it and play it. i got 4 days on rentals, but i only needed 2. returned it.
i wish there were more missions or harder ones. after i beat a game, i see no further reason to really keep it around. i have a 360, so i don't play online. (i don't want to pay). if i had the pc specs for this game, i would buy it and play multiplayer online. i'm sure that has to be fun. i don't own a ps3 either yet, so i don't know what multiplayer is like for this game. but if multiplayer is as fun as the game is, then i would buy it to play online.
for those of you waiting to play it out there, DEFINITELY DO NOT PAY $60. DON'T DO IT! NOT WORTH IT!. Not even worth $20. just go rent it. trust me, you'll thank me later, especially ppl who are like me and the guy above who can beat games in like 5 hours or less... and note, usually it's very rare for me to beat a game same day i get it..but dog days is so fun to play i got addicted to it, and i think that's how i beat it so fast.. cuz i was playing it all the time, and it is easy.
just go rent the title. if it does take you longer then 4 days rental time to beat it, just re-rent it.
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video-games_xbox
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Great Piece of Hardware. I was skeptical about buying the Xbox 360, but I ended up giving in after much debate.
I have owned the Sony Playstation 1 and 2 because they have been very reliable and the amount and quality of the games offered have far exceeded every other system. I came to the conclusion that this trend has come to an end.
The setup for the Xbox 360 was simple, as it should be for a gaming system, and since it is made by Microsoft it seamlessly interacts with my Windows based computers on my wireless network. I have all my home videos and other downloaded videos stored on my dektop and can now easily access them on my HDTV through the Xbox 360, not to mention my music collection as well. Windows media center is so simple that my grandmother would be able to access it.
Besides the media center capabilities, the Xbox 360 has great graphics and fun games. I really don't think you're going to see much of a difference in games between the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 for a long time, even if the Playstation 3 has a more powerful graphics engine. I know that there will be plenty of good, fun games to choose from on both systems, as well as a huge overlap of games.
You most likely will have more freedom with the Xbox 360. Check out Sony's long list of copy protection and other digital right management controversies. That alone could convince a number of people to stay away from a Sony product that is software based.
The last thing that made me want to wait for the Playstation 3 was that it will be able to play Blueray discs. It made me remember how I wanted to get the Playstation 2 so that I could combine my DVD player and gaming system in one. It was the same for me as it was for everyone else I know; DVD players came down in price and went up in quality so everyone switched to a dedicated DVD player. Who do you know now that uses their gaming system as a DVD player anymore?
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video-games_xbox
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A REVIEW FOR THE CASUAL GAMER. So you don't play sports video games usually? Then this is the review for you! I gave this game a spin when I saw it lying around the office and figured I'd give it a chance. So here's what I thought of it:
GAMEPLAY: 3.5/5 -- As far as the basics go, it's thankfully intuitive. And the large button-map that shows during the load screen is a lifesaver!
The AI (at least on beginner) automatically selects whatever player of yours is closest to the ball for you to control. And what if the ball goes somewhere else? Then the AI warps you to the next closest player.
Stealing the ball away can be a bit tiring, as I found myself constantly mashing the "run" and "tackle" buttons to get the ball. It works well, but again, very tiring on the thumbs.
Shooting and blocking shots was also pretty easy for a beginner like me.
Of course, there were more advanced difficulty levels and tactics for more "hardcore" soccer fans to take advantage of.
GRAPHICS: 3/5 -- Blah. The soccer players look about as detailed as store mannequins and in individual close-ups they always do the same actions (rub the nose, wipe the sweat off their brow).
There are multiple stadiums to play in, but when the camera angle is usually focused straight down, I honestly couldn't tell the difference from one to another.
I did notice that frame skipping during replays, but honestly I didn't feel like it detracted that much. Good replay mode--reminded me of the one in the old PC game X-Wing.
SOUND: 2.5/5 -- The roaring of the crowd got extremely annoying, so I turned that down and listened to the commentary. Two very annoying Brits who say the same things over and over again. Not sure if there is a feature to unlock more commentators but that would certainly be something to consider in future versions of this game.
FUN: 3/5 -- How much do you like soccer? Your answer to this question will greatly determine how much fun you have. I certainly felt some accomplishment after scoring a goal . . . or 8!
OVERALL: 3/5 -- I'd say rent this one first, see how you like it and then go from there. Pretty easy to catch on to for the casual gamer and it looks like it has plenty of advanced stuff for the hardcore.
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video-games_xbox
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They say, "Steal from the best. I picked this up for under $20 from Amazon, so please bear that in mind while reading this review. The rating would be different if I'd paid $50 for Two Worlds.
First, these designers have definitely tried to steal from Oblivion. If you've played Oblivion, you're going to recognize a whole lot of the elements in this game, from the landscape and scenery to brewing potions. That's not necessarily a bad thing, because Oblivion was such a good game. This isn't up to Oblivion's standards, but if you're looking for another world to wander around in, this one has some of the same trappings. It's not as polished, but for $20 it is 'good enough'.
Character customization at the start of the game is not impressive. You're a bounty hunter/mercenary type, but if you want to be female you're out of luck. You use sliders to determine your hair style, eye color, all the standards, but it's nothing to get excited about. Think Tiger Woods 08 and dumbed down a bit.
You don't have a set class, but rather a pool of skills that you can assign points to. Some require training, some are available from the start. As you complete more and more quests, you get more points to assign, pretty much like every other role playing game out there.
I've had a few problems w/this game locking up my Xbox (twice), so I had to remember to save often. There are also some glitches with the frame rate, especially around bright areas it seems. This is annoying, but with the game installed on the hard drive it isn't terrible and happens rarely enough that you get used to it.
Now the good stuff. I love being able to have an axe in both hands! One weapon in each hand slicing and dicing is great fun. There are several mounts in the game to ride on, but some people apparently have a hard time controlling them. I didn't find this difficult, but I also didn't spend too much time on the horse or other mounts.
The landscape and world are fairly well designed, but they're not as pretty (or downright breathtaking) as Oblivion.
The voice acting is so cheesy that it is hilarious. You could rip on it for being so bad, but when my character is whining about rain and using words like "forsooth" and "prithee," it just makes me laugh.
Yes, you're going to get mad if your game freezes and you haven't saved. You're not going to like this if you're expecting Oblivion-quality graphics and gameplay. But if you're buying it for $20 and expecting something "Sort of Like Oblivion But Not As Amazing," I think you'll be getting your money's worth.
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video-games_xbox
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Overhyped but decent. Watch Dogs. It's been compared to a futuristic Assassins Creed and GTA5. So how does it stack up?
The whole hacking concept is awesome in an open world game. There are so many ways to interact with the world and learn about people. Hacking into traffic lights and underground steam pipes, arming enemy grenades, looking though remote camerasit really helped make the world real. Once the novelty wears off, however, hacking feels like it could've used more depth. It's mostly reduced to a basic button press or hacking mini-game (which got annoying at times).
The open world definitely has character. It's amazingly detailed. NPCs aren't just background decorations; they feel alive, aided by the great animations in both the open world and cutscenes. Loads to do: poker, chess, drinking games, racing, space invaders, gang hideouts, crime prevention, and more. Though these quickly become repetitive and grindy.
It has great open-world combat with various ways to complete missions. This was probably my favorite aspect of the game. Character progression is also nicely done. The cop chases are super fun, though super easy to escape from via boat.
The Xbox 360 version looked decent enough. I don't have a next gen console to compare it against. So, impressive for what it was.
I won't delve too much into the story. Our protagonist, Aiden, is a bland and uninteresting vigilante an everyman with little to no personality. I never developed any real emotional attachment with him or his situation. The side characters were much more interesting. Good voice acting, but the story is weak and filled with cliches. Overall, it's an average story at best. The stakes are never very high, in the end it didn't feel complete. Saving that for the sequel, Ubisoft?
What didn't I like? The vehicle control/physics is laughable, and no melee combat? Huge oversight there, given the huge number of ways Aiden can interact with the environment and the crafting system. The radio stations are terrible. Online modes are interesting in concept but sadly easy to exploit (by people disconnecting when their opponent is about to win). And of course, Uplay.
Overall score: 3.5/5. Definitely worth renting or picking up on sale, though I've read that the PC port is terrible. Probably want your console version of choice for this one.
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video-games_xbox
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Profoundly ordinary, morally objectionable. The Short Version
For what it is, this game is fine, but nothing special. It is definitely not the best game I've ever played. If you've played all your fantasy RPGs through twice and are itching for more of the same, The Witcher 2 is a reasonable choice. If you're looking for a game that challenges genre gameplay and story-telling standards, The Witcher 2 is bound to disappoint. If you are hesitant to support the game industry mindset that sexually objectifying women is acceptable and even enjoyable, think hard and consider taking your money somewhere more enlightened.
The Long Version
I bought The Witcher 2 hoping for an engaging story that takes a different approach to player choice than the familiar BioWare et al. version (quest: explore/fight through new area, gain knowledge shedding light on original problem, make binary decision at end, repeat). The Witcher 2 utterly fails to distinguish itself from the pack. This is not to say it is technically flawed, necessarily, just that it's nothing new, and my score mostly reflects the disparity between the breathless advertising and the staid product. Its approach to sexuality, on the other hand, *is* flawed. Don't buy The Witcher 2 expecting anything revolutionary, because what you're getting is Dragon Age with a different set of lore and more nudity.
I want to highlight the three most disappointing aspects of the game, based on the expectations I had from the Amazon product summary, customer reviews and Game Informer/GameSpot scores.
1. Combat. Geralt, the main character, has three sword moves: a fast swing, a strong swing and an unlockable parry/riposte. He has access to six spells. He can craft a number of auxiliary weapons such as grenades and traps, one of which can be hot-keyed for use without needing to jump into a menu. Geralt can also craft potions, which must be taken before battle to briefly increase certain stats (sword damage, health regeneration speed, etc.) but are unusable during battle. I'm not a big fan of dealing with timed status effects, so I found the potions irritating rather than invigorating. This also means if you're low on health and didn't take a health regen potion before battle, your only options are to avoid getting hit or die and start over.
Tactical variety, such as it is, comes from potions and the occasional projectile or trap, although I found only a handful of situations where the run-in-and-hit-the-sword-button-until-everyone's-dead approach didn't work. There is no appreciable variation in enemy AI. The combat feels similar to that of Dragon Age 2 (and Jade Empire, come to think of it). Slightly better than the Fable series, significantly worse than Dragon's Dogma or God of War. Nowhere near the visceral and satisfying action of Skyrim or Dark Souls.
2. Maturity. I hoped references to the maturity of the content meant The Witcher 2 would present me with tough, thought-provoking situations and then trace the repercussions of those choices through the story. I feared they were code for ' gratuitous nudity and swearing.' Sadly, it's a lot more the latter than the former.
In fairness, The Witcher 2's first act ends with a very brave gameplay decision. The player must choose to align with one of two morally ambiguous characters, and this choice leads to two virtually separate gameplay experiences through subsequent acts. That's cool, and exactly the sort of thing I was hoping for, even though either choice basically takes you to the same conclusion. But the vast majority of decisions the player will make falls into the typical 'save the hostages or chase the bad guy,' 'let the elf go free or kill her' mold. Once made they have no further impact on the game.
However, the *other* sort of 'mature' content is not in short supply. As the story progresses, Geralt has a handful of opportunities to have sex (graphically) with women (not men, though). The player can usually refuse the sex, making most of it technically optional. However, Geralt also runs across other people having sex, including a prostitute fellating a guard and a light lesbian spanking scene. These aren't avoidable without skipping story cut-scenes. Several of the hookups arise from genuine emotional bonds and give us insight into some of the characters; the rest are meaningless rolls in the hay.
Now, I'm a huge sucker for romance subplots in stories like these, and I am as sex-positive and kink-positive as one can be. My problem is not with the game's inclusion of the sex, but rather with the mindset behind its nature. The Witcher 2 veers too far into fan-service, and specifically, young male fan-service. Game developers, please! This is no longer your only demographic. At a time when we are uncovering and challenging the systemic misogyny in the game industry, I felt increasingly uncomfortable with each of Geralt's dalliances, especially in their predictable focus on busty, naked women. If you're going to make a responsible, thoughtful game that includes graphic sex--which would be great!--make an effort to include a bit more of the sexual panoply, and for God's sake, treat each of the participants as a complicated, fully human person, not merely a pretty naked body to ogle.
The language also gets a bit tiresome. Dwarves in particular seem unable to talk about anything other than their pricks, their rectums, their bodily emanations and their love of 'ploughing' (guess what that means). In moderation, it can be funny, but after a while it just gets embarrassing.
3. Story. Don't buy the hype about the story. It's not very well put together, which prevents it from being immersive, meaningful or emotionally-charged. The three acts are only tangentially related. The ending lacks resolution, because it doesn't seem to grow out of prior conflicts and developments--although this didn't bother me as much as it might, as there was no character I could bring myself to care about very much. I know a fair chunk of the gaming population doesn't care about story, which is fine. But if you do, know that you're getting what amounts to collected vignettes from 'The Adventures of Geralt of Rivia.'
There's also the issue of lore. I really enjoy games with deep lore. That said, I found The Witcher 2's lore to be particularly impenetrable. Perhaps this is because I haven't read the books. But if the game is billed as capable of standing alone, its plot shouldn't rely so heavily on the politics of countries I've never heard of, or, if it must, it needs to do a better job bringing the player up to speed. I'm happier than most to look at maps and read histories and journal entries, but if I need to pause the game to look at the wiki just to figure out who that person is or why that country did what it did, there's a problem.
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video-games_xbox
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Better than the first. Title: Spider-man 2
Description: Spidey takes to the New York skies once again in this very loose psuedo-adaption of the movie. Become a hero, assist citizens, and fight super villians. In this free dwelling New York landscape that is anything but linear. You could explore the city for hours and still find new things. Descend skyscapers and take pictures, bust up car jackers, visit the statue of liberty, and even rescue the occasional child's balloon. There is so much to do.
Platform: Xbox (reviewed), PS2, and GC
Learning Curve: 8- Expect to invest alot of time learning how to manuver Spidey. About everything on this game is timed and as such you need to move FAST and you have to keep up with your wall crawler. You almost have to get Spidey to be an extension of yourself. Expect to spend about 5 hours (unless your quicker to catch on than me) to get the mid-grade understanding on getting the most out of Spidey's locomotion. Once you get this stage of learning through. Spidey is easy to control and he is VERY versatile. I think players will enjoy all the possibilities with this kind of control.
Replay Value: 9- There is sooo much to do in this game it would literally take months to do it all. The city is HUGE!!! There are also a ton of rewards you can work for and lots to time trails scattered throughout the city. You gotta be really fast and have spider reflexes to do some of these fun challenges. Excellant indeed.
Difficulty: 7- I am only guess on this one as I'm about about half way through the game, but so far this seems a fair assumption. The game does seem "hard," but I think it will be defeatable to most decently experienced players. The bosses can be hard, but I think once you've gotten Spidey's higher locomotion functions down they should prove to be no problem. The key here is finger dexterity and patience. Realize you will have to do some things multiple times to get it down just right. To "master" this game and get "everything" I'd knock this difficulty rating up to about a 9!!! I can be an enjoyable frustration for hardcore fans though.
(...) It is also not really necessary, but the city maps helps me the most. I don't really suggest a guide unless you are planning to do everything.
Pros: Huge city map for exploration, Character movement versatility, Improved physics for added realism, Classic villians, and Bruce Campbell returns to help narrate the story along with Toby McGuire and Alfred Molina.
Cons: Some times the controls get "choppy," I gotta problem with Spidey wanting to spring off of buildings instead of latching and the wall sprint could have been easier if it didn't share the "grab" button. I understand they had to blur building detailing to speed the graphic engine for swinging and web zipping, but it creates a "generic" feeling to buildings in the distance. Saving people on sinking ships and getting buoy tokens ( I added this just because I hate doing this. Spidey always seems to overstep and land in the water.)
Time Expected to Invest: A month to beat the game with the majority of neat stuff accomplished (75%.) I expect it will take 2 months to get everything.
(...)
Suggested Purchase Price: This guy is worth the full purchase price to fans, but curious gamers will prolly want to mid- 30 dollar cost frame.
Overall: 8- Unlike most movie games this one is good. This is far better than the first Spidey and I enjoyed it. I recommend this one for purchase. I think after you get the hang of it you'll enjoy this title is much as I am.
_________________
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video-games_xbox
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What a Disappointment...and a Fraud. (This review doesn't contains story spoilers, only some spoilers regarding enemy types).
On Xbox 360 Bioshock Infinite (BI) looks great from afar. Up close and personal it looks worse than any game in my recent memory. Textures, fonts, details, shapes of small objects all horrendous, poor, devoid of realism to a bizarre degree, lacking sharpness, depth. Please don't tell me that Xbox 360 isn't capable of showing good realistic textures. Yes, it's not a souped-up gamer PC, but I just played Dishonored, and it looked very good. I just finished Far Cry 3, it looked terrific, and you could walk from one end of the giant island to the other without loading anything.
The gameplay.. oh, where to begin.. this is supposed to be a Bioshock, but a bigger better one, right? So, at every turn I was forced to compare BI to the original game and the conclusion was quite disheartening. As many critics point out, BI gameplay is drastically dumbed down, simplified and stripped of most elements that made it exciting in the 1st game. Rapture was full of mad splicers who attacked you without regard for their own life, but in BI you fight police, soldiers or thugs who also lack any common sense, often attacking the grenade launcher wielding you with batons instead of having a second thought. Gun fights feel very subpar, partly due to very mediocre enemy AI, partly due to vast open areas that completely killed off any sense of frantic closed quarters combat. Weapons suck, they don't visually change with upgrades, some are quite similar, most don't even sound believable or powerful. Vigors blow as well, there less of them than plasmids and in conjunction with almost non-existent security infrastructure and inability to combine vigors you pretty much find two that suit your gameplay and stick with them. I remember having a lot of fun in original Bioshock painting big daddies as enemy and watching how small flying turrets come from all directions and drain their life. Similar vigor in BI doesn't work as well, mainly because it doesn't trigger multiple elements of security system which is quite rudimentary compared to the original game.
There's no equivalent of big daddies in BI, handymen don't count. Fighting a big daddy was one of the best parts of Bioshock, you could avoid him altogether, could hide from him, could jump to a side when he was charging at you, and big daddy had a reason to be in the game, a very important role to play. Handymen are inserted into BI only to provide a heavy enemy class, but they are poorly executed, too fast, have no depth to their character and fighting them is simply frustrating, and the fact that's there is only 4(!) of them in the entire game is both ridiculous and good.
The Siren that was advertised as a separate enemy class is nothing of this sort, it's a level boss you have to fight 3 times in 3 locations but that's it, only one "siren" in the game, having many sirens would make the gameplay much more exciting.
Boys of Silence is a total letdown. We were led to believe that these disturbing creatures will be another creepy enemy class, but it's only five of them, they don't fight you directly and you never even get to kill any of them and watch their metal head explode.
Songbird ? The one creature that was endlessly showcased in every promotional video and was either supposed to be a boss that you absolutely have to face in a monumental and violent battle or a big daddy-type monster ? Forget it. You two will never cross swords. how naive of you (and me) to believe pre-release footage billed as "actual gameplay" ! And it's not even explained what or who this is. It has a purpose, but not the one I wanted or anticipated...
There is no hacking whatsoever (wtf?), an element that was fun and could set off security system in the original game is completely removed from BI. No puzzles of any sort. No inventory (!!!) which is just a travesty, you can't store anything or see what ammo you have, can't use it the way you want, can't drop/replace items, can't accumulate salts for refill during combat.. why, Irrational Games, why ??? Are you that irrational nowadays ?
Invisible walls is another thing that separates a good game design from a bad one, yet BI team doesn't consider it worth the attention. Too many corners, piles of rubble, seemingly friendly structures were protected by ethereal force field.
Pretty much all the cool gameplay scale and mechanics we saw in pre-release videos was cut from the game, Elizabeth is reduced to a mere shadow of pre-release herself.
Actually, a week after I finished Bioshock Infinite in became obvious that BI is the LARGEST FRAUD IN THE GAMING HISTORY. Here is why: (I did not compile this list, it's a great work of a gentleman whose blog you can easily find by googling "billy hale bioshock")
From the 10 minute "game play demo" posted in 2010.
1. The player is shown to have telekinesis, like in Bioshock 1 & 2 and uses it to throw around all kinds of stuff.
2. Huge cannons are firing all over the place and destroying the environment. They aren't in the actual game at all.
3. Enemies have glowing yellow eyes--seem possessed or out of control like the citizens of Rapture. This is clearly not the case in the game; the citizens are motivated to kill Booker solely from political/religious ideology.
4. Pieces of buildings come crashing down in front of the player, including a huge bell from a floating bell tower.
5. Crows eating a dead horse.(Update 4/5/13: This implies that Columbia is in a state of decay and that there are literally dead animals laying in the street. This is an echo of Rapture when you first arrive there--remember the chaos and uncertainty? They were trying to get us to think that Columbia would have the same terrifying atmosphere as Rapture. And this one image, along with the slumped over man driving the cart, really implied that Columbia was out of control and a sort of post-apocalyptic environment, which is much more interesting than what we really got. Conflict is always interesting. I refuse to believe that they didn't have the story figured out by that point, and I think they were using very effective imagery which reminded us about Rapture to misrepresent the game.)
6. Skyline system more extensive in demo than in actual game.
7. Cargo moves along the skyline system independently providing natural hazards to avoid. In the game, other than the first area, the only time cargo moves alone the skyline is when Booker uses a lever a few times to move stationary boxes out of the way.
8. A man named Charles uses Murder of Crows vigor against the player and crows surround the screen and obstruct the player's view. In the game nothing this elaborate is used against the player.
9. The player runs at Charles and rams him off the ledge of a floating platform. In the game there is a Ram vigor, but it's not nearly as cool as sprinting at an enemy and elbowing them off a cliff. If this is real game play, why is this suddenly not available in the game?
10. The possessed enemy uses the skyline to escape from Booker. In the game the Skylines are almost completely barren, the AI rarely uses them, and they certainly don't use them to try to escape a battle; they're not that smart.
11. The player can zoom in, and look at things closely without using a sniper scope.
12. Telekinesis is used to Pull things toward the player quickly. In the game, there is a pulling vigor, but it requires charging and it can only be used to pull enemies toward you, not to pick up things.
13. While riding the Skyline, Booker is vocally animated when jumping between lines. He yells and has flailing arms. In the actual game, none of this danger is present. Again, if this is actual game play, Irrational just decided to axe this?
14. Booker melees an enemy off the skyline. In the game, you can only shoot while riding the skyline, because your melee weapon is the skyline thing.
15. Booker uses telekinesis to take the gun out of an enemy's hand and makes the gun shoot the man while floating. In the game, nothing like this occurs at all. Same question: if this was actually in the game, why was it removed?
16. Booker is able to stop a huge cannon shell in the air, reverse it, and shoot it back at the cannon, destroying it. In the game, you can absorb some small enemy fire, and shoot out a ball of kinetic energy. Not nearly as cool.
17. Blood splatter on the screen from where the enemies shoot you(Update 4/5/13: I agree this is an aesthetic criticism, which I said I wasn't doing. Ignore this, I don't want to renumber this thing. But what's cooler, generic red arrows or blood splatter? I'll leave it up to you..........I think it's the blood.)
18. Elizabeth creates a storm cloud by shooting some sort of beam from her hand. She then tells Booker, "Hit it now" and Booker shoots electricity into the cloud, frying a huge group of enemies. This is the completely omitted in the game; Elizabeth has no independent conjuration abilities whatsoever. During some battles, there are stationary objects like cover or machine guns that you can tell her to reveal for you. It is not even hinted in the game that she can create things--at the very end, there is 1 line of dialogue about how she used to be able to create "tears" in reality when she was young.
19. More telekinesis is used to pick up an object and throw it at an enemy.
20. Elizabeth, acts independently and creates a huge fireball out of pots and pans that Booker uses to "throw" at a group of enemies. In the game, Elizabeth picks locks on doors and leans against walls.
21. Elizabeth is physically drained from using her awesome powers and is coughing and gripping her midsection in pain saying, "I'm okay, I just need a moment." Nothing like this ever happens, probably because Elizabeth just walks around and picks locks when you tell her to instead of acting independently like was promised us.
22. During the handyman fight, he throws a galloping horse back at Booker and Elizabeth and also catches something that Booker throws at him.
23. During the handyman fight, Elizabeth uses some kind of beam from her hand to help Booker bring down a bridge on top of the Handyman. Again, in the game, Elizabeth has no such power at all.
24. A Handyman dies by slipping off a cliff. In the game, they fall down and explode, nothing dramatic at all. Again, if what we are looking at is real game play, why was it removed for something worse? It's just a video, but awards were accepted and praise accepted because this was supposed to be the actual game.
From the 15 minutes of supposed game play footage from July 2011.
25. Booker and Elizabeth enter a sundries store which is abandoned and has evidence of a squatter that Booker even comments on, "Looks like some poor fellow called this place home." This insinuates that Columbia has descended into chaos, like Rapture, and that the city has become derelict. This store doesn't exist and Columbia is not in a derelict state, rather the people there seem extremely happy and nothing is run down at all.
26. In this store, Elizabeth interacts with several things like a gold statue and wears an Abe Lincoln head. Other than the beach scene, Elizabeth interacts with the environment by leaning against walls sometimes or sitting on a bench.
25. Booker searches a barrel and discovers several things that aren't in the game, like a melee weapon called the executioner which looks like a sword. Also something which affects movement called spring-heeled. In the actual game, you cannot switch melee weapons, nor can you upgrade your movement at all. The buttons on the prompt are also clearly Xbox buttons. You're telling me that the console version had different melee weapons and you decided to cut all that?
26. The dead horse scene. It's cool, and it's not in the game. Let's not beat it any more. It's not as though I
need to see that exact scene again, but Booker argues with Elizabeth about whether she is able to bring the horse back, showing a deeper relationship between Booker and Elizabeth and teases that her powers are much more than what is actually in the game. But anyway, if this is truly game play, why were the voices recorded and animations done and everything and then cut? Because it's not real game play.
27. Elizabeth and Booker walk amongst the Vox Populai undisturbed, until someone actually recognizes Booker and attacks. There are some areas of the game where you can walk amongst the enemy without them attacking you first. However, it is not nearly as cinematic as what is shown and in my playthrough, tiny things you didn't mean to do will destroy this. For instance, while exploring, I crossed an invisible line that triggered my attack. I restarted the checkpoint and went another way over the line and the attack was triggered again eventhough no enemy saw me. So this notion that you can sort of sneak through places until you're discovered is an illusion.
28. An enemy taunts Elizabeth somewhat sexually, which scares her and causes Booker to draw his weapon on the man, chasing him away without gunplay. Nothing like this ever occurs Enemies don't even acknowledge Elizabeth nor do people on the street. You certainly can't interact with the environment by drawing your weapon and threatening, which is what this scene implies.
29. The Vox rebellion is shown as the Vox are rounding up Columbia's citizens and harassing them. In the game, the rebellion takes place completely off screen, and there is 1 small scene where a Vox kills a well to do citizen.
30. A citizen is thrown through a window on the street by the Vox and they are holding an informal trial type of execution for one of Comstock's men for his crimes. Booker is given the choice to intervene or not through Xbox button prompt. Something similar does occur, but it's not nearly this elaborate.
31. An enemy starts to sound a huge alarm and Booker has to kill him before he does.
32. Booker uses a vigor to levitate enemies and then instructs Elizabeth to materialize a moving box on the rail system which smashes into the levitating enemies. This isn't in the game. Why would this have been removed if we're actually watching real game play?
33. Booker wants Elizabeth to materialize a turret to use, but she says, "I can't. It's too soon. I won't be able to control it" making it sound like she's tired from using her powers too much, adding a cool-down factor to using her in combat, adding more drama and excitement to the experience. In the actual game, this is not an issue and she can pop in whatever thing you want as many times as you want, but there are really only four of five things that she can ever actually materialize: weapon cache, health, turret, cover, sky hook.
34. Rail system is shown that is huge and sprawling with tons of enemies shooting at the player and bullets and rockets whizzing by. In the game, the rails aren't nearly as extensive, usually consisting of two different rails per screen, not an extensive network of intertwining rails. Riding around on them isn't nearly this exciting, as most of the rails cover a small area and are just a loop, not a sprawling system throughout the city. Many scenes don't have any rails at all, and in ones that do, IMO they don't provide much of a tactical advantage.
35. An enemy pursues Booker on the extensive rail system. This never happened in my game. A few enemies entered on the rails and got off.
36. Booker and Elizabeth come upon Comstock House and Elizabeth says, "Is that really Comstock House? What if he won't help me?" Booker replies, "I can be persuasive." This dialogue is never in the game, nor is what it implies. The implication here is that the game is a sort of Off to see the Wizard theme, and Booker and Elizabeth are traveling to see Comstock for his help with a mystery assignment with which Elizabeth needs help. It's another layer of intrigue and mystery. In reality, Comstock is the villain from the start, he's constantly taunting Booker and sending guys to kill him. Elizabeth never needs anything from him except to kill him and ask him where she comes from.
The back of the Bioshock Infinite box says "WINNER OF OVER 80 AWARDS". Unfortunately for us all of these awards are received based on the stuff that is not in the game. Cute, isn't it ? This is why i call this game a FRAUD.
Also remember this ? 10/15/12 - "Two more key developers have left Irrational Games, makers of Bioshock Infinite. According to LinkedIn, Artificial Intelligence lead Don Nurbury and combat design director Clint Bundrick are the latest to depart from Boston-based company."
This is why BI has sucky AI and combat dynamics.
Yes, BI has a good story, but this is not a book with beautiful pictures, it's a game, gameplay here is paramount. BI is also short, it ended when I thought it was just half-time.
I will always remember original Bioshock as one of the best games I ever played where the story was provocative and gameplay electrifying.
Bioshock Infinite is a game with a good story and overall great art design ruined by fraudulent lies, hype, bad graphics (xbox/ps/actually even pc version shows flat textures here and there), boring combat, forgettable enemies and disregard for many key elements that made original Bioshock great.
Dishonored, you win.
P.S. And in the end let me ask you this: how can anyone buy a box with a game that says it "earned 80 awards", play it, find none of the stuff that earned these awards in it, and proceed to give it a great 10 out of 10 review ???
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video-games_xbox
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Great game with very few letdowns. *No spoilers*
I'll start out with the fact that despite all the hype over this game I was really skeptical. I had heard it was meant to tide people over until Halo 3, but after playing it I realize just how wrong I was.
As soon as I started the game I felt like this was about to be one hell of a rush. I was right.
Graphics: 10/10
The detail and effects were definitely what you expect of a next gen console. I did not notice much or any popup in the background or any other annoyances from ps2/xbox. Everywhere you look in this game someone took time on the little things which adds to the total effect tremendously. The blood from the chainsaw spraying onto the screen is a nice added bonus as well.
Sound: 9/10
The sound did a great job of keeping me in the right mood for the situation at hand. The constant communication between the team and people in another location of the game as you're playing gives a sense of urgency that might otherwise not have been there. I'd have to say everything sounds really good, but I don't remember saying, "wow this soundtrack is great" or anything, so I gave it a 9.
Gameplay/Controls: 9/10
I'll start with the nuances of the game. There's only 4 of them that really stand out to me.
First thing I noticed is when trying to take cover the character wouldn't always do as I wanted. IE accidently jumping over an obstacle instead of hiding behind it, or rolling past a corner when I wanted to peek around it. However, most of that is operator error and not the game's fault. I do think that they should have put the roll and cover actions on two seperate buttons or something, the 360 doesn't lack for more buttons after all.
The second thing that bothered me was the small selection of weapons available. Maybe that's just me, but more weapons would not have hurt this game at all. I'll admit though that the weapons in the game fill their purpose quite well and there isn't abunch of exact same weapons with just a different look. I think the aliens should have had their own versions though at least.
The third thing that I would have liked to see improved on is the grenades. There isn't really a good way to quickly throw a grenade because you only have one type, the bola grenade. Cool concept, but honestly, if you're in a warzone like that you aren't going to take time to swing this bola up to speed every single time... I'm pretty sure they'd have some conventional ones too for a quick clearing of the next room, etc. So, I would have like to maybe have normal grenades, or at least a way to not have the blue trajectory come up to aim the grenade and just chunk it real quick.
The fourth and final complaint would be dealing with the Hammer of Dawn. This weapon is vital in some parts of the game, yet it takes up one of your weapon slots. That's fine and dandy, but if you dropped it and you need it later you're kinda screwed... I won't mention why you need it because it contains spoilers but, just be sure if you see one on the ground, hold onto that sucker because there's a reason you found it...
With that out of the way I can get to the good stuff. From the very first little skirmish I was excited to be playing the game, you get right into the action if you pick the left path in the beginning. I played it coop for the first time and I could tell there was a big bonus to playing coop, not just extra enemies or something silly. Tactics and flanking play a very large role in this game.
For instance, have your teammate use cover fire to pin the enemy down while you gain the advantage on the field. Positioning can make or break you in this game, especially at higher difficulty levels. The controls are very intuitive once you get the hang of them and fit the game well. I don't recall a single instance of "uh, what are the buttons again?"
As for the story line, it isn't exactly real detailed and I won't get into details for sake of no spoilers, but I'll just say it really could use more substance to fill in the large gaps.
Chainsaw: 10/10
It deserves it's own section, it's just that good. I won't even say anything about it, just try it out for yourself and you'll see what I mean.
Hint: go for a double chainsaw attack with a friend! (I've only managed it once where me and player 2 were able to chainsaw the same enemy.)
Overall: 9.5/10
The 10 that almost was.
I'd love to give this game a 10, but the story was really short (beat it in approx 9 hours) and the end was rather anti climatic =/
So, the Achilles' Heel to this game? Not enough substance in the story line.
I feel maybe 2 more weapons so you had a more personalized play style couldn't have hurt, and perhaps more variety in missions would have been nice as well. Overall, if you're wondering if you should buy this game, then the answer is a definite yes.
My roommate, who hasn't played video games since SNES, absolutely loves this game, even if he's just watching. Even my friend's wife watched us play for 5 hours straight before falling asleep and that is saying something. Stop reading! Go buy!
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video-games_xbox
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Don't Waste Your Money. Please don't buy this game. It's not worth the toll it's going to take on your sanity, blood pressure, game controllers that you'll want to throw, etc. Like other versions of this franchise, it has it's good points and bad points. I do like it better that last year's version. But that's not saying much because I hated the previous version.
The biggest thing I hate about this year's version is that it cheats. When it wants you to lose, you are going to lose and there is nothing you can do about it. Your linemen forget how to block (I have given up sacks out of the shotgun where literally nobody blocked). Your receivers drop passes. Your quarterback all of a sudden can't hit the broadside of a barn. Every pass within 10 yards of a defender will be intercepted, and your QB will fumble every time he is hit. Your defense can't stop anything, even when you have the correct defense called. The opposing running back will break 2-3 tackles on every play while your offensive players will go down on first contact every time.
You might be thinking that I am just somebody who just throws a fit every time I lose. Not at all; I have played and lost several games and was fine with the way I lost -- the other team just played better. It's the games where all of the above happens that I cannot take. I can beat Alabama 42-10 one week and lose to Rutgers the next, and in the game against Rutgers I will fumble four times, throw three interceptions, my receivers will drop several passes, my line won't block anybody, etc. That's just an example. But this has happened every time I have played a game where it was predetermined I would lose.
How do I know it was predetermined? It's called simulating it over and over again hoping that I can win it without the aggrevation of having to play it again. I have simulated -- and lost -- the same game 30+ times before finally just giving up. And it's not like I am a horrible team expecting to simulate and win against a good team. I can be LSU and simulate 30 times against BYU and lose all 30 sims.
That's my #1 biggest complaint. It's been like that in previous versions, but seems especially bad on this version. I just can't deal with having to play a game where the game decides to let the other team win by making my team suddenly horrible. I can deal with the other team just playing better and me not scoring enough points, etc. But I shouldn't have to play a game that makes my good team play terrible so the other team can win. Sure, you'll win your share and have some fun doing it. But who wants to play a game where the outcome is already determined? Not me.
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video-games_xbox
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Pretty much an improvement over the original Xbox 360 in every way, still needs a HDD though. First off, let me just say this Xbox 360 is way quieter than the original (non-slim, non-elite) Xbox 360 which I also have. Though it still has a power brick it is much smaller (as is the console itself) than the original, and it is also much quieter. Unlike my old Xbox 360 (I think its the arcade) the Xbox 360 E has a designated kinect port so you don't have to use an external power plug or take up a USB port. The Xbox 360E 4GB came with 1 month of Xbox Live free, and a wireless controller (non-rechargeable), as well as a 3.5mm to red/white coax audio cable and standard video component cables. Also unlike my old Xbox 360, the Xbox 360E has built in wifi which is a very nice improvement/money saver.
I was able to get the Xbox360E from the Microsoft Store for $99 on black friday and to me that is simply stunning that you can get something as good as the Xbox 360 for so cheap. I've also got the Xbox One (bought from Amazon) and really it's no contest. For value you want the Xbox 360, as of now the graphics on the Xbox One really don't seem much better than the Xbox 360s and the price is outrageous, as long as they are making games for the Xbox 360 it will always be worth it.
The only real downside I can see to the Xbox 360E is that it doesn't come with a Hard Drive. 4GB of space isn't enough to do anything except save your games. Almost every game out there requires an update and you'll not be fitting more than one on the internal memory. In cases like that of BF3 (and probably BF4) you are required to install additional "HD Content" to the hard drive if you want the game to look good. Unlike updates which you can install to a USB memory stick the "HD Content" has to be installed to a hard drive so you need to get one anyways... The fact that updates were required just to play most any game was pretty annoying to me. The Xbox 360E 4GB is virtually unplayable without some additional form of storage, it just surprises me that microsoft would sell a version like that.
The good news is that if you don't feel like buying a HDD from Microsoft (the Xbox 360 Slim Hard Drive works) and you happen to have an extra 2.5" laptop hard drive laying around you can upgrade the Xbox 360E for just $5 through use of an enclosure: <a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Xbox-360-Hard-Drive-Shell-Enclosure/dp/B009K5WSNI/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Xbox 360 Hard Drive Shell Enclosure</a>
Otherwise the cheapest/smallest HDD option is $30 for a knock-off 20GB hdd. Also should be noted that the Xbox 360E console does not come with an HDMI cable so you'll need that too if you plan on having it look HD.
At the $100 I paid on black friday the Xbox 360E console was quite the deal. At $150 though it might be worthwhile to just get the "slim" that already includes a Hard Drive and maybe a couple games.
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video-games_xbox
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If you have a family with multiple xbox 360s, skip. If you share an xbox, this is for you. Havent played the game yet. Putting up a 3 star review for the following reasons.
i will list the pros first. Game came in new condition, as advertised. Game shipped on time.
Now my problems are:
1.) DLC / DOWNLOADABLE CONTENT (The extras it comes with, as it says on the case...) is on a ONE TIME CODE, for THAT CONSOLE. Its a LICENSE. In other words, everybody who shares your console with you.
Every game I have bought to date, which I have purposely skipped if they have EA branded on it because EA is death to great games everywhere, has included the Downloadable content on a disc, either a separate disc or the same disc as the game. Fallout 3, Forza Motorsport 4, Dark souls 2 scholar of the first sin, the list goes on. This is b-s that Bungie wants a family of 3-5 in a household who have more than 1 xbox 360 to purchase multiple copies of the game. Not only that, I live in Alaska. The 907 gamers up here in Alaska, don't have the luxury of unlimited internet that the people down in the "lower 48" do. We have bandwidth caps. If something happens to my xbox or something unforeseeable happens where I have to happen to need to download all of the expansions and updates again, thats about rough estimate 4~5 gigs. Thats ridiculous.
Discs not only add convenience but they let you literally take the content WITH YOU when you move from console to console. That is my first problem.
2.) The second problem I have, is that you preorder games, to get the extra content early, no? It even says on the weapons pack code paper in the case "Redeem your early access weapons pack". Release date for the taken king was on the 15th. In no way shape or form did I receive this early. Now, who's fault it is for this is debatable. That is just rambling off topic. People preorder to get the content early. 4 days after release date to wait to get a weapons pack isn't early.
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video-games_xbox
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Just Bad. Turtle Beach has usually been good with their headsets in the past, especially when it comes to console headsets. For PC, they really don't seem to care. Any pair of PC headsets I've bought from them breaks and has to be sent back at least three times before the year warranty is up. The cause of the breakings is the same as everyone else; above the earcup, or just bad quality parts in general. My brother had to send his back 5 times, and the side panel on his computer case is covered in Turtle Beach stickers that came with the headset (Turtle Beach always sent brand new headsets and never the original one). We had a contest going to see who could get the most stickers by the end of the year, and he won by 2.
My brother's never actually broke physically, but always had problems with the dongle not connecting all the way which caused cut-outs in the sound or would never stay connected, or the speakers themselves would stop working if he did a sound test. My breaks were always physical. On the bright side, we have 8 sets of splitters which are actually more useful. We also never abused the headsets in any way shape or form since they cost nearly $100 and we like taking care of our things.
It's a little sad because these headsets sounded great and would have been awesome if they could last longer than a month at a time. The amount of speakers caused them to be on the heavy side which made them hard to wear for long periods of time, but that doesn't matter because they'll slide off when the plastic gives up. After this experience I've found out it's better to go with stereo headsets and use simulated 5.1 or 7.1 sound; they're lighter and have less chances of going wrong, and it sounds just as good (this obviously depends on your intended audio use). Also, depending on the brand, they won't break before you can even consider them used. I'm never buying Turtle Beach again after this experience.
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video-games_xbox
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Good Headphones for Gaming / Movies. Amazon needs to remove all the 1 star reviews that were because Amazon sent the customers the wrong product. Those 1 star reviews have nothing to do with the product and artificially degrade the rating of these otherwise great bang for the buck headphones.
I've owned both headsets from Tritton, the older AX360's and now the new AX Pros. The AXPro is lighter and the ear cups are slightly better and in general are much more comfortable in my opinion for long use sessions than the older AX360's.
Another upgrade which is great is an in-line sound field adjustment dongle which is very handy. You can very quickly adjust the sound to the front, sub, center and surround fields with the push of their associated button and then pushing up on the volume lever. That's not the best part though, the voice communication channel has it's own independent volume control so your voice chatter doesn't get drowned out in the game sounds. There is a dongle that connects the in-line volume control dongle to the controller the way it's suppose to be hooked up so you don't need to set the voice comms to come out the speakers like on the older ax360 model.
Another huge plus of buying the AX Pro model is the new mic, it's a much nicer design, rigid and has a much better mount. The drawback though is that it's not as adjustable, it can be moved closer or farther to your mouth horizontally but there is no vertical adjustment.
One unwanted new thing with the AXPro set is the addition of another power brick which powers the in-line volume dongle. The other power supply powers the mini-receiver. It's not too bad because both power supplies plug in either into the mini-receiver or close to it. One design flaw though is that there is no on/off switch for the actual headset, the mini-receiver has an on/off button but your headset is always on as long as it's plugged in. Tritton has said they're trying to 'fix' this design oversight but so far nothing has been announced.
The headphones themselves are cabled, you will have a single 12' cable running between where you mount the mini-receiver and where you sit. There is also the cable that runs from the in-line dongle to your controller for voice communications if you need them.
Sound quality for movies and games is fine. There is a slight hiss when there is no sound but that is drowned out once the game sounds start. Being able to adjust sound field delay on the mini-receiver and adjust the volume of each sound field via the in-line dongle really allows you to get the feeling of a full featured 5.1 theater speaker system.
The mini-receiver only accepts a fiber optic audio cable, HDMI would have been a nice upgrade to this new headset. So if you are using an xbox360 with HDMI, you will need to buy the audio dongle that hooks into the standard a/v port on your xbox which will give you the fiber port on the xbox. This can be purchased with the hdmi cable for 50 bucks at most resellers. You'll also want to supply your own fiber cable too, the one that is in the box is about the thinnest fiber cable i've seen, although i am currently using it i've heard i'll get better sound if i get a better cable.
I looked at other surround sound headsets from astro and turtle beach but came to the conclusion that for the price, this headset is a great value for movie watching or video gaming. My wife is very happy that she doesn't need to hear the loud home theater going late at night while she's trying to read.
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video-games_xbox
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Insanely difficult. *MINOR SPOILERS*
1-Gameplay: This is not a Resident Evil style "shoot em' up" action game. It is about 90% stealth based, 5% sniper based, and 5% boss battles. If stealth play is your thing, this has plenty. Trust me when I say, the stealth aspect can be very frustrating at times. The main character will die a LOT in this game.
2-Enemies: The standard vampires tend to be tougher than the bosses. If they see you and then hit you twice, you're dead. End of story. There are only about 4 weapons in the game that can take them down. One of them is a sniper rifle that has to be used from a distance, the shotgun you only have for about 3-4 stages, and the "cannon rifle" or whatever it's called you don't get until the very end of the game. The other is a UV knife that is for stealth kills ONLY. The boss battles are challenging enough to not be total push-over; however they can still be very frustrating at times. ESPECIALLY the last two bosses.
3 Graphics: Not the greatest in the world, but not the worst either. The CGI movies and cut-scenes were decent, but did look like they were from last-gen consoles at times.
4 Story: Not a cohesive plot. About what you would expect from a "good" B movie. Not Oscar material, but not terrible either. Some decent suspense, but some corny lines like Mission Commander: "When I get my hands on who did this!" after finding a dead team member, and then when they do get their hands on the person, they do absolutely NOTHING. My personal favorite aspect of the story is the mission commander always giving you the garbage work, ex. "You distract the nightwalkers and take down the communications tower. We'll stay with the command vehicle and make sure everything is ok." "You find a way to the top of the crane past those 10 nightwalkers while we stay here and hide behind this dumpster to make sure there's not a safer way around."
5 Overall recommendations: Pick up a cheap used copy if you enjoy stealth games, or are a glutton for punishment at the hands of a truly difficult game that drops you into no win situation after no win situation that you have to use imagination to get out of. When you finish the game, you WILL feel like you have accomplished something.
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video-games_xbox
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An upgraded crackdown... to a degree. Ok. To start things off i'm gonna say up front When your playing this game forget there is a storyline. Now that thats out of the way you won't be dissapointed. Crackdown 2 was obviously not made for its storyline. All of crackdown 2's fun comes from blowing people sky high, catching renegade orbs, upgrading your stats and watching your Character (Agent) Evolve drastically. The game never ends until you have 100 % everything so there is so many things you can do once the story is "over". The 4 player co-op online makes the game better because its always alot easier to beat things with more agents. the story line itself ...Quite easily...SUCKS. but just because the storyline sucks doesnt mean that jumping off a 20 story building, and ground pounding the ground to kill a block worth of enemies sucks. Quite easily this game is great, not for its story but for the thought and development that went into the characters, the abilities, the upgrade system and the all around playability of it. if your still skeptical ...Rent it... the storyline itself is very short cant give a time estimate because i didn't keep track.
Ok so weapons wise they added alot of rocket launchers including the flocket launcher- which is a homing missle launcher that can attack in rapid succesion (think machine gun only slower with dead aim accuracy it will literaly do circles around the target until it hits it sometimes) the other launchers are a turret missile launcher and a homing missle launcher(think flocket launcher but alot slower but highly explosive and deadly.) there are numerous machine guns and sub machine guns mostly all the same shot and damage wise. and then there are the shot guns heh. ok so there are regular shot guns and then there is my personal favorite... the UV Shotgun!!! basically its self explanitory its a shotgun that shoots UV rays to desintegrate Freaks (or zombies as i like to call em) not very effective on cell enemies except pushing them back ... way back.as far as grenades the only two in this catagory that stand out to me are the Duck bomb as i like to call it (its literally a rubber duck that is trigger activated and sets off a highly explosive all while quacking lol. and then there is the cluster bomb which sets off 4 explosions in rapid succession. Vehicles are basic you start with a normal agency car - slow but gets the job done, the agency buggy quick acceleration a little faster than the agency car but also has a top mounted turret you control while driving, my personal favorite the supercar- very fast and when impact is made head on with another car it will send that car flying out of the waywithout reducing ur speed!!!. the trucklike suburban thing (forgot what its called because i don't really use it) can jump over certain objects by holding down B and then releasing. enough about the vehicles. Once you upgrade your abilities to a certain level you unlock new actions such as the ground pound basically its where you can jump from any distance in the air and pound the ground to send enemies flying, theres the shoulder charge where you run while knocking any vehicles or people out of ur way, both of these are upgraded through the strength ability another ability is the glide suit where u jump off buildings and glide (self explanatory). now as you can see this is only a few of the things you can do there are far more things you can unlock and do you just have to play the game for yourself ...Good Luck!!
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video-games_xbox
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A Must-Own - But Not Perfection. Halo 3 was, in a way, doomed before it was released. No matter how well it did, people are going to judge its "wow factor" against how amazing the original Halo felt to play back when it first came out. Now that we are used to the weapons, races, environments and plotline, nothing is as cool as it was that first time. It's the same issue that plagues any series, be it Dune, the Matrix, Star Wars, etc.
Halo 3 does get a boost in that it is released for the 360, so you get an automatic upgrade in abilities there. We're playing on a high end HD TV, and yes, it looks really nice. The backgrounds look like a painting in motion, with swirling clouds and dancing dust storms. From the light glinting off the metal surfaces to the detailed shadows in the rocks, it can be really gorgeous. Is every detail as beautiful as every detail in, say Gears of War? Maybe not. Different developers focus on different items. There are always trade-offs for speed and visual appeal reasons. For a Halo world, I think they did a good job.
The sound and dialogue are really great. I like the background music, and I find much of the dialogue hilarious. There are some conversations that have me laughing out loud. This is a good game to play with your surround sound stereo system hooked up, and of course the subwoofers.
I hated the ending of Halo 2. I dislike it when a story finishes with a "and now wait a few years to find out what happened." They can at least have you feel like you achieved something, and ended a chapter. For that reason alone it's good to have Halo 3 here to wrap everything up.
Unfortunately, with all the time they spent in development, this third outing is a bit predictable. I really enjoyed the multi character play in Halo 2. I thought that was a great touch. They completely removed it for Halo 3, setting you back into a Master Chief only mode. To be honest, I really thought we'd get THREE races this time around, and get to play as the Flood too. Why reduce ourselves to just one?
Also, while there are a lot of "missions", some of them are maybe 5 minutes long. That's a bit on the short side. I realize you can go back and replay on harder and harder levels to challenge yourself - but they could have put more depth into the basic story line.
Now, all of those things being said, the key to any game in modern times is its multiplayer ability. No matter what single player game you play, it's pretty much a limited time game. Multiplayer is completely unlimited - and you're not stuck with the formulas built into the AI brains. Halo 3 is definitely the best multiplayer experience of the three games - the most balanced, the most fun, the best graphics. You could literally play this for years and not get bored of it.
So to summarize - if you don't have XBox Live, you could rent this game for a week, get through it and have a lot of fun. You'll be able to see how the story ends, get your Halo fix in and be happy. But if you do have XBox Live, you'll want to own this. Between replaying the base game on harder levels to improve your skills, and playing multi-player in a variety of maps and set-ups, you'll be happy for a long, long while.
There are many games we write a walkthrough for that we have to push ourselves to get through, but when we did our walkthrough for Halo 3, we really did have fun :) So that's always a good sign!
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video-games_xbox
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Great RPG for the xbox 360. Although the game suggests it's a sequel, Magna Carta 2 is not connected to it's original for the PS2 (and it's way better). The graphics are really well done and the music was good.
The story of Magna Carta 2 didn't interest me until around the beginning of disc 2. However, the battle system kept me occupied until then. I didn't think the game was very challenging (not once did I face the game over screen), but I found the battle system a bit addicting after I got the hang of it. It's a mixture of turn-based and real-time battle. A party consists of three characters, but you can switch characters in or out of the fighting party anytime during battle (so if someone dies, just swap them with a new character, there are six playable characters in the game) You can move around during battle and hit the apponent, but once characters run out of stamina, they go into an overheat mode and are unable to move (the turn-based portion) However, once you learn how to do chain attacks and chain breaks, you never really stop fighting and are not taking turns. (much more real-time) This makes the battle move very quickly and if you don't watch closely, you could mess up a chain and have all three party members in overheat, unable to move.
The battle may seem a bit confusing at first, but I thought the tutorials in the game were fantastic. You are not only told what to do, but you also have to execute the action you are learning. This made it easy to learn the basics.
I also like how the game has many optional sidequests available. Although the sidequests have nothing to do with the story or characters, completing them will better prepare you for upcoming battles by awarding experience, items, and SID (which is money). Doing sidequests takes a great deal of time (there are over 80 of them) but they are very beneficial. I recommend the Magna Carta 2 strategy guide for the fastest ways to complete all sidequests.
By doing all the sidequests (which led me to fight more monsters) I was never short on experience, but sometimes short on money. Each of the six characters can carry one of two weapons. I tried to update every ones weapons and armor as much as possible. I found that I had the most money at the very end of the game (when I didn't need it, of course) Healing items are also very expensive. However, I am very protective of my items and money (just as I am in real life), and the only battle that I used items during was the very last one.
Over all, I really liked the game. It gets much more interesting (story wise) later in the game, but the combat is really cool and unique. It's definitely worth the money.
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video-games_xbox
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Great realism for the serious golfer. Tiger Woods 2006 brings the glorious realism of the XBox 360 to the game of golf. You get quick games, planned out career mode, plus live play and minigames.
First, the characters you can play. By default you are Tiger Woods of course, but you can also play Vijay Singh, Mike Weir, Chris DiMarco, tons more, or create your own character from scratch. The creation screen is rather impressive, so you can really create a golfer that you can relate to. We had a ton of fun playing with the precise level of detail. Unibrow? Freckle density? It's all here.
You start out with six extremely detailed courses - but EA lists the following courses as the ones supported for this version of the game. I imagine that it means the rest of the courses will be able to be downloaded in the future. You can only fit so much information on one DVD! I've marked which ones come on the game DVD.
Bethpage Black
Carnoustie - INCLUDED
Central Park
Cog Hill
Doral
Greek Isles
Kapalua
Pasatiempo
Pebble Beach - INCLUDED
Pinehurst #2 - INCLUDED
Pumpkin Ridge
Red Rock Creek
Reflection Bay
Riviera - INCLUDED
Sahalee
St Andrews
Troon North - Pinnacle
TPC at Sawgrass - INCLUDED
Turnberry - INCLUDED
The game is definitely not an "arcade" easy style button masher. There's no swing-o-meter to hit the X button on. You have to really "swing" the joystick properly to hit your shot. I found this really natural to do, and my boyfriend, who is an avid golfer, was playing extremely well in only a few holes. That being said, if you're not into golf and don't understand the club choices / ground slope issues, you can have problems.
I really loved how the power shots go into slow motion if you hit them right on, and how the crowd roars out its approval for the great shots. It really gives you a visceral sense of reward. I also love how the crowd cringes if your shot goes too near them, or they actually double over in pain when you hit them. I admit to aiming for them a few times :) It was just too funny.
The graphics are quite nice. The shadows ripple across the green, the ball kicks up debris, the clouds roll across the sky. The birds chirp, you can hear the wind rustling in the trees. The characters still aren't quite photorealistic, but we're getting quite close. I remember as a kid playing the Atari Golf with little pixel-characters - this is amazing how far we've come.
The sounds really draw you in, from the commentary to the crowd noises to the ambient sounds. I didn't even mind the background rock music in the character screens and such.
There's a ton of items to unlock - better clubs, better shafts, and so on. There are always new challenges to try for and items to strive for.
For quick arcadey fun, we're big fans of the PSP Hot Shots Golf, and we finished that game all the way through. But for a serious challenge, where our golf skills are tested and honed, we really like this one. It's both very challenging and very relaxing at the same time.
If I was going to pick on the game, perhaps I'd say it was too hard for beginners, or those who don't really play golf. However, there are tons of games out there that are deliberately arcadey or just "fun". Casual players have plenty of options to choose from already. If someone is a serious golfer looking for a game to have fun with during rainy days and winter season, I really recommend this one.
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video-games_xbox
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Bigger isn't always better. Being a huge fan of the Final Fantasy series(excepting 11 I've played every one since 7), I actually purchased an Xbox 360 specifically in anticipation of this game. However, to a veteran of the series this game was sadly lacking. The developers seem to think that gamers asking for longer games equals make the battles longer. I've played approximately 80hrs so far, and over half of that time has been mindless leveling attempting to accomplish that elusive 100% completion. While I understand that a certain amount of new ideas/changes are necessary between games this title's changes all add up to unnecessarily long battles. I'm sure many games will appreciate the lack of a 9,999hp damage limit (it just feels like you're getting something done if you're doing 50,000+hp per attack), but the developers gave even basic enemies insanely high health to make this possible(cactuars were previously around 10,000hp I think, now they have 777,777hp). This wouldn't have been a big deal if they had made the health proportional to average damage, but they didn't. Another change that serves to drag the content out is removing the gil reward from battles. To achieve 100% completion you have to level up every weapon and accessory in the game which takes millions of gil, but only a handful of enemies drop components that can be sold. I'd much rather have seen a low-medium reward for EVERY battle than a small (1-25%) chance of huge rewards from an incredibly small number of enemies. The entire upgrading process is designed to frustrate any but the most dedicated gamer. The storyline was ridiculously predictable to anyone with even basic reasoning skills. Two characters in the entire game have an Australian (aka Land Down Under) accent. I wonder where they could be from? Even predicting which Eidolon would be granted for each character was foreshadowed beyond belief(i.e. Lightning gets a lightning Eidolon, Snow gets an ice based Eidolon, Hope gets a protector...). Despite all of the unnecessary bits I've already mentioned, one thing ruined this game for me more than any other. They removed the standard leveling system and set very finite limits on how far you could develop your characters. While the system was similar to FF10's sphere upgrades, it was limited to the point that I, having leveled every character as far as possible up to that point, found myself in the midst of a final battle where skill was irrelevant. The final boss's attacks were incredibly random and devastating at the same time. If I happened to be in a defensive paradigm when one of those vicious attacks occurred I had a chance of hanging on, but if I was attacking, buffing or debuffing when the controls literally stopped working there was little or no chance of recovering before one of the boss's many minor attacks could finish my main character and end the game. To sum up, I would only recommend this game for die-hard fans and gamers who have never experienced the wonder of Final Fantasy before. This game was utterly disappointing, but could have been considered average without the "Final Fantasy" name.
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video-games_xbox
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Much improved. This is by far the best EA has created in their FIFA series. The atmosphere, graphics, and user interface are much improved over last year's version, but there are still some areas that need improvement.
First, the positives:
The gameplay is pretty realistic. The defense is much harder to break down than in previous versions, which seems to keep the scoreline in check.
The players don't have superhuman ball control like in 2004, and are even less sure-footed than 2005, so you'll actually see even the best players take a bad touch more often.
As far as the graphics go, I believe they're pretty strong. EA could have definitely done better on some of the players' resemblances, but the overall look of the stadiums, game action, and atmosphere is much improved over previous versions.
The new commentary is a nice touch. Having played the last two releases of FIFA, hearing some new commentary and a new voice is a nice touch.
Career Mode is much better in most ways. Although you are still limited to a 15-year career, the team management, player contracts, sponsor deals, and scouting add some new challenges to the career-minded player.
The negatives:
AI on the defense is ridiculous at times. It's been hard to gain a lot of possession due to the fact that if you're pressuring a defender, he will dribble away from you. He'll just dribble back to the 18-yard line and then kick it out-of-bounds. The fact that the computer is happy with dribbling in their third of the field with little ambition to move forward is a bit annoying and unrealistic...especially when they are losing by just a single goal.
This is not so much of a negative, but a warning. In career mode, you need to be careful with your budgeting. After 2-and-a-half seasons with Fiorentina, I was fired with a 17-1-0 record, while also still being alive in both the Italian Cup and Champions League. Performance on the field didn't matter when the money started drifting into negative numbers.
Finally, it's very difficult to build a powerhouse like Chelsea did in real life. The amount that the sponsors give your team doesn't seem to foot the bill for a team with more than a couple high-quality players. Winning tournaments and fulfilling sponsor agreements will provide you with the means to purchase good players, but the weekly salaries of these players might find you in a precarious position (see previous warning). It's also difficult to recruit these players, as many of the teams that I have tried to purchase players from, like Milan for instance, will tell you that they don't have enough players for an outright purchase. This can be frustrating since EA makes you start with a sub-par team.
Regardless, I have to give this game four stars for its attempts, successes, and improvement in realistic gameplay. Although there are a few flaws in the gameplay, it's still the best that EA has put out to date. EA's ability to provide up-to-date rosters, true-to-life stadium environments and kits, and solid graphics definitely help make it fun to play. I'd recommend it for any soccer fan who has stayed loyal to the EA series. You'll definitely enjoy the improvements.
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video-games_xbox
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Look Elsewhere. Hi all! My apologies for not writing a complete and thorough review, but this is going to be a scathing review and I didn't get past trying this headset on. Therefore, allow me to iterate. I did not purchase this headset from Amazon, but rather visited a local retailer who price matches with Amazon to get the advertised discounted price. I was excited to finally get my hands on a Skullcandy product since I typically shy away from products that are geared toward and advertised to our younger gaming generation. So why did I give this gaming headset 1 star? Let me explain. After I opened the Skullcandy PLYR2 box, I felt like I had been ripped off. For starters, this is an on-the-ear gaming headset. A look at Skullcandy's homepage for this specific headset will not give any useful information that you won't find anywhere else like here on Amazon. You'll probably notice that the Amazon information for this headset is more descriptive than Skullcandy's own website. I could not find mentioned anywhere on any webpage, nor any review (none that I could find), that this is an on-the-ear gaming headset. Folks, I'm an adult over 40. I don't have big ears. I have average sized adult ears. When I opened the box and had my first look, I knew I had been duped and this put an immediate bad taste in my mouth. I unwrapped the headset and tried it on just to be absolutely sure I wasn't hallucinating (which by the way this should be the VERY FIRST thing you, the buyer, should do for ANY gaming headset). Sure enough, the earpieces sat right on top of my ears. So, I thought that maybe you have to sort-of wrap the earpieces around the ear. Nope! This is definitely an on-the-ear gaming headset, plus it is very tight on an average adults head. Folks, that's not what bothers me. I have 4 pairs of on-the-ear gaming headsets (2 pairs of Astro A30's, 1 pair of Tritton Kama's and 1 pair of Mad Catz Frequency M's). I like them all, each and every one of them. That said, when I purchased those headsets, I knew from the start that they were on-the-ear gaming headsets. This is information that the buyer needs in order to help them decide to buy or not buy a particular product, right? So, why not include that in the description? Secondly, upon closer visual inspection, this gaming headset LOOKS CHEAP!!! I just could not believe this company was asking big money for this cheap looking headset. Thirdly, the colors of the headset and the graphic artwork are not representative of what you'll see out of the box. Here on this webpage, you'll notice that the yellow is more gold in color, the black appears to be a matte black finish and apparently there's some graphic artwork that is overlaid onto the earpieces. When you open the box and just look, you'll find that what you thought was a golden yellow color is actually a bright yellow, you'll find that what you thought was supposed to be a matte black finish is actually a glossy black finish and you'll find that the graphic artwork overlay on the earpieces does not exist. Furthermore, this gaming headset is NOT as mobile friendly as it's portrayed to be! You have to have power to drive this silly thing, because otherwise, you may as well leave this one at home! Folks, I don't know what you all think about this, but we used to call this misleading and false advertising. All of this alone was enough for me to place the headset back into it's box and return it.
In summation, I cannot recommend this product at all. This is simply due to principle. Think about it like this: You own a company that produces and sells widgets. You market and advertise your widgets to be shiny, colorful and ambidextrous (this means you can use both hands to use the product). However, what you actually sell are widgets that have 1 color, they're dull and only for right handed people. How long do you think it's going to take for customers to figure out whats' going on and start passing the word around about your falsely advertised widgets? I'll leave you with that thought.
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video-games_xbox
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A work in progess. Buy now or wait. Let me see if I got this right. The full experience was supposed to be released on 03/11/16 at 0001 hours. If you did the pre-order, you get the game (which is not the full game), access to Paris and the requiem pack (gun, suit, explosives). Price tag was/is 59.99. Code issues for downloads went haywire across the board. So, if you paid that amount of cash and waited up to play, you couldn't.
Now, for the same price for the full experience you get everything listed above minus the requiem pack. It is no longer the full experience it is just the experience. That being said, you can't use the upgrade pack without first purchasing the intro pack which is 14.99. What the what???
Now, if you didn't purchase the full experience but, want to play the you can get the intro pack for 14.99 and the upgrade package which is 49.99 you can save 10.00. Are you still with me? Instead of paying 75.00 for the FP/Intro you will only pay 65.00 for the UP/Intro.
Now, which ever direction you went or will go, IT IS NOT A COMPLETE GAME! What! you say? Yes, Paris is your first city. April is in Italy and May has Morocco. Then there is Thailand, USA and finally Japan. Here is the catch, as of now, the whole game will be finally released by 12/16. Sooooo, that is about 7 or so months for the final 3 releases That is about 1 release for every 2 plus months. Are you kidding me?
Now, maybe or maybe not by then it will be a finished product. Hard copy release is around 12/30 for 59.99. But, how much more money will you have to spend? Will you have to pay extra for the intro or upgrade? Will there be a deluxe version? Game of the year version? After all of that time and money spent, will there be a definitive edition down the road? Sigh, all the headaches for a video game....
Now, I did my research. I didn't like what I was reading because of the reasons stated above. I have bought a lot of games/codes from Amazon and xbox. I have never had issues with any downloads, ever. That being said, I am hesitant about buying this game from either until somewhere down the road. Six total locations spread out over the next 7 months (I am including the Paris location)? Possible glitches, bugs, framerate drops, connection to servers, wifi, etc....you get the picture. The idea is new but, if you bought it now will you still be playing it down the road? I don't know about you, play and finish the level, done. Do it a different way, done. Beat the level in a few hours, done. Wait a month, do it all over again. I don't know if that is my idea of fun. Plus, over the next 7 months or so, there are some big time games coming out. Will you even think about this game by then? Heck, I am still waiting for the last location to be released on the Witcher 3. The 3 so called areas for Fallout 4 has yet to be determined. GTA 5 is still being played. I don't know about you, I want a game that I paid for, now. I get the extras that come out for games these days but, that is different. I can't beat Dark Souls 2 or Dragon Inquisition in a day.
All that being said, I have played the first location on a friend's xbox one. By far the best, for now, Hitman game yet. It should be, it is on a next generation system. Controls are easy and smooth, in my opinion. The ability to go after targets from different angles is great because it means you are not stuck with a linear format. Customization seems endless. I like the graphics. Gorgeous. I had no issues with gameplay. The replay value seems endless. Question is, are you willing to buy now and wait months for the final product? 3 stars for a game that is not complete. I will be purchasing this game, question is, when?
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video-games_xbox
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A Step Forward For Microsoft. Let me start off by saying this review will be written in the most objective form possible. So over the past few years I have been gaming on every platform you can think of Xbox 360, PS3, PS4, Vita, ect ect. All off these platforms always seemed to bring great value and new experience into the gaming community. With the release of the Xbox One and PS4 a year ago, I easily chose the Playstation 4, and at the time for good reason. At the time the Xbox One had less powerful hardware, wonky UI, flawed voice recognition software, larger form factory, and most importantly a larger price tag. It is a year later now and I can easily say the new price point and software updates to the console make this purchase more than justified. I am going to make a list of pros and cons to really outline what is great and what is missing from the package you receive.
PROS
1. The startup for the console is easy, fast, and effective for users of all age and technical ability.
2. The console features a pass through with HDMI so you can run your cable box or other device through your Xbox One.(Helps Free Up Space On TV)
3. Console has a great design too it, the black gloss looks great and the way they designed the heat vents makes them not an eye sore.
4. Includes 2 games, Black Flag and Unity(there is a con to this though)
5. Hardware is quiet, no real noise from vents or the Blu-Ray drive.
6. Great integration with Skype/Youtube/Twith-Great for people posting videos online or wanting to chat over skype
7. Achievement system is better than ever, new system is streamlined and overall more appealing in game.
8. Visuals on games are great. Don't believe the hype, only video enthusiasts can notice 990p vs 1080p.
9. Easy to install more storage space through software updates
10. Controller navigation has been more streamlined over time for kinectless Xbox One
CONS
1. The overall console is HUGE, it is the size of my 1980's CD player. It also has a large power brick (You WILL NEED to make space)
2. USB on the side (looks better) accessibility to the port is limited if you plan on putting it inside an entertainment stand
3. UI navigation is limited withough Kinect(Not horrible but I imagine a much better experience if I had the Kinect UI functions)
4. 500GB of space. This is insane in 2014 considering each game is pretty much 50 GB of space. An internal 1tb HDD is $60 retail/ $15 for Microsoft, so why not just include it at this point??
5. Top of console gets really hot considering its size (where I believe the CPU is located) Wish it was cooler for the size. Systems last longer when they run cooler.
6. Games are downloads not hard copies. 75GB is needed!
7. Controller uses AA batteries(It is 2014 why not just make a controller with integrated ion battery- If Nintendo and Sony can do it so can Microsoft!)
8. Charging connector on the controller is proprietary, you will have to purchase from Microsoft for $24.99 to get the charge kit with the cord. (Cord is needed for PC gaming)
9. The Windows 8 style menu is still kinda clunky, Kinda wish the 360 menu was still being used. (Thats nitpicking, it is not a horrible UI experience like some say.)
10. You NEED XBOX LIVE for EVERYTHING!!! Without it say goodbye to any apps that are enabled over the internet. Microsoft may have changed DRM policy, but the system is still built like it wasn't.
CONCLUSION
The Xbox One at $329.99 is a steal at this price point. The console offers more than enough features to justify your purchase and the exclusives this gen for Microsoft are looking great!! Any gamer or media enthusiast will highly enjoy the Xbox One. With all the new updates, games, and price drop you would be crazy not to buy one. Microsoft is really punching back at Sony (I am a Sony fan) and I am getting pretty excited about it. Whether you have been and Xbox fan or Playstation fan you have to encourage competition and at this point in time I would choose the Xbox over the Playstation. If size is not a big deal and you were walking into this looking to buy external storage and Xbox live than this is a no brainier. Unity certainly isn't the best game out, but this bundle really is! Buy it now while the price is still this low!
2.
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video-games_xbox
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A few steps colser to greatness, but still stumbling. Ahhhh....here we are, another year another Madden. So, whta do we have...Roster Update? Check. Improved Graphics? Check. New EA tracks? Check. In short,Madden is getting there...it's slowly but surely starting to get up to the standards that NFL 2K5 set FOUR years ago.
Is it me, or do you have a feeling that this SHOULD have been Madden 08?
Let's quickly talk about some of what EA finally got right...and believe it or not a lot of those things are small nitpicky things that have bugged me for years.
1. Commentary....FINALLY after 3 tries they finally have 2 man play by play and it's decent! I still think Visual Concepts did it a bit better but in most ways, EA finally gets this one right and Cris Collinsworth and Tom Hammond sounds pretty well together but it also does need some work as they hardly ever say the names of players during the game.
2. TV presentation style - EA got it right but you still have to ask the, if they have access to the ESPN licence along with exclusivity, wny not rip the page out of 2K5's book and run with it? But...you can't complain too much as what is given this year still feels a lot less clunky than last year and marshall Faulk's pregame crap is gone...however, they still could have left in the pre game intro.
Also, Chris Collinsworth with the telestrator is a welcome improvement and gives you more of a feel of 'watching' the game.
3. More animations and enhanced graphics- by far this is one of the nicest looking games released in awhile....the stadiums look more alive now that they have varied the look and AI of the crowds. There are more on field animations from the players and a lot less broken animations from broken up plays...but...where are the refs?? The lighting effects are nicer this time around really giving you a feel of 'being there' at the prescribed time of day...even the weather effects as stated really do have an effect...a lot more sliding around and uglier games in worse weather and of course uni's getting dirty. The sidelines also show a big improvement.
4. The AI is getting better on D as some plays that were easily paydirt plays are constantly getting shut down and the D will definently adjust more as you keep using certain plays so it's wise to learn to use audibles a bit more especially in hurry up situaions. The AI also seems to be getting better managing the ball in late game situaions...I have seen too many times in past maddens when the AI attempts ot run the ball late in the 4 the quarter when they need to be throwing it deep and this iteration, you really do and some teams depending on the QB is also going to stretch the field on you if they can.
What are some things that still need improving on.
1. The franchise mode - There was so many things that Madden 04 and 05 did right that made the franchise mode fun and I still can't see why they won't bring it back to the next gen systems...I kind of enjoyed managing my team syadiums and tix prices and so on....but none of that has made it back....and BTW until or unless EA comes out with a roster update, you will have to manually make changes to Favre, Thaylor and Pennington. Also I still would like to see other game highlights and scores while my game is playing...I mean come on EA...that's going to determine how much harder I am going to play if I can see how the rest of my division is doing thru that Sunday!!!
2. The halftime show.....ok...so they finally got rid of the cheerleaders last year...but come on now, 2K5 had it down to a T....EA get on the band wagon...again you have the ESPN licence...what are you guys waiting on?
3. More Realism - Where is the cart for injured players? Where arethe refs? Where is the chain gang? EA we are 4 iterations into the NEXT GEN...get with it!! Speaking of the refs...is it just me or can I barely understand him at times?
4. Sound - sigh....when is EA going to stop using the SAME CANNED crowds sound from 199X??? again, this is something that 2K5 had a bit more on the right side that EA really needs to improve. Crowds boo at dumb plays...they get seriously hyped as a great play goes...if Adrian Peterson breaks out into an open field run on the way to a TD, I should hear the stadium explode...not the same sounding static.
Finally some things EA needs to dump.
1. The rewind mode - 'nuff said....you didn't want that play broken...you shouldn't have picked it...suck it up. Thankfully you can turn that feature off.
2. Madden IQ - if you play one really good game, the next one rachets itself up too high for you to keep up plus you can adjust your diffulty level so why bother? Definently the gimmick for this year.
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video-games_xbox
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Just plain fun - despite some flaws. While there are some flaws that are probably addressed in other reviews, this game is very much worth owning and playing. Basically, it's a combination of great controls with a fair degree of ongoing value - though that does require quite a bit of grind.
There are 3 classes - which differ only in their class specific abilities that run on timers. Cool down can be greatly reduced by equipping armor with the right stats. Completing the story - which is fun, but flawed - will take 10-20 hours based on your gameplay style.
After that, you will be at level 18-20. From there, the grind begins. You will essentially be doing one of three things to level further - once the story is finished.
1. Replaying strikes - think dungeons or instances in an mmo - on higher difficulty settings.
2. Running patrols on the planets unlocked throughout the campaign - to earn reputation needed to by higher level gear.
3. PVP - several modes.
I personally, do not like PVP. Just not my thing. But, the PVE is still fun with plenty to learn and enjoy as you slowly (very slowly) unlock better gear -> giving you more light -> raising your level beyond 20. You will then work on reputation to be able to buy epic gear. Which is pretty much required to advance beyond level 24.
Some Epic or Exotic items will drop through gameplay, but essentially you will have grind reputation and money to buy what you need.
The gameplay, however, is incredibly smooth and to me fun. Yes, you spend a lot of time doing the same things on repeat - but the gameplay is fun enough that it is enjoyable and worth the time. IF you are into PVP, I'm sure the replay value would add a 5th star to the game.
In short, this game takes all the experience of the Halo series, adds in some MMO and PVP features - for a universe that is incredibly fun to spend time in. Hopefully the upcoming content updates and future releases will flesh out an interesting story and universe. Overall, highly recommended.
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video-games_xbox
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Polk Audio 4-Shot Headphones. You guys have all made reviews on these Polk headphones which quite a few of you say the " sound " when gaming is supposedly fantastic or unbelievably good !!! I was debating on buying Polk myself for my Xbox one but I not only love eye candy realistic graphics ( I have a PS3 also & will be buying the PS4 soon ) , I have a great ear for audio sound in gaming as being a hardcore daily gamer for hours on Ghosts & now Titan fall , I have to ask if you all are comparing the Polk headphones sound to the cheaper lower end of Turtle Beach headphones like the X1's or X etc??? Because I always buy the top of the range which come with a very high price such as Turtle Beach's X Seven's retailing for $399.00 at Ebgames or Gamestop in America & on the actual Turtle beach website. Amazon sell the X Seven's for around $250 or less give or take & I also have the Limited Edition Turtle Beach " Delta's " from Black Ops 1 ?? & are the same as the XP510 for under $250 now & fully programmable on your PC Which were top of the range & $349.00. If you can compare the Polk's to those Turtle Beach's, you will be blown away how crisp, sharp & clear the audio sound is in games & chat etc...so don't compare Polk headphones to Turtle beach headphones unless they are on the same price range as for anything that has quality, you have to pay for it...so if something is cheap, then you have bought a cheap product that isn't of top quality & more easily faulty, break easy or constant problems. So think about it guys when comparing.
I'll be buying the Turtle Beach's XO Seven's for my Xbox one more for curiosity at how they will sound with game audio as they are not expensive & I can easily use the Turtle Beach's I have with the new "adapter" to allow us hardcore gamers to use our top of the range Turtle Beach's. No offence to Polk & I may even buy a pair to compare the sound to the new Xbox one headphones to see which is better & then do a review :)
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video-games_xbox
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