Total Reviews: 47
Average Overall Score Given: 8.26383 / 10
Total Forum Posts: 1,238
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Reviews
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Pure
There once was a development studio called Climax Brighton, they made games like ATV Off-Road Fury 3 (not one and two), then Disney came along with their better “mouse” trap and now they are called Blackrock Studios. None the less, Blackrock, or the team rather, has a descent past reputation of building descent off-road titles.
When I first received the demo of Pure back in August, I was a little hesitant on writing a preview. Why? Because these racing titles tend to be, hit and miss, especially in the online racing department. Luckily for Pure, I immediately was attracted to the game. But, the better part of my conscious told me to wait and see what lies ahead with the rest of the game. The online multiplayer, the career mode, handling, etc… these were crucial questions that I really needed answered before going bananas over this game.
Then finally the final retail version showed up on my doorstep, I have to admit I was excited. Since, the last off-road title I played was MX vs. ATV Untamed. (see our review)
First off, keep in mind Pure doesn’t have free roaming environments like MX vs. ATV Untamed and the ATV Off-Road series, it’s more of a linear type racer such as Forza, or Outrun. Don’t get me wrong, you can take alternate routes on the numerous tracks, but the wide spectrum of free ride just isn’t there.
You start the game off in the “World Tour”, which is basically the career portion of the game. Each series has anywhere from four to seven events within a total of ten series. Within those series you get to choose between the different types, such as Races, Sprint and Freestyle events. After you choose a rider, this part is essentially what type of riding attitude you want and rider model. There is no real different between the various riders, as far as abilities and skills.
Here comes the fun part, building your bike. If you hold the “Y” button, it will auto construct a random ATV for you. This is nice and fast if you want to get a jump start on the game. As you progress in the game, you’ll be able swap out various parts on your ATV to make it handle better or go faster. Depending on the amount of patience you have, this can get tedious. But, fortunately this part is not as in depth as Forza 2, where you start to split hairs. Pure, is meant to be fast and arcade-like. You start by fitting your ride with a D class motor, these puppies are SLOW, but the more you play the better upgrades you get, sound familiar?
As I played though the game I quickly discovered on some tracks (like 5%) it was feast or famine. What I mean by this is…if you are pulling tricks when you are suppose to and were close to winning a race, you probably are going to place in the top three positions. If you are losing, and crashed a lot, or got hung up on a rock you might as well start the race over, there’s a very slim chance of catching up and winning the, this was more apparent on the Sprint tracks. Thus leaving you in sixteenth place and that doesn’t cut the mustard.
I found the racing and freestyle portion of Pure were the most fun overall. With Sprint there was just too much too fast. If you messed up, once...it was famine. I imagine online it’s a lot more fun, but in single player against the AI, it needs to be looked at closer by the devs.
Where the game really comes alive is online. Pure is able to pull off an awesome sixteen player Xbox Live experience and it didn’t hiccup once! This is the first online off-road title that I’ve seen support that many racers on the starting line. Blackrock Studios has essentially captured what it’s like to race against a lot of people online, the only pet peeve I had with it was that everyone didn’t start in a straight line together, ATVs are scattered all over the place on the start. An interesting thing to point out is that, if someone decides to drop out of the race it doesn’t ruin the race for everyone else.
Like in all games, there are flaws. The large flaw in Pure is the AI. There were several occasions where we’d all sixteen of us would take a jump and they’d bump me off the track in mid air, or land on me. Or simply drive me off the sides. Other times, the AI would cut me off like they had eyes in the back on their heads. Come on guys.
Graphically, Pure looks simply amazing. The graphics are not only beautiful, but they run at an extremely high frame rate. The attention to detail is awesome; the mud splashes on the ATV look great! On a personal level I wish you could deck out your guy in some real racing gear, from what I was able to tell…you were stuck with the back-woods redneck look permanently. With the exception of a few un-lockable costumes as you progress through the game.
The music in Pure is pretty good, seems to fit the style of game that it is. But, the ATV sounds just aren’t there, I’m not sure what they are riding there at Blackrock Studios. Pure is not the only game that suffers from the same problem, MX vs. ATV Untamed had out of control revving sounds. Personally, I don’t know if there is a fix for these type of issues, but I know that today’s consoles have enough horse power to deliver a realistic ATV or motocross bike sound. Unfortunately, the ATV sounds like a lawn mower.
I’ve played numerous Off-road titles, from Motocross Madness to 98% of off-road on the market today. Looking past the various flaws of the game… Overall, I highly recommend Pure. It’s a pile of fun online against some friends.
Overall Score: 8.6 / 10
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Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
Since Bioware’s Kights of the Old Republic, we’ve all been longing for another good, deep Star Wars story to get lost into. Well, at least I have been! With titles, like Full Throttle and Sam and Max no longer in the picture...waiting for another great title from the San Francisco Lucasarts developement studio has been a nail biting experience to say the least.
How is Star Wars Force Unleashed to HUGE fan of the series? Well, folks without letting any cats out of any bags here…that wait is over for now, our prayers have been answered. Read on.
In SWFU, you play the role of Darth Vader’s secret apprentice code-named “Starkiller”. Which is voiced by the actor Sam Witwer (he’s been in a couple of episodes of Smallville and CSI), while his real name isn’t very cool, Galen Marek, he’s still the new kid on the block.
He is quickly joined by a humoristic robot sidekick named Proxy (Eat your heart out Jarjar!)… I guess the force can’t really help you in the humor department. Besides, the goofy sidekick, you meet a fine young lady named Juno Eclipse, played by the actress Nathalie Cox (she played in the film Jumper, anyone see that?), she also works for the dark man too, she’s not funny, she drives your ship. The adventure kicks off were you both set off into the sunset to kill off some of those pesky Jedis. The End. Just kidding.
The story is told between Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. If you’ve been living under a rock, you have some homework to do. SWFU is a very intriguing story wedged between the two movies, with some colorful characters and very interesting plot twists and turns. It’s top notch; I’d even go as far as saying it might make a good animated mini-movie someday. On a side note, an individual named Sean William wrote a novel based on the game’s storyline, and it spent a few weeks at #1. As the dark lord would say… “Impressive, most impressive”.
On to the meat and potatoes of the game, the gameplay of SWFU is actually pretty good, after playing quite a bit of Too Human in the past few weeks, the enemy targeting reminded me a lot of that. Force grabbing an enemy, and then tossing him is all too easy. On the larger enemies, it uses what I like to call the “simon-says--button-sequence” trick. Press “Y”, then “X”, etc… Personally, I’m not too fond of this method of gameplay, why? The player has a tendency to watch the button sequence, rather than the intended glorified cinematic fight. Afterwards, we look up and the whole thing is over. So, the value is unfortunately very low. But, the “bad-ass” feeling you receive after remains. Now, the reference I made earlier about KOTOR, well, it plays nothing like it. SWFU, is actually more of an action/adventure title, reminded me a lot of God of War on the PS2. Can you tell, I miss KOTOR?
Speaking of feeling like a bad-ass, at the beginning of the game I spent quite a few minutes force pushing wookiees off the wood bridges. Hell, I even unlocked an achievement called “Bossk” – “Defeated 200 Wookiees on Prologue”. Man, that felt good. I meant killing the wookiees, not getting the achievement. Other high points in the game, was taking down the humongous star destroyer with the force. They sure pitched the game correctly, “Kicking ass with the force”.
In the controls department it felt really good. Executing all the various crazy force combos available to you, was a little tough to remember. But, you can always refer back to the purchase menu for the exact button sequence. The game also encourages you to solve various environment puzzles by using the force, in one level you have to align some rotating rings in a set time limit in order to get thru a tunnel with a massive laser beam shooting thru it.
The visuals in the force unleashed are simply beautiful. According to Lucasarts they hired the help of ILM (Industrial Light and Magic) for the character animations. Good use of the force there George! Each character is beautifully rendered with every nuance of the actor’s uniqueness. Including facial expressions, and mannerisms. From watching the web docs on Marketplace, man they really came close to reproducing the real life actors. Well done!
Let’s not forget the very familiar sounds of John Williams original score. It’s cleverly threaded throughout the game, along with all the authentic light saber and environmental sounds. Which entirely immerses you into the whole Star Wars experience.
The total amount of hours to finish the game from beginning to end on the Sith Warrior difficulty, was about eight hours. Grant it, I was blasting through the game at that point.
I’m currently going back thru the game on the Sith Master (highest) difficulty to max out all my achievements. Yes, the completion achievements are recursive, so you’ll unlock all of them if you finish the game on the highest difficulty.
Here’s the bad, which actually isn’t “show stopping” bad. First off, in the past Lucasarts has been relatively unsuccessful in putting together a solid Star Wars title. SWFU is a full redemption, since KOTOR! I also ran into a few minor camera issues, and the rare invisible wall throughout the game. Unfortunately, the problems were not reproducible, so trying to send Lucasarts a bug list was out of the question. Also, when you die the game reloads every single time, I’m sure this is done to refresh what’s in the memory, but it was a little annoying. Especially, when you’re kicking butt, you just want to head back to the action. Besides, the game never crashed on me once. Good solid game.
Overall, SWFU is a great concept and does belong in your Xbox 360 collection, especially if you are a Star Wars fan. It smells, tastes, feels like a genuine thing. So, run out and pick it up.
Suggestions: Coop mode would have been cool.
Overall Score: 8.7 / 10
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MX vs. ATV: Untamed
The Motocross and Off-Road genre has always been a personal favorite of mine. It's not until recently that the masses have seen the true fun factor in these games. THQ/Rainbow Studios has always been one of the leading pioneers in this category, plus they've single handedly carved their own niche in these genre of games for the past ten years. Quite honestly speaking, if it wasn't for ATV Off-Road Fury on the Playstation 2, the general public would still be in the dark ages when it comes to these games.
THQ/Rainbow Studios has now released their next generation experience called “MX vs. ATV Untamed” (MVAU). With a brand new graphics engine, good’ol vintage game modes and a significantly better online multiplayer experience, things are looking good. Really good in fact.
One of the first things returning fans will notice, are the menus, they don't ask stupid questions anymore. No more bad dreams from MX vs ATV Unleashed, where… “Are you sure you want to load your profile”, and, “Are you really sure you load your saved game?” Talk about, Windows Vista syndrome. Much better guys! The menu interface is just more intuitive.
The single player experience is spent mostly in the X-Cross Tournament section of the game. Why? That's where you, as a racer, can experience every facet of the game. Additionally, you'll get to purchase all the swag, aftermarket parts and bikes you want. While spending my hard earned loot, I found myself spending countless hours with the bike and rider customization portion of the game. When you jump online, this is where you're going to make your rider and bike unique. Very addicting.
But, from I was able to figure out, buying all this stuff is purely cosmetic. None of this stuff makes you go any faster or grab more air. It just looks better. It goes like my friend Fernando would say, "It's better to look good than to feel good" - "You look marvelous!" There is a performance tweaking section, but these are more/less bike behavior options.
Let's move on to the graphics department. Some of tracks look great and some look average. Texture-wise some just weren't given a lot of lovin'. For example, on the track "Split Oak", the off-track textures are very flat. But, the majority of Supercross and Supermoto tracks look great (i.e. Clearwater) on the other hand so I'm not really sure what happened there. Unlike their previous MX titles, the developers would actually create each individual unique track.
The Supercross tracks finally feel like they are in a real stadium. Again, this was absent because of a technological limitation. Thank goodness that barrier has been broken.
The ecosystems in some of the outdoor environments seem to be somewhat non-existent or very low. Again, comparing this title to the previous ones (MX vs. ATV Unleashed), at least they had forests! This gave those tracks the illusion of the great outdoors. I've personally built Motocross Madness 2 tracks with more trees. It almost seems like…"One step forward, two steps back". It's too bad, You would think next-gen system would be able to handle a real forest this day in age. Once again, maybe it's a simple case of a technological limitation, but not a show stopper.
While constantly comparing the old with the new, and digging deeper into MX vs. ATV Untamed; I'm starting to think the developers went with a more realistic setting for the game, rather than a borderline fantasy-ish vibe to the tracks. Personally, I miss racing thru a Mayan environment, or an old logging camp. Why? At the end of the day, we are playing a video game after all. Maybe they could try and bring back old Unleashed tracks to download off marketplace?
On a technical note, the game finally runs at solid sixty frames per second, unlike pervious MX games which were were locked in at thirty. This makes a big difference in order to give the player the sense of speed. Well done!
In the sound department is where things get shaky. Primarily the bike sounds and environment sounds. Here's a bike example. You come into a corner, the bike sounds good. You hit the brakes to do a power slide, your bike still sounds good. You pop the clutch to accelerate out of the corner, and the bike still sounds great. You start to accelerate out of the corner and about ten to twenty feet out, the bike sounds burst into a screaming over-revving madness. The bike sounds from the previous MX games were fine, other than the sound variance going over the "Whoops". Here's a track example; on "Split Oak", I would hear a crowd cheering me on, and I look around, I see no crowd. Sadly, this is the area where the game looses most of its points. But, at the end of the day these quirks are not show stoppers; you can always plug in your Zune and listen to tunes on the other hand.
I don't usually include bits about achievements, but THQ/Rainbow Studio has included a few humorous ones that give out absolutely no points. Like the "Clean Freak" achievement. Stay with your bike in the water for about a minute or so. You clean off your bike. Bam! An achievement! Watch the credits to the very end! Bam! Another achievement! Too funny, we can never have enough of those darn achievements. Cool stuff.
As stated earlier, the multiplayer is a bazillion times better than MX vs ATV Unleashed ever was. Seriously, folks. The final score of this review, was totally dependent on the simple fact if THQ/Rainbow Studios was going to mess up this portion of the game or not. Also, the longevity of this game will be determined if it worked or not. Simple. MX vs. ATV Unleashed was just broken. With MVAU, I was able to race online with MVAU with twelve (12) THQ peeps, they were on a mission to prove to me that there was nothing to worry about. Thanks guys! The worries have been put to rest. Rider collision detection is spot on, sometimes, too spot on! It just works. The only thing I noticed was if you did get slammed into (t-boned), it sends you flying a little too far than normal. But, like a real race, the first corner (In order to get the "Holeshot") is always messy, but it's always good to see a nice pile up. The lobby system of MVAU is quite ingenious, while you wait for you opponents to show up, you can practice on a sort of "practice track" setting. At least this way you not sitting around looking at the ceiling waiting for others to show up or hit "ready". I personally would have liked to of seen a bit of randomness here, especially if this game takes off online, riding this same practice track will get old.
They brought back Tag! (Whoever had that idea, give them a raise!) Yay! I remember in the hay day of Motocross Madness 2 (MCM2), the community played this mode to no end. It's really good to see that they are bringing back the things that just work. Tag, in this incarnation looks really cool, when you are "It", your rider has these "Ghost Rider" flames shooting out the back of his helmet. Looks freaking awesome! Other online "Mini Games" as they are categorized, include a tron "lightcycles" game mode called "Snakes", where you ride around and leave a trail of sorts, and you try to avoid other people's trail. The dynamics of this is that it's not two dimensional like Tron, you can actually jump over and sneak under the beams to avoid them. Piles of fun!
MVAU supports all of the Xbox Live features we've come to love, plus the game supports LAN play too! It's about time this feature was added. So, plan on inviting your friends over for a supercross night! Great job!
The real hope is that THQ/Rainbow Studios rolls out downloadable tracks to last us until the next release. I'm not talking about cheap gear downloads. The game does have thirty tracks (twenty indoor and ten massive outdoor), that should keep us all busy for a while. Personally, my time was spent with the Enduocross tracks.
Christmas is upon us and racing games are far and few between this time around, not counting Dirt; MVAU is so far the only open air off-road game for our Xbox 360. And if you're not into PGR 4, or Forza 2, then ask Santa for MX vs. ATV Untamed. It's a lot of fun for all ages.
Overall, MX vs. ATV Untamed is an incredible improvement over its brothers and sisters that got released in the past. Any true motocross or off-road fan will gladly welcome this "next-gen" experience. With great new multiplayer modes and all the technical improvements to this game. THQ/Rainbow Studios has listened to the community, and delivered. Well done!
Overall Score: 9.1 / 10
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Assassin's Creed
When Ubisoft first announced Assassin's Creed in Los Angeles at E3 ‘06, people were literately in sheer amazement as they left the demo room. Unfortunately for Xbox fans, at the time it was rumored to be a PS3 exclusive. Anticipation was already at an all time high based on the fact that the talented Montreal development studio was at the helm. The game showcased a unique storyline, and an uber cool character who was mysterious, fast, stealthy, and dangerous! What more could we want? Plus, based on the studio’s past accomplishments, we knew we were in for a treat. One year later at this year’s E3, Jade and Silent Bob (a.k.a Patrice) demonstrated the game once again, but this time with a more intimate and in person presentation, and on Xbox!
Everyone I spoke with at the show was in awe at what they had seen. But what did I think? Honestly, I was dying to get my mitts on this puppy, but wasn’t really sure if I’d ever get to play it before its actual release to the general public. I knew right then that I
needed to rush over to the Ubisoft booth and ask my Canadian public relations rep if they had a playable demo. She said, “Stephen, we know you’ve been dying to play this game. Do you wish to play?” I quickly replied, “Does Bill Gates burn money?!?!”
As I ran to the television monitor like an anxious five year old (the controller shaking in my hands), my jaw dropped to the floor. They literally had to kick me off the demo kit; and this was back in June!
First off, I will not dive into the unique storyline of Assassins Creed. Why is that you ask? There’s just no need to. You’ll quickly discover the reasons why you’re an assassin, and it really doesn’t downplay the overall gameplay. Let’s just say I wasn’t expecting this type of story so it was a nice surprise indeed.
What can be said though is that you play a character named “Altaïr”, a young assassin that has some major issues, in the year 1191 A.D. The game starts off with a cut scene that sees Altaïr getting in a whole lot of trouble for doing the wrong thing at the wrong time. As his punishment he loses all his weapons, basically starting you from scratch and doing various trivial tasks for your head honcho. To define the way Assassin’s Creed feels and plays in a few words is interesting. It’s a little bit Prince of Persia (Ubisoft Montreal), a little bit of Splinter Cell (Ubisoft Montreal), all rolled into one very unique gaming experience. Personally, I think this mixture makes for one bad-ass game.
There are main contact locations in every city, at a place commonly called the "Assassin’s Bureau". These are a central returning point throughout the game, and the NPCs there send you on various tasks and missions. And if you’re in need of more tasks, climb a high building in the city and “synchronize”. This will give you a “bird’s eye” outlook on that particular area, and allow you to pick up more.
These tasks or quests range from picking pockets, eavesdropping, interrogating, and last but not least, assassinating greedy lowlife scum bags. These scum bags are all the same throughout time, they want to rule the world because the current one sucks. The icing on the cake comes AFTER you’ve finished one of them off. You must get the hell out of that situation, because everyone is now running after you. RUN!
While you’re making your escape for cover, there are various ways to stealth yourself. The game’s unique level design let’s you plan, or rather quickly improvise how you make a clean getaway. Scaling walls, or jumping from rooftop to rooftop, it’s totally up to you how you “get the hell out”. There are just so many options for escaping at your disposal. For example, as you make a run for it, climb a building and hide in grass drying hut (not sure what these things are really called), and wait out your pursuers. The game gives you that much freedom. Also, the buildings are designed in such a way that if you can reach it and grab it, you can climb it. No hidden walls or invisible barriers here.
The NCPs (not the guards) in the game are incredibly poor (financially), and there is always some stupid citizen that comes and crimps your assassinating style and gets in your way. They either beg for money, or generally come to you at the wrong time, making your assassination attempt all the more difficult. You can take the sorry begging individual out, but be prepared to suffer the consequences in return.
I’ve heard a few people concerned with this game being very RPG-like, but don’t worry, as its not really like that at all. As you complete quests, you unlock more abilities, receive more weapons, and are given more tasks and missions. But it’s in no way an RPG, as it’s not that deep, nor do I think it was developed to be one either. The controls in the game are very intuitive, easy to control, but hard to master; especially when you’re attempting to fight large groups of enemies towards the end of the game.
Graphically, the game is absolutely stunning. If I’m not mistaken, Assassins Creed uses a highly modified Unreal 3 engine, and it’s very polished. Every building is crafted with attention to every little detail, and that is a little scary. Each of the five very large cities is uniquely designed, and possess their own look and feel. For example, in the poor areas of Jerusalem, the buildings are not as tall as the rich areas of the city. The sheer power of our beloved Xbox 360 , renders out the game’s massive cities from a bird’s eye view. I want to let you guys on a little secret; I suffer from severe vertigo. Assassin’s Creed has helped me deal with that, especially when I’m about 600 feet up on the roof of a cathedral. All in all, two thumbs up.
In the sound department, the details are very nice. Large crowds near the town’s center really helps make it feels like you are cutting thru a lot of people in order to get to your target. The music of this game, as is the soundtrack is very immersive. Well done.
There are so many nuances in this game that it’s impossible to tell you about them all. Basically, it’s all about not attracting more attention to yourself than needed. The replay value of the game is quite high, as you can go back and collect a variety of little flags, similar to how Orb collecting worked in Crackdown. This is good for all the achievement junkies out there.
In closing, Assassin’s Creed is a masterpiece; a true gem. It deserves a place in any serious gamers’ collection. Even though it’s strictly a single player experience, it is a fresh and much needed title in this over crowed sea of average next-gen games. All I have to say is thank you Ubisoft Montreal.
P.S. Did I mention that Altaïr is a terrible swimmer?
Suggestions: More Assassin’s Creed in the future!
Overall Score: 9.6 / 10
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Viva Piñata
How do I start writing this review? Oh, I know….This is the part where I fully admit that I’ve never been so wrong about a game, ever. Folks, I’m man enough to admit that I’m totally in love with Viva Piñata, and man, do I ever feel like a total Horstachio’s Ass (Little Viva humor there!) for being wrong about it. Why? Because, you have to understand that I saw this game at E3. I looked at it, I laughed at it, said a few unfair things and then moved on. It just seemed to me like a uber childish, and shallow game. Oh fudge, wrong again!
Never in a million years that I’d expect that this title would later on, come back and lure me into it’s Piñata lovin’ goodness. I’m willing to bet you guys have never read a more personally involved game review intro? Probably not.
Anyways, on with the review. It’s so easy to judge Viva Piñata against it’s rather unsuccessful Rare bothers and sisters. But, believe me that it’s not Perfect Dark Zero, nor Grabbed by the Ghoulies, so please try do NOT make that obvious mistake. Although, I though Kameo was a rather good game, Viva Piñata in my opinion, smokes it.
If you’ve ever played games such as Animal Crossings or Zoo Tycoon, then you’ll feel right at home with this game. But, I must warn you, give it a couple of hours before judging it. The main objectives of Viva Piñata range from micro managing your way thru your garden growing plants, building shelters and babysitting various piñatas, so that you can make piles of chocolate money, and level up your gardening skills to no end.
Why is this game so HOT? Because it just appeals to such a broad spectrum audience, period! Unlike Gears of War (Which I also love dearly), I have to wait until my twenty-two month old son goes to bed before I can start playing that bad boy, the wife doesn’t seem to think that chain sawing an alien in front of him is cool, I don’t see what’s she’s talking about (Just Kidding). Viva Piñata on the other hand, I can play whenever he’s around, and to some level it’s educational. He’s at the age that he can just barely talk, so I really enjoy hearing him say monkey or snake! He just loves to watch the humorous animals changing into various colors and evolving in to different breeds also. It’s the perfect Dad game!
I don’t think the game will get me watching the television show that’s on the air now, but the game should give me enough insight to see if I should let my son watch it. I don’t know if Microsoft was thinking in that direction, but it’s true. Plus, from what I was told, the show also gives tips for the game, that’s nice.
The bad stuff: I’ve had this dead Bunnycomb in my garden since the beginning of the game, and can’t select it and get rid of it. I’ve cleared everything around him, you name it. It’s strange stuff. This is isn’t a 100% perfect title, but honestly it’s so close. Another annoyance, is that the game chokes when it loads or auto-saves anything at all, this is especially frustrating because there’s a lot of that going on. I double checked this with fellow Viva Piñata gurus, and some have the problem and some don’t.
The game progresses by gaining levels in your gardening skills, from what I heard that you can go all the way up to level 80, and then some!
On a side note…I have to share with you the most horrible death of a fellow Piñata. I got a local visit from a dude called Professor Pester (a.k.a The Piñata Mafia), and he whacked my $6800 Cinnamonkey, man was I ever pissed! I just thought I’d get that off my chest. Now back to the review...
The most surprising part about Viva Piñata is that once you've gained higher levels of experience, you keep them. Even if you start a new garden. Which means you carry over all you coins and all the items you've unlocked during the course of your previous gardens, so you don't have to start that all over again. Killer!
In game interface is simple, well thought out and very easy to navigate. Extremely intuitive, well done. Some people have complained about it being a little cluttered. But, everything can’t please everyone.
As I was writing this review, I ventured online to check out the local community. I found two very helpful sites. The first one is called, Pinataisland.info, this site catalogs everything Viva Piñata, game tips, the television show, even the MP3 of the theme song! The second one is the Viva Pinata Forums, here you can trade , talk to fellow gardeners. And the folks at both these place seem very cool.
Graphically, this game looks marvelous, it doesn’t have the dark realistic look that Gears of War pushes, but Viva Piñata pushes the 360 to a more “bubblegum-ish” look, bright colors, simple shapes, again, not gears but great looking graphics non-the-less.
In the sound department, the theme song of the television show and game is !&%$@#* catchy! Overall, the in game ambient sounds are actually pretty good. I’m not a sound file by any means, but the sound really does a great job into making you believe that you have a living breathing garden full of Piñatas.
The bottom line is, do not miss this gem in disguise in your Xbox 360 game collection. Get ready to be laughed at by your Gears of War jocks, but just remember you will have the last laugh when they start talking to you about The Tower of Sour! This is why Microsoft acquired Rare, because they have the ability to create rock solid creative titles like Viva Piñata.
Suggestions: For the love of god, please fix the auto-save, screen choppyness glitch. This is extremely annoying, because it does it way too much. Also, you've got a winner here, the possibility of making Live downloadable content, or an expansion pack or a sequel would be a great idea! On the Xbox Live front, the ability to show off your gardens to other gamers would also be a neat feature, so that other gardeners would be able to check out your layout.
On a final note. The way I look at it, Mexicans wack Piñatas with an old broomstick handle, Americans wack'em with baseball bats, us canadians since we don't have much experience with these things, we'll just use a hockey stick of course!
Overall Score: 9.6 / 10
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Xbox 360 Video Game System
Overall: This is a great piece of engineering marvel, the whole thing. I honestly have nothing bad to say about this thing. Xbox Live, enterface, controller, user-friendliness. Great job Microsoft!
Overall Score: 10.0 / 10
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Gun
Back in 1997, Lucasarts came out with a title called “Outlaws”, it gave us one of the first (from memory) old west action/adventure first person shooter on the PC! Unfortunately, there was some sort of dry spell for a few years with nothing of this genre in sight. Then , in 2002, Atari decides that they should bring it back, thus creating “Dead Man’s Hand”, that showed us that the Unreal engine was not just for futuristic titles, it was released for our beloved Xbox and PC. Shortly thereafter, our “problem child” Rockstar released “Red Dead Revolver” soon after, which coined a matrix shooting-style for killing bad guys. These are all commercial products, but there were also a few free western style Unreal mods, released for the PC thereafter, free is good!
Anyways, enough with the history lessons...These types of games seem to have a few things in common, cowboys, prostitutes, gold digging, prostitutes, killing Indians, more prostitutes, oh, and a great story line. Although, the plots all seem to have the same sort of “Hey, you killed someone I like, now you must die!” theme, they all seem to still draw us in anyways. I guess there’s a Clint Eastwood “wanna-be” dying to come out of the closet in all of us after all.
Gun, what does that title mean? It doesn’t say very much actually. Well, it involves a weapon like most games. In this case it involves an old one. Have I sold you on this, yet? I didn’t think so. Keep reading.
GUN is a spaghetti western gone digital! And it tastes good! The game starts you off with a nice little hunting trip with your dad (so you think), where he trains you in the art of gun slinging! YAY! He takes you hunting for quail, wolf, elk, and then the wolves come back, etc…Oh and bear too. It’s harder than it looks boys and girls. Trust me. I never thought pulling out a gun at 600 mph could be this tough and fun at the same time. Then, all of a sudden the game takes a turn for the worse. All of which, ends your little hunting trip pretty quick.
The story consists of you playing a character named Colton White, and that your supposed father gets killed, and he tells you with his last breath to seek out this girl (prostitute) in Dodge City, and ask her about a coin he just gave you. Don’t worry; I’m not giving away any spoilers here. The game pushes you thru mission after mission, but the interesting part is that you have the option of taking to a wide variety of side mission in order to receive; you guessed it, gold/cash. The gold/cash (like most games) allows you to buy better crap like guns, ammo, etc….
A few things in this game that I want to point out before I forget, the developers got the horse ridding thing down. It feels right. Going fast, going slow, turning, etc... It also holds true (not that I was there or anything) to the social lingo of that area, nobody was politically correct back then. So, if you are offended by racial comments and stuff, just remember, you are playing a historically accurate title here. The developers here were NOT trying to offend people like other publishers try to do.
The game has a pretty good free roaming world, which some titles of this genre seem to “cheap-out” on. Don’t get me wrong here, you can’t ride off into the sunset or anything, it is a linear title, but they do a good job of making you believe it’s not.
While equipped with a bow during the course of the game it made me feel I was playing Turok or something, this is not a bad thing, but it was a weird feeling not seeing a dinosaur run by.
At this point of the review I did not have a chance complete the entire game (Due to all the XBA updates). But let me tell you that the graphics look pretty sweet at 720p High Definition; unfortunately, the character models are kind of low in the polygon department. I noticed every once and a while a bit of “gun shaking”, or character seizures on the up-close cut-scenes, but this was not a show stopper. Overall, the cut-scenes could have been a bit better. The in-game graphics looked very nice though, it was hard to tell if they just ported over the models from the Xbox version or not. Trust me I was lookin’!
In the sound department, the in-game sounds were very polished. Although, the soundtrack was kept at low key, what I mean by this is that they really didn’t play up the spaghetti western flavor of music. It would have been nice to have a more western-ish whistling and guitar flavored variety of tunes in there. I think it would have helped the player (me) get more into mood for this game. But, again, overall this was not a show stopper, so it faired out.
Lastly, GUN is a really attractive Xbox 360 launch title; even though the game suggests that you are playing the role a “son of a bitch” every once and a while. I highly recommend dropping your hard earned cash on this exceptional Activision & Neversoft title, if you are into this western-ish genre or like games with a good story. It’s for you.
Suggestions: My notes to the developers, I would have liked to have seen a multiplayer shoot out of some sort in the game, or a draw between two players, to see who the fastest one is. But, I think lag was the main reason these didn’t make it in, maybe next time. Enjoy!
Overall Score: 9.2 / 10
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Jade Empire
My kung-fu is stronger than yours.
We all like martial arts movies right? I mean when at 2am we are flipping around the channels and you see a grainy movie with guys jumping around like maniacs kicking outlaws and bandits in the head we all stop right? What is it about those movies? The plot seems to be superficial but yet we can’t turn away. BioWare has obviously been staying up watching late night TV. With their previous successes they really had their choice of game. They could have made any game they wanted, and Jade Empire is the result.
Ok, I want to get something straight right off the bat. If you are looking for a replacement for Soul Caliber with non-stop action and fights, you are looking in the wrong place. This is first and foremost an RPG. There is a lot of conversation in this game as it is a story driven game. It is an ancient oriental universe that is brought to life in stunning colour and style. With scroll stands, and books scattered about the world with even more information on the world your character inhabits the world really does have the depth that a lot of RPGs lack. It is an incredible deep and well developed world. The fights are meant to further develop the story and advance the plot, not to show off that new demon transformation style you just picked up. Each conversation that you have with an important NPC is well written and you actually have intelligent, meaningful answers as opposed to the drivel that is normally prevalent in these “choose your response” games. Each of these responses during combat will move your character along either the Open Palm, or Closed Fist paths. This isn’t quite the good and evil that you experienced in KOTOR, the answers that you are presented with aren’t as easily identified as being blatantly Open Palm or Closed Fist. Although I have not finished the game (yet) there are supposed to be three endings, one for each Open Palm and Closed Fist as well as an ending for a neutral character. Indecisive gamers of the world unite, finally an ending just for you. Your alignment will also affect what styles open up to you later in the game.
When you sit down to create your character you can pick from one of six templates, three male, three female. There isn’t any customization that you can do to the look of your character in here unfortunately but each of the six characters is very well animated and detailed. If you want to customize your character more you can get in and change each of your three stats, Body (gives you Health), Spirit (gives you Chi) and Mind (gives you focus). You can also choose the martial style that you start with as a new character. One of the pre-generated characters will do the job nicely though. Unlike other RPGs, it is more about how you choose to develop your character rather than how your characters is initially build that matters the most in the game. Health is just that, hit points. Lose those and the fight is over. Luckily you have a built in healing system, just hold down the white button and you will trade your Chi for health. No clunky potions or other items to collect. Chi is also used to generate more damage with your strikes with Chi Strike Mode and to power your Magic and Transformation styles. And finally Focus. Focus applies to your weapon styles. Each strike you make drains some of your focus, and once it is gone you have to switch back to your other basic styles to continue with the combat.
The fighting system is deceptively simple. There are only two attack buttons, regular and power attack. No joystick button combos like in most fighting games. The depth appears when you start linking together styles. To start with you get a martial style (your basic attack) and a support style. The support styles tend not to do much in the way of damage, but slow or hold your enemies instead of damaging them. Later magic, weapon and transformation styles all open up. With the limited experience that you gain as you level you never have enough experience to spread around to all your styles. I think there will be replay built into the fact that you can go about combat in so many different ways and spending your experience differently will completely alter how you go about your fights. Picture a fight with a boss and three minions. You open with your ice magic style, and freeze the boss to keep him down for a couple of seconds. Fire a couple regular shots at one of the minions to knock his health down a bit. Change to your staff weapon style. Fire a couple of hits on a minion again, then when they close in, hit all of them with your area of affect spin move and knock them down. Quickly switch to your regular martial attack, flip towards one of the downed minions and take him out as he is getting up. A couple more flips and take out a second minion. Switch to Shadow Thief, and while avoiding the boss, drop a couple hits (not doing any damage) on the remaining minion to recharge your chi, then drop him with a power attack from your martial style. Switch quickly to Heavenly Wave (a support style) and slow the boss with a flurry of blows. Now change to your Toad Demon style (where you actually change shape into a massive toad demon) and lay the smack down on the boss. I found that if you stick to one style through an entire fight it takes a much longer time to win (if you go at all) By switching from style to style the combat becomes dynamic and fluid. If you are having difficulty or too easy of a time in your fights you can change the difficuly of the game anytime during play as long as you are outside of combat. So if there is a single fight that you can’t seem to get past, you can lower the level, win the fight, then return to your adventures at the previous difficulty.
Luckily you won’t be in these fights alone. You will be able to have a large number of followers that you will encounter during your adventures. You will only be able to have a single follower with you at any time, but you will be able to switch freely between them at most times. Each of your followers will have different abilities and will have greatly different effects on your fights. You can have them take one of two tactics, Attack or Support. In attack mode the follower directly enters combat. Some of the enemies will focus on them and ignore you. In this mode they can be hurt and eventually lost from the fight. You can also put your follower on Support. In Support mode each character sits just outside of the area that you are fighting in and meditates. Your enemies completely ignore them and they can take no damage. The nice thing is that while meditating they will somehow increase your combat ability. Dawn Star, the first follower that you receive, when put on Support will greatly increase your Chi regeneration. This is very effective in combat, as you will always have some Chi to help with your healing. Other followers do things like give you health regeneration, or increase your damage in weapon mode. How you go about using your followers is up to you. I tended to leave them in support mode so I got to lay the smack down on the greatest number of bad guys.
The music in Jade Empire is well done. Orchestral music rises up at the appropriate times, and gives the game that movie feel. The in game sounds are straight out of those martial arts movies that we all know and love. As for voice acting there is a massive amount of dialog in this game. If a line is delivered by an NPC or follower it has voice acting to go along with it. And there is a TON of dialog in this game. It certainly is not the absolute highest quality of voice acting, sometimes giving a bit of a campy feel but doesn’t detract from the game at all. The ambient sounds are top notch, the water cascading off of the rocks or the whistle of wind through the trees.
Jade Empire is an RPG of the highest quality. Everything is done well from the tip of your top knot to the soles of your butt kicking shoes. Some people may be intimidated by the massive amount of reading and conversations that you come upon in this game, but serious RPGers will revel in it. With the different paths available with Closed First and Open Palm the replay ability on this game seems high. I would recommend anyone who enjoys a good RPG to run to the store and pick this game up.
Notes to developers: I would put a feedback screen somewhere in the menu system. Occasionally while merrily clicking on the buttons I would skip over a part of a conversation and there was nowhere I could go back and check out what I had actually said or heard. Also, some of the maps are a bit on the small side and sometimes it gave you the feeling that you were on a set of rails as opposed to freely exploring a massive environment.
Overall Score: 9.8 / 10
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Star Trek: Shattered Universe
TDK Mediactive and Starsphere is the latest publisher/developer to release a game with Star Trek in the title. Most know that Star Trek games are either a hit or a miss, with more misses than hits. TDK Mediactive and Starsphere teamed up to make a Star Trek game based on an original series episode called “Mirror, Mirror”. “Mirror, Mirror” was the episode that the Federation was evil and the Klingons were the good guys.
Starsphere elaborated on this episode and did a “what if…” with Captain Sulu and the Excelsior and Commander Chekov commanding the Enterprise, which I thought was decommissioned at the end of Star Trek VI, again this is a “what if...”. Star Trek: Shattered Universe was born. Shattered Universe’s warp core breached on arrival with a substandard plot, poor gameplay, mediocre graphics, and humiliating voice acting from two Star Trek icons. Pass this game by, Trekkies may want to play it for the Trek aspect of it, but use the money to buy a DVD or better Star Trek game. Throw this one in the bad Trek game pile.
You are no name pilot under the command of Captain Sulu, voiced by George Takei. The Excelsior is called to the rescue of the Enterprise, commanded by Chekov and voiced by Walter Koenig, which is caught in a space anomaly. The rescue goes wrong and both the Enterprise and Excelsior are pushed to the other side of the anomaly. Suddenly you and Sulu are on the other size looking down the barrels of the Enterprise. Evil Chekov is out to destroy Sulu and the Excelsior. Sulu and crew are aware that things have changed around them when they went through the anomaly, but haven’t affected their memory. Not fazed by the Enterprise’s threats, Sulu commands you to defend the Excelsior in your fighter. This kind of reminds me of the old Star Wars X-Wing and Tie Fighter games, fighters defend capitol ships. Eventually you are victorious and fend off the Enterprises’ attacks. Thus this begins the trek for Sulu to get his crew back to their normal universe, going from one tedious battle to another with pointless additional task to survive in the alternate universe.
Sulu sends you out on 19 missions to, for the most part, defend the Excelsior. You start out in a stock fighter brought over from the normal universe. As you go, you can get up to 25 different fighters ranging from stolen alternate universe fighters to Klingon and Romulan fighters. All fighters have the same basic weapons, phasers, bolt weapon which is a short phaser burst, and photon torpedoes. Phasers are going to be the only weapons you will probably use during small fighter combat since the targeting system isn’t advance enough to get a lock on your target. The only time you will use your photons is when you are attacking a capitol ship. Targeting systems are poor and you never lock on to a target with your weapons. Targeting certain systems of your enemies would make me feel like I’m actually trying to accomplish something instead of flying and shoot…….flying and shoot……take damage…….flying and shoot. Determining if your target is difficult because the HUD shows enemies targeted as a green ship with a revolving red halo, friendly targets, green ship with a green halo. The green ship in the targeting area shows the current state of the targets hull. The “sensors” are of no help. Sensors only show ships and nothing else like planets or asteroids which can make battles difficult running in to objects you can’t see. Speaking of objects you can’t see, the “sensor” map is very tiny, so it’s pretty much useless. Piloting your ship really feels like you aren’t going anywhere, even when you have an object in your sights you feel stationary and movements seem like you zoom in, zoom out. This makes the gameplay stale and you quickly lose interest in Shattered Universe. Thrusting around during battles is all the maneuvering you can do. It’s more green light, red light flying. Nothing you can do will make piloting these fighters interesting. It would be nice to have controls over all your systems, boost your shields, more power to the engines, something to break the mind numbing gameplay. Control over your allies would have made a big difference since you are not the only fighter Excelsior has. Having the ability to tell them to cover your !&%$@#* or attack this target would make a huge difference in this space sim.
The missions are not any better. You will have to defend the Excelsior the majority of the time. Endless squads of fighters, I mean ENDLESS. There are missions that will take 30 minutes or more to complete. The mindless AI doesn’t help too much. Fighters and Capitol ships will target either you or the Excelsior. Most of the time they will not come close to hitting you with their weapons, but there are time where they can’t miss and knock you silly. Usually that happens near the end of a mission or when your objective is coming close to completion. This can be really frustrating because you will go deep in to a mission and get destroyed by an AI that has been able to touch the whole mission. Fighters will just circle you in a programmed pattern, stop, turn around and fly right towards you and then do it again and again. The constant waves of fighters take away from any other objectives you may have. Battles become more of an irritation than anything, same thing over and over and over and over and over again.
Graphically, Shattered Universe looks great, till you start playing the game. Then you see the true beast behind the beauty. The CG cutscenes look more like claymations than CG. Cutscenes are supposed to help tell the story, but this makes you think, “Gosh, that looks horrible”. Capitol ships look great till you start going in to battles. They look like stationary backgrounds in space and rarely move during combat. Battle damage is cool but not when other parts of the ship take damage that you aren’t even shooting at. Being able to target a part of the ship and blowing a hole through the bridge would have been an added benefit. Explosions are just a big bright light and nothing special, there is no debris left behind. But you will have to haul !&%$@#* away from the ship before it blows or your fighter will be destroyed. Your fighter can take a lot of damage, but it doesn’t show. Enemy fighters will start venting plasma at least, but even they don’t show any damage till they explode.
George Takei and Walter Koenig doing their own voice acting is the only high point of this game. Fans of Star Trek love these two guys; it’s a shame that they are involved with this title. Their performance in this game keeps me from taking a sledgehammer to the Shattered Universe DVD.
In battle sounds; phasers, shield hits, explosions are dull and eh. With all the Trek material out there to base a game on, you think sounds from the Trek shows or movies could be used in a game like this.
The soundtrack is Trek-like. During the CG, the soundtrack adds the Trek flair for a stick situation. In game battles, the sound track is muffled by the constant button mashing of your controller.
Suggestions: Starsphere needs to either watch the Trek series and movies, or catch a clue they are just like many other developers out there that failed to use the Star Trek genre to make a decent game. With all the material out there, how can in game stories be so bad? Take notes from the Star Wars X-Wing series if you want make a fighter based Star Trek game and mix it with the best Star Trek flight sim, Bridge Commander, and you might have a game worth playing.
Overall Score: 3.0 / 10
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Soul Calibur 2
Before you say, “It’s about friggin’ time that XboxAddict.com posts their SC2 review up!” Let me explain why... First off, we didn’t want to give birth to a half-ass review of such a great game! Most (like ~75% of them) of the other gaming sites cranked out reviews in only a few days. I’ve even seen a few sites with theirs ready in only a few hours, and only covered the “skin-deep” arcade modes of SC2. There was no way they could complete the entire “Weapon Master” mode, even with an early preview build. Go Figure!
When it came to the Soul Calibur series, I considered myself a longtime fan. Whether it was at the arcade or the Dreamcast versions, this fighter had it all. Half a zillion killer moves, what more could a video game junkie ask for? It was just the best thing out there at the time! Fortunately, it still is!
Most people will have a tendency to compare SC2 to the other combat titles out on the market place. Like Dead or Alive 3 or one of the Virtua Fighter incarnations for example. I’ve played all three fighters; let me tell you that SC2 is by far the best one to date, bar none. And on top of that, I’m sure that 95% of my Xbox Addict colleagues will agree with me on this one; it delivers what most games fail to do, give the user a “kick-ass” gaming experience.
As you read through my review, you’ll quickly discover that I got into this game hardcore style, and that is why boys and girls it took so long to pump out this SC2 review. I really wanted to write a thorough review of SC2, because it simply deserves it.
Overall, on the surface SC2 seems like your ordinary “run of the mill” arcade fighter with not much to offer. Luckily, it’s not. If your friends didn’t like it, more that likely they’re not fighting fans, or you’ve been sadly misinformed. SC2 is a deep, complex fighting title for all three next-gen consoles, but in my opinion, it runs the absolute best on the Xbox console and has the coolest extra/unique character out there, Spawn.
Now for the game play, the real meat and potatoes of SC2 is the “Weapon Master” mode. This is where you fight your way through over 60 missions with nothing but your brains and brawn, and sometimes even twice! It took me several hours (just ask my wife) to get myself up to a level 74 character (That’s a Silver Edge master to you kiddies out there). You’ll spend most of your time collecting gold through your various quests and missions, and if you’re really lucky you can purchase bigger and better weapons in the process. Weapons range from ones that regenerate your health, give you better “Soul”.
Each of the 20 unique characters in SC2 has their own unique set of skills and weapons. From big ugly green ogres with huge axes (and asses) and chicks that are annoyingly crazy fast! But, once you’ve found that unique character that makes you look like you’ve been studying martial arts for 20+ years, then you ready to kick some ass! Most of you are probably wondering which one I “specialized” (a.k.a. served you a can of whip ass) with, well, it was Kilik. He was the one that I was most comfortable with. All of the characters in SC2 are simply awesome. All you need to do is find the one that is just right for you. A couple of time I’d use the female version of Kilik, Seung Mina. And found that….well….one word…weak.
As I got towards the end of the “Weapon Master” mode, I found myself with nothing left to purchase and the AI really had me swearing at the television a couple of (ok, quite a few) times. Meaning, it was getting harder, and the AI was kickin’ my butt! In SC2, you won’t find yourself with the “Rocky upper cut” cheat, and beat the game with one single move.
The eye candy in SC2 is what makes it stand out from all the other fighting titles out there; it’s not that it looks more realistic, or has more blood. In fact it has no blood, none. But, rather it boasts a special unique visual flavor to it. They honestly really didn’t leave out too many details out to dry in this sucker. Right down to the last facial animation sequence, which you can playback later on.
The motion capture in SC2 looks so !&%$@#* real; this is from a person like myself who has watched Kung Fu movies since I was knee high to a grass hopper. Don’t get me wrong here, 50% of the moves in SC2 totally over the top and are migrated from the last version of Soul Caliber. Don’t take my word for it, just watch the “Exhibition Theater”, and watch those guys go! It really shows off the silky smooth motion capturing of this title. Awesome!
The only tiny problem I had in the visual department was the arenas. They didn’t seem have the feeling of being immense. Now, I realize that you must have constrained arenas in fighting titles or else you’ll have people running for their lives all the time. But, you can trick people into thinking that the fighting areas are huge, and on that avenue I think Dead or Alive 3 has succeeded in delivering this illusion.
The audio is what had the most trouble with. But, I won’t kill the overall score because of this. Not all of it was bad. The music was fantastic. The part that got on my nerves the most was Kilik’s line when he yells out…“Sister, show me the way!”…What the hell does that mean? Are we singing a Styx tune here? I’m sure the Japanese developers were rolling their eyes with this wacky translation job. I later discovered that you can turn on the Japanese voices in the game, which sounds more powerful. Thank god!
I have no idea what the hell they are saying (even with subtitles), but it just sounds better. They should do a better job hiring people to translate this stuff. Don’t get me started on bad Japanese translations!
The music and sound effects in SC2 were actually the best parts of the audio, the music was extremely well written, and is able to keep you in the mood (a fighting one) throughout the entire game, and I think that’s what it’s there for. Now, don’t get up and beat up your little bother, no matter how fun it is!
The sound bites were also on the right track! I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard Kilik’s cheat “rip-off” bamboo staff weapon even made a different impact/contact sound! Great job guys!
Suggestions: Final words: If you are a fighting game lover of any kind, and you are finding yourself debating, or picking needlessly on your little brother…do yourself a favor a buy this title. It’s worth every penny.
Overall Score: 9.8 / 10
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Midtown Madness 3
First off, I would like to let you all know that I personally consider myself somewhat of a Midtown Madness freak/expert, due to the fact that I’ve been playing and creating content this fabulous series since version one. The way I got so deeply involved with it was, that I slowly found myself wanting to build additional cars for the game. Next thing I knew, I was building a 1982 Delorean DMC-12 for both Midtown Madness 1 & 2 and spending countless hours figuring out 3D Studio MAX, and testing the car on and offline. Much to my chagrin, I slowly discovered the massive amount of cheaters that were out there, people hacking the car files to the point of not wanting to play online anymore. This is where hopefully the Xbox and Xbox Live has finally hepled to solve that annoying problem that we all faced in the past - Cheating.
This version of Midtown Madness has been developed by the famous Digital Illusions, makers of great titles such as Pinball Fantasies for the old Amiga and the more resent Rallisport Challenge. The previous installments of Midtown were developed by the talented guys over at Angel Studios, who were quickly snatched up by Rockstar games after the acclaimed Midnight Club. This version of the Midtown Madness series features a nice pile of brand new options, and Xbox Live baby! The two most noticeable features are that the graphics look incredible and a pile of new single player games to choose from. The career mode, this is where you should be able to unlock most, if not all of the cars in the game. MM3 lets you pick from over 30 cool vehicles such as a garbage truck, a taxi cab, a bus, a Austin mini and few others!
What’s truly remarkable is that Digital Illusions has done a wonderful job retaining the essence of the previous Midtown Madness titles. Although they are not the original developers of the previous two Midtowns' (PC only), they’ve still successfully managed to keep that unique and high-end “over-the-top” unrealistic gameplay we’ve all come to love.
My overall impression of the game is that, even if you don’t have Xbox Live (where the game truly shines), you’ll still have a great time exploring the two huge cities and watch people jump out of the way while you cruise at high speeds on the sidewalks.
The controls are extremely easy; they use the same control scheme that most other Xbox driving titles have adopted. Let me make this clear. If you are looking for a car sim (a.k.a. APEX), you are looking at the wrong game. The physics system is so “out there”, “over-the-top”, unrealistic and exaggerated that it really let’s the uniqueness of the game really shine through.
The single player modes range from a variety of over 50 missions and 14 careers, from being a pizza delivery man, a limo driver and even a cop. This really forces you to love the crappy cars as you must shuffle through all of these in order to get those cool unlockables.
But where you're going to get the best bang for your buck (as stated above) is with the all mighty Xbox Live gaming modes. The classic “Cops and Robbers” is back. For those of you who are new to the series and don’t know what it is, imagine capture the flag but with cars. Rabbit is a new mode, where you have to steal the rabbit (don’t ask) from the other guy, but when you're all playing with a super slow vehicle like the cement truck, it's pure slow fun!
The Xbox Live in-game voice “trash-talking” feature in Midtown 3 is really cool in that it uses a type of positional audio. Meaning, that if you are clear across town, you won’t hear the others in the game yapping away until are about a few blocks away. Now that’s cool!
Also, just sit tight, because where the old series of the game really came alive is with all the add-ons! Back in the day, users created their own cars, and even whole cities! It's safe to say that in the very near future Microsoft/Digital Illusions will have downloadable new cars, and possibly some new courses for the checkpoint races, and maybe even a new city for Xbox Live subscribers.
The reason that I’m giving MM3 high marks on the replay value is that the city is full of hidden short-cuts and insane killer jumps that you’d never take in real life. This is why we play games kids!
Near perfect, is all I have to say about the graphics! Let me tell you that the Midtown Madness series has never looked better! This is the way this game was truly meant to look. They really seem to have pushed the Xbox to the maximum with this one though the game doesn't drop any frames at high speed or even while the screen is filled with cops and pedestrians. On a side note, if you look very carefully you’ll see the odd person walking on the sidewalk with an Xbox package in their hands, talk about details!
The sound is great, Dolby Digital 5.1 all the way! You hear people yelling at you in French, and people telling you “turn your lights on”. And let’s not forget, the unique sound that your car makes smashing into trees at 60 miles per hour. OH! And popping the occasional fire hydrant.
The game does support in game soundtracks, and let me tell you this…there is nothing more beautiful than listening to Joe Satriani’s “Surfing With The Alien” while blazing through the streets of Paris with your Mustang, now that just rocks!
Suggestions: I can’t really think of anything right now. Awesome work!
Overall Score: 9.0 / 10
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Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis
After 10 years since the first Jurassic Park movie came out
someone finally stepped up to make a worthwhile game that actually brings a little pride to the title. Unlike back in the day when somebody decided to make a shameful Jurassic Park game for the shameful Sega console where the objective of the game was to literally slaughter dinosaurs to death. This
time around Konami has decided to add a much needed element; strategy.
Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis is a Sim game much like Sims Theme Park and Roller Coaster Tycoon. In Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis you must also create a theme park. Well look at the title (Jurassic Park), it is practically screaming for a game of this genre. Konami also decided to add missions in the game but the real addictive part is trying to maintain your park and not so much the missions.
Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis is very slow at the beginning just like any other Sim games. I had to use the in game step by step tutorial mode which is really well done. It'll teach you the essential elements that you need to start your theme park in a matter of minutes. Once you actually start a new park this is where it starts to get interesting. You just have so much to do at a time that you might want to keep a little note pad and a pen close by. First thing you have to do is get some of that cash flowing so you can start the formation of the new park. The process of getting the cash to start flowing is an involved one, with many interconnected threads, which can make the first few years of park operation a frustrating, tedious, and disappointing affair. In order to actually breed your first dinosaurs, fossil digs must be funded and ripe sites selected. The fossils are then shipped to labs, where the dino DNA is extracted, but several batches of fossils must be collected before enough viable DNA can be harvested to create your first attractions (50% to be exact). Once you're ready to begin production, the over grown reptiles must be provided with food, water, shelter among the underbrush, vaccinations against nasty dino epidemics, and a proper enclosure to keep them from killing amongst each other. But there are little tricks you must learn along the way to help manage you dinosaurs healthy life. For example, you can put several different kinds of trees but some trees can be hazardous to certain dinosaurs health.
Managing your dinosaurs is only half the battle you still have the park's human inhabitants to contend with. Most of the guests in your park are pretty fussy. Some of them like to see enormous T-rex's snack on little helpless cows and goats while others enjoy watching there favorite herbivores wonder around the plains so you have to keep everyone happy, therefore you must create several different types of dinos. There are 25 different species to pick from so it won't be that hard. While you have to keep you guest entertained they all expect to be kept well-fed, well-rested therefore you must answer there needs one again. You have to add of those rest rooms every now and then, and don't forget those restaurants and Chip stands. But don't forget, customers like to have everything nice and tidy therefore you will have to manage a staff to come clean stuff up once in a while. But with all this said there is a few restrictions in the game that I wish didn't exist for example you can only have a certain amount of dinosaurs in your park. But these limited restrictions don't really affect the gameplay that much. And let me tell ya, the replay value in this game will keep bringing you back for seconds. As if that is not enough there are still missions to undertake if you need a different challenge. They are a good distraction, but not too rewarding. I enjoyed more playing God in the main mode.
The Best part according to me in "Operation Genesis" is the
exquisite visuals throughout. Your eye candy will be tingling from the shear
depth of every little detail on every little element. The landscape is
dotted with all kinds of ambient plants. Water effects are well detailed.
And all the dinosaurs are just as impressive. A herd of dryosaurs skittering
across the plain chirping at one another, or a ceratosauras stalking her
prey, looks amazingly authentic. And larger dinosaurs bending trees as they
come marching by, this game has a particularly nice feel. All the dinosaurs
move fluidly, with elastic skin, colorful markings, and little blockiness.
If you didn't have to build a park, the game would still be worth the
purchase. The camera movement enables you to zoom in and out without losing quality. You are able to swing 360 degrees easily, which is smooth and
efficient. Also all the menus are nice and very easy to use.
Their roars, grunts, slurps, and growls are all very realistic as if
they had been recorded directly off one of these nightmares back in the
day..way back in the day. And I love the sound of when a tornado comes
roaring threw but the after math isn't pretty; lot's of cleaning up to do. Sometime character will talk to you, giving you hints, warnings, and instruction. The soundtrack is the best though. The game has 10 original John Williams's tracks from the movies including the very catchy theme song.
You've gotta' love it.
Suggestions: After playing this game, I don't think I will even think I'll
ever lay eyes on rollercoaster tycoon again even if it did just launch onto the Xbox not to long ago. I think I will stick with this game. Well I'm a bit mad at the creators; they are making me spend all my time playing when I should really be doing homework. Joke, great game, my hat is off to all of
you.
Overall Score: 8.0 / 10
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Kung Fu Chaos
This WILL BE/IS Microsoft’s butt-kickin’ sleeper-hit for 2003! Microsoft and Just Add Monsters have truly outdone themselves!
The game is based on you being a (probably hungry) Hollywood actor in a cheap 70’s style kung-fu film, with beautiful graphics and superb sound Kung-Fu Chaos is what Fusion Frenzy should have been. Trust me, this game is a hoot to play! The rather annoying “wanna-be, Hawaiian shirt wearing” film director will have you rolling on the floor in laughter. Invite all your friends over to play, because they are in for a massive treat! This party genre is relatively new overall, but KFC (not to be confused with Kentucky Fired Chicken) seems to have combined a spectacular overall package that will keep you coming back for more! Don’t be fooled, this game is also very addictive in single player mode.
The head-to head feature of KFC is hilarious! With eight players to choose from, (The ninja being my favorite) each character has their own set of moves and combos and the movie sets range from Titanic to many others.
To be honest I played this game at E3 and it was bad…but this final build of the game has left me breathless, it has really come together well.
Do yourself a favor until E3 2003 comes along, (in the flavor of the director)…“You buy this game! NOW! But, you’re not as good as me!” Yahhhhaaa!
Now with scenes that are called…“The Legend of the Drunken Bastards”, this really sets the mood and describes the humor perfectly that exists is in this game.
The gameplay is super fun and easy to jump right into. You pick up the controller and just play! (The manual can stay on the floor.) The fighting system is surprising very good, with its combos (which you learn along the way) and special moves. KFC hold a good pile of mini games keeps you coming back for more. As I said above, this awesome mini-game/fighting title is best playing with a pile of your buds. So, grab the phone and invite them over. Trust me! A play a few rounds of the featured team-play modes in the game. You’ll laugh your !&%$@#* off.
Each character has his or her own unique special array of moves, which really adds depth to the game. You go from one scene to the next trying to “impress” the director (He is a LITTLE picky), if you do what he asks or come up with a fight scene that looks awesome he rewards you with stars (you’ll see when you get the game). Which in turn, will make or break the movie.
It’s really hard to nail down what game type this really is because it hosts mini-games, fighting scenes, and a few more fun filled aspects. So, I will not try to categorize it. It’s just plain fun, and that’s what a good video is all about.
The heart of this game and each character is based on how much you can humiliate the others on screen, if you hold the left trigger while fighting you will “bitch talk” your opponents. Therefore, giving you stars, when you get three stars. Watch out! Pull the two triggers and watch your character launch his or her fists of fury! This comes in especially handy when there are a lot bad ninja on the screen running after you to kick your butt into next week. You’ll see.
I was able to unlock almost everything, but I only got a “Sleeper-Hit” ranking overall…bah! Last level was still locked.
Overall the game rocks, and you WON’T be tossing your controller anytime soon.
This used the Xbox’s great graphical kung-fu powers, to really add a unique cheap movie feel to it. With movies sets with water, things look fantastic. This where you see the Just Add Monsters uses the Xbox’s graphic power to crank out a smooth looking game.
Not a single frame was dropped with this game while I played, given that there really was a lot of things happening on the screen.
Although the visual aren’t anything to get your jaw dropping, but they are quite nice, overall the visuals rock!
There’s not much to say…it has the song “Kung-Fu Fighting” by Carl Douglas, and the very familiar sounds of cheap kung-fu movies from that era…oh ya, it’s the theme song from “Enter the Dragon”…but this game is not that bad, it’s just a mood setter.
Each character has a unique set of voice acting and fighting sounds and the voice acting in these games are getting better. Did I mention it was in 5.1 Dolby Surround? Oh well, it does is it all good!
Suggestions: Xbox Live level downloads, and multiplayer co-op mode would have been nice.
Overall Score: 10.0 / 10
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Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb
“We meet again Doctor Jones!” Indy made his first appearance in video games back in the Atari 2600 days (I think), but I’d rather not bring dark light on a superb new Indiana Jones game from Lucasarts! Gamers that have played Buffy: The Vampire Slayer will feel right at home with Indy (It uses the same engine). And superb is right, this game will grab you by the neck and take you on an adventure that you’ve always craved on the Xbox! Indy style! Things very different with this re-introduction of an Indy game to the public, and now on the Xbox (and PC)!
The Xbox has been hurting for a title of this genre since its very beginning, and IJ:ET has everything; graphics, the unique “Indy” sound, awesome storyline and a very successful property license. IJ:ET encompasses everything that is cool about the movie trilogy…Indy’s whip, the hat, Harrison Ford’s voice….the whip comes in handy in the most strangest places. But, hey…it works and it’s all good! IJ:ET basically put you (the gamer) right in Indy’s shoes!
Final word….The Emperor’s Tomb is everything a killer Indiana Jones game should be, period.
The gameplay is smooth and silky. With awesome level design and the fact that they captured that unqiue Indiana Jones thing (whatever it is). I imagine wasn’t an easy task, but they (The Collective/Lucasarts) have pulled it off without a hitch. The combat system is well done, with its unique lock-on system makes kickin’ butt a cake walk.
Now for the very small, but oversee able pet peeves, I sometimes had trouble getting the whip grapple onto the crocodile heads (You’ll see what I mean when you buy the game), and switching weapons really fast is not there. No game is 100% perfect; Indy comes awfully close to being one though. This is a near perfect game for the Xbox.
Can you say Xbox graphics?!?! WOW! This is a visually stunning game with its huge environments that are beautifully rendered. Two thumbs up. Everything moves fast and smooth on the screen, never saw a single frame hiccup. Not much else to say hear, but...
Overall the visuals are awesome! A-la Indiana Jones!
First off, let me talk about Indy’s voice. Most developers mess this right up; they tend to hire these cheap imitation voice actors.
But, I guess Lucasarts got someone that could talk just like Harrison Ford (great job!)…Mind you at the time of this review all I got was a early build and could check the credits to see it really was him, but it doesn’t matter because it sounds JUST LIKE Indiana Jones or rather Harrison Ford!
And, let’s not forget the musical score of John Williams (the genius) which really completes the overall sound package. Excellent Work!
Suggestions: Keep up the good work!
Overall Score: 9.0 / 10
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Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance
For those of you who have already played MGS2: Sons of Liberty for the PS2, then you’re pretty much familiar with MGS2: Substance for the XBox. For those not familiar, this is an action/stealth game which plays out over two chapters. The first is the very short tanker chapter in which you assume the role of Solid Snake, the hero of past Metal Gear games, and currently a member of the activist group Philanthropy. Philanthropy’s goal here is to help raise the public’s awareness of the powerful Metal Gear weapons – giant mechs capable of wreaking much havoc and destruction. In the second, much longer chapter, you take control of newbie special agent Raiden as he infiltrates “Big Shell”, a huge cleanup plant where the President has been taken hostage by a group of terrorists.
This is a very cinematic game. Very often you will just be sitting back and watching conversations unfold between the characters of the game as they communicate through the ‘codec’. Visually, all you see is a green tinted screen with talking heads. Other times you may be treated to much better cinematic cutscenes as the story unfolds. And it *is* a story, so the game is very linear. This isn’t to say that you don’t have any degree of freedom – you are free to move from room to room, but you’re not really going to get all that much further plot-wise until you progress down the (one) correct path.
Now, for those of you wondering how MGS2: Substance compares to Splinter Cell, know that this really is a different style of game. Although you play as a special agent character in both, MGS2: Substance definitely sticks to the action side of things. For example, you can take quite a number of injuries before dying, especially at the lower difficulty levels. Also, the enemies’ field of vision is really quite limited as is the distance they can see. Often times, you can be standing in what appears to be plain view right in front of them, but they are somehow oblivious to your presence. Even so, the gameplay itself is still really quite fun and varied. Stealth is definitely a big factor, and there are many wonderful ways in which you can avoid being detected as well as hide the unconscious (or dead) bodies of your enemies. Combat can take place from the usual 3rd person perspective view, or you can switch over to first person if you need to tweak the accuracy of your shot. Keep in mind, though, that you cannot move while in 1st person perspective – this game obviously was not meant to be played as a frag-fest. One thing of particular note – there are multiple difficulty levels. MGS2: Substance will cater to either the newbie player, or to the veteran ultra-elite assassins out there - very nice.
The real bonus for you Xbox owners out there is all the extra VR missions. During the actual game, Raiden refers to his VR training, and now we can see what those missions were actually like. Here, you go through many levels offering many different tactical situations using all the different types of weapons throughout the game. As you succeed in progressing through these levels, more will be opened up to you, as well as hidden characters. All these extra VR missions are perfect for a “quick-fix” adrenaline rush when all you’re looking for is a bit of action and not so much plot and story. Also, your performance during these missions is rated, so there’s another reason to keep on playing – try to better your rating and become the ultimate stealth/killing machine.
: The only real complaint that I have about the graphics is that there was no attempt at improving the visuals for the more powerful Xbox platform, which is a shame. However, what it’s already got is still pretty !&%$@#* fine. Even though this is a game which was originally released a year ago, it still manages to hold up very well by today’s standards. There’s some very nice detail in here – for example, the rain and wind effects when you start the game off on the tanker are really quite breathtaking. The motion-capture animations, simply put, are excellent. The characters move with such fluidity that it’s easy to forget that you’re not watching live actors. Not to mention the fact that there are so many animations as well. There is a multitude of things that you can do to interact with the environment, and it all comes off looking extremely realistic. Then there are the cut scenes – again, the animation is fantastic, and is often done in such a cinematic way as to make it look as if you were watch a feature film at times. One little thing though – there is a motion-blur technique that seems to be used throughout all the cut scenes. I’m not sure whether Konami decided to do this originally on the PS2 because of hardware issues, or simply as artistic value. In any case, the effect got ported over to the Xbox version as well. It does tend to jump out at you - whether you like it or not is just a matter of taste.
Now here is where the game kicks some serious butt. First of all, there is an excellent and very fitting musical score which was composed by Harry Gregson-Williams. This is the same man who is responsible for writing music for such Hollywood films as Armageddon and The Rock. The music always fits the mood perfectly. It’s very subtle – kind of a peripheral character as you sneak around quietly. As things pick up, though, and the action intensifies, so does it. It’s always adapting itself perfectly to the situation at hand. If anything contributes to the overall cinematic feel of the game, it’s definitely the musical score. The voice acting, too, is very well done. Although the overall plot itself may seem a little over-the-top and cheesy with all the twists and turns, the voice acting certainly carries it off very well. Since so much of your time in this game will be spent just listening to the story, it’s a good thing that the voice-acting is done so professionally. Let’s also not forget about the sound effects. Again, we have a top notch job here. From the sound of Snake’s footsteps as they splash the water on the deck of the tanker, to the weapon sounds – everything is extremely well done, and those with Dolby Digital setups should especially be in for a treat.
Suggestions: Hmm, maybe a less convoluted plot next time? Geesh, my head’s still spinning! Otherwise, great job.
Overall Score: 9.0 / 10
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Phantom Crash
Tokyo has been abandoned and relocated. Air pollution and economic disaster have left it in ruins. What better way to make use of Old Tokyo than to have mechs (called scoobees here) battle it out for supremacy as a form of entertainment for the masses? In Phantom Crash, you take the role of a pilot of these hulking yet surprisingly quick and agile scoobees. Starting off with just enough cash to buy yourself one scoobee, you can start ‘rumbling’ in the arenas against the other pilots to win prize money and advance yourself in the ranks to become the top scoobee warrior of all time.
If you were to judge by the back cover, you’d probably assume that the game would be very dark and serious, but it actually takes a light-hearted approach in its anime style ‘quest’ mode. Most of the time when you enter a location, you are treated to some form of a social gathering with your scoobee friends. Actually, it’s more like you are forced to wade through a lot of irrelevant dialogue. Now, I certainly don’t mind being presented with small amounts of information every now and then in an action game of this type (and none of this is actually spoken – it’s all just displayed as text). Just enough can provide a good sense of atmosphere especially with such a wide variety of characters. Too much, however, just starts to become irritating. Unless you’re completely hardcore about knowing all the intimate little details of everybody’s life, you’ll just wind up cycling through all the bits and pieces in order to carry on with the game.
Control defaults to a third person perspective, although you can switch it to first person if you desire. The left stick controls turning as well as backwards and forwards movement – the right stick is used for pivoting the torso to aim. The right and left arm weapons are controlled by their respective triggers on the gamepad, and the shoulder mounted weapons are controlled by the ‘Y’ and ’B’ buttons. ‘A’ is used for jumping, and ‘X’ for camouflage. This layout ends up working quite well – the controls are pretty much what you’d expect and therefore end up being very intuitive.
If it’s a classic mech ‘sim’ that you’re hoping for then you’ll definitely want to be looking elsewhere - this game is about fast and furious action. For vehicles that weigh several tons, these scoobees certainly respond quickly. The pace is usually very frantic, and you’ll have to keep moving in order to stay alive. Once your mech has been destroyed, though, that’s it for the day. You get your prize money for your victories, and then have to pay for any repairs done to your own scoobee. Also, during a match you have the option to quit early while you’re ahead – this will cut back on expenditures for repairs. If you return from battle with a profit, you can then use your winnings to upgrade the components on your scoobee, thereby becoming a greater threat in the arena.
Unfortunately, this all runs in a very cyclical manner. Too soon it becomes very monotonous and there is nothing much extra to really keep you coming back for more. If you truly enjoy the frantic action in the arenas, using tactics to stay alive as long as possible, then you will most likely get a lot of enjoyment out of this game. Many, however, will probably find that the overall flavour lacks spice.
: First of all, the graphics for the menu interface are pretty slick, both in their look and presentation. The images during the ‘story’ part of the game, however, leave quite a bit to be desired. The various characters that you meet throughout the game are composed of nothing more than a few low-res images – each one is basically a different depiction of the mood the character is in. The CHIPs (little electronic programs which you can purchase to aid you during combat) aren’t even *that* much – they are just one little picture of an animal. It would certainly have been nice to see some more animation put into these characters seeing as how you are forced to see an awful lot of them. If you are a fan of anime, though, you probably won’t mind the overall look. It has its charm, but it was rather lacking in detail.
The scoobees, on the other hand, have a good amount of detail put into them. There are nice little graphic touches here and there. If you fire off a missile, or quickly dodge to the side, you will see the little flames from the thrusters responding. The camouflage is the coolest effect of all, warping the view of the scoobee – looking somewhat similar to the effect you see on a cloaking Romulan or Klingon ship on Star Trek.
I’d have to say that my biggest beef with this game aside from the excessive ‘storyline’ would be with the environments. First of all, there are only *four* arenas in which to play, and this includes the extremely mundane training arena. Second, they are really not all that impressive to look at. Design is not bad, and I have to give a thumbs-up to the AI in making good use of it. However, textures are very bland. There is just not enough detail to go around. Couple this with the overall monotonous nature of the gameplay, and it gets too boring too soon.
There are a good variety of sounds throughout the game. Each scoobee has its own beeps, missile alerts, and so on. The action can get so frantic at times, however, that it can often become difficult to discern the effects, and so they often don’t end up providing you with as much help as they could.
The music in Phantom Crash is rather impressive as it boasts many, many tracks that you can choose to listen to. Having a distinct Japanese anime flavour to them, there will be those who will love them, those that hate them, and those that just don’t care. However, there are just so many tunes to choose from, and they are often done so well, that it’s hard to imagine that you won’t find at least *something* enjoyable to listen to.
Suggestions: Many more environments, many more mech designs, and much less ‘talk’. The story is too inconsequential to have this much dialogue. This could have been so much better if the amount of effort put into the music had also gone into the environments and scoobee variety.
Overall Score: 6.0 / 10
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Serious Sam
The way I see it is that everybody needs at least one game of this genre in their library for any particular system. And Serious Sam fits the bill perfectly. Sure, it’s a bit on the mindless side a lot of the time (its about monster-hunting after all), but as long as your library isn’t inundated with games in this genre everything is cool. And not only does the thing look amazing, it’s another great multiplayer game that you can play with some of your buds. Especially the cooperative mode; you’ll have you hands full with the thousands of monsters you find there, I promise. I found Croteam over-the-top approach to the first person shooter to be more appealing then anything else. One reason why this shoot’em up title is so fun, is that the character’s (Serious Sam’s) has an overly useful arsenal. The game has a great variety of weapons for you to equipped which brings a lot more intensity to the big brawls. There are only a few things I was disappointed in this game, and one of them was the replay value. It’s just not there. But I guess Croteam makes up for this when they decided to add several dozens of levels to play in and I had some difficulties going threw it on normal therefore the lack of replay value doesn’t really bother me that much. Rather than bore you by pretending Serious Sam has a story of any importance to the game I’ll summarize it as follows: Aliens attack, all hope is lost, you fight good. You get sent back in time to stop the Aliens in ancient Egypt. But don’t let this put you off, Serious Sam is all about that often forgotten concept in games nowadays, Gameplay.
Serious Sam is not a game that requires much of the observation skills, hearing or other such nonsense. Serious Sam is more a case of move from scene to scene killing everything that moves, for everything that moves in Serious Sam is quite certainly trying to kill you. Serious Sam features the seemingly generic cache of weapons that must be available in order for a game to quality as an FPS game. These generic weapons being the Pistol, Shotgun, Double Barrelled Shotgun, Machine Gun, Grenade Launcher, Rocket Launcher and Mini Gun. Other than these the game features some other semi-original for an FPS game weapons such as the Star Wars type Laser Cannon and a massive Cannonball firing... Cannon. Assuming you've played any other FPS game around the usefulness of each weapon will be fairly apparent, e.g. Shotguns are powerful up close, tend to lose accuracy over distance & take time to reload, while the Mini gun takes time to spin up, isn't too accurate over distance & is best used against large enemies, or a large group of enemy. Weapons must also be reloaded, depending on how many rounds it can hold, although some need no reloading, e.g. Laser Cannon & Mini gun. The only thing lacking with the guns is the secondary fire mode we've become accustomed too in games like Unreal Tournament. That said the game is more of an arcade style FPS game than one that needs the burden of learning key combinations or something to that effect. Overall the weapons aren't anything special, you've seen them all before in a 100 other games at least already. One of the reasons Serious Sam functions so well as a co-op game is its economic approach to map design. There are no intricate jumping sequences, no timed arcade challenges and no extended interactions with A.I. characters or the environment; rather, Croteam escorts people from one combat situation to the next, most of which occur in vast outdoor areas and large, open courts. The developers do include several switch-throwing and item gathering quests to give the proceedings a sense of structure and form. The best one comes late in the game as Sam gathers four pendants and places them on an altar while fighting a growing regiment of dogged alien s !&%$@#* . It comes at the end of an exhausting level and sets the stage for what is perhaps the most memorable boss encounter ever in a 3D action release that has to be seen to be believed. In fact, that sums up Croteam’s debut title as a whole.
Co-starring with Sam is a graphics engine that was programmed with a considerable amount of care and technical expertise. The engine is something of a minor miracle because it does the impossible -- renders high-resolution maps that are colossal in scope and then places dozens of enemies onscreen. The sense of scale is tremendous; launch a missile and its trail seems to fade into the distance forever before expiring in a pixel-sized explosion. However, there are compromises: The actual visual texture of Serious Sam is somewhat washed-out, with the buildings and landscapes being painted in drab sepia tones. The design and animation of the enemies are decent, but most of the creature models are less detailed than those in similar titles. Still, I do not see these trade-offs as negative, because each one allowed Croteam to create the relentless broad-scale action that’s the selling point of this product. Besides, the art design and lighting are top notch, even if the desert and ancient tomb motifs grow old, and the engine comes with a lot of visual bells and whistles, such as particle effects and environment mapping. Pentium II users with decent graphics acceleration should be able to run the game without so much as a hiccup, even when a dozen bulls are stampeding toward Sam while four bio-meets fire in missiles from the distance and three arachnoids sitting atop elevated columns equip their chainguns. This, all while explosions and debris and monster gibs ignite the screen in a spectacular manifestation of sci-fi violence.
Remember how important sound was to the Doom series? The snarling imps, the sonic punch of the shotgun and the high-pitched scream that accompanied each frag enhanced the character of those titles. Sure, good sound effects are still an important part of interactive entertainment, but current game audio is sometimes all soulless technique and zero spirit. Serious Sam returns to the basics; whether it’s the maniacal blaring of the headless soldiers or the deep rumbling that signals the arrival of a bull, the line-up of clear, recognizable sounds are crucial to Sam’s survival because the effects prompt him to start the appropriate defensive maneuvers. In addition, hearing the grinding gears of a regiment of bio-mechs when Sam’s health has dipped into the red zone instills a powerful sense of dread. However, the weapon and creature sounds should have been more robust, and the 3D audio is not that well-executed; a stampeding bull sounds the same whether it’s far off in the distance or staring into Sam’s open-mouthed scream. Since the action surrounds Sam, the audio should have been programmed to better indicate the bearing and location of moving objects. And the music is not so much of master pieces itself; it does not help inspire the gameplay very much.
Suggestions: Great job Croteam, this is a perfect over-the-top fps I’ve been looking for. But since I’m supposed to add suggestion I’ll due just that. It’s a very minor suggestion but maybe pay a bit more attention to the music and sound fx to add a bit more intensity to this title. But other than that great job guys….uh and add chicks!
Overall Score: 9.0 / 10
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Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell
Now I don’t hand out perfect 5’s like it was candy, when we saw a private showing of Ubisoft’s Splinter Cell with my fellow staffers at the Microsoft booth at E3, our jaws dropped. Kevin, Chris and I immediately freaked, we said “This game better not be just a pretty face! Otherwise it will be a huge letdown!” Well folks, it’s WASN’T. Although the game does have its small drawbacks (what game doesn’t), you can easily overlook them. Before I started writing this review I wanted to get pretty far in the game before telling you guys about it. I did complete the Abattoir level (that one was a doozy), and now I’m at the second part of the Chinese Embassy, the game has a nice steady climb of difficulty. This game will be a console seller this holiday season and you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure that out. Tell your friends, “If you own an Xbox, you SHOULD own two titles Halo and Splinter Cell”. NO question. If they ask questions, slap them on the head (lighly). Finally, if you see any bad reviews on this page, simply ignore them (trust your fellow xboxaddict staffers), because the only reason that someone would not enjoy this game either they have a huge complex of military practices or just plain stupid.
Now, the game for the most part the game is jam packed full of beautiful kodak moments, and it also has its “Why the f*** did it do that for?” moments. The controls are very intuitive and I believe it was custom tailored for the Xbox controller. I None the less the game does have a few little pet peeves, on some levels, when you are crouched in front a crate sometimes (only sometimes) you can’t get back up. Weird. Anyways…the weapon switching system in the game has been really well planned out, when you are in the heat of battle…the game doesn’t fall short. I really can’t wait to see what Ubisoft has in store for us with the Xbox Live content. Aside from its very few quirks, Splinter Cell is a fantastic game bar none, and you don’t need to be a military expert to work these weapons or understand them. The big thing that puts SC at the top of my rankings is that you have the choice to complete mission as you please. If you want to go in and shoot all the enemies, you can or just “tip-toe” your way thru the level you can. Bottom line is…if you run out of bullets you can still finish the mission, without having magical ammo boxes appear out of nowhere. Two thumbs up!
If Leonardo DaVinci were alive today this game would bring tears to his eyes! Splinter Cell simply IS the best looking game on the Xbox. This aspect of the game is what EVERYONE was talking about at E3, you don’t need to be a brainwashed PS2 or Gamecube user to see that Splinter Cell is the bomb. It makes extremely great use of the Unreal engine and Xbox hardware and the attention to every detail in SC is staggering. You use the dark as your friend, you can have an enemies walk right up to you (within reason) and he won’t even see you. The character animation is beautiful, I’m not sure if Ubisoft used motion capture or not, that split jump looks painful. Eeck. When you move Sam Fisher near a light source that’s moving, the cast shadow moves along with it. Those hi-tech military grade night vision and thermal goggles makes you feel important and stuff! Simple nice. Without being bias Splinter Cell is the best looking game on any console. Well-done guys!
The developers of SC have successfully set an excellent overall mood throughout the game. You have times when a soldiers get spooked a little bit, the music changes. When you are being “Mr. Hero”; you get nice “hero” music. The musical score in SC is your run of mill Tom Clancy orchestrated set of tunes. Nothing like listen like listening to patriotic music before you head off to save the day. It really sets things nicely. Just like the movies! Excellent work, loved it.
Suggestions: Besides having a near perfect game on your hands. If you guys are thinking porting this title to the other console, this will only sell more Xboxes. The only version I can see living up the sheer beauty of this game, is the Windows PC machine running fairly highend hardware.
Overall Score: 10.0 / 10
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Toejam and Earl 3: Mission To Earth
The main objective of ToeJam & Earl III is to retrieve the twelve albums of funk which have been stolen from the Funkopotamous (also known as Lamont). You take control of one of three alien characters – ToeJam, Earl, or newcomer Latisha. Each one has their own particular advantages such as better speed, jumping ability, and so on. Utilizing the art of Funk-fu as your main weapon, you must travel through various hub worlds, each containing a number | |
