Second Story Gamer

Just as the Wii is known for having heaps upon heaps of mini-games on it, the DS is a puzzle game filled handheld. As an avid puzzle aficionado, this was a major selling point of the system. So the second game I bought on the DS (after the New Super Mario Bros.) was Professor Layton and the Curious Village. And, boy, did I get a hold of a puzzler.

Well, I should probably clarify something.  This game isn’t a traditional puzzle game.  The genre puzzle game is usually associated with Tetris, Lumines, or Planet Puzzle League; these are all games that require fast paced stylus action to, usually, match up similar colored blocks.  Take that definition and throw it out the window for Professor Layton.  Hit the jump for the rest of the review.

The past few weeks have been very good to users who, like me, love demos.  Demos give me a chance to try out a game before I decide whether or not to buy (or rent) the title.  And in recent days, I’ve had a chance to check out the demos for Ninja Gaiden II, Dark Sector, Civilization Revolution, and Battlefield: Bad Company.

Instead of a full length review, I decided to shorten my experiences with each game into a short summary.  You know, because they are demos; it’s not at all because I’m lazy.

Ninja Gaiden II

The original Ninja Gaiden was known (and feared) for its complex combat system and brutally hard difficulty.  Fans of the series will be glad to know that Ninja Gaiden 2 continues that trend.  The combat is very gory as well, with dismembered limbs strewn across the ground.  And the graphics may not be as great as some other titles, but they are still very good.  My one gripe with the demo is the camera, which you have to babysit throughout the game.  Hopefully, the developers can patch that problem with the full release.

Dark Sector

People will always remember Dark Sector as the first next-gen game ever announced, way back in 2004 But the actual release of the game has come and gone almost unnoticed by most gamers.  Well, a couple months after the retail game shipped, the developers have finally put a demo of the game up on Xbox Live, probably hoping to generate some excitement for the game.  And while I fully support developers following this trend, the game just wasn’t my cup of tea.

The strange thing is that this game is very, very similar to Gears of War.  It has a third-person, over the shoulder camera and uses a one-button cover system, much like Gears.  The problem is that it just doesn’t do it as well as Gears did.  The character doesn’t stick to cover as well as Marcus Fenix did in Gears, and the shooting elements are pretty bland.  The seemingly coolest feature of the game, the bad ass boomerang blade that the character carries around, is fun for the first few times you use it, but gets old fast.  So all in all, an interesting concept (even if it was almost a direct rip off of Gears) gone awry.

Civilization Revolution

The Civilization series are strategy games that have always been synonymous with the PC.  However, 2K looks to change that as an Xbox Live version of the demo was made available last week.  Before you mark this game off as another PC strategy game getting a lazy port to the Xbox 360, check it out.  Because I have to say, this was my favorite demo of the four mentioned.

This game is a turn-based strategy game that involves making troops, gathering resources, researching technology, and attacking enemy civilizations.  If those things make you feel fuzzy inside, then this game is perfect for you because the graphics are decent and the UI is intuitive.  But if that isn’t the kind of game you like, you may not have as strong feelings for the demo as I had.

Battlefield: Bad Company

Battlefield is another long series that has had its roots in the PC market.  But, like Civilization, its looking to branch out into other areas of the gaming market.  The demo had both single player and multiplayer game modes and I tried both.

The single player mode was completely useless, in my opinion.  The cheesy dialogue given by your two squad mates (who are two grown men playing Rock, Paper, Scissors as the demo opens) is almost unbearable.  The developer should have spent the time wasted on the single player improving the multiplayer, because the multiplayer could also be better.  That said, it’s not as bad as the single player was, but it’s by no means great.  Especially since the Battlefield series has major competition in Frontlines: Fuel of War.  One very cool aspect of the game was the destructible environments.  Almost every object in a level could be blown to pieces.

So there you have it, four demo reviews.  Look for these to be posted more often, because I believe that if a game can’t capture you within an hour, it’s not meant to be played.  That rule does not apply to JRPG’s.

So I just got a Nintendo DS.  I know I probably should have waited because of the rumors of a new version coming this summer, but my urge to get one and continual nagging from my brother pushed me over the edge.  So as I was picking up my black DS from Best Buy, I decided to get New Super Mario Bros. because I’ve heard so many good things about it.  And most of those good things were true.

I won’t be doing my normal outline for reviews because this game just isn’t big enough to warrant six different full length sections (unlike Mass Effect).  Instead, I will focus on just three sections of the game, visuals, sound, and gameplay, and then add some miscellaneous parts of the game at the end.

Visuals

There’s not much to say here because this game is on a Nintendo DS and while the system has very useful capabilities, graphics is not where it excels.  The DS just can’t put out as many pixels as the PSP.  But the art style of this game is great.  It is reminiscent of the old Super Mario Bros. but does things in a new, different way.

Sound

The music in this game is actually very good.  The soundtrack is very well done and the characters react around it.  For example, on a very low beat, the goombas will stop for a moment, then continue when the beat has finished.  The one problem with this great music is that it is coming out of the DS speakers.  They are just too small and low quality to really appreciate it.  I suggest getting headphones for this game.

Gameplay

The gameplay of New Super Mario Bros. is definitely the highest point of the game.  With this game Nintendo once again proved that they are the dominant species when it comes to platformers, because every level has a unique and very fun design to it.  There are innovative little nuances that make this game really stand out in my mind.  For example, there is a level in which there are meteors raining from the sky that you must dodge as you traverse the level (yes, it’s as hard as it sounds).   This is another game that is just pure fun on the gameplay side.

The Rest

Interestingly, Nintendo took many of the moves from it’s 3-D Mario games and puts them into this game.  For example, you can ground pound, wall jump, and triple jump.  Also, many of the bosses are references from Super Mario Sunshine like Petey Piranha.

One of my gripes with this game is the way the difficulty scales in it.  Worlds 1-7 are relatively easy but then the difficulty jumps up hugely at World 8.  There should have been more of a gradual increase.

Another problem with this game is the length.  Or is it a problem?  The game clocks in at about 6-7 hours, with some replay value.  That seems like a very good number, especially for a handheld game.  But I still wanted more.  God I’m such a greedy bastard.

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Bungie’s second map pack for Halo 3 has three maps, Blackout, Ghost Town, and Avalanche, and it costs 800 MS Points.  It’s in direct competition with Call of Duty 4’s Variety Map Pack that came out just a few weeks ago.  Although it already starts out with a disadvantage because the Variety Map Pack comes with four maps, we’ll see if the three maps that the Legendary Map Pack has are worth the $10 that they cost.

Blackout is a remake copy of Halo 2’s Lockout.  Don’t get me wrong, Lockout was my favorite Halo 2 map and I’m thrilled that Bungie made an almost exact copy of Halo 2’s most played map.  Bungie kept the things everyone loved about Lockout in Blackout, like how you can jump up to the sniper tower on a ledge on the main level or how you can blow up the barrels next to the sniper rifle to send it flying across the map towards you.  All in all, Bungie did an extremely faithful refreshing of Lockout.  The main difference is the color palettes of the two maps.  Lockout had blue hues across the map, whereas Blackout has black tones throughout.  Most people get mad when game developers rehash an old map and change very little, but with Blackout, I couldn’t be more happy that they didn’t change anything.

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Avalanche is a remake of Halo 1’s Sidewinder, but it isn’t nearly an exact copy like Blackout is of Lockout.  It is still shaped like a horseshoe with bases on each end like Sidewinder was, but Avalanche has man cannons scattered throughout the map that make it easier to get from one side to the other without a vehicle.  In Sidewinder, if you tried walking from one end to another, it would take ten or fifteen minutes to finish and you would probably be killed by a person in a vehicle on the way there.  The man cannons take away some of that vehicle dominance, but you should still drive a vehicle on this map.  The most interesting vehicle is the Hornet that is on this map.  Unlike the Hornet in Custom Games or the Campaign, this Hornet is missile-less.  The original Hornet was designed to play in multiplayer because it’s not properly balanced but taking out the missiles helps fix that.

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Ghost Town is an asymmetrical map that is based on first level of the campaign, “Sierra 117″.  Ghost Town has the forests and crumbling buildings that are shown in Sierra 117, but Ghost Town is not just a copy and paste of a section of the campaign level.  It is a level that has platforms that you can jump between and a ground level that you can navigate the level through.  The level structure reminds me of a mix of Turf and Warlock (Halo 2 maps) because it is a both vertically and horizontally played map.  You could just as easily navigate it on the ground as you could jumping from platform to platform above.  Unlike Turf and Warlock though, it is a very complex map that will take a few times playing it to learn it’s layout.

Rating:

Since Blackout is almost an exact copy of Lockout, I would have expected four maps in this pack.  Even so, the three maps are very good maps that are worth $10.  The Legendary Map Pack is much, much better than the recently made free Heroic Map Pack and, strangely, I’m looking forward to more remakes of my favorite maps of Halo 1 and 2 (Turf, please).  And if your hesitant on buying the pack, remember that they will become free in a few months.  Waiting never killed anyone.

Overall Rating:

Sorry for the wait between my first impressions and my full review.  Not only is this game quite long, but I also was pretty busy the past few weeks.  So my review is finally up after I finished the game last night.  I know this game is a few months old, but I only recently acquired it and I have to post a review of the game, because I know there are people who haven’t bought this game yet.  And I’ll tell you whether you should or you shouldn’t.

Story

I know I usually start with the gameplay element when reviewing games, but this game’s story warrants it being first.  I’ll try to keep this paragraph spoiler free so I’ll just say that it is absolutely fantastic.  The world that is created is deeply thought out and enormous.  I find myself craving to know more about the fictional universe that Mass Effect is set in and the different species in this world.  That being said, Halo also had a huge, detailed universe but failed on the storytelling part.  I was utterly confused throughout Halo 3.  Mass Effect flushes out every corner of this world without confounding me.  I know exactly who I’m fighting and why I’m fighting.   And the ending was great.

Gameplay

You would expect a game that is so driven by story and dialogue to be lacking on the gameplay level.  I’m here to tell you that you are completely wrong about that.  Mass Effect has the gameplay of a very good shooter, with great cover elements and some interesting biotic powers (nothing as interesting as Bioshock’s plasmids though).  One problem of mine is that grenades are mapped to the back button on the controller, which is pretty awkward, but I didn’t use grenades that much so it wasn’t a huge problem.

Graphics

Mass Effect is based on the Unreal Engine 3 and it shows.  It is another gorgeous game that came out the end of last year.  Everything looks lifelike and characters’ faces display very believable emotions.  You truly feel like you are in real universe, as you do when you watch Star Wars.  It has a bit of a problem with textures popping in a few seconds late, but it’s nothing terribly distracting.  And the graphics keep getting better closer to the end of the game.

Sound

Whoever wrote the score to this game is a musical master.  It has all the sounds of a high class movie soundtrack, with the sad moments when characters die, to the high cinematic climactic music.  The music really adds to the movie-like atmosphere you get when you play this game.

Characters

Again like a movie, Mass Effect had highly developed and flushed out characters.  Shepard’s (the protagonist) character was your choice as you could make him as ruthlessly efficient, or as good as you wanted through different dialogue options.  My first run-through I made him a good character, saving anyone I could.  My second play-through of the game, I’m going to try to use a girl character and make her ruthless.

All of your squad mates have very detailed backgrounds that you can investigate when you talk to them.  And the voice acting is this game is the best I have ever seen.  Everyone sounds believable, and the characters’ emotions make the whole experience breathtaking.

Miscellaneous

There are a few minor problems with this game though.  First of all, the load times.  It seems like, especially towards the end of the game, there are load times everywhere.  The elevators are very poorly disguised load times and I would almost have a load screen more than those elevators.  This game could really use a caching system like Oblivion had.  It would make the whole experience much better.

Another one of my issues was the inventory system.  The items are hidden in menus that take many clicks to get to and there is a 150 item limit that is reached extraordinarily fast.

The monetary system becomes almost useless about halfway through the game.  By then, you acquire so much money that you could buy anything you want.  It makes the side quests seem even less appealing because most of them give you money.

And speaking of side quests, most of them were totally unappealing to me and it’s not just because of the fact that you only get money from them.  They are scattered and there are an overwhelming amount of them.  But this point is subjective as I’m sure many people really enjoyed them.

I have to mention the dialogue trees somewhere in this review.  These were one of the biggest parts of most of the previews of this game.  The ability to forge your own way through this story by making you own decisions is highly appealing and it does work.  You will find yourself making decisions that could destroy whole species.  This level of control is another layer of immersion.

I can’t overstate how cinematic this game feels.  It’s dialogue, music, and graphics are great and the experience is amazing.  And on top of that, the gameplay is top-notch.  Sure it has a few faults, but they are nothing that hurt the game much.  If you haven’t gotten this game yet, don’t make the same mistake I did and wait any longer.  Go to your local game retailer and grab this one off the shelf.  Just make sure you pay for it.
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Inifinity Ward and Activision released the highly anticipated and much needed Variety Map Pack for the the highest sold game of 2007, Call of Duty 4. There are four maps in this pack that is available for 800 MS Points (about $10).  The PS3 version is scheduled to release in three to four weeks.

This map pack is different because Infinity Ward had an unusual main objective for this pack: they needed more variety in their multiplayer maps. Critics of Call of Duty 4’s multiplayer constantly cite the fact that many of the maps are very, very similar in their arguments, ahem forum wars, about why some other game has better multiplayer than COD 4 (it’s better than Halo’s though). And I’m sorry to say it but they are right. Some of the original COD 4 maps look like clones of each other. Most of them have nearly identical sandy color palettes that make differentiating between them difficult. But there are very distinct differences in these maps that make COD 4’s map portfolio much more interesting. Let’s start out with Broadcast.

Broadcast is a map that is strongly based on the “Charlie Don’t Surf” level in the single player where you have to raid the TV Station to see if Al-Asad is broadcasting from there. It has the main room with all of the monitors and computers playing Al-Asad’s message and the room where you discover he’s gone. That being said, there are some different things from the actual single player level like a part of the level that’s outside. It is a very fast-paced map and you probably should use an assault rifle or LMG through it.

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Creek is exactly what it sounds like: a level with a creek running through it. This level is much bigger than average COD 4 levels, which makes it a sniper haven. There are plenty of spots to just hide in short grass and take out opponents running around below. It is possible to use a long range assault rifle like the M16 or G3 and still do decent. but a sniper rifle is definitely recommended.

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Chinatown is my least favorite map of the pack because of the fact that it feels like a mix of Wetwork and District from the maps that were packaged with the game. There are plenty of places to go around the side of buildings like you do in Wetwork and the map structure is designed like District. Even the color palette is reminiscent of Wetwork’s black tones, except Chinatown has more random bright colors throughout. The best weapon on this map is an SMG or an automatic assault rifle.

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Killhouse has a style similar to that of the training level in the single player campaign. It is a smaller map that is designed for close quarters combat with plenty of obstacles to duck around. So far, it is only available in the Team Tactical and Cage Match game types, probably because it is smaller than average COD 4 map. An SMG or shotgun would be great on this map.

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These maps not only excel in their objective to add variety to the game, they are also very fun to play. If you are anything of a Call of Duty 4 online fan, these maps are a must buy for you. Even if you only play COD 4 occasionally, they are still very good maps. And I’m sure you could resist going to McDonald’s for a couple days to find the money to get them.

Overall Rating:

The Halo 3 Heroic Map Pack became free on Tuesday, which finally gave me a reason to download it, and thusly made me put in Halo after a long hiatus from the game. I don’t usually do reviews of maps or map packs but since this one was free and it is very popular, I decided to do a little write-up. There are three maps in this Map Pack of Heroism (very generic name by the way Bungie, mix things up a bit will you guys). I’ll start out with Standoff.

Standoff is a map that strikingly reminds me of Blood Gulch and Coagulation from Halo 2. Standoff is like a mixture of the two maps. The color tone of those two maps is basically identical to to Standoff’s. All three have a very sandy, dirty feel which huge orange-brown boulders littered across the level. They not only look alike, but they play somewhat alike too. Blood Gulch is a small map with boulders littering the ground between two bases. Coagulation is basically a larger version of Blood Gulch with proportionally by size less boulders. Standoff is a medium sized map with a medium proportion of boulders on it. It plays similar to Blood Gulch on a larger scale, though because there are few vehicles on it.

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Rat’s Nest is the name of the second map in this trio. The visual style is similar to Crow’s Nest from the campaign (coincidental name, I think not). It is designed like a huge race track with a wide circular road around the level. This is wide enough for Scorpions and Wraiths to drive on, but the map defaults with only ghosts, warthogs, and mongooses. There are paths through the center of the race track that cut the oval into fourths. There is a well placed rocket launcher used to take down warthogs, racing around the track just picking people off.

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Foundry is the last map in this pack and it is certainly the most interesting. The map is heavenly for any hardcore Forge user. It is basically a blank slate that allows you to put anything you want on it in any place. Of course, Bungie has there own default setup of the map, but it’s not a great position. If Bungie shipped this map setup without Forge functionality, it would be a pretty bad map. Thank god for the Bungie community though, because there are tons of great user made Foundry maps with accompanied unique game types.

Rating:

Overall it is a decent map pack now that you don’t have to pay for it. If I was writing this in November, it would be a definite don’t buy these maps. But now that it’s free what do you have to lose? Except for the 500 MB on your hardrive to fit these maps, that is.

Overall Rating:

Army of Two, as you may remember, was scheduled to come out last fall. EA saw that it needed more time in the oven and delayed it a few months. From what I’ve heard, it was a very good decision as the previous build was not great. That being said, the released game is not that great. But that doesn’t mean its bad. Well, you’ll see:

Gameplay

The gameplay is a definitely improvable part of this game. Army of Two centers around the aspect of an Aggro Meter. Aggro is basically the attention of the enemies. For example, if your teammate is firing everywhere, he would get all the Aggro causing the enemies to fire at him continuously and making you invisible. This is a very clever idea, but it gets old after a while and begins to feel like a gimmick. The other central idea is the use of co-op actions like Back to Back mode where you and your partner are firing at enemies back to back. This mode feels like a huge gimmick because you can only use in scripted areas. The actual shooting is decent but the cover system is irksome. Whenever i try to just peek out of cover, my character just jumps out in front of fire.

Graphics

I have to take back my earlier statements about the graphics of Army of Two being mediocre. They are definitely good. There is no framerate hiccups and the characters and environment looks good. That being said, the only really good looking part of this game are the cutscenes. They are drop dead gorgeous looking and the people’s emotions during the cutscenes are very well made. When Alice Murray gives a quick smile, her face looks real. I’m not sure whether the cutscenes are in-engine or not, but they look very good.

Sound

The actual gameplay sound in Army of Two is very generic. There’s nothing bad about it, just nothing sticks out. One thing that did slightly annoy me was the fact that whenever you clear an area of enemies, a gong sounds like in Gears of War. Come on guys, invent something new. The voice acting in this game is pretty bad. The two guys are overdoing their characters which adds to some of my problems with the story.

Story (Some Spoilers)

Army of Two’s story was surprisingly immersing. The story revolves around two soldiers, Elliot Salem and Tyson Rios, and takes place over the course of about 15 years. These two soldiers were in the military and were offered a job in a private military organization called the SSC, which paid double or triple what they were making. They accept the offer and continue doing missions for the SSC until they realize they are in the middle of a conspiracy with the CEO of SSC involved.

There is a secondary plot of politicians arguing whether or not to pass a bill that would disband government controlled military and make everything privatized. This is very relevant to todays news with the Blackwater controversy swirling around not so long ago. The bill looks like it will pass, but then the conspiracy is revealed and it is rejected. I really like this aspect of the game, because it is laden with political references that games have really not done before. This is another example of games starting to move ahead.

The story other than that is kind of done before. There have been plenty of movies that have done the whole caught in a conspiracy type of thing and they’ve done it much better (Shooter, Bourne Series), but I admit games don’t do this much and it was a decent story.

Characters

The characters are my biggest problem with the Army of Two. I hated the two characters you could play, Salem and Rios. They were both annoying, stereotypical, bad voiced characters. Everytime Salem opens his mouth, Rios screams out “Shut the hell up with your conspiracy theories” even when Salem makes sense. Reminds me a lot of people who think global warming is a hoax. I just felt like slapping Rios across the face (also like those people) because it was very obvious at this point that there was a conspiracy going on. And they also constantly yelled at each other not very kindly. I don’t see how they could have worked together. I actually like the antagonist Clyde more than these two.

Multiplayer

Army of Two is another one of those games where the multiplayer is just slapped on to add another bullet point to the game. The games multiplayer is not horrible but it isn’t great. And with multiplayer games like Call of Duty and Halo out, why would anyone bother playing this.

Overall

Army of Two is a good game but it’s not great. I would definitely recommend a rent for this game or wait till it hits the bargain bin before you get it because it is most certainly not worth $60. A game based totally on co-op play is a very interesting idea, but they didn’t do a great job implementing that idea. Hopefully, the sequel will be a much better game.

Rating:

I rented Army of Two and just finished the first couple levels so I’m just going to give early my impression of the game. My full review should be up in a few days after I’ve completed the game.

The game starts out with a skull on the screen and a rough sounding man yelling at you. Yes, it was as strange as it sounds. He explains the Aggro system to you and proceeds to tell you to go “kick some ass”. Duly noted sir. After this strange beginning, the game began on a normal track. You do a training mission and then your dropped into a real mission and the game begins.

From the hour or so I’ve played it, I’ve come to a few conclusions. First of all, I think the actual shooting is not that fun. It is really bland and with the plethora of great shooters out why would you pick an average one. The cover system is okay, but I’ve not been able to get into cover multiple times. Maybe these two aspects of the game will get better as I progress to further levels, but I highly doubt it. The graphics are good, but not spectacular and the storyline has been average so far.

The co-op portion of the game is nowhere close to what it was hyped up to be. The Aggro meter seems like a good concept, but so far it has just been gimmicky. The back to back feature is only available in certain areas, which detracts from the experience.

My conclusion from this small impression is that this game is a very average, normal game. So far, it has not jumped from the status quote very far and it has definetly not lived up to what I thought it would be: a co-op shooter where you have to work with your teammate to strategically kill enemies and give each other cover etc. So far it has just been a plain shooter with a few co-op gimmicks in it. Hopefully, it gets better.

Ah, Assassin’s Creed. I really wasn’t planning on playing this game until my friend let me borrow it the other day. This game is great, but it definitely has some minor flaws.

Let’s start out with the graphics. This game is gorgeous; there’s no other way to describe it. The lighting, the textures everything is beautiful. The framerate is smooth and the draw distance is very good. Any graphics whore would faint when seeing this game. Well, since we’re on the topic of graphics, I’ll bring up the animations. The best animated game I have ever seen. Everything looks realistic and has a different animation. The climbing up the walls and all of the combat looks totally fluid without the usual jaggedness usually attributed to video games. Everything about this game visually is stunning.

Now onto the slightly less enthusiastic part: the gameplay. No, I’m not saying it’s bad, it’s just that it’s not great. The actual combat pales in comparison to the graphics but by no means is it bad. The swordplay revolves around a counterattack system in which you wait for the enemy to begin to attack, then gruesomely kill them. The scaling of various buildings is insanely fun; It’s kind of like how you loved climbing buildings in Crackdown. Again, it gets a very good score on this part.

So thats marked off the list; let’s get to the story. The story is actually very interesting, if dull at times. That may seem like an oxymoron to you so let me explain. The whole premise the story that (SPOILER) you go back into your ancestors memories is quite interesting. But, it’s plagued with overlong scenes with you just listening to other characters speaking. Sure you can move around a bit and change the camera angle, but that gets old fast. One, thing I’ll give this game is that some of these scenes are actually quite gut wrenching. During one scene, you actually helplessly see a prisoner’s legs being broken ruthlessly by a crazed doctor. These scenes have gone relatively unmentioned by most reviewers, so I thought I should mention them.

The rest of it is pretty good. The AI is very good for the citizens of the city, but is merely passable for the soldiers, because I’ve killed a soldier right, in front of another and him not do anything. But, that only happens rarely. Getting from one city to another, I got lost a few times, and it gets annoying, but thankfully you can skip it after one time.

All in all, this is a great game. I would definitely recommend picking it up if you haven’t got it already. If you liked Crackdown or Prince of Persia, you will probably like this game. At least give it a rent.

Rating:

I just downloaded Undertow from the Xbox Live Arcade yesterday and it actually surprised me a bit. Now, I have never bought an Arcade game before. Spending $10 or $15 for a small game doesn’t appeal to me when I could just save that money to get a quality $60 game. But, as you probably know, this game was free (today is the last day to get it free by the way) and I couldn’t resist downloading it and trying it out. It is actually a very good little time waster.

Basically, you are this marine group under water and you are fighting these people. That may sound very vague and its probably because the game actually has a story with cut scenes and all but I just skipped those and went to the actual game.

The point of the game is to capture these strategic checkpoints that give you troops before the other team does. It is a lot like Conquest Mode in Star Wars Clone Wars the game. So you start off on one side of the map, while the other team starts out on the other side and you battle to get the two or three checkpoints in between.

There is also a counter of the number of troops you have. If you capture all of the checkpoints the other team starts losing numbers on the counter very fast and when it reaches zero they lose. If you can’t capture all of them, no worries, just kill all of the people to get the counter to go to zero.

Another task of the checkpoints is that they are places where you can switch classes. There are four classes in the game: a marine, a marine in this bulky suit, a small ship, and a bigger ship. My personal favorite is the small ship because the weapons are good and it isn’t slow as hell like the big one, but I guess people could like other ones.

I am playing on normal mode (there is easy, normal, and hard) and I have to say the game gets pretty difficult. The last level on the first campaign (yes, there’s more than one, but each are pretty bite-sized) took me about 4 tries before I beat it.

So, all in all, its a pretty decent game. It’s not perfect, but it’s a hell of a lot better than most of the classic crap that usually comes out on the Live Arcade.

Rating:

I recently borrow Spiderman 3 for the Xbox 360 from my friend. This game isn’t really that bad. The swinging mechanism is actually very fun. The bad, part is that is the funnest part of the game. It’s kinda bad when the best part of a game is the traveling in between missions. The combat is passable. It gets very tedious and repetitive after a while. The climbing on walls is horribly difficult. The camera inverts strangely and you can barely control yourself. I’m about halfway through it and the boss battles have been button mashers. The parts you have to diffuse a bomb are basically just mini-games slapped together. It may seem like I really hate this game, but it is not like that. I’m actually going back to play in between sessions of Rock Band, strangely. All in all, it is a fairly decent game, but don’t buy it if you have either of the first two. It’s really just more of the same thing.

It is not often that a game comes and just blows me off of my feet. But this year I’ve been on the floor more than I’ve been standing up. With games like Bioshock and Halo 3 coming out this year my Game of the Year race is going to be a tight one. But I can tell you right off the bat, Rock Band is definitely one of my contenders.
The Single Player mode in this game is probably its least appealing part. But, even this least appealing chunk of the game is many times more fun than any Guitar Hero. The reason it is much funner is that you can play more than one instrument. The one problem with Guitar Hero was that once you were sick of the guitar, that’s it. There’s nothing else to move on to. With Guitar Hero you can play the drums once your sick of the guitar or move on to singing once your done with both of those. The one gripe with this game is that you cannot switch instruments in the World Tour Mode. I personally do not see this problem. If you want to switch instruments often throughout the Campaign, just make three different bands and be different instruments in each of them. That even makes the game last a bit longer (as if it needed to).
The Multi Player is the best multi player if you have all four people in the same room. It is still very good over Xbox Live, but there is not that personal chemistry you get when you have people together. Today, I got three of my friends over and we played Rock Band till our hands were sore (I’m getting carpal tunnel any day now). It was a blast and nothing can compare up to it.
Now let’s talk about the instruments. First of all, there is the guitar(s). The guitars are very solidly built except for the strum bar. The strum bar feels a bit wobbly and that makes the note recognition slightly off. I love the new button design though. It really looks and feels like a guitar. It is not the cheesy feeling of the Guitar Hero guitars as this one feels solid. The guitarplay is basically the same thing as Guitar Hero. I could feel or spot no difference. It may have been slightly easier (I am playing Hard with no difficulty) but other than that it is top notch.
Similarly, the drums are built very solidly. In my few weeks of playing this game, I have probably abused the drums more than any other instrument for the mere fact that I have to pound on them. They still work perfectly fine and look perfectly fine. The only problem with the drum design is the foot pedal. It is used very often throughout the songs and, quite frankly, pressing it actually hurts your legs. It is just too hard to push on and not sensitive enough when you have two quick foot pedal lines in a row. The drumplay is very good. Unlike the guitars, they had to totally invent the drum beats. They are much faster than the guitar’s but there is more of a pattern. They would be absolutely my favorite instrument if the foot pedal was better, but I still love them.
The singing may be the short end of this perfect package. The microphone is a very good high quality microphone, but the problem with the singing is not in the hardware, its in the gameplay. The singing is just not as appealing as the drums or guitars. It just gets boring and it seems whoever has to sing gets the raw bargain in the band. It might be fun if you try singing and playing another instrument at the same time but I have not tried that yet. Now don’t get me wrong; the singing is horribly boring. It’s just that compared to everything else in this package it seems like the most boring part. And it does have huge competition.
All in all, this is a great package. The guitars are every bit as good as you expect and so are the drums (once you get over the foot pedal). There is no reason to not buy this package if you have the resources to. Do not get Guitar Hero over this game though. It is just a waste of money to buy Guitar Hero when you can get this game for just $80 more. If $170 is too high for your budget, you may consider buying just the game and picking up another guitar (if you have Guitar Hero) and the drums separately. Harmonix is going to eventually sell the components separately; it may be a while before that happens though. Don’t expect to see them before next Spring. So go out and buy this game right now for yourself, or make yourself the new favorite uncle by getting this as a gift.

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