Would You Kindly?

I’ve had plenty of time now to form a fairly finite opinion of Gears of War 2. Sad to say, but I didn’t find this much anticipated sequel as compelling as I was hoping. Don’t get me wrong, I liked Gears 2, with the word “like” being the operative word. I did not love Gears 2, but thought it more of an adequate followup to the first game. On a whole, I felt the developers tried to put in too much, make it too epic in scale. As a result, I didn’t feel quite as impacted by the story or events in the game enough to really care much.

What I liked about Gears 2: Though it may sound a bit contradictory, I really did like the story overall. It’s more how the levels play out than what’s going on in the game world I take issue with. Loved the above ground levels. Loved the new weapons, most notably the mortar. Loved the Horde mode in multiplayer where up to five people can battle to fight off wave after wave of increasingly difficult enemies. The co-op campaign is where it’s at. Punching the little Ticker enemies before they explode on you is amazing amounts of fun. The Training Grounds was a nice inclusion to help new players become familiar with the multiplayer game types.

What I didn’t like about Gears 2: Too much… of everything. I don’t usually like chase/escape levels, and Gears 2 put in several. I don’t particularly like driving levels, and the one dedicated driving level in Gears 2 is no different. Drive, wave of enemies attack, drive some more, even more enemies, et cetera. The fish mini-boss was absolutely horrible. The ending, though totally set up to be a cliff-hanger, was utterly stupid in terms of a final gameplay event. I’ll just say there’s no General Raam event like in Gears 1. Though I understand the story demanded it, I didn’t like how the majority of the game was spent underground. I’d much prefer to play amongst the ruined buildings above ground. The whole worm level was not that fun either, sawing arteries and all. THERE WERE NO BESERKERS…AT ALL!

I was really torn with Gears 2. I wanted to love it so much, but was let down by it in so many little ways. I did find it to be a much more enjoyable experience the second time through in co-op with a buddy of mine, but by then I had figured out what was rubbing me the wrong way.

The Gears saga thus far has turned out much like the Matrix series for me. The first movie was revolutionary in terms of both story and film techniques. It left a lot out to allow audience speculation. Given it’s success at the box office, the eventual sequels that came out expanded upon the universe in such a way that there wasn’t any mystery left. They reveled too much, and packed in way too many plot lines in such a way that it wasn’t revolutionary anymore, but rather a standard action movie.

That’s kind of how I see Gears 2. Gears 1 was short, not much was explained, but it was revolutionary in gameplay. Gears 2 blows the doors open to an epic scale too much. Where you were fighting small groups of enemies in Gears 1, you now have the chance to slaughter hoards of enemy units in Gears 2. It’s become a standard game in every way to me, and has lost a lot of the magic the first one had.

The ultimate feeling I have towards Gears of War 2 is that it’s a game I would be perfectly fine with never playing again. I played through it once solo, once co-op, and played a bit of the multiplayer, but I don’t have the itch I had with Gears 1 where I wanted to play through the campaign through on every difficulty setting. I could trade it in tomorrow and never give it a second thought, and that’s really disappointing.

I don’t know if this is dedication or just plain sad, but in the last week I made it to Gamestop four different times. This was mainly because the new Gears of War was coming out, and my buddy and I needed to go pay off our copies (at two different Gamestops mind you). So on two of said occasions, I headed back to the used games, specifically looking for older basketball games. The prices seemed too good to pass up, so I wound up picking up not one, but three older hoops titles for the 360, all for $5.99 and under each. What a steal, right?

NBA 2K6 - I’ll admit it: I bought this one specifically for the achievements. In one full game with the sliders set to my advantage, I unlocked all but one achievement. I guess you could really say I paid $3.99 for 750 achievement points. I’m okay with that, as the game isn’t half bad. Sure it’s hella dated, but it plays fine and I may just get around to playing it with KG on the Wolves every now and again. I’m probably kidding myself though. The menus are enough to make me puke with design disgust. 2K has always had bad menu design though.

College Hoops 2K7 - Plays a lot like the 2K series of NBA games, obviously, but with college teams. I’ve only played one full game so far, but it’s cool enough I suppose. I missed a lot of easy lay-ups even with the sliders adjusted well into home-court advantage. The character models are utterly atrocious. They look like Cabbage Patch Kids, seriously. This one also has some pretty horrible menus.

NCAA March Madness 07 - My first fore into EA’s college hoops series (now just called NCAA College Basketball 09), and by far the gem of the three games I bought. Like the 2K games, NCAA plays a lot like it’s NBA predecessor (NBA Live), only with the addition of the college atmosphere. You have this meter you can fill up by scoring and stealing balls among other things (or lose if you turnover or foul the opposition). When you fill it up, you have the option to do several positive things, like pump up the crowd or a teammate, or hush the opposition. It’s a neat little addition to the game. My problems with the game are mainly off-court: the camera and the frame rate. The camera is too far out for me, even when adjusting it. It makes you feel like you’re playing the game from the nose-bleeds. The frame rate also sucks. It’s in no way a smooth game to play, but it becomes tolerable once you play a couple of games and doesn’t affect the overall playability.

I’ve been holding off on this post for a while now. I wanted to wait until I had the opportunity to play through Lego Batman, thus being able to write on definitive  post regarding the Lego series of games.

As a kid growing up, I was very much into Legos. At one point I had the entire castle collection, which I think I may still have somewhere in my parent’s house. So it was a non-issue that I would play the Lego series of games. Starting with the Star Wars Lego series, and expanding up through Lego Indiana Jones and into Lego Batman, the developers have made some great games, albeit with very few upgrades throughout.

My gripes with the games are global, in that appear in every Lego game. The first and biggest gripe is with your teammate. This has to be the dumbest companion AI character I have ever played with in any game. They are essentially useless in every capacity other than when the “team” puzzle aspect comes into play. They don’t really help you defeat enemies (they merely hold them back), they certainly don’t take advantage of the brick assembly aspects, and they don’t even pick up studs while they follow you aimlessly around. They won’t even try to shield you while you’re trying to assemble the brick pieces. It’s incredibly frustrating to be knocked off the assembly line by a stray bullet while your teammate just stands there.

My other main gripe is with the camera and depth perceptions. I can’t tell you how many times I missed a vine in Lego Indy because I wasn’t lined up correctly. This was annoying in pretty much every game.

With these gripes aside, the devs definitely improved with every successive game. Lego Star Wars is understandably the roughest around the edges. Lego Indy has to be my favorite though in terms of story. Lego Batman is the best in terms of gameplay. The villain levels were by far the most interesting in any game, but were also the least satisfying because of the lack of boss battles in most levels.

The Lego series of games are fun to play through, despite your companion being a complete idiot. They all have moments where you’ll shake your head at the stupidity of the level design, but in the end, they aren’t the most difficult games you’ll play. I recommend checking them out though, even if you’ve never seen the movies/franchises they’re based off of.

Metallica is one band I can safely flex my old man metal cred with and say I was listening to them way back in 1988. I think I know a thing or two about them, having listened to them for about 20 years now. Crap, did I just write 20 years? Man I’m old.

The reason I would even go to the cred flex card is that’s exactly what Death Magnetic wants to be. It wants to be that new Kill ‘em All or Ride the Lightning. Some parts really do come off well, but after giving the record a few spins, I have to say that it’s a case of trying to go too far back in time to recapture some of their past glory.

Like I said, there are some good parts to every song. I especially love the chorus in “All Nightmare Long”. “My Apocalypse” has a nice “Battery” feeling to it when it gets up and going.

My main complaint with most songs is the transitional parts. In several parts, in several songs, the way the band transitions between parts is just plain laughable. Being involved in making music myself, most of these parts reminds me of those guys you see in the music stores fooling around on the drum kits during their lunch breaks. I can see why the band kind of went that way given the overall rawness of most songs, but it really seems like they just needed some way to transition between parts so they merely clicked of a few random snare beats while the guitars just went up in scales. One of these parts is at the 3:50 minute mark of “The Day That Never Comes”. It just doesn’t fit, and feels shoved in as a way to move from part to part.

The other major disappointment is in the mastering. I’m sure you’ve heard by now of the extremely over-driven sound quality of this disc. The band would like to deny it, but I have my earbuds in right now, and it’s almost unlistenable at times, and most apparent with the real chunky guitar parts and cymbal rides.

I really wanted to hate Death Magnetic. It does bring back a certain amount of nostalgia for me though, and I’m happy they finally got tough again. I do hear a few too many similarities to material they already put out however, which is always going to make me want to listen to their back catalog as opposed to DM. I’m just really glad there’s no trash can snare drum on this one.

Favorite Song: All Nightmare Long
Least Favorite: The Day That Never Comes

I don’t like most standard racing games. Instead, I prefer to stick with the more cartoon-y cart games where you can shoot turtle shells at other racers while falling even further behind in the overall race. That’s why it’s somewhat weird to me that I’ve found Pure to be so enjoyable.

Now don’t get me wrong, Pure is more like the aforementioned cart games than it is say a Grand Turismo. Instead of shooting people however, you’re trying to pull off tricks while jumping. The sheer speed of the game and the gorgeous settings have made Pure an unexpected plus in my Xbox arsenal.

Like I said, Pure is a game of high speed and high jumps, where the name of the game is pulling off outrageous tricks while still trying to come in first. The action at times (most times in fact) is hectic, and you can lose your bearings quite easily. Once you get around the track once or twice though, you learn where the big jumps are, and where the pifalls are.

As you progress in World Tour Mode, the speed and intensity only increases. I’m about halfway to the top in terms of motor class, and I’m already almost getting sick at times with how fast the game is. We’re talking near roller coaster dips and dives here. With such amazing art, the super jumps are just plain amazing to behold.

Throughout your career, you unlock more bike parts and slots to build more bikes. It’s been pretty fun to make new bikes in order to race at the higher levels. The options are somewhat limited, but there’s enough so that you aren’t really making the same bike over and over again.

The only thing I don’t really like is in the trick system. You engage it buy pulling back on the left stick and flicking it forward when you hit a jump. Once in the air, you then have to move the left stick again the direction of the trick you want to pull off while pressing one of the face buttons. It can get all jumbled up at times, especially when there’s a set of smaller jumps right after one another. That said, with enough forewarning, you can pull of some pretty sweet trick combinations.

Pure took me completely by surprise. I didn’t expect to have as much fun with it as I have so far. I get sucked into it, always wanting to race that next race instead of putting down for the evening. The races are starting to ramp up in difficulty, so it’ll be interesting to see just how fast I can actually get, and if I’ll eventually want to puke while playing it.

So I wound up buying both NBA offerings this season. I wasn’t going to, but Live 09 was starting to make me mad with it’s repetitive crashes. There’s something about EA Sports games my 360 just doesn’t like. The game will be working fine one minute, and then the drive will just sort of stop processing and I eventually get an error forcing me to restart my box. It usually only happens once on the first go, but it’s annoying, especially if you only want to play one game.

So out of frustration more than anything, I picked up NBA 2K9. I usually don’t really go in for 2K sports games, as their NHL series has been less than stellar for a few years now, and their baseball games (exclusive license mind you) are an utter waste. It actually shocked me a bit to find their basketball games are the pinnacle of their sports games.

NBA Live 09 is the easier of the two to pick up and play. I like most everything about the gameplay, and I like using the right stick to roll around and deke past players. The play call button is easy to initiate, and I get the general gist of what’s going on on the court. On rookie level I’m winning the majority of my games, even against the much better teams. The overall fun factor for Live is pretty high.

My issues with the game (crashing aside) are mainly in the graphical/animation glitches. Some of the gameplay animations can be herky-jerky at times, most noticeably with ball movement and on throw-ins. It’s pretty obvious, but hasn’t really affected the actual gameplay. It just makes the overall game feel a bit under polished.

NBA 2K9 is a much different beast than Live. Having played several games now, it’s almost too much for me to handle. There’s like a hundred different button combinations for different types of shots, which is cool, but it would take me weeks to learn them and remember to use them during a heated game. More often than not I find myself kind of button mashing when I go for a shot because I’m unsure of what shot I’m trying to pull off. On offense, the right stick is used to actually shoot (while holding buttons as mentioned above). The problem I have with it is the strength/accuracy of the shot depends on how long you pull the stick. Miss the sweet spot and you’re likely to miss the shot. The difficulty is more intense as a result. Even on rookie I have yet to win a single game. I’ve been able to keep most of my games close though, so there has to be something I’m missing, like how to play defense.

Both games have their merits, and both will get their share of time in the 360. Live 09 is more fun to play at this point even with the crashes, mainly because there aren’t so many shooting combinations I need to worry about, allowing me to just play the game. I can win at Live 09, and it feels like next year’s version will be even better. NBA 2K9 on the other hand, is probably the much better game right now and feels the most realistic to play. I really want to like this game and get good at it. That said, I don’t know if I want to invest the time in learning all the nuances to the gameplay, while continuing to lose over and over again.

REBOUND: I went home last night and finally found these “sliders” everyone keeps talking about in NBA 2K9 (the menu system is a mess). Sliders are what you think they would be: the ability to tweak various aspects of gameplay by adjusting abilities/tendencies of both my team as well as the CPU team. I adjusted my team up and the CPU down, and BLAMO! I’m winning games, by a lot. I’ll admit it’s rather cheap at this point, as I made the stats way one-sided, but I plan on tweaking these sliders to try and find a nice balance. I don’t mind losing every now and again, but I’d also like my 3-pointers to go down with a bit more accuracy. Finally being able to find and tweak these sliders officially makes 2K9 the winner this year.

I’m only about an hour into Dead Space, but I really felt compelled to write up some initial impressions of the game based on what I’ve been through thus far. As you may recall, I’ve been championing this game since I first got word of it a year ago. I’m pleased to report that the game does not suck. Sure, it’s an amagalm of quite possibly every popular science fiction since the 80s, but that has in no way has affected my impressions of the game. All of these references, in fact, have only served to heighten my excitement.

There’s very little I haven’t liked about Dead Space so far. The only issue I have at this point is with the map. See, the game doesn’t implement a HUD system, so everything in terms of in-game information is handled via a holographic projection box that comes out of you suit in front of you. This in itself is pretty awesome, until you try to use the map. I’m finding it extremely difficult to utilize the map in general, mainly because I can’t get a decent angle to view the different floors. The map is also rendered in 3D, so I find myself twisting and turning it to find a clear image of the route I need to take. Thankfully though, the devs put a sight guide to follow when in the main game. Simply click the right stick in and a thin blue line appears on the floor, illuminating the direction you need to head. Genious.

The story thus far has been quite compelling. I love the use of in-game storytelling elements, either through popping up on your holo-projector or by picking up recordings along the way (like in Bioshock), which allows you to be fully immersed into the game without having to pause for cut scenes.

The combat can be frantic at times, and I imagine it will only ramp up as the game progresses. You really need to place some accurate shots on these monsters because they will keep coming if you don’t take their legs out first. I was caught a couple of times because I didn’t hit their legs first and they pounced on me. The weapons and melee have been spot on so far, and I’m looking forward to trying out the new pulse rifle I bought prior to stopping for the evening last night.

Like I said, I’m only about an hour into the game so far, but it’s already surpassed most of my expectations. It’s sufficiently creepy to make me peer around every corner before heading down that next hall, and the sci-fi story line is something I’ve been waiting for in a game for a while now. It’s safe to say Dead Space is quickly heading to the top of my list for game of the year.

As you know by now, I rent games from Gamefly. It’s pretty awesome, even if it does take forever and a day to get new games, and get games at the top of your list. That’s another story altogether. I’ve pretty much exhausted the list of games I really need to play, so I’ve begun adding games to my list that I would normally stay pretty far away from, like Kung Fu Panda for instance.

I’ve had a passing interest in basketball. I like shooting hoops here and there, but have never really played, and never watched a full game in my life. The closest I get to the game is watching Hoosiers now and again.

So I took a shot and rented NBA Live 08. IGN gave this game a pretty bad rating, but since I have no clue as to the intricacies of the game, it didn’t really matter one way or the other if it sucked or not. I wanted to stay away from the 2K series in any event, even if it has gotten the better reviews overall.

I have to say that I’m having an absolute blast play this game. Sure, I am completely out of my element with it, but I’m quickly getting the hang of how basketball is played. I’ve even won a few games here and there. My main problem is with defense. I have no idea why I’m fouling players, and can’t block a lane once they get started towards the net to save my life. Regaining possessions off of rebounds are also fairly hard for me to pull off.

What I like about NBA Live 08: The graphics are pretty good. I get the feeling I’m playing the game, and that’s good enough for me. I like working out the best shots for players, and getting in past the defense for the sweet lay up or hitting that 3-pointer from the top of the key is just plain awesome. It’s immensely rewarding.

What I don’t like about NBA Live 08: Argh! No team practice/tutorial mode; none I can find anyway. For someone just getting into the game, it would be nice to have  a full tutorial/practice area, other than just for the new features, which are explained during the in-between game shooting practice. I’ve had to learn on the fly during real games, so I have no clue how to guard against drives to the net, other than just trying to shove a bunch of guys in the lane.

Ultimately, there’s not a whole lot to really say in favor or against NBA Live 08. I don’t know the game well enough to be able to say something sucks or not. In my limited time playing the game, I can say I’m having fun with it, and am looking forward to 09, which is released next week.

NBA Live 09: DEMO impressions - Of course I had to download the demo for 09, having been ravenous for 08 this past week. Even though I’ve only played 08 for a short time, I can already tell 09 is going to be so much better. The game mechanics have appeared to be improved, and the between game practice facility has been beefed up as well. Between playing 08 and the 09 demo, I think it’s safe to say I’ll be picking the full version of NBA Live 09 next week. Wow, did I really just say that?

It took over two years (of delays and setbacks) for this game to come out, so I’m not going to delay my impressions of Brothers in Arms: Hells Highway any longer.

What I liked about BIA:HH:
The story line is intense. They don’t bullshit you here, and for once I’m engaged by cutscenes. The level design is once again top notch. There are plenty of good positioning elements within the environment to place your squads. The bazooka squad this time around is genius. I liked the solo missions, and didn’t feel like it took anything away from the whole “brothers” aspect of squad-based combat. The bombed out hospital level (solo level) has to be my favorite, and it’s pretty creepy. The health system has been updated to modern times, allowing you heal yourself by getting into cover. The old games were frustrating because they never allowed you to replenish your health during missions. More real, sure, but frustrating to die near the end because of hits you took at the very beginning of the mission.

What I didn’t like about BIA:HH:
The story line, though intense, is broken up and a bit confusing at times. You get a lot of personal experience, but no real army intel info as to why you’re doing what you’re doing in a particular area. The squad mechanics still favor short bursts instead of long hauls. You have move your squad in short bursts or else face them running out into direct line of fire moving to your position across the map. This led me to position them in certain areas, while I went off and handled thing on my own. The squad AI is a bit too stupid at times. The bazooka team would misfire often, even with targets almost right in front of their faces. Still hate the tank missions. The cover system is a mix of Rainbow 6 and Gears of War, and doesn’t mix them very well at all.

Brother in Arms: Hells Highway has been getting some pretty average reviews. I tend to disagree with most of them and opt for a much better overall feeling from the game. I loved the first two, and this one fits in well with the series. Having been delayed so long has probably hurt it in terms of graphics and gameplay, simply because other games have come out in that time and have done it better. Had HH been released back in 06, it may have fared much better in general. I love it though, and it was well worth the wait.