Test

Slayer's Chestguard

Grand Theft Auto 4 Impressions

I didnt finish the game, so by my own system i cannot write a review.

This game caused me to abandon my 360, and cancel my gamerpass.

There is like.. Diminishing returns, on GTA4. Its fantastic right off the bat, the multiplayer is (sometimes) pretty fun but (usually) pretty gay. But the kicker was that i got it home, played it for a couple hours, and went to bed feeling as though I had accomplished nothing in the game.

The following day i repeated this process, playing for a few hours.. Feeling like I had done nothing, and then stopping.

For the next few weeks, every time I played it, I dont think I felt the grasp of accomplishment once, and it took its toll on me, as I started to play it less and less.

This brings to mind the Penny-Arcade comic where they say that when given the oppritunity to do everything.. one chooses to do nothing.. its true. Soon I had no desire to even turn the game on..

I wanted to give GTA4 a 10 like every other ass-kiss site in the world, but Epic Fails are Epic Fails, and a game that reduces the players desire to play the game loses points.

conveniently though, since I did not complete the game (was on the last line of missions though) I can't say that i would give it a 8.5

maybe Chewspitt will write a review


-Rei

Oh, Hi

So the site died for awhile, due primarily to me being roped back into playing WoW by my Wife, Chewspitt's PC dying, and Fonny not writing anything ever anyway.

We came back because a friend of ours was running a guild and asked us to, but that fell through, i tried remaking my old guild, but didnt have the time nor energy to wipe peoples asses.

we xfer'd back to that shithole i used to play on (Underbog) and after the guilds fell through we picked a random server and xfer'd.

So since we stopped playing they added a shitload of stuff, the sunwell and the island dailies, various changes to classes, made the game much easier, cool.

Still playing My priest but Alden rerolled a rogue, she seems to like that better than her warlock, coolies.

So im going to come back to this, and start posting again. Most of my posts will be me theorycrafting or debating game mechanics, i think joe might write some reviews, and if i play a new game ill write a review.

More Later
-Rei

Dark Sector (360) Review

Dark Sector starts off to be a deep and involving tale of a man and his flying bladed arm extension of death, sadly though, the storyline turns out to be as deep as the episode of Captain Planet where capn and the gang had to stop them from cutting down the rainforest.

References to prior events riddle the game, almost every single chapter has at least one dark shadow from a previous history between the characters, but these events are never actually explained - at all - and half the time they are never even mentioned again.

The 'Nemesis' enemy, whom is supposed to be one of the main badguys, only appears in the beginning to infect you, and again at almost the end of the game to die in a pathetically easy boss fight. It then turns out that the nemesis was actually this chick that for some reason hayden is protecting, and he gets upset about her death. The player never actually gives a shit about the death of this bitch that only appears like 3 times in the story, because they never explain the connection between her and Hayden. The way the scene was handled leads me to believe that it was originally intended to be a huge blow to the player, but because of missing or intentionally left out storyline elements, this event comes and goes like killing any random grunt.

There was occasional references to something 'setting him up for the disease', but i never actually caught what the fuck they were talking about.. at all. Again it feels like necessary content was intentionally cut, maybe to hasten production time, but the only person paying for it is the player who just feels jipped by the experience.

Concept: A 3rd Person shooter in the style of resident evil 4, light on the storyline and puzzles and heavy on the constant combat.

Graphics: Dark Sector is pretty amazing looking, and the effects on the glaive and the evolution powers are pretty sweet too. But we learned from Assassins Creed that awesome graphics can only carry a game so far.

Sound: Nothing exceptional here, standard bullet noises and clangs of metal. The voiceover isn't all that great either.

Gameplay: The levels are just one gauntlet of guys after another to get to the loading screen for the next area, complete lack of any kind of roaming. The gun customizaion is a joke, i only used like 2 of each kind of gun through the whole game because a bullet to the head kills no matter what, and variety in the gun department was non-existant.

The glaive was pretty cool, Haydens tri-bladed weapon of death that you 'aquire' right after the prologue. 2 or 3 levels into the game you get an ability for the glaive called "Aftertouch" where after throwing the glaive you can manually control it, time slows and control moves to the glaive so that you can curve it around objects or walls into the intended target. This feature is pretty awesome for a couple levels, but when you realize you can go into any fight, find a place where the badguys cant shoot you, and throw the glaive around a corner and kill them all without any danger, it gets kinda easy. I did this practice for pretty much the entire second half of the game without any issue and between this and the pathetic 'bosses' the game is just stupid easy.

The elemental qualities of the glaive; ie: Picking up fire, electricity, or cold onto the glaive, adds a small but distinct amount of situational effectiveness to the glaive. Pressing in the joystick releases an explosion of the element, causing death to any around it, but this is only really useful for clearing out either groups of enemies or enemies behind cover.

The Damage: In the 15 or so hours that this game lasted i managed to squeeze 665 achievement points out of it, the rest were either for playing on 'brutal' difficulty or playing online.

Final Score: I feel that this game deserves a 7.25, there isnt too much to it and what is there feels rather empty. Like an empty box wrapped in bacon, the outsides look delicious but inside there isnt much to it.

My Recommendation: Kinda cool, but meh, really its up to you, non-stop action throughout but don't expect any kind of story.

Viking: Battle for Asgard (360) Review

Yea.. Viking.. I'm not even really sure where to start. This is a game I had heard absolutely nothing about yet i grabbed it anyway. Normally id recommend against this sort of practice but I had to kill time waiting for the GTA:IV release - and vikings are awesome.

This game though, is not awesome.

Basically not at all.




They had a good idea but they fucked it up in the implementation so it turned out to be a sub-par god of war ripoff, even though it wasnt really meant to be as such.

There are some golden moments scattered throughout, the battle scenes are rather interesting, although I believe that some of the other problems do hold you back a bit. Combat is uninspired and repetitive, and it seems like the main focus of the game was the brutality instead of other qualities - like you know, story.

Its pretty much a slasher, but without any broad stroke attacks, all of your attacks save one special attack only hit a single target. So in the aforementioned battle scenes where there is sometimes 2000 enemies in the area and you are fighting a bunch at a time, you have to go after them one at a time leaving you open for assrape from the sides.

I learned a combo a few minutes into the game and used that for pretty much the entire game, special attacks were used only situationally and I only ever used the magic (which just imbues your sword with one of three types of magic) in the battle scenes because your nearby allies also gain the effect, which would often result in the total raping of all enemies in the area. There was only one special attack that would hit multiple enemies, the greatest of the 'combo' line - but the highest level would actually be better if you would STAY ON A SINGLE ENEMY TILL THEY DIED instead of 1 hit and running to another enemy for another single hit.

The magic wasn't a great feature, 3 spells - lightning, ice, and fire: that do what you would expect them to do, lighting does additional shock damage, fire lights them on fire for damage over time, and ice freezes them solid and a 2nd hit shatters them. Since they are all the same cost as far as 'mana' ice was always most used on my playthrough, since with the combo attacks youd basically be shattering guys very quickly after freezing them. In the whole playthrough I only used a magic attack maybe 15 times because of what I see as a huge flaw in the magic system: The inability to turn the spell off. If you got into a fight with say 10 guys and blow your magic and kill them all very quickly, the ENTIRE REST OF THE BAR would burn off and you can't stop it, so if another fight came up where youd need it - but its gone.

Ranged weaponry are a joke and the only reason to use them is for the achievements, they either take too long to use effectively or they are a waste of money to buy them. The firepots which are like grenades get completely lost if you get hit during the huge animation, so using them during a fight is more risky than worth it. Also later in the game the axes just suck too much to use.

Finally I personally do not believe this game was either: A) Playtested at all or B) Playtested enough. I encounted a slew of bugs, ranging from the graphical to environmental to things that directly affect gameplay. Most of them looked like they could be easily fixed or removed, so this leads me to believe there wasn't enough playtesting at all, GG Sega.

Concept: Skarin the viking dies and is reborn by Freya the creepy viking goddess, using hairgel from her bad princess leia hair she gives him some crazy sense of immortality and sends him on a basically idiotic mission to free captured vikings from the forces of Hel (not hell, do you want to get sued?) , another viking goddess who happens to command demon-type things. Also idiotic sidequests.

Graphics: The models arent exactly the most detailed things i had ever seen, but they certainly werent bad - The only decent face in the game was on Skarin, the main character. Random_Vikings all looked exactly the same, and i didnt even notice that there was women in the game til the very end. The environments were very beautiful, well designed areas that efficiently fit alot of different combat 'zones' (ie: different areas to clear) into an overall small map. The detail given to the trees, plants, and waterfalls wouldve been better spent somewhere else, like say.. storyline.

Sounds: There is only like 5 or 6 different voices throughout the entire game, since everyone sounds like a rugged viking you dont really question it. The combat sounds are unoriginal and uninspired, but how many different ways can you slap a sword against a shield, really? None of the bad guys talk, the random_minions, the main evil god and her one single pathetic 'boss' underling talk a couple times, but thats it. The voiceover for the cutscenes between the islands is a guy pretending to be thor, comedic at best.

Gameplay: This is where it hurts the most. As i said before, the combat system isnt meant for a game with huge battles but instead is geared tward single combat. The in game minimap is a joke, its basically only there to guide you tward bags of gold, nothing of any fucking interest appears on the minimap, enemies or landmarks or basically anything other than gold, vendors/people to talk to, bosses/mini-bosses. WHY EVEN HAVE A MINIMAP, you cant even use the thing to gauge which way is north because you cant even fucking see the N on it 95% of the time, you have to hope you can swing your screen at an angle where you can have a very light backdrop and you can see the like 80% transparent N. The dragon support during battles is stupid, you have 3 dragons why do they all hit the same place... are they just flying around the rest of the time? Additionally they added a 'hop over' animation to skarin so that he can move fluidly over objects and up stairs and shit, my favorite being the one where he hops over a waist height wall as soon as you tap it. The drawback of this is that several of the towns are on top of massive cliffs, and said cliffs have.. halfwalls.. blocking people from falling off, they also have alleys with random objects that force you to move 'near' said halfwalls. I think I unintentionally touched a random cliffside halfwall like.. 6 times, and every time it resulted in skarin instantly hopping the wall, though there was no ground on the other side.. and falling to his death. Would it be so hard to add a 'check for landing ground' clause before he hops a wall? seriously?

And heres my favorite part..

Viking Gear Solid: I always assumed that the people who pitch ideas to the board of directors at a company were at least semi-intelligent, and would realise something compltely idiotic before it was released to the general population. But the guy who came into a board room, looked people plainly in the face, pitched a viking slasher game, and then followed it up with "and we'll add stealth elements, similar to metal gear, where you sneak around a city to collect various things" seriously just needs fired. Skarin has arms like fucking tree trunks, hes gotta weigh as much as a VW bug and hes like 50% naked, also hes a fucking VIKING. Why in the goddamn sam hell would anybody even consider adding stealth elements to a viking game is beyond me, the guy walks like a fucking T-rex, his idea of a 'stealth kill' is to cleave a guy in half. Why in the living fuck would you think it a good idea to have this bigass olaf 'sneaking' around AT ALL. Vikings dont fucking sneak, at all, ever - WHY WOULD YOU CONSIDER THIS ASIDE FROM SOME SORT OF PRACTICAL JOKE. In the first sneaking event, on the first island, the first time they even mentioned it, i spent an hour. There is so many fucking ways to get seen and thus end up fighting like 50 dudes by yourself, its a joke.

Final Score: Viking: Battle for Asgard gets a 4.5 for me, the battle scenes are pretty goddamn cool, and the game really isnt long enough to totally ruin the entire experience, but its not completed. The amount of bugs strewn across the countryside, from warping enemies to bad graphical bugs to shitty locking with the targetting almost ruined the entire experience for me, more playtesting would fix this. Graphically not bad but the story just doesnt seem to exist to keep you going, the combat system isnt that good for anything other than small fights. This game desperately needs a re-haul of the HUD, especially the minmap.

The Damage: a Short game, I only spend about 15 hours slashing my way through the lands of midgard, but i achieved 850 Achievement Points.

My Recommandation: Unless you are going for Achivements, pass on this one.

Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core (PSP) Review

The PSP is a fantastic little thing, in addition to porn, you can play games on it. Some of which are kinda good, this is one of them.

Crisis Core is another in the continued exploitation of money out of the Final Fantasy VII franchise that they refer to as the "Compilation of Final Fantasy VII". This one is set years prior to the events of VII, and you play as Zack Fair. For those of you who didn't pay much attention to FFVII, Zack Fair is the guy that Cloud thought he was for most of the game. Where Cloud was never in
SOLDIER, Zack was. Where Cloud never actually got to bone Aeris, Zack hit that shit.

Through the standard exceptionally awesome psp movies, you get to see some fuckin SWEET cutscenes that were probably done by the same people who did Advent Children.

Zack starts off as a less than cool SOLDIER 2nd Class, which is pretty much the equivilent of the guys in the yellow or blue shirts on Star Trek whom just go with Kirk to the planet ENTIRELY TO DIE. Over the course of the game you see Zack rise up to SOLDIER 1st Class and hang out with much cooler people such as but not limited to everyones favorite female looking villain, Sephiroth.

Lets just please the fanboi population right now. Yes - Sephiroth is all over this game like herpes on a whore. Yes - Sephiroth is a boss fight in the 8th chapter "The Nibelheim Incident", Yes - You get to see how the whole shit goes down, again.

Many of the events have of course been seen before in various scenes in FFVII, in addition to the famous 'Nibelheim Flashback" in Kalm after you leave Midgar; You get to see Zack meet Aeris, Zack and Aeris fall in love, blahblah, Zack builds a Flower Cart for Aeris and gives her the idea to sell flowers, Wutai get their asses kicked in a war against Shinra, and uhhh a couple other little details, like the entire score of LOVELESS (that play on the billboard in Midgar).

Crisis Core also introduces some other new characters that havent been in other games: Angeal, who serves as Zacks mentor and superior officer in SOLDIER until all the shit happens. Dr.Hollander; who is behind Project G which was referenced a good amount of times in Dirge of Cerberus. And a new Turk named Cissnei; whom nobody knows dick about except that shes hot, and somehow doesnt die in Crisis Core, but doesnt end up in FFVII or any other later games - though she did appear in that shitty phone game in japan.

The other Character introduced is Genesis, whom first appeared in the hidden ending of Dirge of Cerberus to save Weiss in an underground cave after the credits roll, refering to him as "brother". Genesis being the main antagonist, since Sephiroth disappears from the storyline completely after the nibelheim incident. Genesis discovers that he is infact a result of Jenova Project G, and that his Cells are degrading, leading to his impending death. Project G being the pre-cursor for Project S, and well if you cant figure that one out you are pretty retarded. Genesis is rather key for VII story, since Sephiroth didnt just 'figure it out' and go raid the Shinra Mansion Basement, he was told - by Genesis, and then things go the way they did...

Graphics: Where its just the PSP, the graphics are pretty damn good, not even counting the movies, the movies are basically the same thing as Advent Children. In game graphics are probably better than Dirge of Cerberus, but that game was a hefty bag of shit really. Seeing the events of VII redone with ps2-quality graphics was just enough to give me a semi, but only when I see a true remake will I get a true boner.

Lemme put one of the better movies in here so you guys can see how sex they are.





Sound: This part shines, they got all the voices from Advent Children for the V/O, qualityyyyy. Cloud sounds like a homo because hes totally green, and it shows in his voice, even though its the same guy, Fantastic. The other sounds though are pretty much taken from various versions of FFVII - Even the beeping when you move around in the menus. The game has a more rock and roll soundtrack, including "One-Winged Angel" for the Sephiroth fight. Alot of the music is just remixed tracks from VII, and i noticed that the common combat theme was taken from the Ending Credits of FFVII: Final Order (the anime that never made it stateside).

Gameplay: OK soo.. this is where the game kinda.. loses some points. The combat system is made up of a basic hack and slash game, except when you hit the 'attack' command, zack actually runs to the targetting monster. This resulted in my doing entire fights by just hitting the X button over and over. Instead of experience there is the DMW (Digital Mind Wave), its a fucking Roulette wheel, constantly going in the top left corner of the screen. If 2 of the same face comes up all combat stops and the DMW takes up the entire screen, if 2 of the same number come up, the materia in that slot goes up a level, maxing out at 5. If you get 3 7's, Zack gains a level. If 3 of the same picture come up you do a limit break based on that person or summon. Example: 3 Bahamuts is Megaflare, 3 Sephiroths is Octaslash, 3 Tsengs is an Airstrike from Helicopter. This mgiht sound pretty gay as far as Materia growth, and I assure you - it is 100% homosexual. But upon a little research Zack gains levels pretty much independantly, there is an invisible exp counter and when you go above your Level up requirement the odds of you getting 3 7's is pretty certain.

The other thing I want to mention is that this game is FANTASTIC for Taking a shit, If we had a Taking a Shit meter this would get 5 out of 5. There is a rediculous amount of totally optional missions avaliable from any save point - each taking 3-8 minutes total. So you could pop your ass down to drop the kids off at the pool and do a couple missions easily and enjoyably from the comfort of your throne.

The Damage: Thirty hours, probably couldve done it in 20, i did alot of the side missions, theres a god damn TON of those. I throughly enjoyed it from start to finish.

Final Score: 9 out of 10. It does get a bit repetitive later on, but they give you alot of freedom to stop dicking around any time you want and continue the story to avoid any repetition, and the boss battles are rather easy. My second Playthrough is a New Game+ on Hard and i'm hoping that is a bit more challenging in the boss department. I honestly expected to lose to Sephiroth, but it wasnt even really that close. Overall a good addition to the world of Final Fantasy VII, but this doesn't stall the need for a remake or sequel anymore than another movie would.

Forgot to Mention: Its a prequel, so I cant say 'they left it open for a sequel' but Genesis appears in Dirge of Cerberus which is 2 years after Advent Children. So.... My feeling is that there will be one more game for the Collection of FFVII, and that it'll go back to basics with Cloud. Or it'll be FFVII-2 (hoping for that.)

Lost Odyssey (360) Review

The first thing that caught my eye about this game came long before I even had the disc loaded into the tray, as soon as the box was handed to me a dark sense of forboding came over me as I felt it - like being handed a bag of potatoes, this box was heavy. Upon opening the box my fears became reality as Four Discs came into my field of view. I was in for a long road, and I knew it.

Lost Odyssey is what I consider to be the first good RPG for the 360, sure I haven't played Blue Dragon, but frankly that game looks like shit anyway so who cares.

This game added to my usual thoroughness resulted in the loss of 86.5 hours of my life. Granted about 5.5 hours of it was 'Lost Time' due to a bad incident with the checkpointing system not saving much on disc 4 (God did that piss me off). You dont even notice the time you spend playing, but all those little animations and flavor shit they add in combat really does take up alot of time. Average random fights last about 5 minutes, just due to the amount of time it takes to do animations - of course you dont notice it at the time, largly in part to you staring at Ming Numaras breasts and having to pay attention to the ring system.

On many review sites they rip this game apart because of its unoriginal and bland combat system, sure its basic Final Fantasy 1 - Turn based /w commands and you pick targets for everything. Its unoriginal but does that make it bad? its tried and true - and I saw it as a breath of fresh air, classic enough to be new again.. kinda. Recently all the rpg's that ive played go out of their way to try some sort of original new combat system, in some sort of attempt to push the envelope, but often times these attempts to be new and original backfire and ruin a game. Sure Final Fantasy 12 was a good step in a new direction, but how many bad games are only bad because of chances they take on combat? Eternal Sonata didnt have a bad combat system, but it sure as shit wasnt good. No Risk No Reward might be true, but if it isnt broken why fix it?

The Storyline is believable, makes sense, keeps momentum up throughout and doesn't really disappoint, although there isnt very many twists and turns, no 'hidden twists' at all actually, but it is still pretty good, it isnt fantastic, but this game already lost its chances to get a perfect 10, so..

You play as Kaim Argonar, and they basically dont give you much more than that at the beginning of the game, you are the sole survivor of an amazing catastrophe during a battle (video on that later) and everybody starts asking why, Turns out you actually are a 1000 year old immortal, but you cant remember your lifetime, hence the title "Lost Odyssey"

Over the next couple weeks of your life you regain Kaims memories, meet up with other immortals (who also dont remember anything), and fuck all kinds of shit up. About halfway through the story you get your memories back, the main antagonist is exposed, and you start on a semi-political course to fix the world, blahblahblah, then you kill the dude and you see the credits, and rejoice.

My favorite feature of Lost Odyssey is what they call the "Thousand Years of Dreams", these are actually so good that they even put a link to it on the main menu before you load your game. Over the course of Kaim's 1000 years he had met and experienced alot of things, 1kYoD is a collection of Short written stories that are the lore of the game, the backstory even, and the best part of it is that these stories are usually all really goddamn good. some of them even had me choking up, almost all of them are about death (life for 1k years and see how much death you experience, go for it) and about some sort of general feature of humanity or life lesson.

Graphics: Honestly the graphics are pretty top notch, the walking around the world animations and quality is damn near realism. Another neat feature is having the camera constantly focused on you, so items in the foreground and background are blurry and out of focus until you go to the same distance as them (away from the camera). The in-battle graphics are the same as story or travel, and the smell animations are pretty, i cant fault this game on graphics at all. The movies are just awesome, especially the opening movie (below).





Sound: I never caught any direct problems in the V/O, all the characters are voiced by a person whom matches their look and personality, so A+ there. Other than that, the one-liners on certain skills and spells could use some variations or alternate sayings instead of the same thing over and over. The music sets the tone of the game, and its a fantastic musical score on par with any final fantasy.

Gameplay: "Classic" combat interface with a timing-based ring system attached to the 'attack' command that allows you to do additional damage. (2 rings, one growing and shrinking and you let go of the trigger when it matches the other ring). Like I said before I think the old-fashioned combat system is a relief in times where everyone is trying to do something fresh and new. The status effects and spell-types are standard Final Fantasy, but with different names so they dont get sued. A "Composite Magic" type is something i havent seen before, with hybrid spells "Shadow(ae shadow dmg)+Flara(fire2)=All-Flara(fire that hits all)" So you have to have both of the parent spells before you can use the composite spell.

The skill aquisition system is pretty much stolen from other final fantasy games, Where you get skill points in addition to experience and other people and accessories teach you skills, then your people have those skills but there is only X slots for skills on each person. This sounds ok, but considering that only Immortals can learn skills from others, and that they get (at the end of the game) 30 skill slots - This makes the Mortal characters you can have pretty much fuckin useless in comparison, since they only have MAYBE 12 skills, max. My kaim was utterly immune to magic, and had like 8 different 'chance on getting hit' things that would either; counter, dodge, or guard. in addition to the 9999 hp he had, whereas the 2 'melee' mortals had.. 3k? hp at most and no good defensive skills, and not half the damage output. So by the end of the game you realise that its entirely about the immortals, and the 5 or 6 mortals you get are just there to feed skills to your immortals.

The Damage: I spent fucking EIGHTY SIX hours on this game, and i got 800 Achievement Points. All 1000 of the Achievement points are able to be gotten on a single playthrough, but you have to be terribly thorough (even more than me) - 99 'seeds' are hidden totally randomly throughout the game, and all 99 are required for an achievement for collecting all treasure, and the reward for getting all 99 is an item with a skill the immortals can learn, and if you dont get that you cant get any of the 'all skills' achievements on the 4 immortals, at 20gp each.

Final Score: I give Lost Odyssey a 8.25, its a bit drawn out, and honestly the best part of the game is the dreams, and i dont like text shit really. Kaim is a pretty awesome main character, but some of the situations you get put into are pretty.. dumb, and you can tell it in the lines he says. The story doesnt make any waves and the combat system does hurt sometimes, having immortals fighting eachother in boss fights seems kinda like beating your face into the wall. There was a good chunk of features throughout the game that i noticed werent finished but were too small to warrant more attention. I do think its the first good RPG for the 360, but not for anybody not willing to invest 80 hours

Easyass 1000 Gamerpoints

If you have gamefly or the blockbuster gamerpass, you can get 1000 gamerpoints easy as shit. If you own this game, im sorry.

Game: Avatar the Last Airbender: The Burning Earth
Time: About 5 minutes.

Eternal Sonata (360) Review

Eternal Sonata tries to be something that its not: Good

The story starts following around a complete moron named Polka who happens to be a like 14 year old blonde retard who lives in a fun little redneck town where people sleep with their siblings. Oh and they sell flowers to survive - sweet.

Over the course of the next few boring hours she gets sucked on an adventure with Fredric Chopin. Yea - the 19th centry classical pianist - to figure figure out why the generic version of her floral powder is cheaper than the real stuff and why it isnt taxed. This requires talking to Count Waltz, the totally emo 17 year old ruler of the town of Forte.

Meanwhile Fredric did so much meth that he thinks the entire world is his dream, which in reality it is, and that everything doesnt matter because its in his head. 3 times through my single playthrough of this game Fredric had monologues so long that the xbox controller actually shut off from lack of use.

Anyway, along the course of this idiotic setup for an RPG you come across too fucking many party members who join you, and get roped into a political and spiritual journey to save the world. Imagine that.

Concept: A mushroom adventure in the land of music. Featuring Fredric Chopin and basically enforced history lessons to the backdrop of what seem like slides from a bad powerpoint presentation about the piano and/or the history of europe in the 1830's.

Graphics: I cannot fault the graphic design team, the character design and landscapes are beautiful, some of the special attacks are completely awesome looking - I never got tired of watching several of them. it isnt all that hard to make a 'cartoon' game look good on the 360 but this is one of the better looking ones that Ive seen. Some of the landscapes are just awe-inspiring and pretty much every frame of the game looks like it could be a still from an anime.

Sound: Most of the music is works of the classical composer Fredric Chopin, and as such is great. The music really does a good job of capturing the feel of whatever is happening in the story. Music related minigames are totally homosexual and need removed completely. Also MOST of the voice acting is pretty good, the emo retards and the little kids.. they need to never work again, Polka and Beat seriously need to shut the fuck up - every time the main character talked I wanted to mute the TV and just read the subs.

My biggest problem with the voiceacting was the awkward "due to translation not matching up with animation" pauses between every single line of dialogue. It makes it seem like every single thing they are saying is SO PROFOUND that you need 3-4 seconds to soak it in. Honestly the game would be more interesting if that was the case, and they abandoned storyline completely.

Gameplay: They tried to do a real-time turn based combat system, you have X amount of time to do your actions and it ticks down as you do them. Also the option to change what kind of clock/special moves you have is a nice feature, but you need to do an entire extra dungeon to unlock being able to change that for your 2nd playthrough. The combat system wasnt so bad, I actually started to like it later on but it was not very good because of buggy targetting and lousy camera angles making you miss special attacks.

The complete and total lack of in-game mapping really hurts them, this is a pretty much standard feature in every game you play nowadays. Im not sure why there is no map but it just hurts the player because of bad camera angles and overly maze-like dungeons.

Music based mini-games? wow retarded. I cant read music and you shouldn't punish people like me - thank god for gamefaqs.

This game sets out to fuck you from the get go by only allowing you to get MAYBE 190 or so Achievement points in a single playthrough. Searching everything and trying to find all the hidden stuff is something I normally do. When I realized that I could not get shit for achievements I basically stopped searching completely and just ran from boss to boss. I decided I was tired of continually fighting shit at 22:15 hours, at 25h or so I was done with the game and had gotten into maybe 10 fights.

Like any good RPG there are shops where you can buy things, but the 3rd character you get to join your party comes with a camera where you can take pictures of monsters in fights and sell them at shops. - This gives a frivilous amount of money - after an hour I had more money than I could spend in the entire rest of the game buying 99 of everything I could.

Too many party members, I think theres like.. 11 possible party members, but 3-4 actually kick ass. Some have support roles and others just do dmg, others use magic - and the main character sucks balls. So basically I only used the same 3 characters for 95% of the game because there was no point in using the rest or they were underleveled. Trying to keep all my characters the same level proved fruitless due to overflowing amount of followers the main character has.

Continuity Issues: There is a definate time loop in the storyline, but they dont talk about it AT FUCKING ALL - they mention it and then move on like its totally unimportant. At the end Chopin dies, but then hes alive 2 minutes later talking in a cutscene. Also the ending made basically no fucking sense. I understand every layer and concept in the metal gear solid series, and this game confused the fuck out of me. Not because it was overly complicated, but because it was either total jibberish or completely retarded, im not sure which.

The senseless drivel of a storyline is more often confusing then logistical, and the senseless rambling about life and dreams and what is real from Fredric really just seems thrown in there to add depth to an otherwise idiotic plot. The 'enforced histroy lessons' periodically thrown in about Fredric Chopin seem like some sort of way to force the audience to learn, as skipping one of these results in skipping usually a huge storyline cutscene. These seemed like a great time to go drop a deuce or smoke if you have to, because the one that I did skip resulted in me skipping apparently a huge cutscene, being given a key that I had no fucking clue what it went to and I didnt even know what I was supposed to be doing.

During the credits there was like a 20 minute long speech from all the characters about living your life to its fullest or someshit that sounded like some sort of cult initiation ceremony.

Overall I gave Eternal Sonata a 5 out of 10, a totally par game if you are a little kid and dont want to try to understand what you are doing. The mediocre combat system, fantastic art and good sound doesnt make up for total jibberish and idiocy.

Total damage is 120 Achievement points in about 26 hours.

I do not recommend this game to anyone with an IQ over 90. Unless you are a total Chopin / Classical Piano nut.

Silent Hill: Origins (PSP) Review

Do you feel comfortable in the dark? Well if you get this game you better become pretty damn comfy with it.

Origins brings us to the source of the nightmarish world we have come to know as Silent Hill. By following the main character “Travis Brady” we (supposedly) find how this world was created and why it has been held back until this point. This game also allowed the developers to tie in many elements from the movie “Silent Hill.”

The cut-scenes in the beginning and end of this game are absolutely beautiful. I’m still amazed by the power of the PSP to create such great graphics in a hand-held. The graphics while playing the game however are noticeably worse. Although not horrible, they do remind me of the early PS2 days.

Game play hasn’t changed from the other Silent Hills. Find a weapon, smash, punch or shoot a demon, then run…fast. The dark is where you will be spending most of your time and your trusty flashlight is the only light to guide you through dark hallways, tunnels, and sewers. You will find your self constantly toggling between the “nightmare” world and the “regular” world to finish tasks and solve puzzles. If you’re like me, you’ll be doing a lot of exploring as well. Finding things such as health drinks, weapons, and clues to the storyline.

The storyline feels like a recycled version of the other Silent Hill Games. I was expecting a big “whoa” moment, but never got it. In fact I left the game a bit more confused then when I started. Origins really didn’t answer the questions I had. The only question it did answer was how the “little demon girl” was introduced to Alessa.

The camera angles were an absolute joke. The developers did give the option to center the camera, but it barely ever worked and it certainly didn’t work when a demon was hunting you down. The awkward camera made it so when you entered a new scene and held the joystick while changing scenes, the character would run back to the scene he was just in…what a fucking pain in the ass and waste of time. I did this dance a few times before I realized it was best to not hold the stick while changing scenes.

I only ran into one glitch while playing. At the end of the game, after getting the room 500 key, DON’T go back through the managers office. I took that route 3 times and each time it froze the screen. I could still hear myself turn the flashlight on and off, but the screen was black and the loading symbol stayed on the screen. I’m guessing the reason for this was the triggering of a cut-scene when Travis gets to room 500. So, if you’re not in the right place when you get to room 500, your game will crash.

Replay value was much larger than I had expected. There are more than ten different unlockables, which will supply you with costumes, weapons and accessories for your next trip through the game. Get the moon gauntlets and play around with them a bit, one punch will take out a large demon. You can also get night vision goggles, which are quite helpful in the never-ending dark. The game also offers 3 different endings. But these are just a few of things you can get.

Even though I am a fan of the series I will have to give this game a 6.5 out of 10. I really did enjoy this game, but I think it was my fanboyism that was causing the excitement and not the game. So, if you’re a fan of the series or you are new to it, then this game is worth a solid rent.

Bioshock (360) Review

Bioshock was an experience for me, on a deep down emotional level.

From the moment that the game case touched my hand something deep inside me wanted nothing more than to hate this game.

And so I began my trek through the halls of rapture, searching for reasons to fuel my hatred so I could justify ripping into this game and giving it a terrible score.

I found Nothing.

And i kept trying to invent reasons, ANYTHING I could get my hands on to make the game seem worse to me.

And the only thing that kept coming up was after 4-5 days of playing when the game still was going strong. - its too long.

A pathetic lie just being used to fuel my desire to hate this game.

Now in reality, looking back, I fucking loved it.

This FPS does everything that a fps should do, but the real measure of quality to me is atmosphere. Few FPS since half-life (one) have ever had the atmosphere where i really felt it, And Bioshock does. Where most games fail Bioshock does it right, and it raises the bar to a new standard.

I wanted to hate it so badly, but I found myself coming back every chance I had. It made me feel almost dirty, like an addict sneaking a fix.

Visually perfect, the shadows and the look makes the atmosphere almost thick enough to choke a bitch with. The like 1940's style to everything made Rapture feel like it could really exist somewhere. The models are rich and detailed, the environments are designed for a purpose in rapture, not an arena in a game, and as such provide another level to the atmosphere.

Overall the sound was pretty quality, since storyline is told using casettes found all over rapture you have to assume that the main storyline isnt going to sound like two guys talking over soup cups with a string. The voice actors do a good job conveying the emotions that occur in their lives and as the case may be, their deaths. Guns sound like they should for being 1960's guns, realistic noises for bullets vs random environment when you miss your mark. Random enemies don't repeat the same lame 1 liners constantly, and actually talk to themselves like crazy people should.

The guns and physics were firm, the gameplay side was great. 51? Tonics and like 14? plasmids for some sweet customization options to facilitate a variety of play types. Multiple types of ammunition for each gun, but not enough of a single type of ammo to make you feel comfortable, adding to the atmosphere of survival. Sporatic gun upgrades to allow you to keep using the same weapon against increasingly stronger enemies, environmental kills, inventive traps. Overall just a winner in the gameplay department.

The storyline, although I hated it at first, is fantastic. Subtle hints that later turn into grand perspective changing events that you didn't notice when they happen. A fantastic plot culminating in one of the single most thought provoking events I have ever experienced in a game (Andrew Ryans Office) and a deep (although short) ending.

Despite my earlier feelings about the game, I give Bioshock a 10. If you havent played this game, go get it, now. There is a reason it won game of the year its a goddamn masterpiece of gaming. There are 3-4 events in the course of this game that will stay with me forever, they are that good.

The damage was 910 Achievement Points over 25-30 hours of Gameplay, Long for a FPS but good throughout.

Final Fantasy Tactics: The war of the Lions (PSP) Review

This right here is why I bought a PSP.

I spent -alot- of time playing this game in highschool, -alot- of time. When I saw that they FINALLY remade it for the psp I think I violently deuced in my pants. Also seeing this finally gives hope that they will remake FF7.

For all intents and purposes it is exactly the same game as it was in 1997, the only additions were these kinda cool semi-cell shaded but not really cell shaded, more like pencil shaded in movies that replace some events in the storyline. Also they gayed up the language and replaced the 'normal' talk in tactics 1.0 with like, Shakespere to the fucking extreme. They added two new jobs, The Dark Knight and the Onion Knight, Dark Knight is pretty much the same as Gafgarion was before and Onion knight sucks balls (no abilitys but can equip everything). They added a multiplayer cooperate mode and a vs battle via the ad hoc, but good luck playing it unless some of your friends convinced you to buy a psp to play with them. NOBODY I know locally has a psp (this changed last night, but I doubt hes getting tactics) so I havent even had a chance to try this feature out. They shouldve handled it the same way MGS:Portable Ops works online, just playing online like everything else but using the wireless to do so.

The graphics on the units were sprites so those look the same, the geometry looks like crap because its psx quality, and the animations for the special moves (exception: the new DK skills) look like crap (IE: 1997).

But nobody ever played this for the graphics, they played it for the MASSIVE AMOUNT OF OPTIONS FOR YOUR DUDES. The customization options are still rediculous, new skills in almost all the jobs in addition to totally fucking up the names of the abilities you know and love. Accumulate is now Shout or something equally gay, All the monk names are completely different, etc.

If this was 1997 I would have to give Tactics a 9+, but it isnt. Granted this is for a handheld system I can give you a little as far as graphics, but still.

Final Fantasy Tactics: The war of the Lions manages to garner a 7.75 out of me due to the aging quality of the graphics and the fact that I doubt the multiplayer is 'amazing', in theory I get to try this feature out soon so i might bump the score up, but it wont go up more than half a point, if that. The gameplay is still everything it was back then, and awesome. The in depth story and all its twists and turns still holds up against the best written works ever made.

A Must have for any final fantasy fan, even if you have to get a psp to play it.

Frets on Fire (PC)

If you don't know what Frets on Fire is, and im sure most of you don't, I will explain.

Frets on Fire is an opensource Guitar Hero ripoff, opensource meaning made by people in their spare time and totally free.

If your interested, the website is http://fretsonfire.sourceforge.com/, again totally free game.

I wont rip it too much because I'll give all the credit in the world to guys doing opensource projects.

Basically it works exactly the same as GH does, wammy bar isnt implemented, theres no star power and I don't think you can actually fail songs (no rock meter)

The game 'works', you can infact find songs made by users and play them, and there is a pretty fantastic community at work and a nice plethora of songs avaliable to download - Including all GH 1-3+80's songs and the Rock band songs. After an hour of looking through their forums I had already downloaded some 300 songs, just to test them out.

The bad part is that the game totally lacks any form of polish, it feels barebones even though there is a little bit of meat to it, ugly basic notes sliding down the screen tward the bar and you hit them.

I guess the concept is that you flip over your keyboard and play the F1-F5 keys as frets, and hit enter to strum, but.. fuck that.

Using my handy dandy usb to ps2 adapter and fucking around on the net looking for a joystick to keyboard stroke configuration utility, finding the right drivers for the adapter, and having to change the batteries in my guitar after 20 minutes of trying to figure out why it wouldnt work.. (dur) i finally got my ps2 guitar to work.

This game is pretty much going to stay on my computer forever now, ill update it when updates come out, but i think its a fantastic way to continue practicing your GH skills after you get tired of the songs on GH3.

Frontlines: Fuel of War (360) Review

My woes with this game did not start when I put it into the xbox, oh no.

I went into blockbuster to get Army of Two, they had probably 8 copies, 6 were out. Both of the remaining cases were 'dead cases' where the game is mysteriously missing.

I saw the review for Frontlines along with the Army of Two review in this months GI, so I figured id grab that and review that instead.

Uncomfortably acceptant of my decision I walked out with Frontlines instead of what I had originally intended to get, Went home, and started playing Bioshock, which I had gotten earlier in the same day (Monday).

I Finished Bioshock today at around 8pm, dicked around for about an hour and a half or so, Put in Frontlines and started playing that.

I left to return it at 11 pm.

Graphics: The artists for this game should be given some credits, the environments were realistic, including small objects littering the ground and whatnot. Very believable that it was the places you were at. The characters have great faces, whoever is responsible for that needs to go work at a better game company. The textures and objects all looked really good, the guns looked believable for 2024 guns. If this game were a movie I would actually watch it, but sadly it is a game, and as such it fails.

Gameplay: Where to start, wow. The guns 'feel' pretty solid from what I saw, but looking through the achievements prior to playing (which I really need to stop doing) I laughed when I saw a "Have 50% or above accuracy for half of a mission" achievement - but in reality that REALLY IS AN ACCOMPLISHMENT because the guns are completely fucking inaccurate. Theres a standing/prone/crouching ala call of duty but in this game it pretty much sucks. I don't think you an run out of ammo, at all. The vehicles are boxy and rediculous to control, its like a box with a gun - please steal more ideas from halo, at least they do vehicles correctly. The AI - holy shit. The AI is completely fucking retarded, crouching behind a half wall I panned a scene of like 15 guys shooting at me, and just shot each one in the head in turn down the row without getting hit. BUT THEN in like the next stage, I shot a guy from like a half mile away with a sniper rifle, while hiding, on a fucking mountain, and everybody near him turned and instantly just started actually hitting me, nice realism there. I figure this game was basically made for multiplayer, but I couldnt even stand it long enough to bother connecting to xbox live to try it out. The units in the single player are either super-accurate bots from multi, or totally idiotic 'stand and shoot me' bots. I think the single player was rushed together at the last moment.

Concept: War over oil in like BFE asia against an alliance of russia and china in 2024. Playing a pseudo-realism card on the intro by showing pictures of random presidents knowing this war is coming when oil starts running short. Sadly this turns out to be a Battlefield clone (complete with spawn points and limited respawns (LIVES, IN A GAME THESE DAYS THAT ISNT A SLASHER, HOLY SHIT). Overall a meh concept but semi-believable.

Sound: The sound in the cutscenes and movies was fine, even the VO - but the random radio chatter during missions, which I assume is where most of the storyline comes from was too quiet to be heard unless I slammed my face against the speaker and didn't shoot, hid from enemies, turned off the music, told my wife to stop breathing, turned off my ceiling fans, broke the fan in the xbox, and made the lights in my kitchen stop humming. The other random sounds seemed fine.

Additional Info: The pause screen actually says "Get back in the action!", seriously xtreme dood.

Basically if you have a hankering to play a War game, go get call of duty 4. If you have a desire to play a good war game online, get call of duty 4. If you want to listen to politics involving oil and war you are way better off just turning on MSNBC or CNN and skipping this one.

Overall, Frontlines: Fuel of War earns a 3.75 from me, nothing really remarkable from this one aside from how good it looks. Even the concept is meh, either totally skip this one or go get call of duty 4.

Assassin's Creed (360) Review

Another game I was looking forward to, another letdown.

Graphically amazing, minus the faces, but you dont get really close up enough to see faces unless you really try, faces are rather ps2 looking, everything else is absolutely gorgeous. The faces thing isnt so noticable because you never really get that close to faces from the regular angles of the game.

The bigdrawback to this game is how repetitive it gets, Seriously heres my walthrough of the whole game:

Goto (City)
Hit all High Points
Save all Citizens
Do all investigations
Kill guy.
Repeat 9x, but the 9th time leave town, steal a horse, ride to the place, kill a guantlet of dudes and then the bald guy.
return to base
kill dude.
Watch Credits.

The only storyline parts were during the conversations with the dead after youve assassinated them, talking to your master, or the gayshit in the lab. By the time I was nearing the end of the game I was so tired of doing the same shit over and over I was pretty much ready to say fuckit, the only reason I didnt was I wanted to know how it ended.

Also, its too easy.
Especially at the end, since they keep giving you abilities every time you assassinate, by the end of the game I seriously went around jerusalem and rounded up all the guards and killed them at once without even really trying. Everything is fatal, counterattacks kill, combo timing kills, straight melee attacks kill, throwing knives kill, its pretty fucking rediculous how easy it is to kill guards.

Lack of Unique enemies.
Theres really only 4 types of enemies:
Guards
Guards with Helmets who bark orders (thus being open for a neck stabbing)
Templars
Bosses (but these are just guards with alternate skins)

Kinda crappy storyline: Totally predictable about halfway through the game for Altairs storyline, and Desmonds is just stupid.

oh, lemme hit that real quick. You play the game as this douchebag Desmond, who is locked up in a lab by a bunch of crazy scientists with a device called the Animus. The animus basically lets you read DNA Memories and relive the events therein, saying that all of your ancestors memories are kept in your DNA like a book. So its modern time, and when Desmond jacks into this thing he gets to control Altair. Desmond is pretty homo but Altair is completely badass, but in reality who wants to play a game of a guy playing a game? I thought I put the wrong disc in the xbox till they started in on the DNA memory shit.

DNA Memory is a fantastic option for a story, or at least it was when Hideo Kojima thought of it like 10 years ago for Metal Gear Solid. QQ

Finally, theres no ending. At all.
You get out of the Animus after helping the bad guys find the thing they were looking into your DNA for, and they leave. The credits only roll after you look at a wall in your bedroom with eagleeye, and then you get to wander around the room some more (incase you want to keep playing the game).

They leave the shit open for a sequel in a single email and the fact that you are stuck in the room at the end, they talk about how Memory bleeding happens to people attached to the animus long enough, they lose touch of themselves and start to adapt the memories of their ancestor. The fact that desmond has the same face as Altair leads me to believe a sequel is coming but in the modern times, playing as desmond-altair trying to stop the Templars(Modern) from finding the piece of eden.

And as almost anther example of the repetition of this game, there is 5 voiceactors cast listing in the credits, like just to remind you that it likes doing shit over and over incase you forgot.

This game is very similar to dating a blonde chick who does the same exact thing over and over, such as talking about her dog, or buying shoes. Its great to look at, fun for a few hours, but after that its the same old shit constantly.

My first few hours were spent in total awe of the cool factor of the game, but when I started doing the same events being recycled constantly, it started to get old fast. I can understand why alot of people would give this game high ratings, it is a "good" game, but from a gameplay perspective it started to feel like a job and not a trek through the life of an assassin in 1191. Maybe if you just stick to the storyline objectives and do not go for all the extra stuff, sure the game might be 5 hours long - but it would be pretty awesome.

I give Assassins Creed a 8.5, and most of that is the graphics and the combat system, coolness of character (Altair), the story isnt original but it isnt terrible, the fighting gets old fast but the fighting system is like a perfect blend of game and movie and is always fun to watch, and the repetitive objectives fuck the whole shebang.

The damage was 865 achievement points and like 25 hours, I didnt bother getting any of the 400 someodd flags randomly scattered or going for the templars, but I got everything else - Fuck spending hours hunting flags for 20 achievement points, 400 flags for 80 points doesnt do it for me sorry.

The it really wouldnt take much for me to like it more, add another maybe 15 different ways to get investigations done: Breaking and entering, kidnappings, Arson(donno how that'd work), Add a currency and make the sidequests give cash, bribe people for information, steal for cash, blahblah. Purchase training for new attacks, purchase upgrades and new weapons. currency would actually remove the repitition from guard fights because it would provide a way to get cash instead of an inconvenience. Just adding more variety to the game would move it from an 8.5 to a 9.5 for me, seriously - The fact that 3 hours into the game I had felt as though I had already completed everything it had to offer just totally ruined it for me. Also: Make the flag collection bullshit accomplish something other than a silly amount of gamerpoints for a retarded amount of time - make it actually give you something.

Mass Effect (360) Review

I will be writing another review for Mass Effect including the Downloadable Content when I get it.

Let me start this off by saying that Bioware Shits Gold.

I don't think that the people at bioware know how to make a bad game, everything i've played from them lately has been some sort of amazing experience.

Furthermore I went into Mass Effect knowing that its the first game of a trilogy.

The real meat and potatoes of Mass Effect is the conversation system. Options pop up on the screen before the point where you say what you picked, but your choices are not directly what you choose. The way I figure it is you pick what you are thinking, and that determines what is said - which leads to some pretty awesome dialogue (especially in the case of 'evil' or 'threat' conversation choices).

The game takes place in like 2150, where earth found some crazyass ruins on mars and found some technology that allows you to manipulate the mass of objects thus allowing faster than light travel and creating some pretty cool other shit (guns with infinate ammo, more on that later). The term they use for this fantastic advanced technology (which by the way, everybody else in the universe already had, lolol gimp earth.) is the name of the game. ooooh clever.

You play as Commander (John or Jane) Shepard of the Human Systems Alliance. In Char creation you have tons of options for facial features (ala Oblivion, but without looking gay), Then you get to choose one of three possible backgrounds (growing up) and then one of three military career options (how youve acted so far in your career). These dont really determine shit other than conversational tidbits throughout the game, and some shitty little sidequest they throw in about halfway through.

You have like 8 possible classes, even though its all just a listing of 3 pureclasses and the hybrids between them. Solider (all guns), Biotic (psyonics with a different name, oooh.) and Tech (hacking and overloading and shit). How I played the game through I shouldve picked Soldier, because i didnt use the tech abilities for dick.

Its like RPG Halo, with conversations.

Controls exactly like halo, except third person and you can hug walls for cover (and pop out to shoot), you can pause time like in KOTOR, but only to pick special abilities to use, And there is a strong resemblance to KOTOR in the Good/Bad choices thing, very lightside-Darkside, only without lightsabres or making your guy look undead for being mean to random idiots.

The soundtrack is pretty good, alot of it was repeating in the games later hours, but it never really bothered me. The sounds never bothered me either, and the V/O was good throughout the game.

The overall storyline was not too terribly hard to follow, infact later in it became quite predictable, except a twist at the end that I never saw coming (Fight with Saren and the Result of the Conversation choice before it).

Mapping was fantastic in the storyline areas, the only flaw I saw was the shitty re-used generic buildings everywhere else in the game. It seems every single building outside of a populated storyline centric planet was a default cookie cutter facility.

The biggest drawback I noticed was the Mako, the Tank-like vehicle you use for all your planetary exploration needs. Vehicles in FPS's are fun if you throw them in occasionally and thats it, but the mako in mass effect is like, seriously 1/3rd of the total time played. I wouldve either cut this down or made the mako sections more like the storyline sections that involve the mako, a guantlet with your objective at the end, not endless driving across a barren planet looking for random bits of ore and occasional storyline shit.

My other big complaint is that I spent my entire game macking it to the human chick, just to have this easy blue whore show up later in the game, and she was the one i ended up fucking due to a single choice in a conversation. This pissed me off pretty good but i had already saved it after that point so there was no going back.

I'm very interested in seeing how the second mass effect picks up from the first, I assume it will read your savegame and use the choices you picked in the first one (who dies at the end, etc) and continue the story with that. the drawback there is what if you want to see the storyline with the gay dude living? well then you have to play the first one through again, sorry.
Hopefully there will be a questionnare type thing at char select where you can choose different choices for the first game, to effect the second games story.

The guys at Bioware put alot of thought into the backstory, there is seriously hours and hours of reading in the codex menu. Which just explains stupid shit like, how guns can have infinate ammo.. or why this one race hates this other race. There is such a deep wealth of knowledge behind it theres no wonder people have been jumping into it like its the new starwars.

Overall I give mass effect a 9 out of 10, Fantastic Game - but not perfect.

I seldom give out 10's though.

Total Damage? 520 Gamerpoints on my first playthrough, not farming any achievements. 50 hours (give or take)

Dead Rising (360) Review

Yes, this is by no means a new game. But the reviews come as I play the games, so cry about it.

Dead Rising was one of those games that just sounds so awesome, and you see the movies and the pictures and its just so fucking cool that you need to play it.

Me and one of the guys at work both got 360's about the same time, and the same night we both went and got dead rising without even mentioning it to eachother beforehand.

We both came in the next day and declared it fucking horrible.

The premise is fantastic, Free roam in a mall and anything is a weapon against zombies - How cool is that?

The execution is actually terrible:

Survivor AI is so retarded they make shortbus kids seem like scholars, I cant tell you how often I had 4-5 survivors following me and keeping up while one found a way to get stuck on his own, but it sure as shit felt like every fucking time.

The "Fantastic Assortment of Weapons" that you are first presented with shortly turns into a list of like 3 things that are good and 2 dozen someodd pieces of shit that you dont want in your inventory. You quickly learn where the good items spawn and you basically spend the entire time going from one niche to the next hoping your dumbfuck survivors dont die while avoiding ...

The Cult, Talk about fucking retardedness, somehow these idiots in raincoats can get away with not being eaten by zombies by wearing a cheezy green mask, to add to further frustration they randomly gas you and lock you up - totally randomly - which then puts you into an impossible situation where you have to kill like 25 of them with a weapon that doesnt last long enough to kill 25 of them, all while any one of them could gas you and repeat said event. Furthermore these fantastic additions to the game totally destroy any retarded survivors (see above) that happen to get stuck near them, almost instantly killing them.

the Psychopaths (bosses), For some reason every fat person within the town ended up going insane at the appearance of the zombies, thus creating your 'bosses' throughout the game. A Clown with 2 chainsaws who is upset that the 'people in the mall no longer laugh at him', a Store owner who just goes apeshit and affixes every sharp instrument he can find to a shopping cart to defend his store? the crazy owner of the gunshop? the bulldyke cop? wow. D- for stupid bosses.

Between the bosses and the dumb story, the overly repetitive gameplay bites off more than it can chew - Killing zombies gets seriously tiring after the 4th hour of the same exact thing.

I seriously gave this game a good shot, I expected alot from it and I was terribly let down. Ultimately I ended up getting home, turning this on, watching somebody die stupidly getting pissed off and returning it.

But overall I give this tarnish on capcoms record a 4 out of 10. If you like killing zombies its a sweet rental, but dont buy this piece of shit.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (PC) Review

Getting this was kind of a no brainer, everybody was singing its praises up and down and it was a nominee for game of the year last year.

I had never even tried any of the other Call of Duty games, seriously fuck world war 2. I'm so fucking tired of world war 2 games I almost wish there was another world war so people had new historical games to make.

You really have to look at it like its 2 different games, Single and Multi

The single player is pretty awesome, You know how in most shooters for 80% of the time you are running around with some sort of standard fps gun shooting shit to progress through to the next area. And the other 20% of the time is spent doing cool shit - flying helicopters or calling in airstrikes or someshit that isnt what you do for the rest of it? ALL of Cod4 is the special shit.

Bombing from a circling gunship, Sniping a guy with a .50 cal from like 2 miles away, airstrikes, helicopter support, defending a position. An entire stage sneaking around in a guille suit, running out of a sinking tanker. etc
All cool shit.

CoD4 is like, a 10 hour string of awesome shit linked together with firefights that although standard for shooters, are way more awesome than the same thing in like Halo or Halflife

Id give COD4 Single a 10, easily. The only flaw was that it was a bit short, But then again i can't remember an fps that was more than 10 hours long. The game was beautiful, superb graphics with a decently intuitive AI , Expansive weapon selection and some just awe inspiring scenes (especially in the beginning) make this one of the better games i've played in awhile.

The Multi Player is without a doubt the best online FPS out right now, the main problem I have with it is the Lack of Play Types (theres like.. 4), and the huge grind to get every possible unlockable. 100 kills with a gun doesnt seem like much, but 100 headshots is - Especially considering the lethality of bullets and the fact that people are always moving. For some reason my brain tells me to take the easiest avaliable shot - which more often than not is the chest.

Shitty gun avaliability from the go, having to unlock even the decent guns means that you have to use total pieces of shit for the first several hours online. Same system with the 'talents', some of the talents are just useless, while the goodones (aka Doubletap) are unlocked way later in your online career. This pretty much guarentees that noobs suck balls. I cant tell you how many times i dropped whatever gun i had to pick up somebody elses totally maxed out p90 and go on a killing spree - while having trouble even hitting people with say the AK.

The overabundance of grenades also blows. I totally hate having to dodge or throwback a grenade every 3 fucking seconds. Talents like Martyrdom and the one to carry more grenades just add to this bullshittery, Its a noobs way of trying to get kills. I got all the grenade achievements in like 3 minutes on the tiny shipment map with martyrdom, total crap.

Anyway, those problems dont ruin the game - by all means its a fantastic game, these problems just marr the finish a little bit. A Ferrari with some bird shit on it is still a ferrari.

I give COD4 Multiplayer a 9, Due only to the problems stated above. Still a good score, fuck you if you disagree.