9. Gears of War 2 (360) - really enjoyed it. Campaign kept things interesting and I ended up playing through it in just a few longer sessions.
Printable View
9. Gears of War 2 (360) - really enjoyed it. Campaign kept things interesting and I ended up playing through it in just a few longer sessions.
#11) Sideway: New York. The review just went up on the front page, but the short version is that it starts clever and then never evolves into anything else.
James
52. Gears of War 3
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...earsofWar3.png
Beat it on Hardcore difficulty in Cooperative play through all Acts. Far less of a roller-coaster ride than 2, but that's fine. Exceeding the levels of ridiculousness in 2 might have been a bit overboard and the focus was to make 3 more centric on grudges and stories being more personal than a civilization fighting one (two) massive oppositions. It looks a lot grainier and discolored than Gears 2, with a lot of deserted earthcolor/beige/white/brown areas but that goes with the context that everything is fricking dying, so I guess that's also cool.
I like how they kept the comedic value of Cole Train's strong one-liners (much like the rest of the cast), but he sure does come off as smarter and more of a leader in this episode. Really loved the banter between the really expansive cast, the Hammerburst is way more powerful this time around, frankly the game itself seems to be a dip easier. But I think that's more the fact you have 4 characters at all times and this being the "crescendo" they probably knocked down the difficulty to appeal to more people.
Gotta say, the sub-achievements in this game make me want to drop everything else. Heck maybe even replay the old games. The "meta" of these games are so fun. Too bad I am terrible online and get my butt [and everything else] eviscerated by the Sawed Off Shotgun. Yikes.
53. Castlevania: Lords of Shadow
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...dsofShadow.png
Beat 80% on Hard and then stopped caring and pulled the game up to Easy just to get it over with. Um...kinda trite! Kind of hated it. Some sceneries were nice and the few Cornell and Cronqvist references were fine, but pretty much everything else sucked shit. I get that it's God of War inspired in combat, but their combat is way more responsive and the list of moves, though often borrowing animations from earlier combos, at least feel like newer moves that serve a purpose, unlike this game where AoE attacks are virtually useless, even against lesser foes like Mandragoras who still take two or three swipes of a heavy spike-chained whip to get them down.
There's some balancing and pacing issues, too, with the Colossi inspired bosses trying to shake you off way too often, which really makes what should be a 6 minute fight into a pretty boring 20 minute "hold R2 to Grip" session.
It isn't good, it's a crappy attempt to make an epic (that said, the music feels so flat). I understand this is a new attempt at creating something with the Castlevania brand, but even Castlevania 64 had a stronger sense of horror than this game. I don't get how people swear this game as some fantastic romp. The endings were terrible and were really unecessary, as if they had one writer for the game who left just before planning the final fight and some new guy came along and scrapped everything with some weird modern-day nonsense. Blech.
19) Rage (PC version) Normal mode
Having several types of ammo for certain weapons (and being able to engineer special items) is a good thing. Even the lowly, last-resort pistol becomes more useful since the monocular can be used for a makeshift scope- especially for midrange sniping where it's not necessary to blow through sniper rifle ammo. The crossbow is one of the more fun weapons to use once you get the electric, dynamite, and mind control arrows. Steer a MC'ed enemy close to some of his allies and use him as a walking grenade.
On the bad side, the defibrillator isn't truly necessary and can be an all too easy get out of death free card at times. If enemies drop their guns, you cannot take them- but robbing the corpses does make up for that a bit, sometimes giving you ammo. You can even try breaking into ATMs to get a few extra bucks.
This is a bit closer to what Shadowrun should have been more like, only minus the hacking and NPC allies fighting alongside you. The post-apocalyptic setting has a nice twist- it results from a serious asteroid hit instead of a nuke war. The total length is about comparable to Half-Life 2.
Rage does have a couple of loose ends. Later on, the Authority will have Redstone's office barricaded and you'll never see him again. There's no endboss- after your mission at Capital Prime is done, you get a brief ending cinema of a satellite sending signals to bring other Arks up out of the ground, then you see credits. That's it? One more thing: Don't mess with the Authority Bridge too soon if you'd like to finish all the races. Once you've attacked that, the speedway gets shut down.
The Force Unleashed II (360)
Surprisingly short game, I should have run through it on Hard since normal was like walking through a field of crash test dummies. It's a fun game but very average in every way. Jedi powers are always fun (throwing people off cliffs never gets old) but the game does nothing new. The quality of the visuals changes in almost every scene, animation is usually solid but there is some terrible texture work all over the place. And the screen tearing! Ugh. People have those terrible zombie eyes and the CG cutscenes are really average for a Lucas Arts project. Worth a rental at most.
#37
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...l_Coverart.png
I hadn't played through this one in years, and I'm on a Saturn kick so I wanted to give it a whirl. What an awesome game this is. It's still some of the most beautiful 2D graphics on the Saturn, and many of the backgrounds are just spectacular. Sega really should bring this property back, so long as it's kept 2D.
No they shouldn't because you know they won't. Or if they do, it'll be some flash bullshit 2d.
So they've just made this gorgeous hand-drawn game, and their first instinct was to hire someone's 12yo son to make the cover?
My copy was missing the front cover so I never saw it before. Thank god.
Sega of America is FAMOUS for crappy box art. This is actually one of the better ones, lol.
ShirenDS.jpg anyone? No, really, don't. We've all seen it.