Gamerscore Chronicles

2010-08-23T18:58:00.001-04:00

I am in the middle of spending a month at my internet free cottage, so i decided to pick up red dead redemption to pass the time. Its another game by rockstar, which means 30+ hours of single player game play, and alot of free roaming and stuff to do when your finnished. Like GTA4 red dead is made from the euphoria engine, which means the both play very similarly. The atmosphere in Red Dead is very good. I dont think its quite as good as Grand Theft Autos liberty city, but it really capture the feel of the old west. Alot of the characters are more likeable, including protagonist (or antagonist) John Marstan who you play throughout the game. The story is about you (John Marstan) trying to hunt down your former gang mates after the government captures your family, and takes them ransom untill you kill off all of the gang. It has alot of tweaks to make the game more friends with the sprawling land scape, the biggest being the ability to fast travel.

Another thing that makes the game stand out is dead eye. Its bullet time with a twist. It lets you mark targets on enemys in bullet time, then when you finnish your character will shoot all the spots you marked in quick suceccion. This can be really fun to use, and your meter recharges fast enough that you can use it often.

Another thing that makes red dead different then gta is the fame and honor system. Everytime you complete certain objective you get fame and honor. Fame is gained by doing anything that people notcie, weather its saving a damsel in distress, or killing a town full of people. But honor is gained by doing the right thing and lost by doing the wrong thing. As you gain and lose honor.

Torchlight

2010-03-18T15:07:00.001-04:00

Not everything that I do is related to xbox. Infact I don't spend much time on it besides playing borderlands. I have recently been playing more games on my computer, and one of the more fun, cheap games is torchlight.

It's on steam for $19.99, if you don't use steam you cannot get this game as it is only sold through steam.

Torchlight is very simmilar diablo, a very successfully action rpg made by Blizzard. In my opinion one of the greatest games around even today. They are finnially working on diablo 3 but it still looks like a year or so away so torchlight makes a great appitizer.

Saying torchlight is simmilar to diablo isn't the right word. Torchlight is a diablo clone, there have been many unseccesfull diablo clones but this one for the most part does things right. It dosent stray far from the diablo formula like so many others do. Everything done from waypoints, town portals and identity scrolls make an appetance in torchlight.

It also adds some new features that improve the way things are played. Alowing you to remove jems from armour and weapon when you get new gear (destorying what was in it), a stash the is comunal for all of you chars. They also improved the spell/ability casting alowing you to map spells to your number bar. Potions also stack so you only need to map one button for mana potions and one for health. Another neat feature is your pet. When you create your char you can choose between a dog and a cat. Your pet aids you in combat, but more importantly can hold extra equipment and then run back to town to sell junk for you, keeping the action going.

Being a diablo player I like to use the two button aproach. Use one spell (generaly basic attack) to left mouse button, and another spell to the right. You then map spells to the f keys to switch out what spell is on right click. Then you can use the mouse wheel to scroll through spells. In torchlight you can do most of that except for using the mouse wheel. Instead you map a secondary spell on your right click and press tab to swap them out. I good idea but it felt odd.

Another slight negative is the level design. It gets quite confusing and the many quests you get don't point you in any sort of direction. When you leave the game it forgets the map you explored so you can end up going backwards.

In terms of story you choose one of the characters, your classic beefy warrior, a scrony male alchemist which fills your caster type, and a woman who only likes to armour her private areas, she plays like an archer/rogue. You arive at a town called torchlight (the oddly enough houses a giant torch in the middle) which happens to have a catacombs that's a hundred levels deep filled with demons (sound fimilliar?). Your goal is to save this mining town going all the way down, (no spoilers here)

One of the huge downsides to the game is the total lack of multiplayer. Multiplayer is one of the things that made diablo so amazing and still keeps it's fan base today. The lack of multiplayer cuts replay value, but it also cuts gold spammer bots jumping into your games!

The game has a nice art style featuring cell shaded characters and envioroments that really works well with the game. For fans of diablo and point and click RPGs, torchlight is a great game to tide you over for your wait of diablo 3. For $20 you can't go wrong even with the lack of multiplayer you will be hacking and slashing through waves of badies for quite a while!!

For The Imperium

2010-03-05T11:48:00.002-04:00

A few days ago I purchased Dawn of War2 through Steam. Although it is a computer game and not for xbox, it is run using Games for windows, which means that you log in to your gamer tag and thus it has achievements, gamerscore and all that fun stuff! For those of you who dont know what Dawn of War it, its an RTS game, based on the Warhammer 40,000 universe. (Warhammer 40k is a game played with miniatures) The first dawn of war was a simple RTS with a very refined resource system that wasn't too complicated and let you amass a huge force in very little time. The game was very successful and ended up having 3 expansions.

Well the developer [Relic] is finished with Dawn of War 1 and has created the sequel. The games campaign has you playing as a Space Marine Force Commander. Newly promoted you need to prove yourself by saving your Chapter, and defeating the Tyranid swarm in the sector. On top of the force commander you have access to 4 other squads. Although you can only bring three to a mission one must stay behind to protect the ship.

The game works very different compared to most RTS games. There is no base building. No resource gathering. You start a mission being drop podded in with your 4 squads. You can capture relays, chapels and armory's to reinforce your squads when you lose members. The game plays a lot more like an Action RPG then an RTS. As your squads kill things in battle, they gain experience and level up. A majority of missions also end with a boss fight in which you have to kill one super strong unit. These end up being very entertaining but can also kill you easily in which you will have to go through the whole mission again to get to the end. You also gain wargear at the end of missions as well as random drops from certain units. In between missions, you spend your time leveling up your squads, giving them skill points in Health, Shooting, Combat and Energy, as well as outfitting them with gear you have collected.

Overall though not traditional I found it to be very entertaining. But where the real fun comes in is in Co-op. When you go to start a campaign you invite a friend to your game and you can start fresh or continue another campaign you have going with your friend. You both choose two units you want to take and you get control of those two. The other players units with appear a black colour as opposed to the stranded red so you can tell them apart. The game instantly becomes more enjoyable, coming up with better tactics to crush your opponents. It is also easier to micro manage the abilities of two squads as opposed to four. The only downside is that the host keeps all of the progress and wargear for his campaign. As well there is no campaign matchmaking, its invite only.

The online (and single player) skirmishes work very differently. You start out with a building, a commander and a squad of basic infantry. You need to capture requisition nodes for money, and power generators for power. At your base you can spawn units, as well as upgrade your base to get access to more units. Your goal of the game is to capture control points. There are three on a map and the more you have the more your opponents score widdles away. If someones score hits zero the other team wins. You get access to three more races in skirmish, the stupid Orks, the intelligent, advanced Eldar. As well as the Xeno-alien race Tyranids. Skirmishes are much different from the campaign and more inline with Standard RTS's.

The last game mode is called Last Stand. It works like Gears of Wars Horde mode, or Halo ODST's Firefight. You start as either Eldar, Ork or Spacemarine. You are in an enclosed area in which waves of enemies come to bring you down. As you level up (you only get awarded the experience at the end of the game) You will get a new piece of wargear to equip that will make you more powerful. Your heroes will always stay leveled, although a level 11 Ork Mekboy can play with a level 1 space marine Commander. The ork will just have more abilities, the opponents will still be the same o kill. Its a fun game type but is only really fun the first couple of times you play it, as in most games you make it to wave at then die.

All in all Dawn of War two is an ambitious game that gets a lot of things right. It turns the RTS genre on its head, and it makes for a much more action oriented game in which you dont spend hours building up defenses to your base. Although hardcore RTS fans might not like the simplicity of the campaign, the online skirmishes will be sure to please. This game will not only please RTS fans, but also fans of games like Diablo and Torchlight will enjoy the action RPG element of the campaign.

2009-02-23T21:46:00.001-04:00

Lost Planet 2

2009-02-23T21:12:00.001-04:00

Lost Planet2 just got anounced today by capcom via inside xbox and xbla. It showed off a trailer for the game had a cool on rails looking moment on a boat with helicopters exploding all around. Then it showed some gameplay of a squad of guys running and shooting through a jungle. That's where it lost me. Yes, Lost Planet the game where the whole time you had to collect and store heat because the planet was so cold. Now there running through jungles and beaches. What is the cool inovative thing now? Collecting and storing cold? It reminded me of Far Cry 2 how it had nothing to do with the first game. But then I remembered what a good game it still was! It showed some really cool action sequence with you squad mates. They acctually seemed smart. It showed off the grapple hook the first game was famous for. It seemed like a pretty basic shooter with some really good graphics. Then it showed off the an epic boss that capcom is famous for. Then is was a Q and A. It explained that the planet was hot now because 10 years passed and it went in to global warming. It sounds kind of cheesey but who knows how it will play out.

Halo What??

2009-02-13T23:04:00.001-04:00

So when I first booted up the Halo Wars demo it was a really strange feeling. Seeing Ensemble Studios At the begining of halo game was quite strange. The menu looked quite simmilar to Halo3. That's where the simmilarities end. The demo starts out with a tutorial and shows off there control scheme. They actually did an amazing job that I this is almost as good as a mouse and keyboard. It uses the right analog stick as a main selector. The one strange thing is moving attaking and selecting with "x" after so many console rts's use the a button.

I think that they really captured all of the halo elements of the units. Warthogs are the best example. They fish tale around corners take jumps off mounds of dirt yelling Whooo Hooo! As well ever unit has special abilities. Very fitting the warthogs special ability was ramming. Drive up to a pack of grunts and see them go flying. That's the other this I noticed. When you kill some grunts they don't all die the same way. Some fall over and some explode into the air from exploding fusion coils.

Another unique thing are the bases. Instead of just throwing baracs all over the place. It works with a main control building with several ports surrounding it. Each port can contain a certain building such as a barrac's or vehicle depot. Both the UNCS and Covonent bases work the same.

From what I can tell from the demo they did an amazing job and mastered the console rts controls and made a game that will have a killer campaign With a varying degree of difficulties easy normal heroic and legendary. I am very excited for when this game hits store shelves!!

Halo Wars Demo

2009-02-03T19:08:00.001-04:00

Just letting you know that halo wars ensemble studios Real Time stragey game based in the halo universe is going live on febuary 5th at 2:00 pm pacific time!!

FEAR2 Demo

2009-02-03T18:28:00.001-04:00

The FEAR2 demo just hit the XBL Market place. I have downloaded it played it and let me tell you it is not for the squeemish. I had the lights off the sound off and I was screaming constanly the whole way through. It is a mixture of both jump out at you and mess with your head scary. Alma that scary little girl the the first FEAR was famous for is even more creepy. But what I really love is the mixture of both horror and action. It will have you crap your pants when you see alma walk on the ceiling and cause lockers to explode right in front of you. Then you'll me thrown into the amazing combat and you will be too scared to realize what is going on untill the enimies have knoced over tables and gotten into cover. Luckly you can do the same but knocking them over is as far as you will get. There is no cover system so it is still twitch based. The graphics are amazing and that is an understatment. I have not seen such a good looking 360 game ever! It somewhat reminds me of killzone 2 for PS3. The demo also featured a mech walking segment which was great fun! The descripsion says that the full game will feature 2 player co op. I think that might take allot of the scare away but it would still be fun for a second play-through.
All in all FEAR2 was an amazingly fun and scary game and is looking very promising.

Saints Row2

2009-02-03T15:22:00.001-04:00

I was playing a new character with a friend and I saved it over my other character that had almost beat the game. Quite a pain and I will make my character again just something to be aware of!!

Call of Duty 5-Ray Gun Glitch

2009-01-12T19:33:00.003-04:00

SR2 vs GTA IV

2008-11-20T19:13:00.008-04:00

I know that lots of people were trying to stay away from the whole "you can't compare GTA to SR" but I decided that since I loved both the games a lot I would dive right in.
Lets start of with GTA. In the newest installment of Rock*'s controversial series they decided to take the realism path as so many games are these days. It got praise for doing so. In how many games can you just call up and play pool with your friend. It was like real life except you went to your job offering with a shotgun and pushed your girlfriend of the Empire State Building. But it was a little bothersome. I am in the middle of a drive loaded up with ammo armor and your headed to go rob a bank and you friend calls. If you turn him down he wont like you because you just blew him off. But if you say yes there goes 10 minutes of you driving being the law abiding citizen you are to go bowling!! Another thing is your girlfriend. Yea its kind of cool being able to log onto a computer sending someone a message over an online dating system but when it comes down to it its nothing more than taking your friends out. But GTA makes up for it in the story. Its amazing to see the story progress. Especially following Niko. He is an Immigrant from Siberia who has no talent other than death. His cousin promised him a mansion in America with all the girls he could ever want. He ended up with a ratty apartment with a cousin who is wanted due to his illegal gambling. Watching him build up and pick up the pieces is extraordinary. Another thing that is extraordinary is the voice acting. I can just imagine the hours and hours that went into it. But enough of GTA and on to SR2. Lemme tell you SR2 is certainly something. It might not have jaw dropping graphics and it might not be on the edge of technology but what it doesn't have in power it sure has in fun. You can do anything imaginable. Rob a store, go streaking, parachute out of a UFO you name it. Another thing that SR2 is good at is customization. You can completely create your character. Everything from nose shape to make up to weight the choice is yours. As well you can completely customize your gang. Their clothing their taunts their cloths and their graffiti. And one of the many houses you can buy, all customizable. It gives you the sense that it is your town. Saints Row does a good job with that. As you progress through the game and you take out more gangs you take over their hoods. As you take over more hoods you get more money every day. Go to your house and pick up the earnings. As well you can buy the shops in your hoods to make some extra dough. But Saints Row's strong suit is the multi player. You can go through the whole campaign with a friend. Thats right the whole story is either system link or Xbox Live co-op. Although its not as evolving as GTA it is still great fun. Everything you can do solo you can do in co op. Unlike in GTA's Free Roam. You cant do any missions or any side activities. I really don't think there is a winner. They are so different from each other I think there is room for both of them on the market. If you wanna be gangster struggling to make a living through pure disgusting crime then GTA is the game for you. If you just wanna blow sh*t up and have fun doing it then SR2 is defiantly for you!

The Choices....

2008-06-12T16:36:00.003-04:00

The Call of Duty 4 Variety Map Pack came out for 800 ms points or $10. It is the first map pack to come out for the game and it was a good start. All of the new maps were made by fans who created the maps on pc. The first of the new maps is China Town. It is your basic China town set at night time. There are sculptures, rooftops and windows (although no fake designer clothing). It is a close quarters map so sniping is very hard. The second map is Kill House. It is based off of the training level so there are lots of wall studs and terrorist cut outs. Its a fun map to play in private matches but almost ever time you play there it turns into a stab fest. As well you can only play on it in play lists that require you to be a higher level. The third map in the pack is broadcast. It is based of of the T.V level in campaign mode with a few tweaks to make it more balanced for multi player. The one thing I have to say about this map is there are tons of pointless cordoors that are dead ends. The last map (and my favorite) Creek. It is another original map. There are to camps to hills and on creek right across the middle. Although the map is not symmetrical. There are underground caves in which firefights often break out and the two hills which are perfect for sniping. This map is great for ground war because the map works great for domination and team death match and is pretty large. Overall I think these maps are great for players of Call of Duty 4 and I highly recommend them to any one who plays the game online!

Xbox LIve...Boring??

2008-06-11T19:37:00.004-04:00

Have you ever gone on Xbox Live and see that most of your friends are playing some game you don't own. You just log off in self pity because now your to attached to playing with friends that playing single player is out of the question. Well this has been happening for about 3 months for me now and its rather depressing. The first thing I do when I log on to XBL is check my friends list all I see is GTA IV, GTA IV, GTA IV. But of course promises are meant to be broken so of course I am the one person who cant get the game. I guess it's violent or something and its going to cause me to go on a masacre rampage while hoped up on drugs shooting at people in my school *sarcasm* because thats how into my games I am. Its not like its that big of a deal just usually people play a game for a few months and changes games. This game has been played for months with no break while I play....Forza or something. I dunno playing Halo with annoying 8 year olds is fun to :P

NInja Gaiden 2 Demo Impresions

2008-06-10T20:23:00.002-04:00

When I booted up the demo ready for some crazy massacre somewhere in ancient Japan. Instead I get a cut scene with skyscrapers and floating cars. This left me puzzled for a while. Where did this transition come from? And at first it was very awkward. Just the thought of it seemed strange to me. But it was a great choice. It left an impression on you. And ninjas in the future kick some serious ass!

But as far as the game goes not all that much has changed from the core game play other than making it a hell of allot easier. And I have to say I didn't really like that all too much. In the old Ninja Gaiden it was hard as hell now just put on the claws and hit x as fast as you can and nothing ever hurts you. But in the full version you can amp up the difficulty to make it more like the first. And you can through on the syth or staff to make things a bit more challenging.

Another thing that has changed his the graphics (of course) and the sheer brutality. You can amputate your opponents leg with the claws and then watch Ryu Hayabusa do two round house kicks with the claws on his feet to watch their head fly off brilliantly.

But it is not much of a sequel just more of the same old. But trust me that isn't a bad thing with the new improvements.

My First Video Ever....Period

2008-06-03T20:11:00.003-04:00

I was messing around with a friend playing game for game for game as he recorded with a digital camera that takes 31 second videos! The sniping and G36C and MP5 kills were mine (lilgrim13) and the AK-47 kills my friends (xo Squigle xo) The song is money in the bank buy young buck. Its nothing special but it was really fun making!! Hope you enjoy!!

Time for a poll!!

2008-03-27T18:54:00.001-04:00

My dad thinks that 30 min. to an hour of xbox is allot of time to play every day. Just comment your answer!!!

YAY :D

2008-03-27T15:31:00.003-04:00

The heroic map pack is free. Now it will take me 10 months to get the MS points for the lengendary map pack. They are making a remake of Sidewinder and Lockout (yay). The lockout one (the amazingest one) is called blackout so its in the dark. I just thought you needed to know that. The legndary map pack comes out april 15th. But who cares go download the new maps if you havent already (well I havent but I also cant but you can!!) So have fun while I read a book :(

A Slight Delay

2008-03-27T15:25:00.000-04:00

There is going to be a huge delay in stuff written seeing that I involentaraly cant play xbox anymore so I will write when I can but by the time it is up here it will be old news....

Rainbow Six Vegas 2 Whats the Deal??

2008-03-24T13:40:00.003-04:00

Well it seems Ubisoft real likes to take amazing games and 1-up them and thats just what the did for Vegas2. On the outside nothing has really changed other than an extra layer of polish and some new locales. But if you see all the technical things that have improved you will see that this is a step for the better. First thing is the introduction of a sprint button. This makes moving from place to place a lot quicker and will save your but from grenades and turrets. The second thing they did is A.C.E.S. don't tell me what it stands for but it is kind of simmilar to the challenges in Call of Duty 4. There are three cattagories Marksman, C.Q.B (close quater stuff) and Assult. For eash one there is a few things you can do with diffrent ammounts of reward. For example in Marksman getting a head shot is +1 to your marksman. Shooting a terrorrist or enemy from a long distance is plus three. After you get enough in one catagorey you will unlock guns and get XP boosts. But there are only 20 levels so if you grind by yourselv in T-hunts you will get them up pretty quick. They also added respans in terrorrist hunts which is much needed and the amount of respans go on the set difficulty. Aswelll you can set player matches to be joinable so you dont have to wait 20 minutes for the match to end you can just jump in and play. In story mode there are two great additions. The first is the excelent voice command for your squad. When you say infiltrate they know what you say compared to Vegas 1 ("Go" "Holding Posision" "No GO" "Following".) The second is in story mode if you host a public or private co-op story match you play like in normal story with your squad but if you get stck you can invite a friend to help you. They just jump right in and help you. And player one keeps the squad and the story stays the same (no loss of dialouge.) But there are some problems too. For one the game dosent look amazing. And it does suffer some framerate slow downs. But overall it is really fun and you can play it for hours. If you liked Vegas one your sure to love this next mission for the Rainbow Squad.

Going One Going Twice Sold To The Man In The Lazy Boy

2008-03-03T16:52:00.002-04:00

I havent gotten to far into all the things you can do in Forza 2. Infact I havent even played one online match I have been so cought up with the single player career mode. But looking at forums of all these cars with amazing paint jobs (that I couldn't do.....EVER) they are always saying they will put it up for auction. So I decided to go check it out see what kind of cars I can get for 100k. Man I can get Halo cars GoW cars Soucth Park cars. If it exists in real life you can find it on a car in Forza 2. Although alot of them are just remakes you can still get it for cheap. Why not buy a redbull Porche rather than a more expensive silver one. Seeing that you can just change the paint job. Another thing I like is the abbility to lock your paint job so people can't save your design and put it out on 30 cars making 25k profit every car. If you want a car I suggest looking on the auction first.......you can get some great deals!!

FINNALY New DLC for PGR4

2008-02-15T17:14:00.004-04:00

Love was in the air on Valantines when Bizzare realesed 2 new items downloadable from the Xbox live marketplace. The first on is free and includes two new gamtypes and one new car. The other one has the same two gametypes and several new cars and bikes. Seeing that I have no microsoft points (because if I did it would go to the new Halo maps) I will give you my impresions on the free pack. The two new gametypes are Tourist and Cat and Mouse. Tourist is a timed basicly free roam around the city with other players. The winner is the player with the most Kudos. This is my biggest problem with this new gametype. Everyone wants to win so ussualy instead of having fun just driving around players just do donuts to rack up points. This ruins the game for me seeing the point is to just have fun and drive around with friends. The second gametype cat and mouse I found a great addition to PGR4. It splits you into teams one player from each team is the mouse (a G class car) the rest of the teams or the cats (A class cars). The goal of the mouse is to get the certain amount of lap before the other one. The goal of the Cats is to protect your mouse and smash the other teams mouse to make it spin out and such. This game is best played in a very small map so if your a cat you can catch up to the mice very quickly. The problem I have with this is it dosen auto assign the mouse. So you maight have a team that want to be all cats or if you have more than one people that want to be mice. This can sotimes make the lobby wait very long. Other than that it is a good variation from the basic street racing. The new car you get is the Pegout Flux. I don't like this car at all. It is an E class car so it is slow. But it has horrible acceleration and really band handaling. Ontop of al that it is electric so it makes no noise so you dont get a good feeling when you drive it. But I have to say it is a very cool looking car (see picture). Infront of the passenger seat it hosts an xbox 360 (although I have no idea where the t.v is). The car is mainly for looks and spices up the E catagory and its free so I dont think anyone will mind an extra car. This is a great pack that PGR fans are sure to love.

Fronlines Multiplayer Low Down

2008-02-13T19:21:00.002-04:00

Well the Frontlines: Fuel of War MP Demo was just realeased on the xbox live market place this week and man all I can say is this is my dream game. It supports 32 players online. It mixes the basic weapon set changes like Call of Duty seiries with 4 roles you can choose. With all the options team play works out amazingly well. I'll give you an example. There is a friendly sniper by you looking for enemys. You can hide behind cover a realease a Recon Drone (a remote controled heli) to mark enemys for the sniper. The sniper can kill these target giving him the abbility to call in a cluster bomb attack and he uses it on the enemys caping the objective. So then a tank roles up. Someone with emp tech can disable it while somone with a rocket launcher blows it up. Now the enemy is making a push. A feild commander can lay down a greanade machine gut turret and lay waste to the approaching enemy. Team play is the KEY to victory. The way the game works is there is a frontline and your team will have two objectives they need to do. If they complete them the frotline moves up. Your goal is to push the fronline to a certain point and you will win the game. This game has the most amazing sniping on 360 yet. It is very much like battlefeild 2 for pc. There is a fog about 215m away from your character. And there are leads in affect. You can also piolt planes and helicopter and sky dive out to get you to high places to give you an edge sniping. This ended up being great for me seeing that I snipe for my clan. The way the communication work is through forming squads. Puch the d-pad up form a squad and you can invite 4 people from your team to communicate. I can see why they did this but they should have upped squad size to 5 or 6. The only problems I have ran into was with the parachute and ladders. Twise I have gotten stuck from langing funny on a pipe or ladder. I had to wait out the rest of the game both times because it would not let me redeploy. Luckly there where only 2 mins or so left in each game when this happened. The second problem is geting up ladders. You make it all the way to the top of an oil tower only to do the upey downey and fall to your death. What i mean is you kind of lag up and down the ladder when you get to the top because they are ones you exit off the side so it takes time to master getting off the ladder. Othere than that it is a great game and I can't wait untill Feb. 25th when this game is set to realease. You can find this demo on the marketplace right now!

The One Ring to RULE THEM ALL!!!

2007-09-19T18:09:00.000-04:00

Well sadly as all things do, my 360 just passed away. After freezing during the Call of Duty 4 beta I rebooted into a attack and Defend in Rainbow 6 Veags. It froze one more time and then the horrifiying sight of the 3 red rings apeared on my 360. I was filled with shock realize what I was loosing. 4 weeks to 2 months without a 360 the pain was too hard to bear. I let out a desperate scream just knowing with one ring comes another. And in just 9 days the Halo ring was waiting there to mock me a lagh at me as I sat there doing nothing.

Last Time I Checked There Was Only One

2007-08-30T20:37:00.001-04:00

The Oblivion-esque RPG Two Worlds just hit shelves August 29th. It is an exploration RPG with lots of side quests and backstory like oblivion mixing with the Good/Evil choices that will change the story and outcome of your character like Fable. One thing that Oblivion didn't have was multiplayer. Two Worlds features awesome multiplayer both co-op and pvp with up to 8 players over Xbox live. If you are a fan of RPGs you will probably enjoy Two Worlds.

Fowllowing in the Footsteps

2007-08-29T09:45:00.000-04:00

The Call of Duty series has finnally strayed away from World War II and moved on to current day war. As many see this as somthing great (No more WWII games yes) it will now just lead to allot of Modern tactical shooters. That said Call of Duty 4 looks amazing. It has amazing graphics all new weopons but so far the biggest thing is the multiplayer. Call of Duty is now offering the creation of custom classes where you can choose from weopons, explosives and perks. Perks are like special abbilaties. A few of them are giving you twice the rate of fire, When you die you drop a live grenade and being able to give your bullets more power to go through walls and celings. It still offers premade classes if you are two lazy to make your own. Call of Duty is looking like the Battlefield series. Battlefield started out with Battlefield 1942 a WWII game much like Call of Duty 1-3, Battlefield 2, a mordern day game much like Call of Duty 4 and then Battlefield 2142 which is futureristic and this might aswell be a Call of Duty further down the line. The Battlefield series also has classes to choose from and vehicles. So although this is probably by chance it would be cool if further down the line Call of Duty went futureistic. Call of Duty 4's release is Nov. 5th. You can also follow this link to watch some of the new pers in action http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PO9UMSE2DjU

Before Halo We Ran

2007-08-28T20:15:00.000-04:00

All of the computers in my house are macs and as far as I know always have been. So when I was growing up there were only a hand full of computer games. Among them (and the most played one) is the Marathon series. This was in short a mac DOOM. But marathon was a more complicated shooter with the ability to look around and having tasks other that kill everyone and make it to the exit. This series as you probably know is made by Bungie the creators of the Halo trilogy. The second entry in the Marathon series was just put up on marketplace for 800 points (or $10). When I first started there were childhood memories around every corner, and with the new remake it plays and looks better than ever. It is still very confusing witch can lead to allot of wandering around. Marathon: Durandal also supports 8 player online as well as split-screen on both co-op and versus. You can bring 4 friends and play online as well. Playing it makes you notice all kinds of things that are in Halo like sentinels. As well as maps and guns. Its is an awesome experience and defiantly worth it for a mere $10. Hope to see you online!!

Mr. Bubbles

2007-08-27T19:32:00.000-04:00

Well the long wait is over and BioShock hit shelfs August 21st. It is a very deep single player game about an under water city named Rapture. The game has stunning visuals and a very interesting story with things that you can think about and take your own way. For example at the very begining when you enter a light house (Where you enter Rapture) there is a red banner that says "No Gods or Kings only Men". You will find out later more on what that means. Aswell scattered through the game are audio diarys that you find and listen to that give you interesting little bits of backstory. But you could go through the whole game ignoring the story and treating as a regular FPS. Another neat thing about BioShock is plasmids. As you go throug the game you can find and buy plasmids. Plasmids are in short, powers. Take incenerate, it isn't a fire ball that does 2-5 damage. It simply lights mothing on fire. There are also amazing phisics and reactions. If you light somone on fire that want to find water to put the fire out. They run through oil on the ground igniting 2 other people and they all jump in the water. Then you switch to lighting shock and zap the water and now there are 1000 volts running through the water. Another compelling feature is the 7 ending you can get. Throughout the game there are these girls called little sisters that contain Adam. (Adam is used to buy plasmids) You need to go up to them and either harvest the Adam (rusulting in thier death) or rescue the little sisster (get less Adam but save the girl). Depending on what you do with them changes the ending. The only thing about little sisters is that they are protected by big dadies. (Or as the little sisters call them, Mr. Bubbles) Big Daddies are gaint things in diving suits that are very hard to take down. BioShock is a great game for anyonne who wants a good FPS or an emersive story but its not for somone who buys a game for online.

Watch out Mr. Bubbles is just around the conner!!

The Little Game No One Cares About

2007-08-25T18:18:00.000-04:00

Well I know this is waaaayyy late but there is a little game that goes by the name of Halo3. Well there was a public beta that let people play multiplayer. It is by far the best halo yet. It mixes the elements from halo that were missing in halo2 well still keeping the frantic twich based multiplayer from Halo2. It takes some time to get used to the slightly altered controles. There are moments like "yes I just got the bubble shield and ohh I just wasted it trying to reload". Aside from that the graphics are not amazing (mind you this is a beta). The new deployables are cool but most of them are no more than a gimmick. The new needler is beter but what kind of kick ass spartin wants to run around shooting pink needles (uhh ohh kids here comes the candy man). They added a dual wieldable brute spicker which is a better version of the SMG so now there is no reason to keep the SMG in the game. As far as maps go you have Vallhalla which is a green grassy Blood Gulch with two bases. Its just as fun as BG with extra fun thrown in using the man cannon. The next is High Ground. An Asymetrical attack and Deffend map set in a dessert which is my personal favorite. And Finnally there is Snowbound and snowy wateland with covanent gopher holes. The one thing I didn't like is to talk you need to press the d-pad unlike Gears of War. Taking your hand of the thumbstick is never a good move. But with the care Bungie takes Halo 3 will be the best one yet. Now the only problem is the wait!

You Just Got Krill-ified

2007-06-03T15:22:00.000-04:00

As you probably know 4 new maps just dropeed on marketplace for 800 microsoft points or $10. This map pack includes Subway, Bullet Marsh, Garden and Process. All I can say is WOW these maps make Gears. First off Subway. It is a great map that is great for a small Warzone. It is relativly small and is basiclly an old subway station. One team starts above ground and decends down a staircase into a butiful looking old subway station. The two teams clash already picking up some new weapons for an exiting deathmatch. It is a bit small though so the games end a bit too soon. But it is stil better then Raven Down!! The second map is Process. All I can say is, how did this map not get put into the origanal game? The map is an old Imulsion plant like the one you saw near the end of the story. There is nothing interactive but it is still just a good map. It dosen't do alot that is special but it still looks amazing and when this map comes up in somone eles queue a smile will run across your face. The third map is garden. It is a simmilar area to where you ran into the seconed berserker. The layout is completely different but the one main factor that makes it different is the poisonus gas in the main chamber. You can turn it off by hitting a switch but it only stays off for a little while. There are some good weapons placed inside the main chamber but you can still go around not needing to turn the swtich off. This map is a good map and has some good braging right possibilites with the main chamber. Your friend might not be carful enough and be coughing up blood. The 4th and the best map in all of Gears Bullet Marsh. It is a buttiful looking Asymetrical map that takes place in a dark swamp. First it just looks amazing. But even better wherever a good weapon is located there is a light above. If you shoot and destroy the main power generator these lights will turn off. Leaving the krill some nice food to eat. The lights will turn back on in about 30-60 seconds. And the krill only downs your opponet (or teammate) so you will need to fire an extra few shoot for the kill. It is the new gridlock come November when all these maps become free!!

Dr. Phills at the End of the Rainbow

2007-05-13T09:54:00.000-04:00

The Rainbow Six Players Pack: Red Edition just came out and the verdict is......it rocks.

The pack comes with some new maps and some very nice remakes of levels like Bordertown and Killhouse. It also packs in a couple of new modes: Conquest and Assassination. Conuest is like the generic Battlefeild 2 game. You need to stand near a radar to capture it. This is a good break from the old Rainbow Six game types but the real fun is in assassination. Assassination is like attack and defend with people. One of the players on the defending team is randomly selected as the V.I.P, a character who only has a gloc 18 and who highly resembles Dr. Phill. The attacking team is where the fun really begins. Think of yourself as an assassan and you are orderd to kill Dr. Phill. You know it sounds cool. With all the games I have played there are no respawns so this is real like.

Watch your back Phill

Confirmation

2007-02-26T21:19:00.000-04:00

The final verdict is now in. I just got the full version of Crackdown that came with the Halo3 beta. But microsoft might be screwing us all. If you read the Halo 3 beta inside the game they will relase it when they want and take it off everyones console when they want. This may mean they ralase it for one day then take it away from everyone. But the beta aside there are a few things that are a bit annoying. The first is getting into a co-op game. They tried for a loose you can jump in play for a bit then jum out of the game. But when your looking to play co-op half the time all it says is "This player is playing single player and has denied your request". But I don't blame them. I said yes once and I takes you out of the game puts you in a menu that players rarley show up on.

But I give Crackdown a 8.9 out of 10

Co-op has Never Been Better

2007-02-21T16:30:00.000-04:00

Crackdown has just been released and well the burdden has been lifted Crackdown is a fun game so even if you only plan to buy Crackdown for the Halo 3 beta you also get a good game.

Crackdown is decent in single player but where Crackdown really shines is in it's multiplayer. It is basicly the first sandbox game where you can leave your friends screen. You can play and only see the other player once. But the real fun begins when you start increasing your skill and doing things like climbing the agencey building. The skills work much like oblivion, if I shoot bad guys with my gun I get firearm points. If I shoot cops with a gun the skill goes down. The only skill that is a bit different is agillity. You can jump around quite high when you max your agi. so how might one go about doing this? Well they have these little orbs untop of buildings that if you collect your agi. goes up. The only down side is if you play with somone with beter skills then you it wont be much fun for you so this game is best played with a friend.

If you dont like doing missions you will surley find somthing fun to do like race your friend up the agencey building (the tallest building in the game) but once you get up there you will find only one orb. But none the less then you can both jump of the agencey building and see the instant death well you laugh your head off.

The only talking is some guy that gives you tips through an earphone you character is whearing. This gets annoying pretty fast like when your in a race with your friend you keep running civillians over and the voice tells you to stop then they send a huge police hit squad which will probably kill you. but since this is the only diolouge (some exceptions) there wont be swearing.
(this is for the Crackdown demo)

I Would've Beaten You if I Had a Keyboard and Mouse

2007-02-20T17:30:00.000-04:00

Anyone who has a friend who games on pc's have probably heard the expretion i would've beaten you if I had keyboard and mouse when you play 360 with them. But rest ashured now you can see who really has more gaming skill. With the recent launch of Windows Vista people are fighting to get there hands on a copy. But with the amount of prople who game on a pc you knew they would do somthing different. Along with making there games look more like console games with the Windows Vista they have done somthing amazing. They have there games cross platform. "What does that mean??" you may ask. Well that means that you can play your pc friend using your 360. They even have Vista Live which gets some people up in arms. That means you have to pay just like on an xbox to play there normally free internet game. You get a gamertag and the works. But in upcoming games like Shadow Run the question may be answered. Would your friend of been beter with a keyboard and mouse.

RANDOM: Missing Intellegents

2007-01-15T18:17:00.001-04:00

The first RANDOM of the gamerscore chronicles. I was playing Vegas with a friend and some guy joined. There were some terrorists underground so my friend told him to come underground and help him. He said is underground upstairs while he was climbing up a ladder while saying "While I dont know this map while it could be up stairs" LOL

Age and Playing Styles

2007-01-14T20:41:00.000-04:00

I play alot of rainbow six vegas now and I was recently playing some co-op with my dad. Being much older he was not quite as good. (I pwnd him 49 kills to 9 in one co-op match) But it was because we took on the game very differently. I usaually just charge up and blow the crap out of things while my dad is more sit back and pick em' off. This might be tied into age. My dad looks at it this way, "We're like the S.W.A.T we only have one chance while the terrorists have lots of guys so its there job to rush us." I think this way of game play might be related to age. Older people are less argessive and competetive were as teenagers are always competetive. Also we have a lack of patiance making us have a get er' done atutude. It all depends on the map and sercomstances. Somtimes my dad can beat me because all I do is die.

Cheaters! Players? Cheaters!

2007-01-13T10:30:00.000-04:00

I recently got the game Rainbow six Vegas and they did somthing innovative in their multiplayer that was good and bad. As you played more games you got experience for doing certain things and as you ranked up you would get new guns, armour, colours of camo and things to change your appearance. But the problem was that you got a bunch of experince for staying in the game for as long as posible (according to the timelimit) then people got the bright idea to sit in a game with a friend overnight put a 15 seconds in between each game and then you go up a bunch of ranks. Obviously Ubisoft caught on and would put anyone back to starting ranks if they were just sitting there. But somone invented the elastic band so the thumbstick was jammed moving. If you play fair it takes forever to get to the highest rank so all these people have sweet guns that are hard to compete with.

The other problem with this is you get experience for all of the wrong reasons. If you are escorting intel you should be awarded for doing it quickly but it is the complete opposite. This makes for waiting in games for 20 min. instead of 2 min.

But there are some good things. You can completely customise your player. If you have an xbox vision camera you can put your face on your player. But you are the only one who can see it. (other people can in co-op games but it takes a long time to load on their xbox.) Otherwise it was a very wise move bringing rainbow six back near the top of the Clancy's games

Easy Achievements

2006-12-15T08:17:00.000-04:00

Somtimes game companies do really weird things. The most recent thing I saw that amazed me were some of the achievments my friends were getting. Some examples of easy achievments include getting a first down and clicking a thumbstick in any menu (madden 06) This was starting to get annoying because my friends were getting more gamerscore then I. Like 150 gamerscore for scoring over 100 points in a basketball game. I played all through gears of war on all three difficulty levels but I wasn't getting a ton of gamerscore. But I don't complain because achievments are to make you feel accomplished (well more just bragging rights) but none of these do n e thing so to all game publishers stop putting in simple achievments. It takes the fun out of playing games. If you base the way you play games on achievments you have some boring work ahead of you!!