Revolution isn’t your typical Civilization game. For starters, it not on the PC…at all. A version of it is available for the iPad, but I would hesitate to even call the iPad a computer. Civ Rev, is only available on consoles, mainly Xbox 360 and Ps3. Its the first console Civ game since the port of Civ 2 to the original Playstation. Unlike the aforementioned port though Civ Rev was built from the ground up for consoles, and it shows.

The player takes the role of the leader of a Civilization and must build it nurture it, and if you’re good, it will prosper. Anyone that has played any game in the series knows this. Many of the features and micro-management layers from the PC games have been stripped and the game concepts are laid out very clearly throughout. Obviously Sid Meier and his team are reaching out to the non-PC and non-strategy crowd with Revolution.

All actions are controlled with the standard controller and menus are simple enough to be easily navigated. Managing unit movement, city status and production, foreign affairs and scientific research have literally never been easier. The entire interface is intuitive and the button functions are clearly laid out on screen. It is very clear that ease of use and playability was a main focus during development. Many of the mainstays of a past civ games are missing with the most obvious one being an overhead map view.

There are 4 different ways to win your game. Economic (earn money), Cultural (make artsy crap), Scientific (the ever-popular space race), and Domination (Kill, Kill, Kill) victories are your options with Scientific being the easiest and Domination being the hardest. Your advisers keep you up to date as to where you stand on each goal regularly and nearly all things built in cities specifically target a certain types of victory. The easier the difficulty the more hand holding the advisers do.

With five different difficulty levels to play, the player can gradually increase the challenge brought upon them. The choice of Civilizations to command is deep and most of the technologies and units in the PC games, seamlessly make the transition to console. The visual characters themselves have always been extravagant, but characters like Napoleon, Catherine II, Cleopatra and Abraham Lincoln are almost too over the top. The foreign, economic military and science advisers, appear on screen too much. So much so that the characters are often seen pushing each other away to get screen time. The shenanigans of the visual cast are cute but get old pretty quickly. Luckily with a button press most of them can be skipped.

What can’t be skipped are the 5-15 sec long battle sequences. These are repetitive, and can slow the pace of a game down. Other than the mind numbing battle sequences, the game has a great pace and alot of character. It feels just like a Civ game and plays like 85% of a Civ game. I have to applaud Meier’s team for making a strong transition.

However there are a few things that could be improved. With a many different high resolution polygonal characters fighting for sometimes mere seconds of screen time, the frame-rate can get choppy, really choppy. Multiple times, I thought the game had stopped when a screen took 5 or more secs to load. A more robust options menu, would have been nice. I would have loved to turn off alot of the visual flare and focus on what was happening on the map. I really don’t need the Economic adviser to tell me to build the World Bank (to score an economic victory), every single turn. That too gets annoying, (especially when I am trying to get a scientific victory). Also, the basic game seems a bit too short to be a civ game.

As a kid, I remember my Civ 2 games literally taking months to complete. I would sink 60-80 hours into a game trying to kill the frenchys, or build a space ship, or successfully connect all of my cities via railroad, but I was able to knock out a full Civ Rev game in about 4-5 sittings of just a few hours. Sure, I expect this from scenarios that change aspects of the game, but the vanilla campaign should be epic in length. Who knows, maybe I’m just really good. What bothered me is that a few of my games ended without anyone winning. The games are only a set number of turns, with the game ending after the last one. Sure the game itself picked a winner, but I was given victories without meeting the criteria stated in the descriptions of the 4 types of victories. The game was done playing with me before I was done playing with it.

On the flip side, the scenarios are fun and a great way to knock out a quick and easy game of Civ in 30 minutes or less. If you are good enough, you can play and win the Lightning Round scenario in less than 10 minutes. Bite-size Civ is VERY intriguing.

If you have never played a Civ game and want to know what all the fuss is about, pick up Civilization Revolution, it will ease you into real time strategy nicely and prime you for the big boy PC/Mac versions of the game. If you are a huge Civ fan and have spent time with all of them in the series, you may want to wait for Civilization 5 as Revolution may not be deep enough for you.

Verdict: Dumbed Down, Yet Not Stupid

On paper, Dark Void is amazing. Conceptually its an amalgamation of numerous beloved gaming and sci-fi ideas. It is simultaneously set in an alternate history and an alternate dimension. It has alien-like flying saucers, robots, a Jet Pack and friggin’ science legend Nikola Tesla. Part action adventure, part shooter, part Steam Punk, Dark Void looks like a delightful romp in nerd-land, and in some aspects it succeeds.

What’s good about Dark Void…the setting, story, characters and art-style. Airtight obviously spent alot of time fleshing out the back end of the Dark Void universe and created a story that fits the unique setting like a glove. The sad part is that outside of that, most of Dark Void falls flat on its ass…er rocket pack.

You play as Nathan Drake Will, a generic white dude, voiced by the most prolific voice actor in gaming Nolan North (Nathan Drake, The Prince of Persia, Desmond Miles). Nothing is too special about Will, but he does end up in a Jesus/Neo-like position towards the end, which makes his character a bit more interesting. Will and his former love interest are conveniently flying through the Bermuda Triangle when their plane crashes on an Uncharted Undiscovered island in the Atlantic ocean. It quickly becomes apparent that they are no longer on earth and in fact have been transported to another plane of existence called the “The Void”. I hear its dark there… I don’t want to spoil the story because there is so much wrong with this game that needs to be talked about.

For a game that prides itself on Jetpack gameplay, there is very little variety to the jetpack levels. The flight control feels good, but outside of a few mission specific tasks, the Jetpack is only used for dogfight-like battles with UFOs. You can hijack the UFOs, but that quickly turns into a monotonous quick-time event that is in no way necessary. Also, Will gets full access to the pack way too late in the game, but that is more of a comment on the length of the game and the volume and placement of enemies.

Nearly every enemy encounter, goes on for just a tad bit too long. Rather than feeling like an accomplishment, most of the battles on foot are laden with the thought of “Geez, I gotta kill more of these dudes?” On a quick run through the game can probably be finished in about 5-6 hours with most of that being Gears-style 3rd person shooting. The shooting mechanics aren’t bad, but the enemies take way too many rounds, especially if you haven’t upgraded the gun you are using. I found myself emptying multiple machine guns clips into certain enemies to take them out and with many of the robots being the shape of famished Calista Flockhart and bounce around like a ping-pong balls, landing clean headshots is terribly frustrating.

I quickly realized that the best way to take out the baddies is to just Rambo up to them with guns blazing and meleeing every single one of them. This worked well in almost all situations. Crowds of 7 or more enemies had to be whittled down first, but the remaining few were best taken down hand to hand.

A novel part of the game that got alot of attention before release was Dark Void’s vertical combat. Trust me, its not as compelling as it sounds. Basically, instead of standing behind chest high walls, Will shoots enemies from platforms above and below him, using the platform he is standing on as his “chest high wall”. It actually makes the idea of a cover-based shooter easier since you don’t have to worry about the moving around part as much. Luckily its not tedious and is a welcome break in the action.

I can’t help but think that the developer Airtight is simply stuck in the past. Airtight is made up of a core team of people who worked on the Xbox game Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge. I haven’t played it but apparently it was great. Had Dark Void been released on the original Xbox in 2003 it would have been ground breaking and possibly amazing, but games just aren’t made like Dark Void anymore. The game design is too simple and nothing is terribly deep. My suggestion is that Airtight Games spend some money and send a large team to the game developers conference next year. They are obviously a talented team that seems to have lost their footing. While they are there they can learn how to properly implement achievements.

Games For Windows is Microsoft’s platform for PC release standardization. Games for Windows Live is a Live (a la Xbox Live) enabled version of this format. GFWL games have Achievement support that feeds directly into your existing Xbox Live account. Dark Void didn’t ship with GFWL support. All disc based copies of the game still don’t have Live support, but a few months ago Dark Void popped up on the GFWL download store with Live support effectively giving the game achievements. The problem is that they simply don’t work right.

As I played through the game I earned all of the story related achievements, but many of them never unlocked on my actual Live profile. So, according to my gamer score I finished select levels through the entire campaign and as evident on the Giant Bomb achievement tracker for the game that has happened to numerous other players. A google search for the achievement glitch brings up a pretty extensive thread on the Games For Windows Live forum. The game obviously needs a patch, but nothing has been announced, and players are very doubtful that it will ever happen.

Dark Void had alot of potential, but despite multiple development delays it still feels miles from finished. I reasonably enjoyed my play-through and if you are looking for a quick 700 achievement points on the 360 or a nice chunk of trophies on the PS3, its worth the 6 bucks plus shipping. However, if you are expecting something close to the level of quality typically found is Capcom games, you need to look elsewhere.

Verdict: A Plane Wreck

I found, despite desperately not wanting to, a lot wrong with the beloved title both objectively and subjectively.  It does some things well, but the 94 it holds on Metacritic was kind of shocking after playing through the entire campaign. I will spare you the rundown of the story since I wouldn’t dream of giving away the ending to a story that’s barely intelligible in the first place.  It follows all of the boiler plate rules for a sci-fi shooter.  Everything from the character design to vehicles to plot and settings reek of B-quality sci-fi game stench.  Nothing in the lore is really explained nor is interesting.  The story is told in the style of “if it shoots at you, shoot back” and the macho gang of characters might as well be WWE wrestlers in costume.

Speaking of character design, Gears has a real problem with all the characters looking the same from a far.  About a dozen times during the game I was taken out by what I thought was my partner only to find out it was an enemy.  Everything, short of a few small throwaway enemies, has the same build (the build of the Thing from The Fantastic Four).  I get the feeling that all of the characters sat on the design table a bit too long and could have used a bit of scaling back.

The dialog sounds much like something you hear on a middle school playground with the swears sounding too forced and the script not being clever enough to be considered mature.  These characters might as well be talking with their penises.  When the story plays out in the end, I really wasn’t sure what I had just accomplished.  What I’m really trying to say is that the narrative is laughable and that it is only compounded by the ridiculousness of the characters.  The enemies have even less personality and the final boss you fight has a name that isn’t given to you until right before the fight, nor are you informed of the importance of the character you are killing, nor that it’s the final freaking boss.

This brings me to length.  Gears of War is five chapters long.  That’s it, only five chapters.  Each one can be completes in about 45 minutes if you haul ass.  That puts the length of your single player experience at 3-4 hours, give or take, considering your skill level.  Sure, you can go back and play through on co-op and on a higher difficulty level, but what it comes down to is five chapters.  Maybe Epic though that if they make the game super hard, they don’t have to make it super long.

Speaking of Hard, yeah Gears is hard.  Usually I can hang in pretty well on the normal setting of games, but apparently Gears’ normal setting is actually its casual (or easiest setting).  I was getting my ass handed to me very quickly on Hardcore, partially due to your character only being able take like 3-5 shots before you go down and partially due to the clumsy control scheme.  Being a third person shooter whose camera and control scheme is modeled after Resident Evil 4, doesn’t really have any benefits here.  About half way through, it became very apparent that the only reason the game is 3^rd person, is so you can hide behind shit.  It’s done as a way to exploit the much hyped “cover” mechanic.

I like the cover mechanic, but everything else is slow and unresponsive.  When I want to duck, I dive, when I want to shoot lefty I shoot righty and god forbid I need to pull out my chainsaw quickly.  With the enemies killing you within seconds, getting a chainsaw melee kill is nearly impossible at times.  And why is there not a dedicated grenade button, and why do I have to choose it like it’s a gun?  This slows the pace of the game down and has you fumbling with the accuracy of the 360’s D-pad.  Here’s a suggestion Epic, get rid of the visible arch and flight path of grenades and replace it with a one button grenade throw, you can thank me later.

I found Gears to be really glitchy, I had to restart from the last check point a few times because I got caught behind a door that wasn’t supposed to be open yet.  This may not be representative of the entire experience, but I died a lot of times without ever knowing what killed me…needless to say, infuriating.

Finally my last Gears of War complaint is directed towards the weapons, most specifically the Lancer.  As stated before, this gun has a chainsaw on it.  That’s a great idea, but if it doesn’t respond half the time you press the chain saw button it doesn’t do you any good.  On top of that, the weapons in general just feel weak.  Epic definitely needs a new sound department.  I have stepped on bubble wrap with better pop than these guns.  Even in the cut scenes when you see Marcus and co shooting them with one hand from behind cover, it looks like they are shooting water guns.  Then again I think water guns might have more kick.  Kick is artificially added when using the gun, but both the feel and effect of many of the guns are puny.  You would think the Gears army would have come up with better weaponry, since the current weapons don’t take the enemies down in one shot.  Except the shotgun, the shot gun is awesome, but if you ever let an enemy get close enough to you to use it then you are already dead.

Gears isn’t all bad, graphically, it’s stunning especially when you get later in the game. However, most of the landscapes are super flat.  The entire campaign has a good sense of action and I’m sure that translates well into the competitive multiplayer.  The faults that Gears brings to the table are so great that don’t see how it’s a triple A title.  In a world with an almost infinite number of shooters you could play, I don’t recommend Gears (at least for the single player).  A lot of the control and balancing problems with single player would still be present in the multiplayer, but I really don’t see how the multiplayer can make up this kind of deficit in quality.

Verdict: Play Something Else

If you take Lego Rock Band for face value, it seems kinda dumb.  Lego has nothing to do with music and definitely nothing to due with rhythm games.  When you break down the elements in the actual product its easier to see the motivation behind the crossover and even the novelty of it’s existence.  However, with Travelers Tales doing most of the interface development, many of the mistakes that were corrected by Rock Band 2 (the best rhythm game to date) pop back up and with the family friendly direction a whole slew of new problems pop up as well.

LRB plays exactly like other Rock Band games; everything from overdrive, to guitar solos, to the x6 bass multiplier are all present. Rock Band veterans will know exactly what they’re doing.  What has changed are the set pieces, characters and story progression.  All characters in the game are Lego, and the notes falling down the track are Lego bricks.

Instead of earning cash, you earn studs, and rather than dying if you fail a song, you loose studs and are allowed to continue playing.  While the characters and backgrounds are all Lego, the lighting effects and general tone of the performances still carries a mood like that of Rock Band.  Graphically I would say that LRB is a perfect mixture of the two properties and one of the things that Travelers Tales got right.

Included in the story mode are the opportunity to play as Lego-fied versions of Queen, David Bowie, Iggy Pop, and Blur. With none of these characters having too much of a signature look, its hard to justify their inclusion. Artists that really would have benefited from the Lego-fication would have been Elton John, Kiss, Slipknot, Gwar, Michael Jackson, or even Devo. As it stands, Lego Iggy just looks like a custom character made in the character creator.

The song list is okay, and doesn’t stray as far from the base Rock genre as Band Hero, but still contains a number of songs that I’m not sure will appeal to the its target audience.  The following songs have a pretty wide appeal to them, but alot of the soundtrack is filler:

“Crocodile Rock” – Elton John
“Dig” – Incubus
“Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” - The Police
“The Final Countdown” – Europe
“Fire” – The Jimi Hendrix Experience
“Free Fallin’” – Tom Petty
“Ghostbusters” – Ray Parker Jr.
“Girls & Boys” – Good Charlotte
“I Want You Back” – Jackson 5
“Kung Fu Fighting” – Carl Douglas
“Let’s Dance” – David Bowie
“Life is a Highway” – Rascal Flatts
“So What” – Pink
“Song 2″ – Blur
“Summer of ’69″ – Bryan Adams
“Swing, Swing” – All-American Rejects The All-American Rejects
“Two Princes” – Spin Doctors
“We Are the Champions” – Queen
“We Will Rock You” – Queen
“Word Up!” – Korn
“You Give Love a Bad Name” – Bon Jovi

That’s only 21 top shelf songs, and with only 45 songs…that’s right 45 songs…there’s no room for filler. Putting bands like Lostprophets, Kaiser Chiefs, and Vampire Weekend next Queen, makes it easy to see the holes in the soundtrack. The good news is that all of the songs are exportable to your larger Rock Band library (I can finally play the Bon Jovi trifecta in the same game). The bad news is that it costs an additional $10 to do so. This kinda makes sense since the game retails for only $50 but I’m not sure the casual fans will take this into account.

My biggest problem with the whole music library is the severely truncated amount of DLC that is currently playable in LRB. My Rock Band 2 music library is up to 550 songs and of those, only 237 are playable in Lego Rock Band. This is a terrible percentage. Technically there is no reason why all DLC songs can’t be played in LRB and the warning at the beginning of the game stating that “downloaded content is not rated by the ESRB” keeps them from getting sued.

The choice to pick and choose compatibility is solely based on how “family friendly” the songs supposedly are. I’m sure its all done to ensure that they are granted the status of “Family Game” in the Xbox 360 Library. It’s called perpetual advertising. It also slightly breaks the game. On the flip side, one of the first songs Band Hero asked me to purchase was “The Beautiful People” by Marilyn Manson…….hmmmm.

With all of that said, LRB still looks like a pretty enticing package that’s pretty light on content, but wait I haven’t gotten to the structure of the career mode. First, there is no online play at all and I’m sure that’s also an attempt to get the the green family game dot on the packaging. Who knows what the crazy restrictions are in place for that.

A lot of the streamlining that was added to Rock Band 2′s menus is gone and rather than having a quick way to reach your destination in the career, all songs are spread across 9 or so vehicles that you have to scroll through each time you load the career. Something as simple as a mechanic that remembers where you were last would have greatly helped.

The load times in LRB seem longer than your standard Rock Game and many of the menus don’t make it clear how to get to your desired section of the game. This leaves you surfing back and forth with double and triple times the load. Each vehicle gives you access to about 3-4 new songs to play and about eight setlists that unlike Rock Band 2 have little personality. Luckily, I have a decent amount of DLC to play through, otherwise I would have had to play every song like 5 times to finish the career.

I don’t fault LRB for not having online play, and I don’t have a problem with it bringing little (if anything) of value to the game play, but its DLC filter, and patchy abbreviated setlist combined with an almost unfinished vibe to the structure makes me really want a proper Rock Band 3.

If you are looking for a quick 720 Achievement points Lego Rock Band is the way to go and the Lego Charm never lets you down. I say the cheaper you can grab this one the better. Remember to buy it new because the download code on the inside can only be used once.

Verdict: A Few Bricks Short of a Bionicle

For anyone who doesn’t know anything about this game. It is a 3rd person run”n”gun game. Set with a video filter to give it a old Drive-in theater look and feel this game is basically a chance to play a game that is in the same style as DESPERADO with Antonio Banderas. Not that that is a bad thing by any means. The story is your standard cheesy stylish action shooter movie far. Actress Eliza Dushku voices the role of Ruby. Our female “Desperado”. I have to admit for the amount of hype that I heard about her doing this project I thought the performance would be much better. I’m a Dushku fan, but Ruby doesn’t say much, preferring her guns and sword to do the talking. With the standard cheesy one liners thrown in during the combat. Which for me personally I found annoying.

Aside from the standard run’n'gun gameplay there quite a bit of platforming going on in this game. Some of which had me reminiscing the PS2 Prince of Persia days. In the gunplay Ruby has many acrobatic moves at her disposal. All of which will activate the “bullet time” . Whether your jumping through the air, vaulting off a enemy, or sliding on the floor. Which of course is how your going to be doing 99.9% of the time your killing bad guys. While in the “BT” Ruby will dual wield her weapons. Which you start with standard pistols and then acquire shotguns, sub-machine, and crossbows with explosive arrows. One arm will auto lock and the other is controlled by you so you can shoot at two simultaneously. For the most part Ruby controls fairly well. But the aiming is not a smooth as I would prefer. With the smoothest controls are during “BT” which isn’t too bad except during the sequences where you are riding on top of a car during the car chase sequences. Which with the choppy aiming can get your killed quickly. The ability to trigger the “BT” while stationary on a car roof would have helped alot. Boss battles are mainly quick timed events. Which work with the feel of the world they are going with.

Visually this game takes a very stylized direction. Everything is set up like the shoot’em’up movies we all love. With a filter that gives it that cheep film feeling. Or a film that has been run through the projector way to many times. Luckily you can turn the filter off. I point this out since a few people noted it made them a little motion sick. I’m not going into the graphics. Since on the PS3/360 there is a standard all games must hit. If I do comment on graphics they will be really awesome, or really sucking.

Audio wise think the cheesy movie music meant to pump you up during the action and your there. Ruby has one liners she throws out during combat. Some cool, some funny, but most just really stinky cheese.

For anyone interested in this game I call this one a rental. Or wait until it’s at least at $20 used. There are a lot of places where you will have fun. With a few places where your going to have to pause the game because it will make you bust out laughing with the randomness. Re-playability was pretty low to me. While I do recommend you play through this game if your a fan of 3rd person shoot’em’ups and cheesy movies of the same genre, The facts still stand. While not deserving the bashing it got it’s not the greatest thing in the world. A bit more time tweeking and some more focus work would have done wonders. Also for the amount of  A list cast they got to do the voices there should have been quite a bit more story. For me if there isn’t a lot of story why waste the money getting Eliza Dushku, Alan Cumming, and Malcom McDowell when your not really going to utilize their talents. You could have took that money and poured it into more polish.

This one ranks a 3.5 out of 5

I am here to ease your worries.  The music fits the Rock Band formula pretty well and on most songs is tons of fun.  What was promised last year when this title was announced was a completely new Beatles music experience, however I can’t really say that it delivered on that promise.  This game is very much a Rock Band game.  You hit the notes on the corresponding tracks with whatever instrument you have chosen to wield.  It’s got a Overdrive (curiously called Beatlemania), designated guitar solos and similar fake plastic instruments.  I can’t fault Harmonix for sticking to the formula.  It works, and the little tweaks here and there add enough to set it appart from the landmark Rock Band 2.

The first thing that is very apparant about The Beatles Rock Band is that none of the visuals of Rock Band 2 have been carried over.  Everything from the character models to the strike line have been rebuilt.  Where previous Rock Band games were dark, The Beatles: Rock Band has a very bright color palette and vivid visuals. Other small changes that have been made are the inability to play drum fills before activating Beatlemania and the removal of freestyle drumming before and after all songs.  I’m sure this was done at the request of Apple Corps, in an effort to preserve the integrity of the tunes themselves, but the exclusion of these features is definitely weird.

The biggest and most effective change added to The Beatles: Rock Band is three part harmonies.  As everyone knows much of The Beatles tracks have three distinct vocal tracks, usually John, Paul and George.  With three mic support, the game maps out the three vocal parts to the same scrolling vocal track running across the top of the screen.  Two of the tracks are non-destructive; which means if the backup singer is failing his or her vocal parts, the main player doesn’t fail the song.  However, when sang properly your score will skyrocket.

This mechanic really adds two major things to the end product.  Firstly, 6 Players can now play simultaneously, making Rock Band parties much more inclusionary and secondly a new level of complexity is present in the vocal mechanics that could take a threesome of singers months to perfect.

Since vocals are usually the throwaway instrument in Rock Band, providing a compelling reason to pick up the mic is always challenging, but with music as recognizable as The Beatles and a new “everyone sings” attitude, it’s hard to not set up the mic stand and try to do double duty on two different instruments simultaneously.

With that said, I think we should move on to the track list.  There are dozens of bodafide classics in The Beatles: Rock Band.  Tracks like Revolution, Get Back, Yellow Submarine, Come Together, I Saw Her Standing There, With a Little Help From My Friends, Eight Days a Week, Helter Skelter, A Hard Day’s Night, and Day Tripper round out an acceptable set list, but what’s surprising are some of the songs that were omitted.

I would have loved to see about 10-20 more songs added and maybe even a few of the flat tracks removed from the game.  Songs like Let it Be, All You Need is Love, Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, Strawberry Fields Forever, Penny Lane, Eleanor Rigby, Help!, Yesterday, Love Me Do, She Loves You, We Can Work It Out, and Across the Universe are sorely missed from the game.  Obviously some of these may not fit the format, I.E. Guitar, Bass, Vocal, and Drums, and others may end up being a DLC, but not having Let It Be, and Yesterday should be a crime.  Overall the tracks are mostly solid, but a game with 45 songs in a world where 80+ songs is the new standard, seems a quite weak, especially when you consider the inclusion of the cringe-worthy Octopus’ Garden.

Career mode is a straight forward Guitar Hero 1 setup that has you playing through significant venues in The Beatles history.  The later venues are in the Abbey Road Studios and include videos called dreamscapes, instead of stage performances.  They are intriguing at first and will catch your eye very quickly, but I found myself ignoring them after the first play through.  Unlike RB2 where the challenges were interesting and intuitive, I haven’t seen any signs of challenges that are outside of the standard set list.  What I would have liked to see is challenges based on singer, or album.  Like, all Abbey Road songs, or, all Ringo Star songs.  This feature may pop up later after heavy game play and more DLC, but with an initial list of challenges that is identical to the story mode, I was very underwhelmed by a feature that I loved in the previous RB game.

The production value is high and the attention to detail is remarkable.  Beatles fans will be blown away by the visuals and tribute-like setup of the story mode and the unlockable photos are both candid and eye-popping.  Apple Corps and Harmonix have reputations of maintaining high quality products and the level of polish on this game is extremely representative of both brands.

The new instruments are beautiful, but it’s obvious that they were created to try and recoup a lot of licensing costs.  The two stand alone guitars retail for $100 and the game bundle is $250, so to completely Beatle-out your Rock Band Setup, you’ll have drop $450.  An alternate bundle is available for $150, but it includes the vastly inferior Rock Band 1 instruments.  $100 is TOO much for a fake plastic guitar.

In the end, if you like The Beatles and you dig Rock Band this is a must buy.  However, if you aren’t familiar with The Beatles and don’t have the compulsion to buy all things Rock Band, I would stay away from this one.  As for non-gamers that want to pick up “that Beatles game they saw on QVC and VH1” you may find a fantastic game genre beneath the music that you love or you will wonder why The Beatles put their name on such a weird product.  Does it have problems, yes, is it a value, no.  Is it worth it, probably, but before you buy you should know what you are getting yourself into.

[3.5/5.0 Stars]

I have literally never played a WWII game. I know it’s a gaming staple and the genre has been milked to death with Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, Brother in Arms and Battlefield flooding the market, but I thought I would dive right into, what many people consider, the best of these franchises, Call of Duty. The success of COD4: Modern Warfare caught my attention and as a Hardcore Gamer (I’m not sure if you’re allowed to give yourself that title…oh well) I kinda felt like I was shortchanging myself.  Besides, it was a little embarrassing that of all people, my dad told me it was cool.

Since I don’t do many PC games and I didn’t want to start with a spin off (Finest Hour), the first one I could try was Call of Duty 2.  I checked the achievements before playing and realized that most of them were for completing chapters on the Veteran setting (Veteran setting being the hardest setting possible), and after a bit of online coaxing I convinced myself to try it on Veteran. I finished about 2/3 of the game before finally bumping the difficulty down to Hardened. This doesn’t make the game bad, or good, it simply shows me how good or bad I am at shooters. (apparently not very).

What it DOES tell me, is that the tiny details Infinity Ward built into the AI will make or break your ability to finish the game. No matter how many times I had to replay parts of the campaign, things NEVER happened the same way twice. My human interaction defined exactly what the enemy would do, every time. In my opinion, the insanely robust AI was the most impressive aspect of the game.

Unlike most other games that have scripted spawn and kill points Call of Duty 2 does a fantastic job keeping the player unaware of what is going to happen next, even if this exact area just brutally mauled them 5 times in a row.  If you decide to move left during one attempt and then right on the next, expect your enemy to compensate and find the best way to take you out.  This makes playing the campaign on Veteran frustratingly hard.  I guess that’s how it’s supposed to be, but I couldn’t help but feel like a failure for not completing the entire Veteran campaign.

Obviously the game is great from gameplay to graphics (the graphics have aged pretty well if you keep the game’s release date in mind), but gameplay and graphics have been proven by other games. What Call of Duty 2 brings to the table is unparalleled intensity. I found myself physically ducking several times when being bombarded. Its immersive and engaging, and makes you really want our troops to come home. There isn’t a feeling anywhere else in gaming like the one you get sneaking up on a Tank to place explosives. During certain sequences expect your hair to stand up on the back of your neck (if you have any).

I didn’t play any of the multiplayer, simply because I didn’t see the point (3 years after launch, the online competition is probably unbearable). I was unsure of how my experience would go with COD2, but boy I was pleasantly surprised. If you don’t like shooters, or if you have no interest in WWII, then I would stay away from COD2, but at this point I am probably preaching to the choir when I say “BUY THIS GAME NOW!”

4.5/5 Stars

Afro is on a mission.  He has one concern on his mind:  avenging the death of his father.  He certainly has the skills to do so.  With sword in hand, Afro will cut through waves of samurai, ninja, and topless warrior strippers (no joke, it happens.)

The developer, Surge, did a great job with the graphical presentation.  The game features a slick, cell-shaded look that is perfect for the source material.  Since there is no HUD in the game, you get to see all the bloody, beheading action perfectly.  The cut-scenes are also very enjoyable and the voice talent is incredible.

Samuel L. Jackson, Ron Pearlman, and Kelly Hu reprise their roles from the hit anime as Afro, Ninja Ninja, Justice, and Okiku.  The dialogue is mostly hilarious, especially when Sam L. is involved.  I played the game in surround sound and I must say, the music by the RZA is awesome.  At certain points in the game, I just left Afro idle for a few to take in the tracks.

Now that I have that out of the way, I have to mention this.  Afro Samurai  is a licensed game based on a very popular anime.  That means the developer took the opportunity to ignore some of the games flaws.  This game is a beat-em-up with some platforming elements.  Sure, there are lots of combos to use, but when push comes to shove, you’ll be mashing buttons like there’s no tomorrow.  The game also has a leveling system, but since you don’t decide how to use your EXP, it does very little to add depth.  Luckily, there is a game play mechanic called “Focus” which will give your fingers a break and allow you to pull off “perfect strikes” that will instantly kill most foes.

The fighting is relatively fun, but the platforming is tedious and needed some tweaks.  The camera is a little difficult to get used to, but manages to get the job done.  All in all, Afro Samurai is a decent game.  If you are a fan of beat-em-ups or Afro, try this one out.  Afro Samurai gets a 3/5.

After reading a few of my co-tech-pe-diter’s review submissions, I decided it was time I did one of my own.  Since my exposure to some of the new mainstream releases has been somewhat limited, I figured a good submission would be to do a review of a game many of you may have passed up in the past.  Get it, “Passed Up, Past, PAST’ed Up”.  Ok moving along

Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem ushered in a new “game” genre all to itself, which I do not think any other game has imitated yet.  I am speaking of psychological horror.  This game is the first game, to my knowledge, to purposely screw not only with your character but also, breaking the fourth wall, screw with the player.  The game incorporates a sanity meter.  Simply put, a secondary life bar that indicated the strenght of you and your character’s grasp on reality.  Allow this meter to decrease, through encounters with the games monsters, and your character will begin experiencing incidents that may or may not be real or may not have even occured.  These “sanity effects” range from a slightly slanted camera angle, bleeding walls, weird sounds(which are awesome in surround sound) and hallucinations.  The most awesome of these I have seen is, just to screw with the you the player, the game will give you a Windows BSOD(Blue Screen of Death).   I really thought my game crashed until it flashed back and the character uttered “Is this really happening”.

Another game mechanic it used was selective targeting which could be used for selective dismemberment.  You could run through the game using your sword to just decapitate most zombies and just leave them blind, although the red(Chatturgha) would grow another head, the green(Xelataoh) would have a phantom head and the blue(Ulyaoth) would create a chain wave of magical explosive self destructions to all blue zombies in range of its howl, but still fun to chop off heads though.

Another positive and also the game’s main negative is the magik system.  That is correct.  Silicon Knights used Midway’s Mortal Kombat tried and true replacing of C’s with K”s.  The magic system is pretty unique in that you are not just given spells.  You are given runes/glyphs to form your own magic spells.  Of course you cannot come of up with any spells the game did not already intend you to have but it is still fun on that first play through to experiment and find different combinations for spells.  Hidden in the level are scrolls that pretty much automatically make the spell for you.  However these scrolls can be easily missed and you cannot go back to already completed levels.  So experimentation is the only way to get some spells if you missed the scrolls.  Do not worry however you cannot miss any runes/glyphs.

Now for the bad.  The magic meter in this game is filled up 3 ways.  One is with a magic drink, which only certain characters have, actually one I think and this item can not be carried on to other character.  Two is by casting a magic spell to replenish magic which costs more magic than it restores so is actually useless until you acquire the 5 point spell.  The third method which you will be using for maybe one third of the game is, magic returns as your character  walks/runs.  Meaning you will spend a lot of time just running in circles just to refill your magic so you can cast a spell to refill your health/magic/sanity or a spell needed to solve a puzzle.

Even with the magic refill hickup the game is still remarkable.  I have beaten this game six times.  To get the true ending you must beat the game with all three elder gods scenarios.  I also beat it three more times because I wanted to experience all the sanity effects in the game.  They are just that cool.  If you have a Gamecube or even a Wii you owe it to yourself to play this game.  It is a true gem that too many people PAST’ed Up. 

5/5

X-men Legends is categorized as an action RPG, and developer Raven Software sticks to that formula pretty tightly. You pilot a team of 4 X-men (chosen from a roster of 15), through 15 missions inspired by, if not directly based on, X-men stories. You are able to switch between your 4 chosen X-men on the fly using the D-Pad and at set X-traction points you are able to change your team completely. So, as a player, you get exposed to a lot of X-men and their various powers. Personally, my favorite team consisted of Wolverine, Cyclops, Iceman, and Rogue. If you have friends, you can play with up to four players with each one commanding an X-man on the team. In this case you are stuck with the mutant that you’ve chosen, so choose wisely.

Like most RPGs everything is a numbers game. From, your agility to your lifting strength, every aspect of your character’s abilities is leveled up throughout the game. This allows you to customize your character’s strengths and improve any attacks that you like to use, while ignoring the ones that you don’t. However, I’m not going to bore you with the aspects of “How an RPG works”. I am going to say though, that if you are not accustomed to playing RPGs the level and upgrade menus will throw you for a loop. If you come into X-men Legends expecting a generic beat-em up or hack and slash you will be sorely mistaken.

While the core game play consists of you running around with your characters and punching enemies frantically until they die, the sheer number of ways you can do it is huge. Each character has mutant powers that when combined with the powers of their peers create combo moves. Not only are these “combos” visually pleasing, but they also do massive amounts of damage and bump you experience points. By the time you reach the end of the game your mutant powers are leveled up so high that your character is literally destroying the environments that surround them in one punch. Also, if you take the time and kill every enemy on every level the difficulty of the game will not spike and you will have a pretty easy time running through all 20 hours of the story.

As for the story, it is a pretty true to form X-men story, Magneto has a plan that sees mutants take over the earth and an American General: Kincaid has a plan to rid the world of all mutants (sound familiar?). Professor Xavier and his team are obviously stuck in the middle, wanting peace between both parties. The story revolves around Magma (Alison Crestmere) and her life after the X-men prevent Mystique and the Blob from kidnapping her. She becomes a student at Xavier’s school and subsequently becomes an X-man. This story structure allowed Raven the ability to drop the player into the shoes of a character and as that character learns about the X-men team, so does the player. During the game Alison gets to hear a lot of optional back story. This really appeals to casual fans of the franchise, like myself.

X-men Legends does lot of things right but is also does of a lot of things very wrong. While most licensed games can be whipped through extremely quickly (sometimes in one sitting), Legends makes your experience with the game extremely lengthy. At first glance, this may seem like a good thing, but most of the game’s length comes from its repetitive gameplay and its reuse of environments. During the campaign you play through the Morlock underground at least three times, and mutant power, punch, punch, heavy punch is a combo that gets old really quickly. At about the 15 hour mark I began to wonder if the game would ever end and stopped doing the extra exploration for the back stories of characters.

Constantly micro-managing every one of your character’s abilities is tedious and game slowing. Had some sort of auto fill feature been built into the leveling system, the game wouldn’t have crawled along as it did. Also, as should be, Wolverine really takes center stage with his healing ability. The problem with that is that after about level 5, if leveled properly, Wolverine’s attack damage and damage taken ratios will be so far out of whack that he is almost impossible to kill. This makes him the obvious character choice to play with when tearing through a level, and also kills the use of the other characters in the roster. Unless there is a compelling reason to play with a character, a gamer is going to go with what works, and Wolverine works every time.

Finally, the art in the game is loosely based on the Ultimate X-men comic series, but whoever they got to design the character models is in the wrong line of work. Between, Beast’s mullet pony tail, and Iceman’s dew-rag with matching armband the artistic choices throughout the game need to be questioned. With that said, the game runs at a super smooth 720p, which on the original Xbox, is awesome.

X-men Legends as a licensed game is fantastic, but as a video game it is “playable”. If you liked Action RPGs like Fable, Kingdom Hearts, or Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance, then you will probably get a kick out of this one. Even though is has many flaws, the most important thing about any video game is that it be fun and X-men Legends accomplishes this beautifully. Also, if you like this game, it has a sequel (X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse) and a spin-off (Marvel: Ultimate Alliance), both of which can be picked up on the cheap.  3/5 Stars.

That is a tough question to answer.  I’ve beaten the game on every difficulty (save for professional) and I must say, RE5 is very enjoyable.  I will start out by stating the obvious, the graphics are great.  The games locales are beautiful and the lighting effects are some of the best I have seen.  However, we all know that great graphics alone don’t make a great game (Heavenly Sword anyone).

RE5 is a survival horror game, and while the graphics and lighting create a creepy tone, the amount of  thrills in previous RE games just wasn’t there.  Sure the surprise attacks and chainsaw wielding zombies got my blood flowing, but the suspense just seemed a little watered down.  The main reason for that is your AI or CO-OP controlled partner Sheva.  She is always there!  No solo missions, no watching your own back, no sense of being alone in the face of evil.  In fact, the scariest thing was watching your AI controlled partner make nonsensical decisions at the worst possible times.  The only thing that saved the partner system for me, was the interesting game play mechanic where both characters had to work together to solve a few puzzles.

All that being said, I still recommend RE5 to anyone who asks for two reasons; the story and the game play.  The story picks up a short while after the events of Resident Evil 4 and brings back an RE favorite.  You play as Chris Redfield.  Since his battle with Umbrella, Chris becomes an agent of the Bio-terrorism Security Assessment Alliance.  He is sent to Africa to investigate rumors of a new, potentially more dangerous outbreak.  During his mission, Chris uncovers a diabolical plot to unleash a deadly biological weapon on the world.  He also discovers that the mastermind behind this plot is none other than his old pal, Albert Wesker.

The game play is very similar to that of RE4.  The over the shoulder view, the two button firing scheme, the upgradable weapons, even the random treasure hunting.  Capcom did make a few improvements though, the best of which is the menu system.  In previous entries, the player had to pause the game and go to the menu screen to change weapons or equipment.  In RE5, the menu is presented on screen in real time, effectively adding suspense to the already hectic fights.

The boss fights are mostly fun and the few boss specific weapons are a joy to use.  The Mercenaries mode also makes its return with some improvements.  You now have the option to go it alone or, find a friend (considering you’ve turned the game off long enough to make one) and pair up for some truly fast and fun combat.  Formulating strategy with a friend while running from hordes of evil infected is by far my favorite part of the game.  RE5 isn’t perfect by any means, no game is, but if you are looking for fast action, fun fights, and a solid story, add this one to your collection.  RE5 gets a 4/5.

Whenever you hear someone talk about Crysis or Crysis Warhead, more often than not it turns into a conversation about how graphically demanding or beautiful it is. This is not without merit. However, my brother asked me an interesting question the other day: “Is it any good?” A great question, indeed!

Crysis Warhead is a “Standalone Expansion” to Crysis that was released on September 12th, 2008. It follows Sgt. “Psycho” Sykes (psycho…sykes…GET IT? LOLZ!) as he wreaks havoc on the other side of the island (opposite Nomad, the protagonist in the original game).

Psycho is best described as a bad ass with a moral code. He won’t think twice about disobeying orders or shouting at his superior commander, but he won’t kill an unarmed soldier. Some of his lines seem out of place. He cites the Geneva Convention when he is about to be tortured by Colonel Lee, who is pretty much Kim Jong-il in a nano suit. I don’t consider myself the most tactful person in the world,  but if I was about to be tortured, I don’t think citing the rules of war to a dictator would stop him. But, enough about the story. I may have issues with it, but the point is that games like this just need to give you a reason to blow stuff up. In that respect, we have lots of win here.

I won’t bore you with how great the game looks. I’ll just post pictures:

My only real complaint with the game is the difficulty curve. I played on ‘Normal’ and let me tell you that I blew through the first 40% of the game like it was nothing. However, someone at Crytek drew the line in the sand after this point. Being ‘owned’ is an understatement. Crysis Warhead owes me reparations. I seriously checked the menus to make sure I hadn’t accidentally raised the difficulty. Well, at least you can lower it if things get too hot. I stuck it out, though (and died many, many times…).

The actual gameplay is also varied. The general set up is that you can either go in John Wayne-style with guns-a-blazing, or you can hang back and get your Solid Snake on, sticking to the shadows. There is the occassional boss fight, which forces you to whip out the big guns, but for the most part you could probably sneak through most of the game. There are also sequences that involve you fighting on top of moving objects (such as a train). I was also surprised at the amount of vehicle gameplay. There are tanks and humvees scattered everywhere.

You are wearing a nano suit which can give you super speed, super strength, super armor, or a cloak. Each of these abilities are controlled by your suit’s power supply, which recharges over time. You also have a nice variety of weapons. You have dual-wieldable pistols and machine guns, assualt/sniper rifles, and the rocket launcher. Armor stations are spread generously through the stages, so you will almost always have something to shoot (It may not be what you want though, heh). There are also mines and C4 which come in handy when you are dealing with tanks. Last, but certainly not least, is a weapon call the PAX. Win. That’s all I’m gong to say.

There are also plenty of ‘wow’ moments. One that immediately comes to mind is when I was trekking through a snow covered mountain with a group of fellow nano-soldiers. It made me think of how awesome it would be to fight alongside the ‘other’ spartans from the Halo novels. We plowed through the countryside destroying anything that looked at us funny. It was quite satisfying and easily my favorite part of the game.

Crysis Warhead is not a flawless game by any means, but if you have the hardware to run the game you might as well pick it up.

And yes, it is good.