Guides
AlexMarra's Reviews
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With the development of Halo 3, a whole lot of pressure was on Bungie to go and make another epic title. With a huge fan base, two excellent Halo games already under their belt, with one of them being the most played game on Xbox Live for several years, Bungie knew they had to make something even greater than what they had already done. Did they accomplish their task? Absolutely. The Good Fast, Perfected Combat: Halo 3’s all about either shooting stuff, blowing up stuff, or running over stuff, and each element to killing something has been perfected to a “T”. Combat is fluid and immersive, the enemies are perfectly attuned to each difficulty level, and each vehicle handles beautifully.Quick-to-Master Learning Curve: It’s very simple for anybody to just jump in and start playing. The control layout is easy to get used to and veterans of the franchise will feel right at home. Lots of Variety: Guns are never in short supply in Halo 3. Neither are vehicles, enemies, or equipment. There are three sets of weapons in Halo 3 - Human, Covenant, and Brute - and no one weapon feels strictly overpowered over another. Top-Notch Multiplayer: As with Halo 1 (for the PC) and Halo 2, the Halo franchise has always held on to the rank of master of the multiplayer shoot-out, and Halo 3 is no exception. Online Multiplayer is fast, fun, exciting, and everything you would except (and more) from a First Person Shooter game. With a multitude of ranks, medals, and character creation options, Multiplayer is truly something you don’t want to miss. Long Time Playability: With most games, there’s usually a single-player portion to it and then to extend its life expectancy, it throws in a multiplayer portion as well. Halo 3 doesn’t stop at multiplayer. With the inclusion of Skulls, which are random human skulls you can find hidden in a level, the game continues on. Better yet, each Skull you find unlocks a new game mechanic change, which you can then turn on in the Campaign Mission Settings to effect your game. You can also turn on Campaign Scoring, which allows you to achieve points by doing a multitude of tasks (like killing an enemy with a grenade or beating them to death), much like a classic arcade game. To sweeten the deal, Bungie included interesting achievements to unlock for both the single-player section of the game and the multiplayer. Excellent Story: Bungie’s never had a hard time telling a good story, and they do it again in Halo 3. Each portion of the game makes you feel like you’re in the boots of Master Chief, and each and every thing you do impacts the story somewhat. Terrific Combat A.I.: Your teammates are all hardened veterans of war, and they all act appropriately as such. You may be an elite super soldier, but your teammates can still hold their own even when you’re not around. That also goes for your enemies, as they will also group up, use equipment effectively, and do everything in their power to kill you. Awesome New Video Recording and Screenshot Taking Options: How did I just die? Where did that missile come from? Wow, I’d like to see that head-shot again! Now you can! Halo 3 came packed in with new video recording and screenshot taking options, so you can now show the whole world how you killed somebody with a traffic cone. Interesting New Forge Mode: A new thing to play with in Halo is something called Forge. Forge is basically a level editor, where you can take objects in any multiplayer map and place them where you would like to. Forge opens up many new possibilities and game options for players, and is quite easy to use. The Bad No Difficulty is Too Challenging: I’m no pompous asshole, but Halo 3 was just not that hard. Granted, there are a few moments where I would think “If Hell exists, it would be playing this scenario over and over again while listening to Black Lace’s ‘Agadoo’“, but those moments are few and far between. The highest difficulty is no pushover, but it definitely doesn’t live up to its description either, that description being: “Tremble as teeming hordes of invincible alien monsters punish the slightest error with instant death… again and again.” Unless it’s solely talking about the second-to-last level, where actual teeming hordes of near invincible monsters chase you throughout the whole level, that above statement is a crock of shit, through-and-through. Most of Halo 3’s Fan Base Sucks: The Halo franchise is known for it’s excellent story, action-packed combat, and tons of fun multiplayer, but it’s also known for its terribe mulitplayer fan base, which consists primarily of 12-year old boys who enjoy shouting explicitives at you for any given reason. Technically, Halo 3’s multiplayer is mostly free of problems, but in practice, it’s the game’s fan base that gives the game its problems. Unless you and a group of friends are planning on hosting your own game, expect at least one retard to be added to every random match you join. A.I. Teammates Never Got Their Drivers License: When a vehicle is presented to you in the campaign, expect to be driving it everywhere, as your teammates couldn’t drive if their lives depended on it. If you do take the passenger’s seat, expect to be crashing into walls, blowing up, and careening off of cliffs…a lot. Odd Dialogue: Seeing as how the game takes place in the 26th Century, I found it quite odd for my marines to be calling each other “dude” and yelling things like “you’re toast!” at enemies. In our lifetime, saying “groovy” or “righteous” went out of style 20 years ago, but in Halo’s storyline, people are still saying “dude” 500 years into the future? I admit, hearing these things don’t bother me and actually make me feel at home with my soldiers, but in a technical and logical sense, people aren’t declaring others as “toast” 500 years from now. Halo 3 is a phenomenal game which shouldn’t be passed up. If you still haven’t given a Halo game a try, do yourself a favor and play this one. Not only is it worth it, it will leave you with a lot of good memories and many stories to tell. Halo 3 was developed by Bungie Software and published by Microsoft Game Studios and was released on September 25, 2007. Retails for $59.99 to $129.99 USD. Available only on Xbox 360. Played single-player campaign to completion twice, once on Heroic and once on Legendary. Played several hours of multiplayer both solely and with others.
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Every once in awhile, a new type of RTS game comes out that makes people say, “Holy crap! An RTS game with a premise different than base building or it does something that vastly improves the genre!” Battle for Middle-earth II isn’t one of those games. The Good Diverse Troop Selection: If there’s one notable thing about the Lord of the Rings franchise as a whole, it’s that it has a lot of quirky and spectacular creatures. EA LA follows this concept and uses it to their advantage by creating a diverse selection of soldiers to choose from in the game. All of the troops relate to similar categories, such as cavalry or artillery, but, for example, a catapult is now replaced with a Mountain Giant.Huge Variety of Maps to Choose From: Since every RTS game is about traversing a terrain with some form of army to go kill another army, it’s nice to look around your surroundings once in awhile. Since BME2 takes place in the Lord of the Rings universe, there are many detailed locations that could have been put in, and indeed they were. Landmark locations from both the movies and the books make an appearance in some form in BME2, and each location can get a bit distracting as you’ll constantly find yourself staring at something interesting while your civilzation gets massacred. But seeing as how the LotR universe takes place in more than just open fields, you can also fight in military bases, fortresses, and on the sea. Remember the battle of Helms Deep? You can re-create that (somewhat), granted your enemies are smart enough to figure out how to get passed the locked gate. Resources Are Easy to Gather: In BME2, there is only one type of resource. To gather resources, all you have to do is lay down a resource-gathering node and forget about it. There are no settler-type people to increase your resource gathering output, but instead, resource gathering depends on your location. When you go to lay down a resource gathering node, a percentage of how many resources that node will bring in for each minute is displayed. For example, if you lay down a farm in an open field, you can gather 100% of about 250 resources per minute, but if you built that farm by a mountain, you might only get 50% resources per minute. It’s complicated to explain, but pretty easy to execute from within the game. Variety of Animations for Everything: One thing that bugs me about most RTS games is their lacking of animations. Usually, most RTS games have one animation for attacking, one animation for dying, and so on. That’s most definitely not the case for BME2. Everything from troops, to wildlife, - even buildings! - have a great variety of animations. Great Addition of a Stat Counter for Each Civilization: Want to know how many total people you’ve killed throughout those 12 Skirmish matches you just played? Or how about how many people Gandalf slaughtered throughout all of his battles fought? With BME2, all of this information is stored in a handy dandy stat counter, so you can look back one day and be impressed with all of your progress. The Bad Difficulty is Unbalanced: I pride myself on being an expert of RTS games, but I know when I’m playing on Medium and I’ve already got 300 enemies attacking my base within 5 minutes that something’s wrong. Easy is too easy, Medium is too hard, and Hard is just ridiculous. It would have been appreciated if EA LA had toned down the difficulty just a teensy bit to make playing against a Medium army bearable. Lacks Common RTS Settings: With what BME2 boasts in unordinary features, it lacks in common features. Where’s friend/foe colors? How about easy-drag miltary? Can’t I get a counter of how long my game’s been going or how many resources I’m bringing in a minute? None of this is available in BME2, and makes base building and fighting even more of a hassle. Your Soldiers are Unbelievably Stupid: And not just due to the player’s skill level, but definitely due to what the hell your archers were thinking when you tell them to attack a far away enemy, but decide to run right in front of them instead to get a better shot. And artillery - don’t even get me started. They couldn’t hit the Great Wall of China with a pebble while standing just an inch away from it if you asked them to. Shouldn’t that hulking beast of a Mountain Giant know to throw the rock in the direction those enemy soldiers are moving in, or was EA LA trying to replicate their stupidity? Game Has the LotR Look, but Not the LotR Feel: Lord of the Rings is all about epic storytelling and epic battles, but nothing takes that away more than base building. It’s just so completely awkward in a LotR setting to go and make a farm, while your “fortress” out in the middle of nowhere is getting butt-raped by a bunch of Goblins. Pro-Tip for EA on the next Battle for Middle-earth game: copy Medieval 2 and have just one huge, decisive battle between two forces and move on. No more base building and resource collecting. Save that for games like Age of Empires and Rise of Nations, where it actually makes sense. Super Abilities Are Interesting, but Extremely Overpowered: In BME2, you get these things called Power Points for killing enemy soldiers. Power Points go towards buying special abilities, such as things like spying on your enemy’s base temporarily, or making your army get a temporary attack boost, or better yet, calling a friggen’ squid monster to pop out of the flaming ground to wipe out your entire enemy’s army. Now I thought the battles were inconsistent enough, but when you can just use special abilities to take out your entire enemy’s base with absolutely no effort, that’s when you know that the game’s mechanics are just a bit wonky. Ring Heroes are Devastatingly Powerful: While out in the wild somewhere, standing around with your army, doing nothing, you might come across Gollum, a sad little creature that hobbles around the map aimlessly. If you kill the poor guy, steal the One Ring which he was carrying, and take it back to your Fortress, you’re now granted the ability to summon either Galadriel (for the armies of Good) or Sauron (for the armies of Evil). I think you know where this is going. Sure, Ring Heroes are hard to come by and finally produce, but when you’ve got Sauron out there, fighting along with your troops, your enemy doesn’t have a chance. It’s like pitting an M1 Abrams tank against a caveman. There’s just no way they can be killed. Flaunted Features are Weak and Feel Slapped On: BME2 likes to boast that you can now have naval fights and create your own hero characters, contrary to the first game where you couldn’t, but I don’t see why EA was so happy about promoting these features as they both feel painfully slapped on late in development and are both completely stupid features. For one thing, naval fights are retarded as you first need to find a dock (yeah, find, not build) to deploy your ships from. Naval fights are over quickly, as each boat is barely guarded and take damage quickly. The only off-set is that your enemy’s boats are crap too, so it’s basically a 50-50 gamble of who finally comes out the winner. But for Create-a-Hero - wow, I don’t think I’ve ever been more disappointed with a video game. I actually got tricked into buying the original Spider-Man 2 game for the Playstation because they also flaunted that you could make your own character. Create-a-Hero is extremely limited, and is not even nearly close to what it was supposed to represent. You have no options to change to your character’s body or facials features, and you have about 3 different clothing sets to choose from. The only resounding feature of the character creation mode is that you’re allowed to add in and mix-up your own pre-set super powers, allowing you to create an extremely powerful nobody. Craptastic Campaign: You’d think that with a story as rich as Lord of the Ring’s is that they’d go out of their way to make a decent campaign. Definitely not with BME2. Nearly every mission revolves around base building (still, ugh) and the cinematics bring up some unrealistic expectations. For example, there’s a mission where you need to invade a dwarven fortress, kill everything in your path, and destroy some building at the end. The cinematic before you begin your mission shows your massive army stomping their way to the dwarven fortress, and then you start playing, and you need to…build a base to make a decent army to attack the fortress. It’s so completely disappointing and the campaign just has nothing going for it. To make matters worse, all of your enemy’s follow a scripted pattern and fight as if they’re all high on PCP. I’ll give you another example. In the same level, a group of Rangers (archers) will occassionally sneak through a secret passage in the fortress’ wall and attack your base. What did I do? I created a tower right by the hole in the wall and filled it with archers with flaming arrows, so every time the Rangers would run by, I’d shoot them and they’d burst into flames. Did they ever change this pattern? Nope. Did they ever attack that tower? They never even tried. War of the Ring Mode is Terrible: As if you weren’t already sick of being massacred in the Skirmish mode or gouging your eyes out over the Campaign, you’ve now got a semi-rip-off of Rise of Nation’s Conquer the World mode to go with it! Yay! Graphics Can Go Either Way: Simply stated, one second you’ll be staring at the beautiful water effects and the next you’ll be cringing at the sight of your heavily pixelated clone army. Enough said. The Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle-earth II had a lot going for it, but overpowered military units, unbalanced difficulty levels, and a serious identity crisis left the game feeling average, boring, and not so Lord of the Rings-ish. If you’re a huge fan of Lord of the Rings, you might want to give this one a try, but if you’re a die-hard RTS lover, just steer yourself away from this one. The Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle-earth II was developed by EA LA and published by EA Games and was released on March 2, 2006. Retails for $9.99 USD. Available on both Xbox 360 and PC. Played most of each the Good and Evil Campaign, about three hours worth of War of the Ring, and several different Skirmish matches. No online games were played. Personally, between you and me, the most fun I had with this game was defending Helms Deep and pelting enemy troops with hundreds of arrows. Good times.
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I remember playing this game when I was a kid and being really disappointed because all you could do was race and you couldn’t walk around Tatooine. … That’s all I really remember about the game when I was a kid and when I played it for the N64. But, since my N64 is currently in the possession of my dad who lives in Florida, I recently went out and bought the PC version of this game and decided to give it another go, just in time for Retro Revival Week. So what do I think about this game in the present day? Well…it’s not too bad. The game starts out promising. You got a bunch of different racers to choose from when you first start. I just went with Anakin because he had the best stats. The initial races are pretty fun. There are several different planets you can race on, and there are four different tournaments in the tournament mode, so there are four different tracks for each of the planets. No matter what, every race in which you participate in is based off of a three lap system. Additionally, each lap can last from one minute to up to three and half. The tournament mode can get pretty fun until you get to the semi-pro’s. You can’t choose your level of difficulty in Racer, and if your pod racer isn’t up to date with all of the best parts, you can really take it up the ass in most races. Going 600+ MPH doesn’t really help either. Since it’s past midnight and I want to go to bed, here’s a handy dandy list of some of the complaints I had with Racer:
And to end this review, I’ll leave you with a story. There was this one race in the Galatic Tournament that I couldn’t beat. Each lap lasted about…you guessed it, three and a half minutes. I did this race twice and lost both times. I tried it again one last time before I would give up, and finally! I’m just about to win! And then my keyboard fails. And I crash into a wall. And I lose. … I almost threw my keyboard. Almost. It did warrant a “Son of a bitch!” however.
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Growing up as a kid, we watched a lot of Disney movies back then that came in those white, squishy Disney VHS cases. For me, my all-time favorite Disney movie was Aladdin. The action scenes, the characters, the voice actors; everything came into this perfect combination of greatness, and for it, became one of the finest Disney movie’s ever created. Other than movies, we also had a Sega Genesis. One of the games that I owned (and still do) was Aladdin. Unfortunately, my old Genesis is missing a couple of cables so I wasn’t able to play that version of the game, but I did get my hands on the SNES version. Aladdin looks like your basic side-scroller, and for the most part, it pretty much is. You start out with a couple of hearts, which act as life bars, and if you walk into an enemy, you get hurt and lose one heart. As the game progresses, you attain more hearts, which helps a lot as many enemies will be coming after you in the later parts of the game.
Speaking of enemies, the enemies were designed with a lot of care in mind and stick true to what you might find in that section of the game. For example, you start out in Agrabah, a city, so many of the city guards are after you. In another part of the game, you’re in a cave, so there are plenty of bats and scorpions around. To defend himself, Aladdin is equipped with 10 apples which are used to stun enemies for a short duration. The apples are really useless though, and don’t really begin to help until the last sections of the game. Aladdin’s primary form of defense is to simply jump on your enemies. From the city guards to birds made out of sand, nearly every enemy in the game can be jumped on. It’s a bit of a disappointment, seeing as how Aladdin never jumped on anything to kill it in the movie (I would of rather used his sword), but the game is a platformer after all, so I really can’t complain too much about it. The gameplay in Aladdin is simplistic (it was made for the kiddies after all). Your main objective is to hop and bop your way to the end of the level, going from the left side of the screen to the right. There are a few items you can get in the levels, which includes some food items that replenish your health, a couple of colored diamonds which, if you collect all 70 red diamonds, unlocks a different credits screen, a flying golden scarab that you can catch which unlocks a bonus game, and paper bags, but I dunno what the hell those do. You get two credits when you start the game and two lives to play off of. The number of hearts you have depends on which level you’re on. When you run out of lives, you can use one of your credits, which sends you back to the beginning of the level you’re on (there are sometimes one or two checkpoints in a level), but you get another two lives. Once you’re out of credits, the game is over. You can enter in a password given to you at the end of each section (each section consists of two to three levels, divided by a cutscene), but that brings you all the way back to the beginning of the section and you have to replay any levels that you did before you ran out of credits. It’s a decent system, with an easy, 4-slotted picture password system (the password selections are characters from Aladdin instead of numbers or letters), but it can really become a pain the balls during boss fights or extremely hard acrobatic situations, as it sends you all the way back to the beginning of the section, granted you can remember the password.
However, in spite of a few of the game’s core mechanics, the level design in Aladdin is simply brilliant. There are plenty of things to hop off of, swing from, jump on, fly over, etc. A lot of care was put into the level design, and it stays true to the movie, locales, and enemy placements. For example, you can swing from a horizontal pole, jump onto an enemy’s head for even more air time, grab onto another pole, and then kick some guard in the face. Simple scenario’s like this can be found all over the levels, and executing this “environmental combination” is extremely rewarding and extremely satisfying. Unfortunately, these fun experiments are usually hard to pull off correctly, and some of the end-game level design relies on you pulling off one of these tricks. It’s not too bad of an inconvenience if you have plenty of lives and credits left, but when you’re down on everything, those parts of the game can become nerve-wracking and frustrating. To make the game flow more fluidly, there are levels of the game in which you don’t just exclusively go from left to right, but instead fly on a magic carpet, or fight a boss character. There are only three bosses in the game, which is a bit of a bummer, but the magic carpet scenes make up for that and are as challenging as the boss fights themselves.
To compliment Aladdin’s excellent level design is a beautifully orchestrated soundtrack. As with the levels and enemies, the music fits perfectly with the game, and is pretty damn good as its for an SNES game. The action, the boss fights, the carpet scenes; none of it would have mattered much if it wasn’t for the properly selected music, and the soundtrack delivers. It’s compelling and it just makes the whole Disney experience come alive. There’s not much else I can say about Aladdin. While its difficulty may have been too much for the kids, it’s perfectly suited for an adult or teenage gamer, granted you don’t mind playing an Aladdin game. From its excellent level design, challenging foes, and outstanding musical score, Aladdin is a game which will live on forever in the great selection of the best games the SNES had to offer.
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World of Warcraft is an MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online
Role-Playing Game) created by Blizzard and published by Blizzard
Entertainment. The game takes place in the world of Azeroth, inhabited
by the most bitter of enemies and the scariest of creatures. There are
two full continents to explore and plenty to do in the land of Azeroth,
so be ready to pick up your sword (or spellbook) and get ready to fight
for either the Horde or the Alliance.
Before you jump into Azeroth, you must first create your own, customizable character. There are two warring factions to choose from and four different races for each faction. Depending on which server you choose, players on one faction are allowed to kill players of the other faction when in contested territory. Anyhow, when creating your character, you have eight different classes to choose from (which aren't available to every race, but may be to others). Character creation isn't too varied and is pretty poor when compared to other character creation systems for other MMORPG's, like the Lord of the Rings Online which can get pretty deep. Other than the different hairstyles, most players of the same race pretty much look the same. You're not even allowed to change the body composition of your character, so Humans always end up looking like beefed up, muscular guys on steroids even when you're a magician, so it's pretty saddening to say the least. Also when creating your character, your not allowed to choose a name for your character that's already been taken by another person, but that's typical in most MMO games to steer away from confusion. To try and keep the game feeling like a realistic game world and to keep some sense of lore, World of Warcraft also doesn't allow you to enter numbers into your character's name (but character names like "LegolasOne" are abundant). The character creation isn't too shabby, but it could definitely use some updating to catch up with the times. After you're done creating your character, you're ready to begin your adventure. The first thing you are introduced to in the World of Warcraft is quests. Quests are basically missions, where you either kill a number of things, collect a number of things, or something to that effect, which eventually yields reputation gains, monetary gains, experience, or new gear. Quests can get repetitive, and there are a few instances where you'll be cursing the game wondering why a certain quest item hasn't dropped off of a monster yet, even though you've killed twenty of them, but the game does such a good job at sucking you into the whole experience that you don't even begin to care and you just start thinking of the benefits. To add to the fun of questing, it is also possible to group up with a pal or a bunch of buddies to tackle the quests together. Not only is it rewarding, but it also creates new friendships with people and makes the game move a little faster and smoother. To help you complete these quests is a database crammed with thousands of different pieces of gear to customize your character with. Depending on what character class you chose, some certain pieces of gear may not be available to you (for example, mages can't wear plate armor). The gear types in WoW are cloth, leather, mail, and plate, and they can be classified as junk, common, uncommon, rare, epic, and legendary. All gear from uncommon to legendary are considered magical, and produce some sort of effect on the character. These effects can range from increasing the regeneration of your health to adding more points to your overall health. Once these pieces of gear are removed, the benefits go away. You will be able to obtain uncommon gear from the get-go, but that's only by using the auction house, which I'll explain later in the review. You probably won't be getting your first epic gear until at least level 40. Now that you're all geared up and you've been questing like a real hero, Blizzard knew that all of that would get pretty boring after awhile so there are things in the game called instances. Instances are areas loaded with "Elite" creatures (considerably tough monsters which are extremely hard to kill unless grouped with other people) and improved loot. At different intervals in an instance, you will be tasked with killing a boss monster, which is a single monster with extremely high stats, magical abilities, and rare gear (which can only be found from that monster). Instances are fun additions to the World of Warcraft and can create even larger bonds between your friends. Not only are they extremely rewarding, but they're also a lot more fun to do than quests, and they can be done as many times as you'd like to. However, after your done gearing up some more, doing more quests, and have gained a considerable sum of levels, now it's on to the big stuff: raids. Raids are basically instances but scaled to on a much larger scale. Instead of running into instances with four other players, raids consist of about 24 other players because they're so large and difficult. The enemies are tougher, the bosses are meaner, but the benefits are enormous. You can only get the best gear in the game from raids. Thankfully, as raids are x5 bigger than regular instances, it's also x5 the fun. After you get to Level 60 and have all of the best gear the game has to offer, there really isn't much to do in the world of Azeroth other than improving your tradeskills or commandeering the auction house to turn a hefty profit. Tradeskills are basically modern day jobs like mining or tailoring that uses regents like ores or cloth to create new items. At higher levels, you can create higher level gear, but the amount of regents needed increases with each level you go. Everything you make initially increases your level by one point, but as you continue to rise in levels, some creations will yield no level-ups, or it will be a 1/4 chance of it happening. If your not much into creating objects though, you can always pick up a tradeskill and head off to the auction house. At the auction house, players from your faction are able to trade all kinds of objects, ranging from useful gear to useless junk. The auction house is very simple to use, and is basically self explanatory. You can view lists of different objects or search up a specific one. When auctioning your own item, you can have the auction last up to 48 hours after you set a starting bid price and optionally a buyout price. Using the auction house can improve your gear drastically and without effort, or you can become rich instantly by using it wisely. You will probably be spending a lot of time in the world of Azeroth, and for an MMORPG, it looks pretty good. The game is intentionally cartoony looking, but they pulled off all of the visual capabilities splendidly. The game still looks pretty good even at the lowest graphical capabilities and resolution possible, but there is still a definite amount of lag when entering major cities (as there are dozens of players in one city at a time, crammed between all of the buildings and shops the city has to offer). Yet, even though the graphics look great, the sound is even better. Monsters sound realistic and rarely share the same sound effects between species. Weapons and such also sound great and to the greatest degree of realism. NPCs will greet you when you talk to them, and they'll say good bye when you leave. Even though there is a distinctive amount of voice acting thats lacking (all quests need to be read, the quest givers don't speak rather than the typical greetings and farewells), to include audio for all of the thousands of quest would require an enormous amount of space. To top it all off however, if you decide you don't really like the sounds in the game, you can easily add in your own without breaking the Terms of Service. As I've said many times throughout this review, World of Warcraft can be very addicting. Arguably, it may be the most addicting game ever created. Whether it's the size of Azeroth that astounds you or the certain charm that the game lays upon you, you will constantly find yourself coming back regularly. At a gamers point of view, the addiction of World of Warcraft may be it's biggest flaw. It gives internet trolls' something to regularly bash the game about and it often deeply affects the lives of the player. In recent times, people have actually died from playing this game non-stop. If you think that you're not going to get addicted to the World of Warcraft, think about it this way. Playing World of Warcraft is sort of like smoking a cigarette or taking a drug for the first time. You say to yourself "I'm not the type of person that gets addicted, I can quit whenever I want,". Unless you have some form of resistance to MMORPG's, WoW will most likely have you coming back for more. Fortunately, WoW addiction is easily breakable, as you'll eventually realize that you are essentially doing the same things over and over again. Fortunately for WoW, it was created by an outstanding team of game designers, and the game is constantly updated through patches. Not only do these patches fix up game errors and bugs, but they also bring about new game mechanics, instances, gear, etc. World of Warcraft just never ends. To top it all off, the game is backed by thousands of modders, so there are always new modifications to try out and make the World of Warcraft experience easier and more enjoyable to everyone. In conclusion, World of Warcraft is a game that appeals to just about everyone. You don't need to be a lover of RPG games or fantasy to instantly enjoy WoW. Having complete freedom to do whatever you want, talk to anyone, and to create your own hero is just simply mind-blowing. You just haven't play a fantasy game until you've played WoW.
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Riding on a massive media rollercoaster, Assassin's Creed is a game
that had me worried from the start. The idea of being able to run
across rooftops freely, kill with ease, and blend in with the crowd is
a technical gaming feat which is hard to master. Ubisoft Montreal ran
with this idea and produced a sugar coated fantasy which didn't uphold
to everything it promised, but gave enough to leave you satisfied in
the end.
Assassin's Creed is based off of two story arches and two characters. These two characters are Altaïr, an assassin living in 1191, and Desmond Miles, a distant relative of Altaïr living in the 21st century. The game revolves around the idea that Desmond has been kidnapped by a secret organization which wants to analyze the memories of a particular ancestor. To do this, they have Desmond lay on a machine called the animus which can search through his genetic code for key points in the memory of his ancestor, Altaïr. The main plot is largely uninteresting and seems uninspired. For someone who's being kidnapped by a shadow organization and being forced to relive the memories of his ancient assassin ancestor, Desmond seems perfectly fine with it and cool to a point. Desmond's actions and emotions seem out of place and do nothing to elevate the plot. Fortunately, Desmond is jacked into the animus early into the game and you are taught the simple controls of Assassin's Creed. In Assassin's Creed, there are two types of actions Altaïr can perform: Low Profile and High Profile. Low Profile actions, for the most part, will not draw the attention of nearby guards or civilians, while High Profile actions do just the opposite. By holding down the right trigger, every button that was originally mapped to be Low Profile will now become High Profile. For example, instead of walking, you will now run, and instead of just gently pushing people out of the way, you will tackle them or throw them to the ground. However, once you get farther into the game and perform more assassinations, choosing to be Low Profile or High Profile don't really matter anymore, because just about anything will make the guards want to kill you. Thankfully, the rest of the controls are fairly easy to learn. Climbing buildings requires no effort at all. You just grab onto a building and use the left analog stick to move in the direction in which you desire. Other than scaling buildings and jumping across rooftops, Altaïr also has a special ability called Eagle Vision. When fully synchronized (which means when you have full health), Altaïr can look at his surroundings in an entirely different way. The sky and ground become dark and blurry, but people, such as allies and guards, become more prominent and easier to spot, which in turn makes your current job easier. The main objective of Assassin's Creed is to gather intelligence on a certain person, find out where they're hiding or what they're doing on the day in which you plan to assassinate them on, and then follow-up by performing the hit. There are three ways in which you can gather intelligence on your target: pickpocketing, eavesdropping, and interrogation. These short mini-games are fun the first few times you do them, but throughout the game, you will be doing them over and over again, so they quickly become repetitive and boring. Aside from that, you can also save citizens from corrupt guards, but this only provides you with protection from "vigilantes" or scholars, which for the most part is unneeded. There isn't a whole lot of depth to the gameplay of Assassin's Creed until you get to the actual assassination itself. There are many different locations in which the assassinations take place, and every assassination is different (albeit the actual kill). Altaïr must always be close enough to the target so that he can take out his hidden blade and kill them with it. This means that no amount of throwing knives can kill your target, though you can weaken them with your blade. After each assassination is complete, you are shown a cutscene in which Altaïr and the assassinated target speak. These cutscenes are meant to add more drama to the story surrounding Altaïr, but in the end, they are bland spices sprinkled onto an already boring and tasteless plot. Between Altaïr and the target are hordes of enemy guards but Altaïr has a selection of weapons at his disposal to take care of them. This includes a long sword, a small dagger, throwing knives, his fists, and his hidden blade. The long sword is mainly used for taking down a small number of foes at a time while the small dagger is better for quickly and efficiently taking down larger groups of enemies. Throwing knives can be thrown either in or out of battle and each hit will usually kill your target instantly. For the most part, unless you're fighting another person who is also using their fists, getting dirty with just your hands is utterly useless unless they're being used for interrogation purposes. Last, we have the hidden blade, Altaïr's ultimate weapon. If done while not having nearby guards alerted, the hidden blade can be used for either Low Profile or High Profile kills. The hidden blade can also be used while in combat, but it is not a wise choice to do so as it leaves you unguarded against your attacker's blade. Other than defending against throngs of enemies by yourself, Altaïr also has the chance to ally himself with scholars and vigilantes. To gain access to these two types of allies, you must first save a citizen or scholar who is being abused by the city guard. After killing the corrupt guards, the citizen or scholar will thank you and either the vigilante or scholar allies will then be unlocked to you in that specific area of the city. Vigilantes are helpful when you are being chased by numerous guards, as they will leap out to defend you and keep the following guards occupied by grabbing onto their arms and allowing you a chance to make a break for it. Scholars on the other hand work as moving cover: if you are being chased but you have broken the line of sight between you and the guards, you can blend in with the scholars to walk away freely. As helpful as these two allies may seem through words, they are actually quite useless and it is only by chance that you might accidentally run by one of these two groups while fleeing. It is much easier (and satisfying) to just kill the guards yourself, and finding rooftop garden sheds and piles of hay is a much more efficient way of hiding rather than searching for a group of scholars. However, if not to add a sour note to one thing about Assassin's Creed, the game is simply beautiful. It's clear that Ubisoft Montreal put a whole lot of effort into their building design and characters. You won't usually see (or notice) the same citizen twice, but it still remains the fact that they are there. Beggars and drunks will usually use the same character models (and sound effects), but it really doesn't matter in the end because the game looks completely seamless. Even a great deal of time went into the water effects of Assassin's Creed, even though you don't spend a lot of time wading through it (or swimming for that matter; Altaïr can't swim). Assassin's Creed is flowing with a mysterious atmosphere, and you can really feel at times that you are an actual assassin out to gather intelligence on a target, no matter how mediocre or repetitive the objects may seem. A big let down from the graphics, however, is Assassin's Creed's sound effects. The voice acting is great, but the same voices for the beggars, preachers, citizens in need, and several different dynamic characters are recycled and used over and over again. Just listening to the sounds of Assassin's Creed is as repetitive as completing the in-game objectives. It almost feels like Ubisoft Montreal tried to make the game's sounds as annoying as possible. Beggars will follow you relentlessly begging for money, you will hear the same person over and over again asking for help, and you'll hear the same person preaching to a crowd about the effects of the Crusades and how it is taxing everybody and how bad Richard the Lionheart is. It just takes so much away from what little, imaginative gameplay Assassin's Creed clings on to. Aside from completing the main storyline and saving citizens, there are also dozens of flags hidden throughout the three different cities and its outside kingdom. But, just like in every game ever made, collecting things is just boring and pointless (unless you're an achievement junkie). A good mix Assassin's Creed does show with collecting things is the lives of 60 different Templars scattered around the kingdom. Rather than just searching for a flag and then running over it to collect it, you can also search for these different Templars and then kill them to obtain your reward. Templars are often overpowered and, if you fight fairly, a challenging target to beat, but these fights are always rewarding and it makes Altaïr not feel like a superhuman, killing-machine. Templar fights are, dare I say it? Fair? Overall, Assassin's Creed is a fun action adventure game for the first few hours, but quickly becomes boring and repetitive as the game drags on. It seems that Ubisoft Montreal knew that the game was going to feel repetitive as you assassinated more targets, so they just put a lot of emphasis on the unrealistic fighting by making guards more aware and wanting to kill you for simply running. It's a shame too, because Assassin's Creed was a game with so much promise and appeal, but Ubisoft Montreal just ended up failing with the execution of the formula.
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Runescape is a fantasy online role-playing game created by Jagex Ltd.
Lurking in the shadows of better RPG's such as World of Warcraft or
LotRO, Runescape has always been looked down upon as the poor man's
MMORPG. While delivering a positive first impression, Runescape
combines shoddy graphics, no real story elements, and horrendous sound
effects together to create a mediocre RPG game which generally isn't
worth playing.
Runescape takes place in the land of Gielinor, a place divided by multiple kingdoms, regions, and other random areas. You play as an adventurer out to rid the world of evil and generate a lot of income. When you first begin to play Runescape, you're taken to a character customization screen where you can begin to create your adventurer. The options are extremely limited, and most options basically look the same. You can't customize things like weight, height, or body disposition, but you can add different clothing options and hairstyles to your character. Combined with horrible graphics and a zoomed out camera, character creation isn't all that great and doesn't let you give much of an identity behind your character. After creating your custom adventurer, you're taken to the Tutorial Island, which does teach you a lot of things about the game hands-on, but it is more of a nuisance than something that is in a sense helpful. The worst part about the experience is not having the ability to skip the whole ordeal. The first thing you tend to notice is that there are no voice overs in the game. Everything is text based, and you will never hear anyone ever talk to you. After going through multiple trainers and people who just tend to talk on forever, you're finally given the chance to go to the mainland. While this may sound exciting at first, you're soon hit with your first dose of Runescape reality. After finally appearing in a town called Lumbridge, through testing the game with three different characters, I was greeted by the same thing each time. You will instantly have your chat log spammed with people trying to sell you in-game gold for real life cash, then have people trying to trade random items with you, and then a whole lot of people having arguments, who tend to use the word "nublet" in every other sentence. It's not a particularly inviting situation, but you will soon get used to it because this is the world of Runescape. After listening to the never-ending tutorial, you would know that Runescape is built upon a system of skills. These skills can range from mining to fishing, and are all in a sense used to make money. Half of the available skills in the game are members-only, which is a little discouraging to look at. To raise the level of your skills, you must do them...a lot. Leveling skills can take long, meaningless hours of boredom, and really isn't worth the effort. Runescape's entire economy is about making money, so you can buy new equipment to make you more money. It basically makes no sense, and once you figure that out, Runescape quickly loses its appeal. If you don't feel like mining rocks for hours on end, Runescape also allows you to fight with several different types of creatures throughout the game world. Once you are in an encounter with a monster, you have four basic attack options, which vary with each different weapon, but all have pretty much the same effects. Fighting in Runescape is extremely boring, and though you have stats showing you what you're good at doing with your particular weapon, most of the combat in Runescape is by luck. I've seen a person attempt to shoot a giant rat with a bow and arrow a good 40 times before actually hitting it, and even then, the rat still had plenty of life left. Some battles can even go on for five minutes or more, just because both participants can't hit each other. To add with the skill rising and tacky combat system, Runescape offers quests for the player to embark on. Quests can sometimes be a lot of fun, but most are just simple and boring "Kill this number of creature quests" or "Collect these items" quests. There isn't a whole lot of variation between the quest types, and most just end up falling flat. Practically all quest-givers you meet are uninteresting, and are rather goofy and strange. It takes a whole lot away from whatever story Runescape might have, when this guy who's completely screwing with you jokes around and is just generally acting odd, then tasks you with killing a monstrous dragon. As with most other online fantasy RPG's, Runescape takes place in a massive world based around a player-controlled economy. However, the world of Runescape's apparent goofy-ness and wacky sound effects shows that the game is clearly leaned toward children. So, in a sense, Runescape is filled with more annoying 12 year olds than Halo 3 and Gears of War combined. However, Runescape can teach you a thing or two in grammar. Here, in the land of Gielinor, was the first time I've ever heard anyone called "nublet" before. You're going to be hearing this word constantly through your travels throughout Gielinor, whether you like it or not, so if you plan on playing Runescape, you may as well get used to it. Runescape is also filled with spam bots and scammers, so it all just makes the experience that much more enjoyable. However, if you're into that kind of thing, Runescape offers you the choice to subscribe to a membership of their services. By subscribing to Jagex, your player is granted many new skills for you to endlessly grind with and a selection of new clothe options to wear. The rest of the land of Gielinor is also opened to you, and hundreds of new generic and tasteless quests are available for you to complete. In a quick overview of the benefits of subscribing to Jagex, $5 a month is just not worth the wasted hours of meaningless grinding and its associated childish community. As if traversing the land of Gielinor and completing meaningless quests wasn't enough, you get to do it all in an incredibly bland looking environment. Runescape is all fully done in 3D, but with a world so large and with a never ending associated community, Runescape just looks flat out horrible. Everything is colored one of about 16 different colors, meaning there isn't a whole lot of variation between the environments. Everything is also horribly blocky, and textures don't seem to blend all that great. Mix this with horrible effects and constant area loading (which makes the screen distort its colors for a short time), Runescape is one of the biggest graphical messes ever conceived from the internet. Believe it or not, but the sound effects are just as horrible as the graphics. Everything sounds like it was ripped from an old batch of NES games. I expect to hear something relative to a hammer hitting someone over the head, not the chime of a bell. Jagex tried to make a few of the monsters found throughout the game sound somewhat as passable, but a mixture of beeps and sound distorters doesn't make up for the lost feel of combat. It's a shame really; if Jagex had just added in some decent sound effects, combat might actually feel a little rewarding, or maybe even fun, but that unfortunately isn't the case with Runescape. Runescape, as a game in whole, will last you for a little while. There a few quests that you can complete before the list is cut off due to lack of subscription, but these quests become so boring so fast that you probably won't even make it halfway down the list before you quit the game altogether. Skills sound like a great idea, until you learn that it is all based around endless grinding that reaps no benefits. The entire economy based around Runescape is to grind materials, so that you can make money to buy new equipment to make more money. It's a never-ending circle of stupidity. With a terrible community, shoddy graphics, and horrendous sound effects, Runescape just doesn't stand up as an acceptable game, or a worthwhile experience to be had.
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Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter was one of the Xbox 360's
main selling points out of the starting gate and the breakthrough game
for the Ghost Recon series. Always a great series, but seriously
lacking in some ways, Advanced Warfighter started from the ground up
and, at the time, became the best in the franchise. Advanced Warfighter
is still a wonderful experience to be had, but its some-what
overwhelming difficulty and lack of long-time online players may drive
newer players away.
As I've stated before, Advanced Warfighter can at times be an extremely difficult and frustrating game. AW pushes the envelope in realism, but it's so realistic that it's exceptionally hard to evade incoming enemy fire. You are usually outnumbered, with allies or not, and most enemies are armed with either assault rifles or high-powered machine guns, so dodging bullets relies on either luck, or how much cover you're under. In Advanced Warfighter, you control Captain Scott Mitchell, a hardened veteran of war and leader of a squad of "Ghosts", a special operations team. Captain Mitchell can hide behind most types of reliable cover, including walls, trees, sandbags; anything that looks remotely like a square can usually be taken as cover. To help ease down on the difficulty of the game, there is a feature in the game called the CrossCam. The CrossCam shows you what allies you are in control of, and what they're currently looking at. Through the CrossCam, you can issue basic commands to your allies, like "Move" or "Fire", and it's pretty easy to use. The CrossCam can sometimes be a hassle to use, however, as your allies will occasionally not follow your commands (especially when ordering Armor Strikes). However, its positives far outweigh its small negatives, and it is a welcome addition to the series. As always, Captain Mitchell is usually commanding a team of allies. These allies can range from a squad of Ghosts, to more powerful vehicles like tanks or helicopters. These allies all have their advantages and disadvantages, but when it comes to taking down the enemy, these guys are extremely helpful. Seeing as how you'll be dodging bullets for most of the game, you can order your squad of Ghosts to help you out in a multitude of ways, and each has a different function (like "Anti-Tank" or "Rifleman"). A useful tactic when facing a large opposition of enemies is to order your squad of Ghosts to direct the majority of enemy fire while you sneak around the side to easily flank them. It's great gameplay tactics which bring out the realism of the game. To help you take down your enemies is a massive array of weaponry to choose from. Captain Mitchell can carry three types of weapons: a primary weapon, a secondary weapon, and a handful of grenades. In the single-player campaign, you're choice of weapons in limited, but in the multiplayer mode, you're allowed to choose from dozens of different weapons. There are only two types of pistols and one type of grenades, but there is a very large selection of primary weapons. These weapons can range from assault rifles to sniper rifles, or even grenade launchers and RPG's. This new selection of weapons helps you create even more strategies, and really makes both the multiplayer and online modes shine. In essence, the plot of AW is pretty basic. It's basically a bunch of traitorous Mexican soldiers began a rebellion while the Mexican President, the American President, and the Canadian Prime Minister were signing a treaty. You're tasked with recovering both the Mexican and American presidents, and then taking out the leader of the resistance. Most of the story is predictable, and the ending is one of the most disappointing sequences I've ever witnessed. Because I don't want to spoil the ending for you, all I will say is that it is exactly what you expected it to be, no more no less. To such a difficult game with such a great amount of realism, the ending is just...horrible. I really expected more from it but was left disappointed. In better news, the game looks amazing. Ubisoft did a really great job on this game, and it clearly shows. Mexico City looks and feels just like a real city (albeit there are no civilians in the game). They also put a really cool bullet stream behind bullets, so you can see the smoke trail from the bullets as it whizzes through the air. It's extremely helpful, as it can usually tell you where enemy fire is coming from if you don't see it directly. However, Ubisoft left this addition out of the multiplayer and online components of the game, so any tactical advantage you got from watching the bullets fly don't work here. The sound in Advanced Warfighter was just done perfectly. The realism really shows more clearly in the sound. Every gun you use has a different sound effect to it, which in turn helps make identifying what gun you're enemy is using easier. When close to a blast radius, either it being from a nearby grenade explosion or a vehicle exploding next to you, your HUD will start to get fuzzy and shake around, while all of the sound will be drained from you. After a few seconds of fighting deaf, the sounds of the battlefield will slowly come back to you, and you can resume fighting as usual. Speaking of the sounds of the battlefield, since you are fighting Mexican rebels, they will yell to each other battle commands in Spanish, and if you know a little Spanish, you will know exactly what they're trying to do to kill you. The same voices of the Mexican rebels do tend to be used frequently and you will hear the same phrase used many times, but it's not extremely noticeable, and you shouldn't mind it too much. Advanced Warfighter will last you for a very long time. There is of course the long and difficult single-player campaign, but there are also multiplayer and online modes as well. Advanced Warfighter delivers an outstanding multiplayer mode, in which you and up to three other buddies can take out up to 50 computer-controlled rebels. There are three different modes of play to choose from, but they are largely uninteresting and the main focus was clearly put around the Elimination mode, in which you must take out the enemy force. As I've stated before, all of the weapons not available in the single-player campaign are available here. With the new weapons comes new tactics, as one of your friends can carry a grenade launcher, while another can carry a sniper rifle, etc. There are also several different maps to choose from, all having great advantages and disadvantages. For example, one level is on a boat at sea, while enduring a thunder storm. There are close fighting spots for you to take out the enemy, but with the heavy rain coming down and the boat rocking back and force, you're bullets may droop down and miss you're target directly, so perhaps a heavier, yet more powerful and more accurate rifle is needed. It's great gameplay tactics like this that makes playing AW's multiplayer a blast to play, and it will keep you addicted and focused for some time to come. Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter is clearly one of the most tactical and realistic games out there today. However, with its heavy sense of realism comes a heavy sense of difficulty, and you will find yourself playing the same, long parts over and over again. Besides its difficulty, Advanced Warfighter is a great game overall, and with its outstanding multiplayer and online features, it's a game that will last you for a long time, and justifies its price tag.
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Star Wars: Battlefront II is the follow-up sequel to the instant
classic Star Wars: Battlefront, both being developed and produced by
the same people that brought us Mercenaries. SWB2 is a simple and
addictive shooter that shouldn't be bypassed by any Star Wars fan.
A big improvement from the original Battlefront is that the AI of the game is greatly increased. Your teammates and enemies alike will set explosive traps, man turrets, plow through soldiers in vehicles; pretty much anything that you would do, they will also do to gain the upper-hand. However, even with it being an improvement in a simple sense, the enemies are still incredibly dumb, and the game isn't much of a challenge on the highest difficulty possible. You more often than not lose battles due to the stupidity of your own soldiers rather than your own faults on the higher difficulties. However, even with the mediocre AI, there is a modest selection of soldier classes to choose from, each reflecting their own advantages and disadvantages. For example, the Sniper class is equipped with a powerful sniper rifle with low ammo, but is also equipped with a small blaster pistol that practically has unlimited ammo. There are also some unique classes, which also have their pros and cons. These unique classes strengths usually outshine their weaknesses, but they must be unlocked by getting a certain number of points from battling the enemy. A neat thing about SWB2 is its Awards System. Since this is an older Playstation 2 game, any type of Achievements (like what Microsoft has with their Xbox 360 console) were non-existent at the time, and Pandemic went ahead and created their own system. Most of the awards are easy to get, and you are rewarded with either a bonus to your stats or are given a newer, better version of your gun (For example, if you win the Marksman award, you are given a better sniper rifle). After a certain number of times the same award has been won throughout your entire time playing the game, the awarded gun/stats will forever be implemented with your character. The only downfall to the Awards System is that since your enemies were already pretty easy to kill in the past, now they're ridiculously easy to kill with your new weaponry. The combat in SWB2 is simple, yet intuitive. The basic premise of it is to run around and shoot as many people as you can and kill the other team before they kill you, but Pandemic delivers this method in interesting ways. Aside from killing everybody that stands in your way, you must also capture outposts strategically placed throughout the maps, which allow more of your troops to enter the battlefield, and also acts as a respawn point for yourself. There a few different game modes in which you can implement this system, for example, Capture the Flag, or Hunt, where you must hunt down different species of animals before they kill you. Some of these game modes are unbalanced, but on either side, it's still a whole lot of fun. Even though the game is loaded with different classes of characters to choose from, huge maps to battle on, and an array of vehicles to commandeer, SWB2 introduces Leaders, which are extremely powerful characters in which you can control for a limited amount of time. These Leader characters can range from Jedi Masters to Sith Lords, or even gun-wielding heroes such as Han Solo. Atop of the already ridiculously easy AI, these Leaders can easily mow down half of your enemies reinforcements by the time your session as a Leader is over. Leaders lose time by being hurt, but gain time by killing enemies, so in the right hands, Leaders can really throw off the balance of the game. If fighting on the ground isn't much of your thing, SWB2 also introduces space combat. With fighting in space brings new battle strategies, and a couple of space-orientated battle modes. There are only three real strategies to winning a space battle though, so there's not a lot of creativity to go along with it. You could either grab a bomber and destroy all of your enemies external ship additions, grab a transport and do the same exact thing but by doing it from the inside of your enemy's ship, or you can take a fighter and mow down your enemies reinforcements. The AI seems somewhat improved in this frontier however, because enemy fighters are aggressive dogfighters, and won't let you take down their ship without a good fight. Space maps range from Large to Small, so there's something for everybody. For a game the size of SWB2, the graphics are pretty good. Almost everything is modeled after the movies, so walking around the environments looking at landmarks from the movies is always a fun pastime. The environments are also loaded with spectacular special effects, like lava blasting off the tops of volcanoes in the Mustafar level. The Playstation 2's graphics, however, fair worse when compared to the Xbox version of the game, but most changes are not extremely noticeable and take no effect on the gameplay for either versions. The sound effects in SWB2 are authentic and sound exactly like they should. Lightsabers hum indefinitely, blaster fire rips through walls, the moan of people dying around you fill the map. It really gives you the sense of war, and what you're trying to capture is worth dying for. For a war game, that works very well on Battlefront II's part. The only thing not authentic about the sound in Battlefront II are the voices of the Leaders. I'm not sure why they didn't just use sound clips from the movies, but Pandemic opted-out instead to have voice actors with somewhat similar voices re-voice the roles. It's odd too, because these new voice roles say pretty much what the characters say in the movies, so I'm still confused as to why they didn't just use sound clips from the movies. Hearing a person you don't recognize try and act, as say, Han Solo takes away a lot of the Star Wars feel of the game, but it doesn't shortchange the gameplay in any way, and the Leader character's rarely speak anyhow. SWB2 is one of those games that can be summarized as an Energizer Bunny: It just keeps going, and going, and going. The value of the game rarely wanes in appeal, and no matter how long you've been playing it or how long you've had it, the game is still a blast to play each and every time. The game boasts a long Campaign mode, which illustrates the battles of the 501st Legion from the movies, and spans two eras (from the Clone Wars to the Galactic Civil War). You can also do random skirmishes on a variety of both land and space maps, so the longevity of the game rises even further in that department. Other than the Campaign mode and the random battles, SWB2 also comes with something called Galactic Conquest. In Galactic Conquest, there is a large, board game-like field in which you move these different space ships. By moving these ships, you can either invade a hostile planet and attempt to take it as your own, or you can engage an enemy ship and hope to destroy it. By doing both of these things, you earn "credits" which can be used to purchase new character classes for use in your army or one-time special bonuses, such as having a Leader on the battlefield or giving you extra reinforcements. The game mode is overly easy however, and with the already horrendously bad AI, there's not much of a challenge when you go to take a new planet for yourself. Galactic Conquest can either be played in the Clone Wars era or the Galactic Civil War era, so it's possible to relive some of the movies greatest moments this way. SWB2 also packs an online mode, which is a nice addition to any Star Wars buff. The game mode's mixes real players and computer-controlled players, so you're unfortunately not always going to be fighting a real force of people. The simple game modes from the Singleplayer version of the game follow into here also, so if you wanted, you could hunt down real people in the Hunt game mode if you wish. This creates some unique moments that can only be found in the online portion of the game, for example, hunting down a group of human-controlled Gungans who are only armed with a welding torch and grenades. Star Wars Battlefront II is definitely a game which should not be missed by any Star Wars fan. Its mix of addicting and innovative combat through both land and space creates an untold amount of value to be had, and should last for quite some time. Whether you're a die-hard fan or a newcomer to the franchise, you need this game.
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The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is a role-playing game created by
Bethesda Softworks, and is the follow-up game to the instant classic
The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. Oblivion takes place in the land of
Cyrodiil, which is a part of the Tamriel Empire. Oblivion allows you to
travel throughout Cyrodiil right when you first start the game, and
unlike other RPG games, traveling is not a tedious thing to do but is
quite fun. The one landmark thing that separates Oblivion away from the
RPG-pack is its wonderful usage of a first person view mode. Being in
first person, Oblivion really makes you feel like you're right there in
the action. For example, very early on in the game, you find a bow and
some arrows. A little ways down from the place in which you find the
bow is a Goblin Witch, which mainly uses ranged, spell attacks.
Oblivion coolly transitions into the ensuing fight, and your first
shootout with an enemy will leave you a bit shocked out of how real it
all felt; dodging behind pillars, narrowly evading fireballs, taking
pot shots when you can. You really take it all in straight from the
get-go, and the feeling of it all will leave you speechless.
However, if controlling your character through a first-person perspective isn't your cup of tea, you can also play it in a third-person perspective. Unfortunately, the animations aren't as fluid as they are in the first-person view mode and making contact with enemies is a little bit harder. The jumping animation was also clearly meant for doing through a first-person perspective, because your character will just jump in the air, freeze in that position, and the controls allow you to move in any direction you wish. The only time I ever play in third-person is when I'm riding on a horse, because riding a horse in first-person is a bit odd. But enough on the third-person aspect, and back to the first. The most exhilarating thing to do in Oblivion, as I've noted, is to fight. In the game, most quests have you killing something eventually, so Bethesda put a lot of effort into the fighting mechanics of the game. Every battle is a complete blast, with dozens of weapons to choose from, all based on your typical medieval RPG-type weapons (swords, bows, etc.) The game also has several different spells to master, with capabilities like draining your target's health or making them exhausted. But if you're not much of a fighter, Oblivion also has a short range of mini-games for you to play at different places throughout the game. If your the type of person who likes sneaking around places or becoming one with the shadows, you can get most jobs done without killing a single person. Helping you do this is a little lock-picking mini-game. If a door you need to go through is locked, but if you have a lockpick handy, you can attempt to break through the door. There are several different difficulties to breaking locks, ranging from Very Easy to Very Hard, so every new lock is a different challenge. If you mess up while attempting to break a lock, your lockpick will shatter, and you can attempt to break the lock again if you have another lockpick with you. Other than lock-picking, to better achieve your ambition as a shadow, you can also persuade people. The mini-game to this is a little stupid, for the point of it is to seduce people by either telling a joke, admiring them, giving them compliments, etc. The mini-game is a bit confusing at first, and not very helpful, so if you have trouble playing it, you can always just bribe the person into liking you. The only downside to this is instead of playing a stupid mini-game which doesn't help much, you're paying large sums of money for the same thing. But, if sneaking around in the shadows isn't really your thing, but if you're more into spellcasting, there's also an alchemist mini-game. Through this, you can create different potions made from ingredients found throughout the game world. Potions in Oblivion are one of the main staples to staying alive, so alchemy really comes in handy. But not all of the potions you create have a positive effect on the main character. Some ingredients cause a negative effect, and you can effectively create poisons out of these ingredients, which are applied to your weapon. Unlike the lock-picking and persuasion mini-games, alchemy requires absolutely no skill required, and just has you mixing up different ingredients to create an assorted mix of potions and poisons. But forget about the gameplay, and lets look at the graphics of Oblivion. The game world is absolutely gorges and is incredible to look at. Grass sticks up instead of being mashed into the ground, water shimmers light off of its surface, the sky swirls realistically, and more. Everything was done extremely well, and isn't overly glossy looking like other next-gen games. There are, however, some issues with the performance of the game, like random objects suddenly pop-in out of nowhere, or some objects are flat-ironed out in 2D when they should of been in 3D (for example, the rope masts of a sailing ship). The water, in my opinion, is also incredibly cheesy. It looks great at a distance, but offers no real-time physics or reflections, other than from light. Meaning, if you jump off the top of a castle and fall into a lake below, not only will you live, no water will splash up from your impact, nor will it move away from you. The water looks great, but its lack of physics is extremely disappointing. However, to compete with its gorges graphics is it's outstanding soundtrack. There are hundreds of different sounds, ranging from the sound of things dropping or the sound of opening different types of doors. Swords repel fiercely off of shield and blade alike, and you can actually hear an arrow penetrate your armor and pierce through your skin. This is just clear proof that Bethesda put an equal amount of work into it's sound databank as it did with it's fighting and graphics, and in turn, everything came out perfect. A neat little thing about the audio in Oblivion is how the people speak. Every word of dialog in the game is spoken, with the exception of text in a book. The people's voices are recycled, meaning you will hear the same voice come from several different people, but it is so well done that it is hardly noticeable. The great thing about Oblivion is that it never ends. There are dozens of different side quests you can take part in, and all have a unique feel to it. There are also several different guilds/factions to join, which creates for the player both friends and enemies, but taking contracts within a guild comes with huge benefits and a great challenge to partake in. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has already gone down as one of the greatest role-playing games ever created, as noted by it's highly positive reviews and multiple awards. Bethesda has gone so far to flaunt these awards that they are actually releasing a new version of Oblivion, entitled The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Game of the Year Edition. The new version includes new bug fixes and includes the two expansions already released for Oblivion; The Knights of the Nine and the Shivering Isles. Through gorges graphics, exhilarating gameplay, and incredible replay value, the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has been embedded into my mind forever.
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Halo 2 is an ambitious follow-up to 2000's Game of the Year, Halo:
Combat Evolved. Not only harboring the fact that Bungie had to produce
a game on par with the original, they succeeded by creating a game that
has won three Game of the Year Awards, multiple reviews from major
sites, magazines all having positive reviews, a huge fanbase, and
making IGN exclaim that it's the "Best Xbox game of all time".
The controls of Halo 2 are near exact to the original's, so if you were one of the many people who played the original Halo, sliding into the game should be simple. If you were one of the few who didn't play the original Halo, the controls are pretty basic compared to other FPS games. You can run, walk, jump, shoot, throw grenades, turn on a flashlight, and in some cases, go invisible. The controls fit nicely with the Xbox's controller, and it isn't a pain to pull off the basic or more advanced techniques of Halo 2. In Halo 2, unlike the original Halo, you play as two main characters. You play, as always, as Master Chief, and in some parts of the game, the Arbiter, a Covenant Elite. Both the Master Chief's and the Arbiter's controls are basically the same, with the exception of their character-specific abilities. While playing as Master Chief, you can flip on a flashlight located on your armor, or as playing as the Arbiter, you can make yourself go invisible. Both abilities have their advantages, as it is very helpful to flip on a flashlight in dark areas or to enter an area undetected with invisibility. Aside from these character-specific abilities the two main characters has, Halo 2 boasts a massive array of weaponry to utilize to your advantage. The total count of weapons to obtain is 14, many of which are new to the series. Not only are there several powerful guns to choose from, many of them can be dual-wielded to increase the stopping power of the weapon. Weapons are divided into two categories: Human and Alien. The Human weapons fire bullets, which are more in-tuned to taking down an enemy's overall health faster, while the Alien weapons are more in tuned to bringing down an enemy's shield. Dual-wielding both an Alien and Human weapon is an essential combat strategy to playing the Single-Player Campaign, as the Alien weapons can rip down an enemy's shield easily and then be followed up with a Human weapon to finish the job. While character-specific abilities and creative weapons are usually enough to fight off the Covenant horde, Halo 2 also has seven unique vehicles for the player to utilize and master. As with the weapons, the vehicles come in both Human and Alien. Most of the vehicles in the game can be used to transport several players around the map, or be used to draw fire from the enemy. Halo 2 is also the first of the series to feature destructible vehicles, creating new single-player and multi-player strategies. Halo 2 is also the first of the series to highlight on hijacking vehicles. If close enough to a vehicle that is operated by only one person, the player can hold a button to initiate a sequence in which the player shoves the enemy out of the vehicle. Players can also latch onto vehicles operated by multiple people and attempt to hijack it by either beating the armor of the vehicle, or by opening the entrance hatch and throwing a grenade down to the driver. Both of these maneuvers, however, can have their setbacks, because you damage the vehicle, thus making you an easier target to kill. Bungie really went out of its way to make Halo 2 look great. The graphics are a huge step from the original Halo. There are many more decorations to levels (rocks, bushes, etc.) and it doesn't just feel like running down multiple gray corridors like the original game. The water effects are also stunning to look at, and the marines and Covenant forces are more realistic than ever. However, after the initial awe wares off, Halo 2 is a little odd to look at, because, as EGM humorously stated in their Halo 3 Special Edition September 2007 issue, after describing Halo 3's advanced graphics, "In a word, it's subtle - a welcome change from Halo 2, where even rough stones and alien fur glistened like they'd be slathered with Cristco,". The sound and feel of Halo 2 is superb to any other FPS game available. The Covenants commanding voices really tense up the game, while the Marines' funny dialog help loosen up the tension. Through a new translator attached the Master Chief's body, it is now possible to listen to what the Covenant are saying to each other. Classic lines like the Elites "Wort wort wort" are still in the game, but just knowing what the enemy's going to do next is a major advancement and strategy from the original game. The weapons in Halo 2 are also great sounding, as the differentiation between bullets and plasma is obvious. Magnum pistols sound nothing like the plasma pistol while the battle rifle sounds nothing like the Covenant carbine. Hiding behind objects, you can easily tell what the enemy is using against you without even seeing it. It's great setting up strategies without even seeing the enemy, as every weapon is different and unique. The overall feel of the game is second to none, and really sets the bar for other games. Halo 2, as strangely as this may sound, can be compared to the Matrix sequels. Halo 2 emphasizes more on the story of the game, like the Matrix did with its sequels, but without making the game suck, which was what the Matrix sequels failed to do. The story of Halo is intriguing to follow, but it succeeds without taking you out of the action. You'll always be fighting off hordes of enemy, but now it has purpose, because you always know whats going on but not what's going to happen next. Unfortunately, Halo 2 has a very short Single-Player Campaign, and if you don't have either friends or Xbox Live, the value of the game runs out pretty quickly. There are many easter eggs and "skulls" (objects which alter the gameplay in some way) to find in the game, but once you've replayed the minimal amount of levels to get them, there really isn't anything else to do. The game also boasts a Legendary difficulty level, so if you played the game on Normal, replaying the game on Legendary creates a lot more challenges to overcome, but the basis of the level doesn't change, and replaying the game over again doesn't really make it unique. Halo 2 is by far, however, the best multi-player game with Xbox Live capabilities, second to none to no other game (unless possibly Gears of War at a statistic standpoint). There are several different modes of play, which creates a truly unique experience to gamers and fanboys everywhere. Halo 2 is one of the greatest FPS games ever developed, and continues to be an exciting experience to this day. From the day of its release on November 9, 2004 and up until mid-November, 2006, Halo 2 was the most popular video game on Xbox Live, even after the release of the Xbox 360. Halo 2 is an amazing game in its own right, being ominous with the word "Xbox". If most people think of Halo when someone says "Xbox", that obviously means it's good, right?
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Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings is quite literally a glorious game.
It heralds as the successor to the highly successful RTS Age of
Empires. AoE II had a lot to live up to, and it quite clearly pulled it
off.The best part of AoE II, of course, is its gameplay. As in most RTS
games, the goal is to build a base/town, build an army, conqueror
enemy. In AoE II, there are three unique ways to do it, but I'll get to
that later. To first start off in the game, you must build a base. To
build one, you need resources, such as wood, food, stone, etc., the
necessities to survive. To collect resources, you must first make
villagers. You can create buildings with villagers, attack enemies or
wild animals with them, or use them to repair damaged buildings. To
collect resources, you can either set up a Lumber Camp or a Mining
Camp, where harvested resources can be dropped off. Your villagers will
then go to battering down trees or picking away at mines. Which I found
helpful in AoE II was that once you assign a villager a task, their
name will change also. For example, if you take a villager and assign
them to cut down a tree, their name will change from "Villager" to
"Lumberjack". This all really helps in the long run once you've
depleted your local resources and you forget what your villagers were
doing. But for all of this to happen, you need to keep your enemies at bay. You can have your villagers raise up walls to protect your city or other buildings. For example, I laid a basic wall around my city for protection, but I was trying to protect my Wonder (which I'll explain about later), so I built a wall around that also. On t |