Hope you had a good Christmas, was Santa kind to ya? Alright enough of that. I got a few games for Christmas and I did my best to play as much of each as I could, but I am going to have to go with bite sized impressions for this post. There are actually five impressions paragraphs contained in this post. One of them is on a game I started the week before Christmas: The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age (PS2), I have a few thing to say about this game so I added to this post. The other impressions are of games that I got as gifts: Rock Band 3(360), Brothers In Arms: Hell's Highway(360), Civilization Revolution and the one I know some of you will be waiting for therefore it comes at the end of this post: Bayonetta(360).

The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age (EA Games, PS2, 2004)
I think I found a game that can make me appreciate Final Fantasy 13's gameplay. While I don't like that FF13's overworld gameplay takes place in small corridors at least the game is straight forward. That said LotR: 3rd Age is the most like Final Fantasy 10, especially the battle system. Take FF13 and FF10 s.tyle corridors, combine it with the slower battle system from FF10 (seriously, 3rd Age's system is almost an exact copy), throw in constant 10+ minute battles with unskipable battle animations and completely inconsequential characters with no character development and you get one of the most pointless and tedious RPGs I have ever played. I feel bad for ditching FF13 after playing 3rd Age, sure it had Snow (and I hate that guy), but at least he had character and the game has a story. Not to mention a fast paced battle system that requires strategy and skill. I'm not gonna complete this, there is nothing of worth I can get out of this game.

Rock Band 3 (EA/Harmonix, X360, 2010)
There isn't too much to say about Rock Band 3. It's similar to every other version of the music game, but, it has a 80+ new songs and all your downloaded music carries over, so I have over 220 songs to play. So far I'm just playing the usual guitar and vocals stuff, so I don't have anything to say about the Keyboards or all the new PRO difficulties. So far though Free Bird, The Power of Love and Bohemian Rhapsody are the key new on disc songs. I haven't played enough of Career mode to talk about it too much, so I won't yet. This is one of the games that I'll have to get back to you on.

Brothers In Arms: Hell's Highway (Ubisoft/Gearbox, X360, 2008 )
I had quite a bit of interest in BiA when I first saw it back at E3 2008, but I never got around to playing it. I am enjoying what I am playing so far, it's a strategic type game where you are the commander of various squads and you have to use them to suppress the various targets so that you (and possibly one of your other squads) can flank and take them out. One of things that caught my attention was the way the game handles death. In most shooters you can take a certain amount of damage before you die, it then either regenerates or you recover it with health supplies. But in BiA: HH it all depends on how long you keep yourself exposed to fire. The longer you stay in the open the more red your screen gets, when it's completely red you will finally catch a bullet and get killed. It's a neat idea that keeps with the realism without making the game too hard. The only negative that I have to say about the game at this point is I wish that I had played the previous games because I am finding the story a bit confusing.

Civilization: Revolution (2K/Fraxis, X360, 2008 )
Preface: I have never played a Civilization game before. While I've played myself some Sim City, I was never much of PC gamer and as you know I am not much of strategy game player either. CivRev is a Civilization game designed for consoles; what that means is it is a bit simpler, but still has many of the elements that make up a Civilization game. I've only played one match, on the beginner difficulty setting, but once I dug in I could stop taking turns (which is why this article is so delayed). I'm going to play some more and get back to you.

Bayonetta (Sega/Platinum Games, X360, 2010)
I know some of you are pretty interested in what I think about Bayonetta. Well, it's interesting so far, though, I only played through the intro and the first chapter, so I haven't gotten to far. The game is so campy it hurts my brain, but that's what is amazing about it. As for the gameplay, I don't think I am far enough to really comment on it because it it hasn't begun to get challenging yet. I'll wait until I am further in before I make a harder judgment, but it's fun and fast paced. Expect further coverage as soon as I play more.

I have a few other games that I bought with various virtual points of the Nintendo and Microsoft variety and I will cover those games in my second post of 2011, entitled "The Last Remnants of 2010" which will be January 2nd. Coming up next though on the 2010 Wrap Ups is the annual blog retrospective. In which I summarize a whole year's worth of posts with links to every post so that you can relive some of the better Now Loading moments. That will be up December 28. See you then. Loading Complete!