Hello everybody! Merry Belated Christmas and Happy Belated New Year! And welcome to another edition of The Doctor's Prognosis!

Meant to write this sooner but when the fall semester ended, I suddenly realized I had all these other responsibilities too. Isn't life just grand? Well at least I got to go out quite a bit though.

Went to this 80's club with some friends and I only remember parts of the night because I had one drink too many. Well at least I remember making out with this cute blonde girl on stage but I never got her name (too loud) and didn't even try to get her number (too drunk).

We are going back this weekend as a going away party for my good friend so here's to meeting even more random girls!

Anyway, started playing Marvel: Ultimate Alliance again. Great game and I should finish it before the end of the month. Finished some other games too so I thought I'd share my thoughts on those...

Banjo-Kazooie Review

Well I finally got to see what all the fuss was about with the original Banjo-Kazooie being released on XBox Live Arcade and it is definitely worth the purchase.

Banjo-Kazooie plays a lot like Mario64 except that the worlds feel more open-ended. While Mario64 levels always throw different challenges at you each time you play the level to collect different stars, BK lets you do everything all at once if you'd like. Go around collecting notes or rescuing Jingos. And go find Jiggies (BK's version of Mario's stars) while you're at it. The control is tight so finding Jiggies and notes is lots of fun and addicting.

The music is catchy and the graphics are what you'd expect from an N64 port. But the graphics do look cleaner than what I remember from the old console.

The levels feel huge. And this is one of the game's downfalls too. Do you like climbing a giant tree only to get hit by a bird, falling all the way down, and losing most of your life in the process? I know I don't. And sometimes I had trouble figuring out where to go next to find the next Jiggy. Some of them are a little too well hidden or tricky to find. But I do think it says a lot that I kept getting back up and climbing that tree again. And exploring the levels and uncovering secrets really feels rewarding.

Another thing I didn't like was the trivia game. But it did lead to a great surprise after I finished it. I would even say it was one of the best surprises in any game. I'm not going to spoil it other than to say that it was something that ended up being surprisingly challenging.

And one last thing... Can all developers creating platforming games please not make any more swimming levels? Swimming levels just aren't all that great.

Anyway, despite my nitpicking, BK is loads of fun and is highly recommended to platformer fans.

I give Banjo-Kazooie an 8.5 out of 10.

Gears of War 2 Review

Here is a game many were looking forward to and with good reason. The first Gears had an innovative cover system, a challenging campaign mode, and a multiplayer mode with longevity.

So how does Gears 2 shape up? Well they pretty much did what you would expect, gave us a bigger and better campaign. The best thing about the new campaign is that the story is much improved. Dom has a side story with him worrying about his girl. And Marcus' past plays a big role in the story as well. The only thing I would critique is that the story isn't finished. It leaves you wanting more and really raises more questions then it answers.

Another bad point to the campaign are the vehicles. Some of them are kind of cool and provide some great visuals. But usually they feel like they run a little too long. And they are just not as fun as when you are on foot. I think it helps to break up the monotony to add some variety but the vehicle portions were a little overdone.

Not helping things was that Marcus and Dom get split up quite a bit during the game. Might as well be playing solo then. There were a couple times where it felt right like when one player has to turn off lasers so the other can pass. But other times it felt like they were splitting us up just to split us up. I hope they remedy this for the next Gears. And adding more people for co-op wouldn't hurt either. Four-player co-op campaign in huge battlefields sounds nice to me.

Now the multiplayer is the meat of the game of course and buying a new copy nets you improved maps from the first game. The new maps are great as well and now feature 5 on 5 battles. They changed the room system though. Now you have a matching system so they automatically match you with other players based on your preferred settings. This is a double-edged sword because they guarantee you can find someone to play with. But it can take really long to find a game. Especially if you need to find team members. If you have 9 friends with Gears 2 then you're set! Otherwise, go find some.

The best addition to Gears 2 is the all new Horde Mode. Now this is really challenging and will keep players coming back for more. Horde Mode pits up to 5 players against waves of Locust. Each wave gets more and more difficult as they require more hits to take down and need less hits to take you down. The Horde Mode will make you hate... no... abhor Blood Mounts.

I was able to finish all 50 waves of Horde Mode and get the achievement with 3 friends. But we had to do the last wave on Casual difficulty because we kept dying in like 20 seconds on Normal. Yeah it's that hard. Or we suck.

So despite the negatives, Gears 2 redeems itself with surprisingly improved graphics, refined gameplay, a great campaign with awesome boss fights, and a fun challenge with Horde Mode.

I give Gears of War 2 a 9 out of 10.

Cosplayer of the Blog

I have no idea who this girl is or who she is supposed to be but DAMN!

I don't know what she's selling. But I'll take twelve!

Now for the ladies! Here is Travis Touchdown!

Actually I have no clue if he's good-looking or not but pretty much every male cosplayer I find looks funny. This was the best I could find. Or was it?

You ladies like bad boys right? Well how about this bad boy?

Yeah you like that? Screaming for a light saber from the dark side are you?

Well it doesn't help that the best looking cosplay "guys" are usually girls pretending to be guys. Maybe I'll find something better for next time? We'll see.

Anyway, thanks for making another appointment with The Doctor's Prognosis! Here is a funny video as a token of my appreciation.

See you next time!