The Medal of Honor beta has finally made it way to x-box live for commoner to enjoy(who pre-ordered of course, or got lucky and got one free from the Best Buy website).  I’ve played some and frankly, the game feels like a derivative . It’s got all the same gameplay stuff.   Noob toobs, kill streaks, yatta, yatta.  You’ve seen it all before.  I’d say you get killed a bit faster but thats it.

The whole destructible environment stuff DICE has been cutting a niche in the shooter market with is absent in Medal of Honor.  They already said it wouldn’t have much destructible environments before so I was expecting it.  The class customization is similar to Battlefield to where the game already has classes set out for you and you can unlock stuff for each as you use them.

It’s mostly about infantry combat.  There were some tanks scattered around one map I played in but I rarely saw anyone get in them and the few that did were blown up shortly after.

The kill streaks seem to be based on what class you’re playing.  As the Rifleman class I was able to call down an air strike by using a set of binoculars and pointing where I wanted the bombs to hit.  This feels pretty redundant since you have to poke your head out and risk being shot while doing this.  You’ be just as well off shooting them yourself if you have the luxury of staring at the enemy.  The air strike takes a second or so to actually happen and if I’m not mistaken friend and foe alike can see where it’s going to hit before it does.  The strike itself has a surprisingly small area of effect and does almost no splash damage.  I think I’ve only seen one person ever get killed by one.

As a sniper my kill streak bonus was basically a UAV.  You pull out something that looks like a walkie talkie, press a button and suddenly everyone on your team can see enemies on their radar within their vicinity. Getting enough kills to earn a second killstreak bonus just seems to let you use the same exact bonus over again.  You don’t seem to get different bonuses as you keep racking kills.

It’s hard to describe but the graphics but they’re really nothing impressive at all.  I mean it’s nothing horrible but it’s nothing to gawk at.  It looks worse than Call of Duty 4 but it looks better than Crackdown.  Over all I’d say it’s average and the art style itself is nothing out of the ordinary. Alot of brown and gray.  It makes finding enemies a bit difficult.

The beta includes two modes, Combat Mission and Team Assault.  Combat Mission is basically Bad Company’s Gold Rush.  One team tries to destroy some objects and other try to defend them.  In the game’s description of Team Assault it say it’s like Death Match but based on points earned.  So you’d think the team that kills more would win.  Wrong.  I’ve been on the team getting killed more and still come out with a win.  Since it’s based on points achieving things like headshot kills and assists help alot.  Essentially it practically comes down to luck.  Who doesn’t try and aim for the head?  And the game seems to count assists only if you do a significant amount of damage and don’t get the kill.  All I have to say is why couldn’t it just be normal deathmatch?  They better have it in the full game.

The worst thing this game suffers from judging from the demo is that it brings nothing new to the table, does nothing different and does nothing better than the competition.  They played it safe.  You’ve seen this all before and it was in a game you’ve probably played before called Call of Duty 4.

My Xbox Live Profile just turned three years old and I've had alot of good times. I've earned over fourty thousand gamerscore, made over thirty friends, played over one hundred games  and had good times fragging strangers online.

What makes three years so special? Cuz it's the second sexiest number? Cuz I'm too lazy to wait for a more common bench mark number like five or ten? Pick one cuz I've decided to celebrate the three years by listing my ten favorite games I've played in that time.

Mass Effect 2 didn't really have to deviate much from the original's winning formula. Epic story spanning a galaxy full of interesting characters and lore, check. Awesome gunplay, check. Pretty graphics, check. Nice character customization and moral choices letting you go through the story the way you want, check. Mass Effect 2 has it all and Bioware made extra effort to not drown the player in more menus than they'd like by cutting down on inventory management and made side quests feel less like cut and paste jobs of each other.

Gears of War 2 may have gone off at a rough start but it's a great game and always has been. The multiplayer is fun, albeit a little inconsistent at times but fun. The Horde probably single handedly made up for the short comings from the competitive multiplayer for many people including myself, a co-op survival mode that seems to have started a chain reaction of them in the shooter genre. On top of this Gears 2 provides a fun campaign supporting 2-player co-op and allowing each player to play on separate difficulties.

Grand Theft Auto IV was a very impressive game. Despite being an open world game the graphics and animation looked just as good if not better than most games at any scale. The gameplay was just as well polished using a cover system similar to Gears and nice shooting mechanics. The story was surprisingly compelling telling the story of Niko Belic as he learns the American dream isn't as simple as it's made out to be.

Assassin's Creed really redefined the stealth genre allowing players to parkour and blend in with crowds instead of hiding in the shadows. It was a breathe of fresh air and it nearly blew my mind when I first played it with the life like animations and the large number of NPCs occupying towns.

Banjo moved from pretty standard platformer to extraordinary build your own vehicle game with the pacing of a platformer. The fun in the game was making vehicles best suited for each mission you partook in so the enjoyment you got from it was based on how creative you could be. The game had massive beautiful environments.  Full and charm, wit and self referencial humor and the game launched at just fourty dollars and came equipped with just as much as any sixty dollar title. Today it sits pretty at twenty dollars and I'm still wondering why hardly anyone gave it a chance.

When I first saw Rock Band I was pretty skeptical. Learning to play more plastic instruments seemed as ridiculous as the price. But Once I played it myself it felt as though this was how Guitar Hero always should have been. It's a blast rocking full band style with three other friends. A local multiplayer experience that goes almost unmatched and proved to be worth every penny.

The game is and fun and you're ****ing Batman, what more could you ask for? You got the batarang, you got explosive goop, and theres no Robin!  Poison Ivy is practically naked and you're Batman!!  Come on, I could go on and on.  Rock Steady just got everything right with this game. Easily last year's best game.

Who knew Canadians were so good at sci-fi?  Mass Effect was a pretty impressive to me. It was the first time a game had given me so much power over what happens in the plot and makes me wish more games gave me this level of involvement.  it changed my views on how a story could be in a game. Gears like gameplay didn't hurt either.

Nothing against it's sequel, it's just not quite as impressive a second time. That and trading fun vehicle segments for planet scanning wasn't the smartest move.

Alright, this is the moment where I remind you all this list reflects which games on the 360 were my favorite, not which I think are the best because theres no denying Gears of War as fun as it is is full of flaws. Glitchy multiplayer, a short campaign and at one point in the game's life you actually had to essentially pay for an update.

Still this is a case that proves that friends can really make all the difference. Nearly every day from when I got my 360 up until I got a certain special game I played Gears of War with my friends in private matches. It was a blast. With all of xbox live's biggest jerks around Gears of War is the game that reminds me that there are indeed great people to be met on Live if you give them a chance. And yeah, it's ultra violence, sexy graphics and impressively executed cover system made this game pretty **** fun.

Yeah, you saw it coming but come on, this game was pretty epic in every way. I know you've heard this and it sounds ridiculous but Halo 3 wasn't just a game. The launch was like Christmas and the over whelming enthusiasm for the game was great.

4-player co-op with friends was a blast and going back looking for those skulls was just as fun. To this day me and my friends will sometimes go back for the competitive scoring.

Tinkering around in forge has always been a constant source of amusement and it's impressive to see what the community can accomplish with the tools provided. The competitive multiplayer is constantly updated and the matchmaking is always full of life. Even the DLC is something the community hypes over.

Halo 3 isn't perfect. In fact it's frustrating at times. But the fun has always out weighed that and while theres a fair amounts of jurks lurking in Halo it's so cool to see so many active players almost three years later who are so enthusiastic about the game. Thats goes for the company that made it to. It's great to see and hear from just amazing developers who interact with their fan base and show just as much enthusiasm for their games and their fans.

Simply put I've had fun with Halo 3, with friends, with Bungie and even with complete stangers. This was a fight worth finishing.

I just recently moved so I haven't really adjusted well enough to do a blog for a while. Still not all that well adjusted, I can't find my photoshop installation discs to make more mad graphics to sexify my gamespot page. But I figure I should talk some Reach beta before it's gone.

All the better to see you with

I'll start with graphics since thats the first change people will probably notice. The game looks alot more smooth and animations look alot more natural. Reach has much better anti-aliasing, so there alot less of those jagged edges for those HD players. Reach looks alot more natural, dirty and rough(no sex jokes intended). The armor on Spartans IIIs look alot more worn out and battered than what was our Startan IIs in Halo 3.

The environments looks epic and sexy

And the explosions look... Explodeir?

Over all I'd say Reach is for the most part a much better looking game. Just about everything looks better.

Rocket? Then lock it.

Alot of the core gameplay element from past Halo games are here but some are gun replaced by new and some have been completely changed.

I'll start with armor abilities since they're the biggest change to the game. Remember the deployable Equipment from Halo 3 and the power ups from the rest pf the Halo series? Well think of Armor abilities as an evolution of those. In Halo Reach these special abilities are now an ability the player cna activate with the press of a button.

In Halo: Reach when the player is waiting to spawn they can choose from a number of loadouts(anotherof the many changes to Halo in Reach)that grant them access to which abilities or weapons they'll have on the battlefield.

These can range from the sprint ability that lets players gets a nice boost of speed to get to that precious rocket launcher before the rest of those fools, undoubtedly familiar to Halo fans who frequent other shooters.

All those fantasies of becoming invisible come true in Reach with the armor ability. While you wont be able sneak into the girl's locker room hopefuly sneaking up on unsuspecting noobs and getting in that sweet assassination will be an acceptable consulation.

Speaking of dreams coming true, man's desire to fly is fullfilled with the new jet pack players can spawn with and as anyone who's seen Episode III of Star Wars knows, the high ground is a pretty good place to be.

And last(sorta) we have Armor lock. Sorta like the bubble shield armor lock protect the player, but more effectively. Encasing the players in some sort of invinsible shield, you'll be protecting by all those meanies trying to ruin the fun with their rockets and grenades. Armor lock repels all, but you'll be stationary the who time but a nice emp will know out the shields of any fool who decides to stick too close.

Tons of Guns

The Halo: Reach beta actually comes packed with a full games worth of weapons. I'd be surprised to see more in the complete game in fact.

We have some of our old favorites return - the Needler, the Assualt Rifle, the Plasma Pistol, the Energy Sword, the Gravity Hammer, the Shotgun, the Rocket Launcher, The turret, the Spartan Laser, the Sniper Rifle. All function largely the same. We have a pistol but it's a bee bee gun like it was in Halo 2 and ODSTand it's not slow in the head like it was in Halo 3. This is the real deal, return of the king. While it still doesn't pack quite the same punch as it did in Halo: Combat Evolved it's still beastly.

The Carbine and the Battle Rifle that have been ruling the Halo roost since Halo 2 retire and are replaced by the Needle Rifle and DMR, respectively. Each fire one per pull of the trigger, similar to the carbine in Halo 3, abeit with a lower rate of fire.

Also new to Reachare the Covenant's Plasma Launcher and the Plasma Repeater. The Plasma Launcher is a fierce weapon that shoots plasma grenades that can lock on to any target, infantry and vehicles alike being able to shoot up to four at a time if fully charged. The Plasma Repearter is less intimidating, being the Covenant's answer to the UNSC's Assualt Rifle and it functions very much the same way. Pull the trigger and watch the plasma fly. As the Plasma Repeater begins to over heat the rate of fire will slow down and while in many cases this would be bad it does have the side benefit of making your shots more accurate.

On the UNSC side of things there isn't much new outside the DMR. Except the grenade launcher. It's pretty self explanitory, it shoots grenades. In most cases a direct impact can result in an automatic kill. The Grenades also send out an EMP so it's pretty useful in stopping vehicles dead in their tracks. If you hold the trigger down the grenade wont explode until you let off the trigger so you can try and be a bit more tactical with the uses.

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Thats all for now. I'm tired and I'm no where near finished. I follow this up explaining more of the changes, additions and how to play later with a part 2, maybe even a part 3.    

Most of you probably know that Halo 2's, along with every other original xbox games' servers went down on the fifteenth. It was a doom Microsoft had made warning of long in advance. So for the past couple months I've been catching up on the Halo game I never really played enough of.

Months went by and finally less than a week was left and disaster struck!! I found my copy of Halo 2 literally cracked in half sitting on top of my desk. 

It may have cracked when ejecting it from it's disc holder in box(Another game of mine broke in a similar fashion before. Same has happened to my some of my friends' games) or maybe I wasn't careful enough one of the many times I've moved my 360 from my room to the living room. What ever the case my copy of Halo 2 was broken and I was at risk of missing Halo 2's send off.

The reason I tell you this story is because I went through hell to find a new copy. You would not beleive how difficult it was to find a new copy.

To start I checked wal-mart. It wasn't there. I called Taget. It wasn't there. Gamestop doesn't sell original xbox(and even knowing this I called anyway). I called Book and music exchange, the had Halo 1 but not Halo 2. I called all the local pawn shops. None of them had it. For about half an hours I searched my closest flea market and of all the original Xbox games they did not Have Halo 2(although I did pick up a copy of Jet Set Radio Furture for two bucks  ).

I called a few friends and the one that did have a copy was out of town. There was only two days left sow ordering a copy from the internet was out of the question.

I never thought finding a copy of Halo 2 could be so hard. You'd have found it no problem at Gamestop like two years ago. Halo 2 was the best selling xbox game of all time so of course it should be the easiest xbox game to find. But not today.

All seemed lost so whats a Halo nerd to do? Why, mope about it on the bungie.net forums of course. And there I found my solution.

Users BOB570 and Sergeant Kozi backed him up telling how they also found it there. Unfortunately for me when I read this Best Buy had already closed for the night and I had to wait till the next morning(Halo 2's last full day, April 14th) to see if my Best had the game and sure enough they had it. They were even nice enough to offer holding me a copy at customer service.

It's funny to think I thought of about every place but Best Buy. But I don't generally go to Best Buy. Most things are more expensive. Halo 2 for instance was still twenty dollars there. But it was worth it to participate in Halo 2's last day with all the other Halo fans.

Halo 2: Platinum Edition. I never knew it had the "Plays on xbox360" in place of the old "Only on xbox" logo.

Once I got it home I practically played it all day. It was my least played Bungie developed Halo game and i wanted to experience what I could of it before it was gone. When all was said an done I logged in fourt nine matches. Just one short of fifity, darn 

Some pretty memorable moments were made and fun was had with friends and strangers alike.

I got to play with some pretty interesting people as well.

I even got to play a match with some guys from 343 industries and giant bomb.com www.bungie.net/Stats/GameStatsHalo2.aspx?gameid=803120842&player=Vashkey

I can't say it all went with out a hitch though. When the clock striked 12 AM Halo 2 chugged on. I really wanted to see it to the end so I figured maybe it'd go down 12 AM Pacific time. Stayed up till then and the servers were still up. I looked all over the internet for answers and found none so I went to bed. I was exhausted the next day. I found out that aparently Microsoft had no scheduled time for when it was going down just that they'd be taking the server down some time that day.

I slept most of the 15th and when I woke up the servers were down. so I didn't get to quite be there for the final hours.

Oh well, I still had a great time playing me some Halo 2. 

And so the Halo 2 adventure ends.

The next? Oh, it begins very soon.

So yeah, I've had Final Fantasy XIII four a lil' while now. Might not be finished with it yet but I've clocked in over thirty hours so I've seen almost all there is to be seen in the game and I figure it's about time to put in my ten cents since I'm about sick of the game and don't intend to finish too soon.

I'll start off by saying Final Fantasy XIII has a pretty poor first impression. You're introduced to Lightning who comes off as an early Final Fantasy VIII Squall with a vagina She's an insensitive, unlikabledouche at first.

Snow is as campy as they come. Hope is probably one of the most whiny characters I've seen in a game up until the fifteen hour point. Vanille initially seems like another one of those ditzy childish jrpg staples like Yuffie and Rikku. It doesn't help that she sounds like she's has a chronic orgasm in battle. I'm about thirty hours into the game and I still know next to nothing about Fang. Hell, I can't even think of how to describe her personality.

That leaves us with Sahz. The only likable, mildly relatable and understandable characterduring most of thegame. I give him bonus point for having a chocobo in his fro.

All the characters really start to pick up along with the story around fifteen to twenty hours in... But yeah, that fifteen to twenty hours of player indifference.

The game does a poor job of fleshing the world around you out as well. Most players will have a hard time getting what the difference is between a "L'Cie" and "Fal'Cie" is in the first dozen hours or so. the game makes little effort to explain the cultures and origins of it's past at first. You feel as though you're throw into the middle of something, like watching a television show only after missing the first season.

And don't give me "read the datalogs" crap. I shouldn't have to waste my time in some menus to get whats going on in the game. Datalogs should be supplementary.

The combat is alright and at first seems like something new. But once you give it some thought it's just a stripped down version of the Final Fantasy VII combat system with a couple interested additions.

You control only one character of the party, if that character is killed the game is over. It's sort of turn based like Final Fantasy VII where you input commands once the ATB gauge has been filled. I guess one of the defining changes here is that you do hardly any damage to enemies until their "Stagger" gauge is filled after you chained so many attacks. So you often get to waste tons of time fighting the most basic of enemies. 

Often times enemies will have elemental weaknesses and such, but you never have to give it much thought. Use the libra ability or a libra scope which will instantly research enemies and show their weaknesses and your party members will automatically act on that knowledge. Select the "Auto battle" option that almost always chooses the best attacks for you and voila, you have a game that requires almost no thought.

Then you have "Paradigm shifts". This allows you to switch the roles of the party members on fly in combat. It's a pretty neat idea actually and you could form up alot of interesting formations. Unfortunately, it's rare that fights you get into will require you to use any formations other than some offensive one and a healing one to heal up when health is low and then back again the the offensive one.

Of course, there are exceptions. Such as the occasional brick wall boss fight. Final Fantasy XIII's idea of pacing is run through a bunch of push overs and then introduce a big bad that requires a vastly different strategy than you used on all the previous enemies. There is no slow build up in difficulty, it's fight mind numbingly easy baddies then fight Mr. Not-Quite-Impossible-But-You-May-Need-an-FAQ-Good-Chum.

Most of these tough battle are for your summons which prove to not be worth the trouble. They barely make up in damage the amount of time they waste on the field. Perhaps their most useful aspect is that the party is revived after the summon goes away, but the stagger gauge resets.

Then you have the poopy pacing. The game is a giant grind. Walk in a line, fight some guys, watch cut scenes. This routine goes unbroken for almost a solid thirty hours. Final Fantasy games traditionally had puzzles, minigames and towns to mix things up a bit. Not here, pal. The closest thing you get to ths in the first thirt hours of the game is a minute long ride on a robot and walking around a room for a couple minute looking for a baby chocobo. Then when you finally get to some side quests at the thirty hour mark the vast majority are really only feasible after actually completing the game.

I might sound a bitb!tchy but it's not a bad game. In fact I'd probably give it something like a 7.5/10 or an 8 even. By current jrpg standards this is almost as good as it gets now a day. While I don't approve of some of the changes I'm at least happy Square is putting forth effort to make some changes rather than continuously putting out a recycled product *cough*Pokemon*cough*. Oh, excuse me. I meant Nintendo as a whole.

But you expect more from Final Fantasy. And considering it's been in development for aboutfour years, maybe more, you'd expect better. Other developers such as Bioware puts out arguably better games on ayearly basis and they're a much smaller developer.

WARNING

I will be discussing Halo: Legend's stories in detail. If you have yet to watch Halo: Legends and you want to see it with fresh eyes, I suggest ignoring my blog till you've seen it for yourself.

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So I've just bought Halo: Legends...

Just standard edition for fifteen bucks. Kinda wish I had just bucked up the extra five for the two disc collector's edition. Still, It was nice to see that standard wasn't twenty bucks which often seems to be the case with DVDs now a day.

Before I get into this, I'll you guys to previous blogs where I discussed how I fealt about some of the episodes back when they first broadcast on Halo: Waypoint. I'll be typing enough about the new as it is with out them.

The Duel

The Package

Now for the stuff I haven't talked about

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When I watched Origins the first thing that hit me was that Cortana was not being voice acted by Jen Taylor who had exclusively done voice work for Cortana up till now. Unfortuntely, this is a recurring problem in Halo: Legends. Still, the replacement does a fair job.

Origins takes place right after the ending of Halo 3. The Master Chief and Cortana are stuck floating in space. Master Chief is in Cryo Sleep. Broken down into two episodes, Cortana essentially goes over the etirety of human history and then some. It's makes for a good recap or an explanation of the Halo series to those who are unfamiliar.

Cortana seems to be going into rampancy, she's old by smart ai standards and she's clearly been through some testing events. You can tell by the end of the story that she's having trouble holding it together, fizzling in and out and going through what seems to be some halucinations.

During her little recap toward the end when she actually gets to the stuff from the games there seems to be a little screw up. She claims that the Covenant and humanity put aside they're battle to fight the flood together. If played Halo 3, this isn't really the case. I guess you could count the Covenant seperatists. It's also possible she was just trying to fill in the blank there, she was with the grave mind during most of Halo 3, so she didn't personally witness the battle on Earth or the Ark. Or she could just be losing it, but that part of the recap was treated just the same as the accurate stuff where as there after she has some clear hallucinations.

Over all, it's a pretty good episode. Nice art work, reminiscent ofMoebius' stuff, Second Sunrise Over New Mombasa in particular(obviously).

Strong lines and rich color.

The episode is accompanied by reprised scores from the games themselves. All seem to be altered from the originals, some more noticable in others. All of it is pretty good.

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Homecoming has an interesting idea. It tells the story of a Spartan who tried going back home to the family she was kidnapped from. When she arrives she discovers her clone replacement. This little plot thread is all played out as a flashback during the present plot about her trying to evacuate a war torn planet that turns out to be her former home.

One of the big issues with this episode is probably that it's trying to be emotional and all but given how short the episode is(roughly fifteen minutes), it's hard to become attached to the character and the way it ends you practically feel you just wasted your time.

My biggest issue with this particular episode is that it just isn't visually impressive at all. Alot of the characters often times look proportionatly incorrect.

On top of that the animations often look stiff and unatural.

This episode has no original composition and doesn't even redo any of the older tracks from the Halo games. It uses music straght from the games, completely unaltered. Know what that is? LAAAAAAAAAAAZY. The episode is enjoyable but it's in no way impressive.

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Well thats it for now. Wait for part two for the rest. Right now the blog is screwing up not letting me insert more pictures for some reason. Besides, this is a long process. Look forward to the rest tomorrow.

So I know I said I was gonna leave this till after I beat Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City but I'm just not playing it often enough nor am I making as much progress as I'd like. I'm only about twenty percent in the Lost and Damned campaign and I still haven't even tried out the Ballad of Gay Tony's campaign. Still, they seem like standard GTA fair and thats not to belittle them. They do seem great but I'm not sure it'll top my other favorites of 09 so far so I'm going to go on ahead with my list, apologies to Rockstar if I change my mind.

I'll go ahead and clear things up, this list is going to be based on which games of 2009 were my favorites, not which I think were the best. So for example Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 doesn't make the list, but I do think it's technically better than some of the entires. Regardless, it wasn't my cup of tea. Also, keep in mind this is based on my limited experience of 2009's many great games. I only purchased what interested me and only games that were available on the 360 since thats pretty much my only current generation game console I have and play on(I hate the PSP, didn't buy games for it in 2009). So with out further ado....

Vashkey's Five Favorite Games of 2009

It almost comes as a surprise to me that ODST makes the bottom of the list as I was actually expecting this to be my favorite game of the year. A testament to how much better 2009 was than I had expected. Anyway, ODST was great. It retains the fun Halo gameplay, mixes things a little with the atmospheric night time city of New Mombasa and rounds out the packages with a favorite feature, Fire Fight. It may not be as ambitious as the rest of Bungie Halo game's but it's a blast none the less.

One of the things about Halo Wars that amazes me is that it takes the rts formula and simplifies things so that most any gamer could really get how to play the game after a little time and converts Halo into this totally different genre without losing the soul in the process. As a gamer I was introduced to a pretty interesting genre and as a Halo fan Halo Wars was a much needed breathe of fresh air.

Assassin's Creed 2 took almost everything from it's 2007 predecessor and improved upon it cementing it as one of the year's best games. The mission structure was less predictable, the characters were more likable and the main character Ezio, while not as bad ass as Altair, was more interesting and relatable.

Borderlands is a genius blend of MMORPG like looting, weapon hoarding and stat building, the engaging and intense combat scenarios of first person shooters thats woven together with 4-player co-op. The result is the gaming experience that must be had with friends.

Batman: Arkham Asylum may be shorter than some of the other games on this list but it does the most with every hour it has and is stronger in every way. The melee combat system is simple yet satifying, the stealth elements are rewarding and well executed, throw in some sweet gadgets and this game goes a long wait at making you feel like the dark knight himself. The asylum's atmosphere is so well achieved thanks to the impressive graphics that are second to no game I've played on the 360 and the voice cast is taken straight from the 90s batman cartoon series and they portray their characters just as well here as they ever have.

Arkham Asylum is full of some of the most memorable gaming moments you'll have on the xbox 360 and even the action adventure genre. I mean it when I say that Batman Arkham Asylum is one of the best games I've ever had the pleasure of playing let alone on the xbox 360. Developers take note, this is how you make a licensed videogame.

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Now that thats out of the way, here the five games I most look forward to playing this year. I'll only list games that are most likely to come out within the year. Games that haven't been confirmed for a 2010 release or have no release window announced at all like Batman Arkham Asylum 2 wont be mentioned.

Vashkey's Top Five Most Anticipated Games of 2010

2007's Crackdown with it's super cop take on the open world genre proved to be a great purchase even ignoring the Halo 3 beta. It may have been missing some standard features but it's 2 player co-op game play and concept made it a fun game but Crackdown 2 looks to be going all the way with 4-player online co-op and a new 16-player competitive multiplayer.

This may be a risky choice on my part since I didn't really like the original Splinter Cell too much but this one looks really awesome to me. From what I've heard from the developers and seen from the trailers the Conviction seems to give the player more freedom. You can go guns blazing or you can play it sneaky and thats one of the things I loved about Metal Gear Solid 3. Conviction also seems a little more character driven than the original Splinter Cell and the presentation is alot more compelling to me than the original Splinter Cell and thats not just because the graphics are better.

Mass Effect is one of my favorite games on the xbox 360 thanks to fun shooter combat, rpg set up and plot rich in back story. How could I not look forward a sequel set to improve it all?

Final Fantasy XIII just barely beats Mass Effect 2 for number two and thatslargelybecause it's a Japanese rpg. I do generally prefer rpgs of the Japanese type and there is just a serious lack of quality ones on the xbox-360(and in general this console generation. I mean, last one I really enjoyed was February 2008's Lost Odyssey... It's beeen almost two full years. But Yeah, Final Fantasy is a series that always delivers so I look foward to XIII.

You saw this coming, but come on. This game looks incredible. Vastly improved graphics, a bit more more serious looking and with motion capturing and Image Metrics enlisted to help improve characters' faces and expressions Reach seems to be going for more believable characters. According to Bungie Reach will be coming with all the same features as Halo 3 such a forge and saved films. More on screen enemies, new and reworked weapons and vehicles, new game modes and new gameplay features such as special abilities that come with armor permutations not to mention a campaign with an entire team of Spartans.

Sure you've seen Courage Wolf, but you ain't seen nothing till you seen Rage Brute!

As you can see Rage Brute is full of rage.

Heres a textless version if you wanna join in on the fun Just remember that Rage Brute hates humanity.