Vashkey

I'm new to this game and I Just finished it.  I feel It's a good game, not great.  The camera is a pain some times, the combat is a tad shallow and the stealth is weak.  The dungeons and presentation really carry this game.  While the story is decent I wouldn't say it's great, the characters are good.  The bad guys are cartoonishly evil though.  The leader of the alpha section's last words is just hilariously bad.  Were it not for the fact that the game was ten dollars I'd be disapointed at how short it is.   I'd have likely been very disapointed last gen if I had actually bought this at launch for fifty dollars.   It took me about ten hours to beat and I only missed about six pearls.   Towards the end the game really feels like it was rushed to completion.  Normally theres some story and dungeon(s) between each vehicle upgrade.  There was none between the last two upgrades and the ending...  It just doesn't come together.  The second phase of the final boss fight was just lazy on the dev's part.

 
It's a good game though it has plenty of missed opprotunity and it could have used more polish.  I'd like a sequel though.  Fun game with a lot of potential.

" @Daryl said:

"Battlefield 1943.  "

But very time consuming to get that win 100 games trophy/achievement. "

Monday Night Combat.

It was inevitable.  Just prepare for a wall of text my pretties. 

Would You Like Some Campaign? 

You like cheesy titles too?  Cool!

So like I do with every game I started with the campaign for Reach.  One awesome thing you'll find about the campaign from the get go is that your customized Spartan will be the guy you play as in campaign which will appear in the cinematics.  For this though you pay the price by having a less interesting character as the rest of the cast whom are perfectly comfortable taking of their helmets and expressing their opinions.  Clearly this was done so the player could more easily project themselves onto Noble Six...  Still it's nice this guy isn't a mute like last year's "Rookie" of ODST.

Reach has an interesting and diverse set of characters in Noble team but personally I found it hard to care most of them.  Jorge and Kat probably get the most screen time, you'll likely become more attached to them.  Jun and Emile feel like they're hardly in the game.  Carter's alright I guess.  In the end I actually found last year's cast of over the top ODSTs to be more memorable.

The plot is more about heroism, sacrifice and thrills here.  The game makes no effort of making characters out of the Covenant like Halo 2 and Halo Wars did.  You see this from one side and the game really tries to make the covenant more alien and menacing than before.

How the game ties this story into the trilogy is great... So long as you aren't a hardcore fan such as me who has read the novels and take note of the large plot holes it creates.  That probably my biggest complaint about the game as a whole.  How some of these plot holes slid past Bungie and 343(who's job is to make sure crap like this does not happen) is beyond me.  I've heard that Halsey's journal which is included with the Limited and Legendary editions of Reach cover up some of these inconsistencies, but thats bull.  I shouldn't have to pay extra for a plot hole free story.

I'm not being too specific here with the plot here so I don't spoil it for you guys but it's actually enjoyable, especially if you leave your Halo knowledge absorbing mind at the door.  You don't get to learn too much about these characters, and while it would have been nice to it's not really all that bad.  Like I said this is a story of heroism and sacrifice.  This is about Reach and how Spartan fought to try and protect it and that much the game gets with flying colors.

In terms of how it plays though it's great, theres a ton of variety in the tasks the player is given.  As you've probably seen by the e3 trailers theres one level where you storm a beach fighting the covenant on foot, you then move onto a space battle and then fight on a covenant shit in low gravity.  Halo: Reach has a wealth of set pieces that really mix things up.

At the same time however, alot of these set pieces feel recycled from previous games.  The beach storming scene I just referenced is very reminiscent of the opening to the Halo: Combat Evolved's level "The Silent Cartographer" and Halo 3's "The Covenant".  The games third level is practically a throwback to Halo: Combat Evolved's "Truth and Reconciliation".  The game's still great fun but at times you'll get a sense of "been there, done that".

The enemy ai has been significantly improved over Halo 3.  My main complaint about Halo 3's ai was answered in Reach.  In Halo 3 Brutes spent too much time with animation to challenge the player like they did in Halo 2 or the Elites did in Halo 1.  After you took a Brutes shields out in Halo 3 by the time it took for him finish throwing a fit about it you'd have already had the chance to finish him off with a head shot like three times.

In Reach enemies will frequently fall back to another group of their allies if they find themselves out matched, elites will run to cover if their shields go out, enemies frequently jump out of the way when they find a rocket or grenade coming their way.  Reach has the most variety in enemies as well, the entire covenant and then some join the fight.  We have Hunters, Elites, Brutes, Grunts, Jackals, Engineers, Drones and Skirmishers.  Each of these species aside from the Engineers come with a variety of ranks and come equipped with different weapons.  This is easily the richest combat experience in the Halo series when it comes to fighting the ai.

Despite the game taking place on one planet unlike some other Halo games the scenery has plenty of variety.  You'll be fighting on beaches, in a sterile white ONI facility, In a Shiny purple Covenant ship and even the stary skies above and then some.

All the campaign options remain, you can do 4-player co-op over live and system link, 2-players per box.  You can do scoring, team or free for all like Halo 3 and ODST.  Like ODST skulls are available for use from the outset.  While you wont be hunting them down in campaign like you did in Halo 3 Reach still has it's collectathon fix in the data pads.  You wont be getting any rewards for them this time around though so check out the side stories provide at your on discretion.  Campaign matchmaking will be coming to Reach this October to round out the feature set.

I didn't encounter the problem often at all, but if I recall players can continue to play campaign even if one player drops out.  I'm not entirely certain though but the problem was alot less frequent in Reach than in Halo 3 or ODST.  players rarely dropped out from my experience.

I had a fun time playing Reach's campaign.  I wasn't completely blown away, although I was caught off gaurd by some scenes and set pieces and was impressed over all.

--------

It's All About Presentation!

So, I've already touched on Reach's environments a bit.  It's quite diverse.  However, I'd say whats seen the biggest improvement, graphics wise, is character models.  Specifically faces.  They look awesome now.  In fact, the game as a whole looks pretty damn good.  A nice step up from Halo 3.  Much better anti-aliasing, bigger better environments.  Everything is better.  I still wouldn't say it looks as good as say Gears of War 2 but it still looks great and the scale is pretty much unmatched among console shooters.  Another thing that really helps elevate Reach is that for the first time a Halo game uses mocap, making the characters and how they move more believable.

It's not perfect, however.  The few moments the game more heavily relies on more traditional animation, it sorta stands out.  Especially the assassinations.  They're cool but they look unbelievable, over the top and even goofy some times.  They go perfectly with multiplayer but not so much in campaign where the game is constantly trying to be a more serious than past games.  Occasionally the frame rate seems to take some dips in the campaign when theses a ton of stuff happening on screen.  I haven't had this issue in multiplayer.

Still, this is a big step up for Halo and over all it's a fantastic looking game.

As for the audio, it's just as great as every other Halo game.  Great voice acting.  The sound remains on par with the rest of the series and Bungie is successful in making recognizable sounds for each of the new weapons while adding more umph to the staples. Halo joins the scores of other shooters that have the ringing noises the player experiences after explosions with Reach.  I thought I'd point that out.  Another interesting addition is that while a player is invisible they can't hear anything except music that might be playing in the game.

Speaking of which, music in Reach is awesome.  But anyone familiar with the Halo series probably isn't surprised that Marty does good again.

--------

The Meaty Center 

Yeah, yeah, campaign is cool and all but must people will agree the heart that keeps the Halo beast alive is the multiplayer and this is just as much the case for Reach as it was for every other Halo game.  Reach brings with it every game type ever featured in a Halo game and then some.  The classics like Slayer, King of the Hill and Oddball return, race is revived and new comers like Invasion and Head Hunter round out the competitive multiplayer scene.  It's safe to say if you value your player vs player shooting theres something here for you.

And if theres isn't you can always make it so with forge and custom games, but more on that later.

Matchmaking has seen a bit of change in Reach.  Right now the selection is more broad.  Less playlists but more variety in game types in each.  After you've found the players to be matched up with all thats left to do is to vote on a list of game types and maps.  Definitely better than Halo 3's veto system.  What unfortunately hasn't been improvised is players still can't join up mid game.  If you find yourself with half team or more gone then you're screwed or you're guaranteed victory depending on game type.

Ultimately whats most important about the experience about the multiplayer is the gameplay and instead of explaining it in a different section I'll talk about it here.

Reach really returns to it's root, or picks up where ODST left off.  It feature recharging shields over a base health system like the first Halo did.  I can't say I feel too strongly about this in any way.  I guess I would have prefered a simply shield system like Halo 2 or 3, but I'm fine with this.  It really doesn't make any significant difference unless it's a one on one between two equally skilled players.  But in most cases that isn't the case.  I do think it's stupid that you have to press the X button to use health packs in Reach though.  In Combat Evolved and ODST all you had to do was get next to the,.

Another thing done that makes Reach similar to the original is there is no dual wielding and personally I fully support this.  In Halo 2 in order to fit the feature in the Assualt rifle wasn't included.  While dual wielding the player can not throw grenades or melee which were two major parts of Halo combat.  In Halo 3 the assualt rifle was brought back and hardly anyone tough dual wields again.  Most dual wielded weapons were really only good in close range and the shotgun beat them there.  And the fact that every time you switched to your other weapon you'd drop one one of the weapons you were dual wielding it really made it more trouble than it's worth.  Personally I felt the feature just didn't add much to the game.

Reach also reduces the amount of grenade types to just two, the classic plasma and fragmentation. I also support this since it makes switching grenade types much more simple and the other grenades featured in Halo 3 really didn't do much the others couldn't.

The major addition to Reach's gameplay here is armor abilities.  These abilities range from sprinting, invisibility, jetpacks and more.  These really change the flow of battle to the point to where I'd say Halo's three golden rules have turned to four.  If any of the part of Reach refreshes the Halo experience it's armor abilities.

The second biggest addition would probably be the crosshair bloom.  You have one part of the crosshair that shows the ideal area of fire you want stay in and a second that expands as you shoot.  If you pace your shot and Keep the second circle inside the first your shots will hit their mark.  The tricks here though is that you need to learn the rhythm in which you should shoot your gun in what ranges.  You can think of these blooming crosshairs are guideline rather than rules in close range.  Feel free to spam the trigger on the pistol at close range just try to slow down for the finishing head shot once the shields are down.

 Speaking of weapons, I'd say Reach's set are pretty well balanced.  Every weapon is pretty useful.  I don't feel like going into detail since theres a long list of weapons here, I'll talk about the most notables.  The pistol is back with sweet vengeance.  It's just as powerful as the DMR, the primary weapon most players will go by.  While it is just as powerful, it has a higher rate of fire, so it has the potential to down enemies faster.  The trick here though is that the bloom is bigger.  You have to pace the shots wider apart for enemies that are farther out.  The pistol is more ideal at mid or close range, but the DMR is more effective at longer rangers than the pistol and is easier to use in mid range.

If theres any weapon I feel is less usefull than others, it's maybe the assualt rifle.  It's not headshot capable so I generally rely more on the pistol in it's place.  However it seems to be more accurate than it's previous iterations, there isn't much bloom for it and it seems like a decent weapon for the new comer.  If any weapons seems a bit over powered it's the plasma launcher.  It launches plasma grenades that will kill a player if just one of them sticks.  It takes a bit more for vehicles but one charged shot will launch four grenades which is more than enough to stop any vehicle.  Still, the charge time is long and the rounds actually move pretty slowly.  I'd say for the most part Bungie has done a fantastic job making sure everything works well here.  The game has been out for a week and I have seen no exploits and the weapons are mostly balanced.

A subject I almost forgot to cover are the maps.  This Halo technically has the least right from launch, nine for competitive play.  A number I wouldn't say is too bad.  One of the maps, Forge World comes with five custom maps built by Bungie, which would increase the total map count beyond that of any other Halo game if you wish.  Given how robust Forge is I'd say that it more than makes up for the shoter map count but more on that later.

I'd say that the over all map quality is pretty good.  There aren't any duds here if you ask me.  If there any problem I have with the maps is the best ones are remakes.  This Halo game comes with more remakes out of the box than any other.  Counting the Forge World variants there are four remakes.  While the other maps are good fun none of them feel like they'll become fan favorites like Blood Gulch and Lockout.

--------
 
We Have The Technology, We Can Build it 

Your customization options in reach is a pretty long list.  Already mentioned, you can customize your spartan selecting different armor for most of their body, like the helmet, torso, shoulders and even knees, visor color and wrists.  However, most of the armor you'll have to purchase with credits you earn in the game.  You get credits for just about everything you do in Reach, be it campaign, forge, matchmaking.  Everything except watching films.  These credits will rank you up(spending them wont rank you down, rest easy).  You can earn bonus credits by completing daily and weekly challenges and upgrading commendations(think CoD's challenges).

Then you have the return of Forge, bigger and better than ever.  Forge as recieved a slew of upgrades such as allowing players to phase objects throgh solid objects and have them hang in the the air.  The new expansive Forge World map effortlessly puts it's predecessors Sandbox and Foundry to shame.  While forge isn't as robust as a map editor of the likes of Far Cry 2 it's the next best thing, a big step up from Halo 3's Forge and flexible enough to make some really fun maps and remakes of your favorite classics such as Boarding Action.

You can carry your Forge maps over into custom games where you can tweak the experience further such as effecting player movement, gravity and damage.  The only option that felt like it was curiously missing was the ability to force players to play a particular race in regular game types.  Assuming you play with your friends though this shouldn't be a big deal.

The Fire Fight co-op survival mode from ODST returns in Reach.  Interestingly, it comes with it's own set of maps entirely seperate from that of the competitive multiplayer.  A shame since some of the multiplayer maps feel like they would work just fine in Fire fight and vice versa.  Whats an even bigger shame is that you can't forge fire fight maps.  Still, theres a wealthy amount of customizable option for your covie killing experiece.  You can customize what enemies come in each waze, how they appear, your load out options, what skulls are turned on in each set, the list keeps going.

Also returning to Reach is theater mode where you can view games you've recently played or videos you''ve saved or downloading.  An awesome addition to theater mode is that you can now rewind campaign and fire fight film and create clips from them.  A lame subtration is that parties can no longer view saved films together.  If you want to view a film your going have to split up, which isn't too big of a deal since in Halo 3 if player tried to view film clips in a party it would usually take forever to load and then kick players out of the party...

Custom gametypes, films, screen shots and maps can be shared via file share just like in Halo 3 & ODST.  Added are the abilities to tag files and search for files based on tags, so you don't need to go to bungie.net or wait for a bungie's favorite update in order to get files from people outside of your friends list.

--------

All things considered I'm pretty satisfied with Reach.  Bungie has improved Halo in just about every way.  Would people who dislike Halo like it?  No, but you'd think people would get the point after ten years.  If you enjoy Halo though this is a must.  This is easily my favorite game of the year thus far, heres hoping for just as much fun in Reach as I had in Halo 3 and Combat Evolved.

Ps- I totally jacked the pic of the two Elites from Sandman.  The rest of the screens were made by me   8)

I want to test :(

So, I had been looking forward and fearing this one for a while.

Yeah, I couldn't find a decent sized green swoosh ****box with the ESRB rating. You'll have to live with BBFC.

I was excited to hear of a sequel to Crackdown, the game bundled with the Halo 3 beta. But I wasn't too excited the sceen shots in the Gameinformer magazine showing off a game using the same engine that the original Crackdown used that wasnt very impressive back when it debuted back in 2007. Fears krept in my mind that this sequel was a rush job that offered little new.

Then I played the game and found out I was right. Crackdown 2 uses the same graphics engine, the same city and the same exact gameplay. It plays almost exactly the same. The controls are the same. Any change is extremely minor.

The problems that existed in the original still exist. Climbing can be frustrating with buildings that have parts protruding outward so you have to back away in mid air so that you don't hit your head on the way up and get back close to grab a higher ledge. Some problems are worse. You're more likely to target things you don't intent to like vehicles in the background and near by explosives and there now way to switch targets on the fly so if you targer the wrong thing you have to disengage your lock on and reengage and hope the targeting system get the right thing. The enemy ai is actually worse. In the original enemies would occasionly try to at least flee from grenades. The human enemies in Crackdown 2 think nothing of standing in place in the open to get gunned down.

Instead of fighting three gangs your tasked in taking out a resistance group and zombies. It's just as repetitive as before. The only missions actually required to finish the game is activating beacons and clearing out freak lairs. Each beacon is protected by a small amount of the "cell" resistance forces, after clearing them out you just stand on a pad for a few seconds and running again and you move onto the next one. After reactivating enough of these in a district and you'll be tasked with clearing out freak lair, where you'll fight all manner of zombies to protect some super beacon thingy until it activates and kills all freaks in the area. Do this nine times and you've beat the game.

There are a few side tasks. You can clear out tactical locations held by the Cell and claim them as your own, Just like in the original Crackdown, but each tactical location Crackdown has a partner sight you need to clear or the Cell will reclaim the other. Then there are freak breaches where you just kill a bunch of zombies as they come out of a hole until a bar on the side of the screen empties and a helicopter comes and plugs up the hole. There are no benefits to clearing out freak breaches other than achievements. Then theres audio logs. They really don't cover much story the player can't get from the first cut scene and simple observation during gameplay, but hey, it's more achievements.

Leveling up your attributes in Crackdown 2 works the same as the original. Collecting orbs. Collecting green orbs from rooftops and participating in roof top races will increase you agility which determines how fast you can run and how high you can jump. Shooting guys will earn you Firearms orbs making the damage you doll out with guns more potent and you'll become more accurate. You can also earn a little bit of agility and firearms orbs at the same time by shooting foes from high places. You'll level up your stregnth by punching guys and tossing stuff at them and you can level up your driving skill by completing races in your vehicle, running over enemies and pulling off tricks like drifts and barrel rolls.

New to Crackdown 2 is renegade orbs, orbs that flee the player. It's satisfying to catch them but most the time their extremely frustrating to catch. It doesn't really matter though since you wont need them to max out your skills. In fact, it's pretty easy to max them out. I didn't even drive much in the game and I managed to nearly max out my driving skills thanks to the "hidden" and xbox live orbs(the latter can be collected when other players in a co-op session gather around it) that net you experience in all skill types.

Similar to the original Crackdown, once you've leveled up your skills enough you unlock new abilities. Upping your strength will allow you to lift heavier objects and eventually learn a football-like tackle move thats good for busting through crowds of punks, and finally an ability that lets you slam your fist into the pavement after jumping causing a shockwave that can kill most enemies. Maxing out your agility gives you a wing suit that works similar to Mario Wing cap. Maxing out your fire arms earns you new guns. leveling up your explosive skills increases your explosive damage, radius and earns you new explosive weapons and leveling up your driving skills earns you new vehicles.

Driving is almost as pointless in Crackdown 2 as it was in the original. While Agents aren't as fast as they were in the original, they're still fairly fast. But what really kept me from doing much driving was the map. Unlike more recent open world games like Red Dead Redemption, Grand Theft Auto IV and Saints Row 2, there is no way to set waypoints that guide you to your destination. Normally theres a symbol on the map showing you the general direction to go but theres no line path showing what roads you need to take so if your driving you constantly need to open it up and check where you need to go. It's far easier to just go on foot and just parkour your way through all the building between you and your destination. To top it off, the vehicle don't even transform anymore. LAME.

One thing I don't get is that Ruffian was talking about how they improved melee combat. It really isn't much different. Now when you mash the by button over and over you'll go into a combo. It doesn't really matter though, each hit doesn't differ in damage or delivery time. There are also so called melee weapons. Things like helicopter blades, street signs can be picked up and you can go over and mash the b button with it. They do more damage than using your fists and you have a longer reach. Over all it's not a very different experience and it's not much more useful.

The game tries to make players use different tactics to take on enemies. Freaks are more susceptible to UV weapons and humans no like bullets. But explosives seems to be pretty effective on both so I just ran around using the rocket launcher, grenade launcher and flocket launcher all game long. Worked out pretty well. Enemy behavior also effected by the day and night cycle. During the day the freaks hide in their lairs from sunlight so their lairs are more crowded then and them come out during the night. I'm sure if the cell is effected as much by this, they don't show up as much during the night but I didn't notice any difference for the tactical locations and beacons.

Either way, in co-op there isn't much challenge. Me and my friends have gone into freak layers during the day time for the added challenge since it was ridiculously easy at night. And Crackdown 2 feels like it was primarily made for co-op. I can't imagine taking on the freak layers closer to the end of the game. Full of enemies and some doing attacks that cause you to go into a long reaction animation that you have to wait to end before fighting again. Some tactical locations are like this too, occupied by tons of baddies with explosives that cause you to roll around on the ground like a tard. It's annoying but if you're in co-op, as you should be, then it wont pose too much of a problem.

Co-op is hands down the biggest improvement to Crackdown 2. I almost want to forget some of the game's short comings for it. Rocking Pacific city with three buddies is a blast. What made the original Crackdown 2, the crazy stunts and explosions is that much more awesome with more friends. Still, it could have been better. My biggest beef is that when players are far apart theres no indication as to who those small triangle on the map are. They're all the same color and there no names. You're not gonna know who is who until they're on screen. Theres also the issue of friendly fire. You can turn it off, but even then, friendly explosion and shots from the UV shot gun are going to blow friends away and leave them disoriented for seconds. It's funny at first buy after a while it's annoying.

Crackdown 2's list of good additions don't extend much further than that. You can now see where near by orbs are by pressing up on the D-pad and you can see the locations of all orbs in the menus, although the ones you already found arne't marked off. Still it makes or hunt significantly easier. Theres helicopters but you'll need to get to level five in agility to actually get to them and by then it's entirely possible that you've beaten the game. Same for the glide suit, it's cool but you wont be getting it till near the end of the game and by then there isn't practical use to it other than to goof around. Mag grenades are awesome, allowing the player to link objects together. The applications are endless. For instance, having trouble getting all the vehicle stunt rings? Stick a vehicle to a friend's chopper and have him fly you through the rings while you sit back and relax. Just likethe others though this is just something that'll probably entertain you on the side.

Then theres the competitive multiplayer which is tacked on if I'd ever seen it. You have the choice of either Team Deathmatch or rocket tag. Thats it. Not even free for all deathmatch. Team death match is self explanatory and rocket tag is like Halo's oddball game type expect the players are going after an orb instead of a skull. On top of the unimpressive offering of modes Crackdown 2 does not even support parties. What is this, 2003? What amazes me though is this game actually support host migration. Really? No parties but it has host migration? It doesn't matter, the multiplayer sucks anyway.

Crackdown 2 is fun, but it's really disappointing. It doesn't do much the original didn't and it actually took out some of the cool things the original had. It plays the same, it loks the same, it's using the same engine and same city as the original. Even more than ODST this should have been priced as an expansion. Rent this if you're interesting but don't spend more than twenty dollars if you want to purchase.

I really should quit doing muli-part blogs. Setting myself up to finish something later never ends well...

But yeah, so next up we have Singularity!

The game begins with you and Nolan North investigating an island because apparently Russians did some crazy stuff you should check out. I'm lazy and have bad memory, alright people. To make a long story short, thanks to some strange resources some how people and animals turned into zombie monsters and have messed with the time line or something. Don't think about it too hard, it's a videogame and the ending creates plot holes anyway.

These same resources, called E99 are what power your nifty time manipulation device. When I say time manipulation device I mean it lets you age enemies, Shoot slomo bubbles, age or revitalize crates for crate puzzles and restore stair ways. Yeah, for such a cool piece of tech you'd be surprised at how short your list of options are with it. Sure, you can jump between time lines, but these are only in key areas of the plot that are entirely scripted. You might as well have replaced some of these sequences with cut scenes. But of course they because the character is as interesting and full of personality as such riveting characters like Gordan Freeman and ODST's Rookie.

The game starts out kinda spooky. You're separated from Nolan North and you're fighting monster things with just a pistol. But as you progress that atmosphere is completely destroyed as you power up your happy gadget(not that one! Get your mind out of the gutter) and you pick up uber power weapons such as a minigun and a rifle that you can has rounds you can personally guide to their targets in slomo and insta kills regardless of where the round hits. About half way through the game the challenge is completely gone.

The game allows you to level up your abilities and equip perks, which is pretty cool Whats not cool is that once you beat the game you're done with that character. There is no importing, if you missed some upgrades you're out of luck. If you want to pick up some stuff or earn achievements you missed on your first run you have to play through the entire game over again. Singularity has multiple endings and fortunately if you select to continue from the last checkpoint after beating the game it'll got back the game's last check point and you can get the other endings without playing all the way through again.

Now, one complaint I've heard that I do not understand is the graphics. The game looks good. Not fantastic, but certainly above par. The environments are well realized, the characters look pretty good, I think they even used motion capturing. It's not going to blow you away but it still looks good.

If anything is unimpressive, it's the multiplayer. Only two game modes. Creatures vs Soldiers and Extermination. Creature vs Soldiers is just death match with one team playing as regular humans and the other playing as the game's cast of beasts. The Elimination is similar in that one team takes on the role of human and the other as monster but the goal is different. Human players try to activate beacons in the map while the monsters try to prevent it. So it's kinda like Battlefield's Gold Rush mode.

This concentration of human vs monster gameplay is a bit reminiscent of Left 4 Dead, although I'd say cooperation is less pivotal here. The multiplayer is class based. You can select a class and customize it to an extent, choosing between perhaps a couple of abilities and weapons. but it ends there. There are no unlocks, everything is available from the get go.

What confused me the most about the multiplayer was the ranking system. It served no purpose. There are no unlocks, like Call of Duty, but like Call of Duty players gain experience and rank up for just playing, essentially. So the ranking system doesn't say anything about player skill. It's just there decoration, really.

I almost want to say the multiplayer felt tacked on, but the campaign wasn't anything amazing either and can be beat in around seven hours. Without the multiplayer the game would have been less appealing. It's fun, but it's nothing amazing. A rental is enough.

Bringing a Knife to A Gun Fight

Something I wanted to mention that I never got in, early in the game I was try to earn some achievements. One for getting a certain number of kills with the sniper rifle and another for getting a certain number of kills the pistol. These two weapons aren't exactly a great combination for taking out waves of enemies but against my better judgement I went with these anyway. I was pretty sure my MLG clutch, clutch, clutch skills would come through.

I suffered for that decision. A checkpoint came and I got to a segment where I had to fight with a bunch of fast enemies that fought in close quarters. There were no human enemies to pick different weapons up from, I was pretty low on ammo and there were none of the station where I could get other weapons picked up previously in the game. I was pretty close to just starting a new game.

I ended up just hiding in an area clustered with cars the monsters had trouble getting into. An area I probably wasn't meant to go into. Essentially I had to cheat the game.

Moral of the story, don't use sniper rifle and pistols for close quarters fighters just to earn achievements.

So vashkey rented a fair number of games this summer and he was so selfish he so lazy he didn't attempt talking about it. Weird right? You normally can't get me to shut up. Well I'll try and recall my time with them all despite my poopy memory and share my thoughts on them with you, the not so little people by direct comparison to in terms of value but possible in height...

So I'll start with Transformers: War for Cybertron.

Um... Yeah, i'm pretty sure the actually box had that new green swoosh on the right like all new 360 games have... but yeah, anyway...I've been keeping a close eye on this game since it's announcement. Robots that transform have always interested me since I watched Beast Wars back in my Elementary years. So seeing this game not look like dog doody caught my interest. Still, just because something is dog doo doesn't mean it's gold either.

I'll just start of by saying the campaign isn't going to blow your socks off. It's your standard yellow brick road shooter sprinkeled with set pieces. It's enjoyable but if you play shooters you're going to feel some intense dejavu. Alot of what you see feels lifted right from other shooters. Thats not to say it's not fun, running through in co-op is a blast and jet sequences, easily the campaign's most memorable scenes, are a blast.

The plot isn't amazing or anything but it's what you'd expect from Transformers. It gets the job done and it should be enough to satisfy Transformers fans. The world of Cybertron is probably faithfully captured in the game but I have to admit, it gets a bit monotonous with all the blacks are gray environments. It makes Gears of War look like a double rainbow.

War for Cybertron incorporates transformation pretty seemlessly. Just click down the lest stick and you're in vehicle mode. Each transformer comes with a couple of special abilities unique their class and in some cases just the character). These elements help separate this from the pack.

Since apparently every shooters needs one these days, War for Cybertron comes with a co-op survival mode called Escalation. Played any co-op survival mode and you know what to expect. Fight your way through waves of ai controlled baddies you already encountered in campaign as long as you can. It's similar to Call of Duty: World at War's Nazi Zombies mode in that you can spends the points you earn on opening new rooms to better weapons and equipment with the down side of giving enemies more areas to spawn. There are two maps, each one dedicated to each of the Transformers factions and with some enemies unique to each location.

I didn't really get to play too much of the competitive multiplayer. It seemed pretty solid though. Similar to the Call of Duty series you can customize your transformers class. You have a selection of promary calles that you can tweak to your liking such as leader and scout, you can choose their abilities and spawn weapons and such and even choose between chassis and colors. And of course from threre you can earn new awesome stuff from leveling up and once you max out you can go Prime(prestige).

Theres a selection of playlists with a fair amount of of game types. Like I said I didn't get to play too much but certain classes seem better equiped to take on certain tasks so it seems like mastering them all would be key.

Thats about all I care to share. It's a fun game but aside from being about robots in disguise it doesn't really break the mold. It's recommendable and it's about the best quality you could hope for a licensed video game(well, short of Arkham Asylum..>). But against all games in general it really doesn't hold up against the Halos, Gears, Call of Duties and Half-Life. It makes for a good distraction though.