Tom Clancy's EndWar

I Have too many games.

Actually, that is kind of a lie, because I don't HAVE too many, I just spend my time with them unwisely. I really need to complete games more, and this list is my reminder that these games exist, and I *will* complete them. You'll all be here with me guys, right? Guys? 

My Backlog

Welcome to my personal reminder that I should really get to finishing Mass Effect. Catchy nickname, don't you think? Anyway, my list. These are games that I own that I have not finished, and do intend to. It doesn't include the games that I own and have barely played, such as my Sports games. I'm still debating as to whether to include Pure. Anyway, without further ado, the games I need to finish but haven't. What this means is these are the games my mind goes: DO THIS, so on some (one) of them, I've already completed it twice.

	1. Saints Row 2 Amazing game. I am loving every second of this awesome adventure. I received it on Christmas day, and have almost finished it already. Hopefully this won't be on the list for long, but I am attempting to savour Saint's Row 2, with the extra activites and Real Estate buying, but other games are calling, so I'll finish this up soon.
	2. Mass Effect OK, this game is different. I finished it, then I did a renegade run, then I started a rushy Hardcore run, and now Mass Effect 2 is approaching on me and I haven't got to Level 60 (I'm 2 off) and don't have a file that has the decisions I originally made carried over. Yes, I'm trying to complete this twice before Mass Effect 2. Yes, I know its futile.
	3. Shadow Complex Bought this on Sale whilst it was 800 points, and I'm not dissapointed. I played it for about an hour, and I managed to get stuck. I'm sure I'll complete this later. Hopefully. I really don't like being stuck in games, its kinda demotivating.
	4. Lost Odyssey I *love* this game. So much. It is a testament to this love that I REFUSE to complete it until I have done more of the sidequests. I've got the DLC bonus dungeon, and yes it is like banging my head against a wall, but my head is enjoying every second being bashed against the wall of Lost Odyssey. I truly love this game, and aren't being quick about finishing, even though I HAVE TWO OTHER JRPGS. AHH.
	5. Lost Planet: Extreme Condition Got this for my Birthday in November, I'm sure I'll play it eventually, its not bad. I've already done the first level, but this isn't a priority as of now.
	6. Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts Again, Birthday gift in November, and what a gift it is. I enjoyed the two days I played it on in November, then went back to Modern Warfare 2. I will come back to this eventually. This list will still be here until I do.
	7. Tom Clancy's EndWar Again, birthday gift. I'll never complete this, I know it in my heart. Which is a shame, but inside, I know I don't have it in me to complete an RTS game. Ever. Sadface.
	8. Fable II I love this game, rather a lot. Fable II is FUCKING AMAZING. Go buy it if you haven't. I bought it, I then bought see the future, and I haven't finished that yet. Its the one short thing I have to do, if only I could just put the game back in...
	9. Bully: Scholarship Edition Birthday gift. FROM 2008. I played it once, REALLY enjoyed that, then left it til I had time. I still don't. This saddens me.
	10. Beautiful Katamari Now, this was a christmas gift, and a very enjoyable christmas gift. A *very* enjoyable christmas gift. Too bad it doesn't have an auto-save function. Three hours lost, and I am a very upset annoying little teenager. I'll get back to it, its not that long, but its very good, though losing three hours of Katamari making through my own stupidity, its just frustrating.
	11. BioShock I got this game, I played it, and my original Xbox BROKE. I don't know how far I got, I cannot remember where I am in the game. I was really enjoying it, then everyone spoiled ALL of the twists. What Jackasses I know. I really hate spoilers. I currently am refusing to forgive my dad for spoiling Serenity, which I just watched, but thats by the by. I don't know if I have the motivation to finish this.
	12. Blue Dragon Oh boy. Oh lord. Two JRPGs. TWO! This will end up being the one I don't finish, because inside of me, I know that Star Ocean will be better, and less similar to Lost Odyssey in gameplay. But I like to think that I'll finish it, even if I won't.
	13. Star Ocean: The Last Hope Christmas gift, and I got it twice, from two people. I know have a spare copy of Star Ocean that I really don't need. This is rather annoying. Oh well.

 
Right, that was fun, wasn't it? I think the thing I am most saddened by this list is there are a few games that I've just gone "nope, never doing that" and won't ever complete, that aren't on this list. So, actually, think of this not as a moan, but as a To-Do list. I will report back to this website and show my progress! Heres to it being good!
 

In Other News...

• I don't know if I said this in the main blog, but DUDE SAINTS ROW 2 IS PRETTY SWEET. It is really refreshing to not care about consequences, and have a game that does not care about consequences. I have guns AKIMBO, I have a car that may well be the batmobile, and I'm loving every second. Not realistic at all, but oh so amazing.
• Happy new year, or whatever. New year is the most pointless celebration, just an excuse for people to get drunk and not feel guilty. Then again, I will never drink (part moral reasons and part fussy eater reasons) and so I will never understand why people enjoy it.
• I'm getting a guitar. This will be awesome.
• I should go and have a shower now, considering I'm going into london. I suppose I'll talk later.
  

Got a mother lode of 360 games in the mail this past week, most of them look pretty promising. After finishing the single player in Uncharted 2 and messing about a fair bit in multiplayer, I'm ready for some backlog stuff again.

Game 1: Tom Clancy's EndWar 

 

 BEFORE: Don't know what to expect here, to be honest. My experience with RTS games is limited, but this one promises a fresh take on it, anyway. The reviews were generally on the good side, but there wasn't really a crazy amount of buzz. 

AFTER: The first achievement popped four minutes in, that was pretty quick. The voice command tutorial seemed to work well enough that I just had to play the first few missions to see if it held up in the field. Three missions in, feels pretty solid so far. Seems kinda easy, though.

Game 2: Resident Evil 5

 

 BEFORE: I bought two copies of this game and gave one of them to my brother, since I've heard that co-op is the way to go. I'm a Resident Evil virgin, so this is going to be a new experience. The focus on co-op is apparent in the opening menus, I'm doing this session alone, though. 

AFTER: Whoa, this game is... different. I needed 45 minutes and three continues to beat mission 1_1 on Normal and get the first achievement. The controls felt very slow compared to other shooters I've played, but popping zombies in the head and collecting gold got really satisfyting once I got over the hump. Can't wait to play this in co-op now. Also, after playing through Uncharted 2, the voice work and animation in the cutscenes here don't hold up.  
 

Game 3: 50 Cent Blood on the Sand 

 
BEFORE: This should be quite a contrast to RE5. 50's quoting Eminem in the opening screen track. I played and liked The Club, I should be able to have some fun with this. Expecting ridiculousness and lots of it.
 
AFTER: Even more ridiculous than expected. Wild and crazy arcade-style effects and a pretty good tempo to the shooting. Way fun. It's pretty good with the achievements too, the first one (for a successful melee attack) popped near the 6-minute mark, and another 30 minutes yielded a bunch more. Could not put this down right away.  
 

Game 4: Mortal Kombat VS DC Universe 

 
BEFORE: Fighting games was one of the genres I didn't foresee myself getting into when I started playing games again a few years ago. I'm also more familiar with the DC Universe than Mortal Kombat, so this should be interesting. I've heard good things. 
 
AFTER: Jumped straight into arcade mode with Scorpion, mixed opponents. Got two achievements in the first match, one for Free Fall Transition and one for Klose Kombat, both worth 25G. Pretty generous. I'm seeing some cool moves here, this should be fun once I get my Hori stick out and learn the finishers. 
 

Game 5: Bionic Commando 

 
BEFORE: There were a few things said about this game when it was released that kept me from buying it at full price, mainly about the collectables. I love collectables when they're done right. When they're not done right, they become an annoyance. I also tried the multiplayer demo, and it left me indifferent. I'm totally willing to give this a try at this price, though. Not expecting too much. 
 
AFTER: Damn, the Grin guys put their logo in the intro cutscenes. Clevery done. This could have used some more polish. Combat feels pretty goot, though. Not quite 10 minutes, finished the first challenge for 5G. I'm gonna have to play through this one later, though I'm already aware of the idiotic twist. 
 

Game 6: F.E.A.R. 2 Project Origin

 
BEFORE: Playing this as the last game before I hit the sack at 2:45 AM may not be the greatest idea. I tried the demo for this game when it came out, it seemed OK to me. Not enough to warrand a full-price purchase, though. 
 
AFTER: Bad idea for sure. I spent the better part of 40 minutes trying to finish the first mission because I missed the instructions and I couldn't find them again. This game look pretty. The atmosphere is almost tangible, and there are even some scary parts in there. Shooting seems solid, too. Should make for an interesting diversion someday, though I've got a feeling that once November rolls around, I won't have room for any other shooters than the obvious one.

So I've noticed that GiantBomb is missing a lot of stuff from the Tom Clancy universe. I'm completely addicted to all things Ghost Recon / Rainbow Six so I've dug out all my old dossiers and folders on all the games missions, characters and even blood types of all the characters involved. I've just started with Domingo "Ding" Chavez and next I'll start throwing up a few more everyday until it's nice and complete around here...

Giant Bomb really is awesome, no? I mean seriously! Ok, now that I got that out of the way...

I've been busy with a couple of sequels in my gaming time as of late. One new, one slightly old. The first is Dawn of War 2. The original game represented an extremely accessible, not to mention visceral satisfying, refinement of the RTS genre. While all the expansions were great, I really wanted this game to finally make its way out. Relic certainly took the series in a very different direction, but it's for the best...or at least not for the worst. The level of personal attachment you'll get with your wildly fanatic marines is quite surprising. But besides that, the scaled down nature of the game offers a play experience unlike most stuff out on the market. It's refreshing.

The other sequel is Far Cry 2. It took a while to get around to, but I'm glad I did. That is one dirty, gritty, grimy, but (most importantly) fun game. Enjoying my time with it so far.

And in a moment of shameless self-promotion, I put up my first review in a while. While EndWar isn't the newest of releases, the mood struck me with that game. Give it a look if you care to and maybe even leave a comment! (*gasp*) I'll give ya a cookie!

ZOMG!

Take a look!

I would be quite happy if you hit refresh a few hundred times, and get us some ad revenue. Then I could actually get paid!

Regardless, I wrote this review like 3 months ago, they're just now putting it up. Hee.

You people are all members of Giantbomb. That means you ALREADY KNOW what the good games are, and which gaming aesthetics are going to itch your trigger fingers.

So, here's a completely different list of things you should go and check out, but that probably wont feature prominently on anyone's top ten of 2008 list.

 

AGE OF BOOTY

There have been a lot of awesome XBLA games released this year, but Age Of Booty was particularly enjoyable. The simple emphasis of co-operation and communication really does add a lot of depth and tactical awareness to what would otherwise be considered a simplistic experience. I liked it enough to write my first (and only) review, so you should go chCHCHhcheck that out. Age Of Booty is, I feel, massively under-rated. It looks great, its fun to play, and you get to shout as much Pirate nonsense as you can shake a cutlass at. Buy it or WALK THE PLANK!!

 

 TOM CLANCY'S: ENDWAR

I don’t usually go for RTS games because I find I simply cannot react fast enough to multiple events taking place on the virtual battlefield. This isn’t helped by my inability to play PC games, and the selection of RTS games on 360 are somewhat lacking. Yes, I can beat you at Battle For Middle Earth 2 - but I won't enjoy it, which sort of defies the point. Endwar was a breath of fresh air - the voice controls work stunningly well, and it makes zipping around the battlefield fast and effective. Instead of having that gloomy "fog of war" you are limited to a more personal 3rd-person-esque perspective of your troops. The game empathises with your limited squads particularly well, and you may find yourself risking the lives of dozens just to protect a single unit of Gunships that worked so hard to defend Bravo point. Franticly yammering commands into the mouthpiece adds a wonderful sense of involvement, tension and, aside from everything else, makes you feel like a total badass. This game is a lot of fun, and while I would only really suggest the online is used - I still think its a shame that Endwar got smothered by the wealth of other titles released over the last month. It deserves a lot of praise.

 

BURNOUT PARADISE

I don’t own a copy of Burnout Paradise. Like an idiot I decided that I should walk for half an hour to play it at my mates house every day. For a month. Like everyone else out there - I freakin’ loved it. Its easy to forget Burnout what with it being released so early in the year (January 22nd?!) but it really is a great game - and the continued high quality of the Dev Support is stunning and makes me wish I had bought the game myself to take full advantage of it. (Just so you know, I'm totally cool with being a hypocrite). Burnout gets all the basic racing elements right - the cars all feel individual without making the game unbalanced, there is a great sense of speed, and the city is lush and full of life. The multiplayer is particularly robust, with a flawless transition from off to online. The gorgeous crash sequences are, in the words of Ryan Davis - "Pornographic". How can you NOT go for that?!


Those three games are all awesome. They all deserve some of your time. If you are scanning the completely predictable GOTY awards and find yourself stuck for good titles to play, maybe you should experiment with one of these.

If I had to pick a “game of the year” it would be GTA4 by the way...

 If you have spoken to me on the IRC or have been keeping track of my blogs then you will know why. If you haven’t then you probably have no idea who I am and you shouldn’t care about my opinion anyway.























Thanks For Reading
Love Sweep

I'm sure everyone is in a similar boat with the huge number of games that have hit the shelves in the past month or so, but I just actually looked at the games I've bought recently and it's crazy, so I thought I'd summarize the my gaming situation right now, a short overview of my feelings of the games,

FIFA 09

It was lucky that FIFA 09 came out before most of the holiday season's big releases. It gave me a good chance to get my teeth into it and play a briliant update to the licensed football game. The new colisions system works briliantly. For the first time in a football game the players actually look like they're actually feel real. The colisions system helps this, but it's also the way players interact with eachother. The introduction of a referee and linesman actually in game also helps this, even if it is annoying when the ref gets in you're way. It has excelent replayability value, I would still be playing it now if I didn't have so many other games to play, but unfortunately I've had to put it on the sidelines so I can play some more games.

Fable II

Fable 2 Limited Collector's Edition

Fable II is another game I've had a good chance to play. I got it on the release day, and played it allot, and finished it within a couple of days and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The colourfull and vibrant world was really immersive. The combat worked well,  Ordinarily I'd have played a second playthrough. I really wanted to try the game out as an evil character. I wanted to see just how much the world changes around you as you play, but once again other games prevented me from playing it as much as I would normally like too.

Far Cry 2

Far Cry 2

Far cry 2 was an impules buy for me. I didn't enjoy the first far cry, but I saw this one in the shop and decided to buy it. I haven't had a chance to play allot of it, but from what I played of the single player, I didin't like it. I hope to play it some more eventually and hopefully get into it. I did however get to play a reasonable ammount of the multiplayer, and I found it weirdly enjoyable. There was allot in the multiplayer that was bad, mainly the fact that you have to load about 20 bullets into someone before they'll die (Ok, 20 might be a slight exaggeration, but you get the picture). The map design wasn't great, and having to wait 20 secconds for a respawn is annoying, but somehow I had allot of fun playing it. I definately plan on returning to the multiplayer when I get a chance.

Midnight club LA

I played midnight club LA for all of about 30 minutes, purely because of the steep dificulty curve. Outruning the cops was near impossible and wining races usually involved restarting at least once. I'm sure once I get used to the road layouts and get a little bit more practice in It'll be fine, but right now I don't have the time to be learning street layouts on a game. Once I have time to dedicate to this game I can see it being really fun, but right now that isn't going to happen.

EndWar

Endwar is another game I'm having trouble to get into with so many other games I could be playing. The camera angle isn't like a regular RTS. It is fixed your units. You can rotate it and look all arround your unit's, but it still gives you no where near as much freedom to look arround as a regular RTS. I could see it actually being really fun once I get into it, but again, I've got so many other games to play, this is going to have to wait for a while before I play it much.

Gears of War 2

So far I'm really enjoying gears 2. I'm just at the beginning of act 3 and I'm enjoying it more than I enjoyed the first gears of war. The combat works really well and its just a shit load of fun to play, and I haven't even had a chance to play any multiplayer yet. Theres not really much else to say about gears, just that its awesome!!!

Banjo Kazooie Nuts & Bolts

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I got this yestarday, and I'm really enjoying it. The gameplay is really fun. The level design is briliant, I'm having an excelent time with it. The vehicle building elements of it is simple enough to make it easy to do, yet complex enough to be able to create some pretty bad ass stuff. The humour in it is briliant aswell, I definately plan on playing more of this. It might even eat into some of my gears 2 time, which shows just how much fun I'm having with it.

And more...

Well, thoes are the games that I actually own, but there are more games out and due out  soon that I really want to play too. Call of Duty World at War and Mirrors edge came out today, both of which I was planning on picking up, but I've decided against for now because I've allready got so many games to play. Next week sees Need for Speed: Undercover, Rock band 2 (I'm in the UK) and Left 4 dead being released, all of which are on my wanted list. I'm going to be running out of money soon, never mind time, it looks like I'll be eating beans on toast for the next 2 months!!!!!

I came into work early today, like usual, to sit down and play some Fallout 3 for a little bit.  However, when I walked in, we had four fresh copies of Tom Clancy's EndWar!!!  I've been looking forward to the game just to see how well the voice commands work, but also to see if it's a good real-time strategy game in general.  There were quite a few guys on the forums that were wanting to see a little more of it past the demo before they made any renting/buying decisions, and so I have taken this as an opportunity to hook you doods up!!!