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5 (39) 4 (63) 3 (37) 2 (21) 1 (14) 3.5 starsAverage score of 174 user reviews
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Decent Ending to an Overrated Series 0
Bungie's stewardship over their rather profitable Halo series comes to a close with Halo Reach, probably the pinnacle of this series. The storyline is abject crap (space marines repel the Covenant from Reach) and almost seems to contradict the mythos (Reach, if memory serves, went so poorly it got them to wake Master Chief up to fight the Covenant and the UNSC was basically routed and abandoned the planet).So, this is the prequel involving the Fall of Reach...and things aren't that bad. ...
0 out of 6 found this review helpful. -
Boring in New Ways 1
The 2010 holiday game schedule opens up this year with Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions. Activision and developer Beenox decide to go back to the drawing board and rather radically alter how Spider-Man games are made.Here, we have 4 alternate Marvel Universes collide together as you control Amazing, Ultimate, 2099, and Noir versions of Spider-Man. I had barely heard of the 2099 universe and never heard of Noir, so this does introduce people to more of the Marvel library. I half expected ...
1 out of 3 found this review helpful. -
Open...I Mean Linear-World 0
Mafia II is the somewhat awaited sequel to the enjoyable, but flawed, Mafia. You are, as expected by the title, a member of the Mafia. You start off serving in Italy during WW II (ya know, the Italian front is basically ignored in gaming. Sure, the Italian military was a pathetic joke, but still, lot of ugly fighting there. Bob Dole had his hand mangled there). You come back home and try to make something of yourself and, as a young Italian, apparently the Mafia is your only viable option...
0 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Basically the Same As the Original...but a bit worse 0
Crackdown has been one of my favorite games this generation. I was so up for it I had it pre-purchased before the Halo 3 beta was announced. It was pure, stupid fun and the idea of an open world game with superhuman powers seemed like the ultimate no-brainer. It seemed to be a brief blast of fun as MS seemed to have no desire to sequelize it and Realtime Worlds went on to make the rather-poor APB. Then, it turned out that Ruffian Games was producing a sequel to my fave game this gen. Say...
1 out of 2 found this review helpful. -
I Feel Nauseous...Not Due to the Camera, Though 0
The original Kane and Lynch was a game with a great deal of promise that just could never get it together. The characters are amongst the most unlikeable in gaming (people mention the socoipathic tendencies in Rockstar protagonists or the whininess of Square protagonists...nobody does characters you dislike quite like K & L) and it makes any connection to them nearly impossible. There was potential there, especially with the great gimmick in their multiplayer, and the sequel was some...
3 out of 6 found this review helpful. -
Fun Open World Mayhem 0
The original Just Cause was a fun romp with a huge problem that had the flaw of being barren. Your world was epic, but there wasn't a heck of a lot to do. Avalanche has rectified the problem many times over with the sequel.In fact, few games have worlds as packed as this. There are 360 something places to find and grab upgrades and destroy government property. There are 49 missions for 3 factions. Dozens of challenges. All this seems to demonstrate that they realized that its fun to do ...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Achievement Whores Only 0
Night at the Museum: Battle of the SmithsonianLet's get it out of the way...this is a game for Achievement whores only. It is extremely short, unbelievably easy, and edged out only by Avatar: The Last Airbender as the easiest 1000 point game in existence.You play Not Even Close To Ben Stiller, who is loosely based on Ben's poorly performed starring role in the movies which were way more enjoyable than they had any right to be. Your character is a security guard with dark hair...which completes t...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Does the Movie Series Justice...Take it For What It's Worth 0
Originally scheduled to be released by money-heavy but talent-lacking developer Brash Entertainment (creators of such gems as the games Jumper and Space Chimps), Saw seemed to be DOA when the developer finally died under the weight of their suck. Konami, however, stepped in and released the game.And the game actually does the movie series some justice. It is a gory affair, with some rather unpleasant deaths...but the overwhelming game dynamic isn't violence, but puzzle solving. The game ...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Valiant, Yet Failed, Effort 0
Obsidian takes their crack at a game genre that has been amazingly underrepresented: spy-based RPG. After a somewhat elongated development cycle, Alpha Protocol has been launched.In this title, you are Michael Thornton, a blank slate you can develop into almost any type of character you desire. You can be a debonair ladies man...or an arrogant prick. You can be as sneaky as a ninja...or run into rooms, guns ablazing. You can rely on sheer firepower...or you can use other gadgets to get y...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Better than You'd Think 0
Disney has quietly worked to revamp their gaming division, ending their practice of outsourcing game development to THQ and, instead, hiring gifted developers like Warren Specter to build up an excellent studio. One of their first, if not their first, movie tie-ins is for the newly released Toy Story 3. And the game has a weak story mode...but a borderline inspired sandbox (well, toy box) mode. It doesn't seem to follow the movie's plot...I certainly can't claim to have a clue about the pl...
7 out of 7 found this review helpful. -
A little disappointing 0
Out in close proximity to Blur, Split Second was the OTHER hot racing game released in the 2nd quarter of the year. The gimmick in Split Second is that you are on a TV show where you have to race through a few tracks and do battle with your opponents...except you cannot directly attack them. What you CAN do, however, is have the track itself attack your opponents. Construction equipment flies out of control. Parts of the course fall apart. Buildings blow up. And, occasionally, shortcuts ...
3 out of 4 found this review helpful. -
DICE nails Single Player 0
DICE's console-centric Bad Company makes its return in the aptly titled Bad Company 2.EA has quietly built the best collection of FPS developers in the business. They have DICE, Criterion (who are still, allegedly, going to make a Black sequel), Respawn (the former Infinity Ward guys), and the upcoming Epic/People Can Fly gem Bulletstorm all under their banner at present. It's a Murderer's Row of gaming that has not been matched, possibly, ever (and I'm still hoping...admittedly, it isn'...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Shockingly Fun Affair 0
Blur is the latest release from one of the premier racing developers on the market, Bizarre. Their takes on racing, from the more traditional PGR series to the shooter-that-is-actually-a- Yes, Blur is, overall, a kart racer. Yes, it uses actual carrs, but the gameplay itself is pure kart racer. You have your power ups and a bit of rubber banding AI to keep the races close. You have opponents who will hold their weapons until the last lap and then unleash hell upon you. Bizarre has managed...
5 out of 6 found this review helpful. -
Great Atmosphere Does Not Equal Great Game 0
Metro 2033 is based on a Russian novel dealing with life in post-apocalyptic Moscow, brought to you by members of the team that gave us S.T.A.L.K.E.R. And while the game has the same bleak atmosphere of their original major release, it avoids the major technical bugs it had.In Metro 2033, after the apocalypse, Russians live in the underground metro stations as the surface is totally irradiated and impossible to deal with without gas masks. You are set to seek help for your beleaguered station a...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Early GOTY for 360 0
Alan Wake is the LONG awaited title from Remedy, who previously took forever releasing Max Payne last gen. Sadly, they've already started releasing DLC, so planned jokes about new episodes hitting in 2013 have been thwarted.The story is fairly complex. I could spoil it here if you would like, but I would advise against it. But I will say that even spelling out the story, it doesn't make a ton of logical sense...which was a goal of the developers. So, well played men. On seond thought, eve...
3 out of 4 found this review helpful. -
Bad Business Decision Mars Game 1
The follow up for the excellent original title has been launched. Will the series fall into the usual sports annual release malaise of small, incremental changes being hyped up as being huge to justify a retail price?Fortunately, this is a new franchise (these seem to have little in common with the last gen UFC titles), so they have enough room to grow for a year or two. In this case, they've introduced a wealth of game modes. The career mode is the meat, with you going through 12 years of a ca...
0 out of 2 found this review helpful. -
Total Must Have 0
Simply put, this is one of the most addictive games I've ever played in my life. Borderlands is a cel-shaded, FPS/RPG hybrid that basically takes the game mechanic of MMO titles (walk around, have somebody give you a quest, do it, get rewards, do the same thing) and puts in a single player or multi-player co-operative game. That it plays equally well as either a single player affair or multi-player affair is something to marvel at.The story involved you playing as one of four characters ...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
A Sequel Nobody Was Calling For 0
Another sequel for a game series not known for high quality as is. DtRR is a 3rd person action game with an emphasis on fisticuffs in addition to gunplay.You play psychopathic hero Jack Slate, who deals with crime by, arguably, being meaner and crueler than the criminals he deals with. You get to torture numerous people, some of whom that even deserve it. You are a cop of Grant City and you initially team up with your father and his dog, Shadow. Of course, bad things occur and you end up teamin...
2 out of 6 found this review helpful. -
Ugh 0
The original Iron Man was probably the worst Marvel comics related game of the last ten or so years, barely edging out Daredevil largely because Daredevil didn't actually come out for home consoles. So, it's been 2 years and Sega has learned their lesson, right?Well, to be gentle, no. I hate using the term "crap" as an adjective, but it is the cleanest and least offensive phrase I can use to describe the quality of this terrible movie tie-in. Now, it's not the like usual movie tie-in whe...
1 out of 2 found this review helpful. -
Best Fighting Game Ever...Again 0
Capcom, yet again, brings its winning formula of having excellent 2-D fighters look 3-D to a gorgeous apex in Super Street Fighter IV. Easily the best animated fighting game I've ever seen, even moreso than the outstanding BlazBlue, SSFIV is the best fighting game in history and one that you cannot really do much to top. The engine is very similar to the outstanding SFIV, with some of the same glitches and exploits (Zangief's spinning lariat is still able to win almost every single fight with v...
1 out of 4 found this review helpful. -
Not Quite Splinter Cell...but Very Much Awesome 0
Sam Fisher, epic bad ass, has returned. And this time, he is after his daughter that he believed had been dead all of these years. Fisher has left Third Echelon and wishes to be left alone...but, as seems to be the case with highly trained killing machines, reality keeps dragging him back into the fray. It turns out that the same thugs who killed his daughter are now planning a major attack on the nation's capitol, and Sam is called back into action to head them off at the pass.Now, suff...
9 out of 9 found this review helpful. -
Very Worthy Successor 0
The somewhat shocking sequel to one of the truly great titles out there launched earlier this year and we will see how well it lives up to its namesake.The first issue was that the original didn't leave an opening for a sequel. At all. It had a very definite conclusion. So, 2K Marin had an ugly problem in even trying to start this game in the first place. And they shoehorn it as well as they can, but it is still clunky. It is illogical for a character who was, apparently, every inch as i...
7 out of 7 found this review helpful. -
Amazing Game 0
After two major excursions (and a PSP one as well), Kratos arrives onn the PS3 and is still not a happy man. You still seek to kill Zeus and you have the Titans helping you get there.Let's say, upfront, this might be the best looking game in history. It is a technical marvel. Kratos looks like a real person, the levels are crazy detailed, the framerate almost never chugs (it did for me one time at the very end out of nowhere) and load times are hidden behind in-engine cutscenes so they a...
3 out of 6 found this review helpful. -
Decent, But Not Worth the Money 0
Dante was a poet who wrote a long piece on Hell. However, in Visceral Games' newest title, Dante is not so much a poet but, instead, is a brutish thug who can slaughter the minions of Hell with few problems. In reality, Dante was a skinny, waifish little dude...but in the game, he is a huge brute. The game is God of War in everything but name, but is it fun?Dante was a Crusader here. His wife, Beatrice, made a deal with the Devil that he would be faithful during the Crusades ---- and she...
3 out of 3 found this review helpful. -
Still Fun After All This Time 0
Katamari are a series of games that pretty well defy criticism. They are all insanely goofy, all look pretty terrible, all are brutally redundant...yet are, consistently, absurdly playable. And this is no exception.The creator of the series didn't work on the previous Beautiful Katamari (which was awesome nonetheless), opting to work on Noby Noby Boy instead, but is now back with Katamari Forever, which signals Katamari's return to the realm of being a PS-exclusive title.As with all othe...
4 out of 4 found this review helpful. -
Poor Design Aplenty 0
Ok, first off, I did like this game.BUT, this game might be one of the worst designed messes in recorded history. They took the simple game design of previous Lego titles and, well, discarded all of it. First off, the hub --- rather than being a quick portal to game levels --- is now a level of its own. Which means you get to FIND where the levels are. Fun. Rather than making it easy to locate, you have to search the map to find them. The movement speed is slow enough to make this annoying if yo...
2 out of 2 found this review helpful. -
R & C Keep Rolling 0
I was really looking forward, though, to Crack in Time. And, to be honest, is totally exceeded all of my expectations. This might be the best title on the PS3 (keep in mind, I haven't played a ton of games to completion on the console to date, so my experience is, admittedly, limited). It takes the successful formula, adds a more open-ended frame to the engine, and produces an amazing little game.As the game starts, Ratchet and Clank are separated. Clank is stuck in the Great Clock while...
2 out of 2 found this review helpful. -
Stunning Game the Sly Cooper Guys 0
Last year, we had two open world games with superpowers as the main hook. Prototype was the disappointing release and the other one was Sucker Punch (Sly Cooper makers)'s Infamous. And it was a solid addition to Sony's really good catalog of exclusives.You play Cole Porter, a courier who accidentally destroys your city with a bomb that manages to grant you incredible powers based on electricity. Your city gets quarantined, so the only thing that can save the city is you.And one of the ni...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Avoid!!! 0
The start of the year has had an unusually large number of big titles. Bayonetta, Army of Two II, and Darksiders have all hit. Now, we have Dark Void, Capcom's vertical-based 3rd person shooter. And an airborne combat game largely designed by many of the people behind Crimson Skies --- how in the world could this NOT end up awesome?Well, Capcom pulled it off. With aplomb. You play William Gray, an arrogant WW II pilot who is sent to an alternate dimension to fight off an alien race known...
9 out of 9 found this review helpful. -
Major Improvement from Original 0
I actually kinda liked the original game, though the main characters were utter knuckleheads. I certainly did not expect a sequel to be forthcoming after the original, though it apparently sold rather well.The sequel takes place in Shanghai and Salem and Rios are in Shanghai when all hell breaks loose. And, literally, ALL HELL breaks loose. A former military leader attempts to take over China via threat of nuclear weapons and a few thousand troops. It all takes place over a single day and...
2 out of 2 found this review helpful. -
2010 Starting off Right 0
So what happens when the apocalypse comes earlier than expected? You get a nice bloodbath between angels and demons. War, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, finds himself embroiled in the conflict and needs to restore the destroyed Earth as much as possible. Mankind is, of course, very much dead due to apocalypse and War is basically the fall guy for the whole ordeal.War is suitably bad ass, making Kratos seem like a bit of a puny wuss. The controls are remarkably spot-on. You h...
2 out of 2 found this review helpful. -
An Epic Racing Experience 0
Microsoft's premier racing franchise, Forza, has turned into one of the more under-respected but overall terrific racing titles on the market. Giving you the ability to make the game so hardcore that you cannot enjoy playing it to being so arcade-y that you cannot help enjoy playing it, it manages to somehow be the second best arcade racer on the market (behind Burnout) and, for my money, the best sim racer on the planet. I know, Gran Turismo is the racing game of the last few game genera...
2 out of 2 found this review helpful. -
Tedious as it is, shouldn't it be called the Never Ending Story? 1
James Cameron's ode to hippiness is apparently going to be a critical darling. But, Cameron's track record in gaming is sketchy. Dark Angel, let's be honest, was dogshit. In fact, I hesitate to refer to that due to a concern of offending dogs and their fecal matter. Anywhoo, after the genius concept of a Titanic FPS never saw the light of day --- admit it, it'd be fucking awesome! --- we get Avatar. In Avatar, you play the lead from the movie, who is a parapalegic who can have his identi...
3 out of 3 found this review helpful. -
Yawn 0
Richard Marchinko has written a veritable ton of books about his military exploits. It is a bit surprising that a game on his books hasn't been done until now. Our next goal, though, should be for a good game to be made based on the books.In this title, you play Marchinko, apparently the baddest dude in history and founder of counter-terrorism squad Seal Team Six. And your goal is to stop nukes in North Korea. As the game starts, your mission goes quite poorly and you have to basically ...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
They Nailed Their Target 0
The prior Assassin's Creed was probably the most hyped up series debut not named Little Big Planet. It sold extremely well and provided a storyline ripe with easy retelling as the idea of a man whose family consists of hired killers throughout history gives a game near infinite numbers of sequels to churn through. The second game in most series tends to be the best of the bunch and we'll see if Assassin's Creed continues that tradition.The first AC was a beautiful, but horribly flawed, t...
5 out of 5 found this review helpful. -
Yeah, This was a bit botched 0
Tim Schaeffer is a highly-regarded game developer whose games haven't sold shit in years. Psychonauts was an excellent game that bombed unbelievably poorly. With Jack Black providing the lead voice and a wide array of cameos from legends of heavy metal (it's the most coherent Ozzy Osbourne has been in decades now), Brutal Legend hopes to give Schaeffer some commercial viability in addition to his usual quality.So, how does it do?Honestly, it's a very mixed bag. In the game, you are roadi...
0 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Better than Expected 0
In the annals of really lame game names, this is rather high on the list. A third person shooter that seems to take quite a bit of inspiration from Stranglehold, WET is a game that has definitely been on people's radar for a while. There are some major names providing the voices and the hype for this game was, at one point, fairly high --- though it seems Bethesda has lost faith in the project as they have basically abandoned WET to die on the vine.You play Rubi in a game that has been c...
0 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
More of the Same 0
Another year, another Yuke's developed WWE game. The bar has been set really with THQ's outstanding --- albeit difficult as all heck --- UFC title. Can THQ finally have their WWE game clean up all of their assorted flaws and bugs.For starters, the clipping is back and depressing. I used to be forgiving, but UFC, which has markedly more grappling, had very little clipping. It is no longer excusable to have this problem, but SD v RAW 2010 still has it in spades. Other than that, the game l...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Meh 0
Yay. One of the least desired SW storyline that became a shit movie, spawned an apparently mediocre cartoon, and is now a game. It is made by Krome, who created Ty the Tasmanian Tiger, which is a paean to mediocrity. They took their skills and dedication in making mediocre, kid-oriented platformers and unleashed it upon a lame-ass part of the Star Wars universe.You are one of several completely and totally interchangeable characters. Jedi all have identical attacks. Clone troopers have i...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Rally Done Right 0
I have never traditionally been a big fan of rally racing games. Haven't liked one, to be honest, since the Saturn's Rally game. I didn't even much like the original DIRT game.So it was with some trepidation that I tried this one.And, for whatever reason, it really clicked with me. In a major way.The tracks are all over the world and all look different. Morocco doesn't look like Malaysia or Baja. Malaysia doesn't look like China or London. Each area, while having only one real track, all...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful.
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