The same guy also did Pole Position, Pong & Space Invaders. Pretty cool, though he must have quite a bit of time on the hands…

system: xbox 360

one sentence description: army of two…….tough guys named ‘tyson’ and ‘elliot’ who blow things up and rock……but have a secret crush on each other in the third person perspective.

graphics: 9 | sound: 6 | playability: 7 | challenge: 6 | value: 7 | bias: 7

total: 7

the low-down

my hopes were really high for this game. i watched the developer videos while it was being polished up and it seemed like a pretty promising fun & unique idea. in practiciality, the game seems just…well…OK. the dissappointing thing is that the game seems to have all of the right elements there…two tough guy army characters, black-ops intrigue, cool customizable weaponry & body armor, an awesome co-op mechanic and a decent (but throw away for the most part) story line.

but something is missing, and that something is keeping all of these elements from forming a cohesive package. for a game that is supposed to be super action packed, it doesn’t seem like the overall experience quite reaches any level of high excitement.

you have these two tough guy army characters…one of whom talks in a somewhat annoying (and kind of borderline effeminate) voice and calls his partner, who is named ‘tyson’, ‘tys’ (as in ‘tice’. ‘help me out, tys!’ ‘come on and cover me, tys!’ ’save me, tys!’.

black ops intrigue…but it’s so heavy handed that it just doesn’t feel cool. there’s a cut scene where your ‘boss’ is telling you in this really abrasive tone, ‘…and remember boys, when you come out of this, it never happened….’ ooooo! scary!

cool customizable weaponry…that sounds like a freakin’ pop gun. i mean, i have this sweet large machine gun that barely registers as something akin to a pop cap through my stereo. and my tough action hero heaves this thing…with one hand…over his cover, firing blindly, and generally hits what he’s aiming at. huh?

an awesome co-op mechanic based on the idea of aggro (i.e. your partner or you draws fire while the other guy goes stealthy-like and takes people out)…but DAMN your partner AI is stoooopid when you’re playing single player. he has a real hard time keeping and controlling the aggro…which i suppose is to be expected…except for the fact that this is what the game sells itself on…

a decent storyline…but it doesn’t make a lot of sense how it goes from the beginning, where you’re good ol’ army rangers, to ‘army of two’ mercenaries. sweet.

and not that there’s anything wrong with manlove, but this one has quite a few undertones of a little more than a friendly swat on the ass or a punch in the shoulder. these dudes parachute into hot zones together…as in they are attached to the same chute and one guy is holding the other. they do goofy things like ‘play air guitar together’ after ’something awesome’ happens…or they playfully knock each other around when ’something bad’ happens. they ‘cover’ each other, and say things like, ‘i can’t take it anymore, elliott!’ or ‘cover me, tys!’ seriously…there’s nothing that screams ‘game of the year for the closet homosexual army man’ louder than some of the things happening in this thing.

all of the above said, i still like the game…for the most part.

i can tell i’m probably not going to play all the way through it, but i know that i’ll have a little fun. thankfully, i just borrowed this game. i absolutely wouldn’t buy it…not even used. it’s worth a rental, i think, but even that is borderline because there are PLENTY of other higher quality rentals than this one.

pros

• graphics are nice and fluid. the cut scenes are well done.
• large array of customizable weaponry
• pretty cool story (so far…)
• has potential to be a lot of fun with another person

cons

• not that exciting for an action shooter
• characters are a little bit stupid
• repetitive in-game dialogue
• sound design isn’t that great
• “pimped” weaponry looks lame
• when too many objects are on the screen, framerate starts to go
• “

Finally, after a week, I decided to stop being lazy and actually downgrade back to V2.1 of Wordpress. You’ll notice that my categories are finally back. Amazing. I was starting to get discouraged, but thankfully, it’s now fixed.

Also, if you use Wordpress, I highly recommend the Tiger Administration tool. I gotta’ give it to this guy, he has done a fantastic job of making the wp-admin interface a much, much nicer thing to navigate through. It’s very clean and well designed. I’m impressed.

Let’s see…in other news:

• Finished up Condemned 2: Bloodshot. The game was awesome, although in retrospect, it was a little restrictive in the way you approach how you play. It’s a very linear game, and there are a lot of sequences where you just hit a button and your character  does what he’s supposed to do in a sequence. For example, if you have to climb up something, you don’t actually have to figure out how to do it; rather, you just hit the spot where the sequence is triggered and hit ‘A’, and then he climbs.  However, the experience overall was pretty amazing. It was a great story and is truly one of the creepiest games I think I’ve ever played.
• Picked up Rainbow 6 Vegas 2 and have played through the first mission and a half or so. As with the last one, it’s really great. Not much has changed in the overall mechanic…and really…why should it? The first one was awesome. So far, I’m having fun with it, though I admit that it’s not a shooter for everyone. It’s far more difficult in that you really have to think and use your parters else you get quickly wasted when you go busting through doors. Your character can’t take much damage before he goes down.
•  Evil Andrew tried to open up a new credit card, but he was foiled by the fraud alert I put on my accounts. Stupid bastard. Some guy called me from Capital One and asked if I had tried to open up a credit card anytime recently. The only dissappointing thing is that when I called to update the Las Vegas PD, they didn’t seem to know what was going on (couldn’t find my case) and the guy who would have an idea was, of course, out for the day. That’s my luck though. Oh well; at least this idiot can’t open up any more cards under my name.
• The neighbors continue to get progressively worse…or it’s really just that since I decided to write about it, I’m now even more painfully aware of them. We’re thinking about purchasing scary masks, going down there in the middle of the night and banging on their windows…specifically the kids’ windows. Is that evil…?
• I am addicted to a place called ‘The Pita Pit”. Holy crapola, Batman…it’s so tasty.  Its about 3 blocks up from my new office, and they have some of the most ridiculously good wrap-style food I’ve ever had. I seem to have found a superior combination of flavors in mixing a little bit of wing sauce with tzatziki sauce, the ensuing tastebud effect being a spicy sensation mixed with the mellower cool cucumber taste of the tzatziki. Mmmm…I think I just like using that word…tzatziki…
• I’m gonna’ go see ‘Horton Hears a Who’.  It loos like it’s freakin’ awesome.
• Today I knew I was getting old when I was picking up coffee and the friendly counter girl asked me if I had any weekend plans. I thought for a moment, initially said no, thought more about it, and then decided to say that I had just gotten my “Planet Earth” HD-DVDs (for the bargain basement price of $25.00) and was really looking forward to watching that this weekend. She looked at me as if I had just sprouted a third eye and was getting ready to pour the hot coffee directly into it. I walked away…mildly ashamed…but still oddly excited about watching “Planet Earth”. Screw the Seattle’s Best counter girl. Hmph…
• In the house buying process…or rather…the loan acquiring process. Got a sweet huge packet of junk that we get to fill out so we can get a large sum of cash to fund aforementioned house purchcase. I’m excited about that.
• Deliberating whether or not it’s worth it to purchase an XM Radio subscription. It has been really nice having it since I got my new car, but I don’t know that it’s worth the $13.00 a month for it. There are quite a few awesome channels though…

That’s all I gots. I’m sooooo sweeeepy……..

Friday @ 11:55. Wow. I am  pathetic…

system: xbox 360

one sentence description: extremely dark, extremely violent FPS survival horror meets fight club.

graphics: 10 | sound: 10 | playability: 9 | challenge: 9 | value: 10 | bias: 10

total: 9.7

the low-down

i never played the first condemned game for the 360, but now i’m going to. it was one of the first games released, and if i would have known that it was this interesting, then i probably would’ve made it one of my first purchases.

considering the reviews say this one ‘picks up where the last one left off’, i have only a vague idea of what’s going on. i read the wikipedia entry for it, but it’s not all that great. however, you are reprising the role of an agent named ethan thomas, and you appear in some pretty bad shape. you’re drunk and you get tossed out of the bar you’re in. and that’s where the trouble begins, what with really ugly dead things and cracked out drug fiends attacking you.

the game is very interesting in that the focus isn’t on guns. rather, it’s on melee combat, which is different for an FPS. your main weapons are your fists, and you can chain different attacks together to perform stronger ones. everything feels well put-together, from the way the controls pan out to the overall presentation. it’s very ambient, very dark and very, very violent. it’s a kind of raw violence only made moreso by the up-close-and-personal nature of the hand-to-hand combat. and just about anything goes when it comes to picking things up to use as weapons, from bricks to bats to toilet seats. if you can pick it up, you can use it to bash skulls. and there are guns, you just don’t use them all that often.

the other part of the game that’s interesting is the investigation mini-games that take place. it puts you in the role of a forensics investigator, making you take a look at blood patterns on a wall and determining if the pattern was caused by an exit wound or an ‘arterial splatter’. it makes you look at bodies and see what identifying characteristics you can find on them. if you get these sequences right, you earn a better rating, and better ratings get you better stuff by the end of the level. for example, i was just awarded a flak jacket which affords me better protection against firearms.

it’s worth noting that this is probably one of the most ’scary’ games i’ve played. there were a couple of points where i was playing it and i actually jumped. i think of the term ‘ceiling sacks’ and now shudder a little…

this is a truly great game. it feels a little like bioshock in the presentation and the atmosphere minus all of the thought and character building that was in bioshock. that could be good or bad, depending on your point of view. the story is engaging, and atmospheres are genuinely creepy and unique and the fact that it’s an FPS that focuses on melee combat is extremely cool. i rented this one, but i might end up buying it if it continues like this.

pros

• extremely high-end graphics. monolith has created an excellent game engine
• game atmosphere truly engaging and creepy
• pretty cool story (so far…)
• good voice acting
• robust combat mechanic focusing on hand-to-hand combat
• player ratings at the end + rewards based on those ratings give incentives to go back and play again
• very adult themed; this ain’t mario bros, kiddies
• surprises around every corner
• thoughtful mini-games

cons

• because the combat is so different, you may not like it
• combat timing is essential. if you don’t time it right, you’ll get pummled, and that can be frustrating
• the environments are all extremely dark and hard to see in
• navigating through some of the areas is hard and sometimes requires a little backtracking

My 360 is very much alive right now. I was like, “360, you seem like a pretty smart feller. So how about you go ahead and be like dad and start up a blog.”

And about 2 days later, after some intense Wordpress training, he did.

In all seriousness, this is kind of a cool little thing for those of you with a 360. If you have an Xbox LIVE profile, all you have to do is sign up for this little service called 360voice, and as you start playing some games, Mr. 360 (or Mrs. 360, depending on your preference) decides to start writing snarky little posts about your playing. He can be  a jerk sometimes, but that’s OK because it’s kind of entertaining.

You can see what kinds of mean stuff mine says about me here.