In case you've been living under a rock for the last couple of months this is just a remider that the new Xbox experience is launching today. Estimated time for launch is 4am central time, 5am eastern. Above is a video showing how the update will launch on your xbox. Continue Reading»
For those of you that haven't seen Quantum of Solace yet, a new Watchmen trailer debuted in front of it and proves that yes, there will be a story that goes along with all the gorgeous visuals. For those of you who haven't read the graphic novel, please do yourself a favor and pick it up at your nearest book store. Every time i watch the trailers, I'm absolutely blown away at how closely Zach Snyder has come to reproducing each panel of the book.
One rumored change was confirmed over the weekend however, concerning the ending of the book, which has been changed for the movie. While plenty of fan boys are going to bitch and moan about the change, honestly, the ending was really the only problem I had with the book. Without spoiling anything, it came out of left field and was a bit ridiculous. Dave Gibbons, co-creator of the graphic novel, has even come out in approval of the change and said it still stays true to the overall tone of the book.
Finally, The Watchmen has been announced to be coming to current generation consoles in the form of a prequel beat em up entitled Watchmen: The End Is Nigh . Early sources claimed that it would be coming to XBLA and PSN and would be a side scroller, early screens look way to good to just be a download. It's also been announced to be episodic in nature which further lends credence to the early XBLA, PSN rumor. While I am interested in playing as the lunatic Rorschach as he kills just about everyone, I fear once this reaches Alan Moore by carrier pigeon it will be the final straw that pushes him over the edge into Bond villiany. And that ladies and gentlemen, is how you bring an article full circle. Continue Reading»
One rumored change was confirmed over the weekend however, concerning the ending of the book, which has been changed for the movie. While plenty of fan boys are going to bitch and moan about the change, honestly, the ending was really the only problem I had with the book. Without spoiling anything, it came out of left field and was a bit ridiculous. Dave Gibbons, co-creator of the graphic novel, has even come out in approval of the change and said it still stays true to the overall tone of the book.
Finally, The Watchmen has been announced to be coming to current generation consoles in the form of a prequel beat em up entitled Watchmen: The End Is Nigh . Early sources claimed that it would be coming to XBLA and PSN and would be a side scroller, early screens look way to good to just be a download. It's also been announced to be episodic in nature which further lends credence to the early XBLA, PSN rumor. While I am interested in playing as the lunatic Rorschach as he kills just about everyone, I fear once this reaches Alan Moore by carrier pigeon it will be the final straw that pushes him over the edge into Bond villiany. And that ladies and gentlemen, is how you bring an article full circle. Continue Reading»
Good:
-Intriguing Story
-Big Open World
-Enemy AI Is Smart and Intuitive
Bad:
-Too Many Encounters While Driving
-Repetitive Side Quests
-Weapon Degrading system
-Multiplayer
Ugly:
-Voice Acting
-Machete is Useless
-Hang Gliders
GOOD: Far Cry 2 is a Far Cry from the original, The feral instincts are gone, the main quest is not forced upon the player, also the previous hero Jack Carver isn't mentioned at all during the game. Instead Far Cry 2 allows you to chose 1 out of 9 playable characters to be your protagonist. Its a nice change of pace to be able to choose a character in an FPS in the days of the set in stone characters. Far Cry 2 throws you into a huge open world somewhere in the middle of Africa Where you will travel through tons of beautiful terrain. The game is true eye candy and the surroundings will make you feel you truly are in the heart of Africa. The story starts off by explaining the two factions that run the nation; The "UFLL" and the "APR". These factions are heavily armed all thanks to an arms dealer known as "The Jackal", you're mission: Kill "The Jackal". Not only can you choose to go the linear route through the game only completing the main quest but you can dabble in sidequests given by arms dealers, friends, and assassins via cell phone. All these elements together make Farcry 2 an interesting single player experience, it pulls you in with its 'Blood Diamond' moments and keeps you playing with its open world.
This game is without doubt a challenge. I myself played through on the normal difficulty setting and I was constantly dying. Far Cry 2's continue method will ease the pain of dying by having a buddy pull you out of the fray and heal you up. However die again without a buddy rescue available an you will be forced to load from you're last save. Despite the help from the buddy system this game is unrelenting and will show you no mercy for mistakes. You will be run over, you will get incinerated, you will be blown up by mortar fire, and hell you will die some more. This is all thanks to a strong and intuitive enemy AI that will cover behind the brush or just about any obstacle in the environment. If you post up from a far position with a sniper, enemies will all find cover an maneuver around the environment forming ways to flank you. At times I saw enemies pull their wounded comrades out of battle only to post them upright against a tree so they could still fire at me.
BAD: Far Cry 2 is by no means a perfect game. There are plenty of times I shut this game off for the sheer fact I did not want to do the task at hand. The huge open world has a great feel to it and it adds to Far Cry 2's biggest strengths, but will also contribute to it's biggest weaknesses. A huge problem with the game lies within the fast travel system. The player can find a bus in which you can ride to the middle, or all four corners of the map. However getting to these buses can vary from a regular 5 minute trip to an annoying 20 minute trip. This is because you will encounter enemies almost every minute along the way. There are guard posts all over this nation, and none are filled with starving little African children that want food and water, no sir just angry soldiers that want you to die. Just when you think you're safe and you wont run into one of the guard towers, you're sadly mistaken. If you drive past one of these guys on the road they will actually turn their car around and desperately try their best to kill you. At many times I found myself way ahead of these enemies but for some reason they were able to catch up to me. I was curious to see why this was happening over and over, till one time I watched the car chasing me the whole time, only to find their car (the same model I was driving) was FASTER then mine. If you actually get to play some of the sidequests without these guys running you off the road or killing you, you'll see they are actually pretty fun...at first. However then you will discover the sidequests all have the same main goal. Which is either; travel to a point in the map eliminate a target, or steal a briefcase. There are some quests in which you must find pills for your characters case of Malaria, but even in those you find yourself running to a target and killing tons of people. Because of this Farcry 2 may seem to have a plethora of sidequests but when you really look at them they are mostly just rinse and repeat. During your travels to these many sidequests you notice Farcry 2 tries to approach weapons management in a more realistic fashion. Over time your weapons will degrade, fire less accurately, become jammed, and have more issues. Although this sounds good on paper it is executed poorly. Other than the obvious issue of the weapons having to many problems to frequently will notice enemies will seem to have no issues while operating their own weapons. In one instance I was pinned down with a weapon that was completely broken. With no other choice I rushed an enemy that had been firing at me for at least 5 minutes with no issues. After taking him down I procured his weapon only to find it have a jam one clip in. I understand that the game is going for a more realistic approach but does every weapon have issues? It would be a much more enjoyable experience if these issues only happened once in a while. Not only would it keep it fresh but it would eliminate the frustration of weapons breaking all the time. Farcry 2 also offers a multiplayer experience in order to keep things fresh.
Despite the map editor being a strong part of multiplayer Farcry 2's actual multiplayer component is very poor. The class system goes hand an hand with the upgrade system. Players will chose their class and depending on their kill count they will receive diamonds. These diamonds open up new weapons in the players arsenal, but only for the chosen class. Because of this you feel restrained to one class and the need to change classes is void for you will have weaker weaponry in all remaining classes. Multiplayer gameplay problems are met with the inability to use syringes that the single player offers. Instead wounded players will have to heal while sitting through a small cinematic of a player snapping their bone back into place or pulling bullets from a wound. These animations look great and some will even make you cringe. However being very time consuming and forcing the player to stop in place, healing yourself will in turn lead to certain death almost every time
UGLY: Now I know Africans have their own language and they have an ugly English accent, but why does everyone in Far Cry 2 sound like they have a fire lit under them? The dialog is great but the people talk so fast you wonder if they take breaths in between sentences. Thankfully there are subtitles, otherwise you would never know what anyone was trying to say. Another feature that bothers me to no end is the machete. Say you're sneaking into a town you want to go about it in a stealth manor so you take out your machete and slice someone in the back without a sound, but somehow everyone is alerted to your position. Also your machete doesn't cut tree branches or grass, so what exactly is the point of having this weapon in the game if it doesn't do anything it's suppose to do. Well at least there are three variations of vehicles to have fun with. There's cars, boats and apparently there's hang gliders in Far Cry 2. Funny thing is through my 27 hour experience with Far Cry 2 I only found 2 hang gliders. Yes this big huge open world, and all I can find is 2 of these suicide gliders. As it turns out my hang gliding experiences were both short lived. The first hang glider I found was great as I was soaring through the air like a beautiful bird admiring the scenery, ah...Peace at last, then suddenly BOOM! My beautiful moment is ruined as I'm shot down by one of the many guard towers scattered all over the map. As I plummeted to the ground I realized I was only in air for a total of 3 seconds, also I didn't have a buddy rescue available an I would have to start from my last save. As I found a second Hang glider i realized my objective was in the opposite direction. So I grab the hang glider and press left to turn around but I catch the edge of the rock behind me an fall to my doom, thankfully this time I have a buddy rescue so he comes and picks me up, only to cause more problems and alert the guard tower down the road. So I try to kill the guard tower an I get blown up by a missile causing me to load from my last save again, but this time my last save was hours ago... This however left my air time in Far Cry 2 at a whopping total of 3.1 seconds, for fear of dying at another try with those suicide gliders.
Final Thoughts:
Far Cry 2 is a game with its ups and downs. However this game is fun and I don't regret my time spent in this beautiful open world. Far Cry 2 shows that open world games can be played through a first person narrative and is truly an original idea. Although Far Cry 2 doesn't execute this perfectly, I do hope to see more first person shooters utilize this gameplay element. Far Cry 2 is a 20+ hour experience which should keep you occupied enough, but if your craving more the multiplayer is there although you will probably find yourself departing the online Africa only a few days later. I myself had high expectations for this game and while some were met, most of them weren't. Not to say Far Cry 2 is a bad game, it's just not winning any game of the year awards. Still it is an experience worth 60$ and should keep you occupied if your a FPS fan.
B- Continue Reading»
The 42-year-old Turkish citizen - who was serving a seven-year sentence - had been making stationery with other prisoners destined for the shops. At the end of his shift, the inmate climbed into a cardboard box and was taken out of prison by express courier. His whereabouts are still unknown. Shortly after it had passed through the prison gates, the inmate made his dash for freedom by cutting a big hole in the tarpaulin of the lorry and jumping off. The driver alerted the police after he noticed the tarpaulin flapping in the breeze.
I'm actually surprised at this. Despite World Tour being a bad game especially in comparission to Rock Band 2 I still believed that it would not only live up to Legends of Rocks numbers but maybe even surpass them. Hopefully Activision will spend some actual time developing the game next time. According to an Activision press release, Guitar Hero III sold 1.39 million units and generated $115 million at retail in its first week. It also launched in complete form on four platforms: PS2, PS3, Wii, and Xbox 360. For a comparable seven day period this year, Guitar Hero: World Tour sold 534,000 units and generated $67.3 million at retail. Continue Reading»
I really didn't expect much out of this one anyways. Cool concept, but could have been done better. Midway tried to expand it's market with a Teen rating and ruined everything that makes Mortal Kombat so special in the process. The fatalities are toned down, with some looking like a basic special move rather than a fatality. With Mature rated games like "Gears of war 2" selling over 3.5 million copies, this marketing plan really makes me scratch my head. Regardless I am a fan of the Mortal Kombat series and hope this game does sell. Enjoy the review. Continue Reading»
I hope you're prepared to have this song stuck in you're head all day. But hey, at least you get to see how big Chun Li's thighs are in HD... Continue Reading»
As long as this game is nothing like "Kingdom Under Fire:Circle of Doom" it has a shot. The big questions on my mind are, will the game play well with all those characters on screen? And why does the main character have dreads? Continue Reading»
For all those who bought the collectors edition of Fable 2 and didn't receive your codes, emails are being sent out now. Continue Reading»
With less than a week till Mirrors Edge releases, EA has released its launch trailer. As always it has the cool transitions, and some new stuff including Faith jumping onto a moving train. Mirrors Edge releases November 12th. Continue Reading»
Next week's DLC offering will be the Foo Fighter's The Colour and the Shape album. The DLC album will include the following tracks:
1. "Doll"
2. "Monkey Wrench"
3. "Hey, Johnny Park!"
4. "My Poor Brain”
5. "Wind Up"
6. "Up in Arms"
7. "My Hero"
8. "See You”
9. "Enough Space"
10. "February Stars”
11. "Walking After You”
12. “New Way Home”
The Colour and the Shape will be available for download starting November 11, 2008, for the Xbox®360 video game and entertainment system from Microsoft and November 13, 2008, for the PS3. Pricing will be $19.99 (1600 Microsoft Points) for the album, or $1.99 (160 Microsoft Points) per track. All tracks are masters. Continue Reading»
Harmonix wasn't kidding when they said they were fixing the issue. Codes should be rolling out right now. Continue Reading»
When Dead Rising released way back other than Otis calling every 30 seconds to inform you what he was having for dinner it also plagued many players with another problem. It had a habit of having unclear text on standard definition televisions. Let me rephrase by 'unclear' I mean completely unreadable. This issue has gone under the radar because it hasn't been seen in a game since Dead Rising. Unfortunately players who downloaded the new Banjo Kazooie demo are experiencing the same unclear text. So does Rare plan on fixing the issue? No. Rare's George Kelion stated:
I'm sorry that we weren't able to address this issue as nothing would please us more than turning all your complaints into gleeful responses, but it's simply something that's too expensive in terms of time, resources and money to alter.
Way to be Rare, way to be. Continue Reading»
Reported earlier the 20 free additional rock band song tokens were supposedly rolling out via email over a 24 hour period. Unfortunately its hit a bit of a snag and we wont see them when we expected
Sean Baptiste on the Rock Band forum sates "We have hit an unexpected delay with getting the content online with Microsoft and are working diligently with them to get that resolved."
Knowing Harmonix they are working as fast as they can to resolve the issue, and we should see these songs as soon as possible. Continue Reading»
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