Top 10 XBOX Games of All Time that AREN’T Halo!

        Today marks the 10th anniversary of the XBOX and to celebrate I’m listing off the best XBOX games of all time, that maybe you’ve forgotten about.  After all, while Halo might have been the most lastly and iconic of the big black box’s titles it wasn’t the only reason to own one.  After all, the XBOX was my only console during that period.  And this folks represents the reason why: (Not in specific order)

         1. Crimson Skies

     2. Mechassualt

     3. Oddworld Stranger’s Wrath

     4. Phantom Dust

     5. Burnout Revenge

     6. Black

     7. Psychonauts

     8. Jade Empire

     9.  Knights of the Old Republic 1 & 2

   10. Otogi 1 & 2

     There are countless others.  I just settled on 10.  Not ALL of these games would hold up today, but I would venture to say that most of them would.  Perhaps not Mechassault, because after all, it was basically an online only game.  But the rest would be a different story considering most are single player only experiences.  So if you get a chance, take some of these games for a dry run.  And if you ever meet the guy who made Phantom Dust, tell him he needs to make another one.  Because while it is probably the least known game on this list, it is one of the best.

 

Some of the Community's Best showing off UMVC3!

I GOT Next! Documentary NOW on Hulu! Watch it!

BLAST FROM THE PAST! Quick Look of MW2!

Courtesty of Giant Bomb!

   Hey guys, in scant hours Modern Warfare 3 arrives everywhere in the United States.  I figured I’d relive the excitement of Modern Warfare 2 with my favorite folks over at Giant Bomb!  Enjoy…

Battlefield 3’s Next DLC!

MW3 Killer? Not quite,,,,(Extended Edition)

   This story does appear elsewhere in a somewhat different form.  What you will read here is a feature article and not a review. So if you want the review head over here.

          For months now, probably before E3 2011, going back all the way to E3 2010; Electronic Arts has been touting the superiority of Battlefield 3 over Modern Warfare 3. Neither game was done. EA wasn't able to play MW3 but still, they felt it was superior. Perhaps it was their way of trying to carve out their piece of the modern military shooter that they couldn't grab with Medal of Honor.

        Which as history has shown is a multibillion dollar genre and virtually completely the territory of Activision, Infinity Ward, and Treyarch. But as with so many other things that Activsion has stumbled upon: World of Warcraft, Guitar Hero, Tony Hawk, etc...Everyone is waiting for Activision to misstep or just beat people over the head with the genre one too many times. But so far, the modern military shooter has a hallowed place in the halls of gamers everywhere.

      Everyone from high school kids to thirty year olds can be found on the XBOX LIVE or Playstation Network all most every day of the week playing either Call of Duty Black Ops or Modern Warfare 2. Of course, this is a proving year for Activision after a significant loss of staff at Infinity Ward it was necessary to call on the talents of Sledgehammer Games to work on part of the current release. It's hard to say beyond broad strokes what the involvement of each studio was and there is certainly some speculation that more than the two studios were involved in the development this time. Appearing from a spectators vantage point that this game was an, “all hands on deck.” affair where things had to be done right and properly if they were going to make their ship date.

     So EA, after creating a mediocre at best shooter with Medal of Honor. Decided to get Battlefield 3 out there to take on Modern Warfare 3. Which is great on a bullet point or a PR board. But in practice it is a little more complicated.

    Battlefield 3 is an excellent first person shooter. Battlefield does multiplayer better than anyone else. Mostly because the game allows the player to not only shoot their opponents, unlock weapons and gadgets, and of course level up. But because the player can pilot a jet, tank, helicopter, or just hop into an Anti-Aircraft gun and shoot a tank with it. Yes, players can shoot tanks with an Anti-Aircraft gun, not that I would recommend doing so. The scale of warfare is much broader than running around in an arena and shooting people. This is similar to the difference between Quake and Unreal Tournament. The field of battle is much larger and the sense of being with a battle zone is much greater.

   Modern Warfare usually feels more like Football. There is no pretense, it is just a group of players against another group of players. Not that there is a lot of pretense in Battlefield but rarely does the player feel like they are just running around shooting each other. There are stories that come out of Battlefield 3 that aren't going to come out of an infantry shooter. The pace is slower, the game requires the player to have more than fast reflexes. There are tactics, practices to remember, and definitely a learning curve steeper than Modern Warfare, Doom, or anything similar. Where all of this falls apart is that the single player is absolute garbage.

   While garbage is a bit harsh. I have to explain where this is coming from. The beginning of the campaign contains no less than 3 quicktime events. Which having quicktime events in a FPS smacks of at best laziness. The second scene of the game which features flashbacks prominently which leads directly to a group of soldiers the player isn't introduced to and couldn't care less about. The main character isn't given any prologue or back story; so what difference does all this make? None... In fact, for the first few minutes of the game the player isn't really assigned a particular character at all.

   Then we are rushed into a mission that involves the beginning of sets of wonderfully inept non-quicktime, quicktime events where if the player doesn't perform EXACTLY as the game requires they will simply be shot and die. No variation, no deviation, just do what we say or die! Which wouldn't necessarily be that bad for the beginning of a game. But it never gets any better. The designer perhaps, had a vision for the game. But they have a very inelegant, heavy handed way of implementing that vision. Just to make sure the player is further separated from getting their bearings, the game then changes everything with an earthquake. I won't go through the whole process blow by blow. But of all the things they copied from Medal of Honor and Call of Duty they SHOULD have copied the small amount of freedom the player to is given so they don't feel like they are being bolted to a rail and thrown down a straight line.

   Of course, there is also the matter of this game obviously a PC port to consoles. Where the PC version is graphically so much better than the console version that no matter how much work the developers put in, they can't get them to look the same. This is, of course, a technical issue on the part of the console. Not so much a problem of the developers skills or abilities. After all, it's not DICE's fault that XBOX 360 and PS3 can't render in DIRECTX11. This is cold comfort to console players, of course, that paid the same $60 that their PC counterparts did. Which will, in the end effect sales. Because no matter how much everyone wants to deny it these days. The PC market for AAA titles only exists for Blizzard. Not even Call of Duty is usually very concerned about their PC numbers.

  Why? Not because the medium is dead. Just not quite the same as the console market. The console market, no matter how much we want to say otherwise is a more causal market than the PC market. Console players may spend $600 every 5-10 years. But PC players can spend that same $600 every other year for a new graphics card or even a whole new computer which can cost upwards of $1,000. These guys are the same folks that bought flight sticks to fly helicopters and jets in past Battlefield games. But there are probably, far fewer of them than the millions who buy and XBOX or Playstation. This is the reason why console development is usually so important and PC development is usually an after thought.

   This is a case of DICE and EA overreaching. There was no need to have a single player campaign in a Battlefield game. Most fans of the series rolled their eyes when this was announced. The only reason to include a single player campaign, is to compete with Modern Warfare 3. Which if the game shipped with a large amazing multiplayer, much like it did. Would have been enough to get the game a large amount of sales. But Battlefield 3 is a much more hardcore, complicated game than Modern Warfare 3 and this is evident to anyone who plays it. But that's not what Modern Warfare fans want. They want more of the same. The people who love Battlefield will either play both or play Battlefield over Modern Warfare. There won't be a huge land rush, there won't be paradigm shift. Because that's not what makes Call of Duty games popular.

  Battlefield 3's numbers wouldn't be any smaller today without the calling out of Modern Warfare 3. Without that calling out of Modern Warfare 3; would there be the single player? It's hard to say, but I think losing both would probably have worked much better for all involved.

11-11-11 Everything is COMING OUT!

I’m Getting Too Old for THIS Nate! (Uncharted 3 PS3)

       The latest installment of Uncharted is a wonderful game. If you don't mind things like redoing the same jump a few times until you do it the way “the game wants you to do it.” After a while, in a few areas of the game, the retreading made me incredibly annoyed. As I was playing the game for review, Most of these fell off toward the end; mostly due to me getting used to the game's logic. Not because the game was doing a better job of conveying where it wanted me to go. I do remember having a few little issues with this sort of thing in Uncharted 2; but nothing evening approaching this level of annoyance.

      Uncharted 3 has amazing voice acting, incredible set pieces, and some of the best facial animations since L.A.Noire. Plus, considering the game is supposed to be ripped from the pages of something like Indiana Jones; the story is wonderful and fitting even if parts of it are ridiculous and others are predictable.

     Of course, Uncharted 3 continues Uncharted 2's tradition of great puzzles. Which is unusual in the world of video games. Usually the puzzles are either incredibly esoteric as you would need to look them up online or so stupid that they barely qualify as puzzles. Uncharted seems to have found the sweet spot, for which I am grateful. Strangely these were things that many games tend to have problems with that Uncharted seems to do consistently well every time. Even the first Uncharted was pretty good at the story, setting, characters, etc... It was the mechanics and scripting that the game got wonky.

   There are certainly a few small advances here in the areas of lighting, water animation, facial animation, and some of the set pieces are pretty incredible from a technical standpoint as well as from a gameplay standpoint. But when one boils down Uncharted 3 down to the game's core; Uncharted 3 is a very uninteresting, badly mechanically put together game. Just one long corridor that you run down and jump when the game tells you to jump. Nathan Drake is an explorer and treasure hunter after all, I would have just liked even the illusion that I was exploring or treasure hunting. Rather than finding my way through a very pretty maze to the next cutscene.

    With a relatively short campaign, the developers have pointed to multiplayer as the reason this game will have staying power. Because when you have a thrill ride, on rails single player, your going to need something for replay value. However, the multiplayer isn't that deep and the customization options while better than the previous game are nothing that are going to stand up in a couple months. In fact, there are probably people who will max out their characters in the first couple of weeks of play. Especially those that got a multiplayer jump start with the beta.

    While there are some definite bright spots in the multiplayer like moving maps and a kind of illusionary progression through those maps which certainly should be copied by any and all developers who make multiplayer games. These innovations are just not enough to put this game in a class that it's multiplayer would be taken seriously. Or be essential enough a part of the experience that would deem it necessary to have an online pass to access it. I played around 15 hours of Uncharted 3 multiplayer and I really don't see this mode standing up in a marketplace that even PS3 only: has Resistance 3, Battlefield 3, and Modern Warfare 3 in it.

    As much as I liked Uncharted 2. I have to say that this game probably is more like Uncharted 2.5 than Uncharted 3. Which is probably all right, except they want the player to pay exactly what they did for Uncharted 2 just for some more of the same. But maybe this shouldn't be about money.

  Maybe it should be about the expectation everyone had when Uncharted 2 won every critical award the year it came out. I think everyone assumed that this game would be another bar to set all action games against yet again. Instead, they couldn't even quite reach the bar they set the last time. So maybe it isn't a matter of feeling ripped off and it's more of just a feeling of disappointment that one of the best franchises on the PS3 isn't going to set the world on fire this year the way Uncharted 2 did when it came out. 8/10

Gears of War 3 Command Pack DLC

   Apparently the rumors of the delay of this content were exaggerated.  If you don’t have a Gears of War 3 Season Pass; here’s what’s in the DLC so you can make your decision on if it’s worth 560 MSP.

Happy Halloween! Lollipop Chainsaw Trailer!

Skylanders are Just for Kids! ;)

Mark of the Assassin Gets High Marks. (Dragon Age 2)

         After the last bit of DLC, I was reticent to give the latest expansion to Dragon Age 2 a chance.  But Tallis, the new character in the expansion is modeled after and voiced by Felicia Day(of the Guild, Dragon Age Redemption, Dollhouse, and Sarah Connor Chronicles fame.)  Whom I love.  So I figured I’d at least give it a chance.  So I loaded up my main save, where Hawke is level 21 and jumped in; using the now standard system of clicking on a monument in your house.

         The beginning of the expansion is great, you are able to pick whom ever you choose to play with as long as you have Tallis in your party.  Which is good, considering even with respeccing Tallis there are moments where things can get a little crazy when fighting one of the new monster types.  But the combat is the combat.  It appears that the expansion scales to whatever level your at in the beginning.  And if you are high level, your probably only going to get one or two levels of experience.

         The entire expansion is very story driven and while some of it can seem a little madcap.  I won’t go through the whole plot of the story here, because it is very important to your enjoyment of the expansion that you don’t know what happens.  Unlike in the last expansion where so little happened I could have explained it  inelegantly in one sentence.  Tirelessly fighting through the same sets of corridors isn’t my favorite thing, especially when they are the same enemies.  What I did like was that there was all ways a story beat.  The close interaction between Tallis and Hawke makes the expansion seem very cinematic in the way that it is presented.  Removing some of the weirdness that comes from having four people together all the time.

        I wasn’t a big fan of the stealth section that occurs 3 quarters of the way through.  While the castle, does get a bit annoying after a while, it’s not too bad.  The new environments in the game are wonderful and I’m glad they didn’t recycle anything from the main game or last expansion.  There is a mini-boss fight toward the beginning and then toward the end there is a very good boss fight that has some smart design.  Much less esoteric than the last expansion.

         As a whole the the expansion is great albeit a bit short at around(2-4 hours on Normal) and while I would have really loved to retain Tallis as a permanent member of my party in the rest of  the game.  I might have even played through the entire game again if there was more I could have learned about her.   But as implied in the story a couple of times; I doubt this is the last we will see of Tallis.  This is a story driven character vehicle.  If you haven’t seen Dragon Age Redemption, go see it on Youtube.  If you don’t like Felicia Day or Tallis your not going to like this.  For around $10, you get a good story, a few new pieces of gear, 2 new types of monsters, and probably around 2 levels of experience.  With all this in mind I give Mark of the Assassin a 8.5/10.

Nightwing DLC Hits Nov 1st(Batman Arkham City)

Forza Motorsport 4 Review (XBOX 360)

         Forza Motorsport 4 is one of the best racing games I've ever played. The game isn't perfect, but no other title out this generation is as amazing as a total package as Forza 4. Racing games usually boil down to numbers. Like features, number of cars, graphics, sound, etc... But there is really more to a racing game than this. Let's start with that though...

         Forza Motorsport 4 has more than 500 cars, 25 tracks, and some amazing features.  Among these a Rivals mode that works similarly to the EA Autolog. Here times in certain events are taken from your friends and Car Club members and you try and beat them.
The main feature that has been stressed by the developers of Forza Motorsport 4 is the Autovista Mode.  This allows the player to examine a car in depth with both visual and audio commentary on each piece of the car.  The doors open, the engine reeves, the player can examine parts of the dashboard, etc...  The commentary is provided by the folks at the popular television show Top Gear.   Each car is rendered down to the most intricate detail.  The cars in this game are ALL rendered perfectly.  But the cars in Autowista are modeled in ways that would be invisible in the other cars in the game.  All of this is wonderful and it DOES kind of remind me of some of the segments on Top Gear.  But this mode is barely necessary and frankly seems to be the only real black mark on what is an amazing package. The time spent in Autovista should have gone into upgrading some of the other parts of the main game that are lacking when compared to similarly simulated experiences.
          The Career Mode has two modes; the World Tour where you play through a different events that seem to be randomly generated for you based somewhat on what car your in and what level of driver experience you have at the time.  As you go through six driver championships there are increases in difficulty as you progress.  Mostly this is represented in smarter driver A.I.  And fewer rewinds. Until you reach the final World Tour championship level where the rewinds are not available and the A.I. Can be sporadically very difficult.  The other option in the Career Mode is to play through Events manually in the Event List area.  This allows you to choose the events yourself.  But there are no championships or championship progression.
        The Career Mode is also where the player is going to be customizing and upgrading your cars.  This is also where your going to be creating design and tuning packages.
The other main area is the Community Mode.  Here you will find the online racing area, the Rivals Events, Car Clubs, Auction House, and Storefront. These features are all expanded and wonderful from Forza Motorsport 3.  There are more online race types like Virus and Cat and Mouse.  While I really did enjoy the online area.  There is certainly some streamlining that could have been done.  There is still a lot of loading, waiting, and menus that have to be gone through before you can actually race.  
        The Car Clubs area is new and this is where you can join or create a car club and share your cars.  There are some limitations here however, cars cannot be shared if they are downloadable content and the person who is sharing the content doesn't have the car.  Which seems silly.  Shared cars can only be used online.  Which usually gives the participant a wide variety of cars to choose from.  So unless you are tuning or upgrading a car in a special way.  There isn't much reason to use these.  Cars shared won't necessarily have the design you put on it, as if the design is locked; it too will be unavailable for the person borrowing the car.  This too seems silly as, wouldn't a locked design be good advertising for the designer?  So more cars that the design is on, the better. 
       The Auction House and Storefronts are improved menu design wise.  But there are still too many menus.  When you bid on a car you can't bid more until you go through a few menus.  And then there is the silly receive credits/resolve auction menus.  You have to go through additional menus to finish out your auction whether to get your money back or the car you won.  Just send it to my account automatically.  Why the extra steps?  Throughout all this there is waiting, loading, etc..  I definitely, as all ways really love the Auction House and Storefront features.  I wish there was even more to them than there is.
While there are some great extra features in this game.  The main thing your going to be doing in this game is racing.  While Forza 4 isn't perfect in this regard it is still the best game out on any console right now for racing.  Every car feels different,  every interior is rendered perfectly, and the audio model for each car is awesome.  Each car can be upgraded and doing these upgrades makes an impact on speed, handling, etc..  Unlike other customization centered car games, there is no instance where upgrading a car destroys the performance of the car. Which even Forza 3 made this mistake.  Of course, if you want your Mini to be a Supercar, you might be dreaming.  Because cars that don't have 12 cylinders to begin with, usually don't have the wheel base to support high speed and high speed turning.  So while you will definitely be able to pimp your ride; just don't expect a Lamborghini for the price of a Datsun.
        There are short comings however; There are no weather effects, no night races, and the tracks themselves can sometimes amount to virtually the track itself.  There are certainly some limited terrain effects on the tracks.  But this is mostly done to slow down cars not change their handling.  But even with all this taken into consideration Turn 10 has made and is still making some of the best racing content to ever grace a console.
Every car in the game makes you want to play longer. I completed this game's career mode incredibly fast.  In just twelve days, I finished the World Tour mode and I hit Driver Level 59.  This is far higher than I hit in the entire course of time playing Forza 3.  Which I played a great deal.  While some of this is due to the revamped Driver Level system where you get experience for doing everything from Online Races to Rivals Races to the Main Career Mode Races. But it is still a testament to how wonderful the game is, and how much the actual work has been done from one game to the next.
For sixty dollars, this is a huge package with more than 30+ hours of gameplay.  If you even like racing games you will love this one.  Especially if you've played Forza 3, you really need to play Forza 4.  9/10.

Online Passes: The Splintering of an Already Splintered Market

 

   When the Cerberus Network debuted a couple of years ago I was one of those people who smiled nodded and didn't think much about it. I was thinking, “Well, it's EA what do you expect. They will figure out that this pass stuff is just not worth the effort and move on.” Boy, was I wrong...

  Every publisher out there now seems so interested in this online pass system that there even different versions of it based on what game you get. Some limit you to a number of hours online, number of levels, some games just drop a bunch of stuff behind the pay wall of the online pass like it was extra DLC. There seems like a theory within the publishing community that this will guarantee that people not sell back their games or somehow prevent piracy? Which if I'm getting the game for free, I'm probably not all that interested in the online anyway. But who knows, I might be wrong.

  The real problem with all this is not the problem of significantly driving down the prices for games on the secondary market. Whether your selling on Ebay or at Gamestop; if you don't have your unused online pass your game is worth not just $10 less but probably more like half price.

The real problem is that most of the games that have online passes right now, are not big multiplayer games to begin with. If your not Call of Duty, Halo, or Gears of War; Your online is struggling simply to exist. And then you have the audacity to actually limit the number of people playing? This applies to everyone playing online. Whether you are level 1 without an online pass or level 25 who has either redeemed your pass or paid for one. You are significantly impacted by the online pass system. Why? Because people who play the single player of most of these games won't even try the online if they don't have the online pass or don't understand how this system works.

  I think publishers were thinking about existing players when they came up with this system. But what are the existing players for a game like Warhammer 40K Space Marine? None... By the end of the first week that the game was out; it was incredibly hard to find a match. This is because the pool of people needs to be very large in order to provide a descent experience.

Matchmaking takes a big pool of people. At least in it's current form. When developers talk about TruSkill matchmaking; it all sounds wonderful. But TruSkill NEEDS a VERY LARGE group of people to work effectively. Call of Duty Black Ops even has matchmaking issues and they are the biggest multiplayer game out there. The idea that a new IP is going to be able to survive with an online pass is insane. A non-AAA franchise like FEAR or even a new to online franchise like Dead Space is not going to be helped by an online pass.

The stated reason for the Online Pass system is to prevent people from reselling their game. What REALLY prevents people from reselling their game is compelling multiplayer and single player content with consistent downloadable content that makes the game worth keeping. While an Online Pass is a cheap way to try and fix a very expensive problem. All the Pass System really does is discourage people who didn't buy your game new from even trying the online multiplayer which when games are struggling to keep online communities to begin with; ends up hurting everyone. The alternative, of course, is to drop online multiplayer in ALL CASES where it doesn't provide a unique experience. Of course, a completely digital distributed system would completely prevent issues of reselling and online passes. But that is even more expensive and complicated issue than making a good game with good multiplayer. But this is probably the only future that makes sense for everyone in the end.