MEMBER PROFILE FOR Variation
Total Reviews: 9
Average Overall Score Given: 8.56667 / 10
Total Forum Posts: 9,013
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Reviews
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Tomb Raider: Legend
Overall: Intro:
If you ask most people what they think about the Tomb Raider series, most will vividly remember how much enjoyment they had fun years ago with usually part 1 or 2. From then on, the series continuously declined in quality, and basically fun overall. Eidos has dropped Core Design from this title all together after the huge decline in the series and went to work on the newest installment of the series, and we now have Tomb Raider Legend. It builds on what made the series great and it’s cool once again to enjoy a Tomb Raider game.
Gameplay:
As the story begins, Lara is back, and is haunted by flashbacks of her mother’s death years ago. As the story progresses, you explore many different lands on different continents with a story revolving around the power of a sword broken into fragments that seem to be scattered across the world. Throw in a plot that involves the King Arthur Legacy and you have yourself a somewhat decent story line that may not enthrall you, but will definitely make you want to see what happens next.
Cutscenes are throughout and flashbacks that unlock more pieces of the story’s puzzle keep you interested other than the basic ‘figure out puzzle, then move on to boss and beat the level’ schemes. The new team did their homework, and if you have ever played Resident Evil 4 or God Of War, you will recognize the interactive sequences that require you to press the correct direction or button at the right time to either keep her from dying, or to collect secrets in the level, which in turn will unlock bonus features, costumes, cutscenes, and more. It’s nothing new, but it is more entertaining than just sitting and listening to the story unfold on its own.
One thorn in the side that the series has always been plagued by was the controls. Not so much how sloppy it felt, but you had to always be perfect with your jumps and directions or else you would miss that critical jump and fall or miss a cliff edge. These inconveniences are a thing of the past, now that you can run around freely, swim, jump, climb on ropes and poles, scale cliff edges, and use ladders, all while looking good and even showing off with some flips and vaults in between if you wish. It is by no means perfect, especially when trying to jump off a rope in a certain direction and the camera is fighting you, but it’s a major improvement in the series.
A nice new addition is that if you are climbing a pole or rope, or shimmying across a cliffside, you can press a button in time with your movements, and it will make you move twice as fast. Though I spammed the button while always doing this, and it seemed to do the exact job, but is necessary in later levels where you only have a few seconds to hang onto a ledge before it breaks away with you on it.
Swimming was a big part of the series in the past as well, with many underwater caverns, swimming levels and puzzles that usually involved getting wet somehow. As most games, swimming in the original series was no different, and was one of the leading causes of frustration with poor controls that had you either drowning, or not being able to see where you are supposed to go in time. The mechanics now are much smoother and actually doable, but still not perfect, with you sometimes barely getting up in time for air, or not being able to see the hole you are supposed to swim through due to the underwater camera angles. Lara’s signature dive is in the game again, and taken to a new level, where in one section, you actually have to dive off a 200ft cliff which is still my most memorable section of the game.
Combat is also still in the game, and it has been given an overhaul as well. You are given many more moves than previously before and respond quicker, but it really doesn’t feel all too different at the same time. You lock onto your enemies and can start shooting away, but you are also given a manual aim as well if you wish to use it, though it wasn’t very accurate the further away you got, even with the more powerful weapons. Much like previously before as well, you must shoot, jump, and avoid all at once if you wish to avoid being target practice. While it sounds like a lot, sadly it gets really easy as you master it. You keep jumping, and when you have a moment, let some rounds off, and then return to jumping like there is something down your pants, and repeat. It is very basic, but it’s also fun to be doing flips throughout a gunfight, to run up to an enemy and then blast him like your invincible.
A similar version to the infamous bullet time is also implemented and as you become in melee range of an enemy, you can run up their chest, back flip off them into ‘bullet time’ and shoot them down easily, since it gives you a damage bonus. This works great in crowds of enemies, since when you are in slow motion; you can lock onto your next target and hopefully get 3 or 4 before you touch the ground. It does become very easy when you learn how to do it swiftly, but it definitely doesn’t loose it’s cool factor seeing it again and again.
Lara has a new gadget this time as well, which is much like a grappling hook. This will help you cross long gaps like a swing, will pull enemies towards you much like Scorpion from Mortal Kombat, and pull boxes and items towards you that may be too heavy to move on your own will.
Your favored dual pistols are back as well, and like always, with the infinite ammo. Now that you are allowed to have two pairs of weapons at a time (always your pistols, then another weapon of your choice), many times you will be picking up an enemy’s gun after killing them due to it being more powerful until you run out of ammo for it. You are also given grenades this time, and while they are powerful if they hit, that’s the clincher, “if they hit”. These will bounce around like they are made of rubber, and rarely ever explode on time to do any real damage, unless they bounce back to you, then of course they go off in time.
Your D-Pad will control your tool belt of sorts. You have your PLS, which in essence is your flashlight, that is attached to you, you can use your health packs that you’ve saved up, and since almost every enemy drops health, you will basically never run out, and will also control your binoculars which help with puzzles. Using the binoculars are much like Metroid Prime, where if you ‘examine’ a switch or block, it will tell you if the item can be activated, moved, or destroyed, though there were very few times that you are so stumped on a puzzle that you needed to resort to this method. The flashlight was also basically useless as there weren’t all that many dark levels or spots that you couldn’t really see that well.
If you played the last Tomb Raider (Angel of Darkness), you still have a stealth mode of sorts, but I never used it once. There was no point when you could just run up and use your ‘bullet time’ to basically 1-hit your enemies. I still don’t understand why this is even implemented.
An exciting feature is when Lara gets to use her motorcycle; wish sadly is only used twice in the game. It’s very simple and very arcade-ish, to the point of being too easy. The first time using it is much too short, cause it’s new and cool for something different than the regular platforming, and the second feels too long, as you just want it to end so you can progress.
Lara’s own mansion makes a return, but has a different reason behind it this time. Instead of being a training ground to learn all your new moves and practice them, it is now basically a small mini level that has its own secrets and collectables. It’s mainly meant for exploration and to break up the monotony, but it’s very nostalgic with many of it’s own puzzles to solve.
With this new edition also comes new ways for puzzles to be solved. Physics help play a role in this that require you to really understand what your object is, and how you are going to do it in the environment you are surrounded by. It is by no means as advanced or in-depth as Half-Life 2’s physic puzzles, but it makes you think the same way. There were nowhere near enough puzzles in this fashion, but playing with boxes on sea-saw’s doesn’t get old quick.
Much like previously in the Tomb Raider’s, the puzzles will sometimes have you thinking of how you are going to do two or three things at once, but once you catch on to how things are done and completed each time, many of the puzzles become too simple, almost to the point of feeling like tasks, rather than puzzles. You will be moving boxes onto pressure plates, while you then much use your acrobatics to reach another portion to flip a different switch for example. There is simply not enough actually challenging puzzles, and once you do figure out how it’s done, you usually feel stupid for not realizing you didn’t notice that block that you could move the whole time.
Visual:
When comparing the different versions, the 360 version easily wins out, by having 720p enabled. You will see much more detailed textures on walls and ground, bump mapping to actually make it look more realistic, lots of foliage that the other versions miss out on, particles and dust in the air in the tomb levels, water flowing and slashing, and the whole environment in general just looks so drastically better it’s hard to even suggest the other versions when comparing (Though we all know it’s the achievements).
Lara herself looks much more realistic and not so “38-22-38” like before. She actually looks like a real woman, a very attractive one at that. A nice feature as well is that whatever guns you are equipping or carrying, will show up on your belt or around your shoulders and doesn’t magically go into your inventory bag like previous.
Cutscenes look decent, but basically only look like a prettier port of the other versions. Explosions and the environment is really what makes you enjoy the graphic features by far. Some of the levels are designed so beautifully that you actually may stop to look around and take notice.
Sound:
Lara actually sounds like Lara, and not like someone reading off of a script. Her voice is well acted and very distinct with her accent. The other characters also do a great job, though a few of them just felt bland overall, but it seemed more due to their character, not their acting. Lara will wink or be witty in dialogue, and if you weren’t watching the screen you would be able to tell what her face motions would react like. She sounds like she has emotions, and that’s very important for her character as the story progresses.
The music is very moody and fits in with each level. With the bike levels, you get an action rock-like beat and while you’re jumping platforms deep in an underground tomb, you will get moody backdrop music. It’s not too distracting, but it wasn’t memorable either.
The dialogue actually is not quite what I was expecting. I was honestly expecting lots of cheesy lines and some script that even I could have come up with, but to my surprise, it’s actually quite well written and doesn’t bore you with too much back story and bland characters. It has its humor, it has bad guys you love to hate and just sound evil. It was quite a treat to be this surprised and not feel too “Hollywood”.
Closing Comments:
The game is very short, as in 8-12 hours, and the puzzles really aren’t as challenging as they should have been. It did have a nice mix of platforning with having to jump and swing lots of places mixed in with the few puzzles here and there, but ultimately, I would have been greatly more impressed if I actually got stuck and had to look up how to finish a certain puzzle.
The combat is extremely easy and other than the odd boss fight or two, I rarely ever had to heal, especially with almost every enemy dropping health along the way. It wasn’t the lock-on that trivialized the fighting, it was that the AI was not at all aggressive, and was very predictable.
On the bright side, it does contain a decent amount of replay, since you can do any level at any time once it’s completed, and even try the time trials to unlock more goodies for Lara. Though once these are done, it really only adds a few more hours onto the overall gameplay and again, after figuring out the puzzle schemes, it’s not challenging in any way, even on the most difficult setting.
A great Tomb Raider like this has been long overdue but it is finally here and while it may be short and not have you thinking terribly hard to complete it in a weekend, it’s all about the fantastic ride to the end and the entertainment in between. Lara is back, and she is as cool as ever. You don’t have to be ashamed anymore to say you enjoyed a Tomb Raider. Legends delivers what Tomb Raider used to feel like, now lets hope for an even more improved sequel.
Overall: 7.96 Gameplay: 7.8 Visuals: 8 Sound: 8.1
Overall Score: 8.0 / 10
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Table Tennis
Overall: Intro:
When Rockstar first announced their next game, it was definitely a shock to everyone, no one really expected something this drastically different from their previous titles. Table Tennis lacks guns, violence, hijacking, profanity and blood, which Rockstar has used to make their name, but in no way does it make this title un-cool.
Table Tennis has a simple objective; to deliver a very fast paced gameplay that is simple enough to pick up and play, yet be deep enough to keep you coming back for more. This is all it does, and surprisingly, better than most would expect.
Gameplay:
As you start up the game, you will be greeted with the cl@!%#*!ic “Rockstar Presents”, and even by the GTA font alone, you know this already feels like one of their games. Simplicity is one aspect that the game has strength in, but unfortunately at times, is also its weakness.
Soon as you start the game, you see a background with two players with the very slim menu choices in the upper corner. You are greeted with choices of Tournaments, Exhibition, Training, and Xbox Live.
Training is actually quite helpful and will teach you the basics of how to play, and then get into advanced techniques for later on. It’s broken down into sections from serving, returning, spins, counter spins, drop shots, slams, aiming and more which actually help later on with difficult matches. After a few goes, you’ll have the system down and want to jump right into a game, which is where the action begins.
The controls are incredibly simple, yet very precise to the touch. The left analog stick is your movement of your character, and once your about to hit the ball, your aim for where you want to hit the ball on the table. Your right stick controls the spin on the ball, and after your opponent hits the ball towards you, the longer you hold the stick in a direction, the more spin you can attain. The danger in this is that while your ‘charging’ you’re hit with a lot of spin, you are unable to move your character, so you have to think ahead where you should be to return the hit.
With four different types of spin, you can always keep your opponent guessing of not only where you are going to drop the ball, but if it’s going to have front, back, left, or right spin to help it curve as well. This is where counter hitting can also come into play. So if a shot was coming to me with immense right spin and going to go off the table, I would hit it right back with the same type of spin to essentially neutralize the spin on the ball and get things back into my favor.
A very clever yet subtle feature works very well once you even realize it’s there and in place is the use of the rumble feature of the controller. As your about to slam the ball towards your competitor and holding the direction you want for spin, once your controller starts to shake it means that you are getting dangerously close to the edge of the table. If you do not heed these warnings your shot will go out of bounds and off the table, and honestly, having not read the book before playing, it made things extremely easier once I learned this tactic. You will get a feel for how much is too much over time with more and more gameplay. Eventually become very skilled in this can net you easy points where it can nick off the edge of the table and basically become un-returnable.
So after keeping all these things in mind, there is also another aspect that will come into play and usually help you win easily against the computer (as opposed to a person). The more you charge your spins, the more your focus meter will fill up, and once full, you can use it to unleash an extremely fast return or even more powerful slam. While this works great against the computer players, against real players, it can help, but not as effectively. In single player, the camera will go into a slow motion mode, make it look all awesome even if you are just trying to reach for a save return. In multiplayer is just speeds things up to insane rates of returns and you will watch your rally numbers increase very quickly.
Camera work is flawless, and while you do only get two choices of close or far (close being the much easier to see the ball with), it never once felt like I didn’t know where I should be looking. If you are at one corner of the table, and they are at the opposite other, the camera will slightly pan enough so it just seems like the perfect angle. If you are playing multiplayer on the same system, one person is on the bottom for their serves, and then it switches so each person gets to play on both sides of the table. I did find being on the top side of the table a bit odd, and missing more shots I shouldn’t have been, you do get used to it eventually and it will feel natural.
Loading times are decent, though with how little is actually on the screen, it seemed at first it should have been quicker. At least while you are waiting for it to load, you can look at what you’ve unlocked so far with each character, and even get hints on how to unlock more arena’s, clothes, and characters.
Picking and choosing the character that fits your play style is crucial as well. You are given a choice of a few choices at the starts, and as you progress through single player tournaments (note I didn’t say career mode); you unlock new players along the way along with clothes and arenas. If you are a power player and want to slam your opponent every chance you get, then Jesper is your choice, but watch his zero rating in serving. Liu Ping from China is your all around choice which most people online tend to use I found. If you want to trick your challenger with awesome spins and fakes, the Luc or Kumi are the way to go. Learning more than one character is crucial for online play, as using a defensive character against another defensive character makes easy scoring a challenge.
Each character is rated on spin, serve, power, and accuracy, and actually feels different than each other as well. While there is no rating for movement, I did find that certain players I preferred just seemed to move quicker than others. As you learn to be in the right place at the right time, you won’t rely on the footwork as much, but it can be frustrating to miss that shot because it doesn’t feel like they move quickly enough at times. While you are charging your spin, you can not move either, so it’s a lesson you tend to learn early on very quickly.
One downfall to the games simplicity is its lack of modes as well. All you get are exhibition modes for a quicker play, or tournament to unlock items and features. That’s it; there is no career mode in any shape or form. Regrettably there is also no create a player either. And for player options, you get to pick their color and style of up to a few shirts, not even wrist or headbands. While the choices are very slim mode and player wise, the gameplay does redeem it and is quite deep and involving.
There is quite the intensity that becomes apparent once you hit milestones in long rallies. Once you realize you have been going back and forth for over 50 hits, you seem to become more focused. As the rallies become much higher, and even breaking the 100 mark, you become tense and it’s exciting with the result either being you standing up cheering, or shouting new profanities because you accidentally hit the net with the wrong spin. When even playing the lower 7 point games, they can take time when you have two very good players and are scoring back and forth on each other.
When you play online for the first time, you will feel just at home since it’s identical to the single player in almost every aspect. Just as single player, you can choose Exhibition for the quicker matches, or a Timed Tournament which is 4 to 8 players all playing at the same time in a Round-Robin style of play with a set amount of time. Unfortunately the settings are very weak, and once you are done an exhibition match, it boots both players, even the host, to the main Xbox Live screen where you can hen either host again and invite your friend, or join a random game. Being able to play with my friends reputedly without having to send an invite every time would have been much enjoyed, but rather it’s a h@!%#*!le. While setting up a Timed Tournament, you can pick either 4 or 8 players, and should you choose 8 and you don’t have a full room, you can not start the game, even if 4 of you are there and waiting. It’s another simple thing that could have been avoided but just brings frustration instead.
While online, the same pace feels the same. While there isn’t many lag problems, the few times I have had them brings very weird occurrences. Sometimes I won’t be seeing my opponent move, but an invisible paddle will still hit the ball, or sometimes the ball will float there for a second as if it’s waiting to be hit by them instead of me scoring a point. Another odd bug that I’ve run into that’s only happened once so far is while I picked Juergen to play with, the person I was playing with said it was Jesper and was even his name and model instead of what I see on my own screen.
While there are certain things that I’ve noticed that shouldn’t be there, it by no means takes away from the quick action and frantic gameplay. With there being absolutely no extras, career mode, or mini-games, the single player is very bland and quick to finish. Multiplayer with a friend or on Xbox Live does feel like it compensates for what it does lack.
Graphics:
As noted before, from the moment you turn on Table Tennis, you know that it’s a Rockstar game, not only from its patented font, but just the feel and style of the product as a whole.
The players in this title look simply amazing and realistic for the most part. While in replays, you can see everything from beads of sweat on the forehead, to the fine hairs of an eyebrow. Each character looks unique and the motion capture of each is marvelous. When you need to quickly move to the side you can see them plant their foot and push fluidly rather than just strafing.
I don’t think I’ve seen better clothing in a game before this title. Shirts will droop and bend and move like they do in real life. Reach for a high slam and the shirt near your armpit actually stretches, lean and bend over to hit a drop shot and your shirt will actually sag with gravity. It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s something so fluid that you have to notice it.
To add another level of realism, players will also sweat over time and the longer the rallies, the more sweaty your character gets. It makes the color of your shirt darken as well depending on where they are sweating. It’s not a necessity, but having it definitely makes it feel like a genuine 360 title.
Each player will also have their own stances and hold the paddles their own specific way. This just breathes more life into the characters and with no drops of framerate and the lighting being perfect, Table Tennis is one of the more realistic looking titles on the system thus far.
Sound:
To be cliché, you will hear every ‘ping’ and every ‘pong’ the ball makes as it bounces off the table. Even the crowd can be heard at times, and when they want someone to win, you will hear them chant their name or country without too much repetitiveness.
With Table Tennis being such a rhythmic gameplay, Rockstar has picked the perfect choice of a soft ambient techno to play in the background that just seems to fit the whole style of the game. Obviously your own soundtracks are recommended, but they have certainly combined the style of gameplay with the style of music to fuse a wonderful mix.
Closing Comments:
Rockstar has not made a mini-version of Virtua Tennis or Top Spin. While many aspects may seem the same, they have combined fluid gameplay with simple controls to make a completely new experience. While it may seem like the next-gen version of ‘Pong’, the pacing, gameplay, and addictiveness of Table Tennis is represented so well that with it’s low price tag, should not be p@!%#*!ed up.
Table Tennis is simple to pick up and play, yet very deep if you want to invest the time into it. While it does have it’s shortcomings with lack of modes and create a player, this title is completely about the gameplay. It is exciting, it is additive, and this truly is Table Tennis bought to us by Rockstar.
Gameplay: 8.8 Graphics: 8.3 Sound: 7.8 Overall: 8.3
Overall Score: 8.8 / 10
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Project Gotham Racing 3
Overall: Intro:
PGR 3 may be one of the first games in quite awhile that has fooled me with the screenshots before hand that looked pre-rendered but upon playing it the first time, you realize that it’s completely in-game and much more than you expected. Not being one for many racing games, I decided to pick PGR3 up to add some more variety to my launch collection, and I was not expecting it to turn out that it would be my most played title. With so many different modes, a large selection of cars, and a plethora of extra features, PGR3 has huge replay value that doesn’t get old quickly.
Gameplay:
The Project Gotham series has always had a unique premise; to win races, not just by being the first across the finish line, but to do it all with such a style that would be fit for a Hollywood movie. This is achieved with the games Kudos system and it works simply yet effectively. You take a turn normally, no big deal, but take that turn going way too fast, power sliding by hitting your emergency brake and having the nose of your car inches away from the turn’s wall, and that is how you get the Kudos that you need to progress further and unlock more goodies. Catching air, going on 2 wheels, doing clean sections, and racing perfect lines can earn you more. Kudos is all about skill and precision, not going fast as possible into a wall and just accelerating out of it like most racers. Your score goes higher the more you string together moves and slides, so to get some of the goals you need, especially in the hardcore setting, you need to sometimes even slightly slide on a straight track to keep your combo and multiplier going. The risk being that if you have a huge combo going and then misjudge when you start sliding into a turn and hit a wall, you lose your whole point combo. Knowing when to keep stringing moves together and when to let the Kudos add to your score definitely comes in time, and will differ with everyone’s play style.
PGR 3 is much more heavily based on skill rather than “wall riding” that other games let you do without much consequence. The first rule that you learn very quickly is that you must use your brakes to take turns slowly and controlled until you learn how to do sliding E-brake turns at breakneck speeds. Braking means you will make the turn, which in turn means you keep your momentum much faster and have an overall higher speed. Sometimes the game can be a little forgiving in which you just barely touch the wall and it won’t penalize you and take your Kudos away, though it doesn’t always seem to be consistent when it chooses to do this, nor does it happen that often unfortunately.
You are placed into the game with a set amount of cash to buy your first car and then sent off to go start winning your trophies and medals. Not only do you get a decent amount of starting cash, but you quickly notice that you won’t be starting off with an ancient car that has no real hopes of winning any races; but instead, you can start off with quite the decent racer to get your racing career headed in the right direction. Quickly you start earning more than enough cash to buy yourself a much faster vehicle, and instead of selling off your old car to afford the newest ones like most racing games have you do, PGR 3 leads you more in a collective direction; where all your exotic beauties can be showcased in your numerous garages.
PGR 3 offers 5 different city locations which doesn’t sound like a lot, but there are many variants of the city, all with different turns and even feels to them. One feature I quite enjoy that Bizarre Creations has added is not just made the tracks separated by car cl@!%#*!es, but by race types. This means that while there aren’t many different city settings, there are numerous different race types for every one. These can range from drift style races, speed challenges, to cone challenges and more. So rather than giving you a set car for a certain track, you will want to pick a car that is going to be better suited for the type of race you are attempting to complete.
With of choice of 80 different vehicles ranging from the “lower” end Ferrari’s, Lamborghini’s, and Lotus’, all the way to the super top performance TVR, RUF, Benz, and even the coveted Ferrari F50 and McLaren F1, along with concept cars that would make you drool if you were to see them p@!%#*!ing on the street. Each car handles very differently and certain cars are best suited for different race types. You will obviously enjoy and prefer certain cars to others for their own individual handling and speed, but as soon as you play on Xbox Live, if you aren’t using the “normal” cars that the majority of players do for each cl@!%#*!, you will sadly be left in the dust; regardless if you can take turns superiorly better than the rival that can double your top speed and acceleration.
Single player career mode is divided into 23 multi-tiered championships, and each of them usually has their own “genres” or style to them to offer a play change, rather than the same monotony most racers do. So one championship may be all head to head street racing mixed with some one on one medals to win, while another championship can be all cone challenges mixed with drift and overtake objectives. While the single player is short to initially complete, there is plenty of replay with trying to get all the different medals and achievements that can only be done by choosing a harder difficulty level. Having never really played much of the previous series, I can hold my own while challenging the medium setting, but trying hard is a challenge best left to PGR veterans. For those of you that absolutely love a challenge, hardcore is just that. One mistake on this setting could mean the whole race, and usually does. While this is great news for those that are that good, it can be quite frustrating when you are about to win a long enduring race, having then having lose it on the last corner because you started to turn a split second too early or late. It leaves extremely little room for error, but it’s a great way to keep going back and trying to achieve those elusive medals.
If you want to just quickly start a race, you can do so easily, but there is much more that you can choose to do rather than your typical race. Modes differ from the standard Street Race to Eliminator in which the last driver to complete is lap is knocked out until there is only one victor. Team Street Race adds almost a Nascar feel in the sense that you and your teammates must do what it takes to win; so sometimes having the better racer up front with your partner behind you trying to block the opponents from gaining is what it takes to win this Red vs. Blue battle. Team Eliminator which is much like the normal version, but the victor wins it for their whole team. One of the more unique modes is the Capture the Track mode in which you have to “own” as much of the course as you can by having the quickest time in certain sections. So while you can be amazing at certain corners and have great speeds in sections, you need to have the majority of the track in your control by the end of the timer.
Should you grow tired of racing, there is still much PGR 3 offers for anyone. The biggest noteworthy of these features being the Route Creator, where you can make your course just the way you want, race it, and even play it with your friends over Xbox Live. You start by choosing the city and it gives you an overview of all the city roads. Picking the start line will get you going right into the good parts where you can pick any road to use, the corners to take, all exactly how you want to race. You are free to make any style of track you want, whether it is a point to point or a circuit race, or even a long straight drag race to finally prove which of your friend’s car is superior in horsepower.
Another great feature is the Photo mode, where you can walk around your garage of all your cars, and freely able to take pictures how you want. There are camera settings for zoom, tilt, height, free movement, focus, shutter speed, brightness, contrast, even sepia. It’s not completely open to take it always exactly how you want, but it certainly does the job. The real exciting part of the Photo Mode feature is that you are able to take a picture of your car whenever you like just by pausing the game. This can lead to some really amazing pictures of you overtaking someone on the inside while sliding almost along the wall, or even with all four wheels off the ground getting some air. Factor in the ability to move the camera freely, and you can turn into quite the photographer. One of the games achievements is to take a picture of your car in every city, so definitely spend the time and play with this great feature. The only complaint I have about this is that there is no ability to share or post your photo’s online somewhere, so you can only share them on your with your friends. Adding an online gallery of sorts with rankings would have been a great addition.
Bizarre clearly had Xbox Live in mind when developing PGR 3, and it clearly shows with the robust online features it contains. While playing single player offline, when you finish tracks it automatically uploads your times and scores and places it into the rankings and before you exit out, shows you where you are in the world’s ranking for your efforts. Think that you are the best in the world on a certain track with your car? Go online, download anyone’s ghost car and race against it to see how you really stack up against the best in the world. You are not limited to the top 10 or 100 people either. If your placed 300th place and the guy that’s ahead of you in ranking has somehow beat your time by a long shot, you can watch their race or choose to race his ghost to see how it was done. One key element in this feature is that you can watch the replay and learn from it, but you can watch it from any angle you choose. If you play in the 3rd person view and want to know how to take a certain turn like the best do, watch in that view. If you use the @!%#*!pit view, you can even watch the whole thing like that if you wish to learn from the best to better hone your skills.
This is where Gotham TV also comes into place. You can see who’s racing online from the leader boards, tune into Gotham TV, and watch in real time; races that they are competing in at that very moment. Of course you have the ability to change to any racer, and any camera angle you wish as well. Play online enough and your TRUESKILL ranking will go up, which is how the game determines who to pair you with, much like Halo 2’s ranking system. Get good enough and you may even appear on the Hero’s Channel on Gotham TV that showcases the best in the world. Having been on Gotham TV numerous times myself, I can tell you that it adds a pressure factor knowing that thousands of people could be watching how great or poorly you race.
To combat cheating by only racing with your friends and working your way up the leader boards that way, Bizarre has made it so you have no choice for your competitors. While not being able to race along your friends for rankings, I haven’t found it to be a huge issue. Another measure they have taken to detour people that cheat by learning one course and just raving that one over and over to improve rankings, is by picking what cl@!%#*! of cars you want to race, not the course. Each cl@!%#*! then has a random choice of a number of maps which are suited for that cl@!%#*! of car. It’s a far from perfect system, but its wonderful having a variety of random maps when earning for your online profile.
One huge difference to keep I mind when playing online, is that you are playing real people that can and usually will do what it takes to win. More often than not you will race against the kind of competitor that will side swipe you just before a turn, making you spiral out of control into a wall at 200mph, and this is to be expected, but when you do have a race where everyone is respectable of each other and won’t crash people into walls for the sake of making a turn, it makes such a memorable online experience. Feedback is there for a reason, and so are the zones that you choose to play online, so prepare for the dirty racers that will take any means necessary to win. One word to the wise is to avoid going into the first turn of a track online with everyone else, as it’s very seldom that you will come out with your clean slide and getaway.
Load times are slightly more than usual, but can get annoying and tedious when restarting races and waiting for it to load all over again. For the visuals this game puts out, I find it’s reasonable; mind you I’m not sure what they would be like without the Hard Drive.
Visuals:
The one feature that this game has that makes it stand out visually is the @!%#*!pit view. We aren’t talking your normal view where you can see the steering wheel and maybe a rear view mirror, this is much more, and shows off what the 360 is more than capable of. Instead, this is inside the @!%#*!pit where you see your steering wheel, you see your hands gripping the wheel and shifting, the rear view mirror, the speedometer, your tachometers, and anything else that is actually authentic to the car you are racing. That is until you flick the right stick which acts as if you were turning your head inside the view. So you actually have to move the right stick left or right to check your side mirrors to see if someone is trying to overtake you. It’s the next step in realism, and overtime I found myself looking at the dash for my speed rather than the overlaying HUD. With each car being an accurate depiction of what the car is actually like to sit inside, it’s difficult to not be impressed, and finding yourself learning all different kind of blind spots. For a truly unique experience, choose the McLaren F1 and race in this view. Since the bucket seat in this car is directly in the middle and not on the side, it’s as close as you will ever get to racing one.
Lights, shadows and reflections will all bend and deform around the hood and windshield of your car, and this is the most obvious when you are using the in-dash view. First time seeing this came should make you impressed with what is possible now in next-gen systems. While you corner, slide, and brake hard, your camera will shake and blur depending on your velocity and force you can going into turns. This again is most apparent when using the @!%#*!pit view. Where the game does not inherently feel as fast as a Burnout title, the speed sense you have while in-dash is quite astounding, and you don’t always see the corner come us as early as you would like.
PGR 3 showcases HDR (High Dynamic Range) lighting which gives a more realism effect. The easiest and more of the impressive examples I can give is that when you come out of a tunnel and back into sunlight, you will have a second of bright light everywhere as if your eyes were adjusting to coming out of the dark like in real life. It’s just one more step closer to realism, and while subtle, it works perfectly. My only wish is that you could choose to turn the HUD completely off so that I couldn’t see a turn coming out of the tunnel on my map, rather than trying to see it coming at me 200mph while my eyes adjust to the sun.
Overlooked aspects in PGR 3’s graphics are definitely the background and layout. Most games will save space and look great while racing, but if you ever stopped and looked at trees or the crowd while still, they were usually animated 2D cutouts. Those are long gone now this generation, with fully 3D pedestrians watching the race, and fully lush trees. They have many more animations than any other racing game I have seen will even take pictures of you as you go by with the flash of their camera’s going off. It’s not perfect by any means, but it’s so much improved that it’s very noticeable.
On a bright side, there is damage modeling, but it feels as if it’s almost a cop out and just in there because. The most you can really do to your car is bend your bumpers and spoiler, and crack your mirrors and windshield; regardless that you are going over 200mph into a wall head on. It is hard to drive with no mirrors using the @!%#*!pit view, and does add that want to keep your car in pristine condition, but sadly it’s purely a cosmetic addition, it does not affect your cars performance in any way. The damage does look great, but personally I wish it had more much like Toca 2 did.
Visually, this game is easily one of my top choices for 360’s launch titles. It’s very impressive, and with an HDTV it looks even better. It’s not something that absolutely screams next-gen, but you will be very impressed when you see it for the first time.
Sound:
Not being much of a car guy, I didn’t really realize that there could be so many different sounds for a car braking at different speeds, different engines revving, tires squealing depending on your speed, and the differences of them depending on your position to the car.
Every car does sound different, and not just the engine sounds. Like said above, anything you do with the car, will sound unique for that car. If you played enough, and had your 5.1 surround sound set up, knew the cars sounds well enough, you would be able to tell if my McLaren F1 was coming up behind you on your right just by the sound of my motor pushing itself trying to overtake you. Yes, it is that impressive and distinct. Something else I wasn’t expecting was that the sound will also differ depending on if you are using the 3rd person views, or the @!%#*!pit. Inside your car, your engine will sound incredibly more mean with your sub woofer turned high up, where as the outer views you will hear the squealing of your tires as well but from a distance.
PGR 3 offers a soundtrack that will cater to almost everyone. You are given the choice of 9 different music genres that you can change on the fly. Pressing up or down on your D-Pad will change between the genres differing from Rock, Electronica, Hip Hop, Industrial, Bhangra, J-Pop, and even Cl@!%#*!ical. Once you find the style of music you want, simply hit left or right on the D-Pad to choose different songs in that genre. This is all great and there should be something in there you will enjoy, but obviously playing your own play lists and music through the 360 dashboard is much more preferred
Closing Comments:
There are so many modes and extra features that PGR 3 offers that even non racing enthusiasts will want this title. Bizarre has created an extraordinary launch title, and this is not one to be p@!%#*!ed up. Need that final reason to buy a HDTV or simply justify your 360 purchase? This is that reason.
Gameplay – 8.6
Visuals – 9.0
Sound – 10
Overall – 9.2
Overall Score: 8.6 / 10
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Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, The
Overall: Intro:
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is finally here after much waiting and anxious anticipation. If you have ever played any of the series, most notably Morrowind, then you understand the broad range of freedom and scope that Bethesda can deliver. A game where you can literally explore for hours finding new places, dungeons, and towns, but being able to stop on the way, look around the vast landscape around you and even look at the minute details that have gone into the world to make it immersive as possible.
From the moment you are thrown into the main storyline in a cl@!%#*!ic good vs. evil plotline, there is much more underneath the basic premise and will have you traveling all over, and if Bethesda has done their job right, hours and hours spent on side quests, advancing ranks in guild missions, exploring landscape for more dungeons and treasure, and arena battles that can easily get you sidetracked.
Gameplay:
Start Oblivion, and after the game’s first cut scene that explains briefly what is happening in the world, you instantly start to design your character with much detail and enough options that you can spend some time getting just everything perfectly. Adjusting facial features such as length of nose, hair, chin and such is just the starting. Even getting your eye color the way you want, the options are very deep, and should make you happy with how you want to exactly look. There are different races to chose from, each having their own positives and negatives for stats and certain cl@!%#*!es.
As you start off the game after creating your masterpiece of a character, the first dungeon, which is basically following the King and his guards for a prison break, you are taught some of the fundamentals of gameplay, and while you are guided along where to go, everything you do here should be thought of as the “Training Level”. As you complete this first dungeon, everything you have done up till this point will be noted and you will be given a recommendation of what type of cl@!%#*! you should play based on how you have been so far. You are more than welcome to pick one of the template character cl@!%#*!es, or even completely customize your own how you wish. At the end of this first dungeon before you leave to the outside world, you are given one final chance to change any aspect about your character including name, race, appearance and skills. Once you leave this section, there is no turning back for any character changes, so make sure you understand what skills do what, and which ones to make your primary, or you will have major headaches later on. Sadly, this is more or less learned by trial and error if you’ve never played Morrowind, any anyone who has, will understand how the leveling system is and the difference in making skills primary or secondary.
As you leave the prison’s sewers, you are now set loose in the world of Cyrodiil with your first task that starts you along with the main quest, though it does not pressure you into doing so. This being Oblivion, you can march through the main storyline if you wish and complete that portion of the game, or simply do whatever you want and travel anywhere doing anything your heart desires. When you are on a specific mission or task, your comp@!%#*! will have an arrow always pointing you in the right direction, so you are never truly lost on where you should be heading next. If you are given a red arrow, it means you are not in the correct city or zone or need to go through a door somewhere, but if it is green, the person or place you seek is nearby.
Don’t feel like walking everywhere and want to get where you need to be right now? Bring up your map and choose the icon of the place you wish to go to magically be whisked away instantly (minus the loading screen). The only trick to this is that you have to either visited the place before, or know of it through conversations with NPC’s if it’s a town or city. So as you are give a quest to go clear a certain dungeon of all the vampires or whatnot, if you have not been there before, or traveled within proximity, you have to walk (or if you’ve obtained a horse at this point) the way. Most areas needed to go are near a city, so worst case scenario; you fast travel to the closest city or town, and then do the journey from there.
Making any quest you have available from your journal your “active” quest is very easy, and will instantly give you the new arrows of where to go, and the descriptions of what is needed to do, so that coming back to old forgotten quests is not really a burden in remembering where you were before you got sidetracked.
The main quest has a very simple Good vs. Evil concept at the start, but as you learn more about the King’s @!%#*!@!%#*!ination, long lost son, why Oblivion Gates are opening up across the land, and how you are going to stop them, it becomes much more involved and more time goes by than you ever thought would in a single player game. If you were to strictly only do the main storyline and absolutely nothing else, I found it was surprisingly over quickly, though the multiple climaxes of the plot does not disappoint at all. This is nearly impossible to do though, as you will get sidetracked and venture off to do other things to advance your character and chart new areas.
There are literally so many things you can do, that a simple 20 hour main quest can at times not even be remotely close to your focus. With multiple guilds that will have you doing errands and quests escalading in difficulty to climb up the ranks, cities that are littered with people that all have problems that apparently only you are capable of solving, join the battles in an Arena to make a name for yourself, rob people blind for everything they have then sell it to make a profit, explore mysterious dungeons and be a treasure hunter, become a vampire and feed on the living, or even buy a house for yourself and do what you wish with it. With it being completely open ended, this is just a fraction of things that can sidetrack you from any certain quest or anything else you may be doing, without it being too daunting at the same time.
You can play any style you wish, so if you prefer to sneak in the shadows, pickpocket people, steal their items to see if you can get away with it, and just simply act roguish, you are given the skills to do so. If you would rather just smash your enemies with a giant hammer or sword and plow through anything that looks at you the wrong way, feel free to do so as well. Even combine different styles and play exactly how you wish, and depending on how you decided your skills, almost any character cl@!%#*! or skills are possible.
The more you use your skills, the greater you become at them. If you want to become a master archer, keep using it and you will become more powerful and unlock more skills as you progress. If you want to be a master at haggling for better store prices, that is also a viable option that if you become good enough, you can actually invest into stores and reap the benefits.
The strength of armor, spells, and weapons you obtain in the game are solely based on your characters level, which in turn is risen by your main skill attributes. This is why picking your main skills is very important, because if you pick a skill like Acrobatics for example that is naturally going to level up as you progress, you will become burdened by the level advancements, because you can now jump and run fast, but your combat and defensive skills will lack, causing you to constantly play catch-up with your other skills.
There are four guilds across the land, which you are able to join, obviously after some tests and tribulations though, to prove your worthiness and trust of course. The four guilds that you are able to join are the Fighters, Thieves, Mages, and Dark Brotherhood. They all have their own quests and rewards, and at times, interconnect and can sometimes be difficult to do one guild orders without failing another’s at the same time. Though sometimes very daunting and frustrating at times, the rewards in the end are generally worth all the trouble and time spent for it, not to mention the achievement points.
There is an Arena in the Imperial City where you can become a gladiator to rise in the ranks and compete for gold and fame. Sadly, if you are very proficient at combat, this side portion of the game can be done very quickly if you decide to finish it quickly, as in around 30 minutes start to finish. The non combat heavy characters should enjoy the challenge though trying to fend off fights in one vs. one, one vs. two, and even one vs. three. And like the guild quests, the achievement points alone should be incentive enough to complete this action filled portion of your adventures.
Radiant AI is something that Bethesda touted about for a long time, and in simple terms, this basically means that NPC’s can almost think for themselves. They will have certain tasks they need to get done, such as work, or getting to places and anything in between is almost “as it happens”. An easy example of this would be, say a certain NPC is hungry because its lunch time. They will look around the house for something to eat, but what happens if you stole all their food while they weren’t looking? They would venture out to get some, or better yet, if you happened to put a poisoned apple in their pocket without them knowing, they could take a bite of that, and then you could do what you wish with their belongings once they keel over dead.
Sometimes you need to obtain information from NPC’s on clues where to go next, but sometimes they will not like you, or trust you enough to divulge secrets to you. Depending on your skills, you can try to sweet talk them with high speech craft skills, charm them with spells to make yourself seem more attractable, or simply bribe them with money. Obviously trying to bribe guards and other characters will not always be looked upon kindly and may even lower your disposition towards that person.
With so many skills that become unlocked, and spells you may obtain throughout the course of the game, there is a hotkey system that allows up to eight items able to be changed on the fly. These can be pieces of armor that may have certain enchantments you need for certain situations (water breathing items for example), different weapons for different types of monsters (bow and arrow to pull it close, then hack away with a sword), and of course, all different types of spells you may have. Considering the scope of the game, it can feel very limited to only have 8 hotkeys especially if you are a mage heavy character, though combat driven character may not notice this burden as much. If there was a way to have different sets of 8, it might have been handier, but also being set to the D-Pad, it can sometimes be annoying to try and hit one of your diagonal arrows for a certain spell in time, but not always correctly choosing the right one.
While the game feels and plays out like it is meant to be in first person mode, there is options for playing in third person, but with making combat incredibly tougher not being able to always judge your distance, and some of the embarr@!%#*!ing animations like jumping and strafing, it feels more immersive in first person by far. Moving the camera back to third person is usually only used when traveling to get a broader scope of your surroundings, or if you are trying to find a secret lever or item on the ground.
Certain bugs are still present, such as odd sound glitches, clipping through walls, NPC’s sometimes acting “brain-dead”, and my personal favorite, breaking into someone’s house, then going in and talking to the NPC and them acting like nothing has happened. The apparent bugs can be annoying and at times frustrating when you get stuck somewhere, but overall, you learn to live with it, and it doesn’t really take away from the game so much that you notice after awhile.
Visual:
Visually, there has not been anything to this scale done before, and the distances you can see at times, especially on mountaintops, can be very breathtaking. Your environment is not flat, and with trees and gr@!%#*! swaying in the wind, or rain coming into your face, there is a huge level of detail put into the world. Day and night comes and goes, and you can even see deer run across the land in the plains. Exploring can be very enjoyable to see how high you can actually get, or how deep a lake actually goes. Waterfalls will even have mist at their base with plants needed for alchemy usually thriving near water sources.
Almost every weapon you own will look different from others, and as you obtain the higher level ones, they can be very intricately detailed and simply gorgeous to look at with glows and enchantments on them as well. Armor is the same way, with light chain or leather armor looking very distinct from heavy iron or steel sets, with them even shining differently in the light.
In dungeons you will find cobwebs in corners, dirt on the ground, dust on treasure chests and littered bones if it’s quite a dangerous place to be. Sometimes the walls can look repetitive, but with all the lighting effects and the traps laid out to look for, it’s usually not noticed.
Physics also play a role, where if you kill an animal on a downward slope, they will roll and tumble accordingly, even bouncing off rocks or down cliffs. This can be pretty entertaining itself, but when you want to loot the monster you just killed, chasing after it down a hill waiting for it to stop gets old. Hitting someone in the head hard enough with a bow can even make them back flips, sending their body one direction into a wall, and the weapon in completely the opposite direction.
For how gorgeous everything can look, there are still faults that are apparent, and sometimes even take away from being immersed. While you can see for miles at certain places, the objects far off don’t look sharp and usually have very low textures, enough to be extremely noticeable and out of place. As you travel across the land, since it’s such a huge area, it will sometimes stutter as its loading everything in the vicinity nearby. If you are on horseback, it only makes the problem worse, sometimes almost skipping if you have one of the faster horses. It’s bearable, but really shouldn’t be there. Fortunately the regular loading times of exiting or entering places are decent; it seems to just be the traveling outside for the most part.
Sound:
Sound is undoubtedly the absolute star of the game and brings in a new feeling of gameplay, due to every single NPC being voiced for all dialogue. Obviously many minor characters that have very few lines, or even just one, you sometimes think that different characters have the exact same voice. Surprisingly even with the one-liners and sometimes repetitive responses, nothing sounds too out of line or cheesy.
The star casts for two of the main characters are voiced by celebrities. Patrick Stewart plays the king that gets @!%#*!@!%#*!inated very early in the journey and you can distinctly tell that it’s him. It’s quite amusing, though I was waiting for him to tell me to “engage”, not “Close shut the gates of Oblivion”. The majority of the main quest focuses on the long-lost son of the emperor, Martin, who is perfectly voiced by Sean Bean.
The music definitely adds a special feel to certain situations as well. As you adventure and explore freely, you hear a happy cheery melody that makes you feel like you’re floating across the land and that all is good in the world. When an enemy spots you, the music will change to a tense battle sequence so that you know you’re in combat, and gently fades away once your combat is over. Dungeons will have an eerie musical score that makes you feel like you want to be creeping slowly and watching your footing.
As you pluck your bow and arrow, you will hear the string tighten and “twang”, swords will clash and make it sound like there are sparks, water drips in dungeons, footsteps of people and yourself that change according to the type of ground you are on, and even you swaying in the water. Skeleton bones crumble when you defeat them, ghosts and wraiths let out an eerie wailing gasp when they are defeated and being in an Oblivion gate is overall pure frightening with the music and enemy battle cries.
Closing Comments:
One of the major things that really stuck out for me was that there were only 2 cut scenes in the whole game; the beginning and end, which is unfortunate due to how beautifully they were done. With all the criticisms that could be held against it, it’s impossible to deny the enjoyment that will come from everything that is possible from this title. Bethesda has scored again by listening to the fans and improved upon many aspects from Morrowind. It is by no means perfect, but there is nothing else that compares to the scale and immersiveness that you will get from enjoying this game.
Simply put, Oblivion is the single best single player experience you can get that has come along in quite some time on the Xbox 360. With almost unlimited gameplay hours and never a shortage of things to do, Oblivion is an incredible experience that should be even played by non RPG fans. It’s not often a gem like this will spoil us for expectations for future gaming.
Overall: 9.46 Gameplay: 9.3 Visuals: 9.3 Sound: 9.8
Overall Score: 9.5 / 10
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Need for Speed: Most Wanted
Overall: Intro:
Take the underground street car modding culture and open free roaming city from Need For Speed Underground 2, mix in the high tension and fast paced police chases from Need For Speed Hot Pursuit, add a whole lot of speed and attitude with an onslaught of more than 30 way too fast vehicles and you have yourself the newest EA addition to the long running series: Need For Speed Most Wanted; and it doesn’t disappoint.
Gameplay:
Surprisingly Most Wanted boasts quite an impressive career mode that doesn’t tire easily and has you wanting to keep moving up the ranks of the Blacklist to extract your revenge, more-so than the fame and bragging rights of just being the best street racer in the city.
You arrive in Rockport with your BMW that has been customized and tweaked way too fast for your own good. You are greeted with some street racers and leave them in your dust quite easily with your overpowering car and way too much nitrous that shouldn’t (and probably isn’t) legal. Eventually a local cop who obviously thinks he knows better pulls you over and gets ready to arrest you while explaining how he owns the streets. While you are about to hand over the keys to your prized possession, he gets an announcement on his radio of a pack of racers causing havoc and is forced to head off after them, letting you go with a stern warning to leave. Of course he keys the side of your car as he walks away, making you cringe to the sound of it, just to make you spite his evilness that much more. You then meet up with the local racers and are introduced to Mia, who seems to want to help you and warns you about the crowd here in Rockport and to be careful. The apparent leader of the group; Razor, explains that if you want to race against a Blacklist racer, you have to earn it and put the pink slip to your ride on the line, which is why no one is stupid enough to do it. You give your pink slip to Mia, so does Razor, and the race is on after a few cheesy lines about him boasting to stealing your ride, then your girl.
Things are going your way during the race and then you get a call from Mia telling you something must be wrong with your car, since you left a lot of oil back at the starting line and if the race isn’t finished quickly, you are going to lose. As fate would have it, your engine blows and you lose the race very abruptly. Razor tows away your ride, and the cops come to arrest you for your wreckless driving.
You find out that Razor had his lackeys sabotage your car before the race, and that he tipped off the cops to get your car and you in jail. To make matters even worse, he has gone from #15 on the Blacklist to the #1 spot, in your car! This is where the career mode begins as you work your way up the blacklist to challenge Razor to obtain your revenge and win your car back. Now that you have no car and very limited money, you must scrape your way up from the bottom and work your way up to the most dangerous and notorious racer in the city.
The Blacklist is a simple yet effective system of progression. For the opportunity to race a blacklist racer, you must have a prerequisite amount of challenges and a certain value of bounty on your head by the city’s police force. There are two different types of challenges; races, which include circuits, sprints, speed traps, tollbooths, and drag races, and then the more interesting portion of challenges are the milestones, which are all cop related and will have you attempting different goals such as “tagging” or scraping paint with a certain amount of cops, outrunning the police for a set amount of time, destroying enough squad cars, or even obtain a certain amount of dollar value damage to the state by crashing into poles, buildings, trees and the likes. Milestone events will earn you bounty dependant on how long you are being pursued for, the amount of damage you cause, how many infractions you rack up; which can vary from excessive speeding to hit and runs, and the heat level on your car. Obviously the longer you are being chased and the more dangerous things you do, the higher your bounty gets, but also the chances of being caught and the aggression level of the police gets turned up as well.
Your “heat” level is basically the cops’ gauge of how dangerous and wanted to them you are. The cops keep track of your heat levels for your individual cars and they will respond accordingly. The higher your heat level, the more intense and severe their techniques for attempting to stop you will be. Heat level one isn’t really a challenge, as usually it’s just normal police cars driven by simpletons that can be evaded and taken out quickly, but once you reach the higher heat levels of four or five, you will have a slew of twenty plus police chasing you, range rovers that can roll your car, helicopters that will follow your position, and even the federal cop from the beginning of the game in his extremely overpowered Corvette C6 that will use any means necessary to stop you ranging from road spikes and even rolling road blocks that are almost impossible to avoid.
Luckily you do have some tricks up your sleeve to help you when needing to take turns at way too fast speeds or gain some distance from the relentless maniacs behind you; Speed Breakers and Pursuit Breakers. In essence, a Speed Breaker feels like bullet-time for your car which will help you slide through exceptionally unyielding turns, right yourself out of a fishtail, avoiding traffic in hectic intersections, or even guide yourself under a moving 18-wheeler. Using this feature does slow you down when you stop using it, but usually it’s overall quicker than hitting the wall and having to use your nitrous to speed back up. Pursuit Breakers are markers set on a building, power line poles, towers, gas stations, or even scaffolding that when sped through, it will collapse; causing the police to either be destroyed if they are in close proximity to you, or making them stop to observe the situation and call for backup while you speed away at leisure. Nothing is more satisfying and ironic than multiple police that are constantly on your tail trying to wreck you, being crushed by a giant doughnut sign as you get away freely.
Now when you do complete the needed challenges and achieve the needed bounty, you are ready to challenge the next blacklist racer, with pink slips to both cars up for grabs of course. Most Blacklist races are usually 2 circuit or spring races, but get more diverse as you progress in the story. One thing I found was that the “boss” racers usually aren’t all that amazing until you reach the #5th racer or so. They seem to make a lot of mistakes that a player wouldn’t do, like running into all of the light posts or seemingly swerving into traffic when there was no reason to. When a blacklist racer is defeated, you are presented with 6 markers; 3 of which you can see, which are usually unique paint jobs or parts that try to tempt you away from picking from the other 3 unknown markers that can be bonus cash, get-out-of-jail-free cards that you can bank, impound cards to get your cars back from the state that have been caught, or if your very lucky, the pink slip to the adversary’s car.
Once you move yourself up the ranks a few notches, you will notice quite quickly how fast these cars can get. Of course if you win a Blacklist racer’s vehicle, you do save quite a lot of money that you would normally have to spend upgrading the stock cars that unlock as you progress. On any car though, you can get numerous different visual parts and performance upgrades which is slightly different than most games, where you really can tell the difference between various different levels in upgrades. Got way too much heat on your car but want to keep using it without having to worry about your car being spotted so easily? Upgrade your visual car parts such as body kits, spoilers, roof scoops, rims, vinyls, or even a new coat of specialty paint. Doing so reduces your heat, dependant on how drastic the visual change on your car, but for a cost. On the performance side of upgrades, there are four levels of upgrades that can exceptionally improve your ride and you will notice the change even on the lower upgrades. What EA has done though to coax you into playing longer is making the highest and best upgrades only unlockable once you achieve a certain rank yourself on the blacklist. It’s rewarding and works well to make you want to move up the list rather than deter you from hoarding obscene amounts of cash early on in the game.
Like most racers, there will always be the cars that just plain suck and you don’t want as you start out, but as you get further in the career mode, while there may not be plenty of choices of different rides, you are rewarded with awesome vehicles; almost a ‘quality over quantity’ approach. For example you can unlock the new Mustang GT, an RX-8, different Mitsubishi’s, even a Lamborghini once you reach the top few spots of the blacklist, and you quickly forget about the Chevy Cobalt you started off with.
Since you do make money every race, and with every Blacklist race, having the shot to win a free car, you not only obtain a decent amount of cash, but you will come along Impound markers If (and when) you get caught by the police, your car will get impounded, and you can either pay the fines that you have been racking up (which is an obscene amount at later levels with high heat), or if you have them saved, can use the impound markers that you may have one from winning a Blacklist race which will get your car back into your possession.
Another cool feature is that there are plenty of little shortcuts everywhere for you to shave seconds off your race time or to try and pull ahead of that rival. Sometimes they can be very helpful and give you a much needed head start against the other racers, and other times it may be harder, where you might have to come out of a secret tunnel or p@!%#*!age, but have to take a very sharp turn to get back onto the road, ultimately slowing you down. The fact that the other racers can and will use the shortcuts as well makes it feel more like you are racing a person and not just a scripted racer since they will not always go the same way every time. In pursuit modes, shortcuts are absolutely needed when trying to evade that last cruiser or two, and pulling into alleys or turns at the last second is sometimes what’s needed to fool the cops so you have those few more seconds to get away.
One great thing EA has also done is litter the streets with destructible objects like light posts, garbage cans, cardboard boxes, fruit carts, and many other items that when ran into, will either fall over and cause an obstruction for racers behind you or simply explode and makes the race feel much like a chase movie. The only problem I have with these things are that you can hit a row of trees or light posts for example, and while it does slightly slow you down, there’s hardly any consequences for driving that badly as you don’t slow down very much. Do this in a blacklist race or a pursuit and that’s a completely different story, but during regular races, it almost seems too easy at times. The catch to some of these objects, are that not all of them are destructible, and are usually placed in crucial spots around turns that will make you dead stop and make you wish you did upgrade to that next level of nitrous. It doesn’t always make sense why you can completely crash through a row of light posts, yet hit the wrong sidewalk that you aren’t ‘supposed’ to go up onto, and it simply doesn’t allow you, much like invisible walls in other games.
While there is an online mode, it feels just thrown in and nothing exceptional. With only an attention to purely racing, there are many features that could have made the online simply amazing. You and three friends can team up online and race your custom career mode cars against each other to see who the top racer is, or go into random ranked games and earn your worth online. An impressive feature that EA added to the online mode was a real life Blacklist that tracks the top 15 most dangerous racers in the world. There are many filters that you can choose to search or create games such as a ‘incomplete races’ or disconnect percentage, or even collision modes should you want to rub paint with the other racers or see who can simply get to the end first. This tends to eliminate many of the “jerks” that we’ve all come to loathe and create a much more pleasant environment. Of course if you want on the real Blacklist, you need to play ranked games, and those filters are pre-set and people will do anything it takes to win.
With an ample selection of vehicles and a terrific sense of speed, the fact that the single player mode has more than 15 hours of gameplay that doesn’t even count the hours of unplanned cop pursuits, additional races to get cash for that final upgrade you want, or even the daunting milestones needed to race people high on the Blacklist, is quite a treat and doesn’t seem to grow dull very quickly with its high replay value.
Visuals:
With 720p or 1080i enabled, the game simply looks extremely sharp and crisp with a constant 30FPS. The lighting will bend and deform on the cars curves, as will the shadows that makes it have a realistic feel to it visually as you p@!%#*! under some overlaying trees or go through a tunnel. They also seemed to have put in HDR lighting, as when you do come out of a tunnel, it gives you a moment of bright light as if your eyes were adjusting to the brightness difference like in real life. Driving into the sun directly will make it very difficult to see what’s ahead of you and even getting glimmer off the shine of the adversary ahead of you.
As mentioned above, when debris is ran into it can either tip over and fall causing distracting sparks, or explode if it’s a garbage can or boxes. Even at later levels of the Blacklist when you have literally a dozen or two police chasing you, there seems to be almost no slowdown that’s very apparent.
Obviously you can’t tell when speeding and racing, but if you look at the roads and ground when stopped, you can see that the pavement has cracks and can even appear wet when it’s not. It doesn’t just look like the typical pavement either that has the repeating cracks in the same places either.
EA has opted to present the cut-scenes to gamers in a fashionable way that hasn’t been around for awhile. While games now will rarely have the pre-made FMV movies and do everything with the in-game engine, we are treated to some cl@!%#*!ic style movies that we grew up with. Interestingly it’s not at all cheesy (the visuals, not the script) and looks quite unique. The actors were filmed and then many different filters were used to give it almost a comic book feel where you sometimes can’t tell if it’s CG or if it’s real people. It’s very incomparable to anything else, but it brings a certain charm to the plot line. The only letdown being is that there aren’t enough of the videos throughout the game. They are not needed to progress the story, but they are amusing to watch.
Sound:
Each car sounds authentic, and when you do upgrade to that bigger engine or strap on the nitrous, you can even hear the difference of the performance in your car. The Mustang GT frankly just sounds mean, and when you finally hear the Lamborghini’s take off from the start line, you can just catch the difference that the sounds of the different motors make.
Easily the most noteworthy sound feature the game has is the police. If a cop sees you, you will hear them on the radio communicating to each other the whole time they are chasing you. You overhear their plans to try and box you in, or set up roadblocks and can change your choice of direction accordingly. Once you can decode the police’ codes of the plan of action they are going to take against you, you will be able to figure out of they have laid road spikes to stop you, or if they are just calling for backup to help take you down. The police jabber sounds genuine and they constantly discuss your location and their best plan of action to arrest you.
In the movie sequences, the acting seems to sometimes be over the top, but they do play the parts very well. With some of the one-liners, it sometimes does sound very cheesy, but you forget this once you’re back into the adrenaline fueled racing. Unfortunately for me, much like the last two of the series, there was no songs that I really enjoyed at all, though fans of the previous soundtracks should enjoy it, though with the 360’s media player this isn’t really even a concern though.
Closing Comments:
It’s a shame that you can only race in the daytime and not at night like the Underground series, since when I think of illegal street racing; I don’t normally picture it mid-day in the middle of a city or freeway. The best feature that EA could have added was a pursuit mode online where players could be police or racers, but instead the online seems bland and if it wasn’t for the real online Blacklist, there wouldn’t be much point to playing online other than against your friends.
While the game’s name; Need for Speed, may fool you in the beginning when you have a slow-moving car without nitrous, once you start earning some cash, win some cars, and then upgrade them, you will not be disappointed.
The real thrills come from the police chases, the close calls, the Speed Breakers to escape past a two-row line roadblock of SUV’s, flipping a cruiser car off a ramp then speeding away to escape, and taking the huge jumps that reward you with a glorious slow-mo view of your car taking flight complete with ‘speed lines’ behind you.
Surprisingly for a racer, the game has an in-depth story mode that makes you keep wanting to move up the blacklist and prove yourself against the rivals and the cops that you are the most dangerous racer in the city.
EA has done a wonderful job creating an accelerated experience where you get to race your way-too-expensive vehicle at speeds that will have a whole police force after you in attempts to stop you. The game is challenging and has a high replay value while looking great and effortlessly being enjoyable at the same time.
Need For Speed Most Wanted does not disappoint and is a remarkable addition to the welcomed series. If you are looking for something entertaining wheather it be for long haul races to move your ranking up the Blacklist, or to simply tease the police while having them pursuing you, this game should be one of your Most Wanted.
Overall: 8.2
Gameplay: 8.3
Visual: 8.0
Sound: 8.4
Overall Score: 8.2 / 10
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Marc Ecko's Getting Up
Overall: Intro:
Mark Ecko’s Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure takes many different game elements and combines them into one. You get the Graffiti gameplay that Jet Set Radio pioneered, similar acrobatic skills much like Prince of Persia, and you are even given some stealth moves and kills to go along with a game enriched with Hip-hop culture. Great ideas when put together on paper, but execution is much more complicated it seems to excel further than average.
Gameplay:
You are Trane, a gifted guy that wants to make a name for himself and become a legend graffiti artist. New Radius is your home, which could relate to a slightly futuristic New York City. Opposing gangs will constantly get in your path, causing you to take them out so you can freely tag your name. Tough times call for tough measures, and you will even have the Civil Conduct Keepers (CCK) doing anything they can to annihilate you for good, which are basically like police with a license to do whatever necessary to put an end to all graf writers.
Obviously the focus of the game is the graffiti tagging and the culture it has, as this is what your main goals to accomplish are. You are given different tools that will be used depending on the king of tag, how big, where it is, and what style you want it to look. Basic markers, spray-paint, stencils, and even a squeegee-like broom to glue your banners onto things is how you are going to get New Radius to recognize who you are.
Your black book is your bible; this is where graf writers practice their tags and art, and if given the opportunity to meet a legend, where they will sign their tag. Before you go into a mission, you can decide what tags you want to bring in your black book this time for variety, since you only have a certain amount of slots of choices in any given mission.
When you see a surface like a wall, window, billboard, or even side of a building, you are able to freely tag your name how ever many times you wish, in different colors and styles…almost. For some reason, there are certain walls and fixtures that simply don’t allow you to tag there, which doesn’t make much sense considering the premise of the game. Numerous times I’ve been denied of not being able to ink my name on a bench or somewhere obscure which really felt like it took away something from character, since he’s so ambitious and wants to get his name everywhere.
With the press of a button, you can active your ‘Instinct’ which will show you gold and blue vapors that point you to where you want to make your mark. With the gold ones being your primary targets for the missions, and blue for bonus missions and points. Now that you are standing in front of your marked X, a white outline of a design will show on the surface, and from your black book, you can decide what art you want to showcase. When it’s a simple just “Trane” tag, you can pick the color and design, but when it’s a bigger marker or in certain spots, you are given a choice of some pre-determined art where you don’t really get to pick the color scheme. More art becomes unlocked as you progress through the game, and in the later parts where you are literally tagging a whole banner or side of a building, the art is quite a piece to admire. Bonus missions also come in the form as simple tasks like tagging a certain wall 10 times within a set amount of time. The more missions you complete, the higher your Rep becomes.
Now that you are in position to start your tagging, you actually have to make Trane do the motions, not just a simple button press. You actually have to move his arm up, down, left and right to fill within the borders and complete your art. Much like using spray-paint in real life; if you don’t keep moving as you spray, you will get drips in your art which then take away from your total score. In time you never really get drips after you learn the form of spraying properly, although the controls for doing so on the PC were quite tiresome in the later levels with much stricter time limits.
One huge downfall of the whole graffiti aspect of the game is that you can not make your own art and tags. You are forced to layer the city in “Trane” tags and art that you may not possibly appeal to. A game about freeform and expressing yourself, yet you can only pick a few different styles and colors. This is one of the reasons that it felt almost like completely no reason to replay the game upon completion, I just had no desire to see TRANE plastered everywhere. If it could have something of my own choosing, or any kind of customization, it may have had a longer life left in it.
People generally don’t kindly take to you vandalizing their property, and in a large part of the game, you are fighting your way out of a tough predicament, or against rival gangs and the CCK. You are given your basic punch and kicks, with many combinations in between; you also can roll, block, and grapple your enemies. You can even embarr@!%#*! adversaries by using your spray paint in their face to get the needed time to rest up or start another flurry of attacks.
If you grapple with someone, you can rapidly press the punch and kick buttons to try and get the upper hand from which you can go into combos, or even throw them into oncoming traffic or trains for easy kills. If you are patient enough, you can attempt to go for stealth kills, where if you are not seen and come behind someone, you can get a one-hit kill by slamming them over the head with a can of your paint. Since usually not many enemies hang around solo, once you are uncovered, you are left to fend for yourself against the rest of the bad guys.
To reach many distant sweet spots for tagging, you are going to need to be intuitive and figure out how to get up to that billboard when there is no ladder. This has you jumping caps, climbing ledges, shimmying across balance beams, hanging over ledges and slowly crawling much like a Tomb Raider setup of controls. Much like most platformers, you will run into areas what you should be able to jump across or grab onto, but you simply wont as it was not the designed path to take to get to the area you need. Frustration can set in easily just because you didn’t see that one pipe that you needed to climb in the corner, rather than you trying to jump impossible gaps.
Perhaps the greatest example of the most enjoyable portions of the games controls would be a level where you need to graf the sides of a moving subway train, and yes, you are riding it on the roof and sides, not the comfort of the seats within. Having to switch sides, lean against the side of the subway, and duck on the roof to avoid being knocked off by the pillars screaming by you, all when you need to complete your tag within the time limit as well. It can feel very rewarding at times, and completely frustrating at others, though a Keyboard and Mouse were simply not meant to play this game, you need a console version, or joypad to get the most ease of use out of it and avoid much disappointment.
Visuals:
The graffiti in the game simply looks astonishing, and the fact that all the pieces are done by real graf artists even further enhance the fact that this is a very gritty environment. Your tags can look great, or if you drip a lot while painting can look like something you’d rather no one see.
New Radius looks gritty and downtown urban, but even more importantly, it feels like it as well. Dark filters and the graf all around you from other people really bring you into the world and truly make you think it is the slums.
The cutscenes feel very unique and tell the story while painting the picture (no pun intended) clearly for you. The art style and storytelling really makes you feel like you connect with Trane. Though the gameplay graphics may not be up to par with many of the bigger titles out there, it does it’s job and immerses you into Trane’s world filled with fear and culture.
Sound:
Easily the strong point of the game, the soundtrack and voice acting are almost unparallel by anything else out there. You have actual hip-hop talent like Talib Kweli (Who also voices Trane), Rakim, Eric B, Mobb Deep, Pharoahe Monch and some other big names as well. A notable feature as well is that not only is great music put into the experience, but they are all played at carefully selected portions of the game so you don’t hear the same song over and over wishing you had your own music playing in the background.
With an in-game iPod player, you can also pick and choose your favorite songs to hear while playing as well; the only feature missing from this is actually loading an MP3 folder on your PC, or play list from your Xbox.
The voice acting is more than your typical B grade talent saying their few lines of dialogue that you are forced to listen to throughout the game. The script is quite clever and the lines are not cheesy that usually make you roll your eyes. Talib Kweli does the honors of Trane’s voice and makes it sound authentic and MC Serch does Trane’s rival Gabe. Looking into the credits, other actual big names such as P. Ditty, Charlie Murphy, Giovanni Ribisi, and even Adam West, yes, Batman, grace the cast list as well.
Sound effects are also more than your usual “bang” and “crash” noises. As you tag walls and use your aerosol, you can hear it spraying, and as you refill and shake the can, you can even hear that as well. Using a simple marker on the wall even gives you that squeak that new markers do. Combat sounds are deep and feel very powerful because of it, and doing a combo into someone’s face makes you bite your lip from the sounds of it alone.
Should you opt for the extra $10 and purchase the Limited Edition of the game, which you should since there’s many extras, you will also get the soundtrack of the game that even has music that isn’t in the game portion, but made for the title from other famous artists as well.
Closing Comments:
With an average 12 to 15 hours of gameplay, there are many unlockables to obtain such as new tags, songs, and fight moves. Unfortunately, due to the lack of being unable to incorporate your own art into the game, there isn’t much incentive to spray TRANE all over the city again. Sure I would put probably something profane or toilet words, but something that simple as even editing the words, would have added much more.
The camera work gives a very cinematic feel and Trane is simply just an awesome character that develops and you find yourself enjoying him much more as the game progresses. The only thing that kept coming to mind was everything gameplay related was very average and didn’t stand out as a champion of its own. Very unique idea and concept to compile all these different styles into one, but just doesn’t seem to exceptionally shine in one unfortunately. .
Splurge for the Limited Edition to get a quality soundtrack, a silver sharpie to start your own graf all over your own city, and your own black book to record all your art, the big shiny looking box also is a bonus too.
Overall:7.73 Gameplay:6.5 Visual:7.5 Sound:9.2
Overall Score: 7.3 / 10
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Burnout Revenge
Overall: Intro:
The substance to Burnout is easy: Drive way too fast, drive dangerously against traffic, crash into everything, and take down your opponents any way possible. Criterion has proved that you can take a current-generation game and do more than the regular 360-coat-of-paint and call it a new game.
Improvements of features, additions of new ones, incredible high definition visuals, very detailed sound effects, a lengthy single player, and a very addicting online mode proves that it’s more than just a port. For those that have had the game already on Xbox or PS2, the question is: is it still worth buying again?
Gameplay:
First: the new features that were given to the Xbox 360 version.
Previously in Crash modes at the starting line, you had a golf swing bar that you had to get perfectly if you wanted the best possible crashes, since it was what your starting boost speed was based upon. This usually led to many restarts and frustration, just to get that faster boost you need to rack up the crash values. This whole feature has been scrapped thankfully for the much easier racing start where you have max speed regardless. This allows you to focus more on your correct path to crash paradise and raking in the demolition.
After every event you finish in single player, it automatically goes into a full replay of your whole race. From here you can skip, fast-forward, and rewind to where the most action happened, and then record a 30 second clip of it. Think your explosion looked amazing, or that taken had to be seen to be believed? Xbox Live allows you to show the world your replay, which in turn can be voted and if it’s awesome enough, be showcased in the Top 20 clips for all to see. With that being one of the achievements as well, you better remember to record every awesome thing to prove it. Sadly, you don’t get much control over the camera, and sometimes the camera will change just as you want it to be facing somewhere else, missing some of the action. One interesting feature as well to this, is that when you do upload and share your clip, you can then send a message to a friend, or your whole friend list, which theoretically all of your friends would watch your clip and vote it for you. After 2 or 3 messages of “Check out my awesome Burnout Clip!” it gets old very fast, and there isn’t a simple 1-button way of viewing it either. You need to go to the main menu, then Clips, then View clips, then your friends list (which is a pain since it is done alphabetically, even if they don’t own the game), and then find it, view it, then save or recommend it.
The saving grace feature of this enhanced version of Burnout is easily the Live Revenge. It works simply and will have you up very late some nights trying to extract that sweet revenge on the player that somehow keeps taking you out every chance. Revenge is simple; you take someone out and you are then essentially a takedown up on them, take them out even more times and it keeps track of those too. In the lobby when you are waiting for the host to start the race or crash mode, it clearly shows you how many takedowns you are up or down with someone. If you are ahead on takedowns, there is a green yield-like icon with the number of times you have taken them out. If someone has taken you out, it will be red and show the embarr@!%#*!ing number instead, usually with the person har@!%#*!ing you about it, making revenge that much sweeter when you take them out.
At the start of an online race the camera will do a flyby of the points leader (World ranking or room depending on ranked or player matches), then if you have any, rivals will be pointed out as well so you know exactly who to gun for and try to take out. Red names above the cars means they have takedowns on you and you should try your best to make them crash to get your retaliation. If their name shows green, that means you have taken them out and they are going to do everything they can to make you eat wall, barriers, busses, or oncoming car hoods. Obviously, some of the achievements are based on this which vary from taking one person out 5 times in a row, all the way to making someone your arch rival by taking them out over 100 times! Needless to say, this adds a huge amount of replay since EA tracks everyone you’ve ever taken out or been taken out by; meaning that days or weeks later, someone may come into your lobby that you never got a chance to tangle with since they took you out, or vice versa.
While these features don’t look like much on their own, also include more Xbox 360 exclusive race tracks and crash junctions on top of the regular game. If you are new to the series, Burnout Revenge offers more than your regular racing game.
Rather than your standard race point A to point B, include rivals that are going to be trying to not only push you into traffic, but also slam you into walls and take you out by landing on top of your car. If you don’t drive against traffic, narrowly miss slamming head on, check same-way vehicles, drift corners at speeds more than 200mph, take jumps, and takedown your combatants, you will not get the boost required to finish in first place, making this a much more adrenaline based racer.
While there may only be half a dozen or so tracks, that does not include the small variants of each, and the forwards or reverse on them as well. Different paths and shortcuts change completely if you are doing a course forwards or reverse and feels very different from the others as shortcuts are what you need to learn if you want to stay ahead of the competition. One flaw that isn’t apparent at first until you put numerous hours into the same tracks over reputedly is that tracks have a preset traffic pattern. This means that the more you learn the bends and curves of a race; you will also learn that the same bus that you keep crashing into on that one hairpin turn is there every single time. While you don’t notice it all too much, as usually other things are on your mind, like the person rubbing your rear bumper trying to take you out, or concentrating on the upcoming corners to keep your place, it does seem like a large oversight to not have random traffic patterns.
Other racing variants include Road Rage which pits 2 teams against each other. Essentially a cat and mouse game where one team chases and tries to take them out, while the other has a set amount of distance needed to cross while not being taken out by the opposing team that usually has permanent boost to even things up. This mode can get very entertaining and white knuckled, especially when you accidentally take out a fellow teammate.
One of the new features that Burnout Revenge brought us was Traffic Checking which allows you to now hit traffic going the same way as you as long as they are not busses and large vans, and then using those like bullets to send opponents crashing or into the pileup ahead that you caused. The single player mode of this is called Traffic Attack in where you need to basically hit enough cars and do an adequate amount of damage to meet goal. Causing large pileups, getting crash combos, and even trick shots across other lanes help you reach your goal, but generally it’s somewhat boring and not challenging at all.
The crash modes are the most unique events that Criterion brings to the table in this series. You are given an overview flyby of the intersection or overp@!%#*! that you will be hurling yourself towards, usually showing just a hint of where the biggest crashes need to take place, or what jumps to hit to meet your goals. You pick your vehicle of destruction, and every car, truck and van has rating of Speed, Force, and Weight for you to decide whether you need to quickly crash into something to stop the flow of traffic, or get there slower but cause more destruction with a heavier vehicle. As mayhem occurs with automobiles piling up, your crash breaker meter slowly fills up and when it is at 100% full, you have to hit the B button as fast as possible to explode your car, which in turn sets in motion more carnage and the possibility of filling the meter again. Online crash junctions don’t give you a fly-over preview like single player, so if you don’t know the tracks by name, or can’t react quickly enough your score will be lacking compared to others. The other new crash mode that was added to Revenge was Crash Battle, that pits you and up to 5 others online all heading for the same intersection at the same time from different roads or angles for some truly huge devastation.
Usually when a racing game has the “rubber-band effect” included that makes it impossible to keep a distinct lead, its not welcomed very well, though in Burnout it would not be the same game without it. The game is designed so that you are constantly battling for your position with racers trying to take you out any chance possible. As the game progresses, the AI does become more aggressive and will infuriate you more, but they are still no match for playing on Xbox Live against real competitors.
EA has done a wonderful job of making you want to go to your favorite retailer with your memory card as well when you pick up their game. If you have an Xbox 360 memory card and the retailer has the proper demo disk in the interactive system, you can download an Xbox 360 car to race in your game as well as a theme for your dashboard. Unfortunately at this time, EA has noted that the downloaded car does not work at the moment, but Burnout Revenge will be patched shortly in the future to allow it to be unlocked.
Visual:
A high definition TV with 720p is what’s needed to really see the difference between this version and the Xbox or PS2. Much crisper colors, more sparks, and more debris on the tracks really are shown off in its glory. Surprisingly for an ample boost in the graphics, the loading time does not suffer all that much more than the Xbox version. Burnout emphasizes on great frame rate and impression of speed, but lacks neither.
Region specific damage is just another feature that has been added to immerse you in the experience. Always rub the walls on a single side of your car and only that side will look like it’s been thrashed, leaving the other perfectly fine. While by itself doesn’t seem like that much, also make note that much more detail has been given to the whole car designs, such as being able to see the treads on tires as well.
Your surroundings have also been looked into with much more detail. Much sharper textures, great effects when making contact with others vehicles and simple debris littering the track adds much more than the previous versions. As you crash, and you will, your car will deform much more and more spare parts will be flung around the track as well. When using a crash breaker, it simply just looks and feels more mean and explosive with car parts being considerably blasted apart with the screen shaking to further emphasize its m@!%#*!iveness.
While the cars may not be licensed, many of them you can tell what they are supposed to be, and the ones that aren’t, you wish were real cars simply due to how cool they appear.
Sound:
With surround sound, you will hear the slightest bumps from your opponent on all directions and the roaring engine of you shifting gears while your tires squeal from that obscenely long sliding drift you took around the bend between two busses that are honking their horns at you. As your turbo boost kicks in, it sounds very distinct, almost like a jet taking off, and with a great sub you will feel it as well.
As you use your Crash Breaker, you can hear the subtle intake hiss, like it’s charging up, before the huge rumbling explosion. As parts of cars and vans fall from the sky, you will hear them fall to the pavement as well as the other vehicles screeching their brakes to avoid the inevitable collision.
The music is along the same lines as Burnout 3’s genre of music and is quite catchy. While there isn’t much for genre variety, I didn’t find many songs that I was constantly skipping past, though loading your own play list is always preferred as usual.
Closing Comments:
With more features than other games ported to the Xbox 360, it’s refreshing to see that more content was added other than the usual graphic overhaul and addition of achievements.
Live Revenge doesn’t make Burnout a completely new game, but the enjoyment you will get from taking out ‘that annoying kid’ we all loathe on Xbox Live will be more satisfying than any achievement you could accomplish otherwise.
If you have already played Burnout Revenge on the Xbox or PS2 and are contemplating to get it for the 360, you will want it if: you never got around to completing it, now have the TV and sound system to showcase the added features, are addicted to achievements, solely buy games for their online components, or love Burnout A LOT. If you never have played Burnout, you need this version to see what a true arcade racer with exciting online action is all about.
While it’s still a hard sell to recommend the purchase if you already own it for the Xbox or PS2, with the new features, you will be up to the wee hours of the morning trying to extract your revenge or move your World Rank up even higher. Kudos to Criterion for making a truly excellent port of a current generation game to the Xbox 360 by raising the bar others may not have done.
Overall 8.9
Gameplay: 8.9
Visual: 8.3
Sound: 9.5
Overall Score: 8.9 / 10
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BioShock
Overall: BioShock For Xbox 360
Opening:
It’s not very often that a game comes along that almost everyone can agree is a required play experience for any gamer that brings together all game elements so perfectly. Bioshock is more than a very attractive FPS, it also has a blend of RPG elements where you can customize your character and weapons to anything you choose.
With a very engrossing story, amazing visuals, incredible sound and enough scary moments that you care to admit, the plot has a much more emotional impact than an explosive one.
Story:
Bioshock’s primary focus is the engrossing story, and it’s done extremely well with intertwining story lines conveyed through radio messages and old audio logs that you find while searching around the city.
Its 1960, your plane crashes in the ocean, you are the lone survivor and the game begins with you swimming along your plane wreckage as you see a lighthouse off in the distance. It actually took a few moments to realize you are playing, and not watching a CG intro movie
Rapture; masterminded by Andrew Ryan, is a city set under the Atlantic Ocean, and as to progress, you discover why the idea of the city as failed and is trashed, and why there are Splicers out to kill you. You are kept on track to Bioshock’s plot with always letting you know where to go with onscreen arrows and a top down map that shows where you have and haven’t been. Audio diaries are scattered everywhere and explain Rapture’s back-story, its citizens and their personal tales. Instead of having a convoluted story with details from many citizens, it focuses more on in-depth stories from just a few, that also seem to intertwine and unfold the cities history and what went so wrong. Hearing all these stories unfold makes the city seem much more alive, which is ironic being that the majority of everyone is dead. While you are not forced to listen to all these audio diaries, doing so will unravel all the main characters back story and more details about the main plot.
Genetic tinkering is possible with a substance called ADAM which can give the user incredible powers called plasmids. This invaluable resource is only able to be harvested by Little Sisters who use an exaggerated sized needle into dead victims. These Gatherers are then in turn protected by guardians called Big Daddy’s who will fight to the death to protect the little sisters. Big Daddy’s come in two flavors: Bouncers and Rosie’s. Bouncers have a drill on their arm, are very intimidating in size and sound, and will rush at you before you can even move out of the way should you make him mad or try and get too close to the Little Sisters. Rosie’s don’t seem as menacing from their look, but they have a very large gun that can make quick work of you if you don’t take them out quickly.
This is where the games moral dilemma comes into play. Do you harvest the Little Sisters for more ADAM, or save them for less and be their hero; thus making the game a bit more challenging. Both choices have benefits and consequences and with 3 different endings, these choices will play out to the story as well.
As the plot unravels and you find out what exactly has caused Rapture into its current state, you will be surprised with moments of shock and awe as plot twists keep you guessing and thinking of why events have happened in this fashion.
Gameplay:
You start off with limited slots to customize different key traits of your character, but this increased as the story progresses and you purchase more with your ADAM collection at specified locations in the game after dealing with the Guardians of Little Sisters.
Plasmids are active powers that you genetically enhance yourself with. Electricity will shock your enemies and stun them for a short duration as you proceed to fill them with your weapons’ ammo. Incinerate will engulf your enemy in flames, slowing draining their health, but can also | |
