Soundtracks are incredibly unappreciated throughout all games. Some soundtracks can be amazing, while some can be only mediocre. Here is a list of some of the more fantastic soundtracks the Xbox Team has ran into throughout the Xbox 360’s life span. Music/rhythm games are excluded.
The new trailer for the upcoming Goldeneye remake on the Wii focuses on how the writers have updated the classic story. While the original N64 game was based on the 1995 Pierce Brosnan film of the same name, this Goldeneye “re-imagining” has been updated to be more relevant to modern gamers. Not only will the game take place in the current socio-economic climate, but it will be replacing Pierce Brosnan’s role as James Bond with Daniel Craig’s version of the character as well. Developers have also revealed that the current worldwide financial crisis will take a more prominent role in the plot, affecting character motivations and interactions.
It’s important to mention when reviewing any Left 4 Dead DLC about what platform it’s on. Valve has been releasing free content for the Left 4 Dead series on PC ever since announcement, but everything that’s been free on the PC has been $7 on Xbox Live. That’s the same case here with the latest DLC for Left 4 Dead 2, The Sacrifice. It’s a piece of DLC for Left 4 Dead 2 that includes both a new 3-segment, 40 minute campaign called The Sacrifice, and including the Left 4 Dead campaign No Mercy in the package as well. That makes this one of the more fully featured DLCs, making it a great deal on the PC. However, if you’re intending to get this on the Xbox 360, it’s best to hold off on the DLC unless you are a hardcore Left 4 Dead fan.
I hadn’t played the original Lost Planet so when I started up Lost Planet 2 I didn’t know what to expect. As I explored this game I found that it holds a series of pros and cons that make it an above-average action game at best. The plot is fairly simplistic, with nameless soldiers from several armies (NEVEC, Snow Pirates, Jungle Pirates, Mercenaries, Waysiders and Carpetbaggers) fighting each other or the resident aliens(Akrid) on a planet named E.D.N. III for Thermal Energy, an energy source that is used for a variety of purposes, from powering Vital Suits (resident mechs) to healing. This Thermal Energy constantly drains and must be collected to prevent the ticker from hitting zero, where the player will begin to suffer damage. This apparently made sense in a frozen wasteland that was the setting in the first game, but the same conventions are maintained in Lost Planet 2 despite the fact that most of the missions are in hot or temperate climates.
Guitar Hero is one of the pioneers of the modern rhythm game. Before Guitar Hero, rhythm based gaming was purely a niche market and most developers refused to take on the added cost of plastic peripherals that were necessary to the game. The first Guitar Hero blew the doors off the gaming community and managed to redefine the worth of tiny plastic guitars and simultaneously lower the inhibitions of millions as they bore their souls to the rock gods. Millions of broken whammy bars later, we arrive at the 6th major iteration of the popular franchise. Does this one live up to the spirit of its predecessors?
The same thing has happened again… every time a Halo game comes out, it sells huge. Well, Reach isn’t an exception because it just broke a milestone—it sold 3.3 million copies worldwide and here I am wondering… how? Don’t get me wrong, this is quite nice for Bungie… but as a regular gamer who is enticed by the new and improved, how did they manage to sell Halo Reach to everyone in the world?
Ninja Theory has teamed up with Namco-Bandai in order to remake one of the oldest Chinese folk tales ever written—Journey to the West. The developers took a leap in terms of cinematic presentation and interpretation in order to tell the story in the best way possible, so what happens when a hot red-head and a monkey man team up to fight killer robots? Ironically, you get a pretty competent version of Wu Cheng’en’s work and an incredibly gripping epic that may have evolved story-telling in games.
