Xbox 360 Reviews

Dragon Age II (Xbox 360) Review

Bioware has quickly formed into one of the few companies that no matter what video game they put their name on, it’s guaranteed to be a success. Bioware never fails to deliver an epic, lengthy adventure consisting of many twist and turns but ultimately ending with apropos satisfaction; as is the case with their newest release, the sequel to the massively popular Dragon Age, Dragon Age II.

Dragon Age II is told from the perspective of one of you party members. Varric. He’s been captured and forced to blab up some information about the story of Hawke (which is the main character) and his adventures through the glorious city of Kirkwall. This is a nice way to make the few large time jumps understandable and relevant to the story. The story of Dragon Age II is simply put, incredible. It’s deep, dark, twisty, and as engrossing as any Best Picture nominee at the Oscars. It’s very clearly broken up into three acts, with three separate story arcs looming over all the acts. While the third act is by far the shortest, it is also the best. It seems as if Bioware’s design philosophy for the third act was to not give the player a single second where they wanted to stop playing just because of how intriguing the story is.

Fable III Traitor’s Keep DLC Review

One of the most compelling concepts of Fable III was the fact that you not only had to breath life into a revolution, but then serve as king (or queen) and try to make sure Albion flourished after completing your main quest. But what would happen if someone else tried to start a revolution to dethrone YOU?

That’s the question that the new “Traitor’s Keep” DLC asks. Another one of your brother Logan’s nasty secrets rears its head when while going through your daily duties an assassin makes an attempt on your life right in the throne room! After dispatching the would be killer, you get word from some of your soldiers that an unknown ship is approaching the harbor. 

Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood: The Da Vinci Disappearance DLC review (360)

The Borgia have fallen. Rome has been restored.
There is peace (relatively speaking) at last. Time for Ezio to put his feet up
right? Wrong. The year is 1506, and a new cult has arisen and come
to prominence from the shadows. Known as The Hermeticists, they are the main
antagonists you face in Ubisoft’s newest helping of downloadable content for
its flagship franchise.

Torchlight XBLA Review

In late 2009 Runic Games took the PC Gaming world by storm. Out of what seemed to be nowhere, they introduced an isometric styled RPG named Torchlight that not only drew numerous comparisons to Diablo, but also brought up questions of is it actually better than Diablo. So having played its original PC version, I knew mostly what to expect upon entering the XBLA port of Torchlight. But some questions still remained; would the controls lend themselves to consoles well? As well as would the game look as good as it did on PC?

The biggest question of the two is obviously the one regarding the controls. Would Runic be able to map the PC controls well enough to an Xbox 360 controller where it didn’t feel too much like an obvious port? And the answer to that question is: Mostly. The standard controls such as moving around, attacking, and zooming in and out the camera all work well. Attacking is done simply by holding down the X button, which is nice because having to repeatedly tap a button during a battle would be very tedious and thankfully Runic Games knew that. But once you get into using the abilities, that’s when things can get complicated.

Rango (Xbox 360) Review

EA and developer Behaviour Interactive have teamed up to take the movie Rango to Rango the video game.  We all know how bad movie based games are, but is Behaviour able to make a competent video game that is playable for anyone?  Are they able to make a game that is enjoyable for kids and be equally enjoyable for an older crowd?

Rango takes place after the events of the movie.  You play as a chameleon who is sheriff of a desert town call Dirt.  Rango is in the local salon where he is then approached by one of the towns people that have found a mysteries rock.  Rango then goes on to tell a tale of each time he has encountered one of these stones.  Each tale he tells is broken up as a level in the game.  Almost all of the game is told in the past tense.  Come to find out that these rocks are part of a meteorite that has been spread across the desert.  So you take on the task of collecting these rocks along with trying to catch your nemesis Bad Bill.

Bulletstorm (Xbox 360) Review

There’s
a good chance you’ve already made up your mind regarding a Bulletstorm
purchase, between the lackluster demo and questionable marketing it’s
understandable that some may be put off. The final product is a very well made
shooter and attempts to serve as the antidote for other shooters that are
clogging up the market like a bad infection these days. Bulletstorm doesn’t let
up one bit in its attempts to make every single aspect incredibly over the top,
the dialogue, characters, environments and of course; the weapons are light-years
away from what you would find in any other modern shooter. The action is what
matters here though, and Bulletstorm has some of the most responsive and
satisfying gunplay you’re likely to see in any shooter this year.

The
story in Bulletstorm is surprisingly decent, in the sense that a game called
Bulletstorm has a story and more so because it’s not complete garbage. Granted,
it’s safe to say that it won’t peak any emotions out of you, but it really
works for the game. You’re placed firmly in the boots of Gray, a soldier turned
outlaw that is being hunted by various nasty people. There is a very brief
flashback near the beginning that sets up why your character is on the path
that he is on. You can really take or leave the story in Bulletstorm, but the
characters are done well and give the occasional chuckle and they move the game
along in a way that’s better than just sitting through loading screens.

de Blob 2 (Xbox 360) Review

De Blob 1 was an interesting game upon its Wii only release. It was a very pretty, colorful Wii only game with very little depth or substance, and the sales numbers showed that. De Blob developers Blue Tongue Entertainment have decided to expand their colorful game onto the Xbox 360 and PS3 with the latest installment de Blob 2 in hopes of better sales numbers. Will this risk pay off? I don’t know what the answer will be but I know what it should be.

You start off de Blob 2 as de Blob (obviously) and you realize that… the gray guy… made things gray. Or something. Story is by no means an integral part to the de Blob experience. It’s mostly just a means to deliver cute little cutscenes that usually involve a blob getting hurt. After all the towns are gray, you must embark on your journey to suck up color and paint the town with your body.

Bejeweled Blitz Live Review

Bejeweled Blitz Live is a port of Bejeweled Blitz for Facebook and PC.  Popcap games have come up with some very exciting and addicting games like Plants vs. Zombies and Peggle.  But do they have the ability to take their formula for match three gaming and make them fun and addicting again?  Are they able to make the player feel like he is experiencing something new and not just throwing out another version of Bejeweled?       

As soon as you start up Bejeweled Blitz Live you will notice how the game is geared more towards multiplayer.   The game supports up to 16 player party mode, where all the players play at the same time on their own board.  The person with the highest score wins at the end of the round.  At the time of this review I was not able to find an online multiplayer match.  I could not even find a quick match to join.  Luckily there is local battle where two players go head to head to see who can get the highest score.  The local battle is fun as long as you are playing against somebody that is not new to this version of the game.

Hard Corps Uprising Review

If
you take a minute to consider the current state of the gaming industry, it’s
quite amazing that a game like Hard Corps: Uprising has come out. This is a
game rooted neck deep in the older days of gaming that began in arcades. All
the trademarks of that era are present in this game; a vertical learning curve,
brutal checkpoints, severe penalties and borderline broken mechanics. The
question is though; does this still make for an entertaining game in 2011?
Well, I’m going to get to that now as answering that question depends on a ton
of other elements.

Firstly,
the difficulty in this game is absolutely nuts. When you first start out you
will curse at your X-Box like you were back in an arcade in the days of
Pac-Man. The main thing that makes this game so hard is at the beginning there
is a complete lack of preparation for the player. Apart from a control screen,
the rest is up to you. Hard Corps: Uprising takes a huge inspiration from
Contra and for those of you who don’t know what Contra is, it’s a side
scrolling shooter with some platforming thrown in that is notorious for being
hard. Hard Corps: Uprising has the difficulty part in spades, but with equal
amounts of frustration.

TNT Racers Review

TNT Racers is an easy game to miss in the Xbox Live
Marketplace. The market is saturated with all sorts of racing titles, most of
which you could probably live without playing. T.N.T Racers seems to borrow
elements from other games, but it’s hard to fault it for being unoriginal,
especially when you’re talking about a driving game. T.N.T Racers is worth your
time, but you may want to take heed before you drop 10 dollars on this quirky
racing title.