Xbox 360 Reviews

Limbo Review

Limbo has been a silent game since its announcement. Though in the past months, it’s taken full charge. Winning plenty of Indie Game awards and being placed as the opener for this year’s Summer of Arcade. Limbo has been compared vigorously to last year’s Braid. This is a tough comparison for Limbo as some could argue Braid as the best Xbox Live Arcade game yet. I never thought that, I couldn’t decide what the best Xbox Live Arcade game was. Now, Limbo has arrived and made that choice much easier.

Crackdown 2 Review

The original Crackdown pushed the limits of non-linear gameplay. You were tasked with creating your own unique brand of justice while taking down the drug lords of Pacific City in whatever way you saw fit with your cybernetically enhanced Agent. So could the boys from Ruffian Games top that original, over-the-top experience with their new sequel?

Crackdown 2 takes place 10 years after the original Crackdown with the end of the first game coming back to haunt the people of Pacific City. A mysterious virus is consuming the city’s residents and turning them into genetic freaks and mutants who stalk the remaining people of the city during the night. The kidnapped citizens in turn morph into freaks themselves and continue to bolster the freaks’ monstrous numbers. Now, the remaining people turn to their longtime protectors, the Agency, to deliver them from this new threat before revolution and chaos overthrows the delicate balance of life in Pacific City.

RISK: Factions Review

If you would’ve told me two weeks before Risk: Factions was released, that I’d be sitting right here, writing about how much I enjoyed playing Risk for hours on end, I would’ve slapped you in the back of the head and forced you to leave my house. But here I am, thinking about Risk, a game that seems seemingly impossible to make fun and exciting, and thinking Risk: Factions, along with Snoopy: Flying Ace, may be the best Xbox Live Arcade game released this year.

Green Day Rock Band Review

They are one of the most popular bands in the world and have been speaking to the youth of a generation for about 20 years now. Their music has even inspired a Broadway play. So it’s no wonder that the folks at Harmonix and MTV Games felt that Green Day deserved their own Rock Band video game. Unfortunately, all this latest edition into the Rock Band library shows is how soft Green Day has become over the years.

Starting-off with the hit album Dookie that launched Green Day into the limelight, Green Day Rock Band features 47 songs that touch upon most of the group’s best hits as well as the near-entirety of their American Idiot and 21st Century Breakdown albums. The problem is that by putting in so many newer, and in my opinion, inferior songs, they left out almost the majority of Insomniac, all of Shenanigans, and nearly all of Warning and Nimrod, all of which were far superior to the red-headed stepchild that was 21st Century Breakdown.

Snoopy Flying Ace Review

Let’s be honest, the title “Snoopy Flying Ace” sounds like enough in and of itself to write this game off as being even more shovelware for Xbox Live, but if there is one thing you shouldn’t do with this game, it’s write it off. The concept is simple: take the Snoopy/Red Baron comic strip and make it into a video game. Of course, this concept sounds so ridiculous that there would be no way it could be transformed into a good multiplayer flying game, right?

Wrong. Snoopy Flying Ace shocks you immediately by giving you a variety of weapons at your disposal, most of which are fun to use and tamper around with. Some do seem a bit throwaway, such as the sniper type weapon, the Silver Bullet. It’s tough to get a straight shot on a moving airplane, but when you have all the other options at your disposal, you get over that problem fairly quickly. The homing missiles are easily the most fun. I found myself constantly diving into a large dog fight, just going crazy and firing homing missiles at everything like a madman. And in the end, that didn’t work out very well for me, but it was still damn fun.

UFC Undisputed 2010 Review

They are modern day gladiators as fans cheer for knockout blows and bone breaking submissions. It is the fastest growing sport in America and is wowing fans with both the technical precision and sheer brutality its athletes need in order to just be competitive, never mind to try to reach superstar status. Of course, I am talking about MMA and its premiere league, the UFC. As with every sport in modern America though, you haven’t really made the full impact your capable of on the popular culture until you have a successful video game franchise. With that, I present to you the second video game installment of the UFC: UFC Undisputed 2010 from THQ.

Split/Second Review

When you think of a Jerry Bruckheimer or Michael Bay production, you think of big-budget, high gloss, action sequences with fast cars, multiple explosions and plenty of hair-raising moments. Vehicles are engulfed in flames left, right and centre, flipping into the air and careening out of control; buildings collapse upon the streets, shop windows are blown out, helicopters swoop down across the road and city centres are completely and utterly demolished amidst the chaos and destruction of this grandiose action sequence. Now, gather all of these jaw dropping elements, roll them into one package, and make them the defining feature of an intense arcade racer. That’s Split/Second in a nutshell, and it’s as crazy, exhilarating and fun as it sounds, even if that initial excitement may not hold up in the long run.

Lost Planet 2 Review

A cold frigid land awaits us in the brink of the black canvas. Wait… isn’t this Lost Planet? Isn’t this EDN III? Well yeah it is, but… it’s tropical! That’s right, the second installment of the Lost Planet series takes us back to EDN III to envision a lush tropical land that was hidden under all that snow in the first one… who would’ve thought that under all that snow we’d actually find something that cool?  Well back to the point, this game has been long in the making and a couple demos have come to surface themselves from the ashes of the Capcom’s anticipated sequel to their hit multiplayer game from 2006, but the question still lingers… was the wait even worth all the hot anticipation?

Everything has had some sort of change in the past few years for the sequel. A lot is sort of an understatement since I last checked… and it really boils down to how you see everything. Some of the changes were for better, some were just downright periling and it kind of makes you want to scream in pain. I walked into the game with an open mind and wasn’t expecting too much as the first one for me was really a screwball hint of illustrious joy. I enjoyed multiplayer and was up in the air with singleplayer when I got my hands in on the first one, but I couldn’t help but be disappointed with a few elements with the first game, and they didn’t really fix it in the sequel (kind of breaks off that sequel monotony, instead of fixing problems, they just exacerbate them!).

Alan Wake Review

A lot of times nowadays, plot is an afterthought when it comes to making games. It’s more about lots of explosions, big guns, and an endless swarm of enemies to mow down. What would happen though if you had a writer as your main character and were forced to focus on the plot? You would probably have something along the lines of Remedy Entertainment’s newest Xbox 360 exclusive, Alan Wake.

Alan Wake follows the title character through his mundane life as he struggles with a horrible case of writers block. It’s been two years since Alan has written anything of note and he is plagued by insomnia and nightmares. Finally, at the behest of his wife Alice, Alan decides to take a vacation with her to the quiet and tranquil town of Bright Falls in Washington.

Alan immediately feels out of place as a city boy in this rural backwater town. Everyone from the local radio DJ to the waitress at the main street diner begin to swoon over the great Alan Wake’s presence as he realizes this is probably the closest thing most of these people ever get to touching Hollywood. Alan rushes to find the local grease monkey who seems to be in charge of his cabin’s key, but comes across a haunting old woman instead who says the mechanic is indisposed at the moment, but left the key for him with her.

Iron Man 2: Rustproof Doesn’t Mean Bustproof

I really thought that Iron Man 2 was a solid movie, so I was hopeful that the game wouldn’t be a total screw up.

What I’ve noticed from many recent games based on movies is that they try to extend the story portrayed in the movie, either as events leading up to the movie, or events immediately following the movie. Two recent examples of this that come to mind were Terminator: Salvation and GI Joe. Iron Man 2‘s video game, a third-person shooter/action/adventure title developed by Sega, falls into the “after the movie” concept.

The game opens up with Tony’s archives building being attacked by robot drones. Immediately Tony and Rhodey scramble to the scene and try to quell the chaos with repulsor beams and mini-guns blazin’. For the most part they are successful, but after checking all his files, Tony finds that part of his original program for JARVIS, his electronic butler and suit A.I. program, has been stolen. Knowing what could happen if that A.I. fell into the wrong hands, Tony and Rhodey start following a trail of breadcrumbs to find the culprits.