Xbox 360 Reviews

How To Train Your Dragon Review

Very rarely is a movie-game good, so my expectations for How To Train Your Dragon were already non-existent. How To Train Your Dragon’s formula is very apparent, make a game where kids that loved the movie will buy, play for an hour, then never play again. Not even a child that was in love with the movie would enjoy this game. It’s un-fun in every single way. 

Once you start playing, you can see a bit of potential. The game looks decent when you’re wondering around the very small world and the managing of your dragons seems like, if done well, it could be interesting. Your hopes that the game will be good are shattered within minutes. Once you start training your first dragon, you see how tedious it is before you’re even done. The way to train your dragon is simple; you have to do a certain button combo 4 times. After doing one combo 4 times, you move onto another. There are around 15 combos per dragon. You have to train 4 dragons. Now, if my calculator doesn’t deceive me, that means doing combos 240 times. 16 times doing the same combo (all combos are the same on each dragon, just do different things). Seriously.

Splinter Cell Conviction Review

Splinter Cell: Conviction opens up with Sam Fisher sipping a drink in Malta, a small island nation in the Mediterranean, as he tries to piece back together his life after the death of his daughter in a drunk driving accident three years earlier. Having left Third Echelon after his last mission pushed him past a point he didn’t think he could return from, where he killed one of his best friends in Irving Lambert, Sam appears completely lost. That is until an angel watching over him appears to deliver him from the brink.

Batman Arkham Asylum Review

When many of us gamers hear about a video game coming that’s based off a licensed property, we may initially dismiss it or expect mediocre at best results, but that’s far from the case with Batman Arkham Asylum. This is one of the few times in gaming where you can tell the licensed game was built by true fans with love and knowledge of the source material, and simply not a thrown on gimmick to sell extra copies.

The basic premise of the game is that Batman has caught The Joker after one of his plans seemingly goes awry. Batman then delivers The Joker to the psychiatric hospital named Arkham Asylum, once on the island The Joker takes control of the facility and reveals to Batman that was his plan all along. With Batman trapped on the island with hundreds of thugs and several super-villains the player takes control of Batman and must stop The Joker’s plan.  From there the story goes fairly deeper and starts to incorporate other super-villains as well.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Review

The biggest game of the year is finally here, but did it deserve the hype? Modern Warfare 1 (MW1) pushed the Call of Duty franchise to an all time high, garnering it the same level of prestige as the other top series in gaming. Though it’s up for debate, MW1 was followed up by the sub-par sequel World at War. Luckily, Modern Warfare 2 (MW2) is a return to form. Like the other Call of Duty games, you take the perspective of different soldiers in different units throughout the world. This time you bounce between a Marine unit and a Special Forces unit, which also has Sgt. Soap from MW1 in it. The two narratives with these units are much more significant than in previous COD games. This time instead of taking the role of a random soldier and experiencing the war through their eyes, you’re actions are much more instrumental to how the entire war pans out. This installment overall feels much more “action movie” than any other COD game. Since the game does this in a none cheesy and clichéd way it feels fitting, but those looking for a realistic experience maybe turned off. If MW1 was parallel to the TV series 24, then MW2 is more like the movie The Rock, especially towards the end.

Just Cause 2

When you think of Square Enix, you think of elaborate, time-consuming RPGs and fantastic worlds where magic and wizardry are more commonplace than traffic at the Holland Tunnel. So when it came down that Square Enix was pairing with Eidos and Avalanche Studios to bring us a sequel to a game that had a lukewarm reception, befuddled to optimistically curious was the range of thoughts for many gamers.

Just Cause 2 sees the return of CIA special agent Rico Rodriguez, our protagonist from the first game, as he is again tasked with overthrowing a tropical island’s government that is somewhat hostile towards our good ol’ U.S. of A. On top of this, Rico must also track down his missing mentor and best friend, Tom Sheldon, whom the desk jockeys in Washington think has gone rouge after he fell off their radar for several weeks. In order to accomplish his mission, Rico is tasked with going around and blowing up as much government owned and operated equipment as possible in order to lure out both Tom and the dictator of the island nation of Panau, “Baby” Panay.

Mass Effect 2 Review

Can a RPG have it all? All game genres have their inherent problems, but when it comes to RPGs there’s usually a separation between gameplay, story, and technical aspects. The better RPGs are usually good at two out of those, but rarely is there a game that’s great at all three. Mass Eff bounds better. The combat is good and just not “good for a RPG shooter”. ME2’s combat can hold its own against full-fledged 3^rd person shooters.

Aliens vs. Predator

Those three words sum up the entire premise behind Sega’s latest foray into the mature gaming world as they continue to try to distance themselves from a certain blue rodent. Aliens vs. Predator, the latest addition into a series that has been beaten to death with new iterations of the same name on nearly every system dating back over a decade, returns with what they are claiming is a brand new story, but is really just a rehashed version of the same old one Rebellion Developments and other developers have been pushing out for what seems like forever with this series.

Like in the previous installments of the game, this version of Aliens vs. Predator gives you the opportunity to take control of three different factions and play through their respective story lines. Unlike previous installments of the game though where there were three completely different story arcs, these three story arcs all interconnect.