Xbox 360

UFC Undisputed 2010 Preview

This article is strictly my opinion of an unfinished build of UFC Undisputed 2010, not the finished product. UFC Undisputed was a hit. It sold one million plus units and it was damn good on top of that. So it was pretty obvious that this breakout UFC game would become a yearly series.  The only real question was what was Yukes going to do to change it up and warrant a 60 dollar purchase?

UFC Undisputed 2010 doesn’t seem to have changed that much in its actual fighting. Take for example, the Madden series, I personally think that has changed a lot over the past years, gameplay wise, but UFC hasn’t whatsoever from what I noticed, which isn’t all a bad thing. The first UFC’s fighting was quite impressive, if not very complex at times. The complexity still remains in this one as the ground combat boggles my mind at times. Trying to get the perfect position on someone on the ground can lead to awkward stick movement and repetitive animations (from trying to get the stick movement correctly).

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.

Blur vs. Split/Second

The racing genre has always been a very competitive (HA!) genre of video gaming. Be it sim-style racing or the more arcade style, they’ve always been constantly jocking for position (HA! I done it again!). However, in the past few months, two racing games have seemingly been going at each others’ necks, Blur and Split/Second. This feud is the 2010 version of inFamous vs. Prototype. Except one of these games will not be an absolute travesty. I say it’s the inFamous vs. Prototype argument again because the main similarities here are that they’re both racing games, and they are releasing very close to one another.

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.

Alan Wake Preview

It was one of the most talked about titles from E3 2009 and after several delays, psychological thriller fans will finally see their dreams turn into living nightmares on May 18, 2010, with the long anticipated release of Alan Wake for the Xbox 360.

For those of you caught unaware, Alan Wake sees the title character, a horror writer, and his wife taking a vacation in a tranquil Pacific Northwestern city trying to help Alan overcome his writer’s block. Once in the town though, Alan starts having nightmares and wakes up one night to find his wife is missing and a story he can’t remember writing has come to life. As Alan scrounges about the wilderness collecting pages from his otherworldly novel, trying to find his wife and unravel the mystery of where the book came from, he must combat members of the community who have been consumed by a poltergeist-like darkness.

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.