Year in consumables: 2007 games

Time to finish this series off for 2007. The first two parts were music and movies. Also, I just read my 2006 games post and damned if I wasn’t entertained by it. Maybe you should read it (again?)… for added incentive, I make fun of Mookie a little bit.

Speaking of which, I heard via Ed that his 360 finally red-ringed him. (Did we have a pool somewhere about this?) Well, I’m actually sorry to hear that. I thought it was going to beat the odds, but it might have finally succumbed after being subjected to the indignity of the Bee Movie game. I mean, a 360 that thinks it is owned by a man can only take so much girl/kidz games over the course of a lifetime, right?

(I kid ya Mook, you knows I luvs ya!)

Back on track, the good news of the year was Ed got back into the 360 fold and we did a lot of good co-op gaming together. As I referenced in last year’s post, we did play Gears of War together, twice, so that was fun. Insane was… insane, but utlimately beatable. Anyway, that game doesn’t count for this list.

The bad news of the year was my 360 red-ringed me having just broken the 10k Gamerscore boundary. That put me out ... Continue reading »

Three hundred

This is going to be short and sweet because I am so late to the party with it. I have wanted to post on it for a while, ever since seeing it and then reading Jason and Ed’s posts on it, but other things got in the way. I think I’ll be ahead of the curve for the DVD release though, yeah?

I found the premise of writing a graphic novel about this event in history to be quite novel. I mean, how exactly did Frank Miller get about doing this as a project? This is a guy better known to the masses for Sin City, Robocop, Batman (comics) and Tank Girl (heh… well, the original work was better than the flick. Oh where have you gone Lori Petty?). I’m sure I could do some research on the web for this, but I’m a lazy blogger today and like I said, short and sweet.

And, again, being lazy (and potentially dumb to do so), I’m going to go off what I remember as the gist of what either Ed and Jason (or both) were saying about the film. I’m not going to argue that acting in a giant green sound stage is just as easy as one filled with set pieces and extras, never mind in the wild. I will argue that using this method is fairly new to a lot of act... Continue reading »

Beta beta beta

Remember that robot on Buck Rogers? I don’t think it ever said anything else or my brain remembers nothing other than that — which is true of the entire show really — and yes, it wasn’t quite “beta” but more likely “bitta.”

Don’t worry, this post isn’t about that robot or betta fish or math or physics or fraternities or the Greek alphabet. It is about the Halo 3 Multiplayer Beta test. The one I mentioned a bit in my Crackalackin post.

For the uninitiated — I’m willing to bet you didn’t get this far — “beta” is a term attached to software that isn’t quite finished and tested, but needs some wider end-user abuse and use. It comes after an “alpha” test, which is usually a really rough build that the developers muck around with. Google and Yahoo users may be familiar with the term as all their products seem to be forever in beta while everyone is using them.

Oh, and should you wonder what the heck “beta” really is, you aren’t Greek or a math/science prodigy and don’t know it is the second letter in the Greek alphabet after ... Continue reading »

Halo 2: softcore edition

You know how to sell an almost three year old Xbox game to PC gamers? Put a little nudity in it!

Hopefully it isn’t dudity of the Master Chief removing his codpiece… that wouldn’t go over so well with the fanboys… or, maybe it would.

I’m just having a hard time figuring out how you even integrate that into one of the game’s cutscenes. I’m guessing it would be there instead of, oh… I don’t know, a strip club that the Chief passes by in Cairo Station and you can have him stop in for a legs and eggs…

Crackalackin

You know, I finish building a Biggerboat and think I can spend some time on my blog for a while, but then a game like Crackdown gets my dollars and that idea goes straight out the window. I swear, I can’t really multi-task at home anymore, work has sucked all that out of me.

At most, I get to do two things when I get home during the week: eat (always) and watch TV or play Xbox 360. Weekends are a little different, but again, I have a hard time doing more than a couple things on a given weekend day lately. I don’t really know why other than think it has something to do with addiction. I feel like I get on little stretches of being addicted to a certain activity and that causes me to neglect all kinds of other things. This is no way for an adult to live… I think.

I suppose that’s a larger subject than what this post is all about, and it is all about Crackdown.

I have had the game for a little under a week and I am totally addicted. I’m shocked at how addictive it is and I know I am going to be sad when it is all done (seems to have little replayability once you are maxed out and completed the story and Achievements). In fact, I hate... Continue reading »

RvB: Season 5

As a registered user, I got a little e-mail from Rooster Teeth on Tuesday to give some discount code for use in their store this holiday season.

“Hmm…” I thought, I haven’t been over there since the last season finished up. Let’s see whud up.

Well, whud up is Season 5 started at the end of September!

What, what, what???

That’s right, I’ve been missing out and so have you! If you count yourself as a Halo fan, you should be following what these guys do…

Halo Wars

There’s actually a cool little video trailer out there for it and a web site. If your rig can handle the 720p version, I highly recommend it. Some excellent rendering and sound there.

The Halo Effect

I’m sure all my gamer readers, all two of you, have already read about this, but just in case, more Halo games on the way. I wonder if the Age of Empires developer’s game will be like that where you build up a side, human or Covenant, and then try to take over. Could be good, but then again, I get bored of those types of games quickly.

Perfect Dark Zero

When the first wave of Xbox 360 games, the launch titles, were announced, it was pretty much assumed that this game was going to be the 360’s Halo. The game was hyped up as the one that would sell the system and I remember Microsoft used this game as their feature in that overhyped and ultimately empty MTV special that aired just before the 2005 E3.

I haven’t played any of the previous games in the Perfect Dark series, so I can’t base this *review* of Perfect Dark Zero (PDZ) on anything other than this game. I suppose in terms of gameplay, I can compare it to Halo somewhat, so here goes…

I made it thru the training level and then the first level before I decided it wasn’t worth it. I say it wasn’t worth it not because of the game, but because the achievements just weren’t going to come. If you don’t know of what I speak, with the 360 generation of games Microsoft has added an achievements/gamer score feature. Each game should hand out 1000 points total and the developers/publishers have total control on how they are divied out. This feature is very similar to the system Bungie setup for Halo 2 where you scored points a... Continue reading »

Call of Duty 2

So, now that I am caught up with my movie *reviews* I can catch up on my Xbox 360 game *reviews.* Again, these aren’t reviews in the usual sense of the thing, they are just my observations or thoughts on the game. I guess you can still argue that makes for a review, but whatever.

You may remember that getting my Xbox 360 setup and running normally was a chore. It still isn’t quite right, but I can play games and Call of Duty 2 (CoD2) was the first one I finished. I played thru the campaign on the Hard (or Hardened) setting, which is the 3rd highest or just below Veteran (I did not play on Xbox Live at all). I did this on the advice of Ed who started his campaign on Veteran but found it impossible to finish the end of the Russian part of the campaign, which comprises the first three missions of the game.

The game was broken up into three sub-campaigns (if you will) where you play as a Russian, British or American soldier. Out of the three, I found the Russian campaign to be the most enjoyable of all of them. Probably just for the landscapes filled with snow. The Russian weapons were also pretty good overall, especially their sub-machine gun. That last are... Continue reading »