Jay’s Internet Log

To begin with, I’ll put it out there that I tried the Forza 3 demo two years ago and absolutely hated it. The setting was boring, the handling felt weird, and there was no nitro boost. You see, to me, the best racing game ever created is Mario Kart, which is vastly disimilar to the ultra-realistic and almost RPG-like game that Turn10 has created. I played the demo for about ten minutes and knew that the game was not for me.

On the day before Forza 4′s release, I downloaded the demo on a whim to see if the game had been improved with two years development. Boy was I surprised! I ended up spending about 45 minutes with it, completing all six races and wanting more. I read about it online and watched some video reviews. I read about the Speed Wheel and how it wasn’t a complete joke like the Wii Wheel. I also read about the super rare Limited Collector’s Edition that was going for over $200 on Amazon, much higher than it’s asking price. All in all, I was excited, and about a game that I abhored the previous time I played it. It was a strange feeling.

I decided to try arriving at Best Buy at opening and see if they had a Limited Collector’s Edition there. I wasn’t expecting them to, but upon getting there, they had about 10 of them. I instantly felt sorry for all the people who spent a lot of money on them. I also was able to demo the Speed Wheel and was impressed at how well it worked. I was told that with Kinect, it is even more precise. I ended up picking one up as well.

Forza 4 jumps you right into the racing, even before I was able to get the Speed Wheel set up. The campaign progression works as seasons, with each season having faster cars and more races. The types of races are varied well, and after every few of them, you level up and get a new car to try. As you race cars from the same manufacturer, you level up your affinity with them, giving you cheaper and eventually free upgrades. I haven’t really gone into the upgrades yet as the game will automatically upgrade for you when needed, and that’s as deep as I’ve gone. It also has a very deep tuning section that I briefly saw. It was like walking into a room you shouldn’t be in and instanly running away scared. That’s how I felt when I saw what types of things you could do in the tuning section.

The game integrates with Kinect and on paper, it sounds pretty awesome. When you turn your head in real life, the camera turns a bit to look at your mirrors. All I’ve been able to make it do is look to the right, even though I’m trying to look forward or even to the left. It hasn’t worked yet but I’ll try it again, but I think you have to be closer or standing to make it work, neither of which I want to do. When you crash in the game, you can press a button to initiate the “Sands of Time” in essence to go back a few seconds. This is great and all, but the way I have my controller set up, whenever I start up again, it quickly looks behind me and is just annoying. Other than these little issues, this game is rock solid. There are many modes, and I was able to lose two online races successfully without lag, but people online are jerks and crash into you a lot.

Now I picked up this wireless Speed Wheel as well, and I like it a lot. It is shaped like a “U” and I think it has a gyroscope in it. The tops of it glow green at times and I think the Kinect sees it. In any event, it works very well and the movements mimic the hands on the steering wheel in the game. The only problem that I’ve come across with this wheel so far is that it doesn’t have the XBOX bumper buttons on it anywhere. There’s plenty of room for them, even on the middle section. This is problematic when navigating the menus in Forza 4, which released alongside this device. In order to change my title in the game, and probably tune my car, I have to switch out to a regular controller, though this causes other problems when trying to sync back up with the Speed Wheel. It’s funny how third party controller manufactures are not allowed to make wireless controllers for the Xbox, but Microsoft can’t even remember to put the required buttons on them. I’d love to hear their reasoning behind this.

All in all, I am having a blast with Forza 4 and the Speed Wheel as well. This is definitely the best automobile simulator that I’ve ever played, and I’ve just scratched the surface!

[UPDATE] – I seem to consistently update this post, so I will place the newest update in red from now on.  Carry on.

People on the GameFAQS boards constantly tell everyone else when they’ve completed the board’s game 100% with the maximum 1000 gamerpoints per game.  I thought I’d start my own little section here for this since, well, this is my site and I can do whatever I want really.  So here goes!

Call of Duty 4 – 1000/1000 on 1-21-2008
This game, as some of you know, has become one of my favorite alltime games, not for the single player but for the multiplayer.  At this writing, I’ve amassed over 500 hours on online play.  Achievements however were only awarded for the single player campaign, and some of the harder ones were REALLY hard.  I would have to say that beating “One Shot One Kill” and “No Fighting in the War Room” on Veteran dificulty caused me the most mental anguish.  The last level, “Mile High Club”, though fun on Normal difficulty, became a nightmare on Veteran, though it felt SO good to complete it, knowing that all that was left to do in order to 100% the game was find a few tapes and destory a lot of televisions

Fallout 3 – 1000/1000 on 12-15-2008
If you’ve read anything on this site about Fallout 3, you know that I’ve really enjoyed it.  From being a game that I told myself I would never get to being one that I will probably never forget, Fallout 3 is a complete masterpiece, and I’m sad that the story is over.  It took me about 75 hours to 100% it and the entire time was like a wild rollercoaster ride.  I won’t spoil the ending here, but it was pretty sweet.  Bethesda is releasing some DLC for this game which I will most definitely pick up, as it is one of the most engaging games I’ve ever played.
[UPDATE - 1-29-2009 - 1100/1100 now after Operation Anchorage DLC]
[UPDATE - 3-27-2009 - 1200/1200 now after The Pitt DLC]
[UPDATE - 5-20-2009 - 1350/1350 now after Broken Steel DLC]
[UPDATE - 7-6-2009 - 1450/1450 now after Point Lookout DLC]
[UPDATE - 8-11-2009 - 1550/1550 now after Mothership Zeta DLC]
Since Bethesda has not announced any further DLC for this masterpiece, I am taking this as the end for me. If they do decide to release more, I will pick it up, but if they don’t, then the ride was a great one and I will look forward to the next game in this series. Fallout 3 is easily one of the best experiences in gaming that I’ve ever had, took up 1497 save files, and lasted me well over 120 hours.

Tales of Vesperia – 1000/1000 on 12-28-2008
This has been months in the making and I can finally say that I have completed this masterpiece.  The “Tales of” series is huge in Japan and I have played two of the games in the series: Tales of Symphonia on the Gamecube, and now Tales of Vesperia on the 360.  These games are traditional Japanese Role Playing Games, meaning the style is very anime and the characters have a lot of personality.  They also implement a crazy live action battle system, which make them a complete joy to play.  Anyways, I played through Tales of Vesperia from launch day until I beat the game about a month later, totaling about 95 hours.  I then immediately started over again, and played through it again to tie up all loose ends and basically get everything in the game, which took another 50-60 hours.  The last two achievements would require a third playthrough, one for finishing the first chapter at a very low level, and another for finishing the game within 15 hours.  All in all, I finished this playthrough in 9:37:31, ranked 791 on the leaderboards for time, and the entire playtime for me is about 173 hours.  I have done everything there is to do in this game, probably a few times, and all I can say is that it is by far the best JRPG I’ve ever played and I’m really looking forward to Namco’s next installment of this great series.  Tales of Vesperia is an epic, long journey that is worth playing for anyone who either likes the series or the genre in the slightest bit.

Fable II – 1100/1100 on 1-25-2009
I consider this to actually be 1300/1300 as I have fully completed the Fable II Pub Games as well. Fable II was a game that I have owned for many months, but stopped playing almost immediately as it was horribly bugged and people were complaining that their games glitched out and got wrecked. This scared me, so I played Fallout 3 instead. A few weeks back, Fable II was patched so I started playing it again. It is a blast to play and is very relaxing. Albion has a very medieval feel to it and you can basically do whatever you want, whenever you want. As far as achievements go, this game has them brilliantly placed. There are only a handful of story-based achievements, and Fable II focuses more on craziness when it comes to them. There’s one for kicking a chicken. There’s one for killing a rabbit. There’s one for shooting the weapons out of an enemy and then hitting him with a headshot. There are so many weird achievements. Some of them require you meeting people online and trading items with them. This can be tedious, but I met some nice people that way. I bought the Knothole Island expansion pack, which honestly only takes about an hour or two to complete, so $10 might be a bit high for it, but I really enjoyed it and the new weapons that it adds. It also adds another 100 to the score, so that’s why this one is more than 1000. I’m not really “done” with this game as there are other things that need to be done in it, but for some reason, there aren’t any achievements for them. I think it would have been cool to have an achievement for opening all of the demon doors for example. Overall, this is an excellent game if you don’t run into a crazy bug along the way!
[UPDATE - 6-4-2009 - 1350/1350 now after See the Future DLC]

Resident Evil 5 – 1000/1000 on 4-1-2009
I had been looking forward to Resident Evil 5 for a few years now, and told myself that I would be taking the release day off of work when it was announced last summer. More on that can be read here but this update is to discuss the game after full completion. That is to say the story mode of the game. Resident Evil titles seem to consistently change with each incarnation, and fans seem to always have some sort of problem with that. I’ve learned to take it as Capcom gives it and enjoy what they’ve created. Resident Evil 5 is without a doubt my favorite in the series, seconded only to the genre-changing Resident Evil 4. The addition of co-op to 5 worried me as so many game publishers are just trying to slap on the words “co-op” as marketing strategies, but when realized, they don’t add anything or are completely one-sided towards the host. I don’t think that Capcom could have done any better with their implementation of co-op, and in this game playing with someone else over XBL trumps the single player in every single way. Finishing this title to 100% took just over 43 hours, making it one of the shorter games I’ve played to get every achievement in. It is truly a masterpiece and I am now going to tackle The Mercenaries, an arcade-like minigame of sorts that is packaged with Resident Evil titles. In a few weeks, Capcom will be releasing an online versus mode based on The Mercenaries, so it’s time to train!

Lost: Via Domus – 1000/1000 on 6-28-2009
I’ve been trying to think about how to put this back when I was still playing the game and knowing that I’d be writing a little blurb about it eventually for all of probably 3 people to see, but this is easily one of the worst games I’ve ever played. For anyone who knows me well enough, you know that I adore the show Lost. It’s my favorite television show that is on television now, and may be of all time. I’m thinking about The A-Team here, but I kind of put them in two totally different categories, so we’ll just ignore that. When Lost: Via Domus was announced and released, it got pretty bad reviews, and I passed over it thinking that it probably wasn’t worth $60….and it isn’t. I found this game a few months back for $10 at Best Buy and figured that I couldn’t really go wrong. I think I got a so-so deal on it. Anyways, when you boot up the game, you first see a Ubisoft logo. If I had read the box and saw that it was a Ubisoft game, I might have just left it be, as I am terribly upset with them and what they did to the Prince of Persia a few years back. But I didn’t see that logo and bought the game anyways. You play the game as a guy who was on Oceanic 815 and crashed with everyone else, but you don’t have any memory. You look almost exactly like Jacob’s nemesis from the Season 5 finale, which I find very strange, and I look forward to seeing if others feel the same way about this. It’s just uncanny how similar you look to him. As you “play” this game which consists of you walking around the beach talking to horribly created versions of the cast, being chased around the jungle by the smoke monster, doing stupid fuse puzzles that make no sense whatsoever, and recovering your memory via looping scenarios where you need to take pictures of things, I realized that I might have enjoyed it more if I wasn’t a Lost fan. I’m kind of on the fence about this one. If I wasn’t a Lost fan, I wouldn’t be so critical about the modeling or voice acting, though John Locke repeating “I’m over in the Banyan Trees” and “Hey, Look at me in the Banyan Trees” over and over again was actually funny, but the funny part was when he said “Banyan Trees”. I don’t know. I’m weird. Hurley, believe it or not, it even fatter in this game. The controls are very loose, and your actions seem to make you float around. You can trade fruit and stuff that you pick up for lanterns and guns, etc, but you only need to really shoot 1 or 2 people, so you never ever need a clip, though they seem to have lots to trade. What sucks even more is that in the end, all your stuff is taken from you, so it’s all pretty useless. They should have just given you what you need when you need it, but then this game would have been even shorter probably. It only took me about 2-4 hours to complete in its entirety, but it seemed like a chore. Would I rather deal with this mess or play CoD4? I had to force myself to finish this game so that I could delete it from my hard drive. One thing that I can say positively about this game is that I didn’t run into any game breaking bugs. That’s a nice thing, but there are some annoyances. One level starts out with you having to run away from the smoke monster, jumping over trees and running across wooden planks, but if you trip up then the smoke monster gets you. That’s not the bad part though. The bad part is that the game is set up episodically, so when you die, which you will a few times, you have to go through the whole 30 second long “Previously on Lost” crap. Argh! Anyways, Lost: Via Domus can’t be recommended by me. If you like Lost, and can get it for cheap (or borrow it from me), then check it out, but don’t expect much.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 – 1000/1000 on 12-13-2009
Well, it took me much less time than I thought it would to get 1000 gamerscore points in Modern Warfare 2.  I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that this game is easier and less annoying/time consuming as its predecessor, and I had a great partner in Glenn for all of the co-op missions.  Glenn and I had a really fun time playing through the Spec-Ops missions, and we’re looking forward to more of them via DLC.  The story in this game is not as emotional or as good as it was in Call of Duty 4, and it definitely does not wrap up with a satisfying conclusion, but I believe that this is done on purpose, so that in a few years, we’ll see Modern Warfare 3.  It is also very difficult to follow.  Being a self-proclaimed expert in this series’ storyline (I played through the CoD4 story four or five times and know it by heart), I was confused most of the way through this game.  The writers don’t really like setting the story up beforehand, but rather just drop you into the middle of it, and your squad mates seem to tell the story around you.  The problem with this is that while they are talking, you’re being barraged by bullets and explosions, so your mind isn’t really paying attention to what they are trying to say.  It’s a small gripe about an otherwise excellent piece of work.  All in all, Infinity Ward made another masterpiece with this game, and now all that’s left is multiplayer!!

Assassin’s Creed II – 1000/1000 on 1-18-2010
I was very skeptical about Assassin’s Creed II.  I wrote up about that in my Initial Impressions, and now that I’ve completed the game in its entirety (for now) I have to say that I have much more faith in Ubisoft.  I’m still a bit uneasy about the Prince of Persia series, but now that I’ve completed Assassin’s Creed II, I might give that series another try when it releases a new entry this summer.  Assassin’s Creed II did so many things right.  The graphics are amazing, the story is deep though a bit confusing at times, and the sound is simple extraordinary.  This was a game that I played both with and without the A40′s, and when playing without them, I lost out on some subtle details such as birds chirping in the background.  These things make up the feeling that is Assassin’s Creed II.  I absolutely love how you’re given a walled-in city that is in terrible disarray, and asked to upgrade it by donating your money.  Over time, you see new structures going up and more people flocking towards this city, earning you more money to build it up more.  It has a very medieval feel to it and I just loved it.  After completing the story, I went hunting for feathers; a remedial task in most games, but it is something that I really enjoy.  I have so much fun doing this and the world that the designers created is nothing short of fantastic.  There is only a single missable achievement (Flyswatter) in this game, but I’ve read that in upcoming DLC it will again become attainable.  Overall the achievements were on the easy side, and I almost wish that some of them were integrated better.  Finishing ALL of the races would have been more of an achievement than just finishing a single, easy one.  As I said in my previous segment about this game, I was mostly interested in the Venetian portions of the game, and they really did not disappoint.  Venice isn’t just created to look like you’re in Venice.  It’s created in the same layout as the islands, with the main Grand Canal bridges intact, St. Mark’s Square is nearly identical to the real thing, and even the market is in the correct location on the eastern side of the Rialto Bridge.  One of the funniest moments in the game for me was when I overheard a public speaker informing the public not to eat fish that came out of the canals.  The only thing that made me cringe about playing a game set in Venice is when I would accidentally jump in the wrong direction and dive into a canal.  When I lived in Venice, I worked on a project to drastically change the way the Venetian sewerage system works, so that may help you understand why I have reservations on jumping into the canals.  :)

Bulletstorm – 1000/1000 on 3-6-2011
Today, Bulletstorm joins my list of fully completed games.  This is a game that exceeded all of my expectations, many of which were set very high.  The story is fun adn hysterical, the time trial mode (Echoes) is challenging and great to compare scores against friends, and the co-op multiplayer mode (Anarchy) is a blast to play with friends.  As far as achievements go, only a few require other people, and most are easily doable.  Red Barrels was difficult for me to get, and a few chapters on Very Hard difficulty were a pain (I’m looking at you 7-1), but overall it wasn’t terribly hard to fully complete.  This is a spectacular game for adults, and I whole-heartedly recommend it.

Portal 2 – 1000/1000 on 4-28-2011
When I first heard that Valve was creating Portal 2, one of the first thoughts in my head was “What kind of crazy achievements will this game have?”.  I was also worried about the length of the game.  Portal 1 took all of 2 hours to fully complete the story, so could Valve create a game that people would and should pay a full $60 for?  The story portion of Portal 2 took just over 9 hours to complete, without a single moment of boredom.  The co-op portion took about half that to complete, but I’ve since played it through two to three times.  The achievements range from smashing 11 TV’s in a single play session to simply hugging your friends.  This game is perfectly executed in every way, and one not to miss out on.

Brink – 1000/1000 on 5-15-2011
Brink is an interesting game. It was marketed very well, but is missing some key aspects that could make it great. The concept of gaining experience whether you play against robotic AI or humans is a breath of fresh air. The same can be said for being able to fully map the controller layout. Every game should have this feature. One thing this game is lacking, and I can not being to contemplate why, is a multiplayer lobby. Brink promotes playing with friends, but there is no easy way to group friends together and then play against other humans. It’s a mess, and I have no idea how this decision was made. Anyways, overall I’d say that Brink is a good game. It throws gamerscore at you like nothing else, and within five days, I’ve completed every achievement. The only one that I could see giving trouble would be “Tough as nails” which requires you to finish the storyline in Hard mode or online. The latter is extremely annoying because of what I mentioned earlier, and the fact that every time a person joins or leaves a team when online, the server comes to a halt for a few seconds. I played through the campaign with friends, and that made it easier, but it wasn’t a walk in the park. The reason this is difficult is because as you rank up, the enemy AI ranks up as well, and while your team’s AI still waits until the last 2 minutes to help out in any fashion, the enemy team’s AI just gets more brutal. Other than this achievement, which is mildly annoying, the rest are extremely easy. I hope the development team adds more achievements with DLC in the future.

L.A. Noire – 1000/1200 on 5-23-2011
This game shiped with two pieces of DLC that are preorder specific. I didn’t get these, but that’s why there are 1200 points total. Instead, I got a sweet light blue outfit called The Broderick. Yippee. Anyways… I didn’t know what to expect from L.A. Noire before release. I’m glad to say that this is not Grand Theft Auto in the 1940′s Los Angeles. I’m a big fan of GTA, but not really of this time period. L.A. Noire is more of a puzzle game than a shooting one, and the story that Team Bondi has created is spectacular. I figured out some of the story from bits and pieces, but was thrown off by others. It’s also nice to play a game without a multiplayer component. You can tell that a lot of work was focused on this single player element. I look forward to playing future games using this engine. Real actors can now successfully play roles in video games, and L.A. Noire is the first game that I believe can show off their talent well. This year is looking great for gaming, and it’s only May!

Deus Ex – Human Revolution – 1000/1000 on 9-5-2011
I never wrote up my impressions of this game when it first came out. This is because of two separate reasons that melded together and caused me to first write up about this game after fully completing it. First off, after playing this game for a few hours, I didn’t really care for it, and I was having trouble figuring out how to write that down. I was upset that the control layout was so radically different than most other games, and there is no way to change it with exception to inverting axes and sensitivity. That right there angered me, along with the fact that I couldn’t aim well and couldn’t hack into anything successfully. It was just somewhat of a mess, and after a few hours, I decided to give it a rest and come back the next day. This is where the second reason comes in. I picked the game back up after a night’s rest, and somehow the controls made sense to me. I started leveling up my character and weapons, making them easier to aim, and making hacking much easier. Most of my problems were almost instantly solved. The only problem now, is that I was somewhat hooked; hence my second reason. The depth that this game goes in each of its aspects is amazing, be it first person shooter, third person spy, even the hacking minigame is probably the best hacking minigame in any game that I’ve ever played. It’s smart, and took me a while to master. The best thing Deus Ex has to offer though is that you can tackle objectives in just about any way you want. You can get there by sneaking by, or by knocking guards out and hiding their bodies. You can also just run in and kill everyone. It’s up to you and in every single situation in the ~25 hour long campaign, it worked flawlessly. This is easily the best game that’s come out this year so far, and possibly even last year as well. As far as achievements go, all but three were completed rather easily on my first runthrough of the game. A second playthrough was completed in order to 1. finish on the hardest difficulty, 2. without killing anybody, and 3. without setting off any alarms. Playing through a second time like this wasn’t as difficult as it may sound because I knew every nook and cranny of the game already, and it was a blast to play through again.

I played Duke Nukem Forever this morning… really, I did.  You can too if you’re in Gearbox’s First Access Club and get emailed a code.  But the game does seem to exist, and it’s shaping up to be a fun experience.

I played through the two-level demo three times, once on each difficulty. The most difficult run was the first one on the easy setting.  This is because enemies spawn in the same location on each difficulty, so once you learn the pattern, the game is cake.  Near the end of the demo on my first run, I got stuck because I found some planks, and when you get close to them, Duke says that a crowbar would be handy, so I looked around the area for a crowbar for 5 minutes before trying to just melee or shoot the wooden planks and move on.  I did die in the vehicle section of the hard run because I got shotgunned and hit by rocks, which takes off a lot of damage on that difficulty.

The game has various weapons spread around the map which are fun to use, but not all are beneficial for that particular section.  I learned quickly that the sniper rifle is very cool.  I found what I think is a hidden item called a Holoduke.  I don’t think there are any other hidden items, but maybe someone else will find one.  Between levels, while the game is loading, you are shown onscreen tips like most games.  Some of these are serious, but others, like the following, are just there to make you smile:  When being shot at, try to avoid bullets

You can feel the Gearbox influence in the way Duke moves around.  It feels a lot like Borderlands.  An issue that I see right away though, and I’m not sure if this is just for the demo, or if it will propagate to the final product or not, is the stutter.  The game seems to struggle on my 360 at times, and it can be distracting.  Overall though, Duke Nukem Forever seems like it will be a really fun playthrough once or twice.

I haven’t played much of the ACB single player story, which is the reason I bought the game in the first place.  I’m probably about an hour into the story, and so far, what I’ve seen has been very fun and cool.  I have however played a few hours of the multiplayer, so this writeup will focus more on that side of things.  When Ubisoft announced that ACB would have online competitive multiplayer, I thought “Great, here’s another tacked-on multiplayer experience that doesn’t need to be there and just took resources away from polishing the single player story”.  I still can’t say if the previous statement is true, but what I can say is that the multiplayer in this game is vastly different than any I’ve played before, so for that, Ubisoft wins.  I’ll try to explain it here, but I wasn’t able to understand it until I played it for myself.

Like other multiplayer games, you rank up as you earn XP.  XP is earned by making assassinations, but more is earned for doing so with style.  Each time you rank up, you earn new abilities and custom classes, and these new abilities really help you get an edge over your foes.  An example of an ability is to be able to change your character skin to another one, so when you are being pursued, you can round a corner, throw on a disguise, and be incognito for a few seconds.  Another one is a smoke bomb, which can get you out of a difficult situation more quickly.

I’ve played two game types so far, and I think there are four total.  Both of the gametypes I played were very similar, the only difference being one is free-for-all, and the other team-based.  Here’s my best description of how the games play, though as I said earlier, it’s tough to describe in words.  8 human players start a match and choose what character skin they want, be it male or female, a nicely dressed Captain or a long-nosed Doctor, it doesn’t matter.  They all play the same.  The map is then populated with AI robots in these same skins and you’re set loose in it.  You are given a single person to assassinate, and another human is given you to assassinate.  You follow a compass of sorts around the map, looking for your target while trying to stay incognito in order to hide your location.  Incognito is the important word here.  You should be trying to blend in with the AI robots, especially those that resemble your character skin.  The AI robots tend to just walk around, so if you see somebody climbing onto rooftops or sprinting around, you can tell that they are a human player, so that’s what you’re looking for.  It’s very slow-paced, but when you get a kill and the target has no idea beforehand, it’s very satisfying.  You get bonus points for staying hidden whilst killing, so running around to your target is generally not suggested.  Once you kill someone, a new target is given.  You can have up to four people vying for the same target or following you as a target, and it can get pretty crazy.  The pacing is extremely slow as you’re trying to blend in with a crowd while looking all around for someone who’s not walking in the same pattern as everyone else.  It’s a lot of fun and I hope to level up all the way, though I’m not sure how difficult that will be.

The multiplayer is by no means perfect.  It would be nice to be able to customize your classes after ranking up without having to drop the whole party and go back to a menu.  This effect is a double-edged sword.  Not only is it aggravating to me, but when dropping me back to the menu, it breaks up the party which requires them to find another player.  The fact that higher ranked people are effectively stronger than lower ranked people is a balancing issue that seems like it was an oversight in the design phase.  I have little chance as a level 7 player to compete with a level 30 player, and this was proven a few times yesterday.  An ability that you unlock at level 14, which allows you to morph NPCs around you into your character skin is extremely powerful, and I look forward to using that when given the chance.

Overall, I’m really liking ACB.  I think that I’ll need sessions of a few hours with the single player in order to experience and enjoy it fully, and the multiplayer is nice if I’ve only got 20 minutes to invest.  It isn’t perfect, but for a first shot at multiplayer with this franchise, I think that Ubisoft did a wonderful job with it.  Overall, the game appears to be top-notch.

It took about 30 minutes to set up the sensor, then push my whole living room back a few feet.  Upon starting up the xbox, it recognized the kinect and updated the dashboard.  It then walked me through a tutorial which was basically useless.  A problem I had was when I walked out of view and kinect forgot about me, which was annoying, but after learning the ropes, I started up Kinect Adventures.   This game is just a set of minigames, just like Wii Sports is.  I played a few of them and Heather jumped in and played co-op with me.  It’s cool that somebody can just walk into the area you’re in and start playing along with you.  The game takes pictures of you at certain intervals and you can then upload them to a Microsoft website to view.  It’s really cool and I wish more games would have websites associated with them like this.  After about an hour of this game, it was time for a break, so we had dinner.

After dinner we booted up Dance Central, a dancing game created by Harmonix, and let me tell you, it’s not easy, even on Easy difficulty!  Heather and I switched back and forth between songs, dancing to them, and learning the moves in them.  The best we could do on Day 1 was to get 3 out of 5 stars on 4 of the songs.  Even here, the game could tell us apart and switched the dancers from male to female when we switched up.  The game has 32 songs and the four we played were difficult, so this game looks to be both tough and a good workout!

All in all, kinect is very cool, though currently reminds me of when I bought my first Nintendo DS when they launched.  It’s a cool piece of technology that hasn’t really come into its prime yet as far as software support.  Everything seems like a tech demo, but I have faith in Microsoft to create new, fun games for it, and maybe even non-gaming applications.  I would also like to see it able to be used in conjunction with controller-based games, but the problem there is that you have to be standing as well as far away from the TV, so it may be difficult to pull off.  Rock Band with kinect support however is an idea that I’ve had in my head since seeing this thing in action the first time so many months ago and I hope that someday we’ll see an entry in the series use this device.

A few days ago I read a review saying that Rock Band 3 is the best rhythm game that’s ever been created.  After spending just about an hour with the game, I’m agreeing so far.  Sure, this basically looks a lot like the other games in the series, but Harmonix has tweaked many aspects of it, all for the better.  The only thing that’s gotten me upset is that I earned a 4 point achievement, and when I earn achievements that don’t end in 0 or 5, I get Incredible-Hulk-Angry.

Anyways, last night I installed three cymbals onto my Rock Band drums and booted the game up.  I tried for a little while to import all of my other Rock Band songs, but couldn’t get it to work, so I’m still puzzled as to how to do that.  I went into a freeform drum room to make sure that the cymbals worked and was pleasantly surprised when not only did they work, but now it seems like I’ve got a fairly full drumset here.   The 4 original pads and kick pedal all play different drum sounds, and each of the cymbals plays a different sound as well.  It’s quite impressive.  I played through the first setlist consisting of 6 songs, then Llama once, all on Pro mode Medium.  When playing Pro mode, in addition to hitting the notes as they come down the course, you have to hit the correct cymbals as well, which has made Medium level drums fun again for me.  It really takes a lot more attention to play this way and with the exception of Llama, I played all real easy songs.

I tried uploading a video but was getting an error, so I’ll try again tonight.  That’s all I really have to say about the game right now since I’ve only put about an hour into it and half that time was creating Sir Awesome again.  It would be nice if Harmonix allowed you to bring over avatars from their previous games so I don’t have to do it each time, but it’s not a huge deal.  I look forward to putting a few hours into it tonight, and eventually with friends, as this game is full of win.

I say somewhat because I’ve never played the game that people are comparing this to (God of War).  In terms of gameplay, The most similar game that I’ve played is Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.  Also, as a side, if we’re comparing games, shouldn’t we all be comparing all platforming games to Pitfall and Super Mario Bros.?  Games are going to continually take ideas from other successful games.  Activision pays a certain developer to basically copy another developer’s ideas every few years and it makes them a LOT of money, though it goes almost unnoticed among reviewers and many fans.  It’s part of the industry and it isn’t going to stop.  When I read about people knocking this Castlevania game because it’s too similar to God of War, I just stop reading because they should be reviewing this game in a sterile environment and for what it is.  Okay, on to the game at hand.

To begin with, my Castlevania experience began when I was 12 years old and my neighbor showed me his new Nintendo Entertainment System.  We played the original Castlevania on it and eventually beat it; a task that I doubt I’d be able to easily accomplish today.  Since then, I’ve played all but about 4 titles in the series on most every platform, my favorites being the Nintendo DS titles.  I did play Castlevania 64 until I got to a part that I couldn’t get past in a clocktower of sorts.  The jumping mechanic in that game was atrocious.

I played the demo for Lords of Shadow Monday evening and was very impressed with the presentation set forth, the voice acting (though at times it definitely feels read and can be a tad long), the graphics, as well as the gameplay.  The demo consists of the first two levels of the first chapter of the game, and admittedly, I had some problems with getting the combat down.  I died a few times but when Gabriel, the main character, flew over a bridge that wasn’t really there at the end of the demo, I took a deep breath and knew that this was going to be a great ride.

Last night when I arrived home from work, the Limited Edition of Lords of Shadow was waiting for me.  I opened up the box and started installing the discs one after the other.  I always suggest that you do this with every current title that you play.  Not only does it make the game run more efficiently, it reduces heat and prolongs the life of your 360.  I took a quick glance at the art book and CD, but these won’t really be looked at more until the game has been completed once.  The packaging is nice, but I would have preferred a metal tin case.  I love those metal tin cases!

Upon starting the game and realizing that I had just played these levels the night before, I fared much better and got through the entire demo section unscathed.  I bought a few new attack moves, and really started to understand the attack methodology.  When done correctly, the battle mechanic is extremely satisfying.  I decided to stop buying new moves to see how far I could get with just a few basic ones, and I got about 6 levels further before stopping for the night.  Now I’ve got a lot of credits to spend on some moves tonight.

Graphically I believe this to be the nicest looking game I’ve seen on the 360 and I don’t really foresee better graphics coming to this platform without serious performance degradation.  The only clipping or stuttering I saw was at the head end of a few cutscenes, and even then, only for about a half second.  During gameplay I saw no slowdown whatsoever.

The game is divided up into 12 chapters made up out of about 50 levels.  Chapter 1 had 5 levels, and Chapter 2 appears to have more like 10 levels.  When starting the game, you can replay any level you want from a menu and choose difficulty.  This is similar to how Resident Evil 5 was set up, and I wholeheartedly approve.  This will make it easier to play through harder difficulties with all of my upgraded weaponry and moves.  Also, each level upon completion grants you a challenge in order to add re-playability and counts towards achieving 100% in the game.

One particular boss fight actually required me to grapple onto and climb his enormous body.  The game doesn’t really tell you what to do at first, and I died a few times figuring it out.  You have to destroy 4 orbs on his body, but after you destroy the second one, the game saves so you don’t have to repeat the first two again when you inevitably die.  At the end of the fight, I was climbing this thing very efficiently and eventually downing it felt really good.

Here are a few negative aspects that I’ve encountered with this game, because even though I think it’s very well made, it isn’t perfect.  It may be just because I’m still early in the game, but it sure does seem to pause an awful lot to instruct you on what to do when new items are available, but like I mentioned above, when a new, huge boss is introduced, the game decides to let you guess what to do while he punches the ice repeatedly (That’s a hint to this boss!). I’ve gotten lost a few times.  Sometimes the path will fork and you won’t know where to go.  Luckily, each time I’ve come across this, the paths merge together to a common goal.  The levels are all very short in length, possibly due to the high amount of graphics that need to be loaded.  When a new level starts, Captain Picard (Sir Patrick Stewart will always be Captain Picard to me) talks for about a minute while the level loads.  This is a nice touch but it tends to drag on at times.  I’m still engulfed in it because I’m trying to figure out this story.  At the end of each level, it always tells me that new moves are available, even when they aren’t.  When you grab an enemy, a large circle closes in on a smaller one, and when it gets inside, you’re supposed to hit a button.  Many times I’m hitting it too early, but that’s not the game’s fault.  Maybe on harder difficulties these circles are a bit faster, which is where I think they should be.  The last little bit of frustration that I’ve had is that sometimes the game will want you to jump to a ledge, but I jump almost to it and drop to my death.  This isn’t so bad though since the game autosaves frequently and I just start over again right from that ledge.  Even when you fall in battle and have to go through it again, the credits that you earn are saved so you essentially are earning them again on top of what you already earned.

Overall, I’m loving this game so far.  Sure it borrows methodology from other games, but very few don’t these days.  Even Batman: Arkham Asylum last year borrowed from games such as Splinter Cell, but for some reason it wasn’t publically knocked for that.  Some reviewers seem to be making up excuses for not liking this game and I’m not sure why.  Most of them say that it’s too similar to other games, but maybe they don’t realize that not everybody has played those games.  They should really be reviewing this game for what it is, and not what it borrows from others.  This game has a great Castlevania feel to it.  Also, when someone says that this game drops in framerate, I have to disagree.  It runs perfectly on my old 360, so it should on yours too.  The game is fun and very well put together, and I applaud Mercury Steam for their effort.  I look forward to finishing this and playing it again!

[EDIT] – I forgot to mention the music.  The music is amazing.