Hiatus

I have to give up video games for the next few months so I can focus on actually graduating. I doubt you'll see any posts until around April or May.

Assassin's Creed 2

I'm working on beating this so I can (eventually) get Brotherhood. I'm about to start the final Memory but I want to collect all the Codex pages (or at least most of them; I'm getting impatient) and collect/decipher The Truth. I've managed to not read any of the spoilers for it, which is rather surprising for me, so... hopefully it's worth the time it'll take to hunt down the glyphs.

Sigh.

I've been meaning to post, but finals week and other end-of-the-semester crap is getting in the way. I'll hopefully have some new stuff up in a week or two.

GoldenEye 007

...I'm working on it. So far, it's okay, I guess. I'm only on the second level. Hopefully next weekend I'll have a review up.

Also, I think I was a little too hasty to review Force Unleashed 2, I'll have to think about that one for a bit and update my original review.

Force Unleashed 2

The story is really weak, and has barely any continuity with the film series. Then again, George Lucas himself has no concept of continuity, so I suppose it all works out.

Some of the best graphics I've seen on the 360, right alongside Halo Reach. The cutscenes are beautiful.

Combat is pretty good. There isn't that awful Force Push wheel, targeting is vastly improved over Force Unleashed 1, and having two lightsabers is pretty cool, except I'm still waiting for the game where you can unlock Darth Maul's lightsaber and actually use it.

There aren't too many glitches from what I could tell; Starkiller disappeared out of the game for a few seconds then came back, but that only happened once. There's still that annoying bug where if you're on the edge of a platform or object and try to jump, you don't move forward, but timing the jump differently can fix that.

My only major criticism is that the boss battles were a little too epic for their own good, at least to me. The giant creature you fight in the arena (Gorgon? Goron? Al Gore?) seemed to be just a little too fantastic for the scope of the game, and the ending fight with Vader seemed to drag on and on and on interminably. Also, the frantic button-mashing at the very end made me wish there was still that 'Turbo' option on controllers... my fingers were pretty beat up after doing it twice. A more minor criticism is that there were some really repetitive elements to the game, such as outrunning an bridge that is exploding behind you and facing the same kind of enemies over, and over, and over, and over. At least there weren't any Imperial Purge Troopers, I would have punched my hand through the TV (and it isn't a flatscreen, it has actual glass on the front).

All in all, I think that this is a great game. The developers really took the time to address the faults of Force Unleashed 1, and work past them to make a game that I really enjoyed playing. Sure, the story was rather lame and the campaign takes maybe 5 hours to do on Medium, but I'm willing to look past those issues because I had a heck of a time playing. Good job, LucasArts!

Graphics: 5/5

Audio: 5/5

Gameplay: 4/5

Story: 3/5

Overall: 4/5

Creepy games

I don't know why I play them, but I do. I got F.E.A.R. Files from Gamefly yesterday and played it for a few minutes tonight, and it's freaking creepy. Naturally, that's the last thing I play before I go to bed. Hopefully I don't have nightmares of that sergeant being thrown around and getting blood all over the walls and floor.

Why do I play creepy games? I've never been able to figure that out. I played RE4 for the Gamecube and beat it one and a half times, then I got it for the Wii and I've played it for all of 20 minutes, and I usually end up screaming like a girl and waving the controller around in a frenzy while hordes of Ganado or whatever they're called chase after me with pitchforks. Don't even get me started on the Regenerador.

Maybe tonight will mark a change for me. As of tonight, I'm not going to play any more creepy games because they just aren't worth the time and effort. Besides, I think my roommates would get annoyed if all I did was play creepy games and scream like a girl.

Quantum of Solace

Why do I always buy games two years too late?

Anyway... I beat this game last night and I'm glad I didn't pay full price on it. The graphics seemed so-so to me, the mechanics were underwhelming, and the campaign was a disjointed mess (you spend roughly an hour or so in Quantum of Solace, and three or four hours in Casino Royale in a massively extended flashback). Not only that, but half of the achievements are based on online multiplayer, and no one on XBL plays this game anymore. I fired up Perfect Dark Zero (you know, the 360 launch title) to see if anyone was on that, and I got into a deathmatch right away. Weird, right?

Overall, the game is an okay first-person shooter with third-person elements here and there. The cover system seemed a bit dodgy to me, and the blindfire really isn't all that blind. If you peek out of cover, line up a shot, then go back into cover and blindfire, you'll hit the exact shot you had just lined up. Maybe this is how blindfire is really supposed to work and I've just played all the wrong games. I'm not complaining too much; this makes the game rather easy, but it just didn't feel right.

I'd say that the bottom line on this game is if you're looking for a few hours to kill and you have a man-crush on Daniel Craig, give this one a tumble. Don't pay full rental price for it unless you're only getting it for a day or two; GameFly it if you can, or get it for a few bucks at your local Gamestop or similar venue. Don't pay full price for it or you'll end up having spent $13 an hour for the time it takes to beat the campaign on a middling difficulty.