GamerTalk Review: Destroy All Humans: Path of the Furon
Posted by HCG Paco | Filed under GamerTalk, Quickies, Reviews
Paco: “Do you think that this is the type of game that needs more work and would benefit from greater depth? Or has this sort of franchise met its full potential?”
KP1gL37: “DAH has met its full potential. It is what it is.”
Paco: “So even with the bugs?”
KP1gL37: “Even with the bugs. The people that would like this don’t care about the bugs.”
Paco: “Yeah, I didn’t care about the bugs. Destroy All Humans was a $10 game. I feel like I got my money’s worth. It sounds stupid but, because it’s so mindless, I find it relaxing. Hard day? Play some Destroy All Humans, put it back down a half hour later. Reminds of Hulk: Ultimate Destruction in overall feeling.”
Tags: Destroy All Humans! Path fo the Furon, GamerTalk, quickies, Reviews, Xbox 360
KP1gL37’s Review: Resident Evil 5 - Exceptionally Underwhelming
Posted by HCG KP1gL37 | Filed under Reviews
I wanted to love Resident Evil 5, I really did. Ask anyone I know: whenever asked the obligatory “what’s your favorite video game of all time?” question, I ALWAYS answer: Resident Evil 4. That’s why I was waiting with baited breath for Resident Evil 5 to finally hit the scene. I was convinced that my all time fav was about to be dethroned by the latest and greatest installment in the series. Well color me disappointed when I actually got around to playing Resident Evil 5 only to find that it was resoundingly…meh. In fact, the first time I played it, I was so underwhelmed, I put it away and waited a month to give it another go.
Tags: Capcom, Resident Evil 4, Resident Evil 5, Reviews, Xbox 360
Musashi’s 2008 Games of the Year
Posted by HCG Musashi | Filed under Games of the Year, Reviews
While it’s always been a challenge for me to narrow down one title to deem my “Game of the Year”, 2008’s release schedule made that task nearly impossible. Each month was packed with at least one buzz-worthy title to take a peek at while other months (November, please stand up and be recognized) had our heads spinning with multiple A-Class titles every week. 2008 will definitely go down in my mind as one of the more impressive years in video game releases.
GAME OF THE YEAR:
Metal Gear Solid 4 - Guns of the Patriots (Playstation 3)
WHY
While Guns of the Patriots is hands-down a technical A-Class (or S-Class?) game, I feel it’s true shining achievement is it’s storyline and portrayal of characters. Sure, the Metal Gear Series is older than most of the gamers playing it today, but I don’t feel the series’ staying power is what made Guns of the Patriots so good; it was Kojima studios’ amazing storytelling and character portrayl that hit it out of the park. While I’ve had the privilege of growing up with Metal Gear series - all the way back to the NES days - it still amazes me that a game produced in 1988 with no more than a simple story on the back of a black and white instruction booklet has grown into a now 20 year old gaming dynasty that has sold millions of copies worldwide.
CONTENDERS TO THE TITLE
Tags: 2008 games of the year, Fallout 3, Far Cry 2, Gears of War 2, Hideo Kojima, Metal Gear Solid 4, Person 4, Playstation 2, PS2, PS3, Reviews, Xbox 360
KP1gL37’s 2008 Games of the Year
Posted by HCG KP1gL37 | Filed under Games of the Year, Reviews
2008 was a pretty stellar year in gaming. With more than a few highly-anticipated sequels hitting the shelves, and a slew of original titles blowing me away, narrowing it down to my select chosen favs for the year turned out to be more challenging than I thought.
So here it is, KP1gL37’s 2008 games of the year:
Game of the Year: Prince of Persia for Xbox 360 (Released: Dec 9, 2008)
I agonized over Game of the Year for a few weeks, and finally gave in to my first instinct with Prince of Persia for the Xbox 360. Between the original platformer trilogy, the recent Sands Of Time trilogy and the countless other portable and remake versions, Prince of Persia has been gracing gaming since 1989, so you bet your ass this was one special remake to beat out the other amazing Game of the Year contenders.
Read why I think PoP is GOTY after the jump
Tags: 2008 games of the year, Bully Scholarship Edition, Burnout Paradise, Gears of War 2, Left 4 Dead, Prince of Persia, Reviews, Rock Band 2, Xbox 360
Dreadsorrow’s 2008 Games Of The Year
Posted by HCG Dreadsorrow | Filed under Games of the Year, Reviews
I play mostly MMOs, but in recent weeks I have finally overcome my brainblocks to playing shooters on a console, and am enjoying them now immensely. However, I am still primarily an MMO player. I certainly hope that my favorite MMOs wind up on consoles someday, but I’m not holding my breath on that.
Anyway, I tried out a few new MMOs in 2008, but they were somewhat less than satisfying (e.g. Age of Conan). But with an MMO, expansions tend to add so much in terms of gameplay and content to the original game that I include MMO expansions among original releases when considering which is the best game released in any given year. So, without further fanfare or titillation…
GAME OF THE YEAR
Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria, nothing else is even close. LOTRO was already so epic in size, so true to Tolkien’s original vision, that I didn’t think it was possible to be any better.
WHY
The Mines of Moria expansion has added such an enormous amount of content that it boggles the mind. Everything was so well implemented, the launch so smooth, everything so bug-free, I had to really nitpick to find fault with the game. But most important, by playing this game, you get a real sense of how epic a virtual world can be, and how very small you can feel dwelling inside it. Turbine is not perfect, no game developer is. But their screw-ups are made insignificant by their successes.
Tags: 2008 games of the year, Gears of War, Gears of War 2, Left 4 Dead, Lord of the Rings Online, Mines of Moria, Reviews, Sins of a Solar Empire, Star Wars Force Unleashed
KP1gL37’s Review: Gears of War 2
Posted by HCG KP1gL37 | Filed under Reviews
I am a Gears girl at heart. Seriously, I freaking loved the first Gears so much (check out my original Gears review) that I could not WAIT for the new Gears to hit the shelves. I was a little scared of the sequel trap most video games fall into. They have an amazing game the first time around and then try to rush out a sequel, only to f**k it all up. Well, Cliff and the guys at Epic did not let me down. For a change, Gears 2 is a video game sequel that equals (if not surpasses) the original.
Tags: Gears of War, Gears of War 2, Reviews, Xbox 360
Paco’s Review: Star Wars The Force Unleashed
Posted by HCG Paco | Filed under Reviews
Star Wars The Force Unleashed (SWTFU from here on out) has one reason that makes it worth playing. And that one thing is not the physics, the animation engine or the graphics. That reason is the story. I am proud to say that for the first time in a long, long time the story shines and frankly so do the performances.
Maybe some of it comes after just finishing the black and white version of The Mist, but Sam Witwer was perfectly cast. The Apprentice was my favorite new character in Soul Calibur IV, so I was already familiar with how he moved and how he carried himself. Nothing could have prepared me for some of those great cutscenes and sure some times they looked stiff, but overall those cutscenes are some of the best we have ever seen as gamers.
I was shocked by how ballsy some of the character arcs were. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Force, Reviews, Star Wars, Unleashed
Paco’s Review: Too Human
Posted by HCG Paco | Filed under Reviews
Metal Gear Solid 4 is the only game for me that has lived up to or surpassed the hype recently. Too Human frankly doesn’t even come close. What it did do though, was remind me why I spent over a hundred hours killing cows and blowing apart skeletons in Diablo. Too Human is crack, if you can look past its many flaws.
The story heats up so much at the end that I couldn’t wait to replay it and see what I missed now that the story started to make sense. Well, that and the fact that I got my first Red Drop.
The crack comes into play around hour 4 or 5, once you’ve become so numb to the glitchy music, repetitive enemies and shear boredom. I mean that with all due respect, but the fact that I became addicted is something to write home about. My obsession with stat counting and character tweaking got so bad that I had to limit myself to one equipment overhaul per level. Without it, I found myself pressing pause every 5 or 10 minutes when I picked up a new set of blueprints.
Tags: Denis Dyak, Diablo, Reviews, Role Playing Game, Silicon Knights, Too Human, Xbox 360
Paco’s Review: 1942 Joint Strike
Posted by HCG Paco | Filed under Reviews
Capcom is trying to do what Midway tried a few years ago. And its brilliant. I know Hollywood gets blamed for this, but sometimes a remake works as good or even better. Bionic Commando: Rearmed is a great example of how great a remake can be using modern technology. If it hadn’t been for that stellar remake, 1942: Joint Strike would’ve been taken the crown.
The graphics look amazing, the control is tight, and the sound is great. There are times that just looking at the graphics you will wonder how they fit it all in an Xbox Live title. The sense of depth here is really cool, especially when you are trailing smoke and flip over an enemy. Frankly, 1942 is one of the best looking Xbox Live Arcade titles out there, especially when you compare it to some of the original releases.
Old and busted.
New hotness.
Tags: 1942 Joint Strike, Capcom, NES, Reviews, Xbox 360, Xbox Live Arcade
Dreadsorrow’s Review: Cabela’s Alaskan Adventure
Posted by HCG Dreadsorrow | Filed under Reviews
Pros:
The XBox 360 has an ‘off’ switch
My next door neighbor is old and deaf so she didn’t hear me screaming in horror.
Cons:
I wasted money on this turd that could have been better spent on thumb tacks to stick in my own butt-cheeks.
There are people out there that think this is a good game, and they are allowed to have children and vote.
The Worst Game I Have Ever Played
This review I started to write a very long time ago. I didn’t post it until now, because I never quite had the heart to actually finish writing it. Like a turd that won’t flush, the unfinished .txt file has been languishing on my hard drive, occasionally peeking up from the drain whenever I looked for files I had misplaced. The reason that I never finished it and posted it until now, is that this game is so spectacularly shittastic it was never worth the effort to me. Then last night, the turd once more poked its head from the drain, and I decided to just get it over with. So instead of doing something fun, I am taking one for the Hardcore Gamer Team, and finishing this sandpaper rimjob of a review.
Tags: Cabela's Alaskan Adventure, Reviews, Xbox 360
Paco’s Review: Wolf of the Battlefield Commando 3
Posted by HCG Paco | Filed under Reviews
I never owned the original Commando. I always borrowed it off of a friend or rented it from the local video store. Commando was one of those games that was rented and borrowed so many times that you knew you had to blow in it if you had any chance to get it to play because of how many times people ripped out of the NES deck and wanted to throw it against the wall. But, that is a good thing.
People need to remember those days of simple game play mixed with high difficulty and they also need to remember that this is Xbox Live ARCADE. Wolf of the Battlefield: Commando 3 is structured like an old-school arcade game with a fresh coat of paint. Arcade games where made to the make the arcades money, period. Quarter munchers pay the rent. This game is an old fashioned quarter muncher.
WotB: C3 owes more to Smash TV, Metal Slug and Geometry Wars than it does to its own lineage, but the mix fills a nice hole on XBLA. For a virtual arcade, there are surprisingly few really fun quarter munchers that make you want to keep playing after you get your ass kicked.
Tags: Reviews, Wolf of the Battlefield Commando 3, Xbox 360, Xbox Live Arcade
Dreadsorrow’s Review: Age of Conan Hyborian Adventures
Posted by HCG Dreadsorrow | Filed under Reviews
Official Site: www.ageofconan.com
Let me start out by saying that I was really looking forward to this game. The previews were good, the tidbits leaking out from behind the veil of the NDA during beta were generally positive, and the screenshots and videos were awesome. Plus, the cherry on top is that Conan of Cimmeria was my favorite hero from childhood, even more so than a wizard that goes off on quests with a gang of midgits, or a talking lion that abducts children and takes them off to his fantasy world “so that you might know me better”. By the time I reached high school, I had already read all the original Conan books written by R.E. Howard, as well as many of the new ones by modern authors, including those by the late, great Robert Jordan. I had my collection of Conan comic books, as well as my poster of Arnold in full costume and muscles, complete with hulking, sweaty, man-boobs. To summarize, Funcom would have to royally f**k this game up for me to not like it.
Tags: Age of Conan Hyborian Adventures, Funcom, MMO, MMORPG, Reviews
