We built this city on cock and balls.

A Kingdom For Keflings
Achievements: 12 (10 offline for 180gs, 2 online for 20gs)
MS Points: 800

The first game to employ the new avatars in gameplay, A Kingdom For Keflings takes the resource management and asset building elements of an RTS and puts them in a sandbox setting. In other words, you build stuff so you can build more stuff and tell your little people what to do, but you don't have to worry about a tower rush while you're at it.

Sounds kind of boring, but it turns out pretty fun, if you're into games like SimCity or always get sacked when you're trying to build up a civiliztion in Age Of Empires. The music volume tends to be set pretty high by default, so you may want to turn that down right away, but other than that, no real warnings.

While those ten achievements can be garnered offline, you can save yourself some time and trouble by just hosting an online village and saving that as you progress; if you're like me and like to organize things, however, I suggest you lock said game until you've gotten things pretty well built up, especially if you don't have a headset handy. Without direction, random visitors will prove to be the most braindead twats on the face of the earth, building random garbage and throwing it everywhere. That, and if you have a sweet town built up by the time you let anyone in, it's pretty much just showing off by that point, and any damage idiots do is less consequential.

Another hit from NinjaBee, aimed at the more strategically-minded crowd. I say buy it.

Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix
Achievements: 12 (8 offline for 110gs, 4 online for 90gs)
MS Points: 1200

The best Street Fighter, if not the best 2D fighter, all prettified. It's solid. Just buy it, since the demo is just the multiplayer beta they let you download if you bought Commando 3. Which is totally a dick move, but whatever.

Blitz: The League II
Achievements: 50 (45 offline for 905gs, 5 online for 95gs)

Augh.




That's the entire review.













Go home.

Time for a booster!

Here's a list of games and the achievements in them I'm looking to trade currently. I'll try to keep this as up to date as possible. Please message me ahead of time so I can make sure I have room on my friends list for you.

Note that these are mostly just achievements that require online play; I'd be happy to help or be helped with anything that can be done both offline and online as well.

Last updated 8/4/09

3D Ultra Minigolf
Open Champion
Host With The Most

A Kingdom For Keflings
Friend

Aegis Wing
Diplomat
Epic Warrior
Teamwork

Assault Heroes
Twin Medal

Band Of Bugs
Third Time's The Charm
Good Host

Battlestar Galactica
Aquaria Wingman Citation Ribbon
Libran Survivalist Citation

Big Bumpin'
First Victory
Slippery Like Eel
Mine!
Outclassed!
What Happened?
Knockout King
Striker
Not Playing Anymore!
Hat Trick
Charge!!

Bomberman Live
The Name's Bomb, Dangerous Bomb
You Die So Good!
The Bomb!
The Good, The Bad, And The Bombed

Boogie Bunnies
Better Together

Burnout Paradise
First Win
Online Champion
Firestarter
Party Animal
Burnout Skills

Carcassonne
Top Of The Heap
Metropolis
Lord Of Carcassonne

Commanders: Attack
Bravely Bold

Culdcept Saga
Triangular Battler
Quadrangular Battler
Alliance Maker
Neophyte Cepter
Apprentice Cepter
Adept Cepter
Master Cepter
Grandmaster Cepter
Legendary Cepter
Fighter's Honor
Knight's Honor
Berserker's Honor

Dash Of Destruction
Extinction Event

Dead Or Alive 4
Achieved Grade "SS"
Achieved Grade "S"
Achieved Grade "A"
Achieved Grade "B"
Achieved Grade "D"
Achieved Grade "E"
5 Straight Wins In DOA Online
10 Straight Wins In DOA Online
20 Straight Wins In DOA Online
5 Straight Losses In DOA Online
10 Straight Losses In DOA Online
20 Straight Losses In DOA Online
10 Wins In DOA Online
50 Wins In DOA Online
100 Wins In DOA Online

DOOM
ROOKIE
DESTROYER

E4
Big Head

Gauntlet
CO-OP
CO-OP Master
Max CO-OP
High Score

Gears Of War
A Series Of Tubes
Domination
I Can't Quit You Dom
THIS! IS! ANNEX!
Inconcievable!
Nub Pwn3r
You Down With E.P.I.C?
Green Thumb
Mind The Gap
Purdy Mouth
All That Juice

Geon
getting out more
gimme gimme world domination
variety is the spice of life

Golden Axe
Co-op Win
Online Co-op

Guitar Hero II
Joe & Steven Award
Keef & Mick Award
Page & Plant Award
400K Pair
600K Pair
800K Pair
Millionaire Pair

Guitar Hero III
Life Of The Party
Back Up Hero
Guitar Wizard
Button Masher
Two Timer
Dynamic Duo
Streak Masters
Millionaire Club
Higher Than Most
Easy Duo
Medium Duo
Hard Duo
Living Legends
Leaders Of The Pack

Halo 3
Campaign Complete: Legendary
Vidmaster Challenge: Annual
Double Double
Alas, Poor Yorick
Came... From... Behind...
Defend This
Flag Dropped
Road Rage
Look Both Ways
Hammer Time
Pull
Blades Of Fury
Ghost Patrol
Post Mortem
Get The Horns
Aww, Too Bad
Killtacular
Have Fun Respawning
Save This Film
Delicious Brains
Zombie Repeller
Tank Dropper

Joust
CO-OP
CO-OP Master

Marathon: Durandal
Tastes Like Chicken
Pfhor Score And Seven Years Ago
I'm Invincible!
Make Someone Pay
World Domination
King Pfhor A Day
You Think You're Big Time

Marble Blast Ultra
First Place
Gem Collector
Veteran Battler
Blue Gem Hunt

Marvel Vs Capcom 2
I Am Doom
Hyakuretsu Kyaku
Berserker Barrage
Shun Goku Satsu

n+
Complete 5 Co-op Episodes
Complete 10 Co-op Episodes

Pocketbike Racer
Multiplayer King
Pro-Gamer

Poker Smash
Champ

Rock Band
One Million Fans
Hall Of Fame Inductee
Vinyl Artist
Gold Artist
Platinum Artist
Big In London
Big In Paris
Big In Amsterdam
Big In Berlin
Big In Stockholm
Big In Rome
Big In Boston
Big In NYC
Big In Chicago
Big In LA
Big In Seattle
Big In San Francisco
Big In Japan
Big In Sydney
Big In Reykjavik
Big In Rio
Big In Moscow
Riding On Coattails

Rock Band 2
Comeback Kid
Victory!
Band Savior
Overdrive Overdose
Million Point Club
Stage Igniters

SEGA Superstars Tennis
Surf The Net
Top Of The Tree
Ball Buddies
Top Ranker
Let's Get Friendly
Space Channel 5
Swinging Report Show

Small Arms
Six Degrees Of Small Arms
Barbaric Recruiter

Sonic The Hedgehog 2
All Multiplayer
Xbox Live Racer

Soul Calibur IV
World Traveler

Street Trace: NYC
Pickup Tournament Pro
Cash Tournament Pro
8 Player Award

Streets Of Rage 2
First Versus
Online Warrior
Online Co-op

Tetris Splash
Online Rookie
Online Back-To-Back
Online Expert

TMNT 1989 Arcade
Slice And Dice
Real Ultimate Power

Undertow
Swim Pals

Uno
Multiplayer
Uno Shark

Wing Commander Arena
TCS Tiger's Claw
Paladin

WOTB: Commando 3
Armored Attack
Combined Asssault

Yaris
Plays Well With Others

Reference city.

Triple threat for today, but not much to say on two of 'em.

F.E.A.R. - First Encounter Assault Recon
Achievements: 47 (25 offline for 685gs, 22 online for 315gs)

Oh man. Fuck this game, too. I thought F.E.A.R. Files might've just been ground out quickly for a fast buck, but now I see the pedigree is pretty shitty, too. It looks a little better visually when it comes to character designs, but the environments are definitely more limited, and the gameplay is just as crap.

To make things simple, I got to the third Iteration, and two or three times into the water treatment plant, I figured I was done, only to learn the game was loading another section of the same damn area. Thanks. Eventually, you get to a point where the guy you're tracking drops some mines and disappears again, and if you shoot the mines (since, if you don't, you splodey), they blow out this electrical box on the wall, sending electricity shooting across the hallway. I imagine you're supposed to use your slo-mo powers to get by it, which I tried about a dozen different ways unsuccessfully before I stopped trying to pretend I gave a shit.

They also nickel and dime you something fierce when it comes to some of these achievements, especially the online kills with different weapons and anything that isn't the basic clearing of the game with a decent difficulty setting. You guys could've afforded to spread some points around and made more ten-pointers out of the pile of fivers.

I imagine I'll be saying, "Fuck this game," to the sequel as well, so look forward to it!


CSI: Hard Evidence
Achievements: 5 (all offline, 1000gs)

Totally phoned in, as all your achievements come from just beating the five cases with any grade. They couldn't even make a few for finding all the insect easter eggs in each level, or stackables for certain grades. Thanks. On the plus side, that leaves this game an easy full-perfect run, if a tedious and moderately long one. Wouldn't take more than two or three days, though, so it's perfect for even a brick and mortar rental.

I've watched all of one episode of CSI, and I think it was Miami and the sound was turned down so I can't say I have much background in the series, but the game basically pits you as a new recruit getting partnered with different investigators on the different cases, for a delightful point-and-click-to-find-shit adventure. The writing isn't bad, but there's a bit too much attempt to insert wit at weak places, and almost all of the characters, main and suspect, look like they were pulled out of a session of Poser 101. Poser as in the 3D imaging program that a depressing number of people seem to use for porn.

The thing that really bugs me is that I don't think they resolve some of the less consequential evidence, especially this one fingerprint you find in the fourth mission that places one person at the scene of the crime, who ends up never having been there at all, if I remember correctly. That, and another person gets tied there but they never explain why he was kind enough to vaccuum a key piece of evidence before he ran back out, terrified. I dunno.

Get your points and forget this game ever existed.

Brothers In Arms: Hell's Highway
Achievements: 43 (36 offline for 1000gs, 7 online for 0gs)

That's right, the online achievements don't get you any gamerscore. Clearly, online play was tacked on at the last minute. Still, that doesn't make the main game any worse.

Another damn WWII game. Great. At least in this one, Gearbox took the time to focus more on the guys you're working with rather than the situation, and the story they crafted is pretty solid. On the downside, there are a great many references to the previous Brothers In Arms titles, and in some cases character faces aren't that distinct from one another, so those new to the franchise are bound to be confused, but other than that, things are all right.

Hell's Highway, set against the backdrop of the massive botch that was Operation Market Garden, is a squad tactics FPS, in that you command other groups of soldiers, often with special abilities like a crew with a bazooka or heavy machine gun, to help you work your way around enemy emplacements and lay down fire so you can get in there and clean up. Run-and-gun is not the name of the game here, but the squad command controls are simple and intuitive while still being somewhat robust, so the pace of the game doesn't drag often.

The achievement spread is decent, too. You're rewarded for each completed chapter, in increasing amounts as you get closer to the end of the game, and most of the other achievements come from stuff you'd inevitably end up doing or trying to do as the story progresses, so even the secret achievements aren't tough to acquire. There are a couple of easter egg hunts with the recon points, which reward you with brief cutscenes as well as more info on your map, and the Kilroys, which mostly aren't hidden anywhere too obscure and are a fun real-life reference to a trend from the war itself.

You might groan, however, upon noticing the three constant play achievements. You get points for playing every day for a week, once a week for three months straight, and every day for one hundred days. Nice way to get people to buy instead of renting, guys! Too bad you didn't account for Gamefly in that equation! So yeah, it looks like I'm going to be hanging onto this one for a bit. Thankfully, the game counts "playing" as merely loading things up and going into a menu or two, so once I'm done with the story and possibly trying to get some of the online stuff, I can just pop the game in for a minute during breakfast or what have you until sometime in February.

There's also an achievement for playing the game on September 17th, which is kind of dick since the game came out a week after that, but the optimist in me makes me think they originally aimed for an earlier release. Not all developers are evil, right? For that one, I'm just going to put it back in the queue sometime next summer.

All in all, it's not a disappointing game, and even if you're not invested in the series thus far, it's worth checking out.

All I ever wanted.

I'm on vacation this week from my real job, so I've got plenty of time to pay attention to this. High on the agenda is getting some images to pretty things up around here and make it not so type-type-type, though I haven't finished editing them down for this update.

Catching up from this past week, I've got a handful of games I played. Not as bad as the past few huge updates.

Vigilante 8 Arcade
Achievements: 12 (11 offline for 180gs, 1 online for 20 gs)
MS Points: 800

I missed out on the original Vigilante 8, but the demo gives me the impression this was someone's answer to Twisted Metal back in the day. Cars drive around and pick up weapons and powerups to make other cars go splodey. Eh.

Not that I'm knocking it, really. I just wasn't particularly impressed, either. If I had experience with the original, I could judge things based on the faith of the translation, but ah well. I do kind of dig the 70s motif. Achievement spread is nice and sounds easy, if a bit grindy at points. Guess you should buy it if you were a fan in the day or like mindless missile-fests. Can't say I don't.

Battle Fantasia
Achievements: 48 (44 offline for 880gs, 4 online for 120gs)

From the dudes who brought you Guilty Gear, Arc System Works, we have another similarly awesome fighter, but decked out in 3D sprites and a fantasy RPG feel. I skipped most of the story scenes to save time, but the basic gist is that a bunch of people are on quests that end up pitting them against this badass suit of armor from hell.

Pretty solid fighter, as is to be expected from Arc, but if you were hoping for much of anything from the RPG side, too bad. At best, you get the same sort of storyline shifts from doing certain things in certain battles as you got in some of the later GGX iterations, and little numbers pop up whenever you hit or get hit. The rabbit wizard's wand levels up as you do better, too. The end.

My one gripe, as mentioned in an earlier brief post, is that the autosave isn't automatically set to ON. I ended up clearing three characters' basic stories before calling it a night during my first session, only to find the gallery stuff I'd unlocked gone the next morning. Always make sure it's on, since some people don't bother defaulting that for some reason.

Achievement spread is mostly simple, with fight counts, story completion, and progress in every mode coming into play, but there's about 200gs worth of CRAZY SHIT you need to do if you want a perfect completion. Mostly insanely high combos, but there's one thing that requires you to hammer your parry button at 212 bpm to survive the last boss' ultimate attack.

Yes. 212 BPM. Someone clocked it. If you want to see how to do it (the achievement is Perfect Hero), peep the last video here. Yeah. Whoa.

Still, love it to death. I highly recommend if you're into 2D fighters, or dudes that rock a combination hoverbike/chainsaw.

Command & Conquer 3: Kane's Wrath
Achievements: 44 (34 offline for 890gs, 10 online for 110gs)

Didn't spend any time in campaign mode, so I can't comment on that, but OH MY GOD THE INTERFACE IS SO MUCH BETTER THIS TIME AROUND. Not much changed, to be honest, save for the addition of a whole pile of factions, but instead of the PC-esque build menus they kept for C&C3, Kane's Wrath implements a radial pop-up that is worlds easier to navigate, and therefore speeds things up handily.

Gameplay, as I hinted, remains pretty much the same, though these new groups have their own tricks. For gamerscore, they want you to run the campaign, then do everything else (skirmish, quick matches online, and a challenge mode) with everyone possible. The only non-story secret achievement is skipping the Boot Camp when you first start campaign, which you can probably only do right at the beginning of your save file, so just say no. Then go back and do it for some points anyway, since once again, it's linked from the main menu. It's also the same damn training course, save with new menus. Ugh.

Solid RTS, though at this point I'd probably just recommend you go out and grab C&C: Red Alert 3. George Takei as the head of Japan? Madness!

Beijing 2008
Achievements: 50 (46 offline for 925gs, 4 online for 75gs)

Ugh. Thanks, Sega. This isn't your daddy's Track & Field, I'll say that much.

This game is all about perfection. Save for the handouts you get for merely hosting a match (good luck finding anyone), making a custom dude, and playing the game with your Rock Band setup (seriously, there's one for playing with 4 controllers on one console, and so long as you've got A buttons to work with, the thing gives it to you), you have to play until you're absolutely amazing.

I didn't even waste a half hour on it, nevermind the normal hour. I'll come back to it when there's nothing else I want to play, or I find someone with whom to boost the online crap. Bleh.

Dynasty Warriors: Gundam
Achievements: 15 (all offline, 1000gs)

OH HELL YES. For some reason, mindless, repetitive button mashing to execute mass murder is so much more satisfying when giant robots are involved instead of random, faceless Chinamen. I'm not even that big into Gundam, per se, but that doesn't matter, because the game follows the anime plots decently enough, and has a character profile section to blow several key plot points in case you haven't watched a given series! NICE!

Really, it's just a reskinned DW, so it's still crappy old DW, but whatever. 'splosions. You get your 1000gs mostly just from beating the game with everyone ever, leveling someone and their machine to the max, and playing a lot of missions, so I think I might bother to grind this one out.

Cool if you're into Gundam, but even then, I'm not sure you really want to buy it to own. Rent away.


I believe Brothers In Arms: Hell's Highway is next up. No, I haven't bought anything new since RB2 this holiday game season, and if anything, the next thing I pick up will probably be DDR Universe 3, because I'm a huge douche. I swear, I've been invited to more Gears 2 games in the past week than I have birthday parties in my entire life.

A couple of reminders.

- Always make sure you turn on your autosave, kids. Always.

- Get out and vote. Now. Put the controller down. Run a defrag or something, and try and help un-fuck this country.

SUCCESS! RICE!

PHILLIES WIN THE WORLD SERIES WHA TTHE HELL IS UUUUUUUP

I may find myself delayed.

Before anything else, I'd like to point out that they finally released Darth Vader as DLC for Soul Calibur IV, and you want him. Bad. I'm not that great with him, but some dude schooled me with him online and trust me, the man is siiiiiiick. He is possibly also the only thing that sounds funnier than Yoda with a Japanese voice track.

Also, Siouxsie & The Banshees pack for Rock Band/2. Killing Jar, Hong Kong Garden, and Kiss Them For Me. You need it.

Portal: Still Alive
Achievements: 12 (all offline, 200gs)
MS Points: 1200

Sure, it's just a port of the version on the Orange Box, but given that it's still one of the best games ever put together, why not pony up for the extra challenge levels and developer commentary? Or save yourself a few bucks if you haven't gotten Orange Box already, in case you really, really didn't want the rest of that extra content, and are stark raving mad to boot?

Achievement spread is mostly a few tricks and the challenge levels, since they realize most people out there played the OB version already. Worth the money, just make sure you have drive space for it.

Armored Core: For Answer
Achievements: 41 (24 offline for 570gs, 17 online for 430gs)

And with this, I have played every retail game beginning with A released in the US to date. Ding!

This follow-up to Armored Core 4, in case you couldn't figure that out from the logo, could be dubbed Armored Core Of The Colossus. There's the usual spread of area clearing and target elimination missions as per previous AC games, but every chapter seems to end with a raid on a giant walking base bristling with firepower, called an Arms Fort. They tell you the weak spots you have to take out during the briefing, and then the "fun" part is actually getting to them before you get raped.

There's also an arena of sorts this time around; versus missions against other AC units with a ranking system you can climb, and they're nice enough to pay you as well.

The one innovation that did impress me somewhat is that they finally provided an alternate control scheme, where your firing buttons are the bumpers instead of A & B, while A & B are swapped to the weapon switch roles. Still a little weird trying to fire your lefty weapon while jetting around, but I think it's a vast improvement regardless. Veterans will probably disagree, but whatever. I've been playing AC here and there since the PS1 versions, and I've never gotten used to the setup.

Offline achievements are all story and mission rank, as well as different endings, and online play gets you stuff for climbing the ranks and blowing up a lot of shit (10,000 online kills? Excuse me?). Basically more of the same, but it didn't get any worse.

Baja: Edge Of Control
Achievements: 50 (50 for 990gs, 1 online for 10gs)

If DiRT was Gran Turismo Rally, this is Gran Turismo Dune Buggy. I should mention now that as soon as I saw the THQ logo starting up, I went into this with some severe bias. I hate THQ. I hate them lots. This was only ratcheted up when I found myself looking at an intro screen featuring full motion video. It's like I have a Sega CD all over again! NICE!

All in all, the game isn't that bad, thankfully. The controls are a little clumsy until you get used to them, but the customization and tweaking is at least second-rate, with lots of little slider bars to adjust your camber and other terms I'm only mildly familiar with, and plenty of parts to buy.

Even on easy, I was getting my ass handed to me, but then again, I wasn't so good with the controls, and the early races are easy enough to repeat, as well as the rewards being decent even early on, to justify playing them a few times to get the hang of things.

Not great for an achievement blitz, since most of them are for digging through career or beating races against hard AI, but good fun if you're into desert racing. I love that they included both short courses and the actual marathon runs through the desert.

Before you ask, I don't understand the whole thing with the single online achievement, either. It even sounds like they were expecting to put a few more in, since it's called Basic Multiplayer, but it's like they just forgot. THANKS THQ YOU'RE SUPER.

Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?
Achievements: 12 (10 offline for 190gs, 2 online for 10gs)
MS Points: 1200

I'm not actually sure if the last one is an online one, but it sounds like a viral achievement so it probably is.

This would be a great easy achievement run if it didn't cost an unjustifiable 1,200 points. I blew through the demo questions in about five minutes, and if anything, they should be paying me 1200 points just to sit and listen to that fucking theme song.

Wait for the price to drop. No one should have to pay this much for Jeff Foxworthy, real or virtual.

Penny Arcade: On The Rainslick Precipice Of Darkness - Episode 2
Achievements: 12 (all offline, 200gs)
MS Points: 1200

Unfortunately, I'm avoiding the demo on this one due to having not yet finished the first episode, but if it's anything like said episode, it's awesome. I don't need to play it to know you should buy it.

Umpteenth verse, review gets terse.

Dynasty Warriors 5: Empires
Achievements: 36 (all offline, 1000gs)

Beat all the scenarios, and then grind your way to a pile of Generals in the Gathering Of Heroes scenario. Unless, of course, you actually like these games. In which case, seek help.

Been working on playing fifty online matches in Beautiful Katamari; while sparse, there are still people who play, usually early to mid evening from what I've found. Beyond that, I'm just waiting for Armored Core For Answer, since that'll leave me with all letter A retail games played. Woo.

Rock Band 2 is still awesome, but I hear Guitar Hero World Tour has Jesse's Girl by Rick Springfield. GUESS I NEED BOTH.

Baby got an atom bomb.

Is this what it feels like to be back on schedule? Righteous!

Crash Bandicoot: Mind Over Mutant
Achievements: 48 (all offline, 1000gs)

There's really not much to say about this. Mind Over Mutant is just more of the same (admittedly solid) railed platforming, which sees the return of the titular Titans from the last game and gives you the new ability to store one while you run around. Oh, and you can dig underground now. Other than that, nothing new.

If anything, I think this one was a bit easier when it comes to extra challenges, as well. The grind this time around, instead of meeting certain conditions on each level, is more leveling up yourself and all the different kinds of Titans.

The co-op was handled a bit better this time around as well. Instead of carrying the other person on your back and swapping with a double jump as in CotT, now the second player can switch between being another bandicoot or a mask, in which case they follow around the lead player and have the ability to fire projectiles aimed with a crosshair onscreen. While the old way was a bit more fun when it came to actually cooperating with someone, this setup makes it a lot easier to bang out the coop achievements with just having a second controller on.

Worth a rent, but no more than that unless you collect these games for some reason. You could probably bang out all the achievements in about a week, two tops.

Age Of Booty
Achievements: 12 (10 offline for 160gs, 2 online for 40gs)
MS Points: 800

From the demo, this seems like a pretty clean cut semi-strategical game. You control a pirate ship, and you're out to take towns, and I'm going to assume other ships as well as the game progresses. You collect resources floating on the sea or from the towns and tribal villages you wipe out, and use those to upgrade your ship back at your base.

Cashing in on "internet people" and their hard-on for pirates, it's a fun little game but nothing mindblowing. Achievement spread looks fairly easy, mostly clearing all the challenges and doing some fun stuff with items, with the online stuff just being winning some matches. Eh.

CrazyMouse
Achievements: 12 (8 offline for 135gs, 4 online for 65gs)
MS Points: 800

You're a blue mouse that eats stuff, in some moderately puzzle-like levels. Sometimes you're up against a rival, sometimes there are enemy creatures out to end your pig-out session.

Controls are well and good for such a simple game, but visually, it feels really phoned in. Very flat-looking 2D characters on a vaguely 3D background that looks off-putting, like a really cheap Flash game. In some ways, it actually reminds me of those LCD handhelds from back in the day, where all the characters and objects on screen were just specific areas that were darkened when active. If things had been kept a little more on par in one direction or the other, it would be less jarring.

Oddly enough, a quick google turned up no results for a previously existing Flash form of this game, but there is a Windows Trojan by the same name. Go figure.

All you really need to do for most of the gamerscore is let the game sew your asshole shut and keep feedin' ya, and feedin' ya, and feedin' ya. There're a few tricks that require a bit more thinking, but really, it's cake.

Not a pun. Not the best use of your funds, either.

F.E.A.R. Files
Achievements: 41 (34 offline for 850gs, 7 online for 150gs)

Fuck this game. I was willing to look past the blocky graphics, vague and disjointed story, and mediocre level layout until this piece of shit bugged out twice in the exact same place.

After you get through what I guess is the prologue chapter of the first campaign, you're running around in the catcombs under a church, following this ghostly thing with red eyes and shooting anything that shoots at you. Eventually, a few of these red-eye things run into a small room, and given there's nowhere else to go, you have to follow them and then get locked in said small room.

The first time I followed them, it was basically a closet with a bunch of crates, and you could hear this weird whispery noise. I tried messing with everything, and eventually just grenaded myself to go back to the last checkpoint and try again.

The second time, the room went all black, with a small light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel glow in front of me and a bunch of the red-eye things dancing around in the darkness. Thing is, you can't move towards the light, you can't jump, your flashlight doesn't work, your time dilation doesn't work, shooting things does nothing, and grenades just get thrown into the ether with no effect, not even on you.

You can turn around to look at a whole lot of nothing, but that's it.

PS - fuck this game.

Eragon
Achievements: 37 (all offline, 1000gs)

Shitty game for a shitty movie based on a shitty book. A bunch of swarm-based combat sections tied together by a few short platforming elements. Everything is ugly. The end.

Your achievements come from beating all the levels on regular and hard difficulties, but regular was pretty damn easy, so Hard is probably a breeze. Oh, and there's one for finding all the hidden eggs, of which there's one per level.

Easy 1000 if you can stand the lame, and I think you actually have to play through twice as I do not believe the Normal/Hard clear achievements stack. Rent it and then never touch it again.

Fatal Inertia
Achievements: (48 offline for 940gs, 2 online for 60gs)

What we have here is the 360's answer to the Sony-exclusive* WipeOut series. Anti-gravity craft racing around tracks with an assortment of exotic weapons, with the sponsorship of different corporations, whose craft all look and handle differently.

The nice thing is, they actually took a somewhat original take on how the weapons function, and gave almost all of them two firing modes, to boot. The focus seems to be more on screwing up your opponents' driving than blowing them up, which in Wipeout seemed to be a more 50/50 balance, especially in the higher-level cups.

Replay value is pretty decent with Fatal Inertia as well, as there's a lot of stuff to unlock, between all the different craft, all the upgrade parts you can get for them, and all the optional logos and paint job options available.

Given that the tracks aren't smoothed over in any way, being built out in the wilds outside the cities OF THE FUTURE to avoid collateral damage, the environment comes into play a great deal more when it comes to piloting than it has in similar games, with some collision points being a very good way to ruin your entire day. There's a "reset" button that puts you back on the track instantly, but without any acceleration, so your opponents tend to take advantage of the situation very quickly.

Achievement spread is based mostly on game completion, with achievements for each of the cups in the game, and some side stuff for using the different weapons well and learning other essential skills and when to use them, like doing barrel rolls to clear weapons off you and so forth.

All in all, a much better game than I expected for a title that's been dirt cheap for a while and looked kind of shoddy upon first glance at the ship designs. If you like the WipeOut games, give this a try.

Unless, of course, you have a PS3, in which case you should already have WipeOut HD
and be going through several packs of fresh underwear. Oh man, WipeOut HD.

If I weren't trying to pick up the pace when it comes to getting through the alphabet, especially with the holiday gamedump dragging down my Gamefly queue, I'd keep this one around a bit longer. It's definitely getting some priority when I start coming back to things.

* - The exception being WipeOut 64, the Nintendo 64 port of WipeOut XL. I'm still not entirely sure how or why that happened.

Next person who says, "Shenanigans," is getting pistol whipped.

I just noticed Call Of Duty: World At War is coming out next month. They're using the CoD4 engine again, which is a great idea, and putting it in yet another World War II game.

COVER KOREA OR SOMETHING. REVIVE THE BLITZ ON 'NAM GAMES WE HAD A FEW YEARS AGO. MAYBE GO ALL THE WAY BACK TO CRIMEA. ANYTHING FOR A CHANGE OF PACE, YOU BASTARDS.

Band battles in Rock Band 2 are great. If you ever completely paste a band called A Dude Named Napil, that's me.

Things that I do: Suck.

Wow, gone almost a month. Sorry about that. Want to hear something funny about that month, though?

You know how I called Microsoft and they said they'd be shipping me a coffin and what have you? Well, it never showed up. I finally got around to looking into things today, and oh, look, they registered my system but never put in a repair ticket. I've been waiting about a month for jack shit. Thanks, guys! I filed a repair jont earlier and now things should start getting straightened out. In the meantime, however, it's not like I haven't been busy.

This stuff's going to be all over the place. Don't mind me.

Beat'n Groovy
Achievements: 12 (8 offline for 150gs, 4 online for 50gs)
MS Points: 800

It's Pop'n Music with whitied-up characters and a small songlist. For those of you who have no idea what Pop'n is, it's like DDR for your hands.

These hamburger/balloon/whatever things descend from the top of the screen in designated bars, and you have to hit the button corresponding to them to pop them as they cross the line at the bottom. The main difference between this and a very similar Bemani game series, Beatmania, is that the songs and characters tend to be more on the cutesy, twee-pop end of things rather than serious techno/DJ stuff.

That being said, the Americanized characters are kind of hideous, but the songs seem to be at least partly Bemani classics; I spied 100 Second Kitchen Battle in the list, though it was unfortunately not playable in the demo.

Achievement spread is pretty much mode completion and point accumulation, with a few online victory notes for good measure. If you're into rhythm games, it's not as if there's a dearth of material to keep you otherwise occupied, so I'd say pick it up.

Duke Nukem 3D
Achievements: 12 (9 offline for 150gs, 3 online for 50gs)
MS Points: 800

Since Duke Nukem Forever is never coming out, you're going to have to be satisfied with this. It was a fun enough shooter for it's time, even if it was just a gussied up Doom with hookers and one-liners.

Achievements are pretty much all completion, with a couple of "fun stuff" ones for game-related humor and special weapons, like stepping on 30 enemies you've shrink-rayed. Personally, I was hoping this lead to a future release of Shadow Warrior, because who doesn't want some Wang, but you know what I really want to see?

Rise Of The Triad. Hand of God, baby.

Grab this if you liked the original or can't get enough FPS action. Personally, I can wait.

Deadliest Catch: Alaskan Storm
Achievements: 20 (all offline, 1000gs)

I like crab. I've seen a couple eps of the show, too, and it was kind of cool. It's a shame the game is the slowest thing I've ever played. Taboo: The Sixth Sense, on the NES, was more exciting than this. Waiting for Xenogears to stop repeating itself over and over so I could beat up god with giant robots was more exciting than this. Funny, for a premise focused mostly on the life and death nature of the industry.

You captain a crab boat. Crab boats move slow. Your deckhands, who are moving huge crab pots in and out of the water, have to move slow. The bajillion tutorial levels you have to endure before you can even go crabbing are sloooow, and the captain they got to guide you through all of them? Talks kind of slow. Sorry, duder.

Still, it's not an awful game in and of itself. They went the sim route, and they did a decent job of that, and even did an okay job of introducing some of the more dramatic elements of the show, with storm issues and other boats getting in trouble. That and they at least tried to add a human element, where you have to keep up the morale of your crew who are douchebags to each other, and to whom you can be a douchebag if you like.

Most of the achievements are tied to the career mode and hard to miss, and it's not that difficult a 1000 if you're patient. I'm not patient, so I'll come back to it eventually. Don't think anyone should buy this, ever.

Dynasty Warriors 6
Achievements: 48 (all offline, 1000gs)

You know, it's not entirely implausible how they've milked this franchise for so many damned games, because chances are, China really had enough people to conscript into being murder bait for all the iterations to date, including the "Xtreme" editions and the Orochi crossovers.

Umpteenth verse, same as the first. You're one of a gajillion selectable/unlockable Chinamen with silly names beating the crap out of everything with a red bar over its head, until you run out of stuff to beat or die. Experience earned and weapons found can help you beat more of your countrymen faster and more brutally as you proceed.

You can level your horses, too. Lovely.

Achievements come half from unlocking more people to kill with, and half from killing more people well. Meh. If it's your thing, well, I don't know what's wrong with you, but then again, even I like to destress with a dose of wanton murder.

Devil May Cry 4
Achievements: 46 (all offline, 1000gs)

I'll be honest here, I hated the first few DMCs. The set camera angles in the first one bugged me, and I've never been much of one for games where remotely realistic firearms don't have an ammo count or need reloading, and 3 was really goddamn hard. Didn't much expect to be into this one, though like many of Capcom's other series that I suck at, I like the effort they've put in the story thus far.

Pleasantly surprised, I was. DMC4 does a nice job of giving you plenty to do in whatever difficulty you're playing, and the achievement spread backs that up by rewarding you even for playing the easiest mode. Things are well-paced, and it's pretty fun working your way toward new and exciting ways of tearing demons limb from limb.

This time around, you're a different blonde pretty boy with some sort of mystic heritage, as evidenced by Nero's devil trigger and weird stuff going on around him, but Dante does show up eventually, as does pretty much everyone else from the series who was cool, ever. So yeah, it's a bit fanservicey, but the gameplay doesn't get bogged down by this fact in any way.

Hell, I'm not even upset that it was the game I was playing when my 360 decided to take a massive shit. Recommended for DMC fans and freshmeat alike, especially since it seems to have gotten really cheap really quickly. Might as well buy it, because going through everything is going to take some time.

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars
Achievements: 48 (27 offline for 570gs, 21 online for 430gs)

Battlefield 2 collides, rather clumsily, with the story established in Quake 2 and 4. Kind of a nice idea, but cheesy and really lacking in narrative once you get past the eyecatch movie.

In short, the Strogg, those ugly alien guys from Quake the second and fourth, have found their way to Earth, and decided to invade, as races who find Earth are wont to do. Humanity fights back, on fronts in Africa, North America, the Pacific, and one other (Asia? I wasn't paying attention), and a whole lot of nothing is explained while you're accomplishing objectives in the campaign mode.

There are different classes you can respawn as, all with different abilities and weapon sets they can select from, and only certain classes can achieve certain objectives. For example, when a barricade or wall needs to be blown, you need to run in there as a Soldier, as they're the only guys who can plant heavy explosives. Stealth Ops hack things, Engineers fix things, etc.

Bots can achieve objectives too, but things usually go quicker if you handle them yourself. As you use the given classes and do certain things with them more and more, you gain experience and star rankings, which improve... something. I didn't really pay enough attention to figure it out. But getting more stars is pretty much the core of the achievement lineup, so, uh, do that.

Another big, fat meh. Quake 4 was more fun than this.

Dark Sector
Achievements: 38 (32 offline for 800gs, 6 online for 200gs)

Something's weird, and it don't look good. Who you gonna call? Some shaky assassin who's got problems with killing people, apparently. Out on a mission to infiltrate a gulag and eliminate some guy with access to a weird alien (?) infection that turns people into monsters, you get caught and infected yourself. Taa-daa! Now you're Xena, Warrior Princess, complete with chakram growing out of your hand!

Moderately cheesed out story aside, there's a lot of good in this game. First off, it's really, really gorgeous. Everything looks sooo good, though it gets a little less clear in the actual gameplay. One of my favorite elements was the fact that, to keep you more reliant on your powers rather than running and gunning, is that every firearm has a fuse of sorts that destroys its operability after a certain amount of exposure to an infected person (like you!). In other words, you can usually pop off a handful of shots before you have to ditch something or go back to what you've been dealt.

On the downside, most of the level layouts seemed pretty straightforward and drab, though that might improve later on in the game, and in most cases there doesn't seem to be much strategy involved besides "shoot the hell out of it until something happens" whenever there's some sort of obstacle.

Worthwhile rent, however, and you can get pretty much all the achievements just by screwing around as your powers increase and improve. Not hard at all.

Lego Batman
Achievements: 46 (all offline, 1000gs)

I could go on for days about how all the Lego games are awesome, stupid fun. Traveller's Tales did another bang-up job on this baby, though it feels a great deal shorter and somewhat easier than its Star Wars-y cousins.

Formula's pretty much the same, though they cut down the character count this time by giving Batman and Robin (and later, Batgirl and Nightwing) several different suits with special abilities, mostly to make progress through the Hero storyline possible without having to bring villains into the mix. Free Play puts all those suits at your disposal, which can be slightly annoying to scroll through if you're trying to find a specific character, but still, it makes banging through tasks when you're hunting for extras a lot easier.

Villains, as they're more numerous, tend to overlap a bit more, save for a few unique abilities, like Joker's hand buzzer and Mr. Freeze's freeze ray. Super strength seems to have been handed out to at least half the crew, and the half that didn't got guns for the most part.

As par for the Lego course, the achievements are a mix of completion, catch-em-all stuff, and specific-character related kills, like killing Catwoman 9 times or smashing Comissioner Gordon with Harley Quinn's hammer. Easy 1000, fun 1000, feels kind of bad once you've gotten it done in just a few days' worth of playing.

My only problem with the game? There's a minikit in the last level of The Penguin's chapter that's just a huge fuck in the ass. You've got to clear the first two thirds of the level just to get to it, and to get the damn thing, you have to hit five gates on the way down an ice slide. You finish the ice slide, and you can't go back up and try again. It's bullshit. Best way I found to do it was start with your controlled character on the right side, hit those gates, then hit Y to swap to the other guy and hit the three on the left. You're welcome.

Disney's Meet The Robinsons
Achievements: 38 (all offline, 1000gs)

Kid's game based on some Disney 3D movie that never grabbed my attention, but has Adam West playing a space pizza deliveryman. Can't be all bad, right?

I got through a bit and it was mostly a more tedious Ratchet & Clank with some annoying minigames on the side. Bleh. The 1000 is fairly easy, but requires a little bit of hunting for some of the files and items later on.

Rent it, kill it quickly.

Battlefield: Bad Company
Achievements: 50 (30 offline for 610gs, 20 online for 390gs)

Whereas Quake Wars went the Battlefield-style class route, this new Battlefield shifted towards something more along the lines of Quake, or at least, the Call Of Duty games. Specific characters, no more parachuting in over and over, similar control schemes.

In Bad Company, you're in with the expendable criminals and mental cases, and a handful of you happen upon a bunch of mercenaries who get paid in gold bars and, conveniently, carry their pay on them. Shades of that Three Kings movie, really, but with less Mark Wahlberg.

I think it was cute of them to hide weapons all over the place and make them "Collectables," which is especially nice given that most of the ones you find are pretty sweet or specialized for needs you'll have when you find them. It's a shame that beyond that, it's mostly justanotherfps. Worth a rent, as the story and dialogue seem decently written, and it's not a terrible game.

Samurai Showdown 2
Achievements: 12 (7 offline for 80gs, 5 online for 120gs)
MS Points: 800

Oh man, SS2 was totally my baby back in the day, and the only SNK game I can recall being even remotely good at. They had a machine in the corner of this shady-ass pager and bootleg video store near one of my friends' places growing up, and we used to hang out there with this huge black guy and a couple of his friends, taking turns after they turned the game to free play when business was slow. Which was always, since most of the drug deals went on in the evening, and we'd be around mid-day.

Fighting game, ancient Japan, goofy characters in part based on Japanese folklore and in part history, crazy moves and swords and just sweet 2D fighting goodness. Must-have if you're into fighters.

Mega Man 9
Achievements 12 (all offline, 200gs)
MS Points: 800

If I have to explain Mega Man, you probably shouldn't be holding a controller, ever. Little blue dude, pew pew laser hand, evil robots, new powers, same villain behind the scenes every time. As a nod to the history of most of the original Mega Man series, they decided to go back and do this one up 8-bit style, both graphically and musically, and it's beautiful.

One thing you may not be familiar with, even if you do know Mega Man, is the term "Mega Man hard." This was an assignment of difficulty that was mildly less difficult than "Contra hard," but still pretty tough, based mostly on the twitch-wracking gameplay of the first game in the series. That baby was unforgiving.

In this iteration, they based things more on Mega Man 2, which was a bit easier but still one of the better games in the series, and went so far as to remove the chargable Mega Buster and slide move bullshit they started handing him in games 3 through 8 to make life easier and/or more intersting. IT IS ABOUT FREAKING TIME.

Of course, because of all this, Mega Man 9 does not coddle you. It does not coddle anyone. And since you haven't played a real Mega Man game in forever, because no one has (unless you've played the Zero games on the GBA), your ass is just as much grass as anyone else's.

Get your blue bomber groove back and get a taste of some solid roots. Buy this game. Buy the endless stage and the Protoman pack, too, because Protoman is badass.

Dragon Ball Z: Burst Limit
Achievements: 50 (48 offline for 990gs, 2 online for 10gs)

I managed to avoid the DBZ franchise, for the most part, from the end of the first airing of the Frieza saga in the US until now. I thought I would regret coming back to it, but you know what? This game is pretty fun.

The cel-shading's a bit obnoxious (and this is coming from a cel-shade whore), but other than that, the game's solid. The button layout felt pretty comfortable, as it's essentially a tweaked version of the Soul Calibur format, and the gameplay kept a decent pace without being insanely fuck-you-if-you-miss-a-move fast or too slow to be true to the show.

The achievements come more from completion than anything difficulty-related, too, which I thought was nice since the prime audience for this stuff is likely to still be kids, or so I'd assume. I dunno what all they show on TV when it comes to anime anymore, seeing as how I don't watch TV.

Definitely not a bad time if you've got even a passing interest in DBZ. Which you must have, because you can't hate Dragon Ball. I'll see you guys in line for the midnight showing of the Dragon Ball live action film, if only because I want to rub one to James Marsters as a Namek.

War World
Achievements: 12 (all offline, 200gs)
MS Points: 800

A poor man's MechAssault. Smaller mechs run through indoor-ish stages shooting each other until someone wins, and they all have different specialties.

The game loses a lot from the fact you're not towering over city blocks obliterating pretty much everything, and I must say the demo was the worst example of a demo I've ever played. Congratulations, Blue Dragon, you've been usurped from the shitty demo throne. I think I got maybe a minute of gameplay before it prompted me to unlock the game or quit.

Eat a dick, War World. You and your shitty "just beat this on all the difficulties" achievement list.

Shadow Assault/Tenchu
Achievements: 12 (all offline, 200gs)
MS Points: 800

Puzzle ninja bullshit. You pick up traps as one of the Tenchu series characters to assassinate unsuspecting nobility who step on them. It's really, really annoying, and you have no way to defend yourself or escape if you get spotted by a sentry.

Don't waste your money. I don't care how much you like ninjas or Tenchu or whatever. This game is a crime.

RocketBowl
Achievements: 12 (8 offline for 125gs, 4 online for 75gs)
MS Points: 800

Bowling meets Kirby's Dream Course. Crazy ramps and obstacles and shit, and all sorts of stuff to pick up on the course as you bowl. Kind of fun, looks pretty and I dig the retro aesthetic, nothing amazing.

Grab it if you like this sort of fun-ish puzzler stuff. Next.

Soul Calibur IV
Achievements: 50 (44 offline for 840gs, 6 online for 160gs)

AW HELL YEAH I'M FINALLY REVIEWING THIS REALLY.

Soul Edge/Blade/Calibur whatever has been running for a while now, with characters dying, coming back from the dead, and what have you, and it's still one of the best 3D fighters around. Granted, it's starting to show its age in that things have just gotten downright goofy this time around, what with Star Wars characters showing up, but somehow they made things at least as sensible as Link, Spawn, and Heihachi showing up in SC2. I admire them for that.

Gone is the shitty campaign mode from 3, and along with it, those foot blades or whatever that gave you the closest thing to a hand-to-hand style you could get, but who cares? Everyone ever is back, along with a few new people, some new styles that aren't just hybrids of other styles, and THE FORCE, BITCH. It's crazy.

Character customization is back as well, and now you can actually level up the styles of each character that you can assign to your creations, in order to give yourself more options as to weird special powers tied to those styles and their weapons.

Story mode is a breeze and kind of weak, but if you're looking for a solo challenge, there's a tower mode with specific challenges of increasing difficulty going one way, and a survival mode you can unlock going the other, both of which help you unlock more things for customization and lead toward more gamerscore.

I can't really fault this game on anything, save for playing ranked matches will almost always land you in special match mode where some fuckwit has pimped out a Siegfried and the shit can only use one move that rings you out or kills you in three hits. Other than that and a lack of a training challenge mode like they had in SC2, perfect.

Now could someone please tell me when the hell they're going to make the console-exclusive characters available on the systems they didn't initially come on? They said we'd have to wait a month or so. It's been two.

Buy this game, and it wouldn't hurt to get an arcade stick while you're at it. The Hori one is pretty tits.

MLB Stickball
Achievements: 12 (10 offline for 160gs, 2 online for 40gs)
MS Points: 800

For those of you who never played it at recess, Stickball is baseball lite, though in this case, they toned it down a bit more and you don't even have to run, just bat and field. You make progress around the bases based on the distance of your swing and whether you hit various stuff in the field, like windows and parked cars (since you're playing in the street).

You take that, add superdeformed actual baseball players, and there you have it. It's fun, but I'm a terrible pitcher, and was not doing so good with the Phillies against the Mets in the demo.

Fuck the Mets.

You could do worse than getting this game.

DiRT
Achievements: 49 (46 offline for 940gs, 3 online for 60gs)

While I normally hate to compare games to other games they're not directly related to somehow, DiRT is a rally-centric Gran Turismo/Forza sort of game. You buy your own cars, have a bit of customization room when it comes to livery (paint jobs) and parts, and compete in different events, in some of which only certain cars can participate.

Unlike GT, however, you can set the difficulty you're racing at before you race for any event in the game; you just make less money for playing easier difficulties. That doesn't matter so much if you're running just for score, since none of the achievements that I can recall are difficulty-centric, and if anything you'd just have to grind things a bit more to make the money to collect all the cars and liveries. Even if you aren't just whoring it, the difficulty switchup gives you a chance to learn essential rally techniques like sliding and when to shift when it comes to corners, as well as what the hell all the crap your co-driver is spouting even means.

Decent game, pick it up sometime if you're into realistic racers. Don't know how far the replay value might go once you finish everything achievement-wise.

Don King Presents: Prizefighter
Achievements: 39 (32 offline for 855gs, 7 online for 145gs)

Fairly solid boxer, with some minigames to break up the monotony. Using buttons instead of sticks took a little getting used to, but at the same time, it made the game feel more like a fighter than the Fight Night style of things. Which would make sense, since 2K games did this one, and we all know how much they looove Electronic Arts.

There's a fairly stock career mode, where you assemble your own custom boxer and set him against a bunch of real boxers, and I really like the addition of classic fights, based on real bouts of the past wherein you can make or rewrite history.

Your gamerscore comes mostly through slamming away at the career mode, with some asides for those minigames I mentioned and some boxer-specific items like taking down someone with a lefty and making a comeback after getting dropped a couple times.

Great game if you know anything about the ring, and still good if you're going in fresh. Who rules? The Marquis Of Queensbury does, fool!

Rock Band 2
Achievements: 50 (48 offline* for 985gs, 1 online for 15gs)

* - Actually, pretty much all the achievements can be obtained on or offline, and may be easier online, but one is specifically for Xbox Live versus matching.

I didn't think this game could get better, but it did. All the good stuff from before came back, but they did fans a few solids this time around as well.

First and foremost, which you've probably heard about, is the exportation of the first game's songs off that disc for use in this one. It eats a gig and a half of drive space, but for whatever reason, I found I'd downloaded that much garbage in the form of Tetris Evolution skins. What the hell? In the end, my drive space came to about the same as what I had before exporting, after deleting all that.

Secondly, this time around, the solo tour is just like the multiplayer tour from the first, with gigs at different venues, the mystery and make-a-sets, and special themed sets for certain venues. No more slogging through the same songs over and over again while working through higher difficulties or different instruments, as progress is tied to your band instead of your characters. The other nice thing about this is that it gives bass players something to do in the solo campaign, instead of just hosing them like the first iteration did.

As for the characters? THEY CAN DO DIFFERENT STUFF NOW. The guy you created as a vocalist? He can pick up a guitar now if he feels like it. Your drummer can also be your guitarist if she needs a change of pace. So much less to keep track of now. Money pools are still character specific, but gained across all instruments, and again, all star/fan progress goes towards whatever band you've assigned the character to rather than just the character. HALLELUJAH LOVE THE LITTLE BABY JESUS THIS MAKES SO MUCH MORE SENSE.

I've only played a little bit, but the song list this time around is just as amazing as the first one was, and you can believe I peed myself a little when I suddenly fell into Journey's "Any Way You Want It" in a mystery set. The giddiness I felt when they dropped a Guitar Hero III pack featuring that song was nothing compared to being able to sing along.

If you care about music games at all you already have this. Good night and god bless.


Someone shoot me if I ever take this long a hiatus again; writing all this up took me about two hours, and I don't even feel like I put enough effort into a lot of it.

Proxy!

Kudos to my friend Dave for lending me his backup system to use until my system is fixed. The GV project lives on! Time to fire up DiRT and see what's up.

Bound to happen sooner or later.

MS is shipping me a coffin. At least the hard drive seems to be fine. I might actually have to review games on *gasp* other systems for a while. WHOA. This does mean I can finally get back to work on Mario Kart Wii and .hack, though. Que sera.

They will have a giant rumble.

Got my new car, with a little more work involved than I thought. No, the free Arcade game did not make me buy the Yaris I got, at least I don't think it did. Her name is SOPHIA, a la Blaster Master, because I am a handjob. Anyway, catchup time, more elaborate than last time.

Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars
Achievements: 22 (18 offline for 880gs, 4 online for 120gs)

RTS has never been done all that well on consoles, but I'd say this is one of the first times they sort of got it right. Sort of. I think the key here is decent cursor scroll speed, though the way they handled the pop-up menus makes sense once you get used to them and to not having a mouse.

The story isn't much to write home about, being standard sci-fi shlock. To summarize the previous games in the series, which were on the PC: comet or other celestial object hits Earth, leaves behind weird glowy rock that starts infesting the planet, called Tiberium. Terrorist/cult group thinks it's the future and tries to get its hands on it to accelerate things, what organized government is left thinks it's a menace and works to stop its spread. Stuff blows up, fast forward to present game day, after a little while aliens who love this crap show up and things get nuts.

What's remarkable about the series is how they handle the storyline. Like some amazing '90s throwback, C&C3 is chock full of FULL MOTION VIDEO. That's right, kids, real actors playing characters on real sets, delivered straight to you on your lightning box! This is made doubly amazing by the fact that they almost exclusively got B-list actors, all of whom I love, to portray all the parts. Not five minutes into the storyline and you'll be squeeing over Michael Ironsides (Jester from Top Gun, among many, many other things) and whatserface who played Boomer on BSG.

It's as if they have this hotline straight to the SciFi Channel that they call whenever they're about to go into production and ask, "So, who's not starring in one of your amazingly terrible original movies/series in the next four or five months?" I love it.

The in-game graphics are sweet, too. Things have come quite a ways since the days of 486 monitors and sprite animations, and a neat feature in this one is the camera zoom and rotation, so you can peer in on just what your little mans are up to at any given point in the battle. Just don't do it too long, or else you'll miss out on all the rape coming at you from every other direction.

If you dig real-time strategy games and have been waiting for a decent one in this console generation, dude you've been waiting too long this game's been out since last year go go go now. If you don't dig them, then you're probably not interested. Also, if you still haven't played this, you'd best hurry because the sequel's already out and probably due for a review here soon.

The Chronicles Of Narnia: Prince Caspian
Achievements: 50 (all offline, 1000gs)

I haven't seen the movie and it's been forever since I read the book, so I can't really say how true a translation the game is of the story. As a game itself, though, it's okay. Not great, but not terrible.

Made by Traveller's Tales, the same crew who gave us the Lego [Insert Franchise Here] games, gameplay's pretty similar to those. Third person view of X number of dudes relative to a given story mission (varies from two to four, though only up to two players), all with different abilities you'll need for clearing different aspects of the maps. Chapters are built much like lobbies were in Lego Star Wars, with different side missions you enter from a larger main area and respawning goodies every time you come back.

Other familiar mechanics return as well. Instead of Lego studs, you're collecting these metal fragments or some such, of different colors reflecting different values. Instead of improving a rating in a given level or allowing you to buy anything, however, they accumulate and eventually increase the strength of your life bar. The minikits have been replaced by treasure chests scattered throughout the various areas, and given that there's nothing to build, really, some just give you a pile of those shards I mentioned, while others just give you nothing besides counting towards your chest count.

All in all, it's not a very compelling game, but the achievements are easy enough that, like the other Tt games, it's a simple but tedious grind if you're looking for an easy 1000gs. Rent it, give yourself a week tops.

Dead Or Alive Xtreme 2
Achievements: 46 (all offline, 1000gs)

To be honest, I was not expecting much. I remember, vaguely, playing the first DOAX on the Xbox, and it was a tedious grind-o-rama with a side of jigglefest and decent volleyball mechanic. Round two is much the same, with a couple of new characters, a funnier intro sequence, and Wave Race 64.

I tried to grind this one. I really did. All the achievements are just accumulation based. GET EVERYTHING FOR EVERYONE. DO IT. Whatever. For some reason, I recall the suits available in the first one being much better designed than this batch, which just reduced my desire to go anywhere even more.

My breaking point was when, at one point where I'd left the game to idle, the eyecatch screen switched to a poolside video of Kasumi putzing around on this inflatable orca. At first she's just laying there in the sun, but then she starts moving around, eventually switching her position so she can ride the thing like a mechanical bull. Then things cut to this insipid crap with LeiFang prancing around on the beach while Hitomi was snapping away with a far-too-expensive camera. After about thirty shouts of, "Oh, come on!" I finally threw it back in the GameFly envelope and got it the hell out of my house.

In conclusion, you need to be really lonely or really drunk and have a lot of time to even bother with this tripe. Please kill me.

Def Jam: ICON
Achievements: 37 (29* offline for 685gs, 8 online for 315gs)
* - 15 of these are actually doable in online Ranked matches or Solo Hard matches.

Hoo man, I haven't played a Def Jam game since the first or second one. My, how things have changed. Summary? You're a rap producer who beats people up to get other people to sign to your label. I don't get it, either, but there've been worse fighting game premises out there. It's certainly a lot more clear cut than, say, Soul Calibur or Street Fighter.

One thing I really don't get is why the default setting for the HUD display is Off. No life bars, no other status indicators, just two dudes beating the crap out of each other on stylized backgrounds with clouds that roll through like a slideshow. Sure, the stages are kind of neat, but aren't that cool after the first or second time. What makes them even less memorable is that, rather than having different music for each stage, your character has a given "fight" song assigned to him, at least the characters you create, and that's all you hear EVERY DAMN TIME YOU FIGHT. Sure, you get more songs as you play through the Build A Label quest mode, but they're rather few and far between. Getting sick of the limited soundtrack is pretty much guaranteed. That might be why they give you an achievement for setting up your own playlist.

Gameplay itself isn't bad, though rather limited when it comes to movesets. There are four or five different combat styles, and there's a Mortal Kombat feel to the quick high, quick low, hard high, hard low button mapping, only without the abundance of specials, combos, and finishers. All the backgrounds have hazards, which get annoying at times as their hit recognition tends not to be the best.

There's also a button to activate turntables in a fight. I have no idea what this does, despite trying it every time I fought. Seems superfluous.

I'd say the worst part is that the gameplay is downright tedious. I had to go through nearly ten fights before I had any real money coming in and anything was actually happening in the story, and by then, I was pretty disinterested. All the fights were the same and I'd seen every stage at least three times, at least the stages they offered up to that point. Even playing a huge black dude with a fauxhawk and a crazy zig-zag chinstrap couldn't really redeem it for me.

Which reminds me, second place in the realm of failure goes to the character creation. There's a lot of customization available in the body type area, with stick-sliding and adjusting your build and even specific areas of your facial structure, but they really phoned in the hairstyles; all of them cut straight across the forehead, and there're maybe a dozen or so, and they all kind of suck. The clothing was all phoned in as well, as besides the wifebeaters, everything is a baggy sack with some logo mapped to identical, potato-sack models. Lame.

I liked this series better when it had actual rappers with distinct fighting styles just beating the crap out of each other. This turn is definitely one for the worse. Ugh.


Last week's XBLA offerings weren't bad, but they weren't remarkable for the most part, either. Here's that Pub Games nod I promised last time, too.

Shred Nebula
Achievements: 12 (11 offline for 175gs, 1 online for 25gs)
Cost: 800 MS Points

Semi-open shooter a la that Genesis game with the caves that I can't remember the name of, with a dash of Asteroids when it comes to ship control. Button layout could've made more sense, but it looks cool and the first demo level was pretty fun. Wish there was much anything remarkable to say, but it's just another okay game. Worse purchases could be made.

Gin Rummy
Achievements: 12 (9 offline for 140gs, 3 online for 60gs)
MS Points: 400

Yet another card game with something of a graphical overhaul, this time with a weird cameo silhouette aesthetic going on. Not bad, though, and thankfully only 400. Grab it if you're a casual card gamer, as it definitely tailors to its intended market.

Fable II Pub Games
Achievements: 12 (all offline* for 200gs)
MS Points: 800
* - I'm not sure if the two for playing/winning tournaments are online only. If they are, then there're 40 points between two online achievements.

In all honesty, I hated the first Fable and got really burned on Lionhead Studios because of Molyneux's bullshit factory leading up to it. If he'd said "This is what we'd like to do," rather than, "This is what we're going to do," things might have been different. But no, he had to be a shit, and thusly, fifty eggs were not eaten and the game was disappointingly narrow in scope. So, despite this being only loosely affiliated with the franchise, I was leery going in.

Let's just say I was pleasantly surprised. I'm not entirely sure if these games were all original, but if not, the veneer they spread on them to tie them in with the Fable II atmosphere is good enough that they may as well have been freshly created. I'm impressed, and both games I tried out were actually pretty fun. There seems to be a decent spread of both solitaire and competitive offerings, and while it's basically a glorified bar touchscreen, I dug this title.

Love that one of the achievements pretty much forces you to play Fable II (play a pub game with your Fable II character), too. Nice shameless tie-in, guys.

Pirates Vs Ninjas Dodgeball
Achievements: 12 (8 offline for 95gs, 4 online for 105gs)
MS Points: 800

Hey, you remember when this game was announced, and the ninja/pirate rivalry was already fading into obscurity? Well, guess how little of a shit anyone gives about the two stereotypes now!

This game is way, way overdue in the relevance department, unless you're some weeaboo douchebag still clinging to the memes of 2003. Which is a shame, because it's a fun little dodgeball game. Instead of your standard set field, it's more freeform, with a set arena but no set sides to stay on, and thusly attacks can come from any direction and get intercepted by various environmental obstacles.

Oh, and just to infuriate me more, since I am still huddling in my All Your Base cave in the early '00s, the other two "races" offered? Robots and... zombies? I can kind of understand them as both being cultural obsessions, but where's the rivalry? Bugger zombies, where the hell are the Monkeys?



Way to drop the ball. I swear that wasn't a pun. I guess you should buy this, but don't expect me to be happy about it.

EA Sports Fantasy Football Live Score Tracker
Achievements: 12 (4 offline for 80gs, 8 online for 120gs)
MS Points: 80

I still don't understand Fantasy Football. My mind is kind of blown by the fact that all the achievements come from just logging in to the damn thing or tweaking some settings. I might grab this just for an easy 200.


Still need to do a writeup on Soul Calibur IV, but this batch took a lot out of me. I'll see what I can do tomorrow, since I have off from work.

Resurrection #2890572

Okay, I'm back again. Took a little longer than I expected, but right after MAG finished up, they started another, slightly less awesome, event in PSU and I had to hit that. Expect a writeup on all that within the week. That, and I've been working more as of late, trying to set aside some money to downpay on a car.

Catchup reviews might be a bit truncated, since there's a lot to catch up on, but I'll do what I can.

College Hoops NCAA 2K7
Achievements: 49 (30 offline for 650gs, 19 online for 350gs)

Another basketball game. I think the only points I got were for spelling out "WIENERS" as my online play availability. 20 points for WIENERS. Good show.

Conflict: Denied Ops
Achievements: 44 (29 offline for 715gs, 15 online for 285gs)

The poor man's Army Of Two. AI was retarded and spent a good ten minutes running into easily avoided obstacles in a fairly open area while driving a vehicle. Dick. Got right up to the extraction point in the first level and died. Bugger that.

Crash Of The Titans
Achievements: 47 (all offline, 1000gs)

I'd never actually played a Crash Bandicoot game before this. I'm serious. I may have played a demo at some point back on the Playstation, but that's it. I actually kind of liked the whole on-rails platformer deal they have going on.

Achievement spread is fairly easy if a little grindy, but the grind never really got to me. I like that they state what you have to go back and do at the level clear screen to get whatever you may have missed, too. Looking forward to picking this up again and slamming the rest of it sometime.

Dark Messiah Of Might & Magic: Elements
Achievements: 49 (32 offline for 610gs, 17 online for 390gs)

I could have sworn I already reviewed this. Fun enough, but I could definitely stand to scream at the item placement for a while. I played 4/5 of the way through the first lengthy chapter, where stuff actually starts happening, thinking I'd gotten the key I needed to finish the level, and struggled through a bunch of drab, poorly-light-sourced hallways to get back to the door I needed to open.

OH HEY, YOU ONLY PICKED UP AND MOVED THE BODY NEXT TO THE KEY YOU NEEDED AND DID ALL THAT WANDERING FOR NOTHING.

Easy enough game to blow through, I guess, but I got really pissed and sent it back after that. Also, why does this game have online competitive multiplayer? I am confused.

Kung Fu Panda
Achievements: 39 (all offline, 1000gs)

Typical kids' game, in that it's relatively easy and all the achievements are mostly progress and scavenger hunt related. Fun enough, though, and the combat was pretty solid. My only reservation is that the little multiplayer minigames were all kind of stupid and not online in any fashion, and the Jack Black impersonator grates on one's nerves very quickly. Especially if you're not that much of a Jack Black fan.



Don't think I've been ignoring XBLA Wednesdays, either.

Bionic Commando Rearmed
Achievements 12 (all offline, 200gs)

Oh man, Bionic Commando was the bee's tits when I was a kid. Swing like Tarzan at will and kill Hitler? SIGN ME UP. I would've played this if it was just a port, honestly, but the graphic overhaul is kind of nice.

Controls took a little re-getting-used-to, and the directional control kind of SUCKS SO BAD, since it's not great with the stick and the d-pad on the 360 controller is trash. Still, meeeeeeeemories conned me into buying it the second it dropped, and it's totally worth it once you get the hang of things. Not a pun, that. I swear.

Braid
Achievements: 12 (all offline, 200gs)

Everyone's mooning about this being this great, moving game that's so deep and a huge puzzle and blah blah blah. I dunno, I only played the demo, and it was a neat little platformer. I might pony up the cash eventually, if only to see what the big deal is. I mean, come on, NPR even interviewed the guy who made it. Something's got to be up.

Castle Crashers
Achievements: 12 (8 offline for 195gs, 4 online for 55gs)

I don't know why it took The Behemoth so long to crank this out, but it was so worth the wait. These guys can do no wrong, which you already know if you've played (and gotten raped by) Alien Hominid.

This time around, there's more of a classic beat 'em up thing going on, with some RPG elements thrown in to boost your characters and give you stuff to collect as you go on. Also, very tweaked in favor of the multiplayer experience, but that's not a bad thing at all in this case.

Sure, you can do a lot playing on your own, but that's a) boring and b) really hard. Get some friends. If you don't have some, make some. Then get this game.

Galaga Legions
Achievements: 12 (all offline, 200 gs)

This shit is crazy! It's like Galaga meets R-Type. Now you have these little pods you can deploy to help you out and shoot in different directions, which is pretty much key if you don't want to get obliterated. The nice thing is, the game tells you where enemies are likely to appear, so you can strategize in the brief second it gives you before they start popping up.

Things get crazy pretty fast, and you'll be throwing your satellites everywhere, but it's actually really fun. Recommended buy.


Coming soon: a Phantasy Star Online/Universe omnispective, and I wax poetic on the merits and further merits of Soul Calibur IV. "I'm gonna beat you naked, hee hee!" Oh, and a review of Fable II Pub Games, since I just realized I never got around to playing that demo.

Everyone makes mistakes.

Three more games down, though I didn't do so much. I thought it might be a good idea to start playing games on the hardest difficulty if they had stackable difficulty clear achievements. Bad idea. Back to easy blitzes for completion achievements, and then going back for Hards. So here's what I've been playing.

Bully: Scholarship Edition
Achievements: 38 (all offline, 1000gs)

Welcome to Grand Theft Auto: Lite. Like its big brother series, Bully is your typical Rockstar sandbox game with way too much to do. It's fun, though, since you get to do it as a two-faced snot kid beating up other snot kids, with the lack of a fatal edge to things being a nice touch.

Definitely a grind whore, though. I eked out a whole bunch of achievements just by killing time in the first chapter, which wasn't so bad since progressing in the classes gives you bonuses you can use elsewhere. The one problem is you can't just sleep anytime you want; you have to wait until 7 PM rolls around, even if you've cleared any classes you might have to take for the rest of the day, which basically leaves you little more option than to just screw around, especially if you've cleared all the optional errand missions for that chapter.

Still, it's pretty fun, and I look forward to getting back to it when I have more time for it. Worth a playthrough, and the achievements aren't particularly difficult, just time-consuming.

The Darkness
Achievements: 50 (38 offline for 795gs, 12 online for 205gs)

There's multiplayer for this? Mmmkay. Yeah, I'm a little confused, too. However, the single-player game is pretty excellent. I remember being impressed by the demo, and I'm really glad this popped up from Gamefly, finally.

FPS with special-powers sort of game, with the powers combined pretty well with your shooty gameplay. You basically try to keep things dark so your powers will work, summon buddies to do dirty work or distract enemies for you, and proceed to make a mess of things. I'm down with this.

Achievements are progress based, with a fair amount of exploration and secret-based ones for nitpicky whores like myself, so remember to find all the phone numbers you can. I actually really liked the phone bonus/secret system, as it added a level of depth and gave the setting a bit more life. It was cute.

Still, didn't get so far since this was the first game I pulled that Hard playthrough nonsense on. Ugh. Play this game, but go easy at first so you can get the hang of it. The beginning, before you even have powers, is pretty unrelenting.

Condemned 2: Bloodshot
Achievements: 38 (24 offline for 600gs, 14 online for 400gs)

Oh man, the first game was sooo good, can this one live up to the legacy? And there's multiplayer here, too? WTF?

Actually, the multiplayer aspect seems pretty fun, since this time around, they really polished and upped the focus on the melee combat system. You must learn decent timing and combo techniques if you want to do well without dying, and I both appreciate and hate this fact.

Fortunately, they also provide a "Bloodshot Fight Club" mode where you can set things up to practice your combat with pretty much any melee weapons in the game against several types of enemies, and it's also a good place to grind out the specific kill type achievements. You also unlock new levels to do so in through completing the game, which is nice for variety's sake.

As for the single player campaign, you're back as Ethan Thomas, about a year after your getting kicked off the SCU and doing quite a number on that little orchard. Drunk and depressed, it looks like your buddy Vanhorn is back, your comrade Rosa's still working and lost some weight, and they're both looking for you because there are... problems.

A lot of the elements from the first game returned, including the forensics aspect and tools, which makes me happy; if you'd just been running around pummeling things this time around while the situation just got weirder, I'd be kind of disappointed. Instead of collecting dead birds and metal, however, you're tuning TVs for story-related info and breaking the sonic emitters that are attracting and killing the birds in the first place.

One other thing is that this game clearly came a long way from the visuals of the first. It's beautiful, for a crumbling city full of posessed bums and monsters. Yeah, monsters. They've got claws. They're dicks. The bums are smarter and tougher now, too, which is why I mentioned you really need to learn how to fight.

If you dug the first Condemned, you need to play this. If you didn't play the first Condemned, you need to play that and then play this. There are no excuses. Go. Now.


As a heads up, I should mention that Sega is finally starting up the Phantasy Star Universe Maximum Attack G extension they promised on 8/1/08. What this means is a) if you have PSU, with the AotI expansion, you should be playing for the boosted experience and goodies out the wazoo, and b) this is the only damn thing I'm going to be playing for the three week's the extension is running, most likely, so it might get a bit quiet here. If you want to run with me, I'm most likely going to be playing as my main FO, Picklebutt, running C-grade runs to finish get the badges I need for the limited edition casting Mag, and then hitting higher grades for better loot and experience, as well as spell grinding. See you there!

Coming soon: Soul Calibur IV review, since I reserved the Limited Edition and have a sexy arcade stick coming next week.

Blockin' yo cock like a tank at Tiananmen.

Oh man. Yesterday, I woke up at 3:30 AM, worked, came home, took a nap, and woke to a thunderstorm and a fried modem. Everything's cool now, though, so your XBLA blurbs are only slightly stale this week.

1942: Joint Strike
Achievements: 12 (10 offline for 175gs, 2 online for 25gs)
Cost: 800 MS Points

I have to admit, I played my fair share of 1942 and 1943 in brick-and-mortar arcades as a kid, and the P-38 was my favorite plane for a while thanks to that. Not because of any love of aviation technology or WWII history, mind you, but because that joined tail thing it had going on was funky lookin'. Love it.

While I'm almost ready to be tired of these arcade rehashes popping up on XBLA, Capcom at least does a nice job of doing them well, as opposed to Atari and Namco who, for the most part, seem to just be coughing up ports with a spit polish.

For you young'ns, the whole idea behind the 194X series is that it's a top-down, vertical bullet hell with WWII-inspired planes and settings. I think it was the first one that was supposed to be set at the battle of Midway, though the events portrayed were a little... off. I only played the demo, so I'm not sure where this one is supposed to take place, but I flew over a (sweet-looking) volcano at one point in the first level, so I imagine it's somewhere in the Pacific.

This time around, you have a choice of three planes: the original P-38 Lightning, the DH-98 Mosquito, and the funny looking Japanese J7W1 Shinden. Dude, your wings are backwards, and it's Japanese, so of course I played as the Shinden.

As you fly along blowing things out of the sky, weapon powerups and medals drop for you to collect, the latter being something you need to collect for an achievement. Other achievements are obtained through high scores, playing as all the planes, and playing on the hardest difficulty. The online ones are just for rocking some co-op, which I think is a nice addition.

All in all, it's as solid a successor to its franchise as Commando 3, and I suggest you pick this one up as well, despite the lack of a SFIITHDR (long acronyms much?) beta with this one, so far as I know.

Go! Go! Break Steady
Achievements: 12 (8 offline for 125gs, 4 online for 75gs)
Cost: 800 MS Points

Not a sequel to Go! Go! Hypergrind, as much as I would love one. Rather, this one is more a bizarre marriage of elements from Zuma, Gitaroo Man, and Bust-A-Groove.

Yeah, that makes no sense in print, but it actually plays out pretty well. The game could best be described as a rhythm/puzzle game fusion. You're a break dancer, and while your character dances in the background, you get thrown alternating sets of button patterns and curves of "Beatniks," which are little heads of different colors. You have to fire new Beatniks into the mess to make sets of three and clear them, as well as setting up combos, and your results on that front determine what your next dance move (and the button pattern for it) will be. The more complex the move, the more difficult the approach of the button pattern is to follow; sometimes they'll come in a wave pattern, or even a spiral.

While I'm not the biggest fan of the visual style they went with, it's kind of urban and cute enough, so it's not a dealbreaker. There's a lot to keep track of, honestly, but it's just barely below the Too Damn Distracting mark. I suggest it if you're looking for another rhythm game to play, but otherwise you might as well pass.

So the other day, I finally got my hands on an underappreciated gem from the early days of the 360, Condemned. While not nearly as creepy as I had been led to anticipate, it was still a good ride.


Condemned: Criminal Origins
Achievements: 50 (all offline, 970gs)

Yeah, that's right. Only 970gs. No one knows why they didn't cram another 30-pointer in there or distribute those extra 30 amongst some other achievements, but whatever. This game is great.

In Condemned, you're an FBI agent who starts off the game investigating a serial murder case in a town that's apparently going to hell fast, and lucky for you, your career seems headed there just as quickly by the end of the first level. Framed for a crime you're quite certain you didn't commit and the weirdness level climbing rapidly through the roof, you set off to clear your name and, if possible, make the guy who screwed up your life pay.

I remember passing over this because I repeatedly keep making the mistake of thinking survival horror games are going to scare me, but once again, this one did not. It's freaky, sure, and there are some good surprise attack points throughout the game, but for the most part, it's just a solid story that makes it worth playing rather than any spook factor.

Another neat thing is that, besides the mostly melee-oriented combat in a first person world, there's also an element of investigation to things, since you're a detective of sorts and trying to find evidence to clear yourself. It's a nice little distraction from wondering how many hobos you're going to have to bludgeon to death around the next corner, and all the visuals for the investigation tools are neat, if in many cases completely impractical.

My only real complaint is that the game is fairly short, even if you're going in blind. Achievements are mostly of a catch-em-all, with things to collect in each level (dead birds and hunks of metal, oddly enough), with a few more for level completions and weapon usage. As a heads-up, let me recommend you play through the game the first time only hitting people with melee weapons, and switch up as often as you can; you get achievements for a total melee clear up through the second-to-last level, and for hitting enemies with every melee weapon ever. Even firearms count as melee weapons, since you can switch to melee mode with the right bumper and pistol-whip or whack them with the stock, though in both cases the weapons take damage and eventually break. There is an achievement for going and shooting enemies with every firearm as well, but you can just reload the library level and disarm hobos for most of the guns (.45, revolver, pump shotgun, submachine gun), and there's a sawed-off shotgun behind the desk on the second floor. Then you just keep going to the next level, the school and grab the rifle in the "hut" by the playground and finish the level to unlock your points.

Definitely play this, but make sure you rent or borrow it, even if it's cheap by now. The unlockable extras are neat, especially the original demo of the school level that they kept a lot of elements from, but not worth really keeping this around unless you're a collector.


Oh yeah, a heads-up for you contest types. They're running a Play & Win with Gears Of War for GoW2 stuff, including limited edition copies of the game and a custom Gears 360. It's one of those reg online or download-the-gamerpic contests, so it's easy to get in, and then you just have to play once every hour you get a chance to get entries in. That is a potential twenty-four entries a day, if you find a way not to sleep. It's running until July 27th, so hurry up!

Try not to suck any dick on the way to the parking lot!

Atari manages to mangle yet another license. I almost think Uwe Boll's film based on this property was better than this pile of trash.

Alone In The Dark
Achievements: 49 (all offline, 1000gs)

Fuck this gaaaaaaaaaaaaaame.

Some of you may remember the original Alone In The Dark PC game. It was all right, and did wonders for starting up the 3D survival horror genre. Well, they done gone and screwed it all up.

Pretty much the only thing they got right with this mess was enforcing the rule that if you mess up, you dead. I'd be okay with this if the controls weren't poorly mapped, clunky, and the sort of action and gameplay they were going for still were not properly tuned to the console format at all.

Clunky camera doesn't help, as things try to be a little too cinematic. At certain points, I loved the idea, but mixing gameplay with what was going on was just not well thought out. Spacing things with a bit of in-game cutscening would not have hurt, and would have made me a lot happier with myself.

Speaking of the cinematic element, there's a sort of fast-forward/rewind option in the pause menu, in case you want to go back through scenes or skip ahead. I'm not sure why it's there, honestly. Sure, maybe you want to get past a part you're having a hard time with (which for some people would be the whole damn game), but for what? Skipping nukes your chances at completion achievements for a given chapter unless you go back and play straight through later, so for the story? HA!

The story sucks. You're an amnesiac (oh great) who runs into a priest who knows you, watches a bunch of random innocents die, bumps into a Primary Female Interest and learns some evil power that seems to operate like Tremors blown way out of proportion is looking for a rock the priest is wearing around his neck. That's what I got out of the first two chapters, anyway.

And what happens at the end of chapter two? A horrendously buggy driving sequence, wherein you either get sideswiped by a cop early on and you die, narrowly miss a turn and die, or get right near the end, driving through the front of a mall, having no idea where to go from there, and you die. It's bad enough that on top of this, in the sort of car-tutorial-y parking garage sequence, I had the delight of veering a bit to the left on a jump, clipping into the wall, and being trapped in a swooshy, slo-mo "excitement ooh you're in midair" effect with no way out. It was as if I were Schrödinger's cat, but subjected to terrible programming rather than a radioactive isotope or poison or whatever.

Until Atari deigns to pump out another 3D Godzilla fighter with some online play for the three-snitsky, I don't think we're talking. This is the kind of game I'll come back to when I can get a nice buzz on and I haven't been up since 3:30 in the freaking morning thanks to work.

Oh yeah, finally looked at some of the unveils from E3. Kind of digging how MS stole from Apple again, taking the gallery look from Leopard for their new Dashboard setup, and this Mii60 Avatar thing looks neat, too. I totally called the idea of unlocking clothing and what have you via gameplay for them when I first saw them. Should be fun.

Time for a little blackcurrant tea and some .hack//GU to try and soothe the soul before bedtime.