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,
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.
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