Quick & Dirty #5 – Left 4 Dead
Teh Good
- Game Director mode
- Killing Zombies is fun
- Great Controls, Accurate Weapons, Smart AI
Teh Bad
- Campaign is short
- Playing as a zombie isn’t as fun as it should be
- I don’t like the fact I can walk through my fellow survivors.
The Conclusion
Who doesn’t like killing zombies? If killing zombies is something that interests you (and again, how can it not), then you need to play Left 4 Dead. Unlike all the other major news outlets, I’m actually enjoying playing the single player campaign. Believe me it scares the crap out of me at times!
read moreXbox & Zune Social Party Night
Last night in the chilly Queen West area of Toronto, Xbox and Zune community members gathered at The Oasi Lounge and Wine Bar. We were greeted by very friendly staff and superb finger foods. The overall vibe and feel to the Oasi was very modern and trendy; the perfect place for casual gamers to gather and try out some of this year’s casual holiday offerings from Microsoft. There were 3 games on for us to play as well as a Zune station.
The first game I played was Scene It Box Office Smash. I had a blast playing against fellow community members okaybuddy, DarthAlbert III and mstehflakes. I have to say I did very well until we had the final cut and I finished in 4th place. Check out our full review of Scene it BOS Here
[tehflakes would have done a lot worse if mstehflakes wasn’t sitting right beside him – ed.]
Next up was Lips. While I didn’t play, I did watch several fellow gamers take turns belting their favourite tunes in this karaoke game. Lips comes with motion control microphones as well as the game for $69.99. I personally think this price point is a little high for a casual game but others argue that with 2 microphones and the game it’s a good value. What separates Lips from other karaoke style video games is the ability to use select portable music players to play your own DRM free songs (without lyrics unfortunately).
Finally we were able to see In the Movies. This game utilizes the Xbox vision camera and places you in the game where you can compete against up to 3 of your friends. The Xbox Vision Camera captures your actions via green screen technology. You and your friends compete in fun mini-games, earning points based mostly on enthusiasm. Once all the filming is complete, the game takes your mini-game actions and constructs a film trailer using actual footage of you playing. It’s quite hysterical.
This holiday season promises to be one of the best holiday seasons in video game history. From the vast array of Triple A games, for the hardcore gamer, to a fantastic selection of casual games for the family like Scene It, Lips, and In the Movies, there’s sure to be a game for everyone’s stocking this year.
Photos courtesy of okaybuddy. More available here and special thanks to Justin Amirkhani for a photo.
Scene It?: Box Office Smash
For someone who isn’t a big movie buff but plays casuals games with his significant other, who claims to be a movie buff, last years Scene It: Last Camera Action was quite the hit in my household. This year’s version Scene It: Box Office Smash brings some new features, hopefully some DLC packs and most importantly a real chance to win at this game on a game to game basis.
There are 22 different puzzles or challenges, if you will; including a few new types of questions such as, Pixel Fix which requires you to name the movie based on an 8 bit video of the movie. Celebrity Ties is a series of clues in which you must link the two actors to a movie. Personally, I really enjoyed the filling in the quotes puzzle. They gave you a quote with a series of blanks on it and provide you with 4 possible solutions to the answer. Also, there is Which is Which, where they give you a series of four still photos and you have to link two of them to the name of the movie. There are hundreds of questions however they tend to repeat after awhile. The movies in this game range from the 60’s to 2008.
Some other highlights were the overall pacing/feel to the game – it felt quicker but, needless to say, sneaking a game in before dinner was still completely doable.
One of my biggest issues with the original Scene It was simply that the game wasn’t fun playing by your lonesome as compared to with another person or a group of people. This problem has been averted! They have fixed it in this edition by adding a feature which allows you to play on Xbox Live. Furthermore, they are promising downloadable content. Hopefully this comes sooner then later and the pricing isn’t overbearing.
I didn’t pick up the big button controllers. I don’t think there was much difference from the originals. The fact that I couldn’t pause the game to get a refill on my beverage was quite a nuisance. Also, the multipliers in the Final Cut were bothersome. It allows the player to earn multipliers based on the number of questions correctly answered in a row. It went from 1x to 2x to 5x. It can either make things really close or you can get blown out of the water. It can be a huge “cut” if you aren’t familiar with the movie clip shown.
Overall, this is a great addition to the causal line up for the 360 and should have families playing it over the holidays. However, with the repeat questions already appearing, I really hope the DLC comes quickly and is reasonably priced.
read moreGears Of War 2 Review
The holiday season is upon us and that means for gamers it’s time for a vast array of Triple A titles to be released. Gears of War 2, developed by Epic Games and published by Microsoft Game Studios, was released on November 7th, 2008 to high expectations. The original Gears of War is one the highest rated games and best sellers on the Xbox 360. The original Gears did a lot right such as introducing a fantastic cover system that may have changed the way we play shooters for ever. On the other hand, it didn’t have much of a story and the multiplayer wasn’t as polished as it should have been. Make no mistake this isn’t Gears of War 1.5, but a true sequel.
The overall presentation of Gears 2 is significantly improved from its predecessor. This is really no surprise for Epic Games. After all, when you develop an engine like Unreal and license it off to other studios, you should know full well how to take advantage of it.
The mechanics of Gears of War 2 are similar to the original with several minor improvements that really enhance the overall in game experience. The changes to the cover system are a welcome improvement. Now you can disrupt entering cover and press A to roll. The single player campaign is roughly 10 hours on normal difficulty containing 5 chapters to play through. The main complaint about Gears of War’s single player campaign was the story was sparse, bordering on non-existent. Gears 2 focuses on Dom who, while helping Marcus Fenix fight the locust invasion, is searching for his wife Maria. The cut scenes are hit and miss. Some of them make you feel connected to Dom while others have you scratching your head. This is still an improvement from the original.
Multiplayer is no longer an afterthought in the Gears universe. GoW2 includes 10 new maps as well as the original 5 maps re-made for GoW2. Multiplayer matches have grown in size from 8 to 10 players. Also of mention is the addition of bots. The bots can be quite useful depending on the difficultly you choose. Online match types you can encounter are Warzone which is the classic deathmatch, Execution which is similar to Warzone but with one life, King of the Hill and Annex in which you have to capture points but have different rules. You also have Guardian in which you have to keep your team leader alive in order to respawn. Once he dies there are no more respawns and it’s a battle to the end. Wingman puts you and your partner against another team of 2 where you only have 1 life and a winner is crowned over a series of matches by kills and deaths. Finally we have Submission which is like capture the flag but instead of a flag you have a person known as the meatflag. The AI doesn’t want to be caught and will kill you. Your job is to knock him down and escort him to your scoring point. Most interestingly, Gears introduces a new game mode called Horde. Horde puts you and up to 4 friends fighting wave after wave of various Locust enemies. After you complete each wave, the following one gets more difficult. There are 50 waves in total.
Conclusion
I didn’t follow any media coverage during the lead up to Gears of War 2. The one exception was during X’08 where I spent a little time on multiplayer getting my butt kicked by the man himself Cliff Bleszinski. I wanted to go into GoW2 with a clean slate much like I did in the original and it worked. I was blown away by this epic experience. It still has some room for improvement, but it has come a long way. In GoW2, there were characters I actually felt emotionally connected to at times which was a welcome change. All in all, if you liked Gears of War you will surely love Gears of War 2.
read moreLittleBigPlanet
Developer: Media Molecule
Publisher: Sony
Media Molecule has made its debut on the Playstation 3 with platformer Little Big Planet.
Graphics
The graphics in Little Big planet are shiny and clean, on par with every other next gen game on the market.
Audio
Actor Stephen Fry has done a fantastic job as narrator in Little Big Planet. His dry, British sense of humour really takes the voice acting to another level. The sound track sets the mood for each level.
Game Play
The minute Little Big Planet loads up you’re introduced to a lovable character named Sackboy. From here the tutorials teach you how to use the controls as well as how to use the six axis capabilities in the game. The D pad controls facial expressions while the pitch and tilt of the controller make Sackboy perform a variety of humorous expressions. You can also control Sackboy’s arms individually with the L2 and R2 buttons in conjunction with the left and right analog sticks. After the tutorials you are brought to your pod, an enhanced menu screen from which you choose which levels to play, download or create. You can decorate your pod as well as Sackboy by either downloading free or paid DLC from the PSN store or by unlocking clothing and accessories in the single player campaign.
The single player story mode is very short at 35 levels. Sure, that may sound like a lot of levels but they aren’t terribly long. That being said, the puzzles are very fun to solve and each level is unique. You should be able to breeze through the single player campaign in 6 to 7 hours; longer if you go for full completion. In each level you can find and unlock various objects, stickers and decorations which are then available to you when designing your own level. After beating the single player campaign the real fun begins: level creation. While I have not yet posted my own levels online to share with the world, I have started to play with the massive tool set provided. I’ve created some small levels and I am impressed with the versatility offered. I’ve downloaded some levels created by other users and all I can say is that the creativity is unbelievable. My favourite so far might have to be the Wipe-Out HD remake. That being said, don’t expect levels like this to be around for too long. Mm is now cracking down on copyrighted content in level design. With the endless possibilities, I would love to see some sort of Hockey or sports level created. They probably already exist, but I haven’t found them yet. I was really looking forward to online co-op level creation, but it is currently not available. This is sort of a letdown as this feature was one of my most anticipated in LBP. Hopefully they will patch in this feature soon!
Conclusion
If you’ve always sought to create your own game but lacked the know-how, Little Big Planet is the game for you. It will help you harness your creativity to design your own masterpieces which can then be shared with the world. There are only thirty-five levels in the single player campaign but, as mentioned, the true replay ability in this game lies in creating your own levels and downloading levels created by other users. The controls are not as tight as they should be and could be tweaked. Only time will tell how long this game will truly last. However, ‘teh good’ outweighs ‘teh bad’. Therefore, if you have a PS3 you need to buy this game. If you don’t have a PS3, well then Little Big Planet gives you a reason to buy one!