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I was browsing the Xbox Live Market Place and noticed that there are some dumb things being sold. Gamer Pictures and Themes are not worth the dollar or so they are charging. I love my Slurpee icon and that was free of charge. That led me to thinking; what would I pay for?
1. Level Skips
Recently I have been going through the Call of Duty 4 campaign in order to get some achievements. In doing so I noticed how devilish those missions are. I would have happily payed a dollar or two to get by because that would add to my enjoyment of the game.
I’ll admit that it sounds crazy to basically pay for achievements however, does it really matter? Achievements are not some kind of noble sport that is above cheating. Just look at the massive save trading going on. I think that anyone who takes points seriously is just sad. If someone is willing to spend their money on something you find stupid it should not bother you. Just support whatever you want to support. If it is truly stupid then no one will buy it and it will end on its own.
I just noticed how easily I got tracked off of my main point. I started talking about bad values then transitioned into points then went back to buying practices. In short, put level skips on XBLM.
Sadly I can’t assassinate the disappointment
In Assassins Creed you play as Altair. You are part of a brotherhood of Assassins that are on a quest to protect the holy land from the invading crusaders. Assassins Creed is a game that will bring you along on a unique adventure unlike any other.
At this point if you have heard of Assassins Creed you know about the “twist”. In reality you play Desmond who is a test monkey for some kind of evil cooperation. Extremely early in the game you find out that these mysterious scientists are holding you captive in order to get information on your ancestor, Altair. So therefore you must relive Altair’s life in order to obtain the correct “information”.
While playing you are thrust into one of three massive cities. Being as Assassin gives you the ability to scale buildings in a fashion that would put Spiderman to shame. Altair will fluidly scale massive towers grabbing rails and scaffolding without any hesitation. This is by far the best part of Assassins Creed; the platforming game play in this game completely elevate the genre and sets a new benchmark that will be tough be match and even harder to surpass.
While the cities themselves are a superb achievement the events going on within the city are rather disappointing. Whenever you go to a new part of the city you must follow a set routine. First you must get to a high point and survey the surrounding area. Secondly you must collect information on your target. In order to get this information you do one of four things. You can eavesdrop on chatty citizens to get the scoop. Pick pocketing an important document is another possible objective, or you can beat the information out of talkative individuals. While these three objectives make sense in terms of collecting information there is another type that make me confused. There are fellow assassins littered throughout the city that want you to complete objectives for them in exchange for information. However these objectives are so dumb; you either have to finish off their assassination duties for them, or collect the flags that they seem to misplace every single time you talk to them. This might not seem like much but I have one question, why the hell do I have to collect your stupid flags?
Regardless once you’re done with those you have to go and assassinate your main target. These also seem to go by some sort of loose routine. You must find your target wade through the crowd of people and go in for the kill. Once everyone notices the corpse on the ground twenty guards show up to brawl. This brings me to my next topic of discussion, the combat. Early off in the game you spend most of the time mashing on the X button until the dudes die. Eventually you will build up a repertoire of moves that will make you a very formidable opponent. However there is one move that seems a little overpowered, the counter attack just has you patiently guarding until someone on attacks you and you counter which gives you the one hit kill. Then you can just wait as each guard approaches you in an orderly fashion each eagerly awaiting their turn to review a good slash to the face.
While this is fun and exciting the first time around, you soon realize that this cycle will repeat a total of eleven times. Around the third time the cycle starts to become extremely tiresome. This is the major thing about Assassins Creed. Your tolerance to repeat this cycle will determine the amount of enjoyment that you will be able to get out of Assassins Creed. For most people I would recommend you borrow or rent this game first. Assassins Creed is not a game that is necessarily worth the sixty dollar price. In the end Assassins Creed is very ambiguous because whether or not it’s good or not depends on your personal taste. For me I found this a fun but repetitive game that everyone should experience.
7.5 out of 10
Since the summer has begun I have made one of my goals to post more often on this blog. However something has overtaken my life and puts productivity at an all time low. No, its not Halo 3 or Call of Duty 4, its extreme laziness.
For example, I have been meaning to write my review of Assasins Creed for some time now but it always comes down to me saying to myself, “I’ll do it later.” I swear to myself I’ll write it by the end of the day ( I wouldnt take this very seriously ).
In a none gaming related post Im here to report that my freshmen school year is coming to a close. I have one week of finals left and once I’m done, SUMMER TIME!
Basically hanging out, and playing games. I’ve been playing Assassins Creed and will put up my impressions or perhaps full review at the end of next week.
Recently I have really been craving Call of Duty 4 on the Xbox 360. I wanted it so that I can play with my friends. This compounded with the fact that Im getting sick of Halo 3. I had C.O.D. 4 on the PC but never got into it. Now that I’ve started playing it I have realized, C.O.D. 4 is awesome on any platform.
I love the whole leveling up system because its so smart. Get kills and get points. Pure genius. I’m not quite used to the whole one bullet will kill you thing yet but Im getting there. Its definatley more realistic that space spartan with magic shields.
It’s Pro. Gotta Buy it.
My friends go into a frenzy whenever a new Burnout arrives and everytime I would eventually make it over to one of their houses and try out these games. Every single time I see them having a really fun time and I just dont see why. I get it the cars go fast. Oh, you can boost to make your car go even faster? Great.
With the release of Burnout Paradise I was really psyched about the concept. The whole open world idea seemed like the good change of pace that I have been waiting for. However when I got it I found it extremly repetitive after you acquire your licenses. It was basically the same as the previous games but no instead of navigating menu’s you navigate a virtual world.
The only thing I like about the series are the visuals. Criterion games always put out games that blow my mind visually but when I get to the game play I always leave feeling underwhelmed.
Every year for seemingly forever a Tony Hawk game has come and gone. And every time one of these games came out I wondered was this the one? Would this be the one where the secret awesomenes that everyone one else saw in the series would be revealed to me. However I have rented a majority of them and played them for about four or six hours I always come out being really disappointed.
For me personally I do not feel compelled by the game play. To me it seems to be alot of grinding and going off ramps mashing alot of buttons to bust out a combo. Also, it seems that I am very prone to motion sickness. Whenever I play these games I end up with a mad headache and curse the constant up and down motions of the camera.
As I do with most games I can see why some people like it but for me personally, I could not care less.
I’m starting to hate Halo 3.
I need Call of Duty.
Thats all I gotta say.
I dont know what line of thought led me to want a RetroDuo game system but now I really want one. Im going to assume that you do not know what this is so I’ll explain simply. The RetroDuo is a system that can play the old school NES and SNES games. Being a big fan of gaming I always hear tales of the original Mario games, the never ending stream of Street Fighter games, and the old school RPG’s being the best games ever.
I’m not sure if I really want to spend the $50 on the system and the money on the games at the moment. I dont want to spend the money and have it just end up rotting in my basement. I’m going to have the think about this for a while. By the way here’s a pic of it:
Image courtesy of Vista Products
Here’s a little bit of what Im listening to at the moment:
Burn It All Down by VHS or Beta
Protect Ya Neck by WuTang Clang
I just finished watching I am Legend. I never caught this film while it was in theaters so this movie was new to me. I found the plot fairly interesting, from what I hear the book is better, the whole “zombie” plot was a new take that is not totally derivative. Sadly some of the major plot points were spoiled by my friends so I can’t say that I started with a fresh slate.
This film is worthy of a rent but its not something that I would watch again.
I was in the middle of updating my PSP so naturally I had my PSP plugged in to an AC adapter in my wall. During the middle of the update the power went out, and since it was about 11 O’Clock at night this was bad, in the middle of the confusion I dropped my PSP which cause my battery to fall out. Ironically enough the instant I dropped it the power came back on. If you didn’t know if you lose power for some reason, like my moments of idiocy, there is a chance that your PSP will brick. And that exactly what happened. Now I have a shiny, 160$ paperweight staring at me.
Now I’m kind of pissed because that was my Crisis Core machine which was my source of morning entertainment on my bus ride to school.
While I was playing BioShock yesterday I was really into the whole experience until I reached my second Big Daddy fight. I just kept dying over and over again, all I did was get into one of those vita chambers, which are basically respawn points, I would run back to the Big Daddy and get a couple shot gun shells off and die again. Then I would just repeat the cycle over and over again. I found this really frustrating and started a new game on the easy difficulty.
When I made that switch the game became alot more fun for me. I no longer feared turning the next corner and the long walk I would go through every time I died was no longer a worry. Playing both I noticed that Im not really missing much playing it on easy. It just makes the whole experience more fun for me.
Who cares if Im playing on Easy mode. I play games to have fun and whatever guarantees me the most amount of fun I’ll do it. If you are not playing games for fun then what are you playing for?
I got a copy of BioShock from my friend and started playing it today. The first thing I noticed was the visual and audio presentation. This game looks fantastic. The water really stood out to me because its so detailed and the small effects on your screen add to the realism effect. The other things in the game environments look really polished as well. I really enjoy the art deco style because almost no game follows this style. This is really refreshing compared to your typical space combat scenario. Another strong suit is the audio; when you are walking around rapture, the under water metropolis you play in, all kinds of really creepy noises make the atmosphere extremly tense.
So far what I’ve noticed is that when you compare the visual and audio together the atmosphere created is amazing. No other game can come close to the tenseness of Rapture. I was legitimately scared by the game when the crazy splices began to attack you.
The thing I’ve noticed is that so far I am not a fan of the game play. The shooting mechanics does not feel satisfying like Call of Duty and Halo. I just don’t feel powerful while I’m wielding them. However the plasmids feel really awesome. Shocking someone or lighting them on fire feels really visceral. The plasmids, as they call them, seem to be the main mechanic to focus on.
Overall I’m really impressed with BioShock’s visual and audio presentation but I feel that the gameplay is not satisfying. These are only my initial feeling so they are subject to change.
Info
Name: Rock Band
Developer: Harmonix
Genre: Rhythm, Party
Good
-Diverse Song List
The song choices in the game are extremely varied and transcend many different forms of rock. Any fan of rock will find some songs that will fit their tastes. Like most other rhythm games, you can easily discover songs that you like that you never knew about. This is a good way to find out about some music that maybe you would not have discovered on your own.
-Graphics
The graphics defiantly do take some time to get use to however the clean look of the on stage avatars began to grow on me after a while. While you’re playing songs there are several music video style effects like black& white, distortion and other things in that vein.
-Downloadable Content
When I said that the song list is diverse I was not lying however it is impossible to cater to everyone’s unique taste in one song list. That’s where downloadable content comes into play. For the PS3 and Xbox 360 version you can download songs of their respective market place. Most songs cost about 2 dollars, for what you get it seems like a fair price. The constant stream of new songs each week ensures that eventually something you really like will show up. This is a good way to custom tailor the song list to your own liking.
-Multiplayer
The true fun in this game comes out when you play with a party of two or more people. I’ve had numerous occasions where friends gather to play a song or two. This is not limited to your game playing friends, it can bring in new people and expose to a really fun game. The Big Rock endings are another game play aspect that becomes really fun with more people. It gives all of the players an opportunity to just “rock out”. That alone is worth getting a few players together.
Bad
-Hella Expensive
One of the fatal flaws that make this game a tough sell is the high price. It costs 170$ for the bundle that includes the guitar, drum, mic and game. When you tell someone that this game is really fun for everyone but it costs about 200$ that would deter a lot of people. Now with the release of individual instruments the price strain can be slightly alienated but it is still a large investment. I would recommend this game if you are really into rhythm games otherwise this could end up being a 200$ waste of space.
Overall
This game is the ultimate party game and for any rhythm game enthusiast this is an extremely easy sell. The base song list along with the constant stream of new content makes this a game that’s always getting better.
blazinasian