The Gaming Experiment

I was pretty ill this weekend. I’ll use that as my excuse for completing Cabela’s Big Game Hunter 2010 this week. When I was sick, I didn’t want to dig too deep in any of the big releases because I wanted to be able to focus 100%. Luckily for me, little concentration is needed to complete the game.

Now, I’m not saying it’s a horrible game, just a boring, repetitive, and convoluted game. So I bet you’re asking yourself how a hunting game could be convoluted. Well, you play a hunting recruit named Jack, and you’re trying to get admitted into the esteemed hunting group called The Order. Really, The Order? That made me laugh because my only motivation was to shoot bears and mountain lions.

I am in no way, shape, or form a fan of hunting. This game helped illustrate my distaste for hunting. I don’t judge anyone for hunting, that is your personal prerogative, but I am not a fan. If you’re willing to go on a one-on-one with a black bear, and you can kill him that way, you are a hero among mere mortals. But shooting it 100 feet away doesn’t count.

Cabela’s Big Game Hunter 2010 is less of a hunting simulation and more of an arcade style of a hunting game. There are 12 missions in different locations of the world ranging from the Rockies to the deserts of Argentina. You are given animals that you need to hunt ranging from deer to caribou to bears.

The world itself is pretty well designed. The levels look lush and plentiful with scenery. But one thing that is definitely is missing is, while on a mission to hunt an animal, the world is completely barren aside from that animal in a particular area. This took me out of the game, because I found myself walking to where the herds of white tail deer are, and there were no other animals around. Another problem is that the variety of animals was low. A couple different species of deer, some goats, caribou, and bears were really the stand outs. But I found myself hunting the same animal several times throughout different landscapes.

There was an added feature of a shooting gallery type minigame where you need to hunt as many hares, birds, jackals, or foxes within a certain period of time. The control of the reticule was imprecise and made those hunts more frustrating than fun.

I will give the game credit for some of the gameplay mechanics that have been used when you are hunting. There is an interesting effect called ‘Hunters Sense’ which highlights the checkpoints to your trophy, the alert level of the beast, and cover points. The cover points allow you to stay in cover while stalking your prey, and give you a bonus on your kill.

Too bad the game isn’t fun, exciting, or even varied in locations or animals. There is no real re-playability to the game. No multiplayer or worthwhile stat tracking. I can not recommend this game and have to suggest that you ‘Toss it from the Pile’.

You probably have read a lot of different reviews for the new entry into the Halo franchise, Halo 3: ODST. Let me start off by saying that this is a great game. The single player offering is a new take on the standard Halo 3 formula, with an open hub world space and interesting storytelling mechanics.

Now let me put this out there right off the bat, you are not Master Chief. You play the Rookie, an ODST that is dropping into New Mumbasa to fight the covenant. The ODST's drop to earth in single passenger pods, but as the team was dropping there was a problem, and the Rookie slams into the pod of another and goes unconscious for about 6 hours.

The Rookie wakes up in a barren world at night time. Luckily you have a type of night vision that outlines the game area and highlights visible baddies. You go through the world tracking you ODST buddies, and you play as them. I dont want to spoil any of the story because I do think that it is well constructed and told. You should really give it a chance.

I enjoyed the single player campaign, but it was the new multiplayer mode, Firefight, that keep me coming back for more, and even stopped me from completing a game a couple weeks ago.

Firefight mode is similar to Gears of War 2's horde mode, where waves of of enemies come and attack, and you must hold them off. I did enjoy GoW2's horde mode, but it didn't really stick with me the same way as Firefight. My biggest complaint with Firefight mode is that there is no matchmaking. You have to play with friends, which makes for a fun time, but if you dont have a lot of Xbox Live friends, it can be tough to make much progress.

I would have to say that overall, I really liked Halo 3: ODST. Unlike some other reviews, I do think that this outing is actually more than just an expansion, but not quite a full retail game. However, ODST packs in a pretty good single player story, the new multiplayer mode Firefight, and comes with a second disc of Halo 3 multiplayer with every map that has been released to date, plus 3 new ones.

For any shooter fan, you must Add it to the Pile.

What did you guys think about the singleplayer story? or firefight mode? Let me know in the comments!

I took two classes in college that really made a huge impression on me. ‘The Muppets’ and another class called ‘The Beatles’. Both stuck with me for different reasons. I had grown up on the Muppets and everything that Jim Henson had produced, from the Muppet Show to Sesame Street to Labyrinth.

The Beatles class was a little different of an experience. Of course I had heard of the Beatles, and there was no question that they made catchy pop songs, and were four of the most recognizable music celebrities. The best part of the class I took was learning about their back story. These were four guys from Liverpool that became music’s royalty. Started in dingy Liverpool clubs and made their way across the pond to Shea Stadium, The Ed Sullivan Show, and Budokan. The band stopped touring to focus on recording at the famous Abbey Road studio and ended with a bang on the roof of the Apple Corps.

The class really opened my eyes to what The Beatles gave the music world, and how they shaped the power of music as a true art form. This game reinforces everything that was really great about The Beatles.

The Beatles Rock Band is a very special game. You can tell right from the opening cinematic video that a lot of care and love were poured into this game. Unlike previous Band specific rhythm games, Guitar Hero: Aerosmith and Guitar Hero: Metallica, there are only songs from the featured artist. In the guitar hero iterations, there were songs from bands that inspired the featured band. The Beatles Rock Band is The Beatles all the time.

When you first start up the game, you’ll see some of your standard options like quickplay, where all the songs are unlocked and you can jump in on any of the instruments and start playing. Or you can start a story, like a campaign, where you follow The Beatles from a lowly pub band in Liverpool to Beatlemania in America, finishing up on top of the Apple Corp Building with the Let it Be album. As you make your way through the life of The Beatles, there are awesome interstitials that help illustrate what that time meant for the band.

For the first couple chapters of the game take place in real-life locations that have been faithfully recreated from the fans, to the venue, to how The Beatles were placed on the stage. A lot of care was given.

I remember watching The Beatles anthology and seeing the Fab Four come to New York and play Shea Stadium, with thousands of people screaming, just going ballistic at the sight. The Beatles Rock Band captures the spirit of that scene. You feel as though you are watching/playing as The Beatles, which is a magical feeling. That feeling comes through with every venue, every dreamscape, and that feeling is why I loved this game so much.

The Beatles stopped touring after they played Budokan and lived in the Abbey Road studios to record. What came out of those recordings were some of their more experimental music, however, playing in a barren studio wouldn’t be too fun to watch. Harmonix solved that problem by creating Dreamscape settings for the songs that were recorded in that time. For instance, the song “Here Comes the Sun” has a dreamscape where they are all playing with the beatiful backdrop of the sun, an open field and the wind. The dreamscapes are really creative, and colorful and really help bring the fun, crazy Beatles' songs to life. The story mode is one that should be experienced by anyone who likes music.

A feature that has been the standard, multiplayer, has been included with the normal tug-of-war and score dual modes included. You can also play though the story mode with an online friend. I tried it out and had fun playing it, however, being able to play with my fiancée in the same room was really memorable and awesome and I think that playing in the same room as the people you love is a great idea.

Of course you can play the game with your older Rock Band or Guitar Hero plastic instruments, but I was able to pick up the full band set. The guitar is a replica of Paul's bass and the drums are similar to Ringo's. It also comes with a mic, which is similar to what was included with Rock Band 2. I am disappointed though that a wireless mic was not included. However, both the drums and the guitar are wireless.

The bottom line with this game is that you must Add it to the Pile. The Beatles Rock Band has the best presentation I have ever seen, and every aspect and detail of the game has been dealt with love, caring, and a genuine appreciation of the source. If I had to knock the game for something, it would be the setlist. Don't get me wrong, the track list is fantastic, however, there are only 45 songs. There is already some downloadable content on the horizon. Harmonix has made a band specific game that, in my opinion, can never be matched. There are no other bands that would lend themselves to a full dedicated game like the Beatles.

This week, it will be a little different. I wasn’t able to finish a game. The game I tried to play was Guitar Hero 5. I picked it up after work on Tuesday, and played a bit of it each day. This weekend I had some things to do, but played it again at night, I tried.

The last GH game I played was the 3rd in the series, Legends of Rock, and I only played if for a little bit. That was the same year that Rock Band debuted, and I was all about the drums (Guitar Hero World Tour was the first GH game to have drumming and a mic). Now let me put it out there, I had been a fan of the original GH on the PS2, and Guitar Hero 2, but once Rock Band came on the scene, I changed camps and was a Rock Band guy. However, after reading the reviews, I was definitely excited to pick up GH5 and hopefully that would reinvigorate my love of the series.

Let me start off by saying that the presentation of GH5 is fantastic. The game doesn’t start off like past iterations have, with a menu, but rather has a band playing one of the 85 songs on the disc. But the most interesting thing is that by pressing the yellow button on whichever instrument you choose, and the game track drops down, and you can play. GH5 calls this party mode. A more casual pick up and play experience. When you miss a series of notes, then the note track disappears. I think that this feature alone is a genre changing one.

When Rock Band 2 was first announced, there was supposed to be a ‘Jukebox Mode’ that allowed the player to listen to the songs that are in the game and have been downloaded through DLC. This never came to fruition, and GH5 beat them to the punch.

I started a Career, my bands name is Abernathy, I’m not sure why, but that’s our name. I created a character, which had a lot of different options, and he is close to how I look. I was never a real rock star, but I am one in the game.

Like previous iterations, there are venues that you play in, encore songs and more venue unlocks. That’s totally fine with me, though I did enjoy the Rock Band model of have fans and becoming more popular in a tangible sense with your fan count, though in RB, there is a lot of song repetition that artificially increases the replayability of it. Each song in career mode has a challenge that needs to be completed by either a specific instrument or more than one player. I really thought that this added a new dimension to playing the songs. Plus if you got 100% on a song, you gained another star. It helped me stick around a bit longer.

I was also able to play some multiplayer, but finding a game wasn’t always an easy proposition. I was often waiting for five to ten minutes just to find a game, and was never able to find a full band vs band battle. However, the little that I played was fun, with different modes like most points and most accurate.

As you can tell so far, the presentation of the game, and its features are great, top notch really, and especially with the added party mode, it bring rhythm games to a new level of a group or party experience. But why wasn’t I able to finish the game this weekend? The track listing. The Achilles heal of any music/rhythm game. I tried to push through, playing one song after another that I had really not heard of before. Ok, so I admit it, I might not be the most up to date person when it comes to the new music the young kids listen to nowadays (I’m 25). But one thing that I always remembered about the first couple GH games was that, even though I didn’t know all the bands, the note tracking was fun. In GH5, I think that it lacks that rocking feeling.

I tried to play though the career, I really did. But I lost that feeling of feeling like a rock star and became frustrated and bored. I would recommend the game to people who like the track list, the features are fantastic, the presentation, though it isn’t as good as Rock Band, still is a huge improvement over previous iterations. The biggest added feature is the party mode with the jump in and jump out capability, I stand by my statement that that feature is truly a genre changer.

For me, this game is a pass, but only because of the, in my opinion, weak track list. I found myself going back to the handful of songs that I really enjoyed, and didn’t mess with the rest. However, if the soundtrack is up your musical alley, I don’t understand why you are still on the computer, go out and pick it up now.

The game I completed for this week’s experiment was the XBLA exclusive Shadow Complex, by Chair Entertainment. You might remember Chair’s first XBLA game, Undertow, which was an underwater capture the flag game. Though it looked great, Undertow used the Unreal 3 engine, it was somewhat forgettable.

Their second XBLA outing is head and shoulders above the last game.

For those unfamiliar, Shadow Complex is a side scrolling action adventure game, in the vein of the 2D Metroid games, and the classic, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Though the game works in a 2D space, moving from left to right, there is also foreground and background enemies that can attack, and the game auto-recognizes that you are shooting at them. This allows for a little more depth to the game, and helps the setting feel more alive.

You play Jason Flemming, a regular guy who meets a girl named Claire, they go spelunking. Claire disappears, and Jason goes searching for her. He stumbles on to a complex underground, in the shadows… cleaver name. In Jason’s exploration of the facility during his search for Claire, he hears about a plan to attack San Francisco . He now has two major objectives; to stop this shadowy PMC and save Claire.

The story was somewhat interesting, but it was the gameplay that held my attention, and the gameplay in Shadow Complex is fantastic. You start by finding a backpack that gives you the ability to double jump, and as you delve deeper into the facility and explore more of the huge map, you find upgrades to your weapons, and armor to your suit.

Some of the mechanics of the game are really great. You are equipped with a flashlight that when shined at an area that can be affected by your weapons, turns the color of the weapon needs that needs to be used. Green requires grenades, orange requires a gun, and purple is you foam gun.

The foam gun is really the highlight weapon of the game. It not only fun to use on enemies, it’s also extremely functional in creating platforms to get to hard to reach places.

You do level up with each kill and by exploring and finding secrets. With each level comes more accuracy and precision. The replay value is definitely there too. In my first run of the game, I was able to get to level 13, however, there is an achievement for reaching level 50. I also wasn’t able to get 100% of the items, and explore 100% of the map.

This is definitely a game that I will be coming back to again, because of the perfectionist streak in me. Shadow Complex is a great game and on that you Must Download

Let me know in the comments what you thought about this fantastic game.

Last week for the experiment, I completed Red Faction Guerrilla, my favorite game of the year so far. I really enjoyed it, the story, side missions, and setting in general. The multiplayer was excellent too!

I decided to pick up the newly released DLC, Demons of the Badlands. I was excited for the DLC, because it served as a prequel of whats been happening on Mars, before Alec Mason arrived.

The war is in full force between the EDF, the Colonists, and the Marauders. Though in this DLC, we play as Sam, your trusty friend from the retail game. You learn about her place in the struggle, and her place within the marauders.

In the DLC, you got 3 story missions, some new weapons and vehicles, and 10 or so side missions. The DLC took me about three hours to complete. I really loved Red Faction, but for $10, I didn't feel as though I was getting my money's worth. This DLC, though it furthers the back story of what's been going happening on Mars, it didn't feel as refined as the full game.

One thing that I did like was that the weapon upgrades did come fast and furious. Salvage, the games currency, is not needed, and there is no collecting, which allowed for a streamlined experience. Another problem was the vehicle selections, in the retail game, my least favorite faction for vehicle and weapons were the marauders, so I wasn't feeling either addition in this DLC.

Like I said before, I really liked Red Faction, but unfortunately I cannot recommend this for anybody but the hardcore fans of the retail release. This DLC is probably one that you should Try Before You Buy, or maybe wait until a game of the year addition comes out.

I just can't recommend it for the content you receive at the price you pay.

If you got this DLC, let me know what you thought about it in the comments!

Red Faction Guerrilla is a fantastic game. This is the third Red Faction game, and changes things up from the older outings. The first two games were in a first person perspective, while this game pulls out to a third person view. But probably the best part of this game is the destructible environments. Every building can be smashed, crashed and blown up.

Here are some of my stats for this playthrough

- $2.3 Billion in damages
- 170 Building Destroyed
- 1029 Vehicles Destroyed
- 94 enemy planes destroyed
- 4284 enemies killed
- 530km traversed
- 19 hours played

As you can see by those stats, I really had a great time.

The story of Red Faction, though not very deep, was good and perfect for the style of game. The game takes place Mars, Humans have terraformed it, and colonies have now populated the red planet. But, there is a nefarious overlord organization, the Earth Defense Force (EDF), that are mining Mars of it's resousces and treating the colonists as workers who are expendable.

You play Alec Mason, a miner from Earth, just looking for an honest living. His brother, Daniel, has been on Mars for some time, and is part of a rebel opposition to the EDF called Red Faction. During a meet-up between Alec and Daniel, the EDF kill Daniel in front of Alec. This event is the trigger point for Alec's membership in the Red Faction, and as the game progresses, his climb up as a central figure in the Red Faction organization, and a leader of the Mars liberation.

I really enjoyed the story, and found it engaging enough for me not to toss it aside. Red Faction is an open world game, where you can roam around doing both the main story line missions, and side missions.

The side missions that were included were:

Raid - Where you must go with some Red Faction to either capture or defend a building or piece of land

House Arrest - You must rescue some hostages

Transporter - A time trial to take a car from point A to point B

Destruction - You have certain ammo limitations to take down a building

When these side missions were completed, the morale of the Mars civilians increased, and you in fire fights with the EDF, back up would arrive. As you completed more main story missions and side mission, you found that NPC's would say things like 'Mason, you're our only hope' and 'Mason, you can do it' and though it had no bearing on anything in the game, it did give you a sense that what you were doing in game was gaving an effect, which I really enjoyed.

While destroying buildings and completing missions, you get paid in salvage, or scrap metal. This in-game currency allows for weapon upgrades.

The weapons in the game were fantastic. You start off with two main tools, a sledgehammer and some remote mines. As the game progresses, you've find assault rifles, shotguns, rocket launchers, and a nano-rifle that turns the enemy shot into a pile of ashes.

It was extremely satisfying to break a building down with the sledgehammer, or with meticulously placed remote mines.

One problem that I did have with Red Faction was how it's vehicles handled. But to be fair, I only ran into these frustrations during the transporter missions where a mistake or spin-out can cause you to fail the mission, that was the only frustrating moment in the game.

Red Faction seems to be an overlooked game, but is, for me at least, the best game that I've played this year.

You must Add it to the Pile.