It’s become clear to me that this site needs a serious kick in the ribs to get it going again. We’re pretty much we are out of articles, so drastic action is needed to keep this place from going belly up.  So, to cut right to the point, I’ve decided to have another contest.  Nothing lame this time though, I’m giving away one of these:

No, not a jpeg. An Xbox 360 Pro.

Yep, a brand new XBox 360 Pro.  Don’t look at me like that, I know I haven’t gone out and bought it yet (you’ll get a real picture when I do).  I want to make sure that people actually participate this time before buying the prize.  Also, I’m afraid this contest will be limited to participants in the US and Canada only (sorry guys, it’s expensive to ship overseas).

If you already own a 360 and you end up winning the contest, you can choose to receive a Wii instead (if I can actually find one, that is).  I honestly don’t know why anybody would want one though (that’s coming from someone who owns one).

So, how do you go about winning?  Here are the rules:

• Contest will run all throughout the month of March.
• Winner will be determined by a raffle ticket system.
• Create a new topic on a forum plugging this contest, get one ticket (please leave a comment on this post with a link to the post).  Limit one ticket per forum.
• Create a 100+ word blog post linking to this contest, get one ticket (please leave a comment on this post with a link to the post).  Limit one ticket per blog.
• Get an article published in March, get five tickets per article (that’s published, not submitted).
• I will contact the winner sometime in early April.  You have 5 days to answer me, or I will pick a new winner.  Once I’ve gotten things squared away with the winner, I will send them the prize.

So yeah, get the word out about the contest and write me some articles.  You may end up with a new console.

F.E.A.R. is in fact not a horror game, but a first person shooter with paranormal and horrific undertones, you’ll run into the occasional freaky occurrence here and there but it’s more shooter than anything else. That being said, the game is still pretty creepy with random occurrences of ghosts or demons popping up and voices being heard. However you don’t feel this creepiness throughout the game, actually when you are in combat, you feel none of it, the paranoia becomes fun for a while.

The scariest or creepiest parts of F.E.A.R. lie completely in the sounds, and the lighting. Even when you are not in combat there is intensive music playing, and often you’ll find yourself jumping at bit at sounds of yourself moving and sounds of the environment. There were many times throughout F.E.A.R. when I jumped because of my own shadow, it’s unnerving.

The combat is your standard FPS configuration: run, duck, shoot, rinse and repeat, but F.E.A.R. does have some notable weapons. Aside from the regular submachine gun, the usual pistol, and the typical shotgun (which you will use a lot), there is a particle blaster, a repeating air missile gun (my personal favourite), and a nail gun. The gunplay is fun but horribly repetitive, and it’s very possible to become bored of the firefights by the end of the game. Monolith does occasionally through in a mech or a super solider fighter here and there but it’s again the same kind of fighting.

The graphics are good for their day and age, though there are some performance issues like frames per second drops during graphic intensive times, but overall F.E.A.R. plays well. The environments are overly repeated and sometimes it feels like the developers simply copy and pasted parts to make a level. However, one thing this game does excel at is it’s level design, there are times (often in later levels) where the path isn’t so clear, and you have to look around a bit more to find the right way to go, but this is vanquished by the linearity of the levels, there is only one path, and if you stray from that path you will either a. die, or b. hit a wall.

Despite all of the game’s flaws, the story is wonderful, even if it is broken up into minuscule pieces until the end of the game. This was something I had a problem with, there was no even flow of story coming. Throughout the levels you’d find pieces of data that act as background information for the game but you never really get a full blast of what’s going on until the end of the game.

If my judgment sounds straying it’s because the game has lots of up points and down points. F.E.A.R. is a great game, but with some fixing it could be much better. Overall I’d call it an average title, so if you have nothing else to play, you can pick up F.E.A.R. and not be disappointed, but if this game was still at retail value I’d say it wouldn’t be worth a full buy. I heard F.E.A.R. 2 is more polished than F.E.A.R. 1, so I will have to check it out and report back.

That’s essentially the rallying cry of the watchdog group Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, or CCFC. The name may ring a bell to those who follow the gaming news; those who don’t, well, really didn’t miss much. 

Once again the CCFC’s antics don’t fail to deliver on the entertainment value, and this time the object of their (pointless) ire is Lego Batman: The Videogame. Why, you ask? I don’t know either. 

Let’s try to rationalize the two basic components of Lego Batman: The Videogame:

• Lego = good, educational, mindless fun.
• Batman = awesome story revolving around the concept of justice and about how crime doesn’t pay. 

I certainly don’t see any problem with it; it looks like a winning formula when looked at from any angle. But of course, CCFC being a watchdog group that dedicates itself to the unneeded, unwanted, and unnecessary cause of taking commercialism away from childhood, they condemned Lego Batman as a virtual spawn of commercial Satan, including it in their list of Toys Oppressive and Destructive to Young Children. Check out their write-up:

How do you turn the ultimate creative toy into a symbol of commercialized childhood?  Begin by partnering with media companies to sell that toy in branded kits designed for recreating movies like Star Wars, rather than creative construction.  Then, dispense with hands-on building altogether by turning your toy into a video game so that instead of deciding what to build next, children choose which cyber weapons to use to beat up their opponent.  Finally, ignore the fact it was rated suitable for ages 10 & up and partner with McDonald’s for a Happy Meal toy giveaway to simultaneously promote the video game, junk food, and the violent Dark Knight movie series to preschoolers.

See, the root of the problem (and sadly, the existence) of CCFC lies with the misguided reasoning that commercialism is bad, bad, bad for children. Blame the people of older generations who wistfully say things beginning with “You know, in the old days we [insert nice but horribly outdated activity here].” This is not to say that old games rife with physical activities are passe; this is to say that things change as time passes. What’s interesting to kids now is decidedly different compared to what was awesome during the collective childhoods of the people who comprise the CCFC.

Let’s be open-minded here. Commercialism has become and now always will be a part of every childhood. There will always be the fictional heroes that children want to idolize, there will always be merchandise related to those “heroes” that children would want to have, to let them bring a piece of their beloved idol along wherever they go. Like the Lego Batman toys and their virtual counterpart, the videogame. 

We shouldn’t also forget about the people whose lives are sustained by this aspect of childhood, and included among them are those who work in the videogame industry, who are now sadly experiencing the brunt of the current economic crisis. But the CCFC doesn’t care, right? All they care about is thinking for the children, yes?

Which brings us to my next point: why bother thinking for the children when there’s a great, awesome invention already available for this very function? Yes, I am talking about the Parental Units, also known as Mum and Dad.

These self-professed watchdogs are the very reason why people nowadays don’t exercise their ability to think for themselves or to be accountable by their actions. At the risk of saying something that has been said ad nauseum, parents are responsible in looking out for their children. Watchdogs dedicating themselves to the noble cause of saving children are, in essence, good, but at the end of the day, the parents are the ones ultimately responsible for molding their children’s thinking, especially when some of the watchdogs in question are spouting inane statements such as:

Finally, ignore the fact it was rated suitable for ages 10 & up and partner with McDonald’s for a Happy Meal toy giveaway to simultaneously promote the video game, junk food, and the violent Dark Knight movie series to preschoolers.

Last time I heard, ESRB and ratings exist. Again, another horrible example of them assuming that parents don’t and can’t provide the much-needed guidance to their kids.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who watches the watchmen?

Okay, I discovered this by accident. It’s how to play the full Banjo game from the trial.

Step 1: Get into Spiral Mountain
Step 2: Go to the giant Ape and make him hit all 3 orange tiles. Make sure the one furtherest away from the tree stub with the monkey is hit LAST. DON’T GET THIS JIGGY YET.
Step 3: Get the orange from Ape’s tree, and give it to the monkey on the tree stub. GET THIS JIGGY.
Step 4: Go to the mole hill above the tree stump, learn how to egg attack, and beat the Ape. A Jiggy will fall.
Step 5: If done correctly, the 2 Jiggys will be right next to each other. Jump right in the middle of them. You should collect 2 Jiggys at the same time, extending the trial.

TRY IT OUT. The only thing you can’t do is save.

Gears of War 2, "breaking news: skulls look awesome"

So you powered through Gears of War in a day or two with your friends on co-op (or by yourself, you poor lonely soul) on an energy drink rave with spare time on your hands. What next, an old question with an old answer, the sequel.

Gears of War Two, oh boy! Who doesn’t love the great Marcus Fenix, war hero or Augustus Cole the loveable and muscular ebony soldier of brute force….and Dominic Santiago their Hispanic friend. Oh yeah and Baird that really smart white guy, that almost every FPS has, like half-life and Gordon Freeman, or Call of Duty 4 and the entire British army SAS (Special Air Service) team. For all you Halo fans thinking about Master Chief, remember, he MAY be a black guy under that Spartan helmet.

So Gears of War leaves off after the lightmass (bomb) offensive from Gears 1 that apparently failed. The lightmass bomb didn’t pack quite the punch that the COGS had in mind. Yea a ton of Locust died but who cares about a few Locust casualties? Those guys were sent on suicide missions anyway. The unfortunate and dangerous thing is that a big piece of the Locust army is still intact, big enough to destroy the last human bastion of Jacinto anyway. Jacinto…sounds like a city that belongs in Final Fantasy 7.

So the storyline in Gears 2 is noticeably improved due to Epic Games hiring professional writers to spruce it up. However although a nice storyline is important, the Gears one is within acceptable bounds, not too awful, although it did leave a lot of questions unanswered and a giant cliffhanger at the end, it is part of a trilogy so no loss of points for the game there.

The graphics for the game are one of the best. It is a compliment to people who don’t have good amazing graphic video engine PC’s. Epic really took advantage of the 360’s hardware. The sound is pretty good, yet nothing amazing, the melancholy moments have the appropriate music and so do the blood-pumping action sequences. The voice acting is good, as expected, and most of what comes out of the characters mouths are not only tolerable, but funny. I would like to cite that when Ben Carmine says “Eh, stand up like a man!” when he revives an ally, it is for some odd reason incredibly hilarious. Perhaps it’s the fact that he’s a rookie and he’s speaking in a condescending manner to veteran fighters.

The controls are pretty much what you would expect to have in Gears of War 2, its standard to Gears 1. It’s easy to take cover, roadie run, fire, and aim (from behind cover as well as blind shoot). The button layout is easy to memorize especially if you’ve played Gears 1, it’s the same really. The game play is also very similar, and slightly repetitive. The driving segments are torturous if your hand isn’t steady and you will be finding yourself cursing the Gears vehicles. Basically you have your guys, fighting the enemy guys in usually open spaces with covers such as boxes and railings and you can take aim by sticking your head out of cover or blind shoot from behind cover if you want to be cautious. The wall glitch in the cover system has been fixed and now you can bunny hop from cover to cover and move forward while pushing back enemies. However there is one small issue with the cover system, when you roadie run and you touch a cover spot even slightly, most likely your character will jump into that cover spot as if he was magnetized to that spot. You can lob a grenade pretty easily and with good aim, however in multiplayer mode it is very obvious to the enemy players that your about to throw a grenade with the aiming system on it that makes you spin it around before throwing (so for that surprise smoke grenade you want to wreak havoc with you should probably blind lob it). More on the multiplayer will be written later on. One more thing I would like to add about the game play is the co-op, like in the first one, makes you restart the chapter segment if either player dies. Personally I think that the living player should be able to play through the segment and have the dead player revive at the successful finish of that segment.

The weapons and items have been expanded on in Gears of War 2. The Mulcher machine gun is a handheld machine gun that deals out massive waves of bullets that will mow down your enemies, considering you don’t overheat the blasted thing. The addition of a flamethrower is definitely nice, now I can serve up my locust extra crispy! Yum! New Locust types were of course added to the game, with new little abilities that you will find out about soon enough.

The AI in the game is pretty fair. The level setting doesn’t really affect the AI method of fighting much, but it really controls the amount of fire you can take before being downed or dying. Anybody who has played an FPS and can beat it on normal with no problem can play Gears on Hardcore without breaking much of a sweat. However on Horde mode (which is where you and your friends face 50 waves of oncoming and increasingly more difficult locust) when you break through wave 30 even if your settings are on casual, you may get a little jolted.

Now for the multiplayer mode review section, oh good. Let’s start off by saying that it may take you a bit longer than you are usually accustomed to, to find a match. The pairing system for the Gears multiplayer will take a while to find suitable teammates and enemy players for you. Also the Gears system, although it looks for “an opposing team of similar skill” you will find yourself paired up with players that could kill you in a minute. The maps are pretty nice if not repetitive in feel. There is a nice little flashback map pack that is sold with Gears 2 which takes maps from the first game and incorporates them into Gears 2. this should appeal to anybody who enjoyed those old maps. There are standard modes of play in Gears 2 multiplayer: Territories, Elimination, Horde, and Wingman. Each of these modes has a subsection. Territories mode has submission, annex, and king of the hill. Submission is a capture the flag mode, where you must take an NPC character back to your team’s base (yes the NPC will struggle against you). Annex and king of the hill are well, territory capture modes, the team that controls the areas for the most amounts of time wins. Elimination mode has Guardian, Execution, and Warzone. In Guardian there is one team leader on each team and the players of that team will infinitely respawn until the team leader is killed, after that it’s a slaughterhouse. Warzone is a standard team death match game, and Execution only lets you kill enemy team players with one shot kills and execution moves. Horde as explained earlier is when AI locusts spawn in waves (that total to 50) and your team must stand its ground through each wave of ever increasing difficulty. Wingman is basically a game for those who have close friends or like two-man teams. In Wingman there are five teams of two that compete in a classic death match style.

Take a long hard look at this thing, Itll be responsible for 80% of your deaths in Gears of War 2 Multiplayer

The main comment I have about Gears 2 multiplayer is the amazing overpowering of the Lancer. The game should be called Chainsaw of War. The constant chainsaw spamming makes it hard to have a smile on part of the time in most multiplayer death match games. The chainsaw doesn’t even stop being revved if you shoot the wielder (without downing him).

If you didn’t get chain sawed by that huge guy behind you, his friend with the shotgun will finish you off with a shot to the face, which is a nice nostalgic kick back to Gears 1 multiplayer where shotguns ruled with iron fists. Planted grenades, they can be very helpful and very annoying. They are hard to spot if well hid so be careful when raging into the enemies base, you never know from what angle you could explode at any given moment. Also do not plant YOUR grenades in obviously seen places. Although you cannot set them off yourself by walking by them, your enemy can certainly shoot them, and blow them up in your face if you’re near them and the grenades are sticking out where they can be shot. Another big tip, watch out for torque bows, these are commonly used in Wingman. The torque bow when fully charged is a one hit kill if you get directly hit by it. If you see a torque bow user, do not attempt to sniper him unless you are sure you can make the shot. Stay under cover and make your way around to the bow handler, and take him out with a good chainsaw or fist melee. These are basically the ground rules for multiplayer to keep in mind, especially when against seasoned hardcore players.

All in all Gears of War 2 is a solid FPS that will keep you entertained for a long time. Playing the solo campaign on different difficulties and playing co-op mode will ensure a high replay value. Multiplayer mode is very fun to play with friends, and Horde mode is just a blast! Beat all 50 waves and get a swanky achievement too! This is a definite buy in my opinion but if you don’t care about multiplayer, or are new to shooters, rent it and see what you think. I give Gears of War 2 (the wife hunt) ((lol couldn’t resist cracking a joke about Dom)) a bloody 8 out of 10

I should probably explain that my friend is like one of those dogs that when you say it’s name too many times, it shits itself. So, when I showed a complete lack of interest in a game I had never heard of, I was then treated, in a shrieking pre-pubescent voice, why I was wrong.

Fable was the best RPG ever made. You could interact with everyone in the game, who were all unique. There was hundreds upon hundreds of hours of exploring in the game, seemingly endless dungeons, castles, towns and the like to explore.  The choices you made, from stepping on a flower when you were a kid to slaying a king when you were an adult changed the game forever. You aged in real time, you could get married, have kids, raise the kids to be good, to be evil, take over towns, cut down trees and build a house, good god, he went on for literally a half hour. Determined to see a game that had finally dethroned TES III: Morrowind, I cleared the 20 minute walk to his house in 8 minutes, and ran in. What I saw was a definite improvement on graphics on Morrowind’s brown and grey tones. I sat down next to him and watched him play.

He brought me up on the basics. The main character’s sister needed a birthday present and you were the guy who needed to find the money to do so. I told my friend to leave the town and go exploring. He looked a bit embarrassed and told me he couldn’t. He reasoned that it was the tutorial, and that a child probably wouldn’t find the world of Albion very forgiving.

I shrugged in agreement, and watched him gather that money. He punched bullies, gave teddy bears to crying little girls, watched barrels(???) and reported indecent behavior to angry wives. My first thought that if this was going to be the usual amount of activites in towns, then it was exciting you could be spending dozens of hours in towns, completing quests and doing favours. Then, bandits attacked, and suddenly we were at the “heroes guild”. Then, the game began the tutorial. Through the hour my friend spent looking over everything and making sure he’d seen anything there was to offer in the guild, I wondered out loud why we were still doing tutorials an hour after we’d booted the game up. In any case, my friends character stepped out into the world, learned how to fart on people and killed a wasp queen. In this time, we learned that there was no free-roaming whatsoever, and in fact, you would be spending alot of time constrained on paths. My friend was furious. He took the game out of the system, and put it in its case, and jammed it onto his shelf angrily.

I went home, and spent a few hours doing Solstheim quests and snickering to myself about the “amazing” game that was supposed to render every other game null and void.

Christmas rolled around the next month, and I got an Xbox. I also didn’t get any games. I called up my friend and asked him if he could lend some from his extensive collection. I was handed Oddworld, Halo, and Fable.

Well, February came along and I was bored. A strange illness had me bedridden, and the inability to even get up to go to the bathroom was killing my brain. So, I reached over, and put Fable in the system.

I grinded through the tutorials as fast as possible, bored, and slowly become more and more enthralled. I mean sure, the game was painfully limited, but good god, the game was fun. I went around, getting haircuts and tattooing myself in every way possible, making my character the ugliest man in Albion. I farted near villagers. I gathered traders around me and laughed and loved the nervous titters they gave so appease my quickly becoming more corrupted form. I kicked a bandits head around a forest map for almost 45 minutes, laughing at the sheer brilliance of putting something like this in.

Over the course of a week, I fell in love in Fable. My character was a ten foot tall musclebound monster, with black smog pouring off him, massive horns, and a santa beard. I had a weird sense of humor when I was 16. Every shortcoming was well noted, and there were alot, but I couldn’t stop playing. As soon as I killed the final boss, I immediately started a new file, just for the sake of making a good character. When that finished, I went and did every single possible thing that could be done in Fable. The fight club. The sword in the stone. The demon doors. Ordered 5 bandits to follow me, and unleashed them in Oakvale, chuckling at the irony. I was an assassin, killing with his bow. I was a warlord, smashing open doors with a warhammer, and telling people the houses they lived in were mine. If they resisted(they always did) I killed them.  I snuck into stores and robbed people without shame. I stood in one spot for 45 minutes, charging up a bow because I heard that would kill a troll in one hit. Jesus, on one file, I grinded killing Hobbes in the cave for 60 hours, just for the spectacle of watching an 18 year old walk into the level up chamber, and walk out a 60 year old.

I pulled, at final count,(with the exception of that one file) around 70 hours out of Fable. When I finally was bored of the game, almost 6 months later, I was very certain my friend was very wrong. Sure, it was no Morrowind, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. I’d rarely played a game where I’d had as much fun as I did in Fable. Hell, even Morrowind made me so angry once I threw my keyboard across the screen.  I managed to just barely play through one more time for all of the Lost Chapters content, but even without it, I considered Fable to be the best game put on the Xbox that year. It was an imperfect, but just awesome game.  Maybe I’m a rarity or maybe I was bored enough to let things go, but if you look past the hype, the game can still be fun.

Give it another chance.

-Harvey Vdarski

The core gameplay centers around using force powers to great effect, upgrading them and mastering them. While gripping enemies is exciting for the first few levels or so, you feel slashing an enemy gets it over with quicker, which raises the main problem. Force powers are interesting, but not deep enough to evolve into interesting mechanics; which make them feel more like gimmicks than intelligent design.

The presentation is done well overall. Though the visuals aren’t A+ material, they provide some excellent distractions throughout, and with the gameplay never becoming intricate enough to truly grab you, it’s needed. The feel of playing a part in the Star wars universe is captured well and the story is enough to keep you pushing through; though a needless love sub-plot is introduced which made me cringe as it seemed so forced. The music is a boon to the whole experience, being Star Wars, it’s got to be excellent. Mixing old tunes and some new interesting ones strikes a perfect balance between familiarity and excitement.

It’s best played for the spectacle, as it feels like a poor man’s God of War with more (God forbid) quick time events. The feel is captured brilliantly but everything else fails to match the epic scale.

The short length is also a problem, coming in at around 7-8 hours, but any longer would’ve made the game terribly boring.

Overall, I’d say this is a title to rent, experience and then forget. It’s nothing special, by any means, but it’ll provide a burst of entertainment.

6/10

“It’s a CASUAL game”

A casual game. A game, that is casual in it’s design? In it’s use? In it’s plot or art? What does that mean? What do you THINK you’re saying?

Video games are NOT casual. Nor are they Hardcore. Video games are video games. There is no such thing as a hardcore game and a casual game. There are obscure games, there are popular games, there are simple games, there are complex games, there are pretty games and there are ugly games. But there is no hardcore game, and not a single casual game. They don’t exist. A game cannot be hardcore or casual. A video game can have a target audience, an art style, a plot, no plot, it can have complex controls, it could use a motion sensor, it might even require you to type words to progress, as opposed to ever controlling anything, but none of these choices will ever make it casual or hardcore.

Katamari Damacy is obscure. It’s also colourful, and it’s simple. It’s kooky and straightforward in design. It’s intention is not to appeal any one demographic. It’s intention is to take a risk in game design. Would Katamari Damacy be a hardcore game or a casual game? Both, and neither. It qualifies for either. So how can we even begin to categorize it with a straight face, knowing full well that it would hypocritical and idiotic to do so?

The same goes for all video games. Another example? Grand Theft Auto. Difficult, traditional, risk taking, and immensely popular. How could this seemingly hardcore game still be hardcore if non-gamers play it casually everyday? GTAIV received endless criticism due to it’s popularity, calling it casual and mainstream when in fact it was ONLY mainstream. I am an avid gamer. I own a slew of consoles, I play them all. I own 2 copies of GTAIV, and will be getting the PC version in December. Now, I do not play it that often. I never play it for more then an hour. I play it, casually, you could say. BUT, it is not a casual game and I am not a casual gamer. It is also not a hardcore game. It is an action adventure open world sandbox game. I am a hardcore gamer, or as I like to say, “gaming enthusiast”. My brother is a casual gamer, he doesn’t spend long on a game, except for GTAIV. He plays the game hardcore, because he payed for it and read into it, and invested himself into it.

Catz and Dogz and Horsez are not casual, they are not hardcore, they are shovelware. Katamari is a puzzle game. Super Smash Bros. Brawl is a party game and Halo is a first person shooter. I own and play all these (with the exception of the shovelware). Famously, on the internet at least, Halo is casual, Katamari is hardcore and casual and Smash Bros. is the epitome of casual. But I’ve played SSBB for at least 100 hours now. How could that be casual playing?

It can’t be, and it’s not. I am a hardcore gamer. People who own Wii’s and play for 40 minutes at most in a day are casual gamers. My friend is a casual gamer, he owns an Xbox 360. My other friend is a hardcore gamer, he only owns a Wii. My brother is a casual gamer, he owns a $1200 gaming PC. How a game could be casual boggles me. Games are not designed like that. Games cannot be casual. It is the GAMER that is casual or hardcore. The gamer plays it their way, invests in it their way, spends as much time in it as they like. There has never been a casual or hardcore game. Only a casual and hardcore gamer. It’s really that simple.