This was a great year of gaming for me.  I was surprised by new titles I hadn’t heard of, pleased by spontaneous buys, and disappointed by games I had planned to buy for months prior.  Given how long it takes for me to get through games I usually just buy them or trade for them on Goozex, using the service as a long term Gamefly type setup.  As my rate of consumption increases I have to wonder if using Gamefly as a set rate of expense is a more cost effective solution, especially given the pain when I buy a stinker.  We shall see.

Below is a list of the major games I have played throughout this year.  With each is a little quip about them, and they are categorized by awesomeness.  Without further ado, here is the list:

Amazing adventures –

Borderlands – This game came out of nowhere and slapped me in the face.  I remember seeing some trailer for it, saying it was cool, then promptly forgetting about it in a sea of incoming games.  On release week, it was brought to my attention again.  The action RPG style, cell themed graphics and co-op features immediately attracted me to the title.  By release day I found myself in a Best Buy, shelling out my $60.  It was worth every penny.  Not only did it play awesome, and have great co-op, but Gearbox continued to put out DLC for this game.  In fact, I would say that I played it 6 to 8 months out of the entire year.  It had great legs to begin with, but the DLC made it into a supermodel.  At the time of this writing I have 2 days and 6 hours into my primary character, a siren.  I have enjoyed every minute of it, both on and off line, and continue to play it currently in between other games.  This was my game of the year.  Full Review

Mass Effect 2 – Literally taking your character from the first game and continuing the story (with story elements correct between games where you made hard choices) this game consumed a fair bit of my spring.  Like Borderlands, the action RPG style played really well, but the story and dialog options gave this game a lot of richness in its universe.  Leaning on my knowledge of how I never went back for a second playthrough on the first game, I played every major side quest in ME2 to their fullest.  I soaked it up like a kitchen sponge.  The plot twists and engaging nature of the story made the 30+ hours I put into the first play through worth every minute.  I knew myself well though, as I never picked it up again after the ending credits.  There was DLC released for it, but by then I had already pawned it on Goozex and was back into Borderlands again.

Splinter Cell Conviction – As a fan of Clancy games for years, this one really baked them all into one for me.  Taking the more agressive tactical elements from Rainbow Six Vegas and blending them with the assassin’s stealth of Splinter Cell, Ubisoft has created a game that tore me away from even one of my favorite games of the year Borderlands for a few months of distraction in a tight leather armor suit.  In order to take advantage of some online co-op opportunities I picked this up used off eBay of all places.  I played it online with a friend on some pre-planned weekends without ever having done the story.  I had so much fun with these couple stints that it spurned me to not only play through the entire game, but we also played through the 5 hour co-op storyline again on the highest difficulty but in half the time of the previous run through.  This game consumed a lot of time for me and I enjoyed every minute.  Previous SC games never had the pull into me that this one did and I look forward to future games if they take this direction and blend of game play elements.  Full Review

A nice fling –

Split/Second – I picked this game up after I had gotten too frustrated with Blur.  Like most games, I got it on a deal and always figured I could dump it on Goozex if I didn’t like it.  When I get into the game I was overjoyed by the gameplay and explosive graphical representations that the environment provided when you triggered events to crash your opponents.  The play and design reminded me a lot of Burnout 3 or 4, especially with the generic car makers and repeating tracks.  Though it was a rush to play up through episode 7, the game started to wain for me as the races became too difficult to get enough points to unlock progression in the game.  This lead me to having to backtrack and play previous episodes over again just to unlock newer races, which ended up being on most of the same tracks anyway.  Online play was decent, but more often than not it was hard to get a match together with a limited amount of people playing online.  It was an amazing game for a short time, but lacked the legs to make me play more than a month or so.

Kinect Adventures – I played this force fed game that comes bundled with the Kinect sensor for several days.  Given that it was my only Kinect title out of the gate it’s not like I had a lot of choice unless I wanted to keep playing with swipe and voice controls in the dashboard.  Overall the play experiences were very tight and controlled at a level of accuracy that easily surpassed the Wii we have.  With only 5 main game types and a dozen or so levels in these types you can easily see all there is to see in the game after a long day of playing.  Granted, they are still fun to go back into, but only to get a next higher level of performance or score.  Gold medals seemed to come a little too easily but Platinums were rather challenging to get.  Lots of fun, but it certainly spurns you to get more games for the Kinect in short order.  To be fair, how many people just stayed at Wii Sports when they got the console?

Doritos Crash Course – I have to say, this is one of the best platformer games I have played in a long time.  Taking your XBL avatar and running it through a physical obstical course is both fun and entertaining.  A lot of great features were put into a game that was obviously setup as an advertisement.  That’s the real rub though, you only see the Doritos name in the title screen and at the start of each level in small letters.  Small things like the screen cracking in a virtual spiderweb of your TV glass when you get thrown towards it and a collection of falling animations spice up what could have been a fairly boring game.  For a free game, it’s easily better than many paid XBLA games I’ve nabbed in the past.  Good job Doritos!

Red Steel 2 – This game was picked up on a whim.  Mostly it was because I wanted to play with more swords than Wii Sports Resort would offer.  Since the second iteration of Red Steel required Motion Plus, I figured it had to be fairly accurate.  For $7 I got it from the Target clearance rack.  Needless to say, the game play was fun, but it didn’t keep my interest very long.  The combination of sword and shooting works out pretty well, however the Wii seems to get out of sync with my movements if the action gets too heavy, causing me to get a beatdown while waiting for it to figure out what I’m doing.  I love the concept, and the game is fun overall with a fairly decent set of story cutscenes to string you along, but it just doesn’t have the staying power to be played more than a few times for me.

Missed connections –

Blur – I had a lot of excitement about this game.  When both Blur and Split/Second came out around the same time, I had to make a choice.  Ultimately what won for me was the ease of slipping into play with this game (Mario Kart on steroids), the social challenge pieces and the 4 player split screen (where S/S only had two).  Once I got it for a third of retail within a month of launch via a Kmart sale and a publisher coupon.  I figured worst case I could make a “profit” by dumping it on Goozex if I lost interest.  The first couple brackets of play were a bit of fun, and I leveraged social challenges to a couple people on my friends list, played split screen with my kids and played a bit online.  After about the third bracket I found that though I was still gaining fans, I was unable to progress.  It seemed as though they had designed the game in such a way that you would have to build up enough fans in order to unlock some car that would make you win.  I tried several more play sessions to progress and could not.  At this point I basically gave up and put it on Goozex for trade at a high point value.  Bye bye Blur baby.

Crackdown 2 – As mentioned in my previous post, I was deeply invested in the first game, so naturally I thought this one would hold true and be at least the same if not better.  With so much pent up anticipation it was only a matter of time before I finally got the game and its true colors were shown to me.  For the most part, the game had less story and structure than the first, leaving me with only a checklist of objectives to roll through.  No amount of new features like wing suits or helicopters or zombies could keep me from the fact that I was plopped down in an open world and merely told to just go out and have fun.  The fun lasted for a while, but without major plot points or really any guidance it came down to just blowing things up and collecting orbs.  Fun for a while, but not enough to even complete any set of tasks.

My DS – I swear I played something on my DS this year, but I have no idea what it was.  Most likely it was Peggle…still.  Recently the DS almost falls into phone gaming for me:  something to quickly pull out and use for short sessions.  It’s too bad because when I have a large amount of time (airplane) I love sinking a bunch of time into games like GTA: Chinatown Wars and such.  This just wasn’t one of those years.  We have Wario DIY in the house now, so maybe I’ll start playing with that.  Full Review

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And there you have it, a year of gaming for me tied up in a pretty little bow.  For the upcoming year I have a hard time getting excited about anything I have seen on the horizon except for Mass Effect 3 and Portal 2.  However if 2010 was any indication, I’m sure a game will come out of nowhere and slap me about the face with its awesomeness, just when I need it most.

- Ben Mazhary-Clark

I loved the first Crackdown game.  Though I was a little late to the Xbox 360 adpotion party, I showed up in full force and bought Crackdown as my first real game for the console.  Given that I was so fresh to the console and this was really my only primary game for it, I easily spent 3 months in early 2007 playing through it.  I even went as far as to purchase the DLC for the game, though I never found it as challenging and fun as the core game itself.  Suffice it to say, I was a Crackdown whore though.

A couple years later, Real Time Worlds attempted another game called APB.  This was set in a similar environment to Crackdown, but was more focused on becoming the next big MMO, which of course we all know WoW will keep that crown until the end of time.  Since Real Time Worlds was putting all their focus into APB, they pawned Crackdown 2 onto a new studio that had grown out of RTW called Ruffian Games.  I was aprehensive of this at first, but was still loving the idea of a sequel to a game that I spent so many hours and even months on.  Now anyone who has done any amount of serious video gaming should know that you are setting yourself up for failure once you start getting too excited about a game.  It seems best if you just let them sneak up and slap you across the face, as this year’s release of Borderlands showed.  However, I let myself get excited into the hype of Crackdown 2.  Reading previews, watching trailers and developer diaries, I should have known that I was setting myself up for disappointment.

Dell had a deal a few days after release of the game, which they said was a pre-order discount but they were still running it well after the release date.  Taunted by the good deal on the game I placed an order and refreshed package tracking pages in rapt anticipation.  When it arrived I coveted the cover and swooned with dreams of Agent sugarplums in my head.  Putting in the game I found myself in the same world that I had left three years prior, though it looked much more worse for wear.  Controls and game play came easily, and contained the same niggles such as the struggle of getting a proper enemy targeted when in a horde of target-able objects.  I threw myself into the game, looking for new adventures.

For a while, I was honestly entertained.  I built up my skills, explored the world and new game concepts such as closing freak breaches, which proved to be one of my favorites.  The game was fun, but it was nothing new.  There were new objects to play with, like the magnetic grenades that allowed you to suspend objects in midair in springy fashion.  Even these wained my interest quickly and I hunted for more depth in the game.

I didn’t find it.

The entire weak storyline had been stripped from the game, leaving you only a series of tasks to be done in almost any order.  Though the appeal of the open world was there, and great expanses of sandbox to play in, there was so little direction in the game that I felt there was nothing to work towards except a hollow checklist of activities.  Freak breaches closed: check.  Control point controlled: check.  Collect every gun by bringing it back to a checkpoint after I was through a bunch of the game and forgot the mechanic: check.

I spent a good couple weeks in my copious free time hacking and slashing through this game.  I even got most of my skills up to the amazing cap level of 6 (ground pound and the wing suit were fun at this level).  I closed breaches, controlled points, and tried to destroy the infected zombie apocalypse, which seemed to be the only real goal of the game.  More often than not, I found myself frustrated trying to get these goals done.  Freak breaches could only be done at night, and I often found myself crawling across the map to close one, only to have dawn arrive and I can’t work on the objective, which caused me to wander off and forget about it until it was dark again, getting to it just in time for…dawn again.  Arrrgh!  There was one last control point that I needed to complete, but the bulk of the enemies were on the roof of the building above the point.  If I went too far away from the point while climbing the building then it would reset and I would have to start over.  The weapons were satisfying, explosions abound, and I never found myself at a loss to blow things up or mow them down.  Nothing really new to see here, but that was fine as well.  Graphics were also about the same.  With a texture filled cell shaded world it is a style I’ve come to like a lot, though it’s not really pushing the pixels that hard.

Orbs were a big part of the last game and this iteration was no different.  I found them easier to get in many areas and had mighty asparations to get them all this time.  I was also excited about online co-op, since the previous game didn’t perform well in this area at all.  Needless to say, I didn’t get all the orbs because my lack of enthusisiam preventing me from wanting to stay in the game long enough to do so.  To be honest, the orb hunting was one of the highlights of this game for me.  I easily spent hours doing nothing but this.  In the end though, it wasn’t enough to keep me going.  Co-op never happened either since no one I knew had gotten this game.  Better luck next time.

Overall I was left unsatisfied.  I wanted it to be the sequel of a lifetime.  What I got was less of an overall game, put out as a quick money shot for a publisher, riding on the successes of a prior title.  Had this game even been given the shallow storyline treatment of the first game, or better yet sliding even closer to a GTA title, it would have done so much towards giving the game structure.  Instead I didn’t even bother finishing it, and it goes into my Goozex queue of shame.  I pour out a drink for my homie Crackdown 1, may you rest in sweet peace in my gaming memories.

– Ben Mazhary-Clark

I will start this off by being honest.  I have never finished a Splinter Cell game before this.  I tried on multiple occasions to get through the first Splinter Cell title, the Pandora Tomorrow title, and even Double Agent.  Most times I would end up stuck in some situation where I was out of ammo, surrounded by tangos and not have a way out of the game short of restarting.  I often found that the level of stealth required to get through the game was almost insurmountable, reminding me of the old PC game Thief verses something more modern with technology on my side.

Needless to say, I was skeptical about yet another Splinter Cell title being added to the franchise.  Overall the Tom Clancy name was being diluted by Ubisoft and the name was being put on tons of IPs.  Was this going to just be another in a line of rehashed titles for Ubisoft?  Obviously I stayed my hand, and waited until well after release to see how the public as a whole reacted.  The trailers had looked interesting, with much more action than previous titles, but I wasn’t going to let myself be swayed into buying Splinter Cell Conviction right out of the gate.

Then of course, I had a free night to play online with a friend, and got a copy of the game off ebay (used).  This revision of Splinter Cell gave me a whole new appreciation for the series.  Gone were the long levels of making sure you weren’t seen, and limited resources.  It was actually FUN.  This game did for the stealth genre what Mass Effect did for RPGs.  SCC gives a whole new take on the one man stealth army, with hand to hand eliminations which load up a meter so you can mark targets and take them down in execution succession, better gadgets and a unique black and white system to show when you are hidden.  I loved it.  We spent a good 6 hours that night playing through the co-op campaigns on normal.  A couple weeks later we went through them all again on realistic and finished it out in about half that time.  The game was good, and I was inclined to play it.

Over the next month or so I finished out the storyline.  The details and fleshing out of the background story were satisfying enough for me, though only borderline plausible.  Let’s not kid ourselves though, this is a superhero action game, who’s really looking for a scientifically correct story?   Throughout the game, you are mostly at the same capability level, with the unlocking of certain skills or gadgets occurring over time.  For the most part, you are just Sam Fisher: Bad-ass extraordinaire.

One aspect I really enjoyed about the game was using the surrounding walls or buildings as a backdrop for cut scenes or objectives.  One time, I was chasing a target through a crowd and he ducked into a tent.  As I passed it a bit of texts over-layed on a truck near me saying “He’s still in the tent!”.  Excellent use of the environment to keep yourself involved in the story and engaged.

There are great challenges within the game that give you point credits so you can upgrade your arsenal or gear, which adds a little bit of RPG mechanic to the otherwise stealth shooter series.  I tried to get the bulk of the challenges (PECs) but lost interest before finishing out any full set.  The amount of time required to complete all sets is fairly intensive and I had other fish to fry with my copy of Crackdown 2 sitting there taunting me (read: orbs).

For me, this was the first Splinter Cell game I actually enjoyed playing.  Even hard core fans of the series have had greats things to say about it.  Though it is a deviation from the previous trend of the series, I feel it is for the best.  Taking in Rainbow Six: Vegas elements into the Sam Fisher universe really helped round out the game and gives a much fuller experience than the previous iterations.  There are many hours of game play available in this game and I’m almost sad to move on to another.  I likely put about 20 hours into SCC, which is pretty good for a modern shooter game.  The co-op elements shine brightly in the Deniable Ops part of the game, while the single-player makes you yearn to solve the mystery around your missing daughter and the conflicting emotions of revenge.  If you are a fan of Splinter Cell in general, this is a shoe-in for you.  If you like semi-stealth shooters and tactics, dive in.  Most shooter fans should enjoy this as well.  However, if you only like car racing games…well…you might want to pass.

- Ben Mazhary-Clark

The demo is finally out, if you hadn’t noticed already.  Now to set the stage, I was a Crackdown whore.  The original Crackdown was the first real game I bought after buying my Xbox 360, and let me tell you, I played the hell out of it.  For months solid I spent my time taking down gangs, collecting orbs (499 out of 500, still pisses me off that I could never find that last one), and generally creating havoc.  Imagine my excitement when Crackdown 2 was announced at last year’s E3.  I have sat in a state of anticipation for the release of this sequel, even though it wasn’t completely made by the original team, as Realtime Worlds has been putting their focus on APB instead.  However, I will say that Ruffian Games has done a great job from what I’ve seen so far from the trailers and the 30 minute demo.

Ruffian gives a decent amount of gameplay in the demo and I found myself having enough time to get several gameplay elements in with this amount of time, though of course I wanted more.  While driving around I found myself in a sea of “zombies” on the road which I plowed through readily with my car.  Taking down gang members seemed easy at first, but when they swarm you there is certainly a need for a bit more tactics.  Aiming felt accurate once you locked on, though sometimes the lock was on an object or enemy you didn’t want.  I seem to recall running into this with the first game as well, as third person cameras can sometimes be a challenge in combat.  One game element I liked so far was the control point, in which you tell the game you are going to take over an area and you have to clear it so the chopper with backup can arrive.  I did a couple of these and they were fun.  The game mentioned I did 2 out of 27, so there is certainly more to do in the larger world.  Agility orbs were just as much fun to get, and once you get up high there is always that “just one more” in your line of sight.  The MOVING agility orb was indeed an interesting challenge and intriguing to figure out the strategy of.  Explosions and particle effects are all that you could ever want, and there is certainly lots of exploding.

Overall it is looking promising.  I expect I’ll play the demo a few more times before the release of the real game on July 6th.  This is certainly a game I’m buying off the bat instead of waiting for a used copy off of Goozex.  Here’s looking at spending another 3 months on this wonderful sandbox world…

- Ben Mazhary-Clark

In the past, I never would have picked up an RPG (Role Playing Game for those not in the know, and if so, why are you reading this?).  The mere mention of them gave me impressions of turn based action sequences, painful management of inventory, and killing spiders for 20 hours to level up.  Recently, publishers and game designers have switched it up a bit, making RPGs less of a painful grind and bringing back the fun.  Mass Effect was the game that got me interested in RPGs again.  The inventory management was pretty easy, the action felt more like a shooter with squad based strategy elements, and the storyline kept you captivated.  From there I went a little more hardcore, and blew untold hours on crafting a paradise in the wasteland of Fallout 3.  Then, from out of nowhere came a game I had heard about in passing several times but never gave it any thought.  A new IP called Borderlands.  Suddenly, days after it came out I was working out a plan to acquire it.

Borderlands for me had all the elements I was looking for in an RPG.  The art direction was cell shaded, which I enjoyed in Crackdown and Robotech Battlecry.  This artistic style gave it a unique look that was easily recognizable whenever you saw a screen shot up.  Battles were action based and didn’t require a lot of setup beforehand.  Inventory management was fairly minimal.  All of these elements were only made better for me given the fact that online co-op was also available, though limited to a 4 player raid.  More on all of these points below.

The premise of the game is that you have landed on the world of Pandora, to search for alien treasures hidden somewhere on the planet’s surface (no, this isn’t Avatar).  The planet itself looks like you’ve landed somewhere in New Mexico, with nothing but scrub and junkyard towns scattered about the dusty plains.  The junkyard towns are usually where you get your quests and have the supply depots in them, where sharky businessmen make their living off the fortune seeking quest followers.  Cell shading lends to thicker outlines around objects, while textures insides of the cells are still reasonable.  If you have played Crackdown you are familiar with the style.  At first it feels almost cartoony, however once the action starts you will feel it is anything but.  Textures themselves are of a industry standard detail, nothing over the top.  Occasionally when you warp into a new part of the world, the textures can take a while to pop in, though it isn’t usually that distracting as you are already rushing to replenish your stores at the closest vending machine.

Action in Borderlands is often intense and keeps your interest.  The intensity increases when you co-op up to three other friends, as both the levels and the quantities of the enemies you are fighting explode to manic proportions.  Even exploring the world and grinding I still found exciting enough to keep playing it on and on.  As you progress through the game, the enemies level up with you.  Each enemy you destroy will give you experience points, that ultimately help you become more powerful.  They also often drop items, such as ammo, weapons, health vials, etc.  Lot more on weapons later.  The interesting item in regards to the level of enemies is when you go back to an earlier area you can literally mow everyone down with little resistance.  The caveat of going back to lower levels, though it does make you feel god-like, is you get almost no experience for anything you take down.

When leveling up, you find yourself with access to new skills and abilities.  There are 4 classes you can play as:  tank, sniper, soldier and assassin.  Each one has it’s own set of three major branches of a skill tree that unlock unique abilities for that class.  As you gain levels, you are given points to deposit into skills in the tree, leaving your character customization options fairly open.  I chose to take the assassin route, and by the end of the main quest line had quite a stealthy bad-ass whom could take on her fair share of enemy raiders.

Which brings us to weapons.  Some have described Borderlands as a gun nut’s orgy.  There are an almost unlimited amount of gun combination available in the game.  You have your basic classes such as SMG, machine gun, sniper, rocket, etc.  However, for each one of those classes you have level of weapon and a series of modifiers available for each one.  These modifiers can be something simple like a 2x reload rate, or more extreme like 4x fire damage for a certain amount of seconds after the target is hit.  Though inventory management isn’t that difficult in this game, you can spend a bit of time after a battle looting what the dead left behind, always searching for the perfect gun.  Ammo slots can be upgraded as well, and once you are half way though the quest line running out of ammo really wasn’t a big deal.  A nice feature is you can collect everything off the battlefield, then take it into a local town or vending machine and cash it all out.

The quests given to you in towns and people you meet out in the wasteland are varied.  It can be something simple like collecting and item and bringing it back, or the more extreme of finding pieces of an ancient artifact to help the storyline along.  All quests can be done solo or with your friends.  Once completed, everyone in the party gets the experience from the quest.  Vehicles are available within the first hour of the game, which further facilitates exploring and movement on the very large map.  Their armaments and speed mix it up a bit in what would be a boring quest or a lot of walking.

Borderlands shines the most when played co-op.  Gearbox did include 2 player split screen, though it is hard to see the menus in each half of the screen when you are trying to do inventory management and the like.  The ultimate best way to play this game is online with three other people.  Nothing beats the experience of trying to flank a horde of baddies with your party, communicating to each other over voice chat, and completing a quest together.  For best results, everyone in the party should try and be a different class, but even when there are duplicates the game gracefully takes it in stride and sends just the right amount of challenge your way.

The developers at Gearbox really knew how to breathe extended life into this game.  Not only can you do a second playthrough with your same character, but the amount of DLC they have release has been substantial.  They have released several major DLC packs for Borderlands to date, and they are still planning more.  The latest iteration, General Knox, adds a whole new realm to the universe, with fresh weapons, vehicles and enemies.  The last game in the recent past I have seen that provided such a steady flow of DLC for a game has been Burnout Paradise.  It is great to see that some developers are finally extending a game with added content, verses just popping out another sequel once a year (I’m looking at YOU EA).

Overall this game has been a great experience.  It took about 30-35 hours for me to do the first play through.  I still have plans to play it a lot more as soon as I can finally make it through Mass Effect 2.  The constant approachability of Borderlands and the amazing fun of playing it online has been keeping it off my Goozex queue, even though I have already finished it once.   I’ll see you in the Borderlands.

- Ben Mazhary-Clark

So it’s coming.  It wants you to be all social and stuff.  It is the Fall Xbox 360 update for 2009.

This update has had the usual fanfare.  The MajorNelson twitters, updates to his site, Kotaku reviews, podcast mentions, what have you.  I signed up for the Xbox Dashboard Update Preview Program a week or two ago, figured I would give it a shot since I made the cut one other time as well.  I made the cut, but was never notified, even though I know all my contact details are correct in Microsoft Connect (their beta testing portal).  I only discovered that I was in because I turned on my Xbox on Friday and suddenly I had a system update….ok then.

The update itself didn’t take painfully long, I’d say 5 or so minutes.  Upon reboot of the Xbox I noticed nothing different.  Upon searching other context blades, menus, whatever you call them, I discovered under Community two new ones for Facebook and Twitter.  There was also a new blade for Zune Marketplace, which had the Last.fm module in it.  I’ll take them in turn below.

Last.fm – For some reason I thought these would all be part of the update, however I discovered it did require a small download, similar to the Netflix add-on that was released earlier this year.  After downloading the application, I launched it, using my last.fm account credentials for an account that already existed.  It immediately brought up all the stations and artists I usually listen to on the last.fm website.  Seamless.  Navigating was swift and it started streaming almost at once.  This is all over a 15/5Mbps connection mind you.  If you are on old old DSL your mileage may vary.  Overall I was very impressed with the add-on, and it performed well beyond my expectations.  One niggle though, you cannot do anything else on the Xbox while it is running, which I’ll address again below.  Sure you can bring up the center button menu and do stuff in those blades, but you can’t say…go browse something else.

Twitter – Again, download a little app, run it, enter in your account info, and it just works.  I was able to tweet, browse over other people’s stuff, view their details.  What I wish it had (that I’m submitting to MS Connect as a feature request): The ability to tweet from the messaging blade on the center button menu.  Other than that, it worked great, just remember you can only do Twitter and nothing else.  Organization and style were almost identical to the Twitter site.

Facebook – Download the app, run, account info (repetitive much, where’s my Single Sign On?).  Worked good enough, things were sorted in the Xbox Dashboard context menu style.  It dishes out the basic info, and you can write on people’s walls, update your status and such, but overall I didn’t see the attraction.   Given that I already have Facebook available on multiple computers and my phone, there are plenty of other opportunities to get this experience.  It is functional and fast though.

Overall, the update looks good.  I found all the apps to be easy to use, technically sound and speedy, their usefulness in everyday life still to be determined.  At the point of this writing, the beta preview program is closed and as far as I’m aware will remain so until release.  Look for this update coming to an Xbox near you in the very near future.

- Ben Mazhary-Clark

UPDATE (on the update?) 11/13/2009:  Latest reports put the dashboard update as mentioned above will be released to your hot little xboxen on November 17th.

It’s a given.  I love driving games.  Most games involving a car and/or motorcycle I’ve at least booted up once or tried the demo of.  They don’t have to be bad or good, but I usually have to try them.

A little while ago, two separate companies released Baja off-road rally type games around the same time.  These were Baja: Edge of Control by THQ, and SCORE International Baja 1000 by Activision.  On the surface, they appear to be almost identical, but on a deeper dive, THQ’s shone more brightly.  After appreciating the amazing work that was put into DiRT by Codemasters, I thought I would give Baja: Edge of Control (B:EoC) a shot and traded for it on Goozex.

The game starts you off in Baja California, with one class open, the VW Baja Bug.  While this isn’t a bad vehicle overall, at this bottom level in the game it is torturous.  Even after upgrading everything on the Bug, you are unlikely to completely win many events at this lowest class.  Also, the learning curve is rather steep.  Right off the bat, you are being bounced all around on very uneven terrain, having to pick up the controls that were not very well explained in the manual or in-game help.  The gist of taking most hard corners is to e-brake slide into the turn, then pop your clutch on the way out.  Once you have this down and get up into the higher levels, it becomes quite easy to keep ahead of the pack.

After you make it beyond the grind of the lowest VW Bug level, other classes open up and you can buy vehicles to race in these classes as well.  I found that if you re-ran several events in the lower classes, you could completely avoid whole classes and just buy the truck or what have you in two levels up and skip over something not as exciting, say “open wheel”.  Furthermore, when you bank up a whole bunch of money in the game, and buy a new 4 wheel dream of choice, you often will have enough to max out all the upgrades at this level.  If this is done, and with proper e-brake/clutch technique, you should be able to clean up almost all events first time through, making the learning/difficulty curve rather skewed: amazingly hard at the start, a challenging but attainable win after the first two classes.  Classes are unlocked with XP earned in racing, and easily unlocked classes ahead of me as I progressed.  Money can be earned by wining races and splattering sponsorships on your rally vehicle.  Sponsors will pay based on how many body panels you still have left at the end of the race, which for me was usually about half.

Events and tracks are varied enough to keep things interesting.  About half way though you will know a large quantity of them quite well, as many repeat with subtle changes.  Tumbleweeds and small rodents or bunnies (can’t figure out which) do sometimes cross the road in front of you.  Scenery of course looks a bit like a desert, no big surprise there, but it certainly doesn’t have the spice and thrill you’d hope for after hours of driving.  It feels accurate, and we’ll leave it at that.  You can fall off cliffs and run into trees, and occasionally roll.

Damage is modeled well when you run into trees or other cars.  In fact, it is modeled so well that they have damage gauges for many parts on your vehicle: tires, oil pressure, temp, suspension, etc.  As you tool through a race, these indicators will decrease.  When they do, the overall performance of your desert rat will decrease as well.  There is the option to pull off the road into a hot pit stop or helicopter to get repaired, but I usually found that even with a blown tire and steaming radiator I had enough of it together to make it the 3-4 laps on a standard rally without repairing.

Which brings us to race types in the game.  Included for your racing pleasure you can do: hill climb, circuit, point to point rally, open world non-race touring, and more that I’m likely forgetting.   There are also major rally modes for the Baja 250, 500, 1000′s.  These can take hours to complete (4 hours on the 1000 I think?) so I didn’t bother trying them out.  In these long modes you would certainly have to make use of the repair facilities, if not for your truck, then for your thumbs by the end.

Overall I was very happy with playing through it, though I didn’t have the passion about the game to finish every nook and cranny in it as I did with DiRT.  The driving certainly keeps you on your toes at all times, regardless of how much you upgrade your vehicle.  It is a good rental, though hopefully you would have it on long term rental, as the game would only get enjoyable for you after you get past the first class or two.  I personally got it off Goozex and will be putting it back up there soon.  I’m sure it is cheap enough to buy now as well, given that it has been out for a while.  Graphics are decent, gameplay is solid once you figure out what the controls all do.  It makes for a nice aside to play when you want something a little more casual but spirited than another game you might be playing at the time (*cough* Fallout 3 *cough*).  Recommend for those of you who want to feel like you know how to race in the dirty dirty.

- Ben Mazhary-Clark

There have been a lot of Star Wars games.  A LOT.  In my experience, only a few have made the cut at all in terms of quality.  I think the last good one I played was X-wing vs. Tie Fighter.  Maybe Jedi Knight.  Rogue Squadron?  Please.  So along comes a game where you get to fully explore the dark side of the force.  I was intrigued.  Never before had we been given an opportunity to slay down anything in our path, with no regard for who it was that you were mowing down.  After a few looks at screenshots and descriptions, I ordered Star Wars: The Force Unleashed off of the Best Buy site on basically a half price deal they were doing the day after Christmas here.  After a very painful process to actually get the game in my house from Best Buy (took over a month and somehow I ended up with two copies of the game) I was able to sink my teeth into the game.

This game fills in some new back story with Vader.  It occurs after the events of the 3rd movie (Episode III), after Vader has been created.  Vader has taken on a new apprentice, behind the Emperor’s back, in hopes to overthrow the Emperor behind the scenes.  The game leads you through a storyline as his apprentice, with the time line coming rather close to the 4th movie (Episode IV), as there is a Death Star already being built and functional.

First impressions were good.  You start the opening level as Darth Vader so you have no issues slaying all the Wookies in front of you, though I did feel a little bad about it at first.  Once that level is down however, you are left to fend for yourself as Vader’s apprentice.   The first HALF of the game was truly painful as this character.  You rarely had enough power or experience to really do the damage you needed to.  Boss battles were often very hard.  Given this, you end up spending half the game attacking and hiding and dodging to keep alive until you level up enough.  Whenever you level you are given points that allow you to add to stats or abilities, similar to a mini-RPG.  The decisions are not very difficult.  More force power that recharges faster?  Yes please.

Once the second half of the game kicks in, you are in the swing of things.  Powers are readily available and you can easily meet the objectives of each level without a redo.  There is certainly joy in wreaking complete havoc on your environment.  Force push here, lightning there, jump in here and sith slay with your saber.  Rinse and repeat.  Most large enemies are easily taken down with running in circles and force lightning them.  Kind of a cheat, but it also feels great to be your own personal electric chair.

When you tire of hacking through levels (as this game really is just a hack and slash), there is a sum of training and challenges you can do.  I wouldn’t expect them to take more than an hour all told, and are usually best done after you are fully leveled up near the end of the game.  For the most part they aren’t very difficult, as long as you engage the most troublesome enemies in the room first, then deal with the rest afterward.

Overall the game is very satisfying.  Once you get a fair amount of powers under your belt, the game is enjoyable, though before that it can feel like a grind.  Like most Star Wars games from Lucasarts, it feels like they put a lot of thought into it, but didn’t take the time at the end to put in the extra polish a truly excellent game usually has.  I experienced many glitches, where I’d fall halfway into the floor, the enemy I was fighting would disappear, and once the save game even became corrupt, causing the game not to boot anymore and moving it off from the hard drive to a memory card made it suddenly work again.  Amazingly, these still didn’t take enough away from the experience to make it miserable.  I liked the game, and had a great time with it.  However once you are done, there isn’t much replay value, and off to Goozex it goes with my two copies.  I’d recommend picking this up if you enjoy the Star Wars universe.  If you are looking for a basic shooter or hack and slash game, your money might be well spent somewhere else.  A solid rental for sure, buy if you are a fan.

- Ben Mazhary-Clark

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