Halo 3: Triple Mayhem

Halo 3 Co-Op with Arth and Wolf

We can MacGyver this back together, I'm sure.

We're roaring through the desert in a Warthog: Arth is driving, I'm on the turret, and Wolf is in the passenger seat. We come over a big sand dune and burst upon a bunch of Covenant. I open up with the .50-cal while Wolf starts chucking grenades. We're making a dent in the baddies, but we're taking a ton of damage from a Grunt in a Turret. I start firing at it, but Arth has other plans. He floors the Warthog and heads straight for the Turret. Before we get there, a Brute's grenade launches us into the air. Fortunately, it doesn't change our direction, in fact it gives us a big burst of speed. We're tumbling end over end as the top of our 'Hog hits the turret and explodes in a blinding flash of light, destroying the Turret and our Warthog all in one fell swoop.

I'm down, and so is Wolf, but Arth is still standing. What normal people would do now is back up and respawn some reinforcements, but Arth isn't normal. He charges into the remaining crowd of baddies and wipes out a half-dozen Grunts and then jumps over a wall of crates to discover that there are four Brutes waiting for him. Arth sticks a plasma grenade to one, melee attacks another, and head-shots the remaining two. Their bodies all hit the ground at the same time as Arth's Master Chief avatar lights up a cigarette while he waits for Wolf and me to respawn.

Clearly, Arth is in The Zone. But Wolf is having a good day too. Later we're attacking a large group of Covenant featuring two Wraith tanks, half a dozen Brute Choppers and two Turrets, all of them occupying a high point on a hill. The way I've been attacking this position has been to swing around to the other side of the hill and attack from the angle they expect me to. Wolf, on the other hand, simply charges up the steep side of the hill, showing off some serious agility. He attacks the tank from behind and stuffs a grenade right down the hatch. Boom! He gets shot off the tank by the other tank and the two Turrets. He's down, but he's shown us the way. Arth and I start a combined assault of swirling around the normal-approach side of the hill while Wolf continues to assault from the steep side, wiping out a major opponent each time. It's not particularly elegant, but it's very effective. We clear the hill, and continue on foot, since every vehicle within a square mile has been reduced to little bits and pieces.

We move up the highway and find another Warthog to ride in. After Arthur's Turret-crashing trick, I decide I'll drive. Arth hops on the gun while Wolf jumps in the passenger seat again. About a minute later we get pounced at the mouth of a tunnel by a bunch of Grunts and Brutes. Wolf and I jump out of the Warthog while Arth supresses everyone with the .50-cal. By the time we take out all the bad guys, Wolf and I are down, leaving Arth alone in the Warthog turret to deal with a huge swarm of Drones all by himself. Moments later, all the Drones are dead. When viewed from above, the bodies of the Drones form a perfect circle around Arth's position. Stylish even in mayhem, Arth reloads while Wolf and I respawn. We hop into what's left of our Warthog (smoking hulk), and go zooming away down the tunnel.

Kill The All

a huge brawl in Assassin's Creed

Bring out your dead.

I've just spent 30 minutes clearing the parapets of archers. I see my target William of Somethingorother, working at a desk in a big courtyard. I check my weapons one last time, take a deep breath, and leap down to the ground, right behind Mr. Dead Soon.

I'm not quick enough to prevent him yelling a warning as I slash his blade out of the way and move in with a heavy blast from my sword. I bash him a few times and he's goes down in a heap of regrets, excuses, and blood. This is only the beginning, however, as the entire castle's garrison comes charging into the courtyard. I back into a corner so I can't get hit from behind and set up my one-man butcher shop.

The first wave of guards are really aggressive, so I wait for them to strike, and parry their strokes with well-timed counterattacks. Three of them go down in just a few seconds. The odds are still against me as the entire courtyard seems to be full of men, but the ferocity of my defense has them wary. I take the initiative and hammer my way out of the corner with perfectly timed sword hits that demolish their defense and allows me to kill four guards in only eight strokes.

I continue this pattern, set up in a corner, counter a few attacks, then bash my way through the crowd to another corner until I've run out of opponents. There's so many bodies I have to climb up above the courtyard to see it clearly. Twenty guards lay sprawled across the courtyard, most of them heaped in the two corners where I had my most successful butcher shops set up.

It's taken some work to start getting the hang of the swordfighting in this game, but the rewards are great. This fight was so exciting my heart was pounding by the time I was done. So far, an excellent, if somewhat repetitive, game.

Orange Box on 360

What's not in my Kool-Aid? Worth: $0
based on Xbox 360 demo of HL2 EP2, and Xbox demo of HL2

Picture? Over-rated garbage like Half-Life 2 doesn't get no stinking picture!

This game sucks! I have no idea why this game is so highly rated. It's really linear, the gravity gun bites, and the graphics are average. Everybody talks about Half-Life 2 like it's the greatest game they ever played, but this just makes me think they haven't played anything else.

Both HL2 demos I've tried only give you the "Gravity Gun" that grabs things like chairs, boulders, saw blades, and propane tanks and the shoots them wherever you aim it. It sounds ok, I guess, but it plays really tediously. I can tell there's an epic story, but I've also read that these games are really long. The idea of spending two weeks picking up chairs and throwing them at mutants sounds pretty boring to me.

The other games in this package look like scraps from the floor, based on videos and reviews I've checked out. People are calling it the greatest video game value ever, but I wouldn't play the Orange Box if you gave it to me.

UPDATE: Nov 28, 2007
My buddy Wolf was surprised that I disliked HL2 so much, so he went and checked out the demo. His verdict is that the demo is a poor representation of the game, being limited to really dumb enemies, one gun, and a short, uninteresting sequence. He's played HL2 on his PC and contends it's the best FPS he's ever played.

Assassin's Creed

Astounding in every way. Worth: $40
based on Xbox 360 retail

The GamerGal applying her feminine whiles.

I'm struggling. Struggling to avoid building this game up too much. You know how if someone says that a movie is "great great great" and then you see it and it's only "great" you feel disappointed? I'm trying to stay away from that. Let's start with a little critical commentary:

The game can be a little repetitive. There's only 5 types of jobs (eavesdropping, pickpocketing, rescuing, interrogating, and killing). There are a couple other activities, like collecting flags and climbing to lookout points. But that's kind of it. The thing is, it's a great "it".

The acrobatic urban jungle gym makes this one of the freshest games I've played in 10 years. The controls are very different, but as I'm getting used to them I see that they're well-done. There is a learning curve to them, but the game is written to introduce you to these new controls gradually.

The game has an important quality for me: flexibility. You can play like a maniac (Arth), like a sneaky SOB (Gypsy 6), or somewhere in-between (GamerGal). A great aspect of this flexibility is that if you blow your cover on a stealth mission, you don't fail the mission (a la Hitman and Metal Gear Solid). It just means you have to finish the mission by killing everything in sight. Your boss will give you a hard time about being so sloppy, but you still finish the damn mission. This lets me keep progressing, and it gives me some replay motivation. ("I bet I can sneak up on that guy if I try it again.") If you totally blow it (meaning die) the checkpoints are well-placed as you respawn just before your confrontation.

Another aspect of this flexibility is that you can just be a tourist and wander around the gorgeous cities, or you can be more goal-oriented and work the missions. I tend to mix them together. You can (if you're Arth) just go crashing in right away and kill your target, slashing and maiming with reckless abandon. Or you can (if you're Gypsy 6) gather intel so you can sneak up on the guy. (Actually, if you're Gypsy 6, you gather intel, attempt to sneak up on the guy, trip over your own feet, get caught, and then have to fight your way out of the area, slashing and maiming with reckless abandon.)

So far, this game may well prove to be worth the $60 I paid for it. Even the GamerGal is playing it. She's a little out of control with the acrobatics (falling off buildings never looked so good), but she's ferocious in a sword fight (bring out your dead!). From watching her play I've learned to try and keep a low profile to avoid pissing off the guards every 20 seconds. The guards will attack you for basically no reason so it's important to blend into the crowd, or avoid the guards altogether. This makes the rooftops your primary route to everywhere, since the streets are so (realistically) clogged with obstacles it's almost impossible to avoid attracting attention (and fights) to yourself.

More later, as we continue through this excellent game...

UPDATE: Dec 3, 2007
Now that I've gotten the hang of the sword-fighting, I don't really worry about sneaking around. If I'm in a bad mood I'll purposely antagonize the biggest group of guards I can find, set up my one-man slaughterhouse, and start carving steaks. These brawls can last so long that fresh guards come by and join the fray. I've been able to get some streets so full of piled-up bodies you couldn't see the ground anymore. Totally awesome. You become everyone's nightmare come alive in daytime and the scourge of repression-loving rent-a-cops everywhere.

UPDATE: Dec. 19 2007
I've finished, and I've got two things to add. (1) Learn the sword-fighting moves*, because the endgame is tough. (2) Good story, but they've obviously got AC2 in the works, so don't expect a lot of resolution.

* At least master the Counterattack move. The other moves are very helpful, but I never would have finished AC without spending a little time practicing Counterattack. Getting the hang of this move made me totally fearless in a fight, no matter how many guys I was facing. Grab Break is a good one too (you'll see what I mean) but it isn't necessary.

Prey

Imaginative corridor-shooter. Worth: $15
based on Xbox 360 retail

I've been playing shooters for 15 years, but I never got to walk on walls and ceilings before.

This game is pretty wacked, but it's full of action-packed shooting and innovative level designs and puzzles. Like all corridor shooters however, there's only one way to play it so replay value is nil.

The controls are tight and allow you to manage eight weapons, most with secondary fire functions. The graphics are great, as are the sounds. But what makes this game worth playing are the gravity effects. I don't want to give away too much, but the designers really took advantage of having a game in a zero-G spaceship. The alien ship has lots of gravity generators that flip you from the floor to the wall, or to the ceiling. The ship also features gravity-walkways that allow you to walk all over the place. It's so well done I got a little vertigo sometimes. Without this gravity effect, this game would be totally boring. With it, it was really fun.

I picked this up for $15, and I'd say it was worth it. I'll return it right away so I can get my trade-in bucks. If I were a renting type of person, I'd say this was a great rental.

The Darkness

And Hell's comin' with me. Worth: $15
based on 360 demo

I normally hate horror games because they give me nightmares. But this game doesn't bother me because the horror isn't happening to me. In this game, I'm the horror, and I'm happening to everybody else.

The story seems pretty thin, and it feels really linear, so replay will be minimal. But, it's such an interesting twist on a horror-shooter that I'll pick it up when it hits $15.

Two Worlds redux

What do you know? It isn't worthless. Worth: $15
based on 360 demo

Two Worlds was touted as a match for Oblivion, and it falls hilariously short of that. It got panned worse than any other major release I can remember, receiving a 4 from GameInformer. Two Worlds was heavily advertised in this magazine, so for them to bomb it like that means the game must have been truly disappointing.

I know I was disappointed. I had thought, "Wow, Oblivion with multiplayer. I can't wait!" But the videos looked bad, the users reviews were dreadful, and the official reviews were disastrous. I gave up on the game, and moved on to jonesing for Mass Effect.

Then the developer released a demo two months after the retail game was released. I've never seen this before, demos are always part of the run-up to the release. I downloaded it (what the hell, it's free). I fire up the demo, and two hours later I was still playing it. I was laughing at the art direction and writing (high school kids could have done a better job) but I was intrigued by the mechanics of the gameplay and the character advancement.

While I was playing it the GamerGal noted, "It looks kind of like Morrowind." She's right, if this had come out four years ago, it might have compared favorably to Morrowind. This is significant because Morrowind is one of my top 5 games ever. Like MW, Two Worlds has terrible looking characters, crappy music, and dreadfully stiff writing. But, it's a big open world to explore filled with lots of things to set on fire and chop up.

The creative in Two Worlds is really weak. The art looks like stuff I drew during math class back in middle school. The writing is so bad it makes me laugh out loud. The voice acting is terrible, but I solved it by going into Options and turning the voice sound all the way down. Problem solved.

The mechanics of combat, character advancement, magic and inventory are like any D&D-style RPG you've played, meaning "good". I can tell there's a lot of depth here. You can combine things into new things, make potions (I've only been able to make bad ones so far), and distribute skill points to build your character the way you like. The magic works well and is interestingly customizable.

Two World's isn't great, but the day I find it for $15, I'll pick it up.

Call of Duty 2

Charge! Worth: $15
based on 360 retail game, October 2007

I know, I know, this game is however many years old already. I hated the demos for COD1, 2, and 3, but one of my video store guys recently talked me into giving the game a try. What the hell, it was only $12 and I was jonesing for Halo 3 when I bought it back in early September. Plus I'm reading Richard Evans' history of the Third Reich, so I was in the mood to shoot at Nazis.

There's only one way to play this game: full-speed ahead. If you hang around in one place, you'll just waste your ammo on the eternally-spawning Germans up ahead. The only way to turn off the Nazi faucet is to move up and occupy that (house / hill / bunker / field). This was a revelation to me because I tend to hang back and soften up that (house / hill / bunker / field) with some well-aimed headshots before moving in to mop up. When I played the demos, I didn't realize that COD punishes you for playing this way since all those guys you smoked just respawn forever. So shooting that guy off the MG42 does you no good unless you immediately go busting into his (h/h/b/f) to make the game stop respawning baddies.

It took me a long time to get used to this. For a game that aspires to some level of realism, it feels incredibly arcadey. But once I got used to playing like my buddy Arth (think Rambo-style gamer) I had a lot of fun playing this game.

The best thing about Call of Duty 2 are the missions. There's a fantastic variety of tasks and objectives that are well-yelled at you by your in-game compadres. The large missions are nicely chunked into smaller chapters and most checkpoints are well placed.

The sense of dramatic action is the best I've ever played. By "dramatic" I also mean "loud." This is one loud-ass game. Shouting, shooting, and exploding are all happening pretty much all the time. My pulse was up over 100 and my teeth were gritted in righteous determination to do my part to stop the Nazi war machine. What this mostly boiled down to was me finding a flank on the enemy positions to trigger my AI buddies to come up and cover me while I frag the shit out of every Nazi I could find. This is the basic tactic for the entire game. Pop a smoke grenade, find the flank, wait for your guys to move up, then jump into the (house / hill / bunker / field) and start kicking ass. Like all WW2 games, the MP40 is the weapon of choice, especially because you've got to fight up-close to clear the (h/h/b/f) anyway. 99% of my kills that mattered happened at ten feet or less.

Since you're the player character, you're given all the crazy shit to do, like sticking a bomb to the back of a moving Tiger tank. "Sure, no problem." I died a lot getting the hang of this, but that makes sense since Tigers are natural video game bosses. You also get to storm MG42 nests, snipe at mortar crews, drive a tank (once), use an AA gun (once), and lug a Panzerfaust around. Very dangerous, those Panzerfausts. As likely to kill you as your enemy until you get the hang of it.

So, all in all, an excellent but severely limited game. Since there's only one way to play it (at full-speed ahead), there's not much point in playing it twice. It'll be an exciting Nazi ass-kicking good time, but it'll be exactly the same exciting Nazi ass-kicking good time you just had.