Overlord

Get in touch with your inner ###hole. Worth: $12
based on 360 retail

For bossy people of all ages.

Control a platoon of minions who obey your every command. Sounds great, right? It is, kind of.

GRAPHICS, MUSIC
The game looks great, sounds great, all that good stuff. Honestly, I take this for granted now, but it stills bears mentioning because I'm sure it's hard to do.

CONTROLLER
Maneuvering a squad of minions is mapped to your controller in a way that mostly makes sense and is easy to use. It's just that controlling a horde of minions is so different from every other game that it takes a while to get the hang of it. Then if I go off and play some other game I have to re-remember how to play Overlord.

MAPS
There is something about the maps that make them impossible to remember where to go. They're like Halo 2's difficult-to-remember maps gone to hell. I'm lost - all the time! Even the GamerGal can't figure them out, and she has a preternatural sense of direction.

MINIONS
They're hilariously enthusiastic. Vicious and utterly without fear, they _are_ the game.

OVERALL
For some reason, I just can't stay with this game. It's too hard, and I spend so much time lost that it becomes an exercise in frustration. As good as this game seems to be, I can always think of something else I'd rather do instead.

Tomb Raider: Underworld

Another great leap. Worth: $50
based on 360 retail

Put those in your rack.

I've been watching the GamerGal play Tomb Raider since it was on a PlayStation 1. She's always liked the platforming and puzzle-solving and I've always marveled at the environments and character animations. Almost every installment in this franchise has brought a fresh level of dazzlement, and TR:U is no exception.

The graphics are amazing, especially in high-def. The music is beautiful, both when it's setting the mood in the background and when it's up front to help underscore a dynamic moment. Lara looks awesome, very athletic and sexy but without such ridiculously huge tits. They're still, uh, well big. But not so outrageously Los Angeles looking as they were in previous TR games.

This game is great in every way, and it's adjustable difficulty level may make it appeal to gamers who normally wouldn't touch a Tomb Raider game. I'm almost tempted to play this game myself.*

-----------------

* While TR has always been fun for me to watch, actually playing was a drag because it was so hard-core. TR:U on Easy seems more approachable for people (like me) who don't need a CHALLENGE every time we play a game. I'm CHALLENGED enough building website and databases for my clients. I'm CHALLENGED enough brooding on the meaning of life. When I'm gaming, I like it to be RELAXED. Not that I want to be spoon-fed, but any game sequence I need to do more than three time is just a pain in the ass. I'm sure some gaming-ninja-twerp will say I should simply get better, but he can shove it until he has to move out of his parent's house and get a job.

Lego Batman

Yawn!!! Snore!!! Worth: $5
based on 360 demo

Holy Retread!

If I hadn't spent almost a year playing Lego Star Wars, I'd think this game was great. It turns out, however, that I'm still burned out on games where I jump around, bash goons, and collect Lego cash studs. While Lego Batman has better characters than the hopelessly lame Lego Indiana Jones, no game will ever come close to having the galaxy of interesting characters we got in Lego Star Wars.

Fable 2

Most Improved Lousy Franchise. Worth: $50
based on 360 retail

Now they've got it right!

Six years ago I read about a game called Fable, a sprawling, wide-open world for you to live your own character and paint your own stories. Like Morrowind and Oblivion but with it's own tongue-in-cheek humor and Sims-like personal interactions. Sounds awesome, right?

Wrong! I played the first game and it was a linear, low-choice, mediocre adventure game populated entirely by humunculi. The GamerGal liked it enough, but I barely did one play-through. I was terribly disappointed, it just sucked. So when I heard about F2 I said "Whatever, I'll wait for the GamerGal to pick it up and I'll just watch her play." Sequels are never better than the originals anyway, right?

Wrong! F2 totally rocks with everything Fable 1 was supposed to have but didn't. Great: stories, game mechanics, camera, characters, writing, music, and art direction. It's also got several terrific innovations I've never seen before:

- You earn money in real time, even if the console is turned off. So if you've bought some shops or houses in the game, your character continues to rake in the cash, all of which you collect in a lump sum when you continue your game.

- Co-op is (mostly) perfect and very flexible. Drop-in drop-out, locally or online. I actually just helped the GamerGal with something in her game, and I used my character's stats from my gamesave! I even earned money and XP!

- You can un-apply XP (50% of it anyway) and re-apply it to another skill, anytime, wherever you happen to be.

Fable 2 is the game Fable 1 wanted to be, and as such, it's a _great_ game.

One caveat: it's not for kids unless they already know about condoms, extra-marital sex, swingers, gangland murder contracts, prostitutes, and divorce. You don't see any nudity, of course, but all this content makes the game truly for mature players only, I'd say 16+ for city mice, 18+ for country mice.

Fracture

Dig your own hole. Worth: $8
based on 360 demo

The world needs ditch-diggers too.

This game is every shooter you've ever played, except that you can move the terrain about ten feet up or down. This allows you to create on-the-fly cover by digging a trench for yourself to hide in, or allows you to access high points by creating a hill to climb.

Neat, right? Well, it actually is kind of neat. But it's not enough to make this game worth very much if you've been playing video games for awhile. The graphics, sound, controls, and camera are all solid, so no complaints there. But there aren't really any thrills either.

Except for the novelty of moving the ground up or down, this game was pretty boring. There's some Bad Guy from Badovia who wants to dominate everyone in Goodville. You must stop Bad Guy by shooting and terraforming your way to Goodiness. If you're new to gaming, or haven't played enough shooters, you might dig this (what a great pun! Oh man, that's really deep. Oh! Again!). Otherwise, you've been there and shot that.

The demo is fun. But it's about as much fun as you'd have with the full game. So just play the demo for 15 minutes and then move along.

Mercenaries 2

Total Video Game Dominator. Worth: $60
based on 360 retail game

Creative. Violent. Awesome.

Guns, rockets, grenades, C4, artillery, missiles, tanks, helicopter gunships, recoilless rifles, 500-pound bombs, jet-propelled water craft, and earth-penetrating nuclear bunker-busters. This action game literally has it all for you to reduce Venezuela to a smoldering ruin.

Controls, camera, driving, environment.
The controls are pretty different from other action games, but once you get used to them they're fine. The camera is solid (unlike GTA4), the driving is fluid and fun (unlike Crackdown), and the world is wide-open and sprawling (unlike Halos 1-3).

Missions
Your tasks range from small (kidnapping/eliminating specific people) to large (destroy off-shore oil derrick). The story also ranges from cozy things like talking to your co-workers (the drunken jet pilot is pretty funny) to real-world issues like the way oil-hungry superpowers stomp all over the rights of third-world countries that happen to sit on large petroleum reserves.

Come for the bombs, stay for the Co-Op
Playing this game with my buddy Arth rivals Halo 3's co-op for best-ever video game experience. In many ways, it surpasses it because you really can go anywhere and do anything (pretty much). There are at least four or five ways to accomplish each mission, and with two people that number doubles. You can run in shoulder-to-shoulder, or ride in a tank together, or have one person in a helicopter providing cover fire while the other assaults on foot. The AI will do what it can to spoil your plans, and that's when the ability to improvise comes in handy. Arth and I have good communication with each other because we've played so much Halo 3 MP together, and we both like creating gigantic exploding fireballs out of things that bar our path to total video game domination.

Example story
Arth and I had just finished a job when we got attacked by two tanks, a company of enemy infantry, and a huge helicopter. While Arth fought off the ground forces, I hijacked the helicopter. Then I used the chopper's anti-tank missiles to obliterate the enemy armor. By this point Arth had cleared out the foot soldiers, so I swooped down and picked him up. He got on the door-mounted minigun as I flew us up to about a thousand feet. Suddenly two enemy helicopters appeared and fired anti-air missiles at us. Arth managed to kill one of the pilots before the enemy rockets blew our ride into an airborne junkpile. Arth and I fell to earth (both of us laughing all the way down, it was totally comic-book ridiculous) and got our health knocked down to 1% each. We both took cover while the remaining enemy helicopter circled the area. Arth broke cover to draw the chopper's fire while I rushed underneath the circling menace and hijacked it. After throwing the pilot out the window, I picked up Arth and we flew off into the sunset. This kind of adventure happens every time we play together.

Mercenaries 2 could be the game of the year, and I give it my highest recommendation.

UPDATE: Sep 19. Arth and I just found the Fuel-Air RPG. It creates a cloud of gasoline vapor (very dangerous!) around your target. Then the cloud explodes in a giant fireball. It's a guaranteed kill on whatever it hits: tanks, bunkers, buildings, anything. Terrific!

UPDATE Sep 20. We found the MOAB (Mother of all Bombs). It destroys at least two or three square acres. Arth and I must have laughed for about ten minutes after we saw how ginormous this friggin' this is. When the bomb came out of the plane it was like the bomber gave birth to a city bus.

UPDATE: Sep 22. Arth and I have taken to racing the game's motorcycles off cliffs and over steep hills to get as much air as possible. We've even discovered our own personal Achievement. We call it "Ghost Rider" and the idea is to get your bike to burst into flames at the beginning of a jump so you create a fiery arc across the sky before the bike explodes in mid-air. We've spent the last two nights doing only this. This game is totally hilarious.

Fallout 3

Eye-popping gut-churning good times. Worth: $??
based on 360 gameplay videos

More amazing work from Bethesda.

I've been entranced by the videos for this game. I loved Morrowind and Oblivion, and now Bethesda has made a sprawling role-playing game set in a post-apocalyptic America.

SW Force Unleashed

Will your Jedi friend help move my baby grand piano? Worth: $25
based on 360 demo

Gorgeous and frenetic, but does it have legs?

The demo for this game certainly makes me want to run around and throw people (and walls, doors, cars, crates, and spaceships) all over the galaxy. It showcases the awesome power of the Force and how under-utilized it has been in SW movies/games/books thus far.

This awesome power is the blessing, and possibly the curse of this game. I didn't use anything but Force Glom (push, pull, throw, whatever) even though I was carrying the coolest weapon ever imagined (light saber). It reminds me of playing the demo for Dark Sector, where the glaive is so unique and destructive that you wonder why the devs wasted their time putting guns in the game. Like the action-packed action in Stranglehold, it's sugary and fun, but is there any meat to the game?

This game could be a terrific multi-course meal, but it might be a beautiful cake that gets stale after a day or two.

Pure

Fly through the air, on your fat ATV. Worth: $12
based on 360 demo

Tons of fun, once the price is right.

Racing games never get good scores from me because they're so inherently limited. That doesn't mean I don't like them though, in fact I love them. A good racer will keep me entertained for weeks as I get to know the tracks and the capabilities of the vehicles. While some racers have a lousy "feel" for the road (Forza) or just plain suck (NASCAR), Pure is fast, fun, and satisfying.

Shake it like you mean it
This game looks great, plays sassy, and the beginner-level tricks are easy to pick up. I can see that there is a nicely sloping difficulty level for the more advanced tricks. I hardly landed any of them, but I can see that I'll have a good time getting the hang of them when I buy this game two years from now when it only costs me twelve bucks.

Too Human

Too Sucky. Worth: $0
based on 360 demo

Duh.

What a piece of crap! It's very colorful and swooshy, (like Japanese action games), but it's just mindless button-mashing with no sense that I'm actually performing what's happening on screen (like Japanese action games). Maybe the full game has a good story, but I'll never be able to tell you about it because I won't play this game until I've passed into the Great Beyond.

The Darkess

Gangster from the Black Lagoon. Worth: $10
based on 360 demo

Just unique enough.

You're a low-level thug in a New York crime family. You shoot pistols at other gangsters. You drive big Caddy's around a dark urban American landscape. If you've never played a video game before this might be enough to hook you. For an older gamer like me, this "been-there, shot-that" premise wouldn't hold my interest for more than one second.

Unless you added something unique. Something like, oh say, giant hell-spawned tentacles to mangle rival gangsters. And gosh, let's throw in a gaggle of little demons with which to infiltrate secured areas and generally wreak havoc.

Now you might be on to something.

It's still not worth much, but it's worth more than zero. As of this writing, this game is nine dollars, used. The price has plummeted so quickly I question whether the demo displays the only good ten minutes of the game. The users reviews are very strong, and they don't read like publisher plants. Perhaps this game is a just an overlooked sleeper like Psi-Ops was.

Dark Sector

Leaves a pleasantly metallic taste in my guts. Worth: $15
based on 360 demo

Mm dark, mm-hmm.

It looks like Gears of War (monochromatic and spooky) but plays like nothing else.

The game handles well, good camera, good controls, nice musical touches, and it looks amazing in high-def. The devs put most of their time into creating a great new weapon and creating great evisceration animations to watch as you slice and dice your way through whatever the hell this story is about.

The glaive boss! The glaive!
This multi-bladed throwing star is the game. But is it enough to carry an entire game? Definitely not for sixty bucks (update: I've seen it for $18 used as of Sep 15 '08). It's unique enough that it would be fun to play for a while, as long as the price is right.

The Bourne Conspiracy

The bored conspiracy. Worth: $0
based on 360 demo

The game plays like you're controlling a puppet with half the strings cut. Avoid this like a dog with rabies.

June 2008 Demo Throwdown

Much big summer demo happy fun time.
based on 360 demos

After a long spring lull, there are suddenly a bunch of demos to try out. Here's what they're worth.

Lego Indiana Jones blah blah. Worth: $0
Same great mechanics as LSW:CS. Exact. Same. Mechanics. (Well, the whip is new.) This reskin of the fabulous Lego Star Wars games is fun, but limited. Instead of star ships and far-off planets you play on earth. (zzz) The game's main weakness is instantly apparent: if you ain't Indy, you ain't nobody. The supporting characters here are nowhere near as cool and interesting as the supporting characters from Star Wars. It's still fun, but since I'm kinda burned out on LSW:CS, I'll wait until mid-2018 to pick this up.

Top Spin 3. Worth: $0
I hate sports games, and this is no exception. Too bad, because I love tennis. This game isn't tennis though, it's non-intuitive button-crushing.

Dark Sector. Worth: $15 (longer review)
Wow, this game looks freakin' amazing. The pointy boomerang is fresh and nasty. Your character, the environment, the bad guys, everything looks wicked cool. I have no sense of the story (alien metallic virus-based super powers uh-huh yeah what?) but I'm intrigued by the atmosphere and unique weapon.

Bad Company. Worth: $5
Strike one: it's a great-looking FPS that isn't Halo 3. Strike two: the controls are wacked and uncustomizable. Strike three: well, there is no strike three, this is a decent game. I can't play it because it'd screw up my Halo playing (the controls are totally different). I also won't bother with this game because I already played it back in 1995 when it was called Duke Nukem.

Grand Theft Auto 4

Whee! Crap! Whee! Crap! Worth: $25
based on 360 retail game

Don't believe the hype. This game is good, but not that good.

Driver 1 and 2, all three GTA3's, and Saint's Row have allowed me to indulge my fantasies of running red lights, crashing my car, and generally running around like an urban maniac. These games have lots of good and bad things in common. Great driving, lousy on-foot camera, terrible weapon targeting, good stories and characters, and outrageously long mission retries due to an obstinate lack of checkpoints.

GTA4 fits right in with all of this. Mechanically speaking, nothing has changed for this franchise. In a pitched battle, you don't fight the bad guys so much as you fight the camera and crappy aiming system. These problems were solved years and years ago by games like Mercenaries, Tomb Raider, Psy-Ops, and countless other third-person action games. More recent examples like Gears of War and Assassin's Creed demonstrate how good a third-person camera can be. In a word, it can be perfect.

But it's not in GTA4. To call Rockstar's on-foot game programming incompetent is an insult to incompetent people everywhere. Each close-quarters gunfight turns into a camera-swiveling nightmare. It's the most frustrating thing I've played since God of War 2's dreadful button-puzzles. It takes me completely out of my character and cruelly reminds me that I'm playing a poorly-made videogame.

Why isn't GTA4 worth zero dollars? The story and the city. I grew up near New York, so I'm having a great time driving around all my old haunts, and then crashing into them. If this game were set anywhere else, I'd return it and just read a walkthrough.

UPDATE:
It seems the best way to handle the gunfights is to go very slowly, take cover, fire thousands of bullets, and use dozens of grenades. Fight as heavy as possible. A common dying zone is when you walk through a swinging doorway. I've found that you can shoot the door open, then shoot everyone inside. If the door swings shut, just shoot it open again. You'll go through enormous amounts of ammo, but who cares? Just buy more. There isn't anything else to do with your money, and once you pull the big bank job, you'll have more cash than you can possibly use.

I try to make sure I'm always traveling with: full health, full armor, 70 Shotgun ammo, 1,000 SMG ammo (a must for drive-bys!), 500 Assault Rifle ammo, 20 grenades, and 9 RPG rounds (the max). This seems to do well for me.

UPDATE: June 3, 2008
I've played some Multiplayer with my buddy Arth. It works really well, and it's totally fun to race each other around Manhattan smashing into everything as we go. We spent some time at the airport trying to do jumps, then we swiped a pair of Blackhawk helicopters and strafed the Bronx until we got shot down by a swarm of very unsporting members of Liberty City's law enforcement community. Good times. But whenever we got into an on-foot shootout, all the camera problems return, so we stayed in vehicles as much as possible.

Crackdown Co-Op

Serve up a double helping of pain cake! Worth: $25
based on 360 retail game, SP and Co-Op

Get in touch with your inner badass.

Yes, this is an older game, but it's still one of the best online co-op experiences on the 360. My buddy Arth and I have been hammering around in this game, and it's given me a whole new take on Crackdown.

I played the single player a year ago. In fact, I played it three times in a row and got all of my Agent's skills maxed out. Then I collected some driving achievements (stunts, mostly) before moving on to other games. Now that Arth has a 360, I'm revisiting my old stomping (literally) grounds and having a great time.

If you haven't played this game, it's totally worth it's current used price, even just for single-player. If you have a cyber-buddy you can play with, this is a must-play game.

NOTES:
- The bugginess that plagued this game on release has been fixed by an update that downloads automatically.
- Tons of great screenshots here.

Turning Point: Fall of Liberty

Terrible food, and such small portions! Worth: $5
based on 360 demo and user reviews of retail game

At this point you should be turning to get away from this game.

The videos and articles show you the interesting story twist and alternate history of this post-WWII game. The demo hints at it's mediocre execution, and now it seems the retail release confirms this game's true mediocrity for all to see.

Installing Amplitube 2 Live on a Case-Sensitive drive

Another off-topic post, but I couldn't find _anything_ about this at Google. Hopefully this will help someone trying to install Amplitube2Live from IK Multimedia on a Mac with a case-sensitive hard drive.


After you install the software, go here: /Hard Drive/Library/Preferences

and change: com.ikmultimedia.AmpliTube2Live.plist

to: com.ikmultimedia.Amplitube2Live.plist (lower case "t" in Amplitube)

Don't even ask me how long it took me to figure this out. \:(

The CLUB

A non-dimensional bulletfest. Worth: $20
based on 360 demo

Run as fast as you can, you won't find much of a point here.

If you really liked Black, you'll like this game. There's no story (those are for wimps!), there's no allies (also for wimps!), and there's no personal motivation (wimps!). You just run around shooting guys.

The game handles very smoothly, it looks great, sounds great, and the camera is well done. But there's only one way to play: full speed ahead. To get the big points you'll need to memorize the level so you can sprint through it, killing every single person as you go. While it makes sense to play a racer for points, it feels weird with a shooter. Racing has always been something I'd do for the sake of racing. Having a shooter be "for the sake of shooting" feels a little... lame. Racers don't need stories, but shooters do. This game seems unfinished, like the developers and artists came up with all the physics and graphics, but they totally forgot to hire writers.

I understand that the developer is trying to mash-up racer game conceits with shooter everything else, but it just doesn't work. The closest example I have of something like this that did work is Carmageddon where you're a psychotically violent (like shooters) guy driving a car (like racers). In The Club you're a psychotically violent guy running a foot race.

Arth had a blast with this game, and I'm sure he would give it a much higher rating because he plays shooters at full speed anyway. If you're like Arth, this game could be worth as much as $40. If you're more like me and like to have _some_ reason for shooting things, it's more like $20.

Conflict: Denied Ops

Oh I'm sorry, were you shooting me? Worth:$8
based on 360 demo

Denied Fun.

Arth and I gave this a run-through. The developers lost us right away because the local split-screen is SIDE-BY-SIDE (like Halo 2). This means you have no peripheral vision, which totally sucks.

But what really sucks is the whole rest of the game. Walk down hall. Get shot at. Shoot back. The sound from the game was drowned out by us chugging Jolt Cola just to stay awake. The fact that you can do this with a friend doesn't help. It's like sharing a deformed, fat hooker with a buddy. The experience is so lousy to begin with, that having someone else there just makes it embarassing.

By the time this game gets down to a worthy price, hopefully something good will have come along.

---------------
A note about the side-by-side local co-op play. Halo 1 did it over-under, H2 was s-by-s, and H3 went back to over-under. What does _that_ tell us?

Viva Pinata: Party Animals

Totally Hilarious. Worth:$25
based on 360 demo

Run! Smash! Belch!

I played this with the GamerGal and our friend Arth. The game is very colorful, the controls are wicked easy, and the sound effects really add to the general kids-of-all-ages video mayhem. The events are short, but there are a lot of them, and participants can hop in and out of the game at will, the 360 will play any untended characters for you.

If you've ever run around like a maniac, or belched as loud as you can, this game is totally worth mid-twenties.

Adobe Scumbags

a brief departure from videogaming

A way to get Adobe CS3 installed and running on a case-sensitive boot drive in OS X Leopard.

Long story short:
You need to use Disk Utility on the OS X install disk for a lot of this. Backup your data because this process wipes your drives.
1. Format external drive as case-insensitive GUID partition.
2. Install OS X Leopard and CS3.
DON'T LAUNCH CS3
3. Format internal boot drive case-sensitive GUID partition.
4. Install OS X Leopard.
5. At end of OS X install, MIGRATE all data from external drive to internal drive.
6. On internal drive, create case-insensitive DMG disk image.
7. Copy just the CS3 apps to the disk image.
8. Done.
Pros: it works.
Cons: formatting is a drag.

Bags of scum
As a Mac-based web developer, I need to have my Mac boot from a case-sensitive drive so I can run MySQL and other dazzling Unix things like PHP and Perl. I also need the latest Adobe software to do my design work. But the Adobe installer won't even try to install to a case-sensitive drive. It gives you a warning about how "The people that work at Adobe are money-grubbing scumbags (error -FU2)" (or something like that).

The good old days
Back in CS2, you could install the software on a case-insensitive DMG disk image and run your Adobe software from that. It was weird, but it worked fine. It worked because _all_ the software went into the Applications folder on the case-insensitive DMG disk image. Now, with CS3, some goes in the Applications folder, and some goes in the Library and System folders. The problem is, my Library and System folders have to be on a case-sensitive drive.

The quest begins
I found a couple things on Google about how to do this. This guy got Photoshop to run right on the case-sensitive drive. Another guy was able to create a new, case-insensitive partition on his hard drive, installed Leopard on that partition, installed Adobe CS3, and then manually copied all the files from Applications, Library, and System over to his case-sensitive partition. What balls on this guy, eh? I tried it and felt my manhood shrink to nothing because it totally didn't work.

There be dragons
But, this guy gave me an idea which I combined with something I'd noticed while reformatting my drive to get rid of the goddamn case-insensitive partition. I formatted another drive (actually it was my 30GB iPod) as a case-insensitive GUID partition, then I installed Leopard and CS3. DO NOT LAUNCH CS3 YET. Then I formatted my boot drive (back up first, duh) as a case-sensitive GUID partition and installed Leopard. At the end of the install sequence, OS X Leopard asks you if you want to migrate a system and files from another drive. In fact, I do!

Roma Migrator!
I migrate my info from the case-insensitive 30GB iPod to my case-sensitive boot drive in my laptop. STILL DO NOT LAUNCH CS3 YET. I then make a 6GB case-insensitive DMG disk image with Disk Utility, also on my case-sensitive boot drive. I copy _just_ the Adobe application folders to this disk image. NOW LAUNCH CS3 apps from the disk image. I authenticate, activate, and it freaking works!

Photoshop gives me a weird warning about how the application has moved, and it needs to repair some settings. I click "Repair Now" and the app launches fine. I get this every time I start Photoshop though. If I find a fix for this I'll update this posting. I'm also not able to update the software on the disk image. I have to update the software by booting from the iPod (yes that works), update the Adobe software there, then copy it to the DMG disk image. Really fun. Yeah, great fun.

Adobe scumbags.

Kingdom Under Fire

Circle of Crap. Worth: $0
based on the Xbox 360 demo

Doom yourself to a miserable experience.

What garbage. Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom looks ok but plays poorly and pointlessly. Gone are the tactical elements that made earlier installments of this franchise worth playing. It's a mindless button-masher, but the game responds so slowly to your button-mashing it makes you wonder if the developers are the mindless ones.