Holy Crap – Gears of War Rocks

Last night I was pretty pissed to be stuck playing Marvel: Ultimate Alliance while everyone else on my friends list was enjoying Gears of War (Thanks Gamestop!). After spending a few too-short hours playing a little multiplayer and a little singleplayer, I understand what the fuss about this game was all about.

It’s taken me a few hours to get the knack of using cover, then popping out when a baddie is reloading to kick his ass. It’s a technique I’ve always used in first-person shooters, but it’s an actual part of the game design in Gears.

Two complaints so far. First, the checkpoints frequently save just before a cutscene or scripted event. That’s lame. Second, where’s the party system? Halo 2′s make-a-party-of-your-friends-then-we’ll-find-some-opponents-for-you matchmaking system was damn near perfect. It looks like Gears is going to have a large enough playerbase for a similar scheme to work, so let’s have it!

Marvel Ultimate Alliance

So, despite my local Gamestop employees best efforts to keep me from playing the game (“No sir, all eight copies behind the counter are preordered by people who haven’t been able to pick up their copies in the last five days”), I’m about two hours into Marvel Ultimate Alliance, and while it isn’t going to change the world, it’s been polished until it’s quite shiny and good.

Unlike the previous Raven beat ‘em up/action RPG X-men games, Ultimate Alliance gives you control over a boatload of characters from the entire Marvel universe, from Captain America and the rest of the Avengers to the Fantastic Four, on down to fan favorites like Daredevil and Deadpool (Flash-based playable character list). The basic concept is simple—take 4 superheroes of your choice, team them up, and smash your way through dungeons filled with both easy-to-defeat minions and a variety of supervillains (Mysterio, Scorpion, and Dr. Doom have showed up already).

It seems like the goofy everyone-must-be-running-the-same-resolution limitation is gone in the Xbox Live multiplayer, although everyone is still tied to the same camera, I don’t find that too objectionable. There are definitely better games coming out soon—Gears of War and Guitar Hero 2 both hit next week—but Ultimate Alliance is an entertaining diversion, and it’s something I can even see Gina playing with me and some friends on Live.

Splinter Cell – WTF?

I finished the new Splinter Cell game on my 360 this weekend, and while I really dig the new “Double Agent” gameplay, where you have sets of conflicting goals for each mission–both the NSA and the terrorist organization you’re infiltrating will tell you to do stuff, and you actually have to make tough choices. The addition of tons of hiding places throughout every map is also a major improvement. In every room there’s at least one place to hide, but many rooms have three or four desks and beds to crawl under and lockers to hide in. Forcing the player to make tough choices is definitely something I can get behind.

There are a few things I really strongly dislike. First, the ending is really abrupt. Like Halo 2 abrupt. There are multiple endings depending on the choices you’ve made, but the game basically just stops. That’s weak, especially considering the events of the game. However that problem’s minor compared to the hack-job that they ran on the multiplayer portion of the game.

The 360 version has no narrative-driven co-op levels that I can find (12 missions shipped on the original Xbox version of Double Agent). Instead it ships with a bunch of co-op training missions that feature insanely difficult AI with perfect aim and knowledge of your every move, whether it can see you or not.

I really enjoyed playing co-op in Chaos Theory, when I managed to get another person available with an hour or two to spend on a mission. I’m not the first person to talk about this, but the removal of the booby-trap gadgets (and the motion sensor vision mode) from the mercs takes away a lot of the fun of the merc portion of the multiplayer game. The new mode is much faster paced, but it lacks a lot of the sublety of Chaos Theory and Pandora Tomorrow’s sublime and complex multiplayer game.

Franchise whoring ^2

Take two massive franchises and put them together, what do you get? One helluva fun franchise all it’s own. I loved the first Lego Star Wars game, and the second one is even better.
Sure, it’s really, really short. The graphics aren’t so hot. And, it’s a damn kids game, but I honestly had more fun with the goofy, too-short kids game than I have with another Star Wars game since the first Knights of the Old Republic.

Controlling a bunch of Lego-ized characters from Star Wars is a hoot. The first time Chewbacca leapt onto a Lego Stormtrooper and ripped his arms off, I almost fell out of my chair laughing. The same kind of mildly perverse, yet in-jokey and deconstructionist humor pervades the game. The game’s a budget-priced $30, and the cutscene with Han and Greedo in the cantina is worth the price of admission alone. Buy this game now!

Vindication!

I knew there was something up with the first few shipments of Xbox 360s. Microsoft’s repairing all the pre-2006 Xbox 360s for free, and refunding the payments people for people who had to pay for out of service repairs.

Here’s the quote:

As part of our standard and ongoing process of analyzing repair data, we recently noticed a higher than usual number of units coming in for repair. Upon further investigation, it was further discovered that the bulk of the units were isolated to a group that was part of the initial manufacturing run of the console. Returns for repair are coming in for a variety reasons and it’s a higher rate than we are satisfied with. We’ve made the decision to comp repairs for consoles manufactured before January 1, 2006, and provide refunds to the small group of customers who have already paid for repairs.

11,753

That’s the number of zombies I had to kill in order to finish Dead Rising, which is far and away my favorite Xbox 360 game so far this year. It’s a strong contender for my favorite game on any platform. Of all the games I’ve played this year–and the list is very long–ranging from BF2 to Oblivion to Titan Quest to Hitman to New Super Mario Brothers. I’ve even done a few things I didn’t think possible–I played Prey and I enjoyed a Tomb Raider game. But, Dead Rising hits all my buttons just right.

If you’re not familiar with the game, it’s fairly simple. You play a photojournalist trapped in a mall filled with thousands upon thousands of zombies, and your ride isn’t going to be back for 72 hours. You can use virtually everything in the mall as a weapon, from trash cans and benches to baseball bats and chainsaws. And it’s vital that you keep good weapons on hand–without them, you’ll have serious problems fighting your way through the zombie hordes. And I do mean a horde–there can be literally a thousand zombies onscreen at any given moment.

If that was all there was to the game, it would be good; but there’s more. Instead of zombie boss monsters, the many bosses you’ll face are human psychopaths. Each one has different weapons and strategies, and all require a slightly different tack. Defeating them frees other people and gives you access to other weapons and even vehicles.

To maximize your score, you need to take exciting photographs, escort survivors, and figure out what caused the zombie outbreak in the first place. When you finish the story mode, there’s plenty left to do, whether you go back and save more surviors, or just go out and slay all the zombies.

The save system initially frustrated the hell out of me, but I’m quite fond of the way it works and the way it encourages you to play the game. I’ll talk about it more when I can keep my eyes open.

Another one bites the dust

Back in February, my first Xbox 360 stopped reading discs properly, but five short days later and I was back in business. Keen-eyed readers might remember that I mentioned I was having some crashes in Dead Rising a few days ago. Tonight, the other shoe dropped, and the 360 totally conked out. Luckily, I still have extended waranty left, and they’re going to fix it again. Still, it seems more than a little ridiculous to have to return a game console twice in about 9 months.

Dead Rising is crashing

Wow, what a drag. I’ve managed to change my play style to suit the Dead Rising savegame system, I’ve killed almost 8000 mindless zombies (and about 15 psychopaths), and when I get to the end of the game, my Xbox 360 hangs. That’s not a good sign. It looks like a heat-related issue, there’s visual corruption over the entire screen, and I have to hit the power button to restart the console. Weak sauce.

I’m especially pissed since I stayed up late to finish the game, and we’ve got to get the dog to the kennel by 8AM tomorrow morning.