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The first game I purchased for my Xbox 360 was Call of Duty 2, and since then I’ve been in love with the franchise.  Infinity Ward knows first person shooters and they are master craftsmen of the genre.  Call of Duty 4 has been no exception, and I tore through the single player campaign as quickly as I could. Usually I end it right there, but having heard about the unique leveling system of multiplayer, talking to friends who were engrossed in the COD4 multiplayer game, and having still an unquenched thirst for more Call of Duty goodness, I decided to give multiplayer a try.I have no false expectations on my skills at first person shooters.  I don’t have the twitch and dexterity to be really good at them, nor do I have the time to practice to push my own skills higher.  Still, I’ve really enjoyed a good multiplayer coop from time to time, so the idea of playing with other people sounded reasonable, so I took the plunge. I’d heard it before on podcasts and forums, but the Xbox Live experience is just plain broken for multiplayer gaming.   I’d assumed there would be trashtalking online, but I wasn’t prepared for the racist slurs and complete idiocy of a select few players in each match.  I thought I might run into it once or twice, but it’s pretty pervasive to the point that I clearly needed to quit or change something because it just wasn’t fun for me to here someone’s drunken diatribe online.   Having 2 kids still too young for real gaming, there is no way I’d let them play online. The one saving grace for me was a little known setting in xbox live to turn off voice communications for everyone but friends (To access it: go to your gamertag, edit gamer profile, privacy settings, voice and text) which silences everyone but your friends.  Now I’m in blissful ignorance, enjoying the game albeit I wonder how much more fun it would be if there were friendly people there working together as a team to play the game as the developers intended. Microsoft really needs to revamp the system to make it a better community if they hope to grow their userbase for this kind of gameplay.  There are ways to report people who are obnoxious but it takes too long to do, and isn’t very effective.  A better system would be something akin to linkedin.com where you can let friends of friends in your voice chat or even friends of friends of friends to at least comb out the bad apples as a first pass and then ban the rest manually.  

Tags: Xbox 360, Games I'm Playing by wagnoid
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Mark Wilson from Kotaku gets it right; XBox Live should definitely put age matching into XBox Live.  It doesn’t have to be perfect, but it would really improve the quality from my perspective.

Tags: Xbox 360 by wagnoid
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I’ll admit it: I own four copies of Half Life 2 and bought my original copy many years ago, but it wasn’t until now that I really played it. With the Orange Box and it’s terrific value, I don’t feel I payed too much for the experience.

The first copy I bought on a whim when the game originally came out, having loved the original Half Life to death. My PC wasn’t really up to the task at that point, and neither was I with all the work and family matters I need to attend to, so it sat in my office collecting dust. When I did find the time to start gaming again, I bought an my Xbox 360 and decided that I should really get the Half Life 2 XBox version and finally give it a go, but soon heard rumblings that Valve was going to create a new version so I decided to wait for a native 360 version. That version, the Orange Box, finally came out, and while it took years to start playing, I was hooked and couldn’t stop playing it once the wrapper came off the box.

Let me get my only gripe with the series out of the way right now because it’s just a minor thing but permeates all the products included in the bundle: the loading screens. The loading screens smacks of old technology with the way they freeze the game up for 5-10 seconds at a time with no warning. Even in Episode 2, you’ll be walking through a tunnel and the game will freeze for a moment until the a loading screen pops up for 5-10 seconds to load the next level. It’s a forgivable sin, but I hope they fix it for Episode 3 and beyond.

By not playing Half Life 2 until now, I got a truly great gaming experience from start to finish. Half Life 2, which starts out slow with it’s long water level, is an awesome game and holds up well despite the fact that it’s a couple of years old. Episode 1 extends that goodness and gives you more of the same. Episode 2 seems to have taken all the good bits from the original and Episode 1, and combined them to make a roller coaster ride of goodness. Portal I blogged about before, which is also stellar. At the end of the day, it was a marathon gaming experience but well worth the time it took and I never got tired of the experience.

At this point, I can’t wait for Episode 3 and I hope Valve does a similar experience next time bundling potentially Episode 3, Portal 2 (the two stories could potentially connect at some point), and a remake of Half Life 1 to make the graphics HD quality. That would be a truly awesome deal.

If you’re keeping track at home, that’s three copies. The fourth was another Orange Box for the PC which I’m going to use the Team Fortress 2 code and give the rest to my brother in law. 4 copies seems like a lot, but it seems like a great deal to me.

Tags: Shooters, Xbox 360, Games I'm Playing by wagnoid
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Before Orange Box came out, no one had really heard much about Portal and assumed it was being thrown in simply as a technology demo.  Now that people have it in their hands, it’s been getting a lot of buzz as a great game.  After spending the last couple nights playing it to completion, it’s become one of my favorite games of the year.

While I waited to read articles that included any spoilers,  what I did read gave me the impression that the game was a series of puzzle and included some witty voice acting.  That is al true, but what really surprised me was the genuinely good narrative and the way the game lead you through that storytelling without the heavy handed approach of cut scenes.  Instead, you find little bits of the story as you go along.

I think Portal benefited from the fact that the game is short and focused on the single game-play mechanic of the Portal gun.  Another developer might have tried to make Portal into a full retail package and be faced with some bad design choices to extend the play out another few hours.  One way might have been to add other gameplay elements such as the use of different weapons, a vehicle level, or the now in vogue, quick time events ala God of War.  Another way, from the school of Mario, is to increase the difficulty as each level progresses making you having to become better skilled at the controls.  While Portal does get more difficult as the game progresses, the answers lie in using more sophisticated uses of the Portal gun as opposed to having to become more dexterous with the controls.  At the end of the day, Portal is all meat and no filler, and as a result, is a satisifying gaming experience.

Spoiler Related Links Below

•  Gamers With Jobs Thoughtful Analysis of the game.
• Sexy Videogameland’s Portal Love
• WikiQuote Portal Quotes

Tags: Xbox 360, Games I'm Playing by wagnoid
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I bumped into title while visiting a local game stop.  It’s really good; I’m surprised more people haven’t heard about it.

Tags: Xbox 360, Games I'm Playing by wagnoid
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I just finished playing through Stranglehold for the XBox 360 and while it isn’t the best game I’ve played all year, it was pretty fun to play and well worth a rental.  While the game only took 6-8 hours for me to complete and likely much less in the hands of better gamer, it had a lot of fun moments with bullets flying, items shattering, and with the slow motion, Tequila Time mechanic, there were times you felt like a super-cop bad ass.   While it was a bit gimicky and likely would grow stale if the game was much longer, I hope it sells well enough to encourage other developers to build theatrical-like experiences for a gamer.

Related info:

 Stranglehold Link to GameRankings.com

Tags: Shooters, Xbox 360 by wagnoid
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It’s now semi-official that Bungie Studios is leaving Microsoft and there is a lot of speculation on what the ramifications for both companies are. From my perspective, it’s good for both companies. Here’s why:

• Bungie will have more independence to develop the type of games they want and the ability to build games for multiple platforms.
• Bungie employees will have more financial incentive to work harder and grow Bungie as opposed to being a single line item on Microsoft’s Financial spreadsheet.
• In a related note, it also makes it easier to attract new employees to Bungie who don’t want to work for a large corporation like Microsoft
• Microsoft on the other hand still retains the IP for Halo and the first right of refusal for any future Bungie products
• Microsoft gets to remove a fairly big chunk of expenses off it’s financial books making it’s game division looking better in the eyes of investors.

At the end of the day, I believe Microsoft looked at Bungie’s proposal and was faced with two options: take the deal Bungie was offering or watch it happen anyway with no control of the situation. There isn’t too much Microsoft can do to stop key Bungie talent from leaving Microsoft and starting their own development house and with this deal, at least Microsoft has some control over the situation.

Tags: Xbox 360, News by wagnoid
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Bioshock may not be “The game of the year”, but for me, I can’t imagine any other game being better in my eyes.  From the moment you enter Rapture, you become engrossed in the game.  It has a fantastic atmosphere, a good storyline (albeit the freedom to choose between playing as a bad guy and a good guy is over-rated), and strong game play mechanics.  Some people complain it is too easy, but I found it to be tough enough to be entertaining but not too tough such that I got frustrated so that I couldn’t continue moving the story forward.  In a word, it’s awesome!

Tags: Xbox 360, Games I'm Playing by wagnoid
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According to XBox 360 Fanboy, there will be a Shadowrun Demo going up on to the Xbox Live service.

I’m really on the fence with this game so I’m glad there will be a demo to try out. I really want this game to be good but the reviews so far have been lackluster. I’m more of a single player gamer and this game is multiplayer only, but the early news on this game sounded pretty interesting.

Tags: Shooters, Xbox 360, News by wagnoid
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Gears of War is a “must have” if you own an Xbox 360 and an HDTV if for no other reason but to show off how impressive the the graphics can be on the Xbox 360. As far as shooters go, the game is pretty fun using a cool new cover system to hide from the bad guys, and it’s been many years all the back to Doom that I was so excited about wielding a chainsaw; the blood splattering graphics are pretty intense.

There are three negatives most reviewer have complained about in Gears of War with some validity. The single player game is pretty short, and as far as the narrative, it’s pretty weak. The last technical problem is the controls which have the A button fairly overloaded, making it a hassle when you start button mashing to get out of the way and end up crouching behind a crate because it thought you wanted to run for cover. It takes a bit to get used to and the controls could have been layed out a bit better (Rainbow Six Vegas cover system is far superior), but you end up feeling like a pro after a little time in the game.

As far as the short single player campaign, I actually thought that was a benefit for me personally. With so little time that I can devote to gaming, it was nice to be able to finish the storyline in a few nights of feverish gameplay. I like shorter games because I can feel like I can play through the game multiple times if I like it enough, but I don’t have to devote months of gaming in the process.

All in all, if you own a XBox 360 and like shooters, Gears of War should be something you own.

Links
GameRankings for Gears of War
GameFaqs for Gears of War

Tags: Shooters, Xbox 360, Games I'm Playing by wagnoid
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