Condemned: Criminal Origins - Xbox 360

Condemned: Criminal Origins was kind of a blast from the past for me. Condemned was the first Xbox 360 game I ever owned, and the first Xbox 360 game I ever beat.

My brother had just bought an Xbox 360 bundle with Kung Fu Panda and Lego Indiana Jones. Right after he bought it I house sat for him for a week. Neither of those games really appealed to me so I headed over to Game Stop to see if I could find something I wanted to play. At this point in time I didn't own an Xbox 360 so I didn't really want something very expensive, I was looking for something in the 10$ or so range. That's when I found Condemned, it looked fun, the premise sounded pretty awesome, and I love scary games, so I picked it up.

I am glad I did. Condemned is an awesome game. From pretty much start to finish I loved it. It was one of those games where I sat down and just played, and played, and played, losing track of time. I think I beat it about a day or two after buying it.

Condemned is in my top probably five scariest games I've played. The first time a crazy guy jumps out of the shadows behind you to beat your skull in with a pipe will scare the hell out of you. In most games they give you a flashlight that you can only leave on for a small amount of time before your batteries die and have to recharge... in Condemened your flashlight is always on. Constantly. And trust me, you'll be thankful for that. The atmosphere of the game is just creepy. It works incredibly well.

I wasn't too sure about an entire game based on melee combat (there's a few guns scattered around the game, but not many). Most FPS games have kind of horrible melee combat, but Condemned makes it work. I think this makes the game even more intense. When you see someone you can't just shoot him from a distance, you have to get pretty much right up next to him to get within range for your found weapons (pipes, 2x4, axes, etc.)

Overall, Condemned is a great game. There's a lot of things about this game that if they hadn't worked would have doomed the game, but everything seems to come together perfectly. For a launch title it was a surprisingly solid game. Really a must play if you like scary games and want something different from the FPS genre.

Squid.

Halo Reach - Xbox 360

We all know my feelings on the originalHalo. I've played Halo, Halo 2, and Halo ODST, and yet I've never been all that thrilled by the Halo series. None of them ever seemed all that exciting or good to me. They were all fun, but I never felt like they were truly great games. That all changed with Halo Reach.

Halo Reach is everything I wanted the first Halo to be. One thing I never felt in the first Halo was the pull to keep playing. I always would get to a point and think "Well, I guess I'll stop now." In Halo Reach it was more of a "Holy crap! It's two in the morning and I should really stop now... after I finish this level." There was a drive to keep playing, a wanting to know what was going to happen next. Halo Reach completely sucked me in.

The action was great, the story was great (though was somewhat confusing having never played a few of the games), and overall was just an incredibly fun game.

Here's the thing. Halo Reach was a good enough game that I'm seriously considering playing the series over again. Over the years I've played the games and haven't really been all that interested in them... but Halo Reach was great. Maybe the problem was me, maybe I wasn't giving them the chance that I should have. It's either that or Halo Reach was a great end cap to a series that was overrated. I'm not really sure.

At the end of the day though Halo Reach was a great game. Even if you're like me and didn't particularly enjoy the series you should certainly give Reach a chance.

Squid.

Morrowind - Xbox

I absolutely loved Morrowind. It was one of the first games I purchased for the Xbox and I played it for God knows how long, I probably spent ten hours alone just exploring and talking to people in Vivec. Since I bought it on Xbox I've played it at least twice as well as buying and playing it on the PC. I love games that allow me to explore and Morrowind exceeds at this. Though despite loving the game, I've never actually finished it, and because it's such an open ended game I'm not really sure how close I had come. I needed to remedy that. I needed to beat Morrowind.

One thing that actually somewhat shocked me is how well Morrowind has aged. For an almost eight year old game it doesn't look half bad. The character models are pretty bad as well as the animations, but overall the game is still rather pretty. I'm not one of those people that constantly complains about how games have just all turned brown, but it's kind of interesting to see the vibrant colors in Morrowind. The skies are sometimes a mix of blue, pinks, and purples. There's forests, mountains, water, things that feel like a true environment. It's a stark contrast between it and games where you sometimes feel like you're in a dull wasteland.

I will say that Morrowind is an absolutely great game. It's an amazing exploring experience and a great game with a great story on top of everything else. If you liked Oblivion, if you like Fallout if you like just kind of wandering on your own and making your own experience, you will love Morrowind. However there are a few complaints I had with this game.

The map and travel system are kind of lacking. The map is adequate but sometimes I would have liked a bit more detail. There were times when I wandered around for a half hour trying to find something that was actually marked on my map, it could get rather frustrating. I wish there could have been a way to mark your map, not necessarily a waypoint system but just a way to put a mark on your map so you could reference it. The travel system could get rather confusing as well. On many occasions I had to go and look on the internet what town I had to travel from to get to other towns and it became a maze of towns to get to one place. It could get confusing. Part of it made you feel like you were exploring even more, though with the game being as big as it is and with as much travel as there was it eventually became somewhat frustrating.

Okay, here's the weirdest complaint I've ever had about a game. It's too damn big. I absolutely love games that allow me explore. Fallout 3, New Vegas, Oblivion, I've spent around 400 hours just playing those three games. With Morrowind I feel like I could have easily spent that many hours just exploring it. I'm not sure how many hours I spent playing Morrowind, it doesn't keep track, I do know I started it February 10th and finished it around April 4th or so. That's almost two months of playing, I would estimate that I played somewhere between 50 and 100 hours, the main quest alone probably took close to thirty hours. Here's the thing, I would guess I saw less than 25% of the entire world. I didn't explore a ton of the caves, I didn't see a lot of the eastern part of the world, and yet I easily spent at least thirty to forty hours if not more exploring... and still only saw maybe 25%. If you explored every cave, every nook and cranny, every sidequest, every town, I would guess you could easily spend 250 to 300 hours on this game. Maybe more. It's huge. Amazingly huge. In Fallout 3 I did every quest I could, discovered almost every location, did everything I could in the game and finished all of the expansion packs. That took me 145 hours. I didn't even bother trying to complete the expansion packs for Morrowind, didn't explore probably 80% of the places I could have, I didn't do a ton of sidequests and yet it still took me almost two months to finish. Morrowind may actually be too big of a game. You may actually get tired of it before you could 100% it. The sheer size of the game is amazing.

Morrowind is a thoroughly enjoyable game. It's just fun. There's some annoyances here and there but overall it's a very solid game and still remains that way even seven years later. If you like exploring, if you like any of the other games I talked about, and if you have a lot of spare time, it is a definite must play.

Squid.

Castle Crashers - Xbox Live Arcade

Okay, I know. I'm only about two years late in saying this: Castle Crashers kicks some serious ass.

I played the demo of Castle Crashers when I first got my Xbox and thought "Wow, this is a great game. I should totally buy this!" Then didn't for about two years. Hell, I've actually played the demo since then and still never got around to purchasing it. Not exactly sure why, I've had 2400 MS points sitting around doing nothing for about a year now.

Then last week I was over at my brother's house. Most everyone in the house was sick with some sort of cold and we didn't feel like going anywhere. My brother decided to pick up Castle Crashers because it was on sale for 600MS points. We started playing it co-op and it wasn't long till we were hooked.

Simply put, the game is an amazing amount of fun. Especially when you consider it's basically a side scrolling hack 'n slash. Everything about it is just fun. That's the best word I can use to describe Castle Crashers. Game: Fun. Music: Fun. Art Style: Seriously Fun. It's the kind of game that throughout you're noticing little details here and there that all add up to make the game so damn great.

I had so much fun that when I got home that night I bought it myself... and then played until about midnight. Then went back to my brother's house the next day and beat the game there. You know what we started doing after we beat it? We went around and collected animal orbs and weapons. You know what we did after that? Started playing through again as a different characters. We did this and I was still going home at night and playing my game on my Xbox. I don't remember the last time I did that with a game. Not only have I beat it, I've continued playing it again afterward.

In the last week I've beat Castle Crashers twice, and have another character about halfway through it. On my game I have every single animal orb and weapon I can get. I've unlocked a lot of the characters and done every achievement I could. I don't know the last game I completed so throughly. And you know what? It's still fun. I'm still having a good time playing it.

Most games I beat and then maybe play again a year or so later. With Castle Crashers I beat it and immediately went back for a second helping, and you know what? I may go back for thirds. It's just that fun of a game.

Seriously, if you haven't played this game already you need to buy it. I can't imagine anyone not enjoying this game... unless they're some sort of heartless bastard.

Squid.

X-Men Arcade - Xbox Live Arcade

Sit down and let me tell you the story of how I came to own X-Men Arcade for XBL. I remember playing X-Men Arcade as a kid so when I heard that it was going to be released on XBL I was rather excited. Not wanting to jump right in and buy it I decided to pick up the demo and play it. So I started playing the demo, it wasn't really as fun as I remember, but I was somewhat enjoying myself. That's when I got an achievement. Actually a pop up said that if I owned the game I would have gotten an achievement. It also gave me the option of buying the game by pressing A. Well I was jumping around doing kicks at the time that the message popped up... pressing A. So it took me directly to the buy page. You have two options, confirm download or cancel. I'm not sure if you can cycle through back to the top or if I just thought I hit down and didn't, but either way I ended up hitting confirm download instead of cancel.

I now owned X-Men Arcade. Oh boy.

Now I won't say that it wasn't my fault, but it seemed just a little to easy to buy the game. Whatever, I owned it now. Not much I could do about it. So I decided to put my best foot forward, not care, and just play the game.

And that's exactly what I did. I sat down and played the game. It took me twenty-seven minutes to beat it. Twenty-seven minutes from start to finish. Oh well, there was always the multiplayer.

X-Men Arcade Multiplayer allows you to play the single player game with up to six different players. Which is interesting... except that in the next hour I beat the game another three times. In less than an hour and a half I had beat the game four times.

Over the next couple days I played the multi a few more times, beating the game another five or six times. It was kind of fun just to spend twenty minutes or so beating the game, but it's not like I'm going to be playing it a ton more over the next weeks or months. It's mostly just served as a twenty minute distraction.

Here's my problem. This game costs 800 MS points, that's $10 in real life money. That's quite a lot of money for a game that can be beaten in less than a half hour on the hardest setting. Even with the multiplayer this game is worth more along the lines of 400 MS points. Also the multiplayer is kind of borked. You get six players in a game and I guarantee you're going to get some slow down. In some places it becomes downright unplayable.

This game isn't at all difficult either. You're playing the X-Men Arcade game, but with unlimited quarters. Sure you can die, but the game never ends. Even on the hardest difficulty setting this game is incredibly easy. There's almost no challenge.

So should you buy it? I would say no unless there's certain conditions: On sale or 400 MS points? Sure, it's worth $5. Huge X-Men fan? Might be worth it for you. Have massive nostalgia for X-Men Arcade? Probably worth the $10. Overall though it's just not a good enough game to be worth $10.

Squid.

Assassin's Creed - Xbox 360

Assassin's Creed was the second Xbox 360 game I ever played. I owned Assassin's Creed before I even owned a 360. I bought it to play on my brother's recently purchased 360. I remember being blown away by the graphics of the opening cinematic. It was about that point that I realized I needed my own Xbox 360. Within the week I had purchased a 360 and a spiffy new HDTV to play it on.

People have always complained about Assassin's Creed. It was repetitive, the climbing was sometimes kind of wonky, you switched between Altaïr and Desmond way too much. I didn't see this. I loved every minute of the game. Was it repetitive? Sure, but it was fun as hell so I didn't care. Was the climbing sometimes wonky? I didn't know, up until this point I had never played a game where you could climb like that. Everything was so interesting and new that I didn't care if occasionally you made a misstep and fell. And I never felt that traveling between the two time periods did anything but add to the story.

That was my first playthrough. My second playthrough I had a change of opinion.

The first thing I noticed... how repetitive it actually was. Gone were the days that I was just happy assassinating people. After about the first two assassinations all I could think was "I have to do this again?" I went from helping every person I came across, climbing every vantage point I could find, to just doing what needed to be done to get the next assassination just so I could forward the game progress. It was the same thing over and over. It became a grind.

All of the sudden every other game I had played that had a climbing mechanic felt vastly superior. It wasn't just that occasionally Altaïr would fall from a ledge. It's that occasionally Altaïr would do the exact opposite of what I had just told him to do. It was like occasionally Altaïr would get a deathwish and decide he didn't feel the need to live any longer. "Want me to jump to that ladder? Screw you, I'm jumping down three stories into a crowd of angry guards!" The climbing wasn't horrible but felt somewhat antiquated and occasionally difficult to control. It wasn't just the climbing. On more then one occasion Altaïr would draw the wrong weapon (even though I knew I picked the right one) or would just refuse to draw his sword. I have no idea what the problem was but it quickly became annoying. Also once you learned to counter fights became way too easy. I could take on a hundred guards simply by blocking and countering and eventually kill them all. What's the fun in that?

I still don't have a major problem of the switching between Altaïr and Desmond. Occasionally it did feel a little out of place, or slowed down the action, but overall I still don't see why so many people hated this aspect of the game.

The game just didn't hold the same wonder that it did the first time around. It was the same game, I was just looking at it through different eyes. Long gone was ability to overlook some of the more glaring problems this game had. Towards the end I was playing the game to beat it, not because I was necessarily enjoying myself. The repetitiveness of the game finally got to me.

So what are my second thoughts on Assassin's Creed? Well, it was good... but not great. It certainly didn't feel as fresh and entertaining the second time around. However, that doesn't make it a bad game. It still find some enjoyment in it, and assassinating people can be very entertaining. If you haven't played it before I would say that you should give it a try, but I'm not sure that it's worth a second playthrough.

Squid.

Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance II - Review

I know, I know I forgot to put up what I was playing next. I kind of forgot. Sorry about that.

So since I have myself a new Playstation 2 I decided that my next game should be one of the many that came with the system. I started out playing SOCOM: U.S. Navy Seals but just couldn't get into it... guess I wasn't in the right mood. So I decided to give Dark Alliance II a shot.

First off, I never played the first Dark Alliance for the PS2. So I kind of went into this game not knowing the lore, or what happened to lead up to the events of Dark Alliance II. Though with as much fun as I had with the second game, you can bet the first is going to be bought sometime soon.

Dark Alliance II is a great game. Switching from a PC gamer to a console gamer there are a couple of genres of games that are somewhat sparse. Dungeon crawling hack 'n slash games are one of those genres.

I loved Diablo II. I don't know how many hours I spent playing it. As well as Sacred, Dungeon Siege 1 and 2, and Torchlight. I'm a big fan of those types of games. You don't have to really think. I swing my sword, whats in front of me dies. I pick up loot and I'm my way to the next mob of enemies. I play these kinds of games when I want to just turn off my brain and slaughter groups of enemies. And Dark Alliance II was perfect for that.

I haven't played many console hack 'n slash games but I will say that Dark Alliance is easily the best. It controls beautifully, which is usually my main problem with these types of games. It's hard to emulate the simplicity of clicking a mouse on something to kill it, but Dark Alliance II manages to do it well.

There's a whole host of treasure for you to sort through, and on top of that you can customize your armor in the workshop to tack on special powers. It really added something to the game, sadly I didn't really try it until later in the game... but once I did I saw how truly awesome it was when you're wielding two kick ass, customized swords.

The story is just long enough that you don't get bored, but short enough that you'll want to play through it again. And you can bet that at some point in the future I'll be popping this game in to beat it with another character class (there's five to choose from), or perhaps just using my kick ass barbarian on a higher difficulty level. [Note: most people say that Dark Alliance II is 8-10 hours long. I think this is based off of the in game timer which appears to run rather slow. It says I beat the game in just over 10 hours, but I would guess I played it for 15-20.]

The story... the story is the one part of the game I will admit that's somewhat weak. If you haven't played the first Dark Alliance you're going to be somewhat confused. Not enough that it ruins the game for you, but you'll be wondering what they're talking about. It seems they could have given you a better understanding of the backstory so if you hadn't played the first you wouldn't be as lost. Overall though it's not a huge deal, the story is still pretty good it just can get confusing in part. Also it ends on a somewhat cliffhanger... not a huge problem, but considering Interplay's financial problems there's a good chance we will never see Dark Alliance III.

Over all Dark Alliance II is a very good game, a very good hack 'n slash game, and probably the best hack 'n slash console game I've played. If you own a PS2 or Xbox and are a fan of the genre, do yourself a favor and pick it up.

Squid.

Halo: Combat Evolved - Review

Okay, I have a geeky confession to make. I never beat Halo. I've owned it for years, and yet I've never managed to finish it. Every time I tried to I made it about halfway through and then just stopped.

You see, I didn't actually like Halo. Never really enjoyed it. I kept hearing how great it was and how it was the best first person shooter ever... and yet I just didn't like it.

I was about twenty when Halo came out. I had heard very good things about it, but at the time I didn't have an Xbox. Well that year was my grandpa's 80th birthday, and my dad and I were going to drive out to Illinois to surprise him (great idea, surprising an 80 year old man), well there's not a whole lot to do at my grandparents house so my dad said that he would buy me an Xbox to bring out and play. It was great, I would finally get to play this amazing game I had heard so much about.

We went to CompUSA and bought an Xbox, the first games I got were Halo: Combat Evolved, Silent Hill 2, and Amped. I immediately went home to play some Halo.

It was somewhat fun at first. I had a good time... it wasn't great, but it was fun. The more I played it though, the more I found it kind of mediocre.

I had one main problem... at this point in time I was still pretty much a PC gamer. The controller felt so odd, I had a very difficult time getting used to. It just felt so foreign in my hands. It was fine for other games, but I just couldn't get used to controlling an FPS without a mouse and keyboard. I think this very much effected how I felt about the game. My other problems were with how the vehicles handled and how the levels were designed.

Several times in the last couple years I've tried to make it through the game. I usually get about halfway through before getting frustrated and giving up.

Nine years later I'm now a console gamer almost exclusively. All of the sudden the game I couldn't grasp the controls of felt much, much more natural. And something else, I was enjoying it a whole lot more.

Don't get me wrong, the warthog still handles like absolute crap... I constantly feel like I'm driving on ice. It's like the warthog's driving physics were coded by someone who had never been in an actual vehicle before and doesn't know what friction is. The level design is still atrocious as well. I don't know how many times I though "Wait, am I walking in circles? This corridor looks exactly like ever other corridor." You also have to love when the level you're in now is just the same level you recently played but it's nighttime now.

Okay, those are really my only gripes. Besides the level design and the warthog the game is good. I'm not going to hop on the bandwagon and say it's the best first person shooter, however I will say that it was a very good console first person shooter... especially at the time when it was released.

I know I've said this before, but bear with me. By 2001 I had been playing Half Life, Deus Ex, Alien Vs. Predator 2, Strife, Counter Strike, Team Fortress Classic, and to a lesser extent Doom, Doom 2, and Wolfenstein as well as a host of other PC first person shooters. The PC had tons of great first person shooters while consoles had... Goldeneye and Halo. And despite the fact that these were the best of their genre on the console, they really couldn't compare to what we had on the PC. In today's world a game is more likely to be released to a console then it is to the PC, and almost certainly if it gets a PC release it's getting a console release. Back then? That didn't happen as much. So console gamers missed out on a lot of very good games that PC players had.

I'm glad that I finally beat Halo, it was a good game that I didn't really give a fair shot. The story was good, and overall I enjoyed the game a lot despite it's flaws. I've never really wanted to play the Halo series, but now I'm looking forward to picking up Halo 2 & 3 somewhere down the line.

Is it the greatest FPS ever made? No, not in my opinion. It's a good game and a great console FPS, and we certainly have to give it a lot of thanks. Without Halo you probably wouldn't have a lot of the first person shooters being released now, and frankly without Halo you might not be playing your Xbox 360. So go ahead and give it a shot if you've never played it before, it's certainly worth a try.

Squid.

Halo: Combat Evolved - Xbox

Wasn't sure what I wanted to play next, then I saw Halo on the list. Figured what the hell. It also has the added bonus of seeing how well backwards compatibility works on the Xbox 360. I have a lot of Xbox games that I want to play but my Xbox is kind of on the fritz. Would be nice if I could just pop them into my 360 and play them.

I've played Halo many times before and have had my gripes about it. It will be interesting to see how I feel now that I'm more used to controllers as well as controlling FPS with controllers.

Either way a game with this many fans and followers has to be good, right?

Squid.

Borderlands - Review

When I first got Borderlands from Gamefly I wasn't exactly sure what to expect. I only knew one other person who had played it and he didn't have great things to say about it. But reviews were generally favorable so I figured I'd give it a go.

I'm glad I did, let me just say that Borderlands is a hell of a fun time and a great game. Plus you get to shoot midgets in the face with a shotgun. Name me one other game where you get to do that.

Borderlands is set on Pandora, a barren wasteland of a planet with small settlements scattered around it. You can choose between four separate characters, each with a different skill set. I decided on the sniper character because that's what I usually play as... but Borderlands did something that I didn't expect but greatly appreciated.

Snipers aren't the most robust of characters. Sure we're good at long range but what happens when you have a bad guy standing right next to you? Or two or three? In borderlands you can be proficient with any weapon. As a sniper I could use machine guns or even rocket launchers. Sure I didn't get the upgrade perks that say the soldier did, but I could still use them. Trust me, when you have four huge bad guys barreling down on you the ability to switch from a sniper rife to a machine gun is greatly appreciated.

I've been sitting here staring at this screen for about an hour now. I'm not exactly sure how to review Borderlands. I could tell you that it reminds me of several other great games rolled into one. I could tell you about how quirky the humor is or how cool the art direction is... but at the end of the day I'm not sure that matters at all.

Sure it, reminds me of other really great games that I liked. It reminds me a lot of a much more linear Fallout 3... but if you didn't like Fallout 3 that doesn't really sell it for you.

I find the humor funny, but that doesn't mean you'll enjoy Scooter talking about his "mama's girly parts" as much as I did. I thought the humor in it was very funny, but that's really subjective.

The art direction is kind of fun, and has a bit of a different feel then a lot of other recent first person shooters... but it's not like it's the first time we've seen it before.

Borderlands is a really fun game, that's what I'll tell you. I enjoyed it and founds myself wanting to play it for hours at a time. I would highly suggest it to anyone who is a fan of the FPS/RPGish type genre.

Will you like it? Hard to say, as I started this review off I said that the only person who I knew that played it ended up not really enjoying it. On the other hand I had a hell of a fun time playing it and once it drops a little more in price will probably end up buying it so that I can play it again.

Sure Borderlands had some flaws, I think enemies reappeared a little too quickly and the ending was somewhat sudden, but overall Borderlands was an awesome game that you should really give a shot.

Squid.

Pirates: The Legend of Black Kat - Review

I remember a few things about Pirates: The Legend of Black Kat when I originally played it. I remember enjoying it, I remember thinking it was very fun, and I remember getting fairly far in the game. This time around things were a bit different. First off, as far as I can tell I didn't get far in the game at all. My original save was maybe three to four hours into the game. And as for the liking and enjoying it? Boy how times have changed.

Pirates: The Legend of Black Kat isn't a bad game per se, but it does have a ton of little things that all added up to me not really enjoying myself while playing it. It was the little things here and there that turned what could have been a very fun game into something that was frustrating and annoying.

First things first, the targeting. There is none. Before I go off about this I just want to say that I'm not sure there was targeting in games on the Xbox, it might not have been capable of it... but good god does this game need it. What I'm talking about is locking on to one target. If I want to throw a keg of black powder at a bad guy, I want it to hit. In this game I don't know how many times my hits were off to the side because I wasn't looking directly at my target. This goes for the land battles as well as the sea battles.

The camera. The camera wasn't awful on land, but at sea it occasionally would get very annoying. By the end of the game I had pretty much figured it out, but camera angles should be something very intuitive and natural. Not something I have to "figure out."

The voice acting. The voice acting ranged from awful to decent. I've heard worse, but I've also certainly heard better.

The goddamn fetch quests. Hey! Katrina! I need you to find these stars for me. Hey! Katrina! Would you see if you can also find these headhunter masks? There's several of these in the game. You have to find some trinkets for some person. And of course they're scattered all over the many lands. Now granted only one of these types of quests is mandatory to do to finish the game but it was still annoying as hell. Especially when you considered that they gave you no real clues as to where some of these items were. Not even a "Hey, this item is on this island." You were supposed to go exploring and find them for yourself, or have found them in the past. I finally had to get a walkthrough to find some of the items because I had no clue as to where they were. It ruined the pace of the game completely for me. I didn't want to have to wander from island to island trying to find a treasure chest. Especially when I had to go a loading screen every new island I went to, and loading screens is where I tended to get dirty disc errors.

I'm not saying that all of Pirates: The Legend of Black Kat was bad. Exploring the different islands was kind of fun, the story was decent, and the different islands where very well themed and each had their own feel to them. The bad guys were interesting and the bosses were fun, though some where incredibly difficult. I think the thing that disappoints me the most is that it seems with a little polishing the game could have been so much better. It had a lot of appeal and could have potentially been a very good game, but the things it had working against it just turned it into a mediocre game.

Squid.

Pirates: The Legend of Black Kat - Xbox

Figured it was about time I broke out my Xbox. I'm really hoping that it works, a while back I tried to play Knights of the Old Republic on it and had some problems with crashing. So start sending me your good mojo in hopes that it continues working. Pirates: The Legend of Black Kat is one of the first games I got for Xbox. I'm pretty sure I found it in the discount bin and figured it looked pretty fun, and I remember it being rather enjoyable. I've always enjoyed Pirate games, I think it stems from playing Sid Meier's Pirates! as a kid. I think there was a point in time where we had rented that so much from Blockbuster that it would have just been cheaper to go out and buy it. For now I'm off to swashbuckle and pillage on the high seas. Yarr!

Squid.