Half Life 2 - Xbox 360

How exactly do you go about reviewing one of the best reviewed games of all time? Were talking about a game that has a 96% on Metacritic. A game that currently is ranked the seventh best game of all time on Metacitic. A sequel to what is considered to be one of the best, most innovative first person shooters of all time. There's not exactly a lot I can say about this game that hasn't been said before.

The best compliment that I can think to give Half Life 2 is that it's just as fun and as good now as it was when I played it in 2004. This games held up incredibly well. Sure, some of the graphics aren't quite up to par with games released now, but at the end of the day they're still pretty damn solid.

In fact this entire game is solid. There wasn't a moment that the game dragged, there wasn't a moment that I wasn't having a great time, there wasn't a moment that I didn't think that this game deserved as much praise as it got. The game was great, and the game remains great.

I remember the first time I played the original Half Life game, I was blown away by it. The game, the story, everything about it was amazing. For the next couple years I was satisfied playing mods, Team Fortress Classic and Counter-Strike mostly. Then I heard rumblings about a sequel in the works. I remember being very excited, but it could go either way. It's an incredibly difficult thing to follow up a game as great as Half Life. Valve was fortunately up to the task though.

Half Life was an amazing game, but Half Life 2 upped the ante. I'm not going to say that it's better than the original, but I will say that from where I'm standing they're pretty much on equal ground.

As I said before, nothing I say about Half Life 2 is going to be something new and exciting. We're talking about a game that's several years old and in almost every top ten list. So all I can say is that it's an amazing game. It's a game that every gamer should play at least once. If you played it and enjoyed it, do yourself a favor and go play it again. I had forgotten how great a game it was. I usually name it when I'm talking about my favorite games, but up until I replayed it again I think I had forgotten why. Playing it again gives me renewed appreciation for what may be one of the best first person shooters of the decade as well as a game that really sets the bar for what first person shooters should be.

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.

Borderlands - Xbox360

Another Gamefly game. God I love Gamefly.

This is a game I've been waiting to get my hands on for a long time. I first remember hearing about this a while back in OXM and really wanting to play it. I love RPGish First Person Shooters, add in an apocalyptic wasteland and I'm sold.

Squid.

Metro 2033 - Review

A while back I read about Metro 2033 in Official Xbox Magazine, they had a couple page preview. I remember being rather excited about it, it looked great and I love those types of games. Then I didn't hear anything about it for a while. I had almost completely forgot about until I noticed a release date for it. I quickly added it to my Gamefly queue and hoped they would have it by the time my disc got there.

After playing a few hours I realized that Metro 2033 is a game I should have hated. It's incredibly dark, there's escort missions, and it's occasionally very difficult to stealth... but for some reason, I enjoyed it.

Let's start off with the things I thought I wouldn't like.

The Darkness. This game is dark. We're talking Doom 3 dark. We're talking playing an original Gameboy Advance in a closet dark. And yet... this game makes it work. Instead of a hindering you it actually adds to the ambiance of the game. The darkness seems to encompass you. Every little bump in the night seems all that much worse because you're not sure what it is or where it's coming from. All you have is your flashlight and later on in the game, night vision goggles to light your way. Not since Alien Vs. Predator 2 have I seen a game that makes the darkness work so well in its favor.

Escort missions. If there's one thing I hate in a game it's escort missions. Metro 2033 did it right though, it gave me escort missions without me knowing they were escort missions. Occasionally you have a computer controlled teammate that will help you out along the way, occasionally these are escort missions. So if that person dies, you have to start from the last checkpoint. For the most part you won't actually know that it's an escort mission unless you let that person die, and as long as you help them out, for the most part you don't have to worry about them dying.

The problem with stealth isn't really that much of a problem. When you have an AI teammate they're not stealthy so you can't be stealthy. It's occasionally a pain because stealth in this game is awesome, but there are plenty of times when you'll be by yourself so you can just be stealthy then.

So even the points about the game that I thought I wouldn't like turned out to be okay... and after that you had an awesome game.

A really awesome game. When I first heard about the game it sounded a lot like Fallout 3, and since I have a love obsession with Fallout 3 I was totally game. Other then being set in a dystopian, irradiated future it turned out to be nothing like Fallout 3... but instead I got a little gem of a game.

Metro 2033 is like if you mixed Fallout 3, STALKER, and FEAR all into one game. So basically, awesome.

A nuclear war has taken out all of human civilization, those who survived now live in the metro under Moscow. And that's where you meet Artyom, the protagonist of our little story. Basically you're world has been taken over by a bunch of funky mutated creatures who are hell bent on eating your face off as well as the Dark Ones. The Dark ones are the real threat in the world, they have the power to drive humans insane and slaughter entire groups of people... and it's your job to stop them! Lucky Artyom!

So you start out on your quest through the metro, and you're going to meet a lot of people and creatures. Some will want to help and some, again, will want to eat your face. Which keeps things interesting.

This game certainly keeps you on your toes. Whether it's sneaking past a group of enemies, heading down a dark corridor, wondering where that noise came from, or searching for more gas mask filters, you will be on edge.

Seriously, one of the most tense moments in the game came from searching for a gas mask filter. You see the air on the surface is unbreathable, so you need a gas mask as well as filters while on the surface. Run out of filters, you run out of air, which means you die a slow death. There I was, in a huge firefight and I notice I have no filters left. There's still three guys to kill and I can't breath. I start choking for air. Two men down, one to go. I'm gasping. I kill the third. It's a mad dash into houses, cars, corridors looking for a filters. My mask if fogging up, the wind is whipping up snow, I can't see. Finally I spot a shack, I run in and find spare gas mask filters. I can breath again. It was a seriously intense moment... and it wasn't scripted. I ran out of gas mask filters because I had been wandering around. Not because I hit a trigger scene and it happened. It could really happen anywhere... and it was great. Sure if I had died I would have just gone back to my last checkpoint, but I wasn't thinking about that. All I was thinking about was that I needed to find more filters.

There's just so much fun to be had in Metro 2033. My advice, as soon as you can, get some silenced guns. Once you have the night vision goggles it can be so much fun. I was sneaking up on a camp of bad guys, so the first thing I did was shoot out all the lights and shroud them in darkness. Then I pull out the night vision goggles and pick them off one by one as they stumbled around in the dark. Now I know why Buffalo Bill did it in Silence of the Lambs... because it's damn fun, that's why.

Sure Metro 2033 has some flaws: I would have much preferred a save anywhere system to a checkpoints system, sometimes I was unclear on whether the gun I was carrying was better than the gun I could buy/pickup, there were a couple quick time events, and scopes seemed fairly useless. But these were all minor complaints in an otherwise very good game.

This is 4A Games first game, and I'm looking forward to seeing what they do next. This game was a hell of a fun time, do yourself a favor and grab it. If you're a fan of first person shooters I don't think you'll be disappointed.

Squid.