The graphics

Horrible. Well, I’d consider them fantastic if this were 1984 and I was playing this on my Atari 800. Rockstar made the game near impossible to run for the average pc owner, medium powered machines won’t be happy with it either. The game looks pathetic, even with the secondary hacks I applied to try to get the game to look decent.

You see, the idiots at Rockstar failed to give us options to really control the graphics in the game. No anti-aliasing options, you can’t control the shading or fine details. Its just all , or nothing. I even created my own commandline file and tricked the game to run at much higher levels, with very little success.

Yes, my 1gb video card.. my 4gb or ram and dual core processers barely squeak out a sniff of beauty in this game. I forced the game into 1920×1280 and it still looks pathetic.

The Adventure

More of the same, but Rockstar has taken out the truely fun elements of this once proud franchise. Gone are the really fun side adventures we used to love in the GTA series. You can vary your choices along the way, take different paths to your goal.. but nothing too new here.

The Cheats

Gone are the wonderful cheats that were so addictive, they made you forget the missions and just have fun. Good luck just typing in “Monster Mash”, spawning a monster truck and plowing over pedestrians then running away for more damage and adventure. Gone is the jetpack, the huge bunnyhops.. its all gone. Instead they give you a few lame cheats you have to type in the ingame cellphone.

The Gameplay

Hard to tell since it looks like you are playing your old Nintendo or Atari. The inability to give anyone but the best systems real graphics makes this game almost unplayable.

The Verdict

Avoid this game, if you have a mid range system, you’ll be unimpressed. If you have a 2k$ gaming rig, you may like it.

The Game

Gears of War® 2 picks up six months after the events of the original game,and thrusts you back into a deep and harrowing story of humankind’s epic battle for survival against a nightmarish force of underground creatures known as the Locust Horde.

The Contest

The Wingman Assault LIVE Weekend is sponsored by Transporter 3, in theaters on November 26. In this fast-paced action film, Frank Martin (Jason Statham) must complete the mission to save his life.

Register your gamertag now and get ready for a whole weekend of fun and competition! From 12:01 A.M. (ET) on Friday, November 7 until 11:59 P.M. (ET) on Sunday November 9, you’ll get an entry into the sweepstakes when you play a multiplayer Gears of War 2 match.

Prize Information

After the entry period, will conduct a prize drawing for the following nine winners from among all eligible entries:

* Two Grand Prizes: A custom Gears of War 2 Xbox 360 console
* Two Second Prizes: A Gears of War 2 Special Edition Zune 120 GB digital media player
* Five Third Prizes: A Gears of War 2 Limited Edition game

The Game

Virtually unchanged since 07, EA Sports is still the king of the NHL.

The Good

Awesome graphics, HD quality … really impressive movements with the players. The sounds are great, very lifelike. Challenging.

The Bad

Quite tough to score, players are still stupid at times. I attempt passes to the player in front of me and often it won’t pass to that player. One timer ability sucks big time, rarely works. Players get stuck going behind the net, same as NHL 98, they have never been able to fix this.

Annoying commentary. Can’t setup the game to skip instant replays, which sucks big time.

The Verdict

Still a great game, still has lots of bugs that they can’t seeem to get rid of.

Crysis Review

Answer? Yes and No. Take away the wicked graphics, and Crysis is an average game. There isn’t a ton of gameplay here, there really isn’t. Its not like Grand Theft Auto where you can explore with incredible command and precision. Sure, you can hop in a hummer and go for a cruise… but you really aren’t going anywhere. The surroundings don’t really have a purpose for the most part.

I was really getting into the game, when once again.. Aliens have to come into the picture. I hate it when they bring aliens into video games for no reason. If I wanted to kill aliens, I suppose I’d buy a game based around this premise. Why do they always have to huck aliens into my video games?

Then I had to spend a couple hours swimming in an alien environment for some reason. It would have been enjoyable for one level.. but damnit.. 3 levels? No thanks, I didn’t sign up for this in a FPS. Just let me shoot people, buildings, vehicles and leave me alone. I don’t want to swim in The Matrix, which this game entirely ripped off BTW.

The Problems

The vehicles don’t handle well. They are slow and unresponsive. For example, hop in a Hummer and see if you can go up a little hill just off a main road. Nope, you’ll stall. Everyone raving about Crysis, because of the graphics, they really aren’t focusing on the game play.

Still, there are lots of bugs with Cryisis. Even if your system has more than enough power you’ll encounter lots of issues, that sucks. My game crashed often and lots of glitches preventing me from completing levels without tricking the game. Some levels I couldn’t shoot the enemy, I had to strangle them.. or I couldn’t proceed.

The Verdict

Remember when Dragon’s Lair came out? All everyone spoke about was the graphics, because well.. the game itself wasn’t very special. I feel the same about Crysis, its pretty to look at .. but .. thats about it.

Oh yeah, stupid aliens, enough is enough.

Episode 2 is short, and its easy. Nothing original in the way of weaponry, nothing new anywhere. Some new characters to battle, and thats eat. I can drive a car, but since there’s no gun to fire out of the front window, I found this tedious and boring.

The graphics are the usual quality you’d expect from Valve. To me, its the same quality as Half Life 2. If you noticed some minor improvments over the original, you probably have a very nice pc that can pump out the fine details.

The game is rather short, I blasted my way through in a few hours. I was disappointed in how little I got to explore the surroundings, considering how much takes place outdoors. I was also disappointed how much of the game took place in the abondoned mines, underground. It just reminded me of Doom, it gets really lame after awhile. My flashlight doesn’t last long enough to make the dark surroundings enjoyable when its dark.

I still find the control somewhat irritating too. Characters often get in the way, obstacles are somewhat clumsy to navigate around at times. Maybe i’m too much of a fan of the Grand Theft Auto series, and I’m spoiled. I enjoy snooping around and I don’t get that satisfaction out of the Half Life series.

Its a good game, if you have a few hours to kill, but don’t look for anything groundbreaking in the Big Orang Box!

The graphics

Horrible. Reminded me of a FPS from the early 90’s. The controls? Nothing original. You can cook a grenade before hucking it at the idiotic AI. Speaking of the AI, they are about as bright as the hookers in Grand Theft Auto.

The only promising graphic detail is when you have the pre-mission briefing. The rest suffers from unoriginal details and textures, the lighting is weak as well.

The Adventure

There’s no adventure in this game. While you can finish the mission in any order, you can’t adventure around, and there isn’t anything to see regardless. I found it amusing how I could jump into a truck 3 feet off the ground, but I couldn’t jump over a small boulder.

The game is short, real short. 6 Missions… and none of the take more than 25 minutes to complete… if you are really slow. I tackled every level pretty easy with a sniper rifle and machine gun.

The final two levels were fun, the previous four were pathetic. The real annoying part of the game was the fact you could only save at certain check points, and not just anywhere. What a corny premise in this day and age…. just let me save where I am, I don’t want to do the level over from the previous check point.

The Gameplay

Finally, and the funniest part of the game… is when the German troops gain more experience as the game progresses. The funny part? The german soldiers take 6-7 bullets in the head before dying.. instead of 1-2 like the inexperienced troops. Because, apparently if you are a higher ranking soldier, it takes more bullets to penetrate your skull? Wow, this makes a lot of sense.

The Verdict

Avoid this game, it stinks.

The characters and names are the same. NOD vs GDI .. this time the Scrin make an appearance {An alien race who you battle from time to time}

Yeah but, is it fun? Yes. The graphics aren’t breathtaking, the field of battle is still too small… {you can’t zoom out far enough for my liking} but its still a blast.

Drop me a line if you want to hook up for multiplayer at some point.. I’ll give you an old fashioned whoopin.