Okay, once again sorry for the delay in posting. I had a pretty busy few weeks, but now I've got some time to catch up, so here are some game reviews.
First up, Ghostbusters!
I was very excited about this back when it came out, but at that time my 360 was busted, so I never got around to buying the game. I finally got a chance to play it recently and it was flat out awesome. This game was actually written by Harold Ramis and Dan Ackroyd, and it's an official part of Ghostbusters canon. Not only that, but it stars the same cast as the movies. Yes, Ackroyd, Ramis, Bill Murray, and Ernie Hudson voice the Ghostbusters in this game! So this game is pretty much Ghostbusters 3. If you're a long time fan of these movies this game will be a total treat for you.
As far as the actual gameplay goes, it's pretty great. There's a bit of a learning curve, but once you figure out how to wrangle those ghosts into the traps, you'll be busting like a pro. On the higher difficulties, the game can be quite a challenge. Getting the achievement for beating the game on its highest difficulty was just plain hard, but doing so made me feel really good about my skills. Just as good as beating The Force Unleashed on its highest setting did.
There is online multiplayer for this game, but I didn't play it. It sounded really cool, a lot of different modes where you both co-operate and compete with your fellow players. Problem is, two of the online achievements are currently glitched. They simply can't be unlocked, no matter what you do. So, no K'ing this game. Sorry, achievement whores. But you can still squeeze 800+ points out of the offline achievements.
Next, Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga.
I played the first Lego Star Wars on GameCube. This was Episodes I-III. I ran through the story mode, but never bothered to do anything else. Lego Star Wars II (Episodes IV-VI) I played on my 360, and because of the achievements I finished it 100%. Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga was the perfect opportunity for me to revisit Episodes I-III and score some achievements at the same time.
If you've played either of the other Lego Star Wars, then you've already played at least half of this game. But if you love the Lego games and/or Star Wars, and you're looking for 1,000 easy achievement points, you'll want to pick this up. It takes a lot of time to K this game, but it's still easier than Lego Star Wars II. It takes much less money to buy the score multipliers in this game.
At the moment, I'm playing The Orange Box, Lego Rock Band, and Saw, so expect reviews on them soon.
Showing posts with label star wars. Show all posts
Showing posts with label star wars. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Game review quickies - 3/2/10
Since my 360 had been broken for the better part of last year, I wanted to up my gamerscore a bit now that I have it back. So recently I played a few quick games to do just that. Here are the reviews.
Fight Night Round 3
I'm not big on sports games in general, boxing games in particular, so I have to admit I took the cheap route to the K in this game. Set the game to easy, turn off DQs, then just groin punch your way to victory. You rarely lose a fight this way. The game only has eight achievements and you can get them all in about five hours. An easy K. Now, if you wanted to take the time to learn the game legitimately, it seemed like it could be fun. Using the right stick to control your punches was something I hadn't experienced before. If you like boxing games, you might really dig this if you take the time to learn it. Or, you could do like me, spend a night punching people in the groin and get an easy K.
TMNT
This game was actually more fun than I thought it would be. This is the first Ninja Turtles game I've played since the NES days, so I don't know how they've been lately, but this one is decent. Of course, it still has lots of problems. Publisher Ubisoft put their stink all over this game, giving the Turtles all kinds of Prince-of-Persia-style moves, running up and along walls, swinging from poles and things like that. It's pretty cool, except for that you don't have to push a button to get them to do it, they just do it. As a result, you wind up running all over places you don't mean to, and often off into pits and dying. A lot. Fortunately, there are checkpoints every few minutes, so it's not that big of an issue. The combat is okay, but very simple. The game was obviously intended for a younger audience. The best part is that the twenty-three achievements are all very easy to get. Most of them you get just going through the game, and the ones you don't only require you to replay one level. I got all thousand points in one sitting. Easy K.
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
This one will take a bit more time than the others, but it's a fairly easy K as well. It's far from a perfect game, but in the end I still had fun playing this. It was developed by Traveler's Tales, the same folks responsible for the current Lego crossover games (Star Wars, Indy, Batman, etc.) and actually plays pretty similar to them. There are only six levels in this game, each with a number of sub-missions you must complete. The combat kind of sucks. Have you played any of the Lego Star Wars games? You know how when you're controlling a Jedi, and you swing your lightsaber at an enemy directly in front of you, but somehow you still miss? Yeah, this game is like that. It gets pretty annoying, especially because many of the achievements are to kill so many enemies with certain characters. Still, it's not terrible. I managed to get every single player achievement just going through the game. You will likely want to find a guide for this, though, as you have to collect a great number of hidden treasure chests to get all the achievements and some of them are tough to find. There are two co-op achievements. If you have a friend who wants to play with you (either local or online) you can get these easily. If not, just do what I did and find an easy mission in the first level, sign in another controller, and run through that mission the required number of times. Sounds annoying, but it was actually quick and easy to do. Two days playing time, and I have another thousand points for my gamerscore.
Jumper: Griffin's Story
Okay, here's where things get ugly. I actually started playing this game a long time ago. Like at least a year. I got to the end of the third level and got stuck, so I quit and never came back. After playing the games above, I saw this turd sitting on my shelf and figured I'd try and go back to it. There are only twenty achievements in this game, each worth fifty points. I already had a few from before, but ones I still needed included beating the game, beating it very quickly, and beating it without dying. I was not optimistic. But then I figured the game out. See, you have to understand that this is a bad game. Horrible camera, questionable fighting controls, uneven health pickups, etc. The fighting is based around teleportation (this movie is a prequel to the movie Jumper from a few years back, with Sam Jackson and Hayden Christensen), and to attack guys you press a button and teleport to that side of their body and attack. You have to watch this little ring around your targeted enemy's feet and try to press the button that corresponds with the green spot on that ring. If you hit it you build up your meter for power moves. If you hit the red spot on the ring, the enemy will block and counter you. Sounds simple enough, but the enemies always move around, thus moving the position of the ring, thus changing the context of your buttons. You have to think quick, and that gets pretty tough when there are five other enemies all trying to attack you at once. But once you figure out the rhythm, once you get the game down, it starts to get a lot easier. As you progress through the game and upgrade your weapon, it starts to get even more easy. At the end of the game you get a sword that literally cuts through dudes like a hot knife through butter. And the best part is, you can carry all your collectibles, weapon upgrades, and experience over to a new game after you beat it. So, muddle through it once, learn the combat system, and collect all the weapon upgrades, then you can start a new game and basically be unstoppable. On my second run through, I had no problem beating it without dying, and I did it in about a half an hour, too. After that it's just a simple matter of finding the collectibles, and you can use a guide for that. So this game is not an easy K, at first, but if you can force yourself to figure it out the achievements will soon fall into place for you.
So there you have it. Four games that, with a little work and patience, can really pad out your gamerscore. Rent them if you just want easy points, or if you're like me and have a compulsive urge to collect, pick them up on the cheap from your local used game store.
Fight Night Round 3
I'm not big on sports games in general, boxing games in particular, so I have to admit I took the cheap route to the K in this game. Set the game to easy, turn off DQs, then just groin punch your way to victory. You rarely lose a fight this way. The game only has eight achievements and you can get them all in about five hours. An easy K. Now, if you wanted to take the time to learn the game legitimately, it seemed like it could be fun. Using the right stick to control your punches was something I hadn't experienced before. If you like boxing games, you might really dig this if you take the time to learn it. Or, you could do like me, spend a night punching people in the groin and get an easy K.
TMNT
This game was actually more fun than I thought it would be. This is the first Ninja Turtles game I've played since the NES days, so I don't know how they've been lately, but this one is decent. Of course, it still has lots of problems. Publisher Ubisoft put their stink all over this game, giving the Turtles all kinds of Prince-of-Persia-style moves, running up and along walls, swinging from poles and things like that. It's pretty cool, except for that you don't have to push a button to get them to do it, they just do it. As a result, you wind up running all over places you don't mean to, and often off into pits and dying. A lot. Fortunately, there are checkpoints every few minutes, so it's not that big of an issue. The combat is okay, but very simple. The game was obviously intended for a younger audience. The best part is that the twenty-three achievements are all very easy to get. Most of them you get just going through the game, and the ones you don't only require you to replay one level. I got all thousand points in one sitting. Easy K.
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
This one will take a bit more time than the others, but it's a fairly easy K as well. It's far from a perfect game, but in the end I still had fun playing this. It was developed by Traveler's Tales, the same folks responsible for the current Lego crossover games (Star Wars, Indy, Batman, etc.) and actually plays pretty similar to them. There are only six levels in this game, each with a number of sub-missions you must complete. The combat kind of sucks. Have you played any of the Lego Star Wars games? You know how when you're controlling a Jedi, and you swing your lightsaber at an enemy directly in front of you, but somehow you still miss? Yeah, this game is like that. It gets pretty annoying, especially because many of the achievements are to kill so many enemies with certain characters. Still, it's not terrible. I managed to get every single player achievement just going through the game. You will likely want to find a guide for this, though, as you have to collect a great number of hidden treasure chests to get all the achievements and some of them are tough to find. There are two co-op achievements. If you have a friend who wants to play with you (either local or online) you can get these easily. If not, just do what I did and find an easy mission in the first level, sign in another controller, and run through that mission the required number of times. Sounds annoying, but it was actually quick and easy to do. Two days playing time, and I have another thousand points for my gamerscore.
Jumper: Griffin's Story
Okay, here's where things get ugly. I actually started playing this game a long time ago. Like at least a year. I got to the end of the third level and got stuck, so I quit and never came back. After playing the games above, I saw this turd sitting on my shelf and figured I'd try and go back to it. There are only twenty achievements in this game, each worth fifty points. I already had a few from before, but ones I still needed included beating the game, beating it very quickly, and beating it without dying. I was not optimistic. But then I figured the game out. See, you have to understand that this is a bad game. Horrible camera, questionable fighting controls, uneven health pickups, etc. The fighting is based around teleportation (this movie is a prequel to the movie Jumper from a few years back, with Sam Jackson and Hayden Christensen), and to attack guys you press a button and teleport to that side of their body and attack. You have to watch this little ring around your targeted enemy's feet and try to press the button that corresponds with the green spot on that ring. If you hit it you build up your meter for power moves. If you hit the red spot on the ring, the enemy will block and counter you. Sounds simple enough, but the enemies always move around, thus moving the position of the ring, thus changing the context of your buttons. You have to think quick, and that gets pretty tough when there are five other enemies all trying to attack you at once. But once you figure out the rhythm, once you get the game down, it starts to get a lot easier. As you progress through the game and upgrade your weapon, it starts to get even more easy. At the end of the game you get a sword that literally cuts through dudes like a hot knife through butter. And the best part is, you can carry all your collectibles, weapon upgrades, and experience over to a new game after you beat it. So, muddle through it once, learn the combat system, and collect all the weapon upgrades, then you can start a new game and basically be unstoppable. On my second run through, I had no problem beating it without dying, and I did it in about a half an hour, too. After that it's just a simple matter of finding the collectibles, and you can use a guide for that. So this game is not an easy K, at first, but if you can force yourself to figure it out the achievements will soon fall into place for you.
So there you have it. Four games that, with a little work and patience, can really pad out your gamerscore. Rent them if you just want easy points, or if you're like me and have a compulsive urge to collect, pick them up on the cheap from your local used game store.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
George Lucas on The Daily Show
It came to my attention today that George Lucas was on The Daily Show last month. If you didn't see it, or just want to see it again, you can do so here.
I thought it was a great interview, myself. John Stewart, aside from being funny and very good at his job, is obviously a big Star Wars fan. I especially liked what George had to say about people liking or not liking the new trilogy.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| George Lucas | ||||
| ||||
I thought it was a great interview, myself. John Stewart, aside from being funny and very good at his job, is obviously a big Star Wars fan. I especially liked what George had to say about people liking or not liking the new trilogy.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Beautiful morning
Have you ever woke up and had something happen that lets you know today is going to be a great day? I'll often go to sleep listening to the classical music station on the radio, WGUC. It helps me relax. Anyway, I woke up this morning and they did something they almost never do. They played Star Wars music! It was the opening titles from Episode I, followed by Duel of the Fates. I had been laying in bed thinking about going back to sleep for a bit, but once I heard that I knew it was time to get up and start my day.
Thanks, WGUC!
Thanks, WGUC!
Monday, January 25, 2010
My history: Sci-fi/fantasy
One of my very earliest memories is of my parents taking me to a drive-in theater to see Star Wars. For as long as I can remember Star Wars has been a part of my existence. It is truly my oldest friend. I love pretty much all Star Wars, from the original trilogy to the new prequels (yes, I'm even okay with Jar Jar), The Clone Wars movie and TV series, and the expanded universe novels (though I've only read a handful of those).
Star Wars may have began my love of science fiction and fantasy, but it sure didn't end there. Most any movie or TV show I watch or book I read is based in sci-fi or fantasy. Other movies and shows I'm a fan of include Star Trek (I don't understand anyone who says you can't like both, the two franchises are so different!), Indiana Jones, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The X-Files. There are lots more, but those are the really big ones.
Then there's novels. It used to be, for a long time, that 90% or more of the novels I chose to read were based off of other franchises I liked. Star Wars or Star Trek novels, mostly. Kind of sad, I know. As much as I like fantasy, especially being a big fan of the Final Fantasy game series, it's surprising to me that I didn't get into fantasy novels much sooner than I did, but for some reason whenever I saw them at the book store I just passed over them without any interest. But that changed in 1999.
My next younger brother has been reading fantasy novels for a long time, and back in '99 I was out Christmas shopping, trying to find something for him. I figured I'd go to the book store and pick out a decent looking fantasy novel. So, I'm looking them all over and I notice that many of them say "book x of y" on them. So I decided just to find one that looked cool, then find the first book in that series and be done with it. So I did. The book I wound up buying for him was Robert Jordan's The Eye of the World, book one in The Wheel of Time series. Later that night while I was wrapping presents, I took a closer look at the book. It looked pretty good, so with Christmas still two weeks away I decided to read it myself before I wrapped it up for him.
I was instantly hooked. Hooked just as bad as I was the first time I saw Star Wars, or played Zelda. I devoured this book. After I finished, I wrapped it up for my brother, then went out and bought my own copy, along with every other book in the series that was out at the time. My brother wound up liking the books as much as I did. The two of us got to see Robert Jordan once, at a book signing when book nine was released. Some of you may know that he died a few years later, so I feel privileged that we got to see him before he died, even if we didn't get to speak to him. By the way, I have yet to read the latest book in the series that recently came out, so if anyone wants to post any comments here please, no spoilers!
Reading The Wheel of Time opened my eyes to fantasy novels, and I've since read a few more series, with plans to read more in the future as time allows. Other series I've enjoyed include The Sword of Truth and Harry Potter.
Star Wars may have began my love of science fiction and fantasy, but it sure didn't end there. Most any movie or TV show I watch or book I read is based in sci-fi or fantasy. Other movies and shows I'm a fan of include Star Trek (I don't understand anyone who says you can't like both, the two franchises are so different!), Indiana Jones, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The X-Files. There are lots more, but those are the really big ones.
Then there's novels. It used to be, for a long time, that 90% or more of the novels I chose to read were based off of other franchises I liked. Star Wars or Star Trek novels, mostly. Kind of sad, I know. As much as I like fantasy, especially being a big fan of the Final Fantasy game series, it's surprising to me that I didn't get into fantasy novels much sooner than I did, but for some reason whenever I saw them at the book store I just passed over them without any interest. But that changed in 1999.
My next younger brother has been reading fantasy novels for a long time, and back in '99 I was out Christmas shopping, trying to find something for him. I figured I'd go to the book store and pick out a decent looking fantasy novel. So, I'm looking them all over and I notice that many of them say "book x of y" on them. So I decided just to find one that looked cool, then find the first book in that series and be done with it. So I did. The book I wound up buying for him was Robert Jordan's The Eye of the World, book one in The Wheel of Time series. Later that night while I was wrapping presents, I took a closer look at the book. It looked pretty good, so with Christmas still two weeks away I decided to read it myself before I wrapped it up for him.
I was instantly hooked. Hooked just as bad as I was the first time I saw Star Wars, or played Zelda. I devoured this book. After I finished, I wrapped it up for my brother, then went out and bought my own copy, along with every other book in the series that was out at the time. My brother wound up liking the books as much as I did. The two of us got to see Robert Jordan once, at a book signing when book nine was released. Some of you may know that he died a few years later, so I feel privileged that we got to see him before he died, even if we didn't get to speak to him. By the way, I have yet to read the latest book in the series that recently came out, so if anyone wants to post any comments here please, no spoilers!
Reading The Wheel of Time opened my eyes to fantasy novels, and I've since read a few more series, with plans to read more in the future as time allows. Other series I've enjoyed include The Sword of Truth and Harry Potter.
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