E3 ON MY MIND

E3 is almost here ladies and gentlemen. Soon, the wait will be over and all the rumors, all the hype, all the fan fare will be over faster than Terminator: Salvation the video game. And that’s pretty damn fast. But with all these rumors, all these games left to be announced, and more details to be revealed on already announced games, I’m here to discuss what I want to see at E3. I just found out I will be downtown L.A. at the same time the Microsoft Press Conference starts tomorrow, and I can’t get in. That’s like torture for me, but I have to be down there so.. maybe someone can sneak me in? (Email me if you perform miracles!) Anyway.. here is what I’m interested in at E3 and why:

First off, I will make a prediction that is so out in left field, it’s probably dead wrong. But I’m throwing it out there anyway hoping it sticks. If I’m right, I may be the only one who predicted it. If I’m wrong, which I probably am, well then I don’t really care. All I know is, Black was one of the best shooters for the original Xbox (after Halo and Half Life) and it’s about damn time we see a Black 2. The market is there, I just don’t know if Criterion actually has enough time to make this, what with all the Burnout DLC they have released. But what if another developer picked up Black 2? Like I said, way out in left field, and wishful thinking. I can dream can’t I? If not this E3, maybe next year.

Another game that hasn’t been discussed, like at all, is the game currently being developed by ex-Blizzard veterans at Red 5 Studios. We know it’s a new RPG, we know it’s a cool art direction which includes all hand painted textures, and we know it just may be the next big RPG to take on World of Warcraft. (does that game really exist? We’ll find out soon enough.) But in the end, we really have no clue what they’re up to and it’s been regarded as a huge secret. I don’t like secrets, I want to know what they’re doing! Even if it’s not the type of game I usually enjoy playing, the anticipation of a new IP being announced, and being announced from a studio who happens to be 20 minutes away from me, just makes me all the more anxious to know what the secret game is.

I have been waiting a long time for an Xbox handheld type device. I thought it would never come. I did want to buy a PSP but just couldn’t bring myself to spend the money. I did buy a DS and that ended up being a waste. Fun while it lasted but not too fun if you have to play it by yourself. Which is why the new Zune HD intrigues me. They say it’s to battle the iPod but let’s face it, if the main device in Microsoft’s sight isn’t the iPhone, then don’t waste your time Microsoft. The iPod is nothing special. Here’s hoping Microsoft does everything right with the new Zune HD. If that’s indeed what it’s called and it indeed does do what the rumors say. I’m so there.

Motion controls eh? The Wii has done it already. They’ve already announced Wii Plus motion controls. Now there is word the PS3 and 360 make jump on the bandwagon? Wait, didn’t PS3 already go this route with their motion controller? It failed didn’t it? Why would they try again? I’m not a big fan of this motion control fad. And that’s what it is, it’s just a fad. I don’t think it will catch on, at least not in the way the Nintendo Wii has done it. For us simple gamers, I’d rather not have to be pointing at the screen while playing a game. Give me the old school controllers and I’m good to go. But Microsoft may get rid of the controllers all together with this new 3D ZCam you say? I’ll remain a skeptic on this one. Not feelin‘ it, and I’m not sure other hardcore gamers will care enough to fork out more dough on an unproven product. We shall see, but just so you understand.. I’m stubborn with this one and I’m not a fan. Keep it simple.

So with all these games to be shown at E3, what are the games that have already been discussed? These are some of the games I’m excited to learn more about.

Lost Planet 2:

I bought the first Lost Planet and enjoyed the single player adventure. Very memorable. However, no one really got into the multiplayer which is too bad, because it was actually pretty good. The multiplayer demo is what got me to buy the game in the first place. Here’s hoping the 4 player co-op gameplay already shown, will be enough to get my friends interested in buying this day one, and for sticking around to see what the multiplayer is like. I look forward to more details on this at E3.

Borderlands:

I’ve written about this game many times. With the new art direction, I think we can be guaranteed to see more details on the art direction, and hopefully some actual gameplay footage. This game is being played up as a pretty big title to get released, here’s to hoping all the hype will ring true. I still want to find out more and specifically, I want a release date. Like a selfish kid in a candy store, I want I want I want! (First look at Borderlands in motion at GameTrailers.com)

Heavy Rain:

I wasn’t that excited about this game from Quantic Dream until I played their last game they made. If you own a 360, you should do yourself a favor and play an old Xbox Original from this developer called Indigo Prophecy. I think it’s been available as an Xbox original download since day one and it took me a very long time to finally download it and try it out. I was not disappointed. It’s unlike any game I have ever played and the first gameplay footage I saw of Heavy Rain the other day, totally makes sense to how Quantic Dream creates their suspenseful gameplay. I believe this is only a PS3 exclusive so I’m a bit down by that, but the PS3 owners deserve their exclusives just like 360 owners. We can’t get all the good games it seems.

Max Payne 3:

Just finished playing another Xbox Original, Max Payne 2, and it was surprisingly better than the first. The 3rd just might be epic right? It certainly can lead to that level I’m sure. It’s Max Payne we’re talking about. I hope to see what the new developers, Rockstar Vancouver, have up their sleeves. It’s supposed to come out this winter so we better see some details of what they’re trying to sell us. But please, don’t rely on the name itself to sell the game. And don’t give us another Bully either.

Alan Wake:

If I don’t see some major gameplay, and tons more details on this game, I think I may already be done with it. This game has been talked about for so long, and hyped up to be this crazy suspense thriller to crush all suspense thrillers.. and all we get are a couple of screenshots? For how many years now? How many E3’s have gone by? Look Remedy, just bring it! Or else you can add another critic to the pile. Give us some gameplay already! Better yet, give us a fracken release date!

And last but not least, I’ll ramble on down to the end of this post by saying I also want to see.. Bubble Bobble for the Xbox Live arcade. Don’t ask why, just give me some old school memories. I loved that game. I would also like to see a new Mario game. Not another Mario Galaxy or Mario Kart, I’m talking about an old school-new school Mario platformer. Bring it back Nintendo c’mon! Also, rumors and leaks are rampant with the PSP Go, although I doubt I’ll end up buying one, I would like to see the features of the new PSP and how it may compare to the rumored Xbox Zune HD handheld that may or may not even exist. I’ll have to decide between the two and figure out which is the better entertainment investment. Mass Effect 2 will be shown as well I’m sure. We’ve already seen some footage so I look forward to seeing if Bioware has any surprises in store. (Bioshock 2? meh.. don’t care) And finally of course, I hope to see some Halo: ODST details and gameplay for sure! With Tricia Helfer confirmed as a voice for one of the characters, ‘Dare’, the game is looking to take a whole new direction which I am getting increasingly excited about in this new Halo adventure. Curious to know if her character plays a small part, or if her character is the main character we’ll be playing. A female Master Chief? Hmmmm.. interesting. I’ll take 2, thank you.

SECTION 8 GAMEPLAY VIDEO

Well looky here looky here my friends. We got’s some gameplay footage courtesy of CinemaBlend.com. (It says they’re trailers, but trailers they are not) I wrote about this game a few months back as I was excited to see something like Halo, but on steroids. And from the film I’ve posted above, it looks like that’s exactly what this is. One of the major flaws of Halo, in my opinion of course, is the lack of a sprint function. I never knew it even needed one until COD 4 came out. Going back and forth between those games, it feels like the pace in Halo 3 is in slo-mo compared to it’s more quick paced competitor. The speed featured in this video would be welcomed by me. In this game, and in my beloved Halo 3. Not a full on sprint, but not a jog either.

So here you can see how you will spawn into a multiplayer match. Falling straight out of the sky, superhero style. Very nice. On top of that, the weapons look and sound just fine. Especially the pistol. With regard to the bigger weapon this guy is firing, I’m noticing no major recoil at all. Which is nice sometimes. In some games, recoil can be a bit too exaggerated and I find myself shooting like a wild donkey on stilts. That’s if donkeys had an index finger of course. But you can get the visual… it’s not pretty. But this? Section 8? Lookin’ mighty fine right now. I can’t wait to see more and to learn more about this game, especially the story (there is a story to this right?). It might be trying to be too much like Bungie’s Halo series, but if they can make Halo proud and go above and beyond all expectations of it’s obvious inspiration(which they will need to do, otherwise this will just be called a cheap knock-off)then I’m all for it. Bring on the good times I say!

See two other videos of Section 8 at CinemaBlend.com..

THE GAMER REPORT REVIEW: TERMINATOR: SALVATION

There is a severe lack of games out right now that I actually want to play. Every now and again when this type of game-drought occurs, I will take the chance on something I normally wouldn’t play. Sometimes it works out great, (X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Kameo, Dead Space) and sometimes the game ends up being so bad, it hurts my nether regions. The latter of the two outcomes was the case with Terminator: Salvation. When I first saw the game being put freshly onto the shelf, I thought to myself, “it’s friggin Terminator! How bad could it really be?” Well, let me tell you, IT IS BAD. Not even the great Arnold, or the inclusion of the mysteriously missing online co-op could have saved this P.O.S. of a game. More on that later. As of the day I decided to rent it, I had actually only seen a few clips of gameplay on TeamXbox.com that actually looked pretty decent. Third person over-the-shoulder cover-based shooter, a la Gears of War, set in the Terminator realm? I’m in! Make no mistake about it, Gears of War-esque this game is DEFINITELY not!

Let’s start with the very few things this game actually does right. First and foremost, the cover system works pretty good for the most part, kind of. Most of the cover in the post-apocalyptic L.A. environments are interactive. From car carcasses to small walls and rubble, you can pretty much take cover on just about anything. A touch of the A-button will have your character take cover just like Gears of war. Only difference, (which really bugged me) is you basically have to walk directly up to the cover and hold A for a second to take cover. It would have been nice to have some sort of a dive or dash like Gears has. Once in cover, if there are other objects nearby to take cover and advance position, a sort of pie graph comes up to show where you can actually advance to. This is where the game slightly shines. The animations of your character sliding in and out of cover are spectacular! This is a bit ironic as the rest of the game’s animations, (particularly in the cutscenes) are downright atrocious. Another aspect that was done pretty decently was the music score, (although it did get a bit repetitive as the game progressed) which sounded a lot like what you would see in one of the Terminator movies. The graphics and environments aren’t mind blowing, but you can tell way more effort was put into the lighting and shading and graphics as a whole in comparison to the gameplay.

Another thing I found semi-impressive was the enemy AI, especially the “spider” type robots. These enemies usually show up in pairs, if not 3 or 4 of them, and the only way to defeat them is to flank while in cover to get some shots on the battery located on their back, as they are invulnerable to fire from the front. This is another time the game actually does something right, as you are always paired up with 2 to 3 squadmates. You must slide around from cover to cover and get these robots into a crossfire in which case either yourself or your squadmates will plug them from behind (OK that came out wrong). Again the irony here is a bit strange. The bots themselves are so smart sometimes it feels like you just can’t trick these things into giving up their back. But once you do lure them into coming after you, the AI of your squadmates is too pathetic to be beneficial to you. Often times you will find yourself pinned down, your squadmates fail at taking the wide open shots, so the awesome series of dives you performed in cover to flank these bad-boys proved worthless. This is frustrating, especially on the harder difficulty. The few weapons that are available sound and feel decent, which ironically enough, (yes more irony) does not transfer over to the explosions. That’s really about it on the good side.

Now for the bad, which out-weighs the good by a hefty margin. Let’s begin with the controls. There is no sprint button, no roll, no dive and not even a decent weapon changing command. The grenades and pipe-bombs are mapped to the right bumper, with no recticule for aiming where you would like to throw them. So you got your basic: trigger to shoot, A to cover, B to switch weapons and right bumper to throw grenades.. that’s it? That’s it. It sure would have been nice to utilize the awesome 360 controller to perform a few more actions. The game feels so bare-bones. It honestly feels like the game was made in a day or two. The story is practically non-existent, the cutscenes are horribly animated and far too frequent, and even the loading screen sucks! By about the eleventeenth time in ten minutes you see the Endo-Terminator’s face during the loading screen, you will want to punch a baby!

Sometimes the game will go into a cutscene, come out of it and have your character walk 2 or 3 steps before it loads another one. WTF is the point of that? Picking up weapons is frustratingly difficult, sometimes the animation of throwing explosives doesn’t work and many times you have a clear shot around cover only to find yourself shooting into the cover right in front of you. On top of that, the Endo-Terminators and “skin walkers” take far too much to kill. The game is not directed well, and does not progress well enough to do the Terminator franchise justice. The enemy variation consists of three types of enemies throughout the entire game: the common Endo-Terminator we are familiar with, small flying sentinel-type bots called “wasps” and the aforementioned “spider” bots. That is it! The WHOLE game. A couple times throughout the game you will shoot down a Hunter Killer, (basically a airplane-like Terminator) which is pretty uneventful. The game also throws in a couple rail missions where you will be on the turret of a buggy or truck, or shooting RPG’s on the back of a train. There is even one section where you take control of the large mech-style Terminator, although you are not moving it, just aiming. The whole section is done in the red vision (like Arnold sees in the first 2 movies) which was a poor choice and really takes away from the originality of it.

Another thing I found unacceptable was the selection of weapons. Basically two machine guns, a very scarce rocket launcher or Grenade launcher and a shotgun is all you can use to do major damage. The machine guns are pretty worthless, as well as the few turrets. I found myself using the shotgun the majority of the game as it was extremely accurate even from across the map. On that note, the levels were so linear and uncreative. Many times there were stairways or balconies that would seem like good flanking positions, but end up being worthless. The game is just downright unpolished and it shows throughout. I kept thinking it would get better as it progressed, but it never really did.

There were several other gripes I won’t even go into, as this game is barely even deserving of a review in the first place. The campaign only lasted about three hours or so for me, and by the end I still didn’t even know that a story had been set into motion. You can play split-screen on the same console, but not online which is a shame as it might have made this game a little more tolerable. Most of the game’s action is really bogged down by framerate issues and screen tearing, especially during the slightly enjoyable rail-style missions. There are no collectibles and no interesting unlockables/trophies/achievements to speak of and my advice is to just pass on this one unless you’re looking for an easy 1000 gamerscore. Here is to hoping the movie is better than the game was!

-DIGGITY OUT

GOBEE’s Opinion (similar to DIGGITY’s):
My buddy rented Terminator: Salvation the other day and invited me over for some co-op. I heard the game wasn’t that good but it could be finished in about 4 hours. We had some time to kill before the Laker game so we tried the game out and well… we didn’t even last 20 minutes before we were so disgusted with this game, it had to be turned off. If there had been a baby around, surely it would have been punched because of this monstrosity. I’m more disgusted that this game was even released to the general public as if this game added any value to the gaming community, other than to show other game developers exactly what not to do. I have to be careful here because the language I want to use in describing this game is so horrific, Google might shut my blog down. In fact, some of the words I would like to use, haven’t even been invented yet.

This game should truly go down in the record books as one of the worst, most half-assed, shit filled game… ever. Or at least in the top 5 shitty games. (hmmm… future post?) I can’t remember that many bad games but this one stands out like a bright shiny turd nugget in a bucket of milk. I don’t even know what the hell that means my friends.. but it sure as hell can’t be good.

PSA: Do not buy this game. Do not rent this game. Thank us later.

INTERSTELLAR MARINES: AAA INDIE

Like I said a few weeks ago, Indie games is where it’s at for me right now with games like COGS, Zero Gear and others. Indie game developers seem to be able to implement more creative and outrageous ideas overall and for Indie developers like Zero Point Software, the risks of running with those ideas just may reap the rewards in the end. What kind of risks you ask? Well let me ask you something. Are you afraid of sharks? Oh, you’re not? OK, well maybe that’s because you don’t like to swim in the ocean. That’s fine, I hear ya. I’m a lake/river guy myself. No need to be afraid of something when you’re never in the creatures natural habitat, right? Riiigghht. But… and this is a big but, and I cannot lie (sorry, bad Sir Mixalot joke) … what if those sharks decided to randomly grow some legs of their own and enter your natural habitat? Would you be scared of these mutant land shark creatures then? Yea, I thought so. My friends, welcome to your worst nightmare. Welcome to Interstellar Marines. (See video above to get your freaky land shark fix)

The best part about Indie for me is, Indie game developers have no problem with giving the public behind the scenes access of how the game is made. Which to me, honestly, should be done with every game. I truly want to know what went into making a product like, say The Darkness, and I want to know if forking over $60+ is going to be worth it for me. Video Games are an entertainment investment and should be treated that way. Developers can show not only what game they’re working on and how they’re developing it, but they can show who is working on it. I guess it’s a lot easier to show who is working on a game when you don’t have 500+ employees you have to take pictures of say like, at EA or ActiBlizzard. I can see how that may be an annoying task to complete. Indie game developers on the other hand tend to work in smaller, more family-like teams which to me, equals a better developed game. They can take their time on it, they don’t have a greedy publisher breathing down their necks, they’re not pressured into finishing the game just for the sake of finishing it and everybody knows what each employee is responsible for on the game. They can take that extra time and polish their art to perfection.

Which makes me wonder, why do some gamers still accept and purchase the same rehashed garbage games that some of the bigger developers/publishers shove down our throats year after year? I have been part of that crowd for a long time and have purchased many AAA games that in the end, I regretted. Why? Because for all the millions of dollars in marketing and all of the overrated hype that leads up to a new IP release date, the $60 price tag is not even close to justifying said hype. I refuse to buy a game, especially a sequel, when there is nothing new, creative or innovative to justify the hype. If it adds no value to the gaming community, what’s the point? Intersteller Marines is on the right path and I highly recommend you follow this game.

Speaking of no added value, the review for Terminator Salvation will be coming soon.. stay tuned.

Check out more of InterStellar Marines…
Learn more about AAA Indie…

GAME INDUSTRY STILL NOT PAYING OVERTIME?

Crunch time eh?

One of the most famous, if not the most famous, story regarding the game industry and its failure to properly compensate extra hours worked, does not come from an industry employee. Rather, it comes from the wife of the employee (who worked for EA at the time) who saw her husband putting in long hours, and was not being rewarded for it. She witnessed him getting burnt out during crunch time, and it started to effect their lives together. To a point where a whistle had to be blown. It was a story my girlfriend and I read a few times over before I finally made my decision to enter this growing industry and for the most part, I thought the complaint and lawsuit was done and over with. This was many years ago and times have changed. Right? The game industry, and EA specifically, learned their lesson and started to comply with basic laws for associates. If I put in a certain amount of hours, I expect to get paid for those hours of hard work. But is the problem still out there? Did the lawsuit and eventual multi-million dollar payout to the programmers and artists involved not solve anything?

It’s hard to say really as it depends on who you ask. But to shed some light on this issue, Developmag.com has released a recent survey of game developers regarding overtime pay and well… it’s not a positive sign. Opinion’s are pretty split from developers around the world. It looks like our beloved game indsutry still has some growing up to do. While I am sure overtime and “crunch times” aren’t as bad as they used to be because of these past lawsuits and internal complaints, there is definitely room for improvement.

Head on over to Developmag.com to read what other developers around the world are saying in this Quality of Life survey.

TECMO FAMILY FUN FOOTBALL

For those who don’t know, I usually only play video games on the 360.. and sometimes on the PC. But recently, I finally got my hands on a Nintendo Wii. I’m still not that big of a fan, but that’s more because of the lack of good quality games for the Wii. The Wiimote, motion sensing is kind of gimicky to me (even on the PS3 and 360, I really don’t care about motion sensing) and well, I just really prefer the old school method of using a simple controller. The simple things in life my friends, always the best.

Enter Tecmo from way out in left field. You remember Tecmo right? Well, I for one certainly remember Tecmo Bowl. One, if not the very first, football video games I ever played. I remember playing with my best friend and always arguing over who got to be the Raiders, and more importantly, who got to be the Raiders with Bo Jackson (greatest athlete of all time! BTW, where the hell did Bo go anyway?) At the time, Bo was the best at just about everything. Football, Baseball, writing books (Bo knows Bo.. awesome book!) and even video games. He was unstoppable! Don’t believe me, watch the old school Tecmo.

So here’s to hoping Tecmo for the Wii will be just as fun as Tecmo Bowl with Bo Jackson. I will remain a bit skeptical about this game with a bunch of mini-games, but if it’s fun for the whole family, I just may pick this up for my nephews.

COD: MODERN WARFARE 2 TRAILER

Y‘know, I don’t even need to say anything about this trailer. You know what to expect and I know you know that I know, you don’t really care to read anything right now.. you just want to watch this. So excuse me, I’ll get out of your way and you can carry on with your Memorial Day holiday weekend and watch this incredible clip of the new Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 trailer. After so many teases, it’s about damn time we get to see the full sha-bang and what a perfect weekend to release it to the public.

Remember, if you see anyone in uniform today.. actually, if you ever see a man or woman in uniform, make sure to go up to them and thank them for serving and putting their lives on the line everyday, so people like us can sit here and watch video game trailers. You don’t need to wait for a holiday to give you an excuse to thank a marine, a soldier, a fighter pilot… just thank them.

Thanks to Kotaku for the vid.

TEAM ICO’S NEW VIDEO GAME

I don’t think this video was supposed to be seen before E3 but.. too late! Hundreds of thousands of fans have already viewed this in a few short hours. From the makers of Shadow of the Colossus, Team ICO looks to be giving us another experience unlike any other.

I unfortunately never got to play Shadow of the Colossus but another student took the time to show the game to me during class one day. Now I wish I got to actually played the game because it looked amazing, and it seems to come from a special set of developers. Even though it was on the PS2, it still was one to remember. Just watch this video, you’ll be impressed. I got weirded out a bit by watching this huge character featured in this trailer but they made the movements and personality traits so realistic, it’s hard not to stare and wonder.. what the hell is that!?

MOST DEFINITELY WORTHY: MAX PAYNE 2

Once I heard word that Max Payne and Max Payne 2 were on the Xbox Live Marketplace for download, I knew the charge on my credit card would be worthy of the purchase. I just couldn’t decide which one I wanted to buy, because I knew I had already played one of them. I didn’t want to download both because well, I’m a cheap ass. It’s cool, I’m totally comfortable admitting that. Also, I was certain I had played the first one but couldn’t quite remember what Max Payne 2 was all about. So I felt like I was taking a risk downloading this one not knowing if I had played it before, or if I even liked it. But I knew I liked the first Max Payne so I gave the sequel a go.

To my surprise, the game overall was very entertaining. It has an artistic dramatic story similar to the first and the comic style cut scenes easily draw you into the story. I really enjoyed that aspect of the game. It didn’t start off well for me though. I knew I was downloading an older game, but to see how low poly the characters are in this game was quite a shock to me. I have gotten so used to HD graphics and high poly characters, you forget sometimes y’know? Boxy shoulders, stretched textures, and seams in almost every scene. We’re really spoiled with the games that are released now days. It’s nice to be reminded how fortunate we are with how far the game engines and 3d modeling technology has come.

The game was off to a slow start but once the story grabs hold of you, that’s it. Moving forward through each level, I couldn’t help but be impressed at how well this game was made. What made it even more impressive to me was the fact that this game was made almost 6 years ago. That’s really not that long ago but in the video game world, it’s quite obvious how far we’ve come since Max Payne 2. But still, very impressive for it’s time and still is today. With random dark humor and all, this has become one of my favorite games ever.

I really enjoyed the bullet time in Max Payne 2. I found myself using it more and more as the game progressed. I needed to in order to take out the many enemies lurking behind every door and corner. Using it while reloading is probably one of the coolest features of the game. The slow motion and the 360 degree reload spin isn’t very practical but it sure as hell looks cool! Very Hollywoodish. Very Matrixy. (I know those aren’t words but you still understand them)

Unfortunately for the shooting and aiming though, I felt like that mechanic was a bit off in the game. I don’t know if this is because it’s a different version made specifically for download or if the original game was like this as well. When I would shoot someone at just about any distance, it almost didn’t matter that my recticule wasn’t directly aimed at the guy. Spray a few rounds in the general direction, and enough spray will take them down. I found myself spraying AK-47’s and MP5’s for dear life as I try to take them out before I ran out of painkillers, and somehow even though my aim was totally off, they managed to jump in the way of enough rounds to kill themselves. It worked in my favor so no complaints really. But if this was the case in today’s next gen games, it would be a huge flaw and possibly not even pass QA. That’s not to say it killed the game for me though, it did not. It’s just something you have to look past.

Not only do you get to play Max Payne in this game, you also get to play as a different character. Max Payne’s sick and twisted love interest, Mona. There is a level where Mona is helping Max Payne take out some dudes on the ground with the sniper. You somehow end up getting hurt (which happens a lot, this is the fall of Max Payne) and in order to find out what just happened to you and what Mona was doing the whole time, once you beat that part, you get to go back to the beginning of the level and play through as Mona to see her side of the story as well. So then you get to pick off the bad dudes with the sniper playing as Mona. I found it refreshing even though this has been done many times since this game. It still felt perfectly in place in the game.

I won’t talk too much more about this game because if you have not played this game yet, I am telling you it is most definitely worthy of a download onto your consoles hard drive. Especially if you played the first Max Payne, you must give Max Payne 2 a go. Need even more of a reason? Well, you need to play the second one before Max Payne 3 is released! You gotta catch up with the story right? So that’s more than enough reason right there you should take my advice, spend the $10 or so and download this game today. Yes it’s old, yes it doesn’t look as good as other games you’re currently playing, but in order to understand where the game industry is going, you first need to understand where the game industry has been. And Remedy’s Max Payne 2 to is the perfect example. Bravo Remedy. A few years too late, but bravo.

Best part of this entire game? No crying babies.

You can also read my last Most Definitely Worthy… Peggle.

TF2: MEET THE SPY… FINALLY

If you’re a fan of The Orange Box, you’re most likely a fan of Team Fortress 2. If you’re a fan of Team Fortress 2, then you’re a really big fan of the “Meet the” series of videos created by one hell of an artistic team of artists. I’m glad this came out today since I was trying to figure out what game I should play later on. This gives me enough reason to throw the disc back in my 360 and give Team Fortress 2 a go. The game isn’t a Halo or anything, but it’s definitely worth holding onto to play every once in a while. For me at least. Anyway, if any of you play this game and you see me online, send me an invite. I need to learn how to play this game better. All I do is use the guy with the rockets and shotgun. I have yet to used the Spy since I haven’t figured out how yet. Maybe I’ll work on that. Until then, enjoy the video! Hopefully it doesn’t get taken down.