XBox – ../notes_to

Election Day : Bungie vs Microsoft !

Confetti. I felt so much glee as I hurried to GameStop to get the latest edition of Halo that it felt as if I had confetti swirling in my dome. Unfortunately, by the time I had slapped down my chunk of cash, my little snow globe burst.

Look at the photo below. From the left, you will see the previous two releases of Halo created by Bungie. On the far right, you will see today’s equivalently-priced release created by 343 Studios(aka Microsoft.) Note that these are the special editions — as opposed to the standard product. If you aren’t familiar with the saga, here is a summary of the corporate helldom that resulted in the tiny packet.

So disappointing … I would defect to Oracle/Java/Sun Microsystems/MySQL/ … or whoever they are this week but that probably would just be more of the same. Oh well, hopefully the actual game will still rock! 😀

XBox Game Review: Your Shape — Fitness Evolved

My Rating: 7/10

I got this program last year for the Kinect and still have not finished it. Even though the graphics are obviously first-generation Kinect, the content is good — if you’ve got the motivation. Unfortunately, the game is not very motivating. I wouldn’t even call this a game since there is no fun-factor. I’m sure I burned many more calories in Kinect Adventures. After all, white-water rafting is much more enjoyable than squats.

XBox Game Review: Homefront

My Rating: 6.5/10

Despite the nagging voice in the back of my head that this game would be all hype, I was looking forward to this game so much that I pre-ordered it anyway. Bad idea.

The story was interesting — Both North and South Korea join up with Japan to make a super-army that invades the United States. Having grown up in the Red Dawn era, the story inspired a touch of fear in me; however, this was quickly flamed out.

Game-play was rather sloppy. Auto-aim only worked for enemies that were really close so perhaps the PC version is better.

The graphics were not worth mentioning. Many of the same objects were re-used throughout the entire game.

The one good surprise was the multi-player mode. Though not terribly extensive, the game-play was enjoyable. Regardless, I decided not to invest in multi-player mode and also did not play this game back through for the achievements. Instead, I took it to GameStop to trade in for Crysis 2 for as much money as possible before the inevitable price-drop that is soon to arrive.

Xbox Game Review: Call of Duty – Black Ops

My Rating: 8/10

I was looking forward to the story-line in this game but ended up hating it. I switched the game to “Easy” mode just so I could get away from the repetitive, screeching, nails-on-the-chalkboard What do the numbers mean!!!” It seems that whenever Activision gets involved, then the Call Of Duty series goes downhill a ways.

The game-play is good and the the graphics are superb. Out of the majority of the other games, it should be a top-ranker in my book … but it is not. Like I mentioned, the campaign became so annoying that I had to force myself to finish it. My intentions have been to play it back through to get some achievement points out of it but this has not happened.

On the other hand, multi-player is excellent. For those non-competitive types who want to just run around with friends and shoot, “Combat Training” mode is excellent as well. For multi-player alone, I’ll hold on to this game for a while.