Halo 3

I am NOT a Halo fan.  Relatively speaking that is.  I’ve followed the series from its inception, and as much as I like the series, I’m nowhere nearly as enamored with it as most other people.  Now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk about what will probably end up being Game of the Year, much to my dismay.

Halo 3 starts off exactly where Halo 2 ended, or as many would call it non-ended.  Master Chief is back on Earth to stop the Covenant from activating Halo, an ancient galactic doomsday device.  This time, however, he won’t be doing it alone.  The Arbiter from Halo 2 will be fighting alongside him for a good portion of the time.  Like the previous two, the story is compelling enough to drive the game although it’s certainly nothing that will blow your mind.  Then again, the story has never been the selling point of the series.  The gameplay and the multiplayer is where Halo 3, predictably, truly shines.

Continuing a tradition of excellence, Halo 3’s campaign mode is still as fun and challenging as ever, all of which stems from the incredible enemy AI.  Whereas most shooters settle for enemies that simply rush you with guns blazing, Covenant forces rely on tactics to take you out.  They use cover, jump away from grenades, throw grenades, stand on crates to get a better shot, and a whole myriad of other things to get the upper hand over you.  Tactics that work well against the brainy Covenant may not necessarily work for the Flood.  Long denounced as Halo’s “dumber” enemies relying more on overwhelming numbers instead of tactics, the Flood is slightly smarter this time around.  Although most will still rush you hoping to get in a hit, some will stay back and shoot instead.  Also, some new variants of the flood have emerged and definitely requires more thought than just running up to it and filling it with lead.

Given the enemy AI’s evolution over the previous games, it’s surprising how much the environments don’t look all that different from the previous games.  Although technically superior in every way, the levels never veers off far from what’s already been done in the previous games.  A level that starts on the beach?  Check.  A level in a forerunner structure? Check.  A snow level?  Check.  All these levels really do is give the player a place to shoot at the Covenant instead of conveying any kind of atmosphere.  For lack of a better word, the environments lack character.
Considering how little time people will spend on the campaign mode, most of its shortcomings will undoubtedly be overshadowed by the true Halo experience.  The multiplayer.

Once again Bungie created an easy to use system with which anyone with an Xbox Live Gold account can just jump in and get an online match going within seconds.  The matchmaking service returns from Halo 2 with much refinements.  Now ranked games match players based on their skill level which, unlike a player’s rank, does not go up based on how many games the player have played.  This way, ranked games tend to be much more balanced.  Don’t care about your rank?  Unranked games are also available and have more varied game types compared to ranked games.

In addition to the divine matchmaking system, the weapons have all been tweaked.  Now every weapon, save probably one or two, feels useful and fun to use.  Halo 1’s much maligned Assault Rifle returns with a smaller clip but a much higher accuracy.  Now it’s usable even at medium range.  Also the needler is tweaked to the point where it can consistently kill players without having to go up to their faces.  These refinements in addition to the new weapons, all of which are very, very fun to use, makes the multiplayer experience extremely compelling and addictive.  Add to it the almost limitless game type variants with all the possible permutations of tweaks that can be made like reducing gravity or increasing damage resistance to everyone and Halo 3’s multiplayer is simply unmatched.  Still not enough?  Forge can fix that.  With Forge, a map’s content can be edited however way they see fit.  It’s fairly flexible, and like the customizable game types, the sky’s the limits.

But wait!  There’s more!  Halo 3 also implements a saved film feature.  It let’s you review up to 25 previously played games be it on Xbox Live or campaign mode.  Those films can also be permanently saved so that you can re watch that one time you killed your best friend with a needler over and over and over again.  It even lets you watch it from your friend’s point of view if you want to see what a needler death looks like! Just to add insult to injury, a small clip of said incident can be made from that film then uploaded unto Bungie.net where anyone can view it.

After years of pining, Halo fans can now rejoice.  The sequel is here, and it is glorious.  Don’t let the naysayers, like me, tell you otherwise.  This game is worth every penny that you spend on it.

Graphics: Technically superior to its predecessors, but a little hard to see all the refinements
Story: People’s fascination with the Halo universe baffles me.  Halo 3 did nothing to fix that.
Gameplay: Refinements and tweaks have made this the epitome of the Halo series.

Music and Sound FX: Weapons still sounds dead to me, but the music certainly livens up the gameplay quite well.
Game Over: This is one of those games that years from now, people will still play.

9.5 of 10

Blazing Angels 2

Blazing Angels 1 got a lot of things right.  It had a solid control scheme.  A good multiplayer component.  Even the graphics aren’t half bad, but it was a little too dry.  For a flight shooter game that leans towards the arcadey side of the spectrum instead of the simulation side, it lacked variety in terms of gameplay.  Nothing that a good sequel can’t fix though.

Blazing Angels 2 took what was good from the first one and replaced everything that was too cut and dry from the first.  First of all, none of the missions ever happenned in real life.  Unlike Blazing Angels 1 that puts you into historical dogfights, BLazing Angels 2 made up their own missions that suppossedly happenned without the rest of the world knowing it.  It gave them an artistic license to push the variety further than the first could ever have.

Propellar planes ruled the skies during a good deal of the actuall WWII, but jets did started to take to the skies during this time period as well.  The game reflects this very well.  Early mission only puts you into old fashioned planes with propellars.  As the game progresses, the aircraft options becomes bigger and more and more modern.  The very last mission gives you the option ride a jet complete with homing missiles.  Odd as it may sound those are just some of the mundane choices.  Other more exotic airplanes also becomes available as the game progresses.  Each one have their own stats and payloads so that no one plane acts exactly like the other.  The best part is the availability of “experimental” planes.   One such plane looks like the predecessor to the B-2 bomber, aka stealth bomber, of today.  Weapons also takes on this approach like a Tesla coil attached to the plane that can disable any nearby plane.  Simply put, Blazing Angels have no shortage of planes to pick from.

Thanks to the “Secret Mission of WWII” moniker on the title, mission variety get’s very diversed.  Regular dogfights still makes up a good deal of the gameplay, but variations in doing so like taking down a squadron of enemies with nothing but, I kid you not, flashlights really makes the game very fun.  Some missions have you stealing a Nazi experimental plane and using it on Nazi targets on your way out of enemy territory.  Another one has you flying slowly near the top of a moving train to deliver a spy on board.  There’s even a stealth mission where you pilot an enemy plane, sneak in behind the lines, and shoot down all patrol planes without anyone detecting you.  It’s impossible to know before hand what it is that you’re going to do for each mission, and that keeps the game very fresh all the way to the end.

The game may have been set in WWII, but the story have almost absolutely nothing to do with it.  The story follows a group of elite black ops WWII pilots who found themselves entwined with the machinations of a Nazi Colonel and his legion of experimental weapons and aircrafts.  Unlike the previous iteration, the story doesn’t take itself very seriously and gets into melodrama teritory very quickly.  Just listening to a captured Nazi soldier going “You’re doomed….doommed….DOOOOOMMMMEEEDDDD!!!!” can’t help me from breaking into a fit of laughter at just how overwrought the story can get.  But it works.  Given the amount of liberal revisions this game makes to WWII (Where in the history book did they mention the part where San Francisco got attacked by a squadron of Kamikaze planes?), you can’t really expect a very serious story to come out of it.  Like peanut butter and jelly, the somewhat ridiculous story gels really well with the anchronistic planes and weapons.

Overall, Blazing Angels 2 feels far more like a reskinned Crimson Skies than a Blazing Angels sequel.  Despite some bad enemy AI and a totally unbalanced multiplayer game (one hit kill homing missile and no way to shake it off…BRILLIANT!), Blazing Angels surprised me with some interesting mission variety and an enjoyable, albeit somewhat corny, story.  Don’t let this one fly below your radar.

Graphics: Well detailed cityscapes and countryside makes the backgrounds pop out.

Story: Overwrought and fairly melodramatic.  A perfect fit for the given circumstances.

Gameplay: Varied missions and upgradeable planes makes up for the somewhat dumb AI of enemy planes

Music and Sound FX: Nothing to write home about, but gets the job done.

Game Over: Learning from past mistakes definitly elevated this one above its predecessor.

8 of 10

MySims

Life sucks.  It really does.  I can’t go up to complete strangers and hug them for no reason whatsoever.  I can’t barge into other people’s houses just to admire their decor.  I can’t even splash around in a water fountain without having people stare at me like I’m crazy.  I wish I live in My Sims’ world. Read more

Fatal Inertia

One glimpse of any screenshots of Fatal Inertia will undoubtedly bring up memories of Wipeout.  Frozen in time, the two do look fairly similar.  Hovering futuristic race cars.  Fairly diverse weapons.  Speeds ranging into the hundreds of Miles Per Hour.  One minute of playtime with the game should fix this little blasphemous problem. Read more

Heavenly Sword

Let me begin by giving this game its biggest compliment and the harshest critique. This game was really hard to give a review score to because of the things it did right and the things it got wrong. A game like Heavenly Sword can best be paralleled to a clone. The game is obviously influenced and is modeled after God of War, yet, as much as it looks and at times even feels like its predecessor in the end it still can’t match the original. Read more

Stranglehold

Ahh gun porn. The only form of pornography that’s completely mainstream. Not many experiences can compare to a good gun porn movie, and the John Woo flick “Hard Boiled” arguably ranked among the best of the bunch. Although at least a decade too late, Stranglehold does a fairly decent job in expanding the “Hard Boiled” universe. Read more

Lair

Many a PS3 game has been publicized and hyped only to turn out to be a debacle, unfortunately with Lair we have another casualty. Lair isn’t awful per say, but unfortunately the game doesn’t execute anything too well either. The controls are a mess, the voice acting is delivered flatly, and the graphics – well I’ll just say that they aren’t as drop dead gorgeous as I thought they should. Read more

Warhawk

I never played the original Warhawk, but from what I hear it’s some what of a quiet classic. The current Warhawk was announced as a launch title, but was eventually pushed back due in large part to work on the gameplay and incorporate six-axis functionality. Well, here we are months later, game in hand and while this game succeeds in many areas the decision to leave out a single player campaign could be the biggest knock against this game. Read more