Xbox 360 Reviews, Previews and Screenshots

Viking: The Battle for Asgard is an action adventure/hack n' slash which follows in the footsteps laid down by Conan which followed in the footsteps laid down by God of War. It has the tragic hero. It has legions of bad guys which your tragic hero stomps on. It has lots of brutal, brutal violence. It even has quick-time-events. The only thing it's really missing are environmental puzzles. And you know what? I'm ok with that. For me, the puzzles in God of War were always just another thing getting in the way of bashing on monsters. The really new thing that Viking brings to the table is colossal battles between a Viking army that you raise (which includes dragons) and the legions of Hel.

The sheer enormity of the battles in Viking evidence some serious technical skills on the part of Creative Assembly, which is only relevant, of course, if the game is any fun. And it is. I have been glued to my 360 pretty much non-stop for the last for four days.

Conan is an action/adventure/button-masher in which you control Conan who is, so I hear, some sort of barbarian. As Conan accidentally releases unspeakable evil upon the world (in his hunt for treasure), he also loses his armor and his recent memory. So, he has to quest to get his armor back before the evil magic that it has been imbued with (as a result of his carelessness) ends humanity as we know it.

Those familiar with the God of War series will feel right at home in Conan as they have very familiar play mechanics. And like, God of War, Conan earns its M rating with gore and nudity to spare.

Dark Sector is one of those games that makes me glad that I'm not being paid to write these reviews. If someone was paying me for to review Dark Sector, I'd have to play the whole game. And that, dear reader, would suck. That would have me reconsidering my choice of career. Dark Sector is a 3rd person shooter that really wants to be something else. Sometimes. Except for when it doesn't. It tries really hard (and fails) to be a brutal close combat game. Sometimes, it will try to be a action adventure with environmental puzzles. And this too, it will fail at. Based on the first 30 minutes or so, you might think that it was intent on delivering a high concept story with well developed characters. And on that point, you'd be wrong.

The only really good thing I can say about Dark Sector is that it annoys early and often, thereby allowing me to get on the with the business of playing games that don't suck.

The premise of Turning Point: Fall of Liberty is simple: Winston Churchill dies early, and without his powerful leadership, Europe falls to the Nazis during the big WWII. Emboldened by their success overseas, they launch a massive attack against our Eastern seaboard capturing several important cities and the White House. You get to play the part of "Carson" the construction worker turned hero who becomes a critical member of the resistance movement against the Nazis.

As many reviewers have pointed out, Turning Point is a fairly flawed game. Despite those flaws, I had some fun with it.

There was once a time when the common FPS protagonist could carry every weapon he encountered and a full load of ammo for each. Likely as a result of the success of games such as Halo, which have a more realistic limit on weapon carrying, this has become somewhat less common. Nowadays, you're typically limited to a couple of guns, some ammo, and maybe some grenades. Condemned 2: Bloodshot takes this its (il)logical conclusion: not only are you limited to carrying a single, solitary weapon, but if that weapons happens to be a firearm, you're only allowed to carry the ammo in the clip.

As a gameplay mechanic that forces the player to scavenge his immediate area for improvised weapons, it's kind of interesting. But it also flies in the face of common sense: even the most drunken and idiotic of ex-cops (which your protagonist certainly is) probably has a couple of pockets in which he can stick some extra bulltets, or failing that, his gun once the bullets run out. Seriously, if I've got room for a flashlight, a radio, and a digital camera/UV light/audio spetrograph, then I've got enough room for a couple of extra .38 shells.

And that's just the most obvious and pervasive flaw you'll encounter.

Assassin's Creed is a great new game just out from Ubisoft's Montreal Studio. Most of the time, you play a twelfth century assassin named Altair (al-tay-ear) in the Holy Land. Jerusalem. Damascus. Acre. The rest of the time you play a confused bartender named Desmond in what appears to be approximately modern times.

There is a wrong way and a right way to play Assassin's Creed. If you play it the wrong way, you'll hate just about every minute of it. If you play it the right way, you'll love just about every minute of it and call it Game of the Year.

My first impressions after playing the 360 demo for Conflict: Denied Ops were incredibly negative. Oh great, just what the world needs: another FPS, and a crappy one at that. But, dedicated reviewer that I am (or is that OCD?), I picked up the retail version when it came out. Surprisingly, by the end of the first mission — even though the demo level was a shortened version of the first mission in the retail copy — my mind was changed. When it came time to choose my next mission, I decided that I kinda of liked this game.

That would last until the mission in Africa which, in addition to being a kind of sucky mission, had a serious glitch which put me off the game for a week.

After playing Lost Odyssey for about 10 minutes, I thought to myself "hey, this looks like the same engine as Blue Dragon", and moments later "except that this actually looks cool". Only minutes ago did it even occur to me look at the developer credits and confirm that, oh yeah, it is from the same people that did Blue Dragon: Mistwalker. As with Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey's big claim to fame is that its producer is the same guy that created the Final Fantasy series.

For once, though, Hironobu Sakaguchi has deviated from the stereotypical JRPG trope of children late for school saving the world whilst the adults stand around with their thumbs up their collective asses. Instead, the main character is an adult. And while he may look to be, at most, 22 years old, he's actually an immortal who's lived for a thousand years. Of all of the JPRGs I've played, Lost Odyssey is one of the few with a story, world and cast compelling enough that I actually care what happens.

My first pass at reviewing Blue Dragon was somewhat...unfriendly and slightly inaccurate. But, I learn from my mistakes. After giving it some more thought, and being mysteriously drawn back into the game, I simply have to change my tune. I really do like Blue Dragon, and I think I will try to finish it. I rarely finish long-playing games, though. So, my failure to do so will (as usual) likely be due to my own failings as a gamer, rather than the game.

My initial impression of Blue Dragon which came via the demo was "oh my god this is going to suck". And I fully expected to hate it when I picked it up. But I didn't. While Blue Dragon begins as a fairly unremarkable example of it's genre, it does have some nice features to counter its blandness. And if you're a big fan of the "Japanese RPG" genre, it's currently your best bet on the Xbox360 as your only other option is, sadly, Enchanted Arms.

One of the 360's biggest problem areas is its lack of good RPGs. Dark Messiah of Might and Magic: Elements does nothing to solve this problem. Elements is nothing more than a console port of the PC game of the same name (minus the Elements). In fact, it's less than a port. Elements is a prime example of what people mean when they complain that console games are dumbed down. This isn't just a case of tweaking the interface to account for console controllers (which happens to be the only improvement they made), but rather one of removing the elements which made the game interesting to play.

In porting the game, they fixed the interface (and presumably, some bugs) but broke the game. The original, which I enjoyed, I eventually had to give up due to game wrecking bugs. Here, I just gave up because, wow, I really can't be bothered when I've got so many good games to play.