Xbox 360 Reviews, Previews and Screenshots

The Club is a 3rd person shooter where you play as one of eight thugs that have been drafted by nefarious forces to fight in a set of modern day gladiatorial gunfights. The more people you kill and the more stylishly and quickly you do it, the more points you get. And the game is all about points which are secondary, of course, only to overall survival; you can't win if you're dead. Despite being a modern shooter, something about how The Club plays brings me back to the days of Contra, an absolutely punishing game, where to have any real chance of winning, you had to memorize every single aspect of each level.

While I find the (admittedly shallow) concept of The Club kind of interesting, and the overall gameplay to be fun in limited doses, I'm not sure I can recommend it to anyone but the most hardcore of OCD afflicted gamers.

Devil May Cry 4 is an action adventure/beat 'em up that takes place in some magical land that I've never heard of. In fact, I still don't know where it occurs. While DMC4 has a serious case of sequelitis, it doesn't actually suffer from it. I have no idea what's going on. I don't who this "Nero" (the main guy you play) is, and I don't know who this "Dante" fellow is either. And when, 8 hours into the game, I get to play him instead of Nero, I still don't know who he is. And I don't really care.

Up until that 8th hour, DMC4 is a blast. Nero kicks ass with a sword and looks good doing it. His controls are utterly fantastic and tight and the brutal decimation of demons has never been easier or more fun. Unfortunately, just as Nero is really getting his groove on, you get to (by which, I mean have to) switch to playing Dante. And to top it off, you get to play Dante in the same places as Nero, just going the opposite direction.

And that's when I start hating this game.

Because I played the original Turok on the N64, I had a sneaking suspicion that this new incarnation would be stupid. Check. I also figured that it would probably suck. Check. There were also some expectations of dinosaurs and some idiotic racial stereotypes. Check and check. These are all qualities that existed back in the N64 days and this new version fails to disappoint. It also fails on just about every other level as well. Except financially, of course. Like the original, and despite this review, it will probably sell like hotcakes.

It doesn't matter how much you like the FPS genre. It doesn't matter how much you like dinosaurs. This game will only make you want to throw your controller through the screen. Or, if you're feeling clearer minded, at the developers. If you must get some sort of FPS/Dinosaur fix, then rent Jurassic Park and play Halo. Seriously, you'll be better off.

Burnout Paradise is the fourth (or fifth, depending on how you count) game in the popular Burnout series of arcade style racing games. Like it's previous incarnations, the focus is on speed (and lots of it) and spectacular crashes. The most important new feature to come with this Burnout title is the change from closed circuit tracks to an open world environment that the player is free to explore at their leisure.

While not exactly perfect, Burnout Paradise is definitely the best of the series and has moved to the top of my list when it comes to next-gen arcade racers.

Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom is the fourth game in the Kingdom Under Fire series, but it's the first of the lot that I've played. As the fourth installment, it suffers from a serious case sequel-itis, a tragic condition where game producers assume that the only people playing it are rabid fans of the series and don't bother to actually explain what the hell is going on to the rest of us. It appears that certain key aspects of the story are (poorly) presented and (vaguely) expanded upon as you progress through the game. Unfortunately, the game is so relentlessly repetitive that I just can't be bothered to care about whatever is supposed to happen next.

The course of action I generally recommend when diagnosing a game with sequel-itis is to shoot it and put it out of my misery.

Of all game genres, shooters are the hardest for me to finish. So, when I tell you that I beat the single player campaign in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, you should know that something beautiful has happened. While the single player campaign is shortish (average is 4 to 6 hours. I'm slow, took me 7), it's totally fantabulous and I never once thought "oh man, this is stupid".

The multiplayer is also excellent, even if it does incontrovertibly prove certain rules.

Saying this game is "fun" is like saying that reading a great novel is "fun". The word "fun" seems to somehow cheapen the art. The game is fascinating and compelling and thought provoking and terrifying. But does that make it fun? Was reading The Stand or Neuromancer fun? I don't think so, but I read them anyway because they were so interesting. Just because you really want to see what happens next, doesn't mean it's fun.

But hey, so long as it keeps your attention, which this one should. It's epic and beautiful and tragic and everyone who cares even a tiny little bit about video games should play it.

Nascar 08 is the latest (and greatest?) stock car racing title from EA Sports. Given that stock car racing is largely an endurance sport where cars go around the same track hundreds of time, I expected Nascar 08 to be pretty boring. What I did not expect was for Nascar 08 to be the most focus intensive and stressful game I've played in my life. It is, by far, the hardest racing game I've ever encountered.

On the one hand, if you're interested in the sport of stock car racing and are looking for a realistic simulation, then you'll be pleased by the fact that a single mistake at 185 MPH will mean your ruin. On the other, if you just like games where you get to go real fast, you might be put off by the incredible level of difficulty. While I'm finding the game to be quite fascinating (far more so than any game about going around and around and around in circles has any right to be), I think I fall into the latter camp.

Mass Effect is a sci-fi action RPG set in a far future where mankind has made their way into space and made friends (and enemies) with lots of different aliens. As with previous Bioware offerings, the player has in important role not only participating in, but in shaping the outcome of, a fairly compelling story set in a deep, detailed universe. And, as usual, the fate of the known universe rests in your hands.

While Mass Effect does many, and most of the important, things very well, it also does some things very very badly. And while these things that it does badly probably won't destroy the game for you, they turn what could have been a shining star in the realm of console RPGs into a game that is merely "good".

Need for Speed: ProStreet, the latest racer from EA Games, represents a change of direction for the Need for Speed franchise. Instead of racing in a wide open city, you race on closed tracks. Instead of earning the ire of the law, you now race in sanctioned pro-am events. And instead of cinematic cut scenes which tell some hilariously retarded story about your illegal street racing career, you'll be stuck listening to an idiot announcer while boring, rendered in engine scenes take place.

While the race mechanics and car rendering have improved a bit, keeping up with current generation expectations, the game itself is a step back. EA Games has somehow managed to toss out everything that gave the NFS series its unique character, replacing it with dullness. Plus, they've added the annoying announcer guy.