Setting the Stage for Another Grand Adventure

It’s rare that I look forward to cut-scenes in games. Normally, I kick my feet up and sit back while the story unfolds on screen. Not so with the Uncharted games. The characters themselves, and the chemistry between the characters really is something special. Nathan Drake is a handsome dude who takes a beating at every turn. Then stumbles to his feet chuckling, only to deliver a terrific one-liner, each and every time. He’s tough as nails, yet sweet and sincere. He comes off as arrogant and self-fulfilling, but he’s always got his friend’s back when shit goes down. And when it comes to solving archaic riddles, there’s none better.

The main characters from the first game make a return in this sequel, and I for one was happy to see them. Also along for the ride are some new allies, and of course new threats. Chloe, an old friend of Nate’s is in the picture, and she’s a feisty one! It’s clear that there was a relationship between the two, which Drake walked out on at some point. Chloe is the complete opposite of Elena – the first game’s pseudo love interest. She’s tall, dark haired, and has an ass you just want to smack, but will likely break your damn fingers if you were to try it. With the two girls in the picture, Nate finds himself pulled in both directions and it’s entertaining seeing it all play out.

Once again, Drake is sucked into another big adventure spurred by the promise of a lost treasure. There are plenty of plot twists along the way, which send Drake and company all over the globe. The game starts out with Drake climbing out of a wrecked train, hanging over the edge of a cliff high in some snow covered mountains. A bit of back-story is shown in the form of cut-scenes during this intro chapter, and it isn’t until about 3/4 of the way through that you find out how Drake ended up there and why he’s there in the first place. The game takes a pretty unexpected turn shortly there after, followed by some of the most intense battles I’ve seen in recent years.

Part Shooter, Part Platformer, Part Stealth

As far as the gameplay is concerned, it’s as though the developers nit-picked every little detail of the first game, and tightened it up across the board. The character animations are a bit smoother and there’s more of them, while combat scenarios are far more fun due to the much improved cover system and hand-to-hand combat. You get your hands on many, many different weapons through-out the campaign, and you are given plenty of time and ammo to use each of them. Like most modern action games and shooters, you can only carry two weapons at a time – one heavy, one sidearm. And ammo can be sparse in times. Thankfully, you have other means of taking out armed enemies.

I was surprised at the amount of stealth gameplay, especially early on. The second mission is played almost entirely without a weapon. But it’s a great setup for later on, when you can use stealth tactics in situations where it would be quicker to simply shoot your enemy, but more beneficial in the long run if you can proceed undetected for as long as possible.

Like its predecessor, Among Thieves has almost equal parts shooting and exploring/climbing. There are a few decent sized puzzles to solve, that are larger than life and have you jumping, swinging, shimmying, and falling to and from great heights. There are vehicle sequences that are all sorts of fun, and some high action scenes that are straight out of a Bond movie. Fighting off a helicopter from a moving train through the mountains of Tibet? Come ON!

Definitely a Challenge

By the end of the game, your skills are well tested. Even on normal difficulty, Uncharted 2 can be a pretty tough and punishing game. Especially when ammo is low – that seems to be when the heavily armoured dudes wielding automatic shotguns come out to play. At the end of my first play-through, I had logged nearly 10 hours of play time.

Treasure Hunting Online?

Uncharted 2 comes stocked with a fully featured multiplayer mode, which doesn’t stray too far from all of the things that make the single player experience so great. There are a couple of three player co-op modes that are set in variations of chapters from the story. The one mode has you working together, going from checkpoint-to-checkpoint until you reach a final stand-off in front of a large chest of treasure. It’s really a lot of fun, and lasts a good 15-20 minutes per round.

There’s of course the typical deathmatch and objective based modes that we have would come to expect in multiplayer games. Unlocks-a-plenty! You earn cash from playing online, and even during the story. Each Trophy you unlock nets you some cash, along with completing the game on various difficulties. You can then spend your cash on unlockables, in the form of weapon upgrades, character skins, and perks. There are two sets of perks, and you can activate any one perk from each set at a time. Having enough cash is only part of the battle, though. There are level requirements for unlocking each unlockable as well. At this point, it’s hard to say if I’ll stick with the multiplayer end for long. I tend to move onto something else pretty quick, but I am having a lot of fun playing online currently.

Yes, it Really is That Good

Going into this holiday season, Uncharted 2 was one of the few games I planned to purchase immediately. It’s one of those games that I feel everyone who’s into gaming needs to experience. It covers a lot of ground, and takes its many inspirations and influences and one-ups them. Uncharted 2 should not be missed.

You’re Wrong

The common complaint, mostly among the community as opposed to game reviewing publications, is that the game is too short to be deemed a stand-alone title. My first play-through of the single player campaign was on Heroic difficulty, and I logged between 7 and 8 hours. This is actually typical for a Halo game, and I found ODST felt a good bit longer due to its some-what open nature.

Bungie’s Patented Single Player Campaign Experience

You play a voiceless character dubbed The Rookie, and the story takes place somewhere between the events of Halo 2 and 3. Somewhere out there is Master Chief, but there isn’t even so much as a mention of him. This is an entirely different branch of the Halo universe, and a story on its own. You, along with your squad (4 other ODSTs, plus a commander) have dropped into New Mombasa, a Covenant controlled city, to recon and find out what the Covenant are after, and report back to command. Of course, things go wrong right out of the gate and you find yourself alone on the streets. Unlike other Halo games, you are free to venture around the city at your own pace and in any given direction. The objective now, is to find out what happened to your squad and where they might be. You catch wind of objects scattered through-out the city, which invoke flashback sequences where you actually play as the other squad members when found. Each mission varies greatly. From the location, to the weapons at your disposal, and the main objective at hand. ODST’s campaign feels very diverse as you play-through, especially if you do multiple missions in a sitting. By the end, you’ve experienced many Halo-esque moments that will likely stay with you over the years.

Not much has changed in the gameplay department. If you have played any of the other Halo games, you will feel immediately at home. That is, until you start taking fire. The big difference, being the way health is handled. Ironically, you have a limited rechargeable shield. Once depleted, you start taking real damage, which requires med kits to bring you back in the green. While this makes sense in the Halo universe, I still find it strange that Bungie decided to go this route. Most modern shooters have abandoned health packs in favour of automatic health regeneration. The first game I recall seeing this in, was the original Halo which debuted as a launch title on the Xbox platform back in 2001. I found the need to leave a combat situation to search for health packs tedious and annoying. If anything, it made the game feel dated, since this is the old way of doing things.

The weapon load-out is almost identical to that of Halo 3. Back with a vengeance, is the trusty pistol which was absolutely lethal in Halo: Combat Evolved (the first game). There isn’t a better weapon suited for picking off Grunts and Jackals at close to medium range, with headshots being an instant kill. It is exceptionally fun using the pistol during the early waves of each round of Firefight, where there are Grunts-a-plenty.

Familiar Voices

Sci-fi geeks will recognize many of the voices behind the cast of ODST. Mal (Nathan Fillion), Jayne (Adam Baldwin), and Wash (Alan Tudyk) from Firefly/Serenity are in the house. Along with the infamous Cylon known as Six (Tricia Helfer), from Battlestar Galactica. You might be wondering where Nolan North is at? After all, he is undoubtedly the most recognizable and commonly used voice in video games over the past couple of years. He’s here too, as one of the main ODSTs, Romeo.

Halo Multiplayer Reinvented

Halo 3: ODST brings a new multiplayer component to the table that is nothing but sheer fun! Firefight, is a 4 player co-op mode that pits you and your friends against increasingly difficult waves of enemies. Survival games are all the rage these days, and for good reason – they’re fun as hell! I’ve always preferred playing along-side friends and working together to thwart the enemy, as opposed to playing against them in typical deathmatch variants. Firefight can also be played locally, and split-screen action can be enjoyed by 2 players online as well.

More Bang

Additionally, there is a second disc bundled with the game which includes a stand-alone version of Halo 3’s multiplayer component dubbed Halo 3: Mythic. It includes all of the maps from the Halo 3 disc, along with all of the DLC map packs. This is one hell of a bonus for those that don’t have Halo 3, or never bothered to pick up the map packs. Not so much for others, since there’s only really 3 new maps.

Obvious Conclusion

So, once again, Halo 3: ODST won’t please everyone. And I’m sure there are people out there who will scowl at the very thought of playing it. But if you’ve enjoyed other games in the series, you will undoubtedly enjoy ODST. It has everything you’d expect from a Bungie made Halo game, and then some.

For those that might not be familiar with my offerings at ThemeForest, here’s a quick overview of the themes I currently have available…

Themes

Filthy

by Matt Brett

$30.00

Filthy is a personal blog theme that’s been through the ringer. This thing is just down right dirty! And best of all, it comes it 2 shades of filth – brown and black.

• Platform: WordPress
• Available From: ThemeForest

Imperial

by Matt Brett

$30.00

Imperial is a theme with no specific focus. It’s not sure if it wants to be a personal blog, or house an online magazine. It’s not even sure if it’s black or white, for that matter!

• Platform: WordPress
• Available From: ThemeForest

Varnish

by Matt Brett

$35.00

Varnish is quite possibly the most customizable WordPress theme on the planet. Choose one of the 23 bundled colour schemes, or create your own – all from WP-Admin! This theme is geared towards the blogger who likes to share their life and themselves with the world.

• Platform: WordPress
• Available From: ThemeForest

Wave

by Matt Brett

$35.00

Wave is a beautiful and flexible theme catered to those that want to build a video focused site

• Platform: WordPress
• Available From: ThemeForest

Spectre

by Matt Brett

$30.00

Spectre (pronounced, speck-ter) is a web professional theme that features a portfolio and blog. It’s built for WP 2 .7+ and doesn’t require any plugins to run out of the box.

• Platform: WordPress
• Available From: ThemeForest

Black Aperture

by Matt Brett

$25.00

Black Aperture is an all-in-one news and reviews theme specifically catered to video games. It’s built for WP 2 .7+ and doesn’t require any plugins to run out of the box.

• Platform: WordPress
• Available From: ThemeForest

Update: Monday, October 19th

Contest closed! I’ve selected the 30 winners and emails will be going on shortly. Thanks to everyone who entered, and congrats to the winners!

Free Stuff, Anyone?

I’ve been thinking about marking this occasion in some special way, and the best thing to come to mind, is to give some themes away for free. So, I’m doing just that! This is not a contest, and everyone is eligible. Simply leave a comment letting me know what game you’re most looking forward to this holiday season, or an album that is totally rocking your socks at the moment, and of course whichever theme you would prefer. I will be picking winners at random, and I’m giving away 5 copies of each theme. For those that aren’t so good with math, that’s 30 themes I’m giving away in total. Can I get a fuck yeah?

Please be sure to include the following with your comment…

1. Your first and last name.
2. Use an email address I can reach you at.
3. Which theme would you like?
4. Which game are you most looking forward to this holiday season, or what album is totally rocking your socks at the moment?

I will be keeping track of the themes I send out for support purposes, which is why I need your name and email address. Winners will have a theme emailed to them at the address used in the comment.

The way these events work is a little different than what you might expect. Many of the games that are present are being demo’d by someone on the dev team, or a PR person. In this case, you sit by and watch a live demo of the game being played with accompanying commentary from the representative. You’re free to ask questions, or you can be completely passive and just watch. I actually prefer having a game demo’d for me, since I can find out any details I want to know about the game. This is particularly useful if you go in without extensive knowledge of some titles.

At this event, I went the entire day without touching a PS3 controller. The PSP version of LittleBigPlanet was the only game I actually got my hands on, and this was fully intentional. With many of the games on display being hotly anticipated by yours truly, or still pretty far off, I didn’t want any spoilers. I love the feeling of picking up a new game and it being a totally fresh experience. Especially those that are story driven single player games. There’s nothing worse than playing through the first part of the game and already knowing what’s about to happen. I’ve been down that road a few times over the years, and it really put a damper on the experience overall. That said, I went, I observed, I talked to many people, and am now even more excited about the great games to come on Sony’s platform.

The Big Guns

Assassin’s Creed 2, God of War 3, Heavy Rain, Uncharted 2 – they were all there, and 3 out of 4 of them were playable. Assassin’s Creed 2 being the only one that was demo’d. There isn’t much to report on these games. They all look fantastic, as you would expect. I didn’t bother even watching Uncharted 2, since it comes out next week. The God of War 3 level that was being played is the same one that was shown during Sony’s press conference at E3 a few months back. And it was a little too loud to really get into Heavy Rain.

Also in attendance was Army of Two: The 40th Day, Lego Rock Band, The Sabateur, Avatar, Alien vs Predator, Dead to Rights: Retribution, Where the Wild Things Are, Tony Hawk Ride, and some other uber Japanese games that I passed by rather quickly. Now, onto some games that really stood out…

MAG

For those that aren’t familiar with MAG – it stands for Massive Action Game, and it’s exactly that. It’s a modern first person shooter that is entirely online. The “Massive” part pertains to the amount of players the game supports – two hundred and fifty six, in a single game. That’s 128 players per team, broken down into 4 platoons, which is made up 4 squads containing 8 players each. Phew! Can you wrap your head around that?

Each group type (squad and platoon) has a leader who can issue commands to their squads. XP is handed out to those that follow orders well, and likewise to those that do a good job leading. As you would expect from a game like this, there’s a huge focus on ranking up – levelling up your character to unlock weapons and abilities. The perks system is very deep and lets you take your character in any direction you’d like, or keep a more broad approach if you prefer to have a multitude of weapons at your disposal. There are no character classes. You build your character out however you’d like.

ModNation Racers

I was quite pleased to see ModNation Racers in attendance, as it looks to evolve the kart racing genre in a big way. Think of it as the LittleBigPlanet of kart racers. It inherits Sony’s “Play, Create, Share” motto and is customizable from back-to-front. From the get-go, you customize your character to your liking. Then move onto your kart. And finally, track creation is where it’s really at. Creating a track can be done in a matter of minutes, and is not only easy, but a fun and entertaining task as well. There’s all sorts of nice little animations that make placing objects and changing the landscape fun, even to watch.

With support for 12 players online, and local 2 player splitscreen gameplay, it’s sure to be a good time.

DJ Hero

I briefly checked out DJ Hero at X’09, as it was constantly surrounded by people eager to get their hands on it. It seemed to be struggling with competition like Uncharted 2 and Assassin’s Creed 2 merely feet away, so I was able to get a good look at the game.

When I walked up to the controller, the rep asked if I wanted to play. To which I replied, “No, I want to watch you play it.” He laughed and started walking me through everything, from the controller to gameplay mechanics. I have to say, it really looks like a lot of fun! And not nearly as complicated as it first looks. Difficulty ranges from beginner to expert, with easy, medium, and hard in-between. The rep played on hard, which was pretty intense.

Each track in DJ Hero is a mash-up of 2 songs. I chose the Jurassic 5 vs Billy Squier track, he chose the Flavor Flav sound effects, then bumped up the volume on the TV and started tearing it up. He was totally showboating, but it was awesome! When you activate the multiplier bonus (like star power in the guitar based games) the bass bumps up and all sorts of flashy goodness fills the screen. One little game play mechanic I loved was the ability to rewind the song if you mess up. To do this, you literally spin the record back about half a turn for an instant re-do. Very cool.

In Closing

It was great seeing how Sony handles events like this, after having been to several of Microsoft’s. It was definitely a different vibe. The X’0 events tend to be very flashy and impressive when you walk in the room. Lots of green lights and set pieces, where Sony’s was merely rented office space with some 6 foot tall banners hung around the rooms with flat white walls. But it was a warm atmosphere with lots of natural light shining through, and was definitely more about the games attracting your attention than anything else.

Forza 3

As soon as I walked in the room, I was greeted by a pair of triple screen Forza 3 setups. Equipped with racing seats and the official Xbox 360 racing wheels, they were essentially the dream setup for any sim racing fan. Needless to say, I didn’t stray very far until I got my turn. There was also two more setups which contained one large screen. I actually preferred this over the triple screen, as I found the three screens to be a little too much to take in. At least, at such close proximity.

I’ve only spent a little time with the racing wheel shortly after it was released, at which time I played Project Gotham Racing 3. After a couple hours, I didn’t feel like I had made much progress and was still struggling to keep my car from smashing into walls at every turn. I expected the same with Forza 3, and was down right shocked when I finished my first race in second place. I hit the retry button and placed first with ease. All of this, with minimal assists enabled and playing on medium difficulty. Honestly, I wasn’t overly enthused about Forza 3’s release, but I sure am now! And I may just have to pick up a racing wheel.

Left 4 Dead 2

I didn’t actually get my hands on Left 4 Dead 2 until close to the end of the event, as it was definitely a favourite among the crowd. And for good reason! If you played the first game, I don’t need to tell you how much fun it is. You already know… but it’s safe to bump up your expectations even a little further, as Left 4 Dead 2 has been refined in just the right spots to make it one hell of a zombie bashing good time! The melee weapons are hilarious, the new super zombies are insane, and it’s just as overwhelming, if not more than the first game.

One little detail that came in quite handy, is the quick-turn button, which is mapped to RB by default. It allows you to do a 180* spin instantly.

Splinter Cell: Conviction

Oh man, I can’t wait for this game, and am even more bummed about it being delayed until 2010 now that I’ve seen it first hand. The hand-to-hand combat is fierce, brutal, and extremely satisfying. And Sam’s interrogation techniques have… matured over time.

Ubisoft have adopted a really neat way of showing your current object, by way of projecting them on near by surfaces. For example, the words “Rescue the Scientist” are beamed onto a wall by a light source, which apparently only you can see. But the cool thing, is that it can be interacted with. If Sam were to walk in front of the words, they are projected onto him as well. Very cool!

Tony Hawk: Ride

Honestly, I’m not interested in this game in the least. The Skate franchise has me covered for all of my virtual skateboarding needs. And physical activity while playing video games just isn’t my thing. Hence the thick layer of dust on my Wii.

But I did spend some time watching people demo this game, along with the Activision rep. It seemed like most people were putting too much effort into it, and over exaggerating. The rep made it look effortless, and a simple bend or lean would pronounce huge tricks. The visual style of the game looks more in tune with Skate has been doing, but there’s still lots of flare and a goofy HUD that you’d expect from a Tony Hawk game.

There were a few other games to check out, like DJ Hero, GTA: Ballad of Gay Tony, some hockey game, a couple XBLA titles, and a couple that are already released (The Beatles: Rock Band, and Halo 3 ODST). But the majority of this season’s heavy hitters were MIA entirely. Modern Warfare 2 was there, but behind closed doors and you had to wait quite a while to get in. I couldn’t be bothered.

New Dashboard Features

I’m happy to report that the Facebook and Twitter add-ons are really looking sharp! I assumed they would be really stripped down and almost useless, but I was pleasantly surprised several times as I was shown live demos of each.

One particularly cool feature in Facebook, is the ability to cross reference your XBL friends list with your Facebook friends and see who you are, or aren’t connected to in each place. For example, you can see what friends you have connected with on Facebook that aren’t on your XBL list and send them invites, and vice-versa. There’s also the ability to comment and “like” everything you view, just like on the website.

A little big of unannounced news for my Canadian friends – TV shows are coming to the XBL Marketplace this fall. You will be able to rent and buy episodes from a number of shows, past and present.

The 1080p steaming service looks really nice as well. The one thing I was interested in was the price point. I was worried that a new price would be introduced for 1080p, on top of the standard and HD (720p) versions, but that’s not the case. The HD option will be replaced by the new 1080p streaming service, and you can choose to stream or download.

Wrapping Up

It’s always fun going to these events and seeing what’s in store for gaming in the coming months. It was also great meeting some folks I’ve crossed paths with on XBL and Twitter. Jeff Jenkins (Sinnix) was there, who you might recall is the artist behind the fantastic illustrations that appear with my game reviews. I had a chance to meet up with Jeff prior to X’09 for an alcoholic beverage and to shoot the shit about gaming and such. Every year Jeff gives out signed prints of some of his art. This year’s poster featured ODST’s hero, The Rookie.

Next week, I’ll be attending Sony’s holiday preview event, and there’s plenty to be excited about there!

Great First Impression!

Right from the get-go, it’s clear that NFS: Shift is a different type of racing game than you’re used to from the NFS series. There are no cheesy live action cinematics. No obnoxious nu-metal music as the menu fades in. And no scantily clad women showing you their “o face.” NFS: Shift comes at you with a lot of style, and some pretty intense cinematics that really get you excited to play to get in on the action. Thankfully, these types of scenes are carried through the career as you unlock new tiers and make your way up the ladder.

NFS: Shift looks and sounds amazing! The car models are gorgeous, both inside and out. But I did find the cockpit view to feel a little too confined. The viewpoint is set too far back, and your perspective actually changes the faster you go. I ended up using the hood cam for the most part. There is actually some damage modeling this time around, which is nice. But it’s nowhere near as extensive as we’ve seen in other games like Forza 2, the Project Gotham Racing series, and GRID.

A Little Help?

When you start the career, you jump into a race and are evaluated on your performance. The game then recommends a difficulty level and you can make adjustments to the assists and AI difficulty. There are the typical assists like suspension and traction control, but some strange ones like steering and braking. With the latter enabled, it doesn’t require much effort to play the game. And I can’t imagine it being much fun that way, either. There’s also a race line to assist you on corners and guide you throw the best path on the track. Like Forza Motorsport, it remains green if you’re safe to keep accelerating, while changing to yellow and orange if you need to slow down a bit, and red if you really need to apply the brakes.

Single Player Career

The career is what you would expect. You’re a new driver who’s trying to make a name for himself by climbing the leaderboard and eventually making it to the big event. There are a number of tiers to get through, which include several events ranging from straight up races, to “car battles” (aka, Touge as seen in GRID), to drifting, and time trials. I had the most fun doing races and time trials, while I couldn’t quite get the hang of drifting, no matter how many attempts I made. The car battle events were mostly frustrating as well, since you are limited to selecting one of two cars. I felt that both drift and car battles were handled better, and a lot more fun in last year’s GRID.

As you complete events you earn stars, and this is where things get weird. You are rewarded for precision driving, and driving aggressively… in the same event. Some events will even require you to perform either precision or aggressive maneuvers in order to earn all of the stars, which seems odd since you’re likely to be one or the other. Personally, I try and avoid other cars and keep collisions to a minimum. While some stars require you to “tap out” at least one opponent – which means, knock them off the track without leaving the track yourself. On the precision side, you are rewarded with points (which lead to drive profile unlocks) for clean laps and perfect cornering. Corners aren’t something I normally pay attention to, and found this to be a nice addition to the game play. While it’s harder to focus on mastering corners in a race with other cars on the track, I enjoyed trying to nail them in the solo time trial events.

A Friendly and Forgiving Racer

NFS: Shift is built with accessibility in mind. Tiers can be unlocked without doing every single event, which means you can skip those you don’t enjoy (a’hem, drift). And best of all, you gain back every cent you sunk into your ride when you decide to sell it. Yes, you read that right – your cars don’t depreciate at all, and you even get all of the money back that you spent on upgrades. This makes trying new cars and blowing huge amounts of money on upgrades a no-brainer, and something I really hope other games start doing. At the same time, if you’re low on cash and don’t want to work for the high-end car of your dreams, you can drop some real world coin on it. Every car in the “lot” can be purchased using Microsoft Points individually, from the get-go. EA has been notorious for releasing car and upgrade packs post-release, and they’ve gone the extra mile this time.

Forget About Multiplayer

With a focus on collisions, there was no way I was taking the race online. Racing games are frustrating enough when you’re playing with the general public. I can only imagine how awful it would be with rewards being given for spinning other drivers out. No thanks.

Recommend, with an Asterisk

NFS: Shift is the best game the series has seen in recent years. But it’s not quite as good as other games in the genre. It does everything well, but there isn’t a whole lot if doesn’t exceptionally well. With other races like Forza 3 and Gran Turismo 5 on the horizon, it’s hard to tell you to go out and buy this game, as both will likely surpass NFS: Shift. That said, I really enjoyed the time I spent playing this game and would recommend it as a solid rental.

Made With Love

The Beatles: Rock Band is oozing with style, and has been carefully crafted with all the love in the world. From the opening and outro cinematics, to the in-game movies that fill the screen as you play, to the gorgeous menu screens. This is likely the most polished game I’ve had the pleasure of experiencing.

Slight Improvements to the Rock Band Formula

There haven’t been a whole lot of changes to the core gameplay since Rock Band 2 was released just a year ago. But a couple nice little details I did notice improved the experience for the better. One being the complete absence of drum fills. These have always driven me a little crazy, especially when dropped in a completely inappropriate place. The second being the count-in when you return from pausing the game. Typically, the second you hit “resume game”, your thrown back into the song and it’s nearly impossible to avoid missing notes. Where as in this version of Rock Band, it gives you a 3 second countdown before firing back up.

Tagging Along for the Ride

The career mode is a bit of a unique experience in that there’s no massive world map, and no choice of what venue you’re going to play at, and in what order. You relive The Beatles’ career as it happened, hitting some of the most prominent events along the way. During each event, you play a small collection of songs from that time period and gather collectibles in the form of photographs along the way. There is only 45 songs in total, and the fact that there’s an Achievement for finishing the career in less than 24 hours is a testament to its short length.

Early on, the game is a lot of fun. The old rock and roll songs are a blast on every instrument and it’s genuinely exciting to experience. Later on in their career when they started hitting the bongs, things tapered off dramatically. So much so, that I couldn’t bring myself to finish the final chapter after seeing the tracks I had to play. Even with an easy Achievement in sight, it just wasn’t enticing enough to sit through that mundane music.

It’s interesting to see how Harmonix tried to offset the drab music and the fact that The Beatles spent their last few years in a studio and not on the road. The music and artwork inspired scenes that are shown during this era are definitely something to see. While they’re not the same calibre of the CG cinematics shown at the opening and outro of the game, they’re still very entertaining.

Unlockable Rewards are Fantastic

As I mentioned earlier, you collect photographs during the career. At certain intervals, videos are rewarded and both types of collectibles are quite interesting. Not being a huge fan of the band, I didn’t think much of them initially. But one night I found myself sifting through the photos, reading every story that accompanied them, and I did so for the better part of an hour. The video footage is really amazing, since it’s more of a candid nature, so you see a different side of The Beatles than usual.

The Verdict

The Beatles: Rock Band is a definite must buy for any fan that enjoys this type of music game. It’s also worth checking out if you’re at all familiar with the music and want to experience a music game that’s taken in a drastic new direction. It really does carry a different vibe than previous versions of Rock Band and even Guitar Hero.

Let’s Reminisce

A few years back I worked in a corporate environment and pretty regularly links would be shared internally via email. One morning, a link to a Flash game arrived in my inbox which almost entirely diminished productivity for the remainder of the week. That game, was one of the first Trials games to make the rounds, and boy was I ever hooked! When I saw Trials HD show up in the Marketplace, I was thrilled and immediately downloaded the demo. Hoping for a simple refresh of an old favourite, I was completely blown away by the quality of this budget title.

Gorgeous!

To say Trials HD has good graphics is an understatement. This game sports better visuals than many full blown titles without a doubt. I was immediately reminded of LittleBigPlanet, and when you take into consideration the side-scrolling nature of the game, the slightly angled camera to show the 3D landscape, and the lighting techniques, you’ll see why.

Hard to Put Down

The core gameplay is simple – get from point A to B as fast as you can, with as few faults as possible. A medal is awarded at the end of each level and you’re told what you need to do to improve on that medal, if possible. On the same screen is a leaderboard displaying all of your friends’ scores. So perhaps you just achieved the gold medal, but your buddy has a faster completion time – here in lies the extremely addictive nature of Trials HD.

Courses are grouped into varying difficulty levels, and you definitely notice when you move from one tier to another. Often, moving to the next tier feels impossible at first. But I found that returning to the previous tier and working improving my scores was the practice I needed to be able to keep progressing through the tiers. Mind you, the Extreme courses are still complete madness!

Added Value

"Whoooa! Whoooa!"

A series of mini games are unlocked as you complete the main career mode, which are all kinds of fun, even if they are silly in nature. They range from balancing on top of a huge metal ball for as long as possible, to towing a cart full of explosives, and even hurdling your rider as far as possible. As with the career, there are leaderboards for each of these games as well, and I find myself returning to them fairly often to see if I’m still in the top 3.

There’s even a track editor, which lets you create and share your own tracks. And of course, you can download and play tracks created by your friends, and other games on Xbox Live.

Achievements are very well balanced and quite obtainable, with the exception of one, which requires you to do a very long series of courses without making a single fault. I’m not even going to attempt that one.

A No-Brainer

Trials HD can have it’s frustrating moments, but when you finally make it over an obstacle that you’ve faulted on a couple dozen times, it’s extremely satisfying. Going back and blowing through the easier courses at full throttle is always a good time, and the mini games are great for a laugh. All-in-all, Trials HD is a fantastic game at a very reasonable price – how can you go wrong?

Satisfaction, Guaranteed

I had a smile on my face the very second the menu screen faded in and the dark music set the stage for what I hoped was a terrific adventure. The lengthy opening cut-scene set the stage perfectly and before I knew it, I was taking down Joker’s thugs one-by-one in some of the best hand-to-hand combat I’ve ever seen in a game. Batman: Arkham Asylum is a refreshing change in the combat department, since Batman doesn’t use traditional weapons. There are no machine guns or sniper rifles. Batman is equipped with gadgets that will assist in taking down bad dudes, but nothing that will do the job for him.

Slow Down There, Partner

Each room requires an assessment before you start taking goons down, as you are quickly wasted once someone gets a lock on your position. And this is where BAA really shines. Stealth tactics are a must in order to survive. Thankfully, Batman’s gadgets come in handy when you need to survey your surroundings. Detective mode can be initiated at any time, which highlights armed and unarmed bad guys in your area, and also brings attention to vents that can be entered, walls that can be demolished, and generally provides useful tips in finding your way around the asylum. I found that I was playing with detective mode enabled most of the time, which hampers the visuals a bit. It would have been nice if there was a way to identify thugs with detective mode, then leave them some how visible on the HUD once it’s disabled.

Familiar (Evil) Faces

The “super villains” in BAA are in their comic book form, which was a good move in my opinion. They’re much more over-the-top and extravagant than they would have been if the style of the recent movies was adopted. Many old favourites are present, and even a couple lesser known villains. You encounter each of them on a different level, and some of which you actually don’t end up taking on directly, which was a bit of a let down. I really wanted to beat the piss out of Scarecrow!

The story itself is quite good, and keeps shifting directions as you uncover Joker’s master plan. Character voice overs are very well done and there’s plenty of chatter through-out the story. Even aside from cut-scenes. As you take down Joker’s thugs, you can hear them talking amongst themselves and they’ll often yell out in hopes of drawing you out of the dark.

Sneaky, Sneaky

One of my favourite aspects of the game is the AI, and how they respond when threatened. For example, as you walk into a room full of half a dozen thugs, you can see they’re condition on your HUD. Initially, they are calm. But as you start picking them off, that changes to nervous, and eventually terrified. They act differently in these varying conditions as well, and will do things like run and climb up ladders which they wouldn’t normally do if they’re at ease. Setting traps for thugs is quite fun, as you have plenty of options when it comes to clearing a room. One of my personal favourites tactics is booby-trapping a downed thug with explosive gel. When the others come to investigate – BOOM! They’re all knocked to the ground, which gives me just enough time to swoop down and incapacitate each and every one of them. It’s quite satisfying!

Plenty of Bang for Your Buck

Once the story mode is complete, there’s plenty of reasons to continue playing. The Riddler has placed trophies through-out the asylum which can be collected, earning you some tasty Achievement points. There’s also a challenge mode which drops you into combat and stealth scenarios that are all sorts of fun. There’s no multiplayer what-so-ever, but I can’t even think what they could have done in this department. This is definitely one single player package that feels complete, despite the lack of online play.

Batman: Arkham Asylum is a game that I have been looking forward to for some time, but I refrained to get my hopes up as I assumed it would be another shitty Batman game to add to the pile. Thankfully, that is definitely not the case and this game shaped up to be one of my favourite video game experiences of 2009.

Blog

I didn’t really do much with my personal blog. I pretty much had things the way I wanted them with my previous design. So I basically just made some minor refinements and tidied up some things I had tacked on since my last redesign.

It’s now quicker and easier to find older content that may be of interest, via the tabbed box that sits in the top of the sidebar. It gives you quick access to related posts, the most recent posts, the most recent reviews, and the most popular posts.

Reviews have received the most love. Specifically, the review archive. The “wall of games” is sorted by date descending. But you can now filter them by platform.

On the topic of game reviews, I commissioned a fellow by the name of Jeff Jenkins to whip up some comic style character illustrations to coincide with my review scores. The idea was inspired by GiantBomb, but I wanted to do full body illustrations as opposed to waist up. Jeff exceeded my expectations and produced some brilliant work that can be seen at the bottom of every game review. You will be seeing more of Jeff’s work on this here website in the coming weeks.

Portfolio

I’m extremely happy to finally have a condensed portfolio that is flexible and allows me to share a bit more in the way of details for each project. At this time, I only have the services I provided, but I plan on writing a little descriptive paragraph for each down the road.

Marketplace

Having recently jumped on the digital goods train, I’m quite fond of having cash rolling in constantly from sales. I wanted to build a platform of my own that allowed me to sell digital goods of various shapes and sizes. ThemeForest has worked out really well for selling WordPress themes, and I intend to keep future theme releases on that platform. But I have plans to release add-on (expansion) packs for my existing themes, and ThemeForest doesn’t support that sort of thing. Through my own site, customers will be able to pick up things like additional colour schemes, added functionality, etc. at a reasonable cost.

Additionally, I have partnered with some other designers and developers who will be selling all sorts of good stuff through my Marketplace in the coming months.

I have also opened the floodgates for theme customization. Anyone who has purchased one of my themes has the option of having it customized to their liking for a small fee.

Workshop

I have one more new addition that is still in the works which will be surfacing shortly. I’m calling it my Workshop, and it’s a place to get your hands on tools and tutorials on the topics of general web design and WordPress development. Much of this content will be free, but I am planning on doing some extensive screencasts which will mostly be premium (fancy word for paid) content.

The Kinks

Call me irresponsible, but I haven’t even looked at this new site in any version of Internet Explorer just yet. Quite frankly, I just don’t have it in me at the moment. After spending 5 solid weeks working on this site, the last thing I feel like doing is troubleshooting IE bugs. In time, I’ll make sure things are in order for IE8 and IE7, but IE6 can go to hell!

Moving Forward

This redesign is still very much a work in progress. These past few weeks have been spent setting the stage for great things to come in the weeks and months to follow. I’m super excited to see how things pan out, and I’d like to take a moment to thank everyone for their continued support over the years. It’s truly amazing to have some many people that I don’t even know buying my products, hiring me to redesign their website, or shouting words of encouragement via Twitter. Thank you!