The Xbox 360 has probably struggled the most hardware-wise since its launch in November of 2005. With extreme overheating issues, loud disc trays, and high-pitched disc spin-ups, it’s been rough. After the new Xbox Elite came out, we fixed some issues with a smaller 45-nanometer processor for slightly faster load times and less heat. It featured a bigger 250GB HDD and more solid hardware, but it was still having overheating and RROD (Red Ring of Death) issues. Now that the Xbox 360 S is out, it fixes all these issues with grace.
The console has a new slick gloss finish design with stylish air vents, and the whole concave thing is out the window. All the buttons are touch panel buttons and release an awesome “ding” tone when touched. The tray is quieter, the HDD is now built inside, and there is a much smaller power supply and brick. This is all noticed right out of the box, which makes it worth another purchase. The biggest addition is probably the built-in Wi-Fi as well as a Kinect port. The Xbox memory unit slot has been removed since you can now back up saves on a flash drive, but people who have items saved on one will be out of luck here.
The console also has built-in HDMI and can support up to 1080p, but other than these new features, nothing else is really new. The console also can’t technically RROD anymore due to there being no red LEDs. The console’s plastic casing does feel a bit cheaper and less sturdy than the other consoles, but being 10x lighter really makes up for it. I highly recommend upgrading to the 360 S if you really hate your old console or if it’s about to bite the dust. Trading in your old console could make up the difference and make it well worth the purchase.
BioShock 2 was a great successor to the original but didn’t live up to the hype or the cinematic quality of its predecessor. It suffered from repetition (loot, go through the section, save Little Sister, gather ADAM, rinse, and repeat), and it didn’t have the scripted events that made BioShock so epic. This, in turn, made you want the game to just end after a while, and the developers played it very safe by making the entire game almost exactly the same. It did have an excellent story, though, and this is what made the game great.
Minerva’s Den has you playing as Sigma, who is a Big Daddy sent by Milton Porter to destroy The Thinker. The Thinker is a computer that runs Rapture, but you are also being told by Reed Wahl not to destroy the computer. Along the way, you are able to meet six little sisters and a couple of big sisters, loot to your heart’s content, and experience the excellent dialog, story, and pacing that should have been in the second game. There are two huge levels in Den, with little things hidden everywhere, as well as a new plasmid, Gravity. Well, new splicers and upgrades are found by finding them on dead bodies instead of Power to the People stations.
The story is really excellent, with you being completely clueless and just following Porter and Tenenbaum’s voice to do as they bid. You discover most of the things going on down here through audio diaries, and some can be pretty haunting. There are a few scripted elements, but the level design is also well done, and there is enough to do here to keep you busy for a good 4-5 hours. You will really want to savor every moment by looking in every nook and cranny as well as completing all of the great achievements.
What BioShock 2 was lacking is made up somewhat in this little DLC that could. While the art style and objects are recycled, there are a lot of new ones that haven’t been seen anywhere in the world of BioShock, such as computer-related objects. It’s a good change and really helps mix up the visuals. With a surprise twist ending that makes you slap your forehead, Minerva’s Den is well worth the money, and I hope it isn’t the last BioShock 2 DLC.
A lot of movie-based games have a lot of potential but fall flat due to shortcuts, bad production values, or just rushed and unfinished work. Saw is one of these games that suffers from this disease, but it’s not a terrible game. You play Detective Tapp, who must find and help various people seen in the movies through traps, but there are small traps you must get through to advance through areas and find items to also advance through areas. This is where Saw should be great: gore. It falls flat; there is a sense that everything feels stale and nothing has any weight or impact on it. When a head pops, it’s no more exciting than a bubble. There’s not much gore other than a red blob on someone’s head and no cringe factor. The movies made me even feel sick and queasy, but the game does nothing for me.
Controlling the character feels floaty and weightless, kind of like those first-generation PS2 games. Combat involves a simple lock-on button and attacking, and it works except that it’s as simple as A-B-C. You can pick up various weapons, such as crutches, lead pipes, scalpels, etc., but they have a damage meter, so after a few hits, they break apart. Enemies are as dumb as they come, and blocking their path by shutting doors can help, but they really can’t kill you since they even struggle to target you.
When it comes to exploring, the game is linear to a fault, with literally narrow corridors everywhere. Sometimes you’ll come to a candle with a tape from Jigsaw or some type of document you can read, but the clues in the game are very vague or too obvious. Most of the traps that you must get through to advance through the levels are pretty mundane and not very interesting. These range from finding a code on the wall to a lock, reaching inside some nasty thing to grab a key, or timed lock mini-games. I want to see gruesome stuff, not silly interpretations of things we’ve seen before. Saw is a game that could really innovate mature audience-inspired games with some pretty brutal stuff.
After you slog through this, you can finally get to the finals, which are a bigger main trap, but not all of these are interesting and are pretty much more glorified versions of the advancement puzzles. Neither are very gory, look brutal, or are as convincing as the movies, and it’s the graphics that really transpire this. They look very dated, and the technology doesn’t allow a lot of detail. If these guys could get a sophisticated engine, they could make this game look fantastic, but they opted for the cheap engine instead. They did capture the Saw atmosphere really well, but the shock value is pretty much nonexistent.
Overall, Saw is a decent rental, but it’s not one that you’re going to walk away feeling great about, but instead depressed at how lame the game is instead of how great it could be. The game does support an Xbox 360 controller, but people who prefer the keyboard and mouse will be clueless as to what controls what because numbers don’t really help and there are no tutorials. The puzzles, however, are varied enough to keep you interested, and there are some fun doozies in there, but other than that, this is a huge disappointment.
Ninja Theory has had a hard time establishing itself as a talented developer. With the major hype of Heavenly Sword, Lukewarm sales of the crappy Kinect Joy Ride, and the controversy of DMC, it’s struggling. Enslaved is probably NT’s most successful game, mainly commercially, due to its better marketing. The story is probably the game’s strongest point, as character development and combat take a back seat.
You play Monkey, a guy who escapes a slave ship that’s crash-landed in post-apocalyptic New York. Along the way to escape, he finds himself stuck and enslaved, but a young woman named Trip needs his muscle to get her back home further west. The relationship between Trip and Monkey is what makes you keep playing, and their constant fight for freedom is heartwarming.
The combat had a lot of potential, but after the first chapter, you’ll get tired of it. It’s the same two combos over and over again, with a crappy camera that can’t stay put. Sure, the angles are cinematic, but if you get backed into a corner, it’s nauseating. The camera can’t stay put at all, and it leads to cheap deaths and frustration when mech after mech is beating you down. You can charge an EMP burst to disable shields and make the mechs temporarily stunned, and this is essential to defeating them due to their constant blocking and shielding. You can command Trip to use a decoy so long-range mechs shoot at that instead of you so you can climb around and get to them. Some mechs have weak points that allow faster kills, and you can use your staff as a projectile weapon equipped with plasma rounds and EMP rounds. This staff is also used for puzzles and exploring as well.
So combat is pretty finicky, but exploring can be a blast thanks to huge sprawling vistas, easy-to-see glowing handholds, and whatnot. Occasionally the camera gets in the way here or the controls can be a bit touchy, but it’s not nearly as frustrating as the combat. You’ll notice orange orbs floating around everywhere, and these are used for upgrades, but you can only upgrade if Trip is in the vicinity. There are some points where you can use Monkey’s Cloud hoverboard, and there are a few exciting moments like chasing a giant mech, but this feels a bit tacked on.
The game also has pacing issues since the first chapter is epic, and the next six or seven are the same repetitive area-to-area beating mechs up and jumping around the affair. It’s a shame that Enslaved feels like it’s only 80% complete because it needed a lot more polish. Even though the game looks good technically, it’s pretty bland, with just lots of green everywhere. There’s no unique art style or anything, and this is a shame. The mechs all look the same, and the enemy variety is less than half a dozen. Boss fights sometimes feel epic, but they repeat often, so Enslaved is iffy on every subject. I do recommend this as a great weekend rental or bargain purchase.
The Need for Speed series has been seriously confused and hurtful since Most Wanted. While Shift was a simulator, the other ones in between have been either subpar or bad. Hot Pursuit revives the classic entry with the Burnout team behind the wheels, and this feels more like Burnout than Need for Speed, however. Using the Paradise engine, Criterion did a good job making the game both look pretty and giving us a Burnout feel with real-world cars. These are slick cars, ranging from Mustangs to Maseratis.
As the name would suggest, it’s about cops versus racers, and each opponent gets a set of four weapons. Cops get an EMP, helicopter, spike strip, and road block. Each is pretty self-explanatory, but this feels like a glorified version of Burnout’s Road Rage mode. Racers get the same, but instead of a helicopter and roadblock, they get a jammer and turbo, which is an extra boost for NOS. Now you can earn turbo by doing crazy stuff as well.
The world map is also classic Burnout style, with each icon labeled for a racer or cop, and there are previews, time trials, and special events for each side. There is also Autolog, which is a social networking type of setup. Your friend’s best scores will be posted, and you can post screenshots and videos of your races. If a friend beats your score, you can jump right into that race and try to beat it. While the single-player is fun, it’s the online stuff that makes the game shine with all the weapons. The single-player feels predictable and stale compared to multiplayer because it feels like this game was made with multiplayer in mind. You earn a bounty and have to hit certain goals in single-player, but it’s nothing we haven’t seen in racing games already.
Once you race, everything feels fine, but the steering tends to suffer drastically depending on the road conditions and the car. Despite awesome damage modeling, the cars all feel pretty much the same, and the sense of speed is so fast that you don’t notice speed differences. This also concludes the repetition because once you unlock all weapons, it’s just the same events over and over again, and some people may never even finish the single-player due to this. The game can also look pretty good at times, but in other ways, it doesn’t.
The chaos comes from the fact that in multiplayer, you never know what anyone is going to do. You can see a roadblock ahead and get your shot lined up to dodge it, but just then someone deploys a spike strip right in your face and you hit both, losing a crap ton of health. You can take off again and try to shake off a helicopter, but then get hit by an EMP. It’s the same with racers, but this can also feel a bit unbalanced since racers’ biggest weapon is the jammer, so cops can’t use their weapons for a few seconds. It all depends on the players’ skills and how they race.
Despite the repetition and lack of weapons, the game works, but also notice all the Burnout references. There’s hardly any need for speed in this game, despite the real-world cards and the Hot Pursuit title. This is just a weird mix-up of game identities, but it’s probably better to have a burnout feeling than an old, crappy NFS game rehashed. Criterion already had the engine built for something like this, so I expect to see a sequel in the near future. I do recommend this to Burnout fans more than NFS, however, but old-school Hot Pursuit fans will dig this completely.
Most movie-based games are disasters, but when you take a movie license and do something original with it, it can turn out for the better. Bizarre Creations (Blur, Project Gotham Racing) has taken the helm of the Bond license to create the third entry into the series, but this is completely original with no movie tied to it. You play Daniel Craig’s Bond, and you’re, once again, trying to stop some evil thugs from doing evil things. While the story borders on paper-thin, it’s the action that we want.
Since Craig took the spotlight as Bond, his style is more brutal, raw, and realistic instead of the campy, funny, and smooth-talking past Bonds. He’s all about melee, guns, and less gadgets, and whether you like this better is up to you. While Everything or Nothing is the best Bond game in recent memory, Blood Stone is pretty decent. There are car chases, gun battles, and stealth sections that balance out nicely.
The stealth areas consist of sneaking around cover and meleeing guys and shooting them in the head without getting caught, or it’s going to be a firefight. This can be very satisfying when you learn the patrols and execute them accordingly. You can earn Focus Aim by doing a takedown, and this is just a one-shot kill, but you only get three. This comes in handy during stealth sections when you have multiple guys to take down in one area or are in a bind with your health.
Shooting is solid enough with blind fire from cover, and the timing is solid, but all the guns don’t really pack a punch. They feel light and sissy-like and completely not Bondlike at all. There’s a good variety of them, but you won’t care because you can’t tell the difference between any of them! There are some fun set pieces, such as slo-mo sections, some cinematic camera angles when jumping around, and a lot of explosions, so it’s packed full of action.
The racing sequences are something to be desired because it’s just driven from A to B and chasing this guy. There are no attached weapons or anything, and the cars drive like crap half the time. The cars either have severe understeer, oversteer, or feel really floaty. Coming from a developer who specializes in racing games, this is a huge surprise.
The game looks decent, but not up to par with current games. The racing sections look nice, but the characters feel last-gen, and everything just looks meh and sterile. The sound is pretty generic, with pew-pew gunfire, and the voice acting feels stiff despite being from real actors. Blood Stone is a great weekend rental, and don’t even expect multiplayer to keep you interested for much longer.
Survival horror is a slowly dying genre, and the king of the genre, Silent Hill, is barely keeping it alive. Shattered Memories is the first American-made Silent Hill, and the whole formula has pretty much changed. Hardcore fans will probably not like this, but the elements that make SH scary are still intact. The game is more about enjoying the experience and less about winning. Puzzles are very simple; there’s no combat, so it’s all about exploration and atmosphere.
You play Harry Mason, who wakes up from a car crash to look for his daughter Cheryl. He runs into different characters (including a MILF’d-up Cibil), and you run around the town of Toluca to find her. In between sequences, you are in therapy sessions, which consist of mini-games and are pretty neat because they change the outcome of the story and the ending. This is a new element for the SH series, and I hope it comes back in some form.
Once you step into the dark, you run around with your flashlight and are basically trying to find mementos and trigger sequences, such as when the screen gets staticky. This means that there is something nearby that will send you some sort of message on your phone. While these are creepy, you can also snap pictures with your phone camera, and this is usually also worked into puzzles.
When you see a white triangle above something, that means you can interact with it. These can be little micro-puzzles because you use a hand to push and pull things. While this was obviously created for the Wii version, it works great here on the PSP. Most puzzles aren’t nearly as mind-bending as past SH games because most of the time the key is in the same room as the locked door, and clues usually don’t need more decrypting. What may get you there is navigating the nightmare sequences.
Now, these are different from the air raid siren bringing rust that consumers SH in past games. Usually, a scene will trigger something, and ice will start covering the room. As you run around, you must find the X that’s on your map, because it’s usually a puzzle you have to solve to continue. While you run around, scary creatures chase you, and you must knock down objects to block their path and let them know you’ve been there before. Some sequences have you running around hallways and bringing you in circles until you go into the right sequence of doors. These sections can be quite hair-raising because of the music and sounds of the creatures, and if they catch you, you have to shake them off via on-screen prompts.
There are some unique parts of the game that make it cinematic, such as riding in cars in the first person, figuring out how to get out of them, and the first-person swimming sequence at the end of the game. Silent Hill has never been quite so cinematic before, and it’s a great addition. Despite all this, the game has a great twist ending and enough uniquity to keep you busy to the end. However, the departure from traditional Silent Hill elements may make some people hate this game. The game looks amazing on the PSP and really feels like it was built from the ground up for the device. This is a top-notch title for the handheld, and we need more of them.
Handhelds these days have the remake curse, with Nintendo being the worst. Really three different GBA’s? Four (and soon to be five) DS models? Once the latest and last iteration comes out, you tend to think that model should have been the first. The same goes with the PSP, since the 3000 is amazing and should have been the 1000 model. The first thing you’ll notice when you take it out of the box is the weight. This thing feels light as a feather, and I almost thought it was a fake piece of plastic. This is also a benefit when playing games and reduces hand cramps.
Another thing you’ll notice is that it’s slimmer, and all the fat has been trimmed off. The D-pad is built better and is concaved on the inside instead of just flat like the original model. The speakers are located at the top front instead of the bottom; thus, they are also more clear and less tinny. The addition of a built-in mic is great too for online play. The memory stick slot also has a major change, with it up near the top left side instead of the bottom. The slot is also a piece of plastic that comes out instead of the black corner piece. The slot is well hidden and blends in nicely with the unit.
Finally, the UMD slot has been replaced with a pull-out slot instead of a switch that makes it pop out. You just lay the UMD in instead of sliding it in like a cassette tape. It’s quieter, seems to be slightly faster as well, and uses less battery power. Another good change is that the WLAN switch is on top of the unit next to the USB port, which keeps you from accidentally switching it on. The console feels better when held due to its glossy back, and there are no contours for your hands, but this makes holding the unit better for some odd reason.
Other than that, everything is the same. The screen is crisper and brighter, and the new PlayStation home button looks great too. The Wi-Fi is slightly faster and supports newer security, and this unit is just solid and brilliantly designed. I really went back to my old UMD collection just to play the unit more, because games look nicer, and they just feel great being played on a solid piece of hardware.
Military shooters tend to take the most flak because they tend to be the same, linear, sometimes boring, with questionable multiplayer, but when Modern Warfare came out four years ago, it really shook the ground, and shooters have been copying it ever since. Black Ops also has something that surprised me, and this was a solid, memorable single-player experience. Blasphemy right? Wrong! The game has lots of varied environments, tons of epic moments, and a few vehicle sections are thrown in, as well as the best helicopter-based missions in any game ever. The game also doesn’t start out as a regular shooter, with Alex Mason (Red Faction: Guerrilla, anyone?) strapped in a chair and a disguised voice yelling at him to remember numbers. The whole story only makes sense at the end, reveals a lot of plot twists, is beautifully crafted, and shows developer Treyarch isn’t the weak link in the CoD series.
The game has a lot of new weapons that are true to the Cold War/Vietnam era, and even the art style shows. The game is beautiful, with great sound, voice acting, and the actual plot mentioned above. The game has memorable characters that you get attached to through the 7-8-hour campaign (yes, it’s also a tad longer than most campaigns in shooters) and even memorable moments themselves. The storming of the Vorkuta prison in Russia and many other levels are memorable. Of course, the game has some issues that Treyarch is known for, such as not knowing what to do, poor directions, respawning enemies, and a few glitches here and there. Despite that, the campaign is solid and well worth the wait and the money, but of course, it’s multiplayer that most people will keep coming back for.
And, oh boy, is the multiplayer sweet. With new maps, a whole new approach to customization, and even the new Wager matches, Black Ops multiplayer is probably the best in the series and the best FPS multiplayer ever made. The game has the same overall playstyle as Modern Warfare 2, but instead of receiving fixed unlocks, the game adopted a currency system, and you can buy everything from perks to weapons to visual add-ons—you name it. This is a great approach to changing up the game and making it more about what you want. On top of this, the Wager matches are ingenious, with players betting on a match, and the top three get some money and the rest lose their bet.
There is One in the Chamber, which gives you one bullet and a knife. If you kill someone, you get a bullet but run out, and you are left with your knife. This is a great and intense mode because it does not shoot first and aim later like the regular models. Gun Game has you start out as a pea shooter, then you move up in tiers of guns with each kill. Not every gun is good because a sniper rifle vs. a machine gun won’t be very easy. The next mode is Sticks and Stones, which gives you a crossbow, a tomahawk, and a ballistic knife. Hitting a player with a Tomahawk resets their score to zero, and the most points are awarded for crossbow kills. Sharpshooter has your weapon switch every 45 seconds, and it’s random, but every player has the same weapon. These are fun and amazing modes that never get old.
On top of that is the zombie mode that Treyarch made a cult hit in World at War. You play as Nixon, Kennedy, and two other characters, along with surviving the three maps and the hilarious political banter the characters speak (Nixon when spending points to remove a barrier: This is taxing me like the Democrats). Players, but fight off hordes of zombies in multi-tiered maps, and points are awarded for barricading windows and shooting the zombies. Points can be spent to buy weapons and ammo and unlock new parts of the map. It’s intense, and trying to survive rounds gets heated (most won’t survive after round 10 and past round 5 alone). With four players playing cooperatively, it’s a great departure from the seriousness of the rest of the game.
Brotherhood is one of those sequels that was thought to be just a cash cow tie-in for II, and everyone forgets about it. In fact, it was supposed to be a multiplayer-only add-on, but a few months before release, we realized it had a huge single-player experience that was bigger and better than II. This is what sequels should be like, especially if they borrow everything from their predecessors. Brotherhood isn’t a true Assassin’s Creed sequel like II was to the first one, but a new chapter in the amazing universe of 1500s Renaissance Italy. This time the game is set in Roma (Rome), and it’s huge, and there’s a lot more to this game than one skeptical fan might suspect.
The story is just as engaging, if not more complex, than II. Ezio is now older and the leader of the assassins, and he must stop the Borgia reign in Roma (since he failed to kill Rodrigo Borgia in the second game), but Rodrigo himself is only seen twice in the game and briefly. It’s all his minions and the fight against Cesare that are the main focus here. The game still has a deep political plot that ties in with real-life situations and people at the time.
Along with that, you can also play as Desmond Miles outside the Animus, and he has a bigger gameplay part with a whole section dedicated to restoring power to today’s Auditore Villa for the team’s new hideout to find the Apple of Eden and stop Abstergo and the Templars. While you only see these guys at the beginning and end of the game, you get another cliffhanger ending that will lead to the third game, as well as a great conclusion to Ezio’s story.
The game plays exactly like II, with no changes to gameplay except for some added stuff like a new crossbow, which is a godsend for killing stealthily from far away. It’s great to do a mission and wipe guys out with a crossbow and not get detected by those hard-to-reach guys. There aren’t any newly added weapons besides that, but combat is enhanced slightly, so it’s not such a counterfest. You can kick enemies, combo Arkham Asylum style, and even do some nice executions with the pistol. This is a nice change to combat and makes it a little more fun. You can also call in assassin recruits to help you, and this is extremely helpful, but more on that later.
Despite the main chapters, there are more side missions than you can shake a stick at. The side missions will take a good 20+ hours to complete and are tons of fun. You have the Borgia towers that have to be burned. These have to be burned down to buy closed-down stores and restore areas and landmarks. You have to enter a restricted area, kill the Borgia captain, then climb the tower and burn it down. There are quite a few, so these will keep you busy, and finding and killing each captain is different and challenging. On top of this, you can buy stables, blacksmiths, doctors, art stores, tailors, faction buildings, banks, and landmarks to restore Roma 100%. You will increase the city’s income, which will be deposited in a bank every 20 real-world minutes.
There are other side missions for each faction (thieves, courtesans, and mercenaries), as well as assassination contracts, Christina missions, finding more The Truth files (10 this time), and now Lair of Romulus missions, which have six in all and are much like Templar Lairs. After you find all six keys, you can unlock the Romulus armor, which is like Altair’s armor in the last game. You can also go to pigeon coops and play a mini-RPG that lets you send your assassin recruits out on missions based on their experience. Missions are based on difficulty, and you will see a percentage bar on how successful they will be. Send more than one to fill it higher, but if they come back, you can upgrade their armor or weapons, and when they reach level 10, you can make them full assassins. These are also helpful during missions since you can call up to three, or call them all for an arrow storm, and kill all enemies on-screen. It’s great to call an assassin on someone you can’t reach and then go in further without getting detected.
On top of all this, these missions can only be synched 100% if you complete the challenge, such as using your hidden blade and completing it in this amount of time. Don’t kill this person; only kill this person. It adds a surprisingly huge amount of depth to the game and makes playing missions (both side and main) more interesting and challenging.
Now the multiplayer is a really fun and surprising addition to the series. There is only one mode, and it’s all about a free-for-all cat and mouse hunt. You are given a target (another player out of 7), and you must use your abilities and skills to kill them while you may also be pursued. So you have to find your target and keep from getting killed yourself. The game has a Call of Duty-style perk and ability system that lets you customize load-outs as well. The game is very addictive and keeps you on your toes. You must blend and try to just act natural since NPCs also have the same looks as other players. There are many characters to play as, and each has its own unique abilities. The multiplayer will keep you hooked and make you come back to the game long after the single-player is exhausted.
With tons of new content, great new characters and a story, and an awesome multiplayer suite, Brotherhood is an example of what sequels should be like. I highly recommend this to fans of the last game and anyone who loves the variety in their games.
Collector’s Edition: For an extra $40, you get a Jack-in-the-Box with either the Plague Doctor or Harlequin (depending on what store you get it from), as well as a bonus DVD, extra maps (one exclusive to the PS3), a playable multiplayer character, an art book, and the soundtrack. This is a huge value for $40 and is a must-have for fans. The Jack-in-the-Box is made a tad cheaply with weak springs, and getting the things to close is annoying, but the figure itself is high quality.
thebinarymessiah.com 
Try multiplayer. A lot of fun !