XBox 360 Rally

You know, I just finished watching the GTA IV trailer… for the twelfth time. Without question, this is what GTA was meant to be, and I look forward to seeing and hearing much, much more about this upcoming classic-to-be.

If you haven’t yet seen the trailer, well… well, you fail. But secondly, you missed on a gorgeous view of New York (yes, the actual New York) followed by a narration of a man (presumably the main character), obviously Russian, telling of how he wants to make a new start in the Big Apple.

My jaw was left dropped. First off, without doubt this is the prettiest damn GTA game in existence, and it won’t even be done until October. Secondly, and most importantly, it looks to have a scope not matched in any GTA game. I don’t usually get childishly giddy for a game, but GTA IV is that game.

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So, I just got done playing the demo to Def Jam Icon on the 360, and I find myself coming away with a feeling of “…huh.”

When I first booted up the demo, I found myself looking at a black & white screen with “Def Jam Icon” on it, and some blue bars moving up and down to silence… for five minutes. Five. Minutes. After that, the demo finally booted up to the EA logo, which I skipped and got to the title screen.

After I finally got into the demo, and to the character selection, I could either play as Big Boi, or… well, Big Boi. But I will admit, I would’ve picked Big Boi anyways, since T.I. is a punk bitch who needs to meet the business end of a crowbar. But I digress.

You know, I’ll be perfectly honest with you — I don’t know what the hell to think of Def Jam Icon. When I was done playing it, it left me feeling confused and frightened, like a homeless kitten huddled near the door to a convenience store on a rainy November night (Yeah, I’m gonna get mail for that). Even as I was playing it, I didn’t know if I was playing a traditional fighting game, a bad urban rip-off of Fight Night, or a REALLY BAD wrestling game.

Don’t get me wrong, what I did play was… interesting. The fighting mechanics are all well done. Graphically, the game looks damn good. It plays great, with interactive environments and realistic looking combat that left you feeling satisfied when you hit TI in that smug effing face of his with a thunderous shot to the “grill.” But in the end, Icons seems to suffer from a bit of schizophrenia. On one hand, it wants to be like Fight Night without the gloves and trunks, but on the other hand it wants to still remain a wrestling game.

There was one question I do have, though: What the hell is the scratching in there for? I hear it’s supposed to work with the music to increase the damage to your opponent and interact with your environment, but I’ll be damned if I can figure out how to work the damn thing. It didn’t help me during combat at all, and as for the environment interaction… the gas station seemed to blow up completely at random times every time I played — and I played it a good seven or eight times in about an hour. That’s another gripe I have — the demo is freaking SHORT! Not GRAW 2 short, either — It took me longer to download the demo, which clocks in at about 350 MB, give or take, than it did to play through the match. That’s never good. Also, no HUD. How am I supposed to know how badly I’m getting whipped if I have no HUD? Sure, these are minor complaints, but as the old saying goes “The small stuff adds up to one big sum.” Suffice to say, when it DOES come out, I’ll have to pick it up just to figure out what the hell is going on.

One thing I strongly suggest they DO keep though is the Korean shop owner with the hose. That was freaking hilarious!

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So, I finally played GRAW 2 on my 360, and I have to say… I don’t know why I’ve been shying away from this game for so long!

The demo itself was fairly short — took me about fifteen minutes to get through once I figured out the somewhat complicated control scheme. Suffice to say, every button does something that, quite frankly, looks pretty good. When you jump into the game, the first thing that you will notice is that the game looks gorgeous, even in this early demo. I let myself get smashed by a mortar round just to watch it fly.

But the game itself is also fantastic. You take control of former NFL Quarterback-turned-Special Forces soldier Scott Mitchell, and you are given the basic mission of “Kill the bad guys before they kill you.” You’re given a slew of weapons in which to kill with and spend most of the demo by yourself as you ice the baddies. Strange, considering that Ghost Recon had always been about team control (to my knowledge, at least) and tactics. Eventually you DO get to group up with three other soldiers and get to play with the team controls for a short period.

There were quite a few things I liked with the demo. The recon drone is a pretty cool feature. If you hit the RB, you can use the recon drone to scan over your immediate surroundings for enemies or objective points, and it helps to plan strategy to most efficiently ice those heffers. Another thing that really impressed me, as a soldier, was the teammate AI. In the brief period I had them, I saw that the programmers at Ubisoft did a most excellent job in programming your teammates to, again, efficiently ice those heffers.

Another feature that I hear is new is the MULE. Basically, the MULE is where you replenish your ammunition and health, and should the situation arise where you’re being hogged down by enemy fire, the MULE works as a pretty good shield. Believe me, I know.

I wish they had come out with a multi-player demo, but the single player demo is certainly worth a few go-arounds. Ghost Recon: Advance Warfighter 2 is due in stores on March 6th.

Oh, by the by… the ACUs look freakin’ awesome.

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So, Crackdown finally loaded up for me. I kid you not, I was waiting for it to DL all damn day. But I finally got it on my hard drive, and after FINALLY completing the main quest in Elder Scrolls IV. All I can say is… not bad.

I have no idea what the story of the game is, outside the fact that you play some sort of bionic cop trying to wipe out the gangs of “Fictional City” (my personal name for it, not the actual name). What I liked about the demo was just how easy it was to jump into, especially for a game with the surprising depth that Crackdown has. As you progress through the demo, shooting baddies, blowing stuff up and just plain exploring, your character will level up specific attributes, such as your strength, your driving abilities, and your skills with firearms.

I only played one mission with the demo: An apartment complex where I was supposed to kill this ganger princess. But from playing the game in a sandbox-like mode, I think it can be said that MOST of Crackdown’s missions will be the basic shoot-that-guy formula. Now, I DID find a couple of racing activities, but I kept getting told I wasn’t high-enough level.

A few knocks on the game: The mission structure seems kind of broken (as in “so loose it’s confusing”). The combat can get repetitive. While the option of targeting a specific limb is cool, in the end it’s still run-and-gun. I don’t want to include graphics, but this game isn’t… it isn’t Xbox 360 quality, let’s leave it at that.

And if you’re wondering about Co-Op, it’s more of the same.

Overall, I’m now officially interested in Crackdown. I may not love it when I get it, but it has it’s moments when it can be true fun.

So the multiplayer demo for Battlestations: Midway has been launched for download on the Xbox Live Marketplace. After spending less than one whole game with this, I couldn’t even bring myself to finish it. It’s that awful.

I love World War II games. I am one of only a few left. So I get my hands on this game, I take the ten minutes to download it (my broadband is split between my phone, PC and 360), I set up a match and I jump right in. Now, I expected off the bat to be piloting a fighter taking off of an aircraft carrier and engaging in high-speed air combat. Instead I find myself AS the aircraft carrier, tugging slowly across the open waters launching aircraft and occasionally shooting down a few very slow moving fighters.

Of course, by using the D-Pad you can switch from the battleship to each fighter, though both are equally tedious. The fighters move painfully slow, and have absolutely NO maneuverability which makes them easy targets for the ground turrets and battleships. When you play as the ship, which is often since it is an easy target if the computer controls it, you are tasked with launching the fighters and maintaining the ship’s systems (turrets, flooding, fire prevention, etc.). Not very fun, and the way the controls are set-up make navigating the menus confusing for the first few minutes.

Now again, I didn’t even play an entire match, and yet, I was playing for a half-hour. I know that this “First Impression” is pretty short, but that should tell you something. After all, when a game is great, you can say it in a million different ways. But there is really only a handfull of ways to say “This sucks.”