Conspiracy: Weapons of Mass Destruction (xbox) Review

Serious Freaking Business

Every genre has its ups and downs. While some are good and some are bad, most of them either have some type of redeeming quality. However, every so often you find this one game that just feels  like there was no effort put into  it what  so ever. Conspiracy: Weapon of Mass Destruction is one of them. To put it lightly, this game feels  and looks like a budget N64 games from 1997 that was delayed for over 5 years and quickly put on xbox, PS2, and PC with little to no update. There is no excuse for a game to be this bad. I don't even call this game shovelware, its that bad. Honestly though, the game does have some humor to  it, but thats mostly due to its VERY poor quality. Enough talking about t, lets get this crap started.

Presentation

Heres were it all gets started. First you put it into you xbox, then you regret you actually paid some type of price  for it (even if you downloaded it and burned  it, you STILL wasted a perfectly good DVD or  CD on it).  You see the no name developer's logo and then it tells you about some douche named "Cole Justice" AKA the best pun EVER! The Menu is nothing but a black background  with the stupid Bio hazard symbol that is spammed everywhere in this game. The settings menu only has like 5 options, none of which effect the game to much. Finally when you press new game (cause theres no way you'll have a save game for this) your greeted with the biggest ass load of text you wil ever find in a game. So much "effort" for such little in return. Oh ya, and the load times are annoying in length, epically when you consider how little needs to be loaded.

Graphics

Damn, it so beautiful!

 Remember when I said N64? well ya, this looks like one,  and not a very good one at that. Where do I start? the clouds move at about 30 MPH, the water has no...ANYTHING, the characters are stiff and beyond lifeless, everything else has just no detention. The only decent thing I can think of is the guns have decent recoil animations, but thats when your not abusing the pistol rapid fire glitch.
     So what did we learn? this game looks like SHIT!!!!!!! yep i just said that, sue me, better yet, sue the idiots who thought it would be a good idea to make this game.

Sound

Sound, ya theres not much in this game. The same menu song lloops over and over through out the menu without any change at all. Thee guns either have terrible sounds or lack any sound what so ever. Theres no wind, foot steps, or even background music while playing. The only person who talks is some person who tellls Cole what to do. ya not much here, though that might be pretty good if you  think about it.

Gameplay

Put all other games to shame

Lets get into the god aweful controls (even by looking at these you can tell  these people seem too not even be looking when they mapped these).  A is the action button (I think). B reloads (Again, i think). Y throws grenades. X switches weapons. White crouches.  Black zooms. R shoots. L jumps. Left thumbstick moves. Right thumbstick aims. Clicking the left thumbstick centers the camera. Left D pad switchs to hand to hand combat. And start pauses. 
      Ok were to begin. The controls are terrible and sometimes don't even function right. You start with very little ammo. There are traps that are stupidly easy to see. The game is really tough only because you can't really do anything. When you die you still hold your gun. And after that you see a black screen with a similar song to the stupid menu theme and you see the words "Cole Justice,  1954-2005" And then the words "We will miss you, Cole, Cara" appear. after that you RESTART from  the last checkpoint.

Overall

The sad part is, someone actually played this game!

 Lets face it, this is as bad as they come and then some. I have no words to describe how bad this is. It was so bad that I haven't found any reviews of it and only a handful of videos on youtube. Then again, maybe its better we leave this game out of pubic eye. This  is probably the wort game  on the xbox. There are probably worse games on the PS2 (since theres so much shovelware) and I know for a fact there are worse for the PC. But damn, this is just one bad game.

Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies (PS2) Review

It was a pain in the ass finding a cover!

Ah 3D flight games, I love them so. The 5th gen had its share of 3 Ace combats while the N64 and Saturn had few, but they were still there. The 6th gen kicked off great  with the Dreamcast having a great share of quality titles (air force delta for example). So finally a year after the PS2 was out, Namco decided to put out Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies! This is a hell of a good semi simulator. Like Early my MGS review from early this morning, I really love this game. However, unlike MGS, this isn't perfect, but  its really, REALLY good.


Presentation

Oh the menus, so so nice. The perfect blue color with the computer like letters, man thats good. The misssions briefing is great as welll with great voice acting that tells you all you'll need to know. An auto save system would be nice, but thats just nit picking. The Cut Scenes are so awesome. Anime style stills with relaxed narration. Once you get to gameplay, everything iis all in your head. The  HUD is perfect as well, and it responds to the Pressure sensitive PS2 controller.

Graphics

Sure, in terms of graphics it got beat withing a month (thanks to xbox and Air force Delta Storm) but  wow  these were great for 01. The use of Distance fog and sun beams is great, even though you could call it cheating.When your far away, everything looks beyond amazing. First person view is the only way to go, as the air craft just  gets in the way of the view. Sure, your not supose to  get to close  to everything, but  if you do its kindof a drag. You'll notice the low resolution textures. But when your playing the game right, it great looking.

Sound

HMMM them some good voices. The voices that never shut up are great. The The airplanes sound wounderful as well. The machine gun is a bit underwelming sadly. The rockets have a nice boom to them. The music the eppic, hook your PS2 up to surround sound cause man you will need it. Can't really say much else, but man itss good (mostly).

Gameplay

SWEEEEEEET!

Controls (oh what joy). X is the machine gun. O is either rockets or bombs (depends what yoou have selected).  Triangle switches targets when tapped and looks behind you when held. Square widens your mini map. R1 Accelorates. L1 Brakes. L2 and R2 basically strafe (can't think of the flight word, so DON'T get mad at ME! lol). D pad up centers the plane. D pad down Changes the view. The left thumb stick controls the plane. The right thumb stick looks around. R3 looks behind. Select Changes weapons. Start pauses. 
     This is one of the best flight games I've played. The controls are nearly perfect and the AI is great. I can't really describe the gameplay any more than saying you  fly a combat plane and fight bad planes. Trust me, its WAY more intense than that.. The game takes you to so many great places that just look great. Trust me, pick this game up.

Overall

Pick up the soundtrack While your at it

I realize I barley reviewed this game. I mostly just said how good it is. The flight genre is a bit lacking (epically on consoles) so I haven't played as many as a I have other genres. But based on the ones I have played, I can tell you this is one of the better ones. It has a lot of immersion, its Tactical, and its just plain fun. I promise my next review ill be much better than this. Even though at this rate no one will even read any of my reviews, so what the hell..

Metal Gear Solid (GBC) Review

The coolest cover EVER!

Its 1:37 am right now and I'm freaking bored. So what do I do? grab my DS, open the gameboy emulator and play MGS on it. after that I realized I can do a quick review of one of my favorite handheld games ever! Not only is it one of my favorite handheld games ever, but it is also without a doubt the best handheld action based MGS ever (better than the two on PSP imo).

Presentation

Sleck and stylish in every way. This is one of them games that  has the look of an older gen but the feel of a newer gen. This looks like a 5th gen game shrunk down for 3rd gen hardware, but NOT on a bad way (like most of the time). This is done in a very good way actually. This game has the  menu, gameplay elements, VR missions, and characters of the PS1 classic. You really can't get any better than this on the hardware, top  notch.

Graphics

Colorful, fluid, and down right amazing for the hardware. The animations are beyond what I thought could be done on the game boy color. The environments have such nice color to them. Everything just looks great. I really can't even type anymore, since I have no critisms about them, top notch.

Sound

What MGS can do on CD based hardware is so increadable. What it can do on 8 bit game pack hardware is just breathtaking. Grab your head phones, cause these are some 8 bit ssounds you wont want to miss. The music is down right beutiful. Espically level 1. taken directly from MG2:solid Snake. Damn, just so good. The sound effects work perfectly. Like the graphics, I have no criticism for the sound.

Gameplay

That's right, a cover system

 First, the very basic (but utualized oh so cleverly) controls. The D pad moves. Start crawls. A is attack. B is action. And select brings up commands.
Ya, the GBC only has two action buttionns, start, select, and a D padd. But man this game uses them to the max. Select brings up your comands. When you bress it, time stops (like in the PS1 game) and pressing up or down on the D pad selects you items, left or right selects your weapons, start activates the codec, and pressing select again cansels it. Its so nicly done and is just amazing. Snake can now move 8 ways (rather than 4 ways in the MSX games) and can use basically the same cover system as MGS. This is not only better than the original MSX games, but it also nearly matches the PS1 game.

Overall

Just to cool

to strait up quote IGN,  "This, folks, is a Game Boy Color game done right. It's clear that the right team was put to the task of bringing the classic Metal Gear to the Nintendo handheld. I want every official Game Boy Color publisher and developer to look at what Konami has done on the system ¿ and then look at the sales figures. I guarantee you this will be one of the top selling games for the Game Boy Color ¿ and this will prove once and for all that, yes, you can spend quality time and resources on a Game Boy Color title and still make it pay off in the end. Absolutely brilliant."
      You may notice I didn't bring up the story, well like most MGS's its amazing. Play this game yourself, its just that good. This is one of the  VERY few games I say is truly perfect.

Attempting to "spice up" the blog

Not his mad...yet

Like anyone will even read this, but what ever. I didn't do any review today mostly because i couldn't figure something out. However, I did Finally add a banner (the word PN003 is suppose to be blinking, but it messed up). I'm going to attempt to give it a very orange look to it, sort of like the sega dreamcast. I'm still gonna be messing with it the next few days, but probably by Thursday I'll have it good.
     Tomorrow I'll probably review Just Cause for the xbox. Also I want to see if i can get more people on to here, since its not very fun typing just to have no one read it. So guess thats it for today. hove a good one!

Half Life 2 (xbox) Review

He makes glasses look badass

When the first Half Life came out in 1998 it blew everyone away. Never has a game had AI, gameplay, and immersion that good. In 2004, Valve finally released a sequal  to it called half life 2. Like the first one, it received great reviews and is considered one of the greatest games of all time. The following year, they released a port of it to the most powerful console avadable, the xbox. While the port  remained relitivally faithful to the original PC version, there are some short comings that will make you want to pick up a different port. However, if you can't get any other port, this is perfect for you.

Presentation

Like most Vaalve games, this starts with the epic Valve logo (with a valve on some dudes head). The game then goes into a cool photo of Gordon and Alex in front of the giant ass tower. Then, you get a load time, get used to this as you'll be seeing them a lot. However if this is the second time in a row you played the game, it will load faster since files cache into your hard drive. Finally you can start a game. once you beat a chapter, you can select that chapter in the new game option. The presentation is really well done. However, the rather annoying load times bring it down for me.

Graphics

PS2 can't run this, umad?

 Half life 2 looked amazing on PC in 2004. And whhat your probably thinking is correct, the xbox can;t run it in that state. There are some cut backs. The xbox version is basically the PC version with most of the graphics set on low. Even with the cut backs the game doesn't maintain a good framerate. The game chugs slightly when there is a few enemmes on screen, and it chugs A LOT when your in a vehicle. The framerate is bearable, but it really makes things annoying, plus you'll probably find yourself dying due to it. Despite these cut backs, the game still looks pretty damn good. The water is ome of the best I've seen on the xbox. Also the lighting effects hold up really well even by todays standards.

Sound

Nothing short of EPIC. The voice acting is top notch and you really feel like your talking too the person. The music, though it  comes  in and out at random times, it always fitting and epic. Most of the sound effect are great. The guns on the other hand are mixed. The pistol sounds a bit to weak and it just doesn't pack a punch.  The sub machine gun also sounds a bit weak. However, ever other gun sounds great.

Gameplay

People defiantly have explosive barrels in the back yard

Controls (which use almost EVERY SINGLE BUTTON ON THE CONTROLLER). A jumps. B Reloads. X   toggles run (and gives you a boost in a vehicle). Y is the action button. Black commands team members. White Toggles your flashlight. R is your Primary fire. L is you secondary fire. Left tumbstick moves. Clicking te left thumbstick activates a crouch. Right thumbstick looks. Clicking the right thumbstick activates your scope. D pad up selects your Pistols. D pad right selects your Sub machin gun, shotgun, and pulse rifle. D pad down selects your Crow bar and gravity gun. D pad left selects your Grenade and bug ball thing. And start pauses. 
      Despite the awful framerate and imperfect aiming do the controller limitations, Half Life 2 on the xbox is still a very fun game. The physics are still fun to use, the enemies are still awesome, nearly every single part of the PC version is still just as fun on xbox. The only problems that might annoy you are the far less accurate aiming with a controller and the bad framerate. Otherwise, the game is a blast with exelent pacing. You will hardly ever get stuck in the game. However, that doesn't mean you wont die over and over, just means you can get through the game without getting stuck on a part for hours at a time.

Counter Strike on xbox.

Overall

Ya, the game has no multiplayer so once you beat it theres really not much to come back to. However, Valve does have Counter Strike for xbox, you can play a similar game in mulltiplayer. I realize the odds of you only being able to get this game on a dead console over 2 current consoles and a PC are slim, so there wasn't much of a point of me reviewing this. But, overall this is a decent port. While it could have been better, its still an awesome game. Plus it took me over 600 minutes to beat it, so...

R: Racing Evolution (Gamecube) Review

Notice the two ratings? We'll get to that later

Namco is defiantly not new to the racing game genre. The PS1 wouldn't have been anywhere near as good if they didn't release there epic Ridge Racer series. In late 2003 they decided to release a third party game called R: Racing Evolution. It was meant to basically be a story based Ridge Racer, but with more of a GT feel to it. While the game has an excellent concept with plenty of features to go around for a long time, the core gameplay of it is a MASSIVE hit or miss. Generally, if you like the gameplay, you should be able to enjoy all this game has to offer. However, if you don't the story MIGHT keep you interested, but you wont want to comeback once its over.

Presentation

You can tell the second the intro video comes up that namco made this. That Techno like music with epic CGI just screamed Ridge Racer. The Menu system is really slick  to. In the car select menu, the cars rotate with nice shine to them. Before you pick each race in either Arcade or Story mode, you get a lot of options on how you want to run the race, almost TO many options. Each story mode mission has a little monologue on whats going on, and some of them have an interesting CGI video first. The basic story revolves around a girl named Rena Hayami who was an ambulance driver. She had to bring an injered racer to the hospital and his manager liked how she drove and signed her up. I didn't really describe that well but you get what I'm saying.

Graphics

Great CGI. The rest, not so much

Remember when GT3 came out on PS2? Back in 2001 that might have been the best looking game ever (Until Project Gotham Racing that is). So, you would thing a game made two years later on more powerful hard ware would look better right? well this one not so much. R  looks like a PS2 game. Its a damn shame to, the gamecube was a very powerful console that just didn't get the respect it should have. The game looks shiny but plain. The cars have rough edges and environments don't have much going  for them. The CGI on the other  hand it great. Namco always pulls through when it comes to it. On the bright side, during gameplay the game runs at a near perfect (if not perfect) 60 FPS. In racing game FPS doesn't really matter as much as action games, but its always nice to have one running at a great one. The game is generally a let down sadly. Games like NFSU and Burnout 2 are the way to go if your looking for a graphically excellent racing games.

Sound

Like most Namco games, this one has great  sound. The cars have strong engines. The sound track is typical Ridge Racer type techno, which is a good thing. I've grown to love that acid Jazz type sount that is always thrown at us. The In-car voice acting is really cool. Think Ace Combat 4 in a car. If your into ace combat 4, you'll like that. Also, the voice actors are really good. Lets face it, this is one game that wont hurt your ears.

Gameplay

Kiss my Dust!

  Here we go again. Better put the controls down. Keep in mind these are not the base controls, but what I like best, the controls are very customizable. The Left thumbstick steers. R accelerates. L Brakes. A shifts up. B shifts Down. The D pad shows multifunction displays. Z Changes the camera angle. Y looks behind you. X is the hand break. And Start Pauses. 
      As you can see it has basic Racing game controls. The best way to describe the racing it shoving Ridge Racer and Gran Turismo into a blender. The game has sort of stiffer ridge racer type steering, but almost simulator like speed. Its generally not as deep as GT but not as fast and fun as Ridge Racer. The cars are very customizable, but its kind of hard to notice the differences. There are 8 different racing types. While they do switch things up a bit, there still not very fun. 14 different tracks which all feel pretty good. Overall the gameplay is probably its weakest quality. While you might get some enjoyment out of it, theres really not enough depth to it. Namco should have attempted to do something full sim or full arcade, rather than doing a weird mix.

Overall

This might be the only reason some people bought this game.

 The Gamecube was a bit deprived of racing games. While the need for speed franchise loved it, many others just skipped them. Though this game does fill a bit of a void, it doesn't fill it in enough. You'll be able too breeze through the racin life story pretty fast. After words, theres not much to  do on that disc. However, if you were smart and bought the Gamecube version, you would realize it comes with Pac Man VS.! Its basically Multiplayer pac man were one person plays as pac man and the other(s) play as the ghost. This requires a GBA. Its a really fun game that might keep  you more entertained than R. I found this game for about 5$ at gamestop, So if you want a decent racing game along with a really fun multiplayer game, get it. Even if you don't play R, get it for pac man!

Far Cry Instincts Predator (360) Review

Well this is kind of funny. I create this blog and a post saying I'll be doing a lot of reviews, and I end up not doing one until now. Well I just got myself a new laptop yesterday and I am loving the keyboard.So, I decided to grab a game from my 360 collection that I bought a few weeks back and guess I'll be reviewing it. Far Cry Instincts Predator is basically a slightly enhanced pot of Far Cry Instincts and Far Cry Instincts Evolution for the xbox. While Predator is a very good game with an amazing amount of content, its defiantly not worth purchasing if you own both the originals.

Presentation 

The game starts off with these slick menus (taken from Far Cry Instincts Evolution) which allows you to play two seperate stories, the instincts story and the evolution. Unless you have the latest 360 firmare, you CAN'T play the evolution story without beating the instincts story or getting a cheat code. While thats not a big deal, its still pretty annoying. Espically since most people who bought this game when i came out got it just for the evolution part (since this actually came out the same day as evolution did on the xbox).I'm not gonna go into the story to much since its pretty cool and I don't want to spoil it, but basically you play as a dude named Jack Carver who is basically gets captured and gets some stuff injected into him. The stuff gives him these weird super human abilities that make him more like an animal.

Ya, Taste the Draw Distance! 

Graphics

Instincts and Evolution look amazing on xbox. I don't think anyone thought a game could look THAT good on a last gen console. They had amazing lighting, great draw distance, and just amazing environments and water. On 360, the game still looks amazing, if you keep in mind its a port. There really weren't many upgrades made to the game. They did change the ratio to wide screen (though i think you could on the original to), some lighting effects have been beefed up. But, there are many things that are still bland. The characters still look like there made of clay, the trees still have a funny look to them, and zooming in with a sniper rifle in the grass is pretty funny looking. The game still looks good for a 360 game (which is a huge complement for the xbox) and it maintains a great framerate. The game has a great draw distance. so expect yourself to stop at certaain moments and just gasp at the beauty of the environment.

Sound

The sound of the game works great. Nice ambient jungle sounds when its quiet (birds chirping, you stepping on dead leaves, oh is so nice). The music pops in during moments, and when it does it does good (lol i worded that so bad). The guns have a good kick to them (epically the shotguns) however, when your holding two sub machine guns and firing them at the same time, you don't get that kick you would expect. The bad guys can be pretty annoying when they say the same crap over and over. But, the rest of the voice actors make up for that (with lots of juicy swearing, such as "S**T, TURN THAT F*****G THING OFF!").

Gameplay

Feral pwnage!

This game strikes really good (but not perfect) were it counts, the gameplay. First lets start with my LONG paragraph telling you the controls (this whole thing will be like this in case you want to skip it). A allows you to jump, get up while crouching, and roll on your back while crawling. B allows you to do a melee attack and push objects. X allows you to reload or do an action (usually open something enter a vehicle, or pick up a weapon). Y allows you to do you feral run or (if you press and hold) activate feral visions. RT allows you to shoot or instal a trap. LT allows you to throw a rock or grenade (or use the handbrake in a vehicle). LB toggle's rocks or grenades. RB toggle's weapons or traps. D pad up zooms in with a sniper rifle (or holding it allows you to use binoculars). D pad left selects your primary weapon, double tapping it allows you to  duel weild (if you have two, this only applies to some weapons). D pad right selects your secondary weapon, and double clicking it has the same effect as D pad left. D pad down selects your special weapon. Left thumbstick moves (clicking it allows you to crouch, holding it allows you to crawl). Right thumbstick looks (holding it zooms in). Finally, start pauses and back shows your current objectives.
     Well that was fun lol. well lets get into some cool aspects about the gameplay. Like I said before, you have these animal like abilities that make the game fun as hell! First you got claws, you can run up to people and claw the crap out of them, oh its so fun. Later you can get more, but I wont spoil it for ya. You have the ability to drive vehicles. While I feel they could have mabe the controls better while driving, it still pretty fun. One HUGE annoyance i have with the controlls are they are exactly the same as they were on xbox. Now the controls are fine on xbox, don't get me wrong, but the fact that the 360 controller has 4 shoulder buttions and they don't make proper use of them pisses me off. Also, the enemy AI is pretty stupid. You will see them either not noticing you or shooting there  brains out the second they see you. But its flaws arn't to bad when you consider how generally fun the rest of the game it. Theres also a multiplayer mode for xbox live. It supports the games map editor. I can't really go into  this to  much since I only played it once. However, beware that if you don't have extra maps downloaded, it will be hard to find matches.

Overall

The map editor will add some lasting appeal

This game has so much content. For the price of 1 game you get 2 great ones. Despite its flaws this is still one of the best shooters I've played. Then again, I had both instincts and evolution before i got this. I paid only $6 for this at a pawn shop, so you should be able to find this cheap these days. Like I said, its not a perfect game, however, for the prices and the amount of content, its really worth picking it up (if you don't already have instincts or evolution that is).