Random X-Box 360 Thoughts
One of the many ways I've wasted time during my 1.5 weeks away from the office over the holidays is to play lots of X-Box 360. One of my favorite new games is called "Getting my head blown off in Halo 3." Other games I've enjoyed in this genre are "Getting my head blown off in Call of Duty 4," and "Getting my head blown off in Mass Effect." You get the picture. I do actually remember being pretty good at video games about 20 years ago, but through this terrible affirmation of my own mortality, it seems I must admit that I'm slowing down a bit or at least out of practice. Still, this is great fun.
Anyway, I posted the Mass Effect trailer above to show one of the best games I'm playing right now. One of the coolest features of the game early on is creating the face of your hero. It just sort of dawned on me tonight after playing the game for a few hours that my hero looks a bit like Steve.... well, actually quite a lot like Steve. Sorry, Steve, but I seem to be getting you blown up in a lot of different ways! Still, I think one of the female crew members has the hots for you, so your virtual space self may get some degree of compensation for all the hot plasma he's been eating.
Playing the X-Box 360 has taken a bit of time away from board gaming, but mainly just the time I spent reading various posts on BGG. I now spend about five minutes a day there looking over the hot posts and vainly trying to entice someone into trading me Railroad Tycoon. No luck yet...
Anyway, enough ramblings... Happy New Year everyone! I hope to game with each of you very soon.
Labels: ramblings
posted by Ben @ 6:50 PM
9 comments
9 Comments:
Me, I've had a real game for the Wii for 8 days. Just finished "Medium" on Guitar Hero III (15-20 hours so far). But I went looking for other Wii games yesterday (Toys Is Us Gift Cards for the kids) and ...
There.
Is.
Nothing.
Else.
Wii's suck.
And Jeff's demented like/love of Mario Party means he'll be first against the wall when the revolution comes. Sorry dude.
My face is a good choice. Definitely not suitable for modeling, but I've proven over and over that it's hard to damage.
If you think the Wii has nothing check the PS3's selection. Worst system ever.
Super Mario Galaxy is a pretty solid platformer. The virtual console games are I guess good for nostalgia, but I have other ways to get my nostalgic kick.
Mario Party is fun...one of the mini games on the Wii version is "lets shake up our pop bottles as much as possible and whichever one shoots the furthest is the winner!" Plus its the origin of the infamous "'come on' him" when I was trying to get my teammate who had the controller at the moment to use our "come on!" taunt on the guy who was taking forever on his turn. It was unfortunately misinterpreted and I didn't even catch on until like 3 hours later.
Re: Halo 360:
Mass Effect is awesome. I don't think its going to give me as many hours as Halo 3 will though. My guy hasn't died that much, I think 100% of his deaths have been driving that car over a cliff. Sniper Rifles increase your survivability drastically.
Rock Band's guitar stuff is surprisingly easy. I didn't touch expert guitar on GHII, but passed a couple of songs on the first try earlier. The drums can be a challenge though.
Video killed the radio star
I've heard that Resident Evil, Metroid Prime, and Medal of Honor are all decent grown-up games on the Wii. And if virtual sports are your thing, Madden football (you actually have to hike, pass, catch, stiff-arm, etc with the Wii-mote) and Rapala fishing (just like real fishing, only on the couch!) are OK.
I LOVE Mass Effect. Compelling story with a really deep, fleshed-out world. The facial animations are unbelievable--best I've ever seen in a game. I like the fact that a lot of the cutscenes are edited like a movie, with occasional camera angle changes that you don't normally see in a video game.
Additionally, one of the things that can make or break a game for me is voice acting. There's a reason that professional voice actors exist--because not everyone can do it. I *hate* games that sound like the programmers did the voices. For example, the voice acting of the main character in Assassin's Creed is pretty bad. Everyone else in that game is very good, but the main character's voice is so wooden and unemotional that it just snaps me out of the game world every time he speaks. I even thought about turning the voice acting off and going to captioning. Before I did that, though, I realized I wasn't that taken with the actual gameplay either. So I've set it aside and may not play it again. The reason I point it out is,
1. The voice acting in AC is so irritating that it makes me feel better just to point it out, and
2. the voice acting in Mass Effect is great. Just another thing I love about the game.
Ok, I have a new game you guys need to try when you come over. Portal (part of the Orange Box from Valve.) Simply awesome. Easy to play, short, logical puzzle game with excellent voice acting (again) and real humor. I finished it in two days and loved every minute.
I still need to start Call of Duty 4's main campaign. The game is so intense, though, that I feel like I need to be mentally in the mood to kill people to play it, and I haven't quite gotten there yet. It's pretty gritty and realistic.
P.S. XBox 360 is perfect for multiplayer cooperative games. They just need more of them. That, in my opinion, is a real untapped market, but I'm hopeful that game makers will start to catch on. If they put a multiplayer non-shooter RPG or adventure (they've already got good shooters) on that thing (even something like World of Warcraft, but on a smaller scale)--I'd never see the sun again.
Elder Scrolls: Oblivion might be what you are looking for Chris. It isn't my cup of tea but it is a massive action rpg using fantasy themes. I guess it isn't cooperative but it is expansive. I hated it for what its worth though.
Also Brian, Zelda is supposed to be awesome as well. The Paper Mario game is also supposed to be good if you like the JRPG style.
Counterstrike was one of my first fps loves. If Orange Box had that in it I would have been all over it a while ago. Alas, no such luck.
Team Fortress 2 more than makes up for CS.
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