Last night, I sat down to just play a few minutes of Civilization Revolution while I was waiting for something to finish downloading on my computer. Three and a half hours later I was still sitting on my couch destroying enemy cities. I really like the Aztecs because their special ability is that there units heal after successful combat, meaning your units are always at full strength, unless they die or you order them to retreat. This is really strong because units normally don't heal in enemy territory.

The strategy of stacking a really strong defensive unit on top of a really strong offensive unit that I talked about in the podcast does work pretty well. I am not sure it is really a strategy or just something you learn to do as you play tougher difficulty levels. For example, Bombers and Artillery are both really strong offensively but incredibly weak defensively. You will need to stack a decent defensive unit army with each of those types of units. Modern Infantry are a good match with Artillery and Fighters are a good match with Bombers. In fact, I think that Bombers can only be attacked by Fighters, and only Fighters can defend Bombers (from other Fighters).

Domination seems like the hardest, at least most time consuming, type of victory to me because you have to amass a huge army and then once you have it, take out all the enemy palaces. Defending one big city is actually pretty easy and can be accomplished a variety of ways. One good way is to have a Bomber Wing (3 Bombers) waiting in your base. If anything gets close to you, you fly out your Bombers and destroy it before they actually reach your base. Their only counter to this would be to bring Fighters with them but that seems really unlikely, unless they already knew had a bunch of Bombers. You could also just turtle in your base with Modern Infantry Armies. If you decided to turtle, make sure you have a Spy Ring in your base or else enemy spies will sabotage your defenses. The only units strong enough to kill fortified Modern Infantry Armies are Bomber Wings and Artillery Armies.

For these reasons, it seems to me that the other types of victories are easier. You can just chill out in your base accumulating culture, science, or gold and wait for someone to attack you, which doesn't happen too often as long as you give in to the threats of the other leaders once in a while.

I am going to do something Dennis Dyack, head of Silicon Knights, developer of Too Human, probably doesn't like. I am going to make judgments on the full version of the Too Human based on the demo. In an extremely strict version of reality this is unacceptable. Technically, the demo is not that full game and you have to play the whole thing to form a sound opinion. But, I am not going to give a score or anything like that and I think I am giving the game the benefit of the doubt.

I've played through the demo 2.5 times, once as the champion, once as the defender, and half way as the berserker. I think that is enough to say that I pretty much have a full understanding of what the demo has to offer.

Too Human is a game that is not really like any other. You use the left stick to move and the right stick to attack, sort of like Geometry Wars. This feels weird at first but you get used to it after playing the demo a few times. The thing about using the right stick to attack is that you feel a disconnect between holding the joystick in a direction and you character doing really fluid and interesting attacks on screen. The action happens quickly on screen but the delay between you moving the right stick and your character reacting is not as short as what you would expect from a Devil May Cry, Ninja Gaiden, or God of War type game. This has a strange effect of making your character feel slow despite the fact that he is moving relatively quickly on screen.

The inventory screen in Too Human is extremely cluttered. It reminds me of a submarine sim. You'll eventually get the hang of it, but its not slick or inviting in anyway. It's just a series of clunky menus.

These types of things would be easily overlooked if the game turns out to be really strong in other areas but I don't see any evidence of that from the demo. It's not very likely that the basic combat and inventory screen will change between now and launch. Granted, you see very little of the story from the demo but the characters all seem once dimensional. There is a berserker guy that travels around with you and every time something happens he spews out a different terrible one liner about killing things.

The expectations are so high for Too Human that I am convinced that most people will be disappointed with the game, and honestly, the blame can only fall on Silicon Knights and Microsoft. No one forced them hype up Too Human beyond all realistic expectations. They stated that Too Human would have 4 player co-op and tons of loot and the gaming public got excited. When your game can't deliver on its most highly anticipated feature, expect people to be disappointed.

I am thinking that in the end Too Human will be a good but not great game. It tried to do new things in an environment where a lot of game companies are terrified of risk and that is respectable. I wanted to like Too Human a lot for that reason, but I can't lie to myself and to my readers and say I like a game by which I am not impressed.

I rented Guitar Hero Aerosmith last night, and I have to say I am pretty underwhelmed so far. Your enjoyment of the game will depend largely on your expectations. If you expect a totally new, improved, and better game than Guitar Hero 3, you will be disappointed. Aerosmith plays almost exactly like Guitar Hero 3. The main difference is that most of the songs are by Aerosmith and there are a lot less boss battles.

The career mode is largely unchanged. You'll have to complete a couple of songs from a set list to move onto the next gig. The twist is that you have to play one or two songs from a different band, one that supposedly influenced or was influenced by Aerosmith, and then play two to three songs by Aerosmith. Mixing it up with Aerosmith and non-Aerosmith songs is definitely a good idea. Aerosmith doesn't have enough songs that would be familiar to the average Guitar Hero fan to fill an entire game. That being said, there are still a bunch of songs I'd never heard before. Admittedly, I am not an Aerosmith fan, but I like a few of their songs that are on the radio. I heard that there is only one boss battle, I haven't gotten that far yet. I've cleared 3 or 4 gigs.

An interesting addition to career mode are video interviews that play before each gig. Again, you fascination with Aerosmith will determine what, if anything, you get out of watching these videos. I was playing while my girlfriend was watching and as soon as a video started and Steven Tyler started to talk, she said, "Who cares?" I watched all the videos because I felt I wanted to give the game a chance to impress me, but the videos, in the end, are somewhat amusing at best.

If you really think about their music, or actually play the game, Aerosmith is an obvious choice for a Guitar Hero game. Many of their songs feature blues/rock guitar prominently. In fact, a lot of their songs have a repeated riff that will be recognizable to most people. Which makes playing the songs more fun. Playing on hard mode, there are a lot of quick notes in a row, meaning you get ample opportunity to do some hammer ons, which I really liked. The only song that I've played so far that I really didn't like was King of Rock by Run DMC. The beginning of the song is just vocals with you only playing guitar sporadically. I never got a chance to find the rhythm of the song. Then, at the end, there is a difficult solo-like part. The song doesn't follow the traditional verse, chorus, verse, chorus, with a solo thrown in somewhere, format so it feels out of place to me.

I haven't played enough of the game to render a final verdict, but from what I've played so far this game seems like it could have been DLC for Rock Band 3. Probably, its best to give this one a rent first unless you're a huge Aerosmith fan. There are no new features compared to Guitar Hero 3, that warrant a purchase if you already have GH3.

Lately, I've been staying up way too late playing Battlefield: Bad Company. Interestingly, I've noticed the quality of play improve significantly since the game's launch. The first couple of days after launch, the defense won every time because people didn't know how the game worked yet. Now, people are starting to work together more and figuring out how to use their weapons better offensively.

I've put together a guide for using the Demolition kit I am not the greatest player, but I have been a big fan of the series since Battlefield: 1942.

Demolition is one of the more difficult kits to use because you can't heal yourself, but when used correctly, demolition has some tools that make it a force on the battlefield. Obviously, the rocket launcher is very strong against tanks, but the shotgun, specifically the NS2000, is very strong at short range. If you can choose where and when to fight, you can play to your strengths and really do a lot of damage as the demolition kit.

Check out my video for all the tips you'll need to start owning as demolition.

Here is the url: http://youtube.com/watch?v=o0usv7_3FU0&feature=user

For those of you who don't know, there is a way in Battlefield: Bad Company (BFBC) to exploit a game mechanic that allows the exploiter to get way more points than would normally be possible. A lot of people call using a glitch to get tons of points "boosting."

I won't tell you exactly how to boost, but it is sufficient to say that if you flip over a vehicle and repair it continuously you can get a lot of points. If, in BFBC, you see someone driving around a vehicle away from the action, trying to flip it over, they are probably trying to boost.

I've decided to make a couple tutorial videos for BFBC because I am a big fan of the series and I think a lot of people are not that familiar with some of the finer details because there has only been one other Battlefield game for consoles. Eventually, I will make a video for each kit discussing the kit's strengths and weakness, and hopefully giving some helpful tips.

So I've been recording video of me playing BFBC and while I was playing I noticed someone on my team boosting. Normally, I don't give a second thought to boosters, if they want to cheat in games that don't involve me, let them. But, when you're screwing our team by just goofing around the whole match, that upsets me. I did my best to stop the guy, check out the video below.

Here is the url: http://youtube.com/watch?v=7e1eAisrBsg

I tried to give the guy negative feedback but he is already off my recently played with players list because this happened a couple days ago.

Personally, I dislike boosting but not to the point I get really upset about it. However, if you're not helping our team because you're too busy trying to get your buddy to help you boost, that bothers me.

It is probably impossible for game developers to completely stop boosting considering that people in random matches in Halo 3 would let other people kill them so everyone can get their achievements. The same thing has happened in Team Fortress 2. People make maps just for getting achievements, so it is not console specific. But when people take shortcuts to getting an achievement or rank, it makes the whole system irrelevant.

Other than making the game perfectly so it would be impossible to boost, it could be possible for people to get banned from Xbox Live or the Playstation Network. The only thing would be that if there was a false positive, if Microsoft banned someone that actually didn't boost, that person would be really pissed off and the community would probably be upset.

Developers could do a lot more to stop boosting. Specifically, they could stop making items unlock when you get a certain amount of points or kills. I think this is one of the biggest reasons why people boost. They want all the guns, outfits, etc. You know almost everyone you see with the samurai sword in Halo 3 cheated to get it, but it still looks cool. But the question is, is it more fun to boost and get a cool, hard to unlock if you don't cheat item, or is it more fun for that item to be unlocked from the beginning. I actually think it is more fun to cheat in this case.

People will always find ways to cheat but the only realistic way to prevent a big percentage of that cheating is for the community of gamers to stop it themselves. Sometimes, stopping people from boosting is easy, like in BFBC. If you see someone out of the action, trying to flip a jeep, go get in their way for a while and they will eventually get frustrated and stop. When it is more difficult to stop the person, the best thing you can do is take a screen shot if you can, or give them negative feedback. The community uprising against boosting obviously hasn't happened (there is a still a lot of boosting going on). I think the reason we don't do more to stop boosters is that the community as a whole doesn't care. Most people want to get to the top rank as fast as possible and unlock all the achievements and items even if they have to cheat. I can't fault them, everyone has a right to play the game how they want after spending their $60.

In the end, it is a myth that the gaming community and game developers are outraged about boosting. A select few are, but most people don't care that much, as long as the boosting isn't so bad that it breaks the game. Personally, I'm going to continue to try to stop people when I see them boosting in BFBC, but I am not going to send out a bunch of angry emails or posts about it.