Guitar Hero II - Ps2

I was going to wait longer with this but ive spent nearly every hour of my time this past 4 days playing this game so i´m doing this now. Warning, this will be a long text with alot of praises on Gears of War. Game of the Year ! Still, i am forced to leave out ALOT. I could write a book on this game...

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+ The best graphics in a game...ever. The Unreal 3 engine combined with some great design makes this the best looking game i have ever played in my entire life. Nothing even comes near it...and nothing will come near it for years. No matter what platform.

+ Fantastic sound. superb orchestral, situation-sensitive music and very heavy, bassfilled soundeffects that really makes you feel everything in the game. Everything from Marcus saying "Nice" to the grunts from the locusts fits perfecly to the thick, macho feel of the game.

+ The core gameplay is plain out fun. The game just feels so right when you are playing it. I cant really put my finger on it but when you sit down and play this game every little detail just feels "right". You get that good feeling inside.

+ Things that will change shooters forever. The Coversysten (that works OH so nicely), the Active Reload and the 3rd person with a switch to 2nd person parrot cam when you are shooting. All of them are things i never want to be without in an actiongame ever again.

+ The overall production and polish of the game. This game is so well crafted. So very very well crafted down to the last detail. When you are playing through it theres is nothing that breaks up the illusion in form av tearing, clipping, bugs, lockups, glitches or things that acts out of normal. Epic has made sure that the game is 110% complete. Nothing were left out. Even the loadingtimes is nonexistant. You pretty much play though the whole game without one single loadingscreen. Considering the graphics this is an amazing achievement.

+ An extremely immersive singleplayer campaign. Combining alot of Survival Horror elements a la Resident Evil 4 with actionelements so solid it never ever gets boring. There are adrenalinepumping fights as well as creepy horror moments and you will visit one memorable location after another, all made so real by the stunning graphics and sound. The game wont let go of you for 1 second. The Chapters offer nice variation and are packed with cool moments and fights that will stick with you when you turn the game off.

+ The cinematic experience. There has been alot of work going into the game to make it look like a blockbuster war movie. The camera is never completely still. Even when you are taking cover the camera sways slighty. The camera is overall a masterpiece in this game, thowing you deeper into the experience than any actiongame before it.

+ A new generation of Team Deathmatch. The multiplayer is soooo much fun. This game could sell in millions on the multiplayer alone. Curbstomping and Chainsawing, the coversystem, the weapons and the way the game controls combined with the small, intense and supremely designed maps makes the multiplayer deathmatch something you could play for years.

+ One of the best if not THE best Co-Op experience ever. To be playing through this knockout of a campaign together with someone who will actually take the part of your otherwise AI controlled partner makes the game even more legendary fun. The game have so much content that are made solely for Co-op in the campaign. The Co-Op experience in Gears will bring people together, it will make friends of total strangers. Gears Co-Op experience bonds like no other cooperative gaming before it.

+ Cliff Bleszinski aka Cliffy B. This man knows how to make a game GREAT. He dosent settle for GOOD. He puts in those extra things that makes the game GREAT. Good controls arent enough so he gives us these perfect controls. The same goes with the rest of the game. He creates the game so that there is not even one thing that will bug you when playing. If you mess up, you NEVER blame the game, you blame yourself, unlike most other games where you throw the controller and shout at why the character didnt shoot, didnt jump or why the camera was wrong..well, not in Gears.

+ The Chainsaw. It never gets old. The Lancer with the Chainsaw attached to it might be one of the best shooterweapons ever and chainsawing someone in multiplayer is one of the most satisfying things you can do in any game on any platform today.

+ Incredible AI. The AI keeps impressing me. Once I think I have figured the AI out, i get flanked from the side by a locust that i couldnt even in my wildest dreams imagine getting there. He had taken a completely different patch from last time. The AI will flank, take cover, retreat, communicate with each other, lay coverfire and charge right at you when they see an opening. They are often successfull and you are often dead before you know it. Ruthless !

+ The Thick, heavy, gritty, macho design of the game. This is as far from Japanese game design as you can get. This game feels rock hard, heavy and manly as a Boeing 747 or a really cool muscle-car! This game is just so very tough! If you put the DVD-case on top of any other game, the case will probably crush the game beneat it with the weight that is Gears! In contrast to this we have these really beautiful locations that will make you just stand still and rotate the camera though the environments and go wow...

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- The Story if plain out lacking. Its actually pretty non-existant. You are not given any backstory at all. None. If you want the backstory including the war, the planet, the characters and their history, the locust and the energysource of the planet you will have to go watch trailers and read up some on the internet. Why not pack all these trailers we´ve been wathing into the game? I dont get why they left it out. All of the story you´ll get is by dialogue from the main characters in between firefights. The ending is not nearly as satisfying as it should be and wheat you get storywise is not nearly as epic as it should be.

- Some problems with the online matchmaking. It happens pretty often that you cant get into a ranked match. You just get some error message saying no connection can be made. When you finally get in, the host can decide to drop you because he is waiting for some friends, since you cant invite friends direcly to ranked games. Theres also a shortage of european ranked games so far it seems. The ping isnt the best to the US hosts so I always play with some amount of lag and delay.

- Some bugs in the onlinemode that will hopefully be fixed with a patch. When chainsawing someone i have on several occasion gotten stuck, unable to move for the rest of the game. Theres also some problems with the coversystem when several people try to use the same cover. Also sometimes you dont stick to the cover and dies. Also, the onlinemode could have used some more skins. Theres like 5 COG skinds and 5 Locust skins at the moment. I want alot more. More like Unreal Tournament and the like. The same goes for the small amount of maps. But we will get more of those soon.

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Final Score: 9.6

When i turn this game off, i instantly want to go back to playing it, even if I´ve been playing it for 10 hours straight already. Its one of the best actiongames I have ever played and its something every gamer interested even the slightest in actiongaming should play. If you miss out on this, you really shouldnt bother play an actiongame ever again..

Tested On: Xbox 360, HDtv 720p

Now the CE has arrived to. 1 weekend later than the standard one. Sweet!

Let me just add that the Hardcover Artbook is fantastic ! Plain out amazing art !

I played the game pretty much non-stop for 15 hours yesterday..that pretty much summarizes my first impressions of GeoW. Stay tuned for a Final Verdict in a week or so.

Years of waiting and anticipation finally comes to an end. Been playing non-stop for 7 hours so far. Versus and Single Player.

Call of Duty 3, Xbox 360

Yay. My Burning Crusade Beta Key just arrived. Lucky! Currently downloading the client. No Gears today either by the way. Tomorrow then...

I´m so tired of my car. Its been malfunctioning in one way or another for a good while now. Just when you fix one thing, something else starts to malfunction. It all started with the car not starting earlier this fall. Had to drag the car to a friends garage and do an extensive check of the fuel-system. We later on fixed the problem wich turned out to be related to the fuelrelay.  When that was all fixed the car started coughing and stuttering. I thought it might be that damned relay again so i completely switched it out for a new one. It made the car easier to start but its still stuttering on low RPM´s. So now im always driving at high RPM´s.

Furthermore my windshield wipers broke down, and they broke in the middle of a heavy rainstorm on the way to work of course. Great.. This time of the year where i live its doomed to drive a car that dosent have any windshield wipers. So there i was, back to the garage again and fixing up the wipers. On top of all this i didnt have any tools to switch to the winter tires because the bolts sits to deep into the rims so i had to go buy new ones. Im just sitting here waiting for the next thing to break or for the car to not start again. Im lucky i have this buddy whos a god on fixing old Volvos. Otherwise i would be broke.

Owning a car (especially an old one) is both expensive (taking borth spare parts and insurance / tax / gas into consideration) and risky. The thing is i cant live without one since i live so far out in the bushes. Heres the car in all its glory this summer, when it still worked great to!

Gears of War should be arriving tomorrow or Friday. Im so excited i cant play any other game other than Lumines Live at the moment. All of my games just feels meaningless in comparison.

Spelbutiken.se had NOT shipped my copy of gears. I dont get why the game got that status at all. Its still flagged as shipped but they say they will ship it close to the 17th so... way to break my heart. I was up way early to set up tent at the mailbox and everything. I had told myself not to get dissapointed if it didnt arrive but as expected i got VERY dissapointed. So now i cant really see for real when they actually DO ship the game since its already shipped in their system.. Really wierd. Anyway...

6 days left !!

The store i ordered GoW from has just changed the status of my GoW CE to SHIPPED. And let me remind you that this SHIPPED status changed EIGHT days before the EU Release. EIGHT. If this isnt some kind of glitch on their side my Gears should be arriving 7 days before release. Thats just whack... Im so excited right now I´m just sitting here laughing like a madman and just double checking over and over that the status isnt wrong...because by any means it should be wrong. I mean shipping to customer EIGHT days before the releasedate. Thats totally insane. You know that old song "Im so exited, and i just cant hide, im about to lose control and i think i like it"? Thats how im feeling right now. I probably wont get any sleep tonight. This is just to much !!

If you live in sweden. Cancel your Gears order from wherever you migh have ordered it from and go to www.spelbutiken.se NOW!!!

Oh and on a sidenote. Best song Ive heard in a great while: "Trivium - The Deceived". If youre in to Melodic Death Metal, this is the SHIIIEET!