It's been over a year since my last update, but I feel this is a worthy cause for posting. So without any dawdling, the 5 games that get far more praise than they deserve:

5) Call of Duty 4
Okay, it'll seem like I'm flame bating here (especially when you see the next game on the list), so let me start of by clarifying: I DO NOT think that CoD4 is a BAD game. CoD4 brings some fun innovations to multiplayer, such as performance-based bonuses, plus the ability to upgrade your character is pretty neat too. What it fails to do, though, is really bring anything significantly new to the table, or drastically improve upon anything old. The story mode really isn't anything special... at all... which leaves us with the multiplayer (which is usually where the replayability comes from anyway in an FPS). But here's where I think it falls short of the hype. You get those performance-based bonuses, but outside of that, what does CoD4 really do better than their competition? Gears of War offers us a cover system. Rainbow Six: Vegas offers us an even better cover system PLUS better character customization (both cosmetic and functional). Discounting the aforementioned two features, I'd say Battlefield 2 offers better maps! So maybe in the world of FPSs, we could make the argument that CoD4 HAS everything but just does it second best. But does that really make it special? Or is it so popular because it was a big-name title that people who hate Halo 3 could rally around? Speaking of which...

4) Halo 3
Once again, I'm not trying to step on anybody's toes here; I'm just asking "what's so special about Halo?" Halo is the game that moves consoles for Microsoft like MGS, FF and Resident Evil move PS3. (Oh wait... aren't ALL of those coming to 360 now?) But what is so special about Halo 3, or any of the Halo games for that matter? Certain games just have an "epic" quality to them; the story sucks you in and the universe really feels alive. Few games manage to accomplish this (and incidentally, they tend to be sci-fi), but Halo 3 certainly does. That much I can concede and I can appreciate about the series: it has a bloody interesting story. But outside of that, what is it? Strip away the drama and the pretty colors, what does Halo 3 really offer? Its multiplayer experience is comparable to Unreal Tournament, where tactics and teamwork are thrown out the window in favor of jumping, spinning, and spamming grenades. Sure, it offers Forge for the creative gamer, but it pales in comparison to Far Cry 2's map maker. Perhaps the guns are a little creative, but I think there was more variability (and tactic) to be found in your choices in GoldenEye 64. My problem with Halo boils down to the same problem I have with CoD4: the multiplayer just... isn't that involved. Maybe I'm looking a gift horse in the mouth when I say this (because the screaming little ten-year-olds aren't playing online with me very often), but games that require the player to employ tactics and teamwork strike me as far more praiseworthy than ones that actively rely on your ability to jump, spin, and lob explosives.

3) The Orange Box
Now we're getting into the games that actually bother me with their fanboyism. Half-Life 2: The Orange Box is the first of those. Let me get this out of the way before I start to gripe: Portal is awesome. It's an incredibly simple, but novel, idea that is more than just your average point and shoot experience. It's a 3D puzzle game with a story and perhaps the best female antagonist since Mother Brain! So put Portal aside because I'm not talking about it with the rest of Orange Box. Everything else was just... WHAT was so special about Team Fortress? The above complaints I had about multiplayer experiences, translate them all to Team Fortress 2. Okay, I get it, it's darkly comedic because it's like The Incredibles meets Doom, but everything else was very much been-there, done-that. Limited weapon selection, minimal tactical teamwork necessary, EXTREMELY limited game modes and maps. Really, aside from being cute, I don't think this game offered anything novel or perfected anything well enough to warrant the praise it earned. And as for the titular game of the package... I really do appreciate Valve for giving us so much for our money but... Half-Life was a great game FOR ITS TIME. Since its creation, however, nothing has really changed in the series. It seems like many fans are still clinging to three things: the story, the gravity gun, and Ravenholm. Credit to the story, because the story IS GOOD. The characters aren't cliché: Alyx is tough but sweet (contrary to the all-too-popular, estrogen-fueled ******** protagonists we see and are supposed to like these days); Dog is cute and has his own creative story behind him. They're character you really come to care about. Everything else, however, is very 5-years-ago. The enemies aren't very interesting or variable. The scenery is fairly static. The puzzles (I hate puzzles) are a nuisance more than anything else. None of it feels up-to-date and fresh. Now as for the weapons, Half-Life offers some of the most under-powered guns of any popular FPS I've ever played. The gravity gun being the one exception, still isn't anything special. At the time? Yeah, I can see how it was fun and novel way back when. Nowadays, though, it's just the fanboys who seem to cling to the gravity gun as though it's the saving grace of Half-Life (and to them I simply rebut: "Dead Space"). Finally, Ravenholm... I have to be honest, when I first encountered Ravenholm a couple years ago, I was expecting much more. Father Grigori and his creative booby traps were respectably fun, but the horror element... it just wasn't there for me. It was grossly outdone by Doom 3; any and all horror to be offered by The Orange Box was laughable by comparison. So the fatal flaw of The Orange Box? It was released about half a decade too late. Outside of Portal, nothing about any of the games is terribly innovative. Minimal replayability if even you're bored enough to get through all of it the first time.

2) F.E.A.R.
My paragraph for F.E.A.R. will be shorted because, frankly, it's not worthy of a lot of time. F.E.A.R. suffers some one of the same problems as The Orange Box, namely in that its enemies and scenery grossly lack variety. Actually, come to think of it, F.E.A.R. is so uncreative that it seems like some of the enemies were actually borrowed from The Orange Box, but I digress... the biggest issue with F.E.A.R. is that IT'S BORING! Once in a while you get a cheap scare with something popping out at you or a little girl showing up here or there, but once you figure out that all these chills or really just idle threats, whose purpose really is just to startle you and not to harm you, it loses its flavor faster than previously-chewed gum. The scares in F.E.A.R. are comparable to being shot with a squirt gun when you're not expecting it: it makes you jump the first couple of times, and thereafter, it's just annoying. As bad as the campaign is, though, F.E.A.R. multiplayer seems to go out of its way to be unexciting. Redefining the term "nothing special," F.E.A.R. Live offers you the very basic set of weapons, very generic arenas for gameplay, and the worst of both worlds in Halo 3 and CoD4 online: no cover system, no tactics, no bonuses, and not even pretty colors. F.E.A.R. was a BORING game, putting it nicely. Not fun. Not scary. Boring. Anything you enjoyed about F.E.A.R. has been done before and done BETTER by another game.

1) BioShock
I hate BioShock. Again, I'm not intentionally going against the grain here or trying to flame-bait, but I'd be lying if I didn't say "I hate BioShock." And it's not necessarily for anything the game itself did... it's for what it didn't. Let me explain:
Hype: BioShock will offer non-linear gameplay.
Actuality: BioShock's story was ENTIRELY linear.
Hype: BioShock will have extensive replayability.
Actuality: BioShock offered no multiplayer and aside from two equally inconsequential alternate endings, there was nothing exciting enough about any of the plasmids or gun modifications to make the affluent player want to play to more than once.
Hype: BioShock will be scary.
Actuality: No it won't.
Hype: Choices will have consequences.
Actuality: Harvesting/Not harvesting Little Sisters will pay off now/later, and have no other real consequence.
Hype: Your actions will affect the world around you. (ie. Setting a small fire and leaving an area could result in a large fire later.)
Actuality: Your actions mean squat. (ie. Setting a fire in an area, leaving and then returning, turns the area soot black, but leaves it otherwise unchanged.)
Like many others, I was hooked by all the promises made by the developers of BioShock. Unlike many others, though, I'm willing to admit my mistake; I bought the game as soon as it came out (the limited edition, in fact), not expecting that this could be another Peter Molyneux situation. BioShock is a pretty game, but other than that, it is LAME. The world is unique, but the story is stupid and contrived, there is EXTREMELY low variability between enemies, there is NO replay value, the weapons and magic mechanic (while novel) is not used to its fullest effect, weapon selection is limited and (sans the crossbow) fairly generic. All in all, outside of the game world, BioShock really is just a cookie-cutter FPS. It had a ton of potential that it failed to deliver on, because it didn't seem to take itself seriously, much less it did use all the tools (unique setting, novel magic + gunplay idea) it had at its disposal. BioShock was a DISASTROUS DISAPPOINTMENT made worse by the fact that so many people still seem to love it and can't explain why. (Could it be that you bought it and refuse to admit that you could have made a bad purchase?) Artistic value aside, there was nothing BioSuck (sic) did to really make it worth more than a rent. It is condemnable, however, because it stole limelight and user choice awards from more deserving games, such as Mass Effect.
I hate BioShock.

So there you have it; the 5 most overly-hyped games on the 360. But do note that this is just my humble opinion, and I don't even think all of these games are really that bad. Feel free to disagree... except about BioShock...

For those of you who don't recognize the latter two names here, Salem and Rios are the protagonists from the recently released EA game, Army of Two. Joe Dodson is the writer of the official GameSpot review. All formality will be dropped hereforth...

So Joe... congratulations on securing a job as a GameSpot reviewer and kudos for having an opinion. I can appreciate that; it's nice to meet a person who doesn't just go with the flow of the mainstream... but that's not what most people look for in a review, Joe. Nope... believe it or not, they are actually looking for an unbiased review of the highlights and shortcomings of a game.

So what should be in a review? Personally, I like to break mine up into categories like "Good," "Bad," and "Audience," to let people know who I think would enjoy the game and who might not find it worth while. You know what I don't do, Joe? Two things...

1) I don't put my political beliefs in a review. A game that has a bad message but is good in a myriad of other ways probably doesn't deserve just a 6.5. I mean... look at Grand Theft Auto! That entire series has gotten pretty good reviews from the onset, and it teaches some deplorable moral!

2) I don't review games where I don't know what I'm doing. I looked at your other reviews, Joe. You don't play a lot of shooters. Now, I understand that GameSpot may have assigned you to this game, and that's fine, but you said something horrendously dumb in your review; you said that the aiming in Army of Two was poor. NO! No it's not, Joe. Some guns have lower accuracy than others - that may affect your ability to hit targets - but by and large, Army of Two is TOO GRACIOUS in its accuracy. You can hit your targets blindfiring almost as well as you could hit them in "precision aim" mode.

So Joe, while I applaud you in your ability not to follow the mainstream and dish out the average review, that wasn't a good thing this time. In fact, put frankly, your review sucked. It had some humor, which was appreciable, but otherwise... it sucked, dude. Really, if everyone else is giving the game 8.0 or thereabout, maybe you should look into WHY they are doing so, especially if you're not familiar with the genre. You let your personal beliefs (on a minor issue, at that) get in the way of a review and you let your inexperience with the genre influence your score. Overall, I give your reviewing ability a 6.5. Try again.

Alright, just a short post this time regarding game reviews.

I enjo writing detailed reviews on games. My opinion about a game will never be swayed by what system it's on; I can admit that I'm a little jealous of PS3 owners because they got Resistance: Fall of Man and will be getting Haze before I do. However, that's not the focus of this blog. The issue that's spawned this message is me getting negative feedback on my reviews because I didn't like X game as much as Y game.

Two specific examples: my Gears of War review and my Metroid Prime: Corruption review.

Gears of War, I said it was better than Halo. "OMGosh! How could he say that?! I'm such a fanboy that I can't formulate a reasonable opinion about other, newer games!" Let me be the first to say that I'm as excited as anyone else about the release of Halo and I LIKE HALO. I still thought Gears of War was better than the most recent Halo at the time (which was Halo 2), and I supported my opinion.

Metroid Prime, I said it was "uninspired." I'm sorry, but if you disagree, you clearly haven't played many modern FPS games. Anyone who hasn't seen my review, go ahead and look at it. I didn't bash the game. Heck, I gave it an overall rating of "good," but just becuase I don't conform to the fanboyism of some people, they feel the need to give me negative feedback. WTHeck? Look at the character models in Metroid. Outside of Samus, they SUCK. You can not formualte an argument against that. Compared to today's standards, they blow. Does that make the game bad? Not in-and-of-itself; it makes its character design uninspired. I will debate anyone who disagrees with me on this point.

So... point of this rant? Don't give me negative feedback unless you have a legit reason, in which case, send me a message. I have never lied or purposely tried to make a game look bad or good in any of my reviews. I'm sorry if your favorite game isn't my favorite or if you're so loyal to a certain company/franchise that you can't even consider that they might be putting sub-par crap because they know you'll buy it anyway, but don't knock the people who think for themselves.

(end of rant)

Throughout the history of videogames, there have been some "partner games" if you will; games where you practically couldn't own one without the other. Double Dragon and Battletoads for the NES. Pokemon Red and Blue for the gameboy. Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon for the XBox 360. This brings me to my latest meditation on the state of videogames (sorry, I've been reading Descartes).

Right now, Ubisoft is holding 60-70 dollars over the head of Sierra Entertainment and Saber Interactive. $60-70 that could be theirs as well... if they would do me just one thing... stop messing around and give me Haze! Allow me to explain how Sierra fits into this. Around the same time I started watching Haze, I became aware of another videogame, TimeShift. (Haze is made by the company that made TimeSplitters. TimeShift has a similar name. Now you understand the connection.) This special link being made in my mind, I now think it would be unfit to buy one and not the other. My collection would feel incomplete if I didn't have both Haze and TimeShift, and thusly, I'd rather have neither, than just have one. Makes little sense, right? I agree.

Oh but wait, there's more! Midway, the third wheel of this equation, needs to get on Ubisoft's case if they want my $60 too! Because, frankly, BlackSite: Area 51 so grossly resembles Haze and TimeShift, to me, that I just wouldn't buy it unless I already owned the first two (namely because BlackSite seems to lack a little in the department of novum).

Now please, don't mistake me for believing that my meager $65 is going to mean squat to these companies; I just found it to be a rather curious observation that I felt like writing down, because I can't help but wonder if there are others that feel the same way.

Is Haze really to TimeShift what Freddy was to Jason? (The movie sucked, but you get the idea.) Does anyone else see BlackSite as being the saddly excluded Michael Myers of the group? (Not the comedian.) Or is it just me having gotten too accustomed to shooters where taking cover is essential?

In any case, for the time being, revel in it, PS3 owners. You have two up on me (Resistance: Fall of Man and Haze)... for now.

I've been tracking the game Overlord since last year, and it intrigued me at the time; I thought it had an interesting premise and some promise. As time went on, and more details wer released, it managed to captivate my interest more and more, little by little. There was a subtle modification that I noticed, however, as more screenshots released, that reports failed to make note of, and I guess I would just like to openly put forth my curiosity now: why the change in the appearance of the minions? Again, it's subtle, but it's almost the mere triviality of the change that irks me. What I'm referring to is the standard minion's attire. Look at the earliest screenshots and some of the later screenshots an compare, to see what I mean. Personally, I think they look worse now. I know, it's a minor detail, but to me, it pushes it over the edge for what is in-game realism (in appearance), to what looks like poorly pasted-on/rendered-on clothing. It makes me think of old James Bond games, where you "wore" a suit with a tie, but they were not seperate entities within the game's physics (the tie was just painted on). Same thing with wrestling games. Frankly, this is a fixable problem for this generation's consoles, but if developers don't want to/don't have the resources to fix it, or it just isn't practical within the scope of the game, the next best solution is to avoid the problem by not using attire, weapon, accessories, etc. that create this ocular blunder. Now, going back to Overlord, they have created said problem, now, with their new minion model. And for what purpose? That's what really gets me. It was a needless change... for the worse! Why, Triumph? Why?

The GameFAQs poll for 5/12/2007:
Which upcoming Xbox 360 game are you most looking forward to?

Blue Dragon

Fable 2

Forza 2

GTA 4

Halo 3

Mass Effect

Shadowrun

Two Worlds

...as of 2:00 pm (EST), Two Worlds is in dead last and Mass Effect is in 5th. WHAT?! It seems I'm one of the few who believes that one of these two games will take the Game of the Year award this year, and that baffles me. My gamer friends and I await Mass Effect like children await the end of the school year, and now I find that Halo, GTA, Blue Dragon and Fable 2 are pulling out ahead of it? I hope Mass Effect wish the second choice for everyone who voted on those other games, because this game is going to be massive! And it's gonna rock! (I hope...) My sentiments on the games (in order of which is in the lead, as of the time of this posting):

Halo 3 - I was never a big Halo fan. I hated it when I was in middle school and early high school, because it didn't offer anything novel (in my opinion). There were fewer guns than there were in Goldeneye (the first one, for N64). The character model was bland. There were no AI bots for multiplayer. There were only 10 levels (to my recollection). All-in-all, I though it was a step backwards. This leads to how I feel about Halo 3. Halo 2 was alright in multiplayer, if you had a lot of friends over. (The extra character model made it nicer, imo, but maybe that sort of stuff is only important to me. :P) Halo 3, thusly, I view as only "catching up" with what we have right now. Bungie is going to have to do a lot to make me want to buy this game, not because it's a bad game, but it just hasn't really stood out from the pack, for me (aside from it's overwhelming fanbase).

GTA IV - Alright, I'll admit it, I've played and enjoyed some GTA games, but I think the series is getting a little tired. San Andreas was enormous, and I can appreciate the time and effort the developers put into it (though they could probably sell a blank disc with the GTA label and still turn a profit). Still... how much more does the GTA series have to offer us? Look at Saints Row. Need I really say more? I just don't see what more the GTA series could show us, that we haven't already seen, to keep us coming back for more. Like George Lucas should have done with Star Wars, I think we should just let GTA fade out and appreciate what it was (and snicker at the spin-offs).

Fable 2 - Alright... I was under the impression that every had reached the concensus that Fable sucked. I thought it failed to deliver on much of what it promised (esp. 2-player coop play and the ability to turn into the Balverines) and had precious little replay value. I don't expect much more of Fable 2 and, unlike with Halo and GTA, I'm surprised anyone does.

Blue Dragon - ...you're kidding me, right? Okay, I won't knock it for being cutesy - I think Viva Piñata looks pretty fun - but what the heck?! I have even seen this thing (or don't remember it if I did) before today, when I looked it up. GameSpot sure isn't raving about it! Honestly, this looks like a Wii game. I wouldn't expect a game, with such a low standard graphically, to be coming out on the 360. Developers are playing with throwbacks right now (like Reality Pump and SouthPeak trying to bring back the top-down view). N64 graphics is not going to be a successful throwback. (Yes, I realize there are more pixel being utilized in this game, giving the scenery and character models a "smoother" look. I'm talking about fine graphical details, like we saw in the Gears of War skins.)

Mass Effect - Yay! :3 This game looks incredible. (If memory serves me correctly) you're given a map of the local supercluter. From there, you can select a galaxy. From there, a solar system, and from there, a planet (and maybe even multiple locations on each planet). If that doesn't say "big freakin' game" to you, you need to brush up on your astronomy. This game looks fantastic. It looks like Knights of the Old Republic but better. If you haven't seen the trailers or the interview with the developers, uploaded on this site, I strongly recommend checking them out (and then voting for this game on GameFAQs' poll ;P).

Forza 2 - I'm not much of a fan of racing games. From what I hear, Forza is one of the best racing games available, so I'm surprized this one isn't doing a little better in the polls.

Shadowrun - Of all the games in the poll that I believe are wrongly beating Two Worlds, this game takes the Grand-WTF-Prize. I hope the thousand some people who voted/will vote for this game are joking. Shadowrun looks STUPID. I appologize to anyone who is really looking forward to this game, but I just don't see the appeal. I guess it's combining the use of magic with FPS. Well, I hear there is another game like that, coming out, somewhat ala Unreal Tournament/Championship, that is going to focus primarily on the multiplayer aspect. If that's true, then what does this game have over that? The logical answer must be "storyline." I'll admit, I didn't read much about the storyline of this game as I haven't been keeping up-to-date with it, but lookign strictly at the character models, I know i wouldn't be able to take it seriously. The protagonists (I've seen) are a strung-out-looking human, a recovering-crack-addict elf, a midget with face paint (okay... that's kind of cool, but anyway...), and some creature that looks like the lovechild of Lucifer and the beast of Minos. Not one of those characters can I take seriously (no offense to midgets... it's the facepaint that does it), and frankly, with the exception of the midget, I'd much rather be shooting them all. Someone might be tempted to say that the characters shouldn't matter as long as the game is fun. Well, I appologize to anyone who may feel that way and I pity you, because you're telling me that it would be just as fun to play with (or as) a block of wood. Anyone who pays attention will realize that literature, film and videogame storylines are all becoming progessively more character driven, because lo-and-behold, it's more entertaining that way. (GoW, for example, is subtly character-driven. As are Rainbow Six and GRAW, and probably the best example, Splinter Cell.) If this game gets anything about a 7.0 on GameSpot (whose reviewers seem to have gotten more liberal in handing out points these days), I will be truly amazed. The idea of FPS + wizardy is unmistakably novel, but novelty alone doesn't make a videogame. Sorry FASA.

Two Worlds - ...you all make me sad. Ye of little faith. Has everyone already condemned this game to fail, just because we already have a series like it (Elder Scrolls)? I don't see anyone pooh-poohing Blue Dragon, although we already have a game like it (every turn-based RPG)! This game looks like is going to be Oblivion online. 8-players in a free-roaming RPG... that's not novel, that's just doing what every free-roaming game player has wanted for a long time. Not only do I hope this game rules, I hope it beats Oblivion (in sales), not because I didn't like Oblivion (quite the contrary), but because I would love to see Bethesda have a rivalry, forcing both companies to give their best efforts to their free-roam games. Two Worlds > your house.

 

All together, here's how I would have ranked the games, in order of how interested I am in their release.

1) Two Worlds

2) Mass Effect (a very, very close second)

3) Halo 3

4) GTA IV

5) Forza (it can be fun to watch others play and design cars)

6) Fable 2

7) Blue Dragon

8] Shadowrun