The original Duke Nukem 3D came out on January 29th, 1996, and was an instant success. The game featured some of the most interactive environments ever seen in a game, beautiful graphics, tons of enemies, and one kick-ass protagonist. The game is considered to be a classic, and it's hard to find a top shooters list that doesn't have the game on it. But the question is, does the gameplay still hold up today? The answer is an enthusiastic "Yes!" Thanks largely to great level design and explosive shooter mechanics, Duke Nukem 3D is a ton of violent throwback fun.

The story of DN3D is a simple one: While Duke was away kicking ass in space, aliens came to earth to kidnap all the babes. Duke's only option is to fight those alien bastards across 39 levels featuring settings such as Hollywood, Los Angeles, a moon base, and alien spacecraft. The level design is really what holds the game together. Every level is extremely creative, filled with enemies, items, and secrets. Despite the game not having a story, you still feel the desire to press on, if only to see where you will be going next.

The gunplay is lightning quick and has aged beautifully. It really makes you realize how little the shooter genre has changed over the years when a game this old still plays so well. Your arsenal of guns includes old favorites such as machine guns, shotguns, and rocket launchers, but there are some interesting ones thrown in as well. The Pipe Bombs, laser Trip Bombs, and freeze ray give the game some tactical depth. A personal favorite of mine, the Shrink Ray, allows you to miniaturize enemies before squashing them under your boot, what a mess! The only real complaint here is that some may find the game a bit too difficult at times. Duke Nukem 3D comes from an era of shooters where developers tried to kick your ass, so you will want to work on your reflexes.

Aside from weapons, Duke also has an inventory of various gadgets. A portable medkit allows players to heal themselves whenever they choose to. Steroids speed up player movement making transit through hostile territory easier. Nightvision goggles allow players to see enemies in the dark. The "HoloDuke" device projects a hologram of Duke that can be used to distract enemies. Protective boots allow the player to cross dangerously hot or toxic terrain. Scuba gear allows the player to take longer trips underwater. Perhaps most impressively, Duke's trademark jetpack allows the player to range fully in 3D, often to reach hidden weapons caches or extra health.

But all of this equipment is nothing without enemies, and Duke Nukem 3D has a good variety of them. Enemies range from mutated humans to aliens, with a few boss fights thrown in for good measure. While the AI is pretty basic, the enemies do provide a good level of challenge, and the different enemies require different strategies to defeat. This keeps the combat in the game interesting throughout the entire experience.

Once you have finished with the single player campaign, Duke Nukem 3D supports online play over Xbox Live. Options include playing Deathmatch or the entire campaign co-op with up to eight players. The online play is not as deep as a game like Halo, but once again the great level design and frenetic action make it enjoyable. However, the online games are occasionally hit with terrible lag, making the match unplayable.

In addition to the Xbox Live play, this version of the game includes some other new features/enhancements. While playing (either solo or online), the game records a video clip of your session, allowing you to post them online for others to check out. What's even more interesting is that if you die, you can rewind the clip of the game you were just playing, and take control at any point. This feature eliminates the need to save your game (although you can still save at any point if you chose to). Other updates include controller vibration, bilinear filtering, motion blur, and a slight quality upgrade to the music. If there is one real weakness about the game's presentation then it's the fact that the game does not fill up your entire screen. The game has borders on the sides in order to keep the game in the original aspect ratio.

Those who were hoping for a good port of the classic are going to be extremely pleased. The original game is completely intact, and the new additions make this the best version of the game yet. While those who never got the chance to experience the original now have a great reason to check it out.

When Valve originally announced their plans to deliver the next part of the Half-Life story in episodic form everyone was pretty excited. Instead of waiting years for a full sequel, fans expected to get episode sized pieces every six months or so. Unfortunately, things didn't go exactly as planned. Episode 1 ended up getting delayed, and when it did come out it was a bit disappointing.

Episode 1 ended up feeling like more of the same. There were no new weapons or vehicles, and the game even took place in the same locations you visited the first time around. This really gave the game a sense of déjà vu while you were fighting the same enemies (except for one) with the same weapons in the same location. Add to that the fact that not much really happened in Episode 1 to move the plot along, and what you end up with is a game that, while fun, was ultimately disappointing.

Luckily, Episode 2 fixes a lot of the problems that Episode 1 had, making it a truly enjoyable game without any reservations. While Episode 1's weakest point was the plot, the opposite is true this time around. Episode 2 starts where you left off, with Gordon Freeman and Alyx the run from the Combine. Your goal is to make it across the countryside surrounding the outskirts of City 17 and deliver the data packet that you stole to a resistance base called White Forest. The Combine know that you took it, and will be stalking you relentlessly the entire way, making your journey (which should take between 4-5 hours) pretty exciting. Along the way you will meet quite a few new characters, engage in some pretty cool combat, and learn quite a bit of backstory. Of course actually getting there is easier said then done, and you won't believe some of the places that you end up at along the way.

These new locations mark a big change from the typical linear urban and industrial environments of the previous games, opening the game up to some new gameplay possibilities. Many of the environments are a lot more open ended then those in the previous games, giving you much more freedom this time around. A new vehicle is introduced, and you will end up keeping it for quite a long time (while getting upgrades). This vehicle adds new gameplay elements that work great with the open environments. For example, at one point in the game you will be racing around to different locations in order to protect them from a huge strider and hunter attack. To say this segment is frantic would be an understatement.

Besides new locations and gameplay, the game also features a few new enemy types. The biggest of which is the Hunter. These flechette shooting creatures usually appear in packs, and can be pretty lethal if you don't work fast to take them out. There are also two new forms of Antlions. The first is the Worker Antlion that likes to keep its distance and lob acid at you. They can also fly; making them pretty fast and mobile. Lastly, there are the Antlion Grubs. These pretty much function as health kits and light up the underground tunnels.

There really isn't much in the way of new weapons. There is the "Magnusson Device", a sticky bomb of sorts that you attack to striders by launching it with the gravity gun. Still, the Half-Life arsenal already had pretty much every weapon category covered, so the lack of new content here is not much of an issue.

The only category that Episode 2 does disappoint a bit is graphics. The Source Engine is starting to show its age. But Valve did make some new enhancements to it that should help it last a bit longer. The most impressive addition is the cinematic physics system which supports very large interactions that blend physics events with key frame animation. Examples include a house exploding or a bridge collapsing. There is also a new dynamic lighting and shadowing system, which allows the player's flashlight to cast dynamic shadows. Lastly, there is an updated particle system as well as new effects such as motion blur.

Overall, Episode 2 is a good game. It addresses all of Episode 1's shortcomings, and actually surpasses Half-Life 2 in some aspects. After Episode 1, I was a bit worried that the rest of the episodes wouldn't live up to my expectations. But Episode 2 has renewed my faith in Valve, and is absolutely worth a purchase.

After The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion's release last year, Bethesda Softworks has been slowly releasing little nuggets of new content via Xbox Live Marketplace. Most of this content, while cheap, didn't add much to the game. Unlike the previous downloads, the Shivering Isles is an expansion pack filled with content, adding roughly 20-40 hours of new gameplay for those still running around Cyrodiil.

The expansion begins when you hear news about a strange island that has sprouted up in the middle of Niben Bay. Upon inspecting the island, you are greeted by a soldier standing guard outside of a strange doorway. Apparently everyone that has entered the portal has either come back out insane, or has simply not come back at all. Being the brave adventurer you are, you enter to find that you have arrived at the Shivering Isles, the realm of Sheogorath, the Daedric Prince of Madness. He has put a call out for a champion to help him stop the Greymarch; a sort of cleaning that happens at the end of every era.

The world of the Shivering Isles is divided into two regions: Mania to the Northeast and Dementia to the Southwest. Both areas are visually stunning and look absolutely nothing like anything that you have seen in Cyrodiil. Mania is very bright, vibrant, and oversaturated with plants like tall trees and large colorful mushrooms. On the other hand, Dementia is a very dark, foggy, and washed out swampland. The main city, New Sheoth, is also divided into two sections called Bliss and Crucible. The entire size of the Isles is about a quarter of the size of Cyrodiil, and is packed with tons of stuff to explore.

The main quest is pretty epic in scope and is easily on par with the one in the main game. The quests, of which many are memorable, will take you all over the Shivering Isles to complete various tasks. Your first job upon entering the realm of Sheogorath is to defeat the Gatekeeper. He is an extremely large and powerful enemy that is guarding the Gates of Madness, which is the only exit from the Fringe (a holding area of sorts that prevents those unworthy from entering the actual Isles). You can face him as is, but innovative players will find ways to tip the battle in their favor.

Another one of the early quests involves you reactivating Xedilian, which is an old dungeon that was used to deal with unwanted adventurers before the Gatekeeper was created. Once activated, the dungeon magically draws any visitors to it, at which point you can either kill or play tricks on the NPCs that find their way into its chambers.

Besides the main quest, the game offers a lot of interesting side quests, many of which are just as crazy as the people who reside in the Isles. One of the citizens of Bliss will explain to you that while he has perfected getting boats to float on the water, he has had less success in forcing the water to fly through air. Logically, a boat carried by flying water becomes a Skyboat. So he tasks you with searching everywhere for calipers and tongs to achieve the effect of keeping water airborne, and pays you gold for each caliper or tong you bring him. Another resident is afraid to sleep inside because he believes the walls will fall on top of him. So he asks you to find a safe place for him to sleep outside.

In addition to the new quests, the expansion also includes new weapons and armor, some of which you can craft from raw materials found in various dungeons throughout the Shivering Isles. Players will also get some new spells along the way, the most interesting of which are a few summons. Also, those who like to create their own potions will find a huge amount of new ingredients to experiment with.

Overall, the Shivering Isles is pretty good. It features all of the stuff that you would expect from an expansion pack: an interesting plot, a good amount of quests, new weapons, armor, ect. Not to mention that this expansion offers more hours of gameplay then other full priced retail games, making the Shivering Isles a convincing reason to revisit an already excellent game.

Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six series of games have seen a whole lot of change over the years. The series started out as a slow, tactical, shooter with a heavy emphasis on planning. When the series made its jump to the Xbox with Rainbow Six 3, the game dropped the planning stage to attempt to appeal to a broader audience, while still retaining a tactical shooter feel. The game was extremely successful, becoming one of the most played games on Xbox Live. But after a well received expansion, the developers took a sharp turn and moved the franchise into arcade shooter territory. The majority of the fans were disappointed, and the game was a critical failure. But don’t worry Rainbow fans, Ubisoft has indeed learned from their mistakes. Vegas is the most intense and tactical Rainbow Six game, making it easily the best in the series.

Rainbow Six: Vegas takes place in Las Vegas as you probably have guessed. Most of the story unfolds while you are playing the game, either in helicopter briefings while you are flying to your next target or while you are on foot from an audio and video feed in the top left of your screen. This is a pretty nice change from the text briefings before missions that Rainbow Six players are used to. Without giving too much of the plot away, terrorists have attacked various casinos in the city, taking some hostages and planting bombs. You play as Logan Keller, a team leader for a group of highly skilled soldiers, and it is your job to go from casino to casino and take care of business. If this all sounds familiar, that’s because it is. We have all heard this same basic story dozens of times in other games and Hollywood action movies. But while the storyline isn’t exactly original, it is good enough to keep you at least mildly interested. What really matters is the gameplay, and that is where the game truly shines.

If you have ever played Gears of War, your might be surprised how similar the two games play. They were in development around the same time, so it’s hard to say if any copying was going on, but both games have a heavy emphasis on cover, requiring you to use anything you can hind behind to stay alive. However, the cover system in Vegas works quite a bit better then it does in Gears. You have a lot more control when it comes to moving around cover and shooting out. Also, the cover seems more important in Vegas then it did in Gears, mostly because you can take much fewer shots in Vegas before going down.

Another element both games have in common is a squad of teammates that you fight along with. Controlling the team works similar to other games in the series. You can still tell your squad where to move, whether to hold fire or shoot on sight, to stack up behind doors before throwing in a grenade and storming in as well as all of the other commands you could give in the previous games. However, there are a few additions. For example, you now have a snake cam that allows you to peak under doors. Using this device, you can then give your team priority targets in the next room, to make sure they take down the most important enemies first when they enter. Your teammates also have some pretty good AI. They know how to take cover and engage enemies, meaning you really don’t have to worry about them that much. They also do a great job taking down terrorists, making them very useful.

Besides commanding your squad, the game has other features that allow for some complex tactics. Many of the rooms have multiple entry points. Using the snake cam you can scout out the room before determining how you want to enter it. You can even use two entrances at once, by having your team stack up outside one door while you go to another. Then you can order your squad to barge in guns blazing at the same time you enter from another door. You also have the option to do some repelling during some points of the game, which adds another entrance, the windows, to a room.

Your large selection of weapons also allows you to take in some tactical considerations. Vegas features a ton of assault rifles, machine guns, shotguns, and pretty much any type of gun you can think of. Each of the weapons offers some level of customization. Pistols can have things like extended magazines or laser sights, while rifles can be fitted with different types of scopes depending on what is needed. Once you have selected your guns, you can choose from items like explosive grenades, C4, breaching charges, flash grenades, and more.

With the cover system, team controls, multiple entry points, and a large selection of weapons, Rainbow Six: Vegas offers a lot of choice when it comes to tactics.

But the single player campaign is only half of what the game has to offer. Rainbow Six: Vegas has a fully featured and expansive multiplayer option, which easily makes it the best on-line shooter on the Xbox 360. The core of the multiplayer experience is what the developers call the P.E.C., or “Persistent Elite Creation”. When you first start out, you create your own character and have a limited access to different types of gear like body armor and weapons. After every match, your character gains experience, allowing you to go up in rank and gain access to more items. It’s a neat feature that rewards you for playing, yet doesn’t make the game feel unfair for new players that don’t have access to all of the items. Different armor makes you choose between mobility and protection, while other weapons may be more powerful but are harder to control.

There is a good selection of game modes to choose from that range from objective driven modes like attack and defend, to more standard offerings like solo and team deathmatch. The levels are varied and well designed for the most part. Though some, such as the Calypso Casino level, were clearly designed with attack and defend in mind and can be slightly unbalanced in other game modes like team deathmatch due to one team having a better spawn point. But if you are not into competitive gaming against other players, Vegas offers cooperative gameplay over live for the entire single player campaign with up to three other players. Or you can play “terrorist hunt” which is a mode that puts you and your friends in a level with a bunch of randomly placed terrorists that you need to take out.

Overall, Rainbow Six Vegas is a great game with a lot of value. The single player is challenging and offers a lot of depth, and the multiplayer packs in a lot of features. You could easily find yourself playing this game until the next Rainbow Six game comes out. It is not often that developers try to reinvent such a successful series, but Ubisoft gave it another shot and ended up creating the best Rainbow Six game so far.

Conker: Live and Reloaded is a remake of the classic Nintendo 64 game Conker’s Bad Fur Day. Bad Fur Day came out towards the end of the N64’s life, right about the time Nintendo was starting up the Gamecube hype machine. So it would be understandable if you have never heard of the game. Not learning from their previous mistake, Rare released Live & Reloaded at a similar time in the Xbox’s life when everyone’s attention was on the Xbox 360. So once again it was overlooked by most, which is unfortunate considering that Conker: Live & Reloaded is not only one of the finest platformers ever created, but it is also quite possibly the funniest game ever made.

You play as the entire game as Conker, a small red squirrel with an alcohol addiction. After a night of partying and heavy drinking, he tries to stumble his way home to his girlfriend, but wakes up to find himself lost. He sets off to find his way home, but can’t seem to get anywhere without getting in a bunch of trouble. You won’t believe what happens to him all in the span of one day.

The gameplay is similar to some of the other great platformers like Donkey Kong 64 or Rare’s Banjo-Kazooie. As you would expect, you will be jumping, smashing, shooting, and solving puzzles for all of the games 12 or so hours of gameplay. The game also makes good use of context sensitive action, something the original game was one of the first to do. You basically walk over certain pads and press a button to do any number of certain things. A few of the boss battles make good use of that mechanic, requiring you to use them to win. It seems pretty basic now but when the game came out it was pretty new. The third person shooting action controls great and some of the later stages of the game feel as if you are playing a 3rd person shooter.

There are a few negative things that you could say about the gameplay though. For a good part of the game, your only weapon that you have is a baseball bat. So combat will basically boil down to running up to an opponent, whacking them, and then jumping out of the way to dodge their counter attack. But then again, the game doesn’t focus much on this type of combat. The only people you will be whacking are those that are walking around the environment that are in your way while you are going about your business. The main focus of the game is solving puzzles, jumping around, and boss battles. And when you get to the later portion of the game, you will have weapons and even vehicles which will make this a non-issue. Also, there are one or two sections of the game that are pretty difficult, such as a race over some lava while dodging dinosaurs that will probably take you 5 or so attempts to finish. But overall, these are just minor complaints that should not hinder your enjoyment of the game much.

The world of Conker is great. Instead of feeling like a bunch of separate self contained levels, all of the areas of the game are connected and you can usually pick the order in which you want to do things. The massive graphical upgrade the game got really helps make the world feel alive. The environments are very detailed, and the fur on the characters looks awesome. Conker: Live & Reloaded is easily one of the best looking games on the Xbox. The graphical style of the game is similar to that of Kameo for the Xbox 360 with lots of lush settings and cute characters that cover up some pretty brutal and mature gameplay.

What sets the game apart from other platformers is its great sense of humor. Some of its humor comes in the form of crude jokes, but most of it comes from parody. For example, there are a few sequences in the game that parody movies like The Matrix or Saving Private Ryan. Surprisingly, these sequences are still pretty funny even though those movies came out quite a while ago. Other parts of the game, like the entire sequence when you battle the Mightypoo, are so outrageous and crude that you can’t help but laugh. The dialog in the game is also well written with a lot of humor, but obviously intended for a mature audience.

After you finish the game’s excellent single player campaign, there is a whole new online component that Rare created. The multiplayer games are large scale class based battles with vehicles. Matches pit the Tediz against the Squirrels in a variety of scenarios. If you can imagine a smaller but more action packed Battlefield 2 then you should have a good idea about how it plays. Some of the matches are set to a World War 2 theme where the Squirrels play as the Allies and the Tediz play as the Nazis, while other matches are set in the future. All of them are a blast to play, making the online extremely addicting.

Overall, Conker: Live & Reloaded is an extremely fun game. If you never played the single player game before, Conker will offer some of the best platforming gameplay out there. If you have played the old game before, the updated graphics and the whole new addicting multiplayer component makes the game worth buying over again. Every Xbox (and Xbox 360) owner that enjoys platforming games should check out Conker: Live & Reloaded.

Small Arms is a four-player fighting game in the style of Super Smash Brothers. But here the game puts a much heavier emphasis on using guns take down your opponents. The combat is pretty action packed and fast, but it’s not exactly complex either. While it does play pretty similar to Smash Bros, the overall experience is not as deep.

While in Super Smash Bros. all of the characters are familiar faces, each with their own personality, special moves and abilities based on whom they are. In Small Arms, all of the characters are pretty much random. Among the 12 characters to choose from, there is a dinosaur, a ninja, a cat and a robot. The characters look decent, but they don’t offer any personality like those in Smash Bros. Also, the only difference between each of the characters is which weapon they start off with when they spawn. There are no unique moves or anything like that.

The single player campaign takes you through a series of battles against AI controlled characters. These fights get increasingly harder as you go along and sometimes they throw multiple opponents against you at once. Once you reach the last level, you will fight against a boss that is actually pretty simple to defeat but is still pretty cool nonetheless. The game also features a challenge mode that is best described as a survival game where you fight enemy after enemy until you finally die. Lastly, the game also has an extra shooting range game where you have to shoot at paper targets as they go across the screen to get bonus points. While the single player gametypes are interesting enough to warrant playing and do give you good practice, the Xbox Live play is where the real action is.

The weapons in the game are much more interesting then the characters, which is great since they are the main focus of the game. All of the weapons have two different firing modes. For example, the freeze gun can shoot either ice shards or freeze enemies in one blast of ice and the sniper rifle can shoot normal bullets or it can drop mines at your feet. Overall, there is a pretty good selection of weapons, and they all behave pretty differently from each other. This means that you will probably have one or two favorite weapons, but all of the weapons are pretty useful. You can shoot the guns in any direction by aiming with the right analogue stick. This adds a good amount skill to the game, requiring you to be able to aim all while jumping around and dodging enemy fire. In fact, the game can be pretty difficult until you get used to how the characters control and how to aim their weapons. But once you do, the controls feel pretty natural.

All of the weapons run on energy that you deplete when you shoot. The good news is that ammo (in the form of batteries) as well as new weapons spawn into the arena pretty often. This makes watching and controlling the spawns a pretty important. Knowing when you are low on ammo and making a run for a newly dropped weapon or ammo before other players can get it is an important part of the game.

When you do manage to run out of ammo, it is possible to get in close do some damage. But while there is a decent amount of depth in the weapons, there is little depth in the melee system. The only attack available for you to use is punching. It would have been nice to be able to string together punching and kicking combos or something like that. But since all you can do is punch, your best bet when going up against an armed opponent is to run away by making good use of the dash button to grab a new weapon or some more ammo.

The levels (along with the weapons) are the highlight of the game. All of the levels are designed pretty well for four players. There isn’t a single level in the game that falls flat. One of the more interesting levels takes place inside a tornado while you jump from one piece of flying debris to another. Another level has you jumping from car to car on a speeding train. The levels a pretty impressive graphically considering this is an Xbox Live Arcade game. The weapon effects and furry characters also look pretty good.

Overall, Small Arms can be pretty fun, but it lacks the personality and depth that Smash Bros. has. But then again, Smash Bros. is a full retail game while Small Arms sells for just $10. Considering that it has some pretty fun online gameplay as well as some interesting weapons and levels, Small Arms is a worthy Xbox Live Arcade purchase.

The Heroes of Might and Magic franchise used to be the best of the best when it came to fantasy turn based strategy games. But ever since the release of Heroes of Might and Magic III, the series has been going down hill rather quickly. With New World Computing, the developer behind the series, going out of business, the future of the Might and Magic series was in question. But then Ubisoft announced that it secured the rights to the Might and Magic series and that Nival Interactive would be developing a sequel. Most people seriously doubted whether or not Nival could actually breathe new life into a series which most already considered dead and buried. So expectations were not exactly high for this sequel. The good news is that Nival surprisingly managed to resurrect Heroes of Might and Magic from the dead and bring back its charm it had lost over the years.

 If you have played either Heroes II or III, then you should know exactly what you are getting into in this game since it shares a lot in common with both of those. You start off most games with one hero and a low level castle. From there you must build up your armies to crush your enemies. But to do that you must go exploring, fight enemies, and build up your castle. The amount you can move is based on a daily allowance. Once you have moved all you can, you must end your turn. This moves the game ahead one day, allowing you to rest and giving the other players a chance to make their moves.

The maps are filled with resource to collect, artifacts to find, enemies to defeat, dungeons to explore, towns to capture, and much more. Capturing mines will put them under your control, giving you a set amount of that particular resource per day. But many of the resources on the map are guarded by neutral creatures, so you will have to fight to control them.

Battles take place on a grid with one army on the left and another on the right. Both sides take turns moving their creatures. A unit with a number on it represents a “stack” of that many creatures and will behave as a single unit. The amount each unit can move depends on its initiative, with faster units attacking first. The amount of damage they do depends on the creature’s stats as well as how many units are in that stack. Many units have their own special abilities that they can use in combat. Also, heroes can directly attack units as well or cast spells with their turn comes up. There are over 100 different unit types in the game, giving a good amount of depth to the combat system. Knowing what units to attack and when to attack them is extremely important, as is positioning your troops on the battlefield and effectively casting spells. The AI does a pretty good job playing smart and will keep you thinking during these battles.
 
When you win, your hero will gain experience that you can use to learn new abilities. There are tons of different skills that you can gain, way too many to list, but they range from having your troops take less damage from melee attacks to being able to move greater distances each turn. No two heroes will have exactly the same set of skills, making each of them somewhat unique.

With all of the resources you collect, you will be able to upgrade your castle. There are a few different types of structures you can build. Some of them will allow you to recruit new types of units for your army while others, such as the mage guild, will teach you new spells. Some buildings will add defenses to your castle like turrets and others will increase the population growth of all your creature dwellings per week. The buildings you can create are listed in a tree diagram, which is similar to some RTS games. Many buildings have requirements that must be met before you are allowed to build them. Building your structure that gives you your best units before your opponents get theirs will give you a pretty good advantage in battles.

The single player game in Heroes V consists of six different campaigns, each of which consists of five separate missions. The storyline in the game is actually decent and is told through various in engine cutscenes. While the storyline and voice acting isn’t anything special, it is good enough to keep you interested. Each mission has multiple primary and secondary objectives to complete in order to finish it. All of the missions are pretty well designed too, with lots to see and do. Most of the missions take multiple hours to complete, making Heroes V a pretty long game.

The game also features a few stand-alone missions as well as a few multiplayer maps. You can play the multiplayer maps over the internet, a LAN, or in hot-seat mode where you and a few friends take turns playing on a single PC. Multiplayer missions end when you destroy the other player’s hero and capture his castle so he can not recruit another hero. This can take a pretty long time, meaning online matches can easily take a few hours to complete. Also, waiting for other players to take their turns can be pretty boring, making the online multiplayer not very appealing.

If the game’s storyline doesn’t suck you into the world, the games fantastic graphics probably will. Heroes V is the first game in the series to make the jump into a fully 3D world. The game features a pretty good art style. Everything in the world is beautiful with a good amount of detail in their textures. All of the trees and water animate, as well as many of the buildings, which makes the world come alive. The combat animations, especially those of spells, look pretty cool. Although, it is a bit annoying that the characters mouths don’t move when they talk during the cutscenes. Also, sometimes you will have to rotate the camera around to see past buildings and trees. But overall the games 3D graphics is a great addition to the series.

Overall, Heroes V feels like an updated remake of Heroes III, which is great considering that many feel that Heroes III was the best in the series. The combat and tactics are as solid as ever, and the 3D graphics and interesting enough campaign make the game extremely fun to play. If you consider yourself a turn based strategy game fan, Heroes V is a game you should seriously consider picking up.

From the moment Xbox 360 launched in November of 2005, everyone has been waiting for the “killer app” that would single handedly justify purchasing the console. The original Xbox of course had Halo. But since Halo 3 was a long way off, gamers turned to Gears of War. Ever since its first showing at E3, fans have been dying to get their hands on this graphically stunning game. With Microsoft hyping the game as the next Halo, expectations could not have been any higher. The good news is that all that hype was well deserved. Epic managed to deliver on all of its promises and provide a compelling third-person action game.

The game opens up with Marcus Fenix being busted out of prison by his best friend Dominic. It appears Fenix was imprisoned for disobeying orders during the initial locust invasion by trying to save his father. Apparently things have gotten significantly worse since his incarceration and humanity needs every bit of help that it can get. With a full pardon, your initial objective after escaping the prison is to meet up with Delta Squad and stage a rescue mission for Alpha Squad, which is in possession of a weapon that may have the power to turn the tide of war. That’s about as deep as the storyline gets; there is not any more back-story to the conflict or anything like that. But that’s not to say that it doesn’t keep you interested. The game features quite a few excellent in engine cut-scenes that move the story along at a good pace. The combat chatter between the soldiers in your squad gives each of them a unique personality, even if they aren’t very deep characters.

While the storyline is only average, the gameplay is exceptional. The combat is very intense, forcing you to take cover whenever you can. Taking cover feels very natural, making it easy to pop in and out to shoot. You also have the ability to shoot blindly around corners to stay concealed, but it is not very accurate. The enemy AI is pretty good at shooting you when you pop out, so you only have a few seconds to fire before you need to take cover again. This makes flanking an especially effective tactic allowing you to rob the enemy of their cover while keeping your own. The enemies put up a pretty good fight and will attempt to flank you as well, keeping you on your toes. You also have a squad with you that you will be able to issue limited commands to. They do a pretty good job of distracting enemies, allowing you to sneak up behind them. They also do a decent job of taking out enemies on their own, which is good because you are usually outnumbered.

If playing with an entirely AI squad isn’t your thing, the game has the ability to play the entire single player campaign with a buddy. This can be done via split-screen or over Xbox Live. This can make the game considerably easier, allowing you to work with your teammate to flank enemies. You can also revive your teammate if he goes down as long as he doesn’t die during one of the sequences where you and your teammate split up and go down separate paths. Playing over Xbox Live was extremely smooth without a single hit of lag.

To take on the locust horde, you have a pretty good selection of weapons. You can carry two weapons at a time as well as grenades and a pistol. All of the weapons feel extremely powerful and are fun to fire. The Lancer will be your standard purpose weapon for most of the game. It’s a fully automatic machine gun with a pretty good rate of fire, but it also features a chainsaw bayonet, allowing you to cut enemies in half if you manage to get in close. The shotgun is also extremely powerful at very close range. It has the ability to rip enemies into pieces in a single shot. Other fun weapons include the torque bow which is an explosive arrow launching weapon and the hammer of dawn which is a satellite particle-beam weapon.

Reloading weapons can take a bit of skill in Gears. All weapons have a set reload time, but you have the ability to reload faster by performing an active reload. Underneath the weapon icon on the screen is a multi-colored bar that looks a little bit like a golf swing meter. When you reload, a line goes from the left to the right of the bar. If you press the reload button a second time when the line is over the gray portion, you will reload the gun faster. If you press the button when the line is over the smaller white area, you will not only reload faster but you will do extra damage. If you mess up and press the button at the wrong time, the gun will jam and take extra time to reload. The fast reloading isn’t all that difficult to do, but getting the extra damage requires very good timing.

The graphics in the game are absolutely incredible. There is simply nothing out there on any other platform that comes close to providing the amount of detail and beauty that Gears of War has. From the characters armor to a large building, everything in the game features an absurd about of detail. The environments are as varied as they are beautiful. They range from destroyed city streets and rainy forests to underground caverns filled with flowing lava. The visual differences between these environments are huge, keeping you constantly impressed with the game’s visuals. It’s also worth noting that the game runs at a rock solid frame rate.

The single player campaign will take most players between 10-12 hours to complete (depending on the difficulty setting). But after you finish the single player portion of the game, the multiplayer component will keep you coming back for months. Online matches feature four-on-four action in compact but perfectly designed levels. The gameplay is round based without the ability to respawn, making every life count. Gears features three different game types to choose from. Warzone is your standard deathmatch where the objective is to eliminate all of the enemy players. In Assassination, one player is the leader and all of the other players must defend him. Lastly, Execution is a lot like Warzone, except downed players will eventually get back up if you don’t get in close and finish them off. The ten excellently designed levels provide players lots of opportunities to work with teammates and perform flanking maneuvers. Voice communication is extremely important and playing smart and using cover effectively is essential if you want to do well in the online matches. The amount of skill and tactical depth to the game is sure to keep you coming back for more.

Gears of War truly is a complete package. The single player campaign in constantly fun and intense for the 10 or so hours it takes to finish. The three difficulty settings, achievements, and co-op will give you some incentive to go back and play through the game multiple times. And the online multiplayer is extremely addicting and should keep you playing for a long time. While a slightly longer campaign and more multiplayer maps would have been nice, it’s tough to ask Epic games for anything more. Gears of War makes good on its promise of great gameplay and amazing graphics, and is reason enough for any action game fan to buy the Xbox 360.

Welcome to Stillwater, a modern American city full of great food, commerce, and unrestricted gang warfare. With the 3rd Street Saints, Vice Kings and the Carnales waging a city wide turf war for supremacy, there has never been a better time to visit.

The game opens up with your customized character getting caught in the crossfire of a gang war. You are saved by Julius, the leader of the 3rd Street Saints, and are recruited into his gang in an effort to clean up the streets. The first couple of missions serve as a sort of introductory sequence that teaches you the mission structure of the game and introduces you to some core characters. The game has three different story arcs, one for each rival gang, for you to tackle in whatever order you would like.

After each story mission you must build your respect before you will be offered the next one. There are numerous ways to build your respect, but the easiest way to do it is to take on various side missions located throughout the city. These missions range from drug trafficking to street racing. The activities get harder as you complete them, maxing out at level 8 and awarding you a prize such as unlimited shotgun ammo at your crib or taking less damage in car crashes.

Almost all of activities are pretty fun, but the two most enjoyable are probably mayhem and insurance fraud. In mayhem, you are tasked with going to a certain area of the city and causing as much damage as you can within a certain amount of time. You are always given a few weapons with unlimited ammo and bonuses for destroying certain targets. Destroying everything in sight with a rocket launcher on mayhem’s level 8 is one of the most enjoyable moments of the game. In insurance fraud, you attempt to throw yourself in front of traffic to collect money from lawsuits. You earn bonuses based on things like air time, hitting police cars, and the number of witnesses.

Besides those side missions, there are a few other ways of gaining respect. Robbing any store you want will give you a small amount of respect. Tagging over other gang’s graffiti will also net you some respect. To help you speed up the time it takes to earn respect, you can spend your money on clothes, jewelry, and tattoos for your character. These items give you respect bonuses when you complete missions. Overall, the side mission system works pretty well. It creates a good pacing for the game, preventing you from blowing through the missions in just a few hours.

Besides allowing you to unlock new missions, as you gain more respect you will be able to recruit more “homies” (up to three at one time). “Homies” are friendly gang members which will help protect you by shooting out of car windows while you drive and following you around on foot. They do a pretty good job of helping you kill whoever is attacking you and hardly ever get stuck on objects such as trees. When they die, you have thirty seconds to revive them before they are permanently dead. At first this sounds like it would make the game too easy, but the “homies” are not overly effective, and don’t take too much to kill. If you had to go find new ones every time one of them died, it would become pretty frustrating. So having 30 seconds to revive those that died turns out to be pretty convenient.

When you are not building up respect, you will literally be taking back the city block by block. Completing a story mission in a certain area of the city will put that area under the control of your gang. Controlling areas of the city actually has some impact on the gameplay. You will see friendly gang members patrolling the streets, providing you a safe area to run to if you are being chased by police or enemy gang members. Controlling different districts also gives you money every day that you can get from your safe back at your crib. The more territory you control, the faster you gain money. You also get new save points as well. The game allows you to save whenever you want, placing you at the closest save point from where you saved when you reload the game. So controlling more save points is definitely nice. Sometimes rival gangs will attack territory that you control, at which point you need to stop whatever you are doing and rush there to help push back the attack. If you wait too long, you risk losing your territory. This is a nice touch, and makes you feel like you are just one small part of a larger turf war.

The story missions themselves are pretty well designed and not overly difficult or annoying. There were many missions in Grand Theft Auto 3 and Grand Theft Auto San Andreas that I personally found extremely annoying and simply not fun to play. While the missions in Saints Row are challenging, I didn’t run across any annoying missions like those in the GTA games. I always felt like I was making progress. The cinematic sequences for each of the missions are pretty well directed. The voice acting is great as well. The storyline turns out to be memorable and one of the highlights of the game.

While playing the game, it’s safe to say that you will be doing a lot of driving and shooting. The game features tons of cars, all with rock solid control. While none of them are real licensed cars, they all look different from each other and handle differently as well.

There is a pretty good selection of weapons in the game as well. Most of what you would expect to see is here, including pistols, machine guns, rifles, rocket launchers, grenades and more are present. The shooting controls are vastly improved over those of Grand Theft Auto, allowing you to control the player like you would in a first person shooter. You won’t find any lock on targeting here. This goes a long way in making the firefights much more intense and fun then those in GTA.

The game features other big enhancements over Grand Theft Auto, the most important of which is the map system. At any point during the game you can bring up the map to set waypoints and locate new activities and missions. You can sort the map by stores, activities, missions, strongholds, and cribs to make finding locations very easy. The on screen minimap will show you the most efficient route to your waypoint or next objective, which makes navigating around the city a breeze. This is especially helpful during fast car chases.

Another small but significant improvement is the ability to shoot enemies in cars through the windshield. So instead of having to fill the car full of lead to get it to stop, you can instead take out the driver with one well placed shot to the head. This is extremely useful while in car chases. Since you can drive and shoot at the same time, it’s not that difficult to shoot the driver of the car chasing you through his windshield.

Besides those gamplay enhancements, Saints Row is also packing some amazing visuals. The entire city of Stillwater is rendered in glorious high definition. Everything in the world is extremely detailed. The game also features pretty good looking lighting and real time weather effects. The cars in the game look excellent, especially the way they crumple on impact. When cars explode, they send pieces of metal and tires flying everywhere. The frame rate is mostly pretty solid, though it can take a dive at times when there is a ton going on. However, this never hindered my enjoyment of the game.

The biggest criticism that you could have against the game is its lack of originality. In my opinion, there is nothing inherently wrong with a game copying another, especially when it manages to improve on its inspiration. The fact that Saints Row sticks pretty close to the Grand Theft Auto formula means that inherits many of the good qualities of the GTA series, making Saints Row a pretty good game in the process. Since it does manage improve upon GTA in many aspects, it’s worth while for fans of the GTA series to play it. It’s probably fair to say that if you liked Grand Theft Auto then you will enjoy Saints Row. If you found some aspects of GTA annoying, as I did, then it may turn out that you like Saints Row even more. In my opinion, Saints Row is the best game of its kind to be released. When GTA 4 comes out later on it may vary well topple Saints Row, but until then, Saints Row is the king of free roaming action games.

Well, I finally got this one done. I was having a hard time just sitting down and writing this, mostly because of school work. I didn’t feel like spending time writing a review when I could be studying or reading a novel for a book review. But I finally decided to just sit down and write out a quick review. This definitely is not one of my best reviews, and it was certainly rushed, but here it is anyway. The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker tells the story of a boy who is growing up on Outset Island. It turns out that today is your birthday. You learn about the legend of the “hero of time”, which was Link from The Ocarina of Time, and how he saved the world. It is customary for boys who reach the age of the Link to wear green clothing on their birthday. After a short amount of time, a huge bird shows up carrying a young pirate girl it apparently kidnapped. After saving the girl, the massive bird grabs your sister and flies away. So you have to set off to try to get your sister back. At first, the story seems pretty much unrelated to The Ocarina of Time, but as the game progresses, it ties itself in to the storyline of The Ocarina of Time pretty well. The world of Wind Waker is comprised of a bunch of islands connected by lots and lots of water. You get a talking boat, called the King of Red Lions, pretty early on in the game to travel between the islands. There are a few main islands on your map when you first start the game, but exploring the waters and finding new islands to add to your map is a big part of the game. The game map is pretty much a grid of squares, and every square on the map has some sort of island there for you to visit. However, it is not necessary to visit a lot of the smaller islands. As for the main islands, there are a lot of things to see and do. They are all inhabited by a lot of people that you can talk to, buildings to go into, and puzzles to solve. You will find yourself constantly be traveling back and forward between them during your quests. Unfortunately, this is where the game starts to have some problems. Traveling between islands, especially early on in the game is pretty boring. It can take a whole lot of work (changing the direction of the wind) and time just to get from one place to another. The fact that there isn’t much to do out on the open water pretty much means you just point your ship in the direction of the island that you want to go to and wait until you get there. This is helped somewhat when you gain the ability to teleport to various places in the world, but you will still find yourself traveling the seas for extended periods of time. In many ways, Wind Waker is almost a direct sequel to Ocarina of Time. Many of the gameplay mechanics that were present in The Ocarina of Time remain unchanged here, which fine considering that The Ocarina of Time played very well. The targeting system remains pretty much the same as it has been. Targeting enemies locks you on to them, which allows you to easily maneuver around them during a battle. The combat and the inventory system also remain largely unchanged. You still go into the inventory menu, and assign various items to one of three buttons that you can then press to use that item. The only real significant change to the combat system is a button you can press to dodge an enemy attack and strike them in the back if timed correctly. So if you are familiar with the previous two Zelda games, you should be able to instantly pick up and play this one. The combat feels pretty good. Targeting and attacking enemies is smooth and feels natural. There is a pretty good variety of enemies that you will get introduced to throughout the game. Some are easier then others and many of them require very specific strategies to defeat. The game also likes to throw a lot of enemies at you at once, which can make for some pretty intense battles. As for the enemy design, they all look pretty good. Most of the items in the game are straight out of the previous games. You will see familiar items like the boomerang, bow, bombs and the master sword. There are a few new items as well such as a grappling hook that allows you to swing on stuff or a deku leaf that you can use as parachute when falling. The Wind Waker is basically the Ocarina of the previous game. You can use it to conduct music, which all have magical effects. For example, you will be able to change the direction of the wind, or warp around to various parts of the world. Ocarina of Time had some extremely memorable dungeons in the game such as the Water Temple. The dungeons in Wind Waker pretty much follow the Zelda formula. Unfortunately the dungeons are not as strong as those found in previous games. None of the dungeons are very difficult. The dungeons do have puzzles, but they are all pretty straight forward, so what you need to do to move on is usually obvious. However, the dungeons are still fun to go through despite not posing much of a challenge. The same can be said for the boss battles which take place at the end of the dungeons. While in the dungeon, you usually find a new item that you must use later on in some way to defeat the boss. While many of the bosses look pretty cool, none of them are particularly challenging. This is mostly due to the fact that it is pretty easy to dodge everything they throw at you, but they can still be a lot of fun to fight. The graphics in the game are surprisingly good. When the first screenshots of the game surfaced years ago, many fans were upset with the game’s new cell-shaded art direction. But as it turns out, the game looks great. The artistic style just looks fantastic and maintains a high quality throughout the entire game. The characters have a lot of expression in their faces and all of the animation is pretty fluid. There are also a few cool looking effects in the game, such as the puff of smoke when enemies are killed. The game also runs at a pretty smooth frame rate. Overall, Wind Waker is a pretty good game. It sticks close to the Zelda formula, so fans of the series should know exactly what they are getting into. It follows the gameplay set back in Ocarina of Time so closely that it pretty much feels like a slightly easier and not quite as deep version of Ocarina. So if you have been dying for more of that great Ocarina of Time gameplay, Wind Waker delivers pretty nicely.