New 360 and some games. Meh!

#1 You should setup a games review site (or write for one) your very honest :p

Always annoys me when I play a new game, where the only thing they spent time on was the graphics.

Ive found myself addicted to playing WarHammer 40K Dawn of war on the pc at the moment
Graphics arn't over the top and the game play is great.
I also seem to be playing a lot more 2d games, because they seem to contain a lot more interesting game play (and not a pixel shader in sight) than the latest 3d ones.

#2 You should get F.E.A.R on the 360, that is the best game ever!
I do like Gears of Wars though, I think the graphics make up for the 1000 times feeling
Never played the other 2

#3 Phil,

I hear ya'. I got my XBOX360 several months ago and I've been very select about what I purchased for it. I thought I wouldn't purchase any FPS because I simply can't get my head around the Dalek-style movement (give me a mouse please!).

In the end though, I submitted and I did get a few FPS and whilst the games are cool, I'm seperated by the damn-I'm-a-Dalek-joystick-handicap! So I did get Ghost-Recon because the graphics looked so cool (why don't I learn?) as well as FarCry Predator and just before Xmas, COD3 which is very cool but I'm still a Dalek stuck in WW2!

Anyway, I agree about Dead Rising; it's very cool, especially at first. Grab a frying pan, heat it up and enjoy the satisfying "clannnggg" as you smack some zombie upside o' the head. Go get the "drill" (can't remember it's real name), stick it in a zombies stomach and watch that baby spin ... wait ... you can kill other zombies with your spinning zombie ... can this game get any better than this? err ... no ... not yet. Why? Well, I'm struggling to save my game half of the time. Only having special save points sucks so very, very much. I wanted to show a friend a really cool part of the game but could I show him it? No; simply because I couldn't save that position so I had to battle my way to near that position and save at the closest point (a toilet). Hell, isn't this game supposed to be about fun? What's going on?

I got PGR3 and to be honest I really do like it. With that said, I also purchased Burnout Revenge and after firing-up PGR3 after playing that, well, I'm not so keen on it although it is still an enjoyable game, especially if you play against others. Burnout-Revenge (in my mind) though is a wonderful fusion of racing, the-need-to-see-destruction(tm), multi-player, pumpin' tunes, progression/rewards etc. Hey, it's even got cool drifting/tail-gating rewards. In-fact, it's got a reward for almost everything and whilst my programmer-brain knows it's just a flag in memory, getting an achivement like an all-car takedown feels great! I swear I've got thumb-RSI from pressing too hard on the boost key! .... and don't start me on how fun it is to play a crash-breaker where you can explode your car if you crash and takedown others!

Also, you might want to give Table-Tennis a go. I played lots of TT when I was younger and the reviews were good and although it sounds lame playing TT on an XBOX360, it's actually a very rewarding game, especially if you're playing two players!!!.

Anyway, agree with your final points and I'll just have to add one of my own, specifically for the XBOX360 ... why-o-why do some companies insist on having the damn CD spinning all the time? It's 3-4x the noise of the XBOX360 when it's at full-spin!!!! I'm happy to wait for the damn thing to spin-up and you're not telling me that it's streaming stuff whilsts I'm playing? COD3 is the only one I've got that doesn't do it. Bah! I guess this alone is one of the reasons to get stuff on your HD and purchase from XBOX Marketplace. Geometry wars is great ... I just wish I could play it. ;)

Anyway, enough whining from me ... Happy new year!

- Melv.
GamerTag: "melvmay"

p.s. We should post our gamertags here (or perhaps on GGE).

#4 Please write a regular game review thing on here. That was some of the funniest to read shit on games I've read in a long time! Just please, don't review any game I make. I'm afraid of you now. :P

#5 Hey Melv,

Thanks for the mini-reviews.. I'm going to pick up TT after xmas when they get stuffed in the bargain bin. I've still got a couple more games to go through (pro evo 6 and viva pinata) I'll let you know how those turn out. PGR3 just seemed "dead" to me. When you crash, it feels so spongy. I'll definitely give BR a try, although I enjoyed burnout to some extent, it felt like "ok, I can crash, when do I get to RACE".

I'm holding out for Motorstorm for my racing thrills to be honest (sad that I've got to buy a damn PS3 for it).

COD3 I've got at work, so I'll try that sometime in the new year. I havent got my XBLA act together yet, so I'm hoping for big things from that too, but have you looked at the marketplace? It isnt exactly screaching (go buy me) to me. I've played almost all of the games on there before, on the PC and I cant see the 360 offering anything new for them.

Anyway, to end on a slightly happier note HAPPY NEW YEAR back atcha melv!

#6 totally agree about the beserkers what idiot thought they were a good idea (and put them in more than once; sigh).

oh and Melv there is a mouse and keyboard adapter coming out in January (not an offical one).

Also Melv you should try gears i does not feel like a dalek for a change. I want a ww2 game done using the gears engine.

#7 Nice reviews.

Ive been enjoying the hell out of my xbox since i got it a month ago. I find myself playing it more and more and playing my pc less and less :).

PGr3- not really into racing games so dont want to review something im not too familiar with. Handling and Graphics looked great, no idea how the racing element stacks up. Burnout is definetely more fun for me, but thats becuase its not trying to be serious and is all about the speed and crashes.

Dead Rising - Only played the demo but seems like fun. Can definetely see it getting repititive though, even moreso then gears :) .

Gears of War - Basically the sole reason i purchased my xbox and im glad i did. I love this game, even though it is all about the graphics, there is no denying the gameplay is superbly polished. Coop is especially the coolest part. One of the few games ive actually finished solo in recent times, and actively want to go back and replay on coop.

Ghost Recon- Im amazed this is a year old and still stacks up as one of the best looking games on xbox. Im a big fan of the squad gameplay so this game really appeals to me.

Oblivion - Just picked this up as a bargain . Im amazed how much theyve crammed into this game , its going to take me a longgggggggg time to finish :)

My only gripe (and it happens on afew different games). Is the streaming of data. Both oblivion and gears really stream alot of data on load. As a result the maps and textures start of as god ugly lowres textures before the highres stuff "Pops" in. I reallyyy wish MS had made the harddrive standard and let u "cache" games . That has to be the biggest "Stupid" decisions microsoft made on the xbox. That and the pathetic movie streaming/playback support.

XBox Live / Arcade - Not too bad. nothing but really old overpriced ports atm. Its getting better though. The upcoming worms addition looks fantastic in HD. Still find xboxlive abit too clunky to find what i want.

Overall its a great gaming machine. The whole wireless controllers/xboxlive is fantastic. Just need to start releasing some bigger harddrives and let games cache if a harddrive exists : )

FYI: my gamertag is AusRoachman :) Look forward to blasting u online soon.

#8 Now I also have the 360 and I have 2 of those games, PGR3 is actually a good driving game, no there isn't any damage really (occasionally the hood gets bent but even that's at a 120 mph impact) and yes that part bugs me since I also enjoy the nascar games. the handle of the game is set up well, the E class very very easy to handle then youg et to most of the A class and very very difficult to drive correctly. If you read the description of each car it will tell you it has a novice handling system or a skilled or expert, and that effects how the car handles. I like the expert ones because a car should be tricky to control at 180 mph with extreme brakeing into 90 degree turns. Overall the look is very shiny but also very nice, and the glares on the windshield from in the driver seat racing is nice.

I just got Gears of War for christmas along with rainbow six (I asked for rainbow six and moto gp but hey right) Rainbow six is very enjoyable, first person view 90% of the time, only time it's not is when your in cover and it switches to 3rd person, if set to realistic the damage is very realistic and the game is a blast, also allowing the terrorist hunt to be played coop is great.
Now I finally played gears of war yesterday and I tried to give it as fair of a chance as I could in both single and multi play (one thing to keep in mind is the vast majority of the games are truly focused on multiplay because it's what people want so single play can sometimes be horrible while multiplay is great). And I have to agree I do NOT like gears of war, I heard people hype about this game when it first came out but everything about it besides the over the shoulder view is same old same old always been done and isn't very enjoyable at all, the setup for multiplay being over the shoulder then slowing down when you enter first person to aim at anyone is such crap and it becomes one of those who knows the level best and can go take all the big guns first which has been shown to be a pretty lame game mode.
Seriously if you like realism (it's not perfectly real but it's pretty good) then check out rainbow six vegas instead and the multiplayer is a lot better where you have you gear picked out before you enter the match so it's strategy not go find the big guns. Everyone who has had both gears of war and rainbow six have said how much more they enjoy rainbow six and I can't agree more. I'm just glad I got gears of war for christmas so I didn't spend my money on it.

Some people are going to love almost every game on the xbox 360 because of the graphics, but for people who have been playing every major and sometimes the greatly overlooked minor games of the past 20 years a lot of the games are going to come out as a lot of fluff. And to the guy above this post I bought ghost recon also and was so disappointed because it was 3rd person, 3rd person takes out so much of the skill and aiming it's just not my thing, the game theory was great the graphics were wonderfull but the fact it was 3rd person just killed it for me.

Overall am I happy I have an xbox 360, yes, have I had a lot of fun online, yes (my cousin and I love to team up in games still play halo 2 just for the fact they have the best multiplayer interface ever, create your party for us 2 person party, and the party will stick together whereever the leader takes it wish more games would incorporate that) But has there been an actual lack of great games for the 360 so far, definetly that will change in time. To this day I prefer computers for gaming, fps with a mouse is far better then with a joystick, the games and maps tend to be a lot bigger on computer games as well. But since everyone is going to consoles and currently nothing that interesting has been put out for the pc in like a year consoles are the way to go

#9 I'll be happy to take your 360 off your hands if you dislike all the games! hehe

#10 Hey cool Phil grats on the X360.

#11 I think I requested around the release of TorqueX that someone should loan me their xbox 360 until late 2009, it's almost 2007 & still no feasible concrete offers :0(

#12 Phil;

Re: the save system in Dead Rising. I have heard a lot of negative about this, but imho, the game save system works perfectly for what the game is designed for: repeat playing. Since you save all your "level up's" when you restart the game and the game is basically designed to be played over and over again, it makes sense to have one save spot.

Just my opinion and I know I am very alone is thinking this.

Cheers,
Fredrik S

#13 Dead Rising is one of the few games that I felt was worth the price of admission for me on the 360. Not so much because I've completed the story and greatly enjoyed the story. No. Because I can put it in and play from the beginning as a casual zombie basher. I can run amok for a while and not worry about the day I had at work. I usually end up going up a level or so along the way by saving a couple of people, taking photos, solving the easy beginner missions. But I approach it in almost the same way I approach Lumines. Get in, have fun, die and save, get out. And then I have a beefy character to run around with in the next 30 minute spree. It was as far from how the game was intended to be played as can be imagined, but it has made it the most enjoyable game that I own on the 360 (Pinata not included).

But to avoid dealing with the machine gun guy and the convicts, I grab a couple of katanas. It takes three hits for the machine gun boss (cannot remember his name) and four for the driver. Then the rest take three hits. Then I like to run over zombies. I could try to get the straggling survivors back to base, but what's the fun in that? I usually hate escort missions in games, and DR is all about the escort.

GoW felt a bit like playing Counterstrike with campers, but was strangely fun...unlike CS with campers. I've had trouble getting into the game through. There's no story to keep me interested and the gameplay is repetitive enough to not make me care which level I'm on or playing or to really differentiate between the levels much. The day I bought GoW, I also bought Gauntlet on XBLA. I played Gauntlet far more than GoW.

Viva Pinata is a lot of fun, though. And is a very strange little game.

#14 @Phil,

You are dead on with the comments about Dead Rising. The game would be so much more fun if it gave you more frequent save spots intead of showing you some lame location on map that is either locked (woot! a locked door prevents me from saving) or you simply cannot find it between you and the row upon row of respawning zombies. Also is it too much to ask for a simple checkpoint save spot in this game after I complete a mission or something?

The other thing I really want in this game is a cheat to make weapons unbreakable... there's nothing worse than having a cool weapon like the sledgehammer or the butcher knife to have it get broken after a short bit of zombie slayage (and hey its only fair to have unbreakable weapons if the dammed zombies are going to respawn).

Gears of War I have to say I have thoroughly enjoyed a lot, both in SP and in MP mode playing against the MGT and 21-6 guys in the evening. The only major complaint I have about it is when I accidentally hop out of cover right into my enemies because I was pressing A while holding the left stick up to peek over. Aside from that the game definately has a nice feel to it with the firefights, even more so online against friends.

As for PGR, mines still in the celephane packaging that it shipped with (came free with the console) and it will probably remain there until the end of time :) Sorry I am not a fan of racing games at all.

#15 Sir, you are a master wordsmith. I have come to that conclusion from this single sentence: "A fantastic looking game, if you're into homo-erotic space marine style graphics."

Also, the phrase "christ on a bike" will work its way into my everyday speech. Thats a promise.

#16 people who own consoles (other then nintendo) and don't like racing games always baffle me, it's pretty much the only game type that plays better on a console then a computer, rts, fps both play much much better on a pc, mmorpg obviously play better on a pc, sports in general are the only games consoles play better at

#17 Great reviews, even if I don't completely agree it still is good to hear people being honest :)

Dead Rising -

I loved it... my wife loved it... even though I've beaten it there still is some people I haven't saved so it's still fun to go back and restart. The most brilliant thing, very simple and done before but great, is carrying your character over to a new game. All of a sudden I don't mind restarting the game since I will start it out 10x more powerful at least.

To me the gameplay was great, started to get repetative and a bit boring, I pushed on and after that a bit boring stage it gets great again. At least this was the case for me. The story (and hillarious aspects of it) just pulled me right in and new abilities presented new ways to finish off zombies. Ripping a zombies guts out of it's stomache nearly never gets old, as well as a face plant in the ground lol.

In any case what really won me over is the diversity. All the different people you could save. The great little mini-missions and main missions are great and hillarious. I still need to do some. Also the multiple ways to end it (the proper way bringing about a whole other game episode)


I haven't played Gears of War and Project Gotham Racing. I want to play Gears of War, I enjoy games with that style. From what I've seen they have done some of the techniques already done in games like GRAW though perfected it to be much more fluid. Just like WoW is so successful. Does it do anything new, definately not, I wouldn't even say the most interesting. Though they seemed to make it flow the best. Now for some of us the flow isn't as important as what you can do, but for the majority of gamers it seems to be *shrug*.


A game I would highly recommend is Enchanted Arms. I bought this about a month or two ago. I played it for 10-20 min and nearly considered taking it back. I kept playing to give it a chance and at about 30-45 min (or less) I just got hooked. I'ts a wonderful and funny Japanese RPG game. Great word play and if you like RPGs with a lot of talking and word play than definately try this one. I loved it.

#18 The absolute worst thing about Enchanted Arms was that they banter about how to use the action button well through the majority of the game.

"Oh no! I can't get up there!"
"Dude. There's a ladder!"
"A what?"
"A ladder!"
"What do I do with that?"
"Walk up to it and press the A button to climb it, idiot."
"I knew that..."
"Sure you did."
"I did know it!"
"You're just saying that now."
"Whatever. Let's just go. I gotta get some money."
"We'll get your money at the top of this ladder...press A to climb it, right?"
"Yeah."
"I knew that"
...ad infinitum...

Not just a little reminder each time that you find an area to use it, but a complete and total cut-scene as they bicker about the subtleties of the action button.

Otherwise it was a lot of fun. I liked the characters and story and found it fun to grind the casino to max out characters because...well, I'm like that.

#19 Gears - I am a shooter fan, so I LOVED Gears. It has a great balance of tactical and action gameplay. Its badass space marines like Halo, but it takes tactical cues from games like Rainbow Six. The game is the same over and over gameplay but just about every shooter is... cause thats whats fun about those games. Gears has some cool environments too, but wish it had more vibrant outdoor scenes from time to time. BTW.. if you arent playing this game in HD, you are missing out. Infact, if you arent playing 360 in HD you are missing out.

PGR3 - Fun game and pretty game. My wife plays it way more than I do...so can't comment on it too much.

BTW - if you are looking for a game like Motorstorm on 360.. check out this game: media.xbox360.ign.com/media/826/826336/imgs_1.html .
I tried to play Motostorm at Walmart but its always frozen. Then I finally found a kiosk that wasnt frozen... then it froze on me while playing lol.. Then I went back again to walmart and Target and both the kiosks were pulled out. :P

Assault Heros (Live Arcade) - Is damn fun. I just purchased it and am hoping some friends buy it so we can do old school coop vertical shooting action over Live! Ya!

I got the 360 on launch day and damn.. its slowly becoming my favorite console of all time (so far).. right next to the good ole NES :)

Edit: Spelling.

#20 Dead Rising is one of the games I just got along with my 360. I have to agree with you on the save and I feel like it is taking alot longer than it needs to be to get into the action.

Gears of War. I have played it with my Brother-in-law and I feel like I'm wanting to like it but it's not blowing me away. I haven't played multiplayer dm yet so there is still a chance it will grab a hold of me. The more I play console shooters the more I feel like they would be so much better on a PC.