GBU Game Review for GTAIV: The Ballad of Gay Tony

Here we are with the second piece of promised DLC for GTAIV. Exclusive to the Xbox360(for now, if rumors are to be believed that is), for 20bux off of the Xbox Live Marketplace, or on the “Episodes From Liberty City” disc. Which is 40bux but it also comes with “The Lost And The Damned”. I liked this DLC even more than the last one, this gets a 9/10 from me.

The Good – Rockstar has really gotten the whole storytelling thing down, everything from the dialog, the voice acting, heck, even the way the cutscenes are directed…all top notch and masterful. Wanting to find out what happens next really keeps things moving. Liberty City remains a lively gaming world with plenty to keep you busy. While GTAIV toned down alot of previous GTAs’ insanity in favor of a more realistic crime drama style, TBoGT has some new activities that brings back some of the craziness of San Andreas that are fun as hell. Stuff like parachuting, helicopters that pack some serious artillery, even the police APC.
New weapons turn the fun meter up a few notches too. Machinery like the automatic shotgun with explosive shells and the silenced machine gun just tears things up with a prowess that makes sure the enemies hide from YOU. Radio stations, a GTA staple, have been updated with newer songs that keeps you draped in the atmosphere of the character(Luis Lopez) you’re playing. Luis has part ownership of a couple clubs that Gay Tony owns, you have to option of running one of them certain times at night. Again, the feel has been fitted to a tee. The thumping music, people dancing, drinking, the whole package. Some cool mini games for dancing and drinking are there as well.
The campaign is lengthy and the mission’s fun to frustration ratio is the most minimal yet. You’ll hardly come across a mission that’ll give you a hard time, the feel and pacing swim along just right. It’s nice starting off and your character already has a nice place to live, nice clothes, and he’s already established in the city. No need to build up, you just jump right in. I know some people who fell outta love with GTAIV, they felt the story just took too long. Not an issue here, the fat’s been trimmed, so to speak.

The Bad – Basically, if you’re not a GTA fan to begin with, this game ain’t changing your mind. While driving still feels great, it would’ve been nice if the on foot controls were updated/tweaked. They get the job done, but nowhere near where they could/should be in feel. With the disc version of the game, licensing issues prevented Rockstar from carrying over all the music from the original GTAIV game, to make up for it they threw in 3 new radio stations. While the downloaded version gets access to ALL of the original disc radio stations/songs, but not the new stations, it’s too bad this small feature separates the two since music is such a big part of the GTA experience.

The Ugly – If you don’t like The Sopranos way of things, or any crime drama of that sort….stay away….The title of the game has “Gay Tony” in it, and you play as a latino character in quite an ugly crime underworld. Take a guess at some of the things you’ll hear from some of the game’s less than savory characters.

Modern Warfare 2 out tommorow?

Ask me. Go ahead. Ask me. No? Ok fine. I’ll ask myself.

 

Jamie: Do you care about modern warfare 2?
Jamie:  Not as MUCH AS  I CARE ABOUT PLAYING SUPER MARIO BROTHERS WII.

There I said it. I’m really excited about this game. There’s something to be said about a game you can play WITH someone. And we all know nintendo loves to bring nerds together.  Ok. Ask me another question. Go ahead. Ask me. No? WELL FINE. GOD.

Jamie: Are you totally pumped about Dragon Age coming out and the fact it’s SINGLE PLAYER.
Jamie: Yes, Dragon Age, in every single RPG way has me totally excited. Bioware is a Devloper rich and I love butttttttttttttttttttt. Single Player? Come on.  I’m in a group of 4 fools, why cant I have a friend pop in? It’s very very dissapointing.  There’s always Super Mario Brothers Wii?

GBU Game Review for Brutal Legend (XBOX 360)

I found out about this game based purely on hype. Sure we’ve spoken about this on the podcast but alas my memory is not like the old days. I’m glad the hype machine worked on this one. Now  I cant recant to you the process why this game was developed in the manner it was or what game was the most influential one before that one but…I can tell you I had a lot of fun playing this. Not only just with gameplay but also laughing which very very very rarely happens while playing a video game. So..enough…with the REVIEW ALREADY.
Good: Jokesin,Jokesin, Jokesin’.  The Metal Jokes abound in this game.  There’s a mention of a Headbangers that still has me laughing when I think about it. Dont worry, it’s no spoiler.  The Map is huge and the gameplay is similar in it’s ease to Fable but, ok, i’ll be a jerk this gameplay is what star wars force unleashed wished it could be. The moves are not hard to get down and they actually DO something. Hold B and you create a fire explosion! Sweeeeeet.  There’s a special’s menu, bound to the shoulder button, where you play riff’s, think Wind Waker here, that summons various things or special abilities. Kind of like World of Warcraft 51 point talents. You can summon an animal aid, or your car or my personal favorite Melt Faces where you melt the faces of the enemies nearby. Yeah. Awesome right?   These effects come into play during the battle matches you have both in game and with another person.  In essense you are given the command of an army and attempt to manage it’s resources duking it out with another player by sending your army to take control of their towers. If you think it sounds like an RTS but in first/third person, you’re totally correct. And if you say that’s the 4th type of game I’ve mentioned you’re very smart. This game takes a lot of what works and puts it into a game, and well.  So this multiplayer is a nice additive and completely unexpected. But there’s more that I’ll get to in a bit.  You are also given this weird way of upgrading your character by finding relic’s and doing missions. You earn these fire of the god points that you can use to spend on upgrades in a garage run by Ozzy Osborne of all chracters. Given how completely easy it was to understand ozzy, I think the whole drunk ozzy thing as a reality is bogus. Dude knows his product and sells it. and we eat it up.

Bad: The Multiplayer match appears out of nowhere after a short “how to” session. The multiplayer while fun is not really perfected and a little overdone. I did not expect it to be the last 3 stages of the game. Which it very nearly was. If you want to complete a lot of the side missions (and you will) you’ll have to treck all OVER the map. It’s fun but it gets a tad overwhelming due to the map size. I’m talking the hunting mission. UGH. That was an achievement I worked TOWARDS. 

Ugly: The game tends to get a tad long in the tooth near the end. While almost not wanting the game to finish the Devloper got a few things really right and then OVERDID it. I guess it’s the metal thing where it’s just done to death. I guess in the sense it’s not ugly.

Rock Band 2 SE Bundle, $99 through 01/01/10

What used to cost like $190, then $160(I think), can be had for the cool price of $99 according to a Harmonix post on the Rock Band forums. This applies to the Xbox360 and PS3 versions of the bundles. You get the game, guitar controller, drums and mic. All wireless with version 2 improvements, such as the drums being velocity sensitive. Heck of a deal if you ask me.

GBU Game Review for Uncharted 2 :Among Thieves (PS3)

Man, the PS3 has been on a roll this year with it’s exclusives and Uncharted 2 is no exception. Read on for some thoughts on one of my favorite gaming experiences of the year. 9/10

The Good – Please excuse me if I happen to repeat certain things from my review of the first game. But what was good there returns and is even better this time around. The Indiana Jones style adventure is back and even more exciting and multi-layered than before. Once again we have a third person action game with platforming/climbing elements, and some fun shooting action that’s mostly cover based. The story keeps you sucked in, wanting to find out what happens next. The characters are well developed and interesting with some great writing and dialogue. There are so many ‘holy crap’ moments, and most of the time the creators don’t even milk them when they could’ve, so many awesome moments that only happen once. The gameplay has been tweaked and revamped, adding a ton of new moves as far as the climbing/exploring action goes. The shooting elements are tweaked to where most of the time it’s really fun, headshots actually register normally this time around. There’s plenty of weapons, some light stealth scenes and just an all around solid action package.
The graphics this time run at a solid framerate, never dipping, and none of the ugly screen tearing that happened sometimes in the first game. There are plenty of scenarios, from jungles, to ancient ruins, to snow mountains, and more. What really got me was the amount of detail packed in, it really is astonishing when you stop and look at the scenery. Simply, these are some of THE best graphics this gaming generation, period. Great lossless audio quality makes a return as well, supporting 7.1 surround if you got the setup.
There’s a hefty multiplayer component, which I haven’t tried, but is said to be strong and a ton of fun. This is a game that every PS3 owner should at least try, good stuff.

The Bad – Some of the action ‘issues’ I had with the first game briefly rears it’s head near the end. As in way too many enemies spawning, with only a few parts requiring multiple tries. While the enemy models look great in-game, you kill ALOT of them, problem is seeing the same guys way too many times can pull you of the adventure experience a bit.

The Ugly – My treasure finding skills. There’s hidden treasure items(just for the fun of it) hidden throughout just like the first game. In this one there’s 100, I was only able to find around 35 or so my first playthrough :-\

Man this is a hilarious, a Sesame Street Yip Yip Martian Rap!

yeah yeah yeah…blam blam blam… just watch and laugh as Yip Yup starts blastin’

 

31st Podcast

Some indepth discussion of…TROPICO. A game similar to RailRoad Tycoon due to using the same engine. Squeeeee. We also talk Army of Two, Sim City 4, The DSI getting a bigger and needed screen size increase, The PS3 getting netflix, A Crazy from the Netherlands who blamed silent hill for a crime? New Video game releases AND Boondock Saints 2? Really?  Surprises abound in the 31st_podcast

Reminder: GTA IV-The Ballad Of Gay Tony -it’s out

Yup, the day I’ve been waiting for as well as other Grand Theft Auto junkies. Exclusively on Xbox Live Marketplace(for $20) and bundled with “The Lost And Damned” on disc(for $40) as GTA: Episodes from Liberty City for the Xbox 360. Here’s a trailer(language a bit NSFW) introducing you to the guy you’ll be playing as, Luis Lopez….oh yeah, I got my hands on this yesterday, and I’m lovin it

Horror Corner ZombieLand

I was hoping to be more active this month.  I was hoping to have a satisfying career and a huge plot of land with a concrete bunker stocked with weapons ammo and food by this time in my life.  Things don’t always happen like ya plan em though.  Just sometimes things happen.  So I’m going to make the best of it and plod on as always,  albeit a bit late and WAY off track.  So lets just say im undependable and we can all love me for my faults.  Let’s get back to what matters.

ZOMBIELAND!

OK.  let me just say that as comedic as this movie really is it’s SPOT ON.  the rules to live by, the realities wrapped in humor, the relationships forged and the absoloute horrible truth of surviving in a zombie apocolypse. 

The characters are fun and likeable, and the suprise cameo while shortlived is absolutely PERFECT for this movie.  Woody is an absolute perfect match for the character and plays his role to an absolute T. 

The Zombies while not completely Romero Zombies are still mostly believable, no superhuman strength and no weird flying powers are bestowed upon them.  They are in fact the living dead.  Good old plain and fancy Zeds.

The story while not gripping does get you involved,  it makes you laugh,  and it allows you to immerse yourself.

All in all this is more of a good time fun movie than an all out comedy laugh fest, and its definately not a horror movie per sea.

Go see this movie, horror fans and stiffs alike will love this movie.  Something for everyone and blah blah blah.

GBU Game Review for Half-Life 2: Episode Two (Xbox360, PC)

In a bit of bass ackwardsness, here’s my review to the 2nd expansion pack to Half-Life 2. One of my all time favorite first person shooters EVER. Why this one first? I just played through it for a 2nd time last week so it’s fresh in my mind. The first time was when it was released 2yrs. ago on the Xbox360, then last week on my fairly equipped PC. I’m gonna go ahead and give this one a 10, that’s right, I went there Somewhere down the line I may review Half-Life 2 and the it’s first expansion Episode One, but this is where the game is tops, until Episode Three drops maybe. But only time will tell, especially since we’ve been waiting for it for 2yrs. now :-/

The Good – Awesome continuation of the Half-Life 2 saga. You, playing as Gordon Freeman, are put to the task of trying to save the world from the Combine. An alien race that terrorizes the human race into a concentration camp like lifestyle. The first person combat continues as you battle Combine soldiers(humans converted to do their bidding), striders, a new combine enemy, the hunter and other nasties as well such as antlions, headcrab zombies and more. Everybody (or creature) has their own tactic to be taken down with, so you’re sure to have a different experience in every section of the game. The action is incredibly thrilling, never boring, sometimes scary, and thankfully never overbearing. Puzzle sections help to break up the action, which usually has you making use of the gravity gun, something that was revolutionary in 2004 when Half-Life 2 dropped. This “weapon” lets you pick up most objects and place them down, or for fun, shoot them anywhere. In some sections you can defeat enemies just with this and whatever is laying around, this makes for some cool creative fights and definitely something new and different in the shooter world, even 5yrs. later. The story, which is strong, is uniquely told entirely through the eyes of the hero, the camera NEVER leaves his perspective, and he NEVER speaks….this is interesting in a strange way, but it 100% works. The characters on your side are likeable, they just make you give a damn, which means the voice acting is there in top form as well. Sometimes you’re paired up with an NPC(usually Alyx), which can spell annoyance in some games, but they never get in your way, always help and are never annoying. One of the last things I love about this game, unlike most shooters today, every gun that you find throughout the game, as long as there’s ammo, is at your disposal. Sure, games like Halo and Call Of Duty started the trend where you can only carry two guns at a time, and while it sets forth an interesting strategy for those types of games, almost every shooter(1st and 3rd), has copied this. Sometimes I just wanna use it all, when I want to. And oh yeah, sorry PC junkies, but the PC version lets me use my 360 controller and the controls are fully configured exactly like the 360. Guess what I used

The Bad – Pffffft….hardly….but I’ll be a little nit-picky for review’s sake……A first person shooter with no dedicated melee button? Really? I know I can use the crowbar for this function, but I have to switch to it, inconvenient if I ever ‘need’ it. In old shooter fashion, you have to “find” health, yup, nearly every shooter today has regenerating health or shields, here you have to find it when you need it, like the old days. It makes for an interesting strategy for me, but some cats may not like that. The Source Engine graphics, while still great and pleasant to the eye, are starting to show their age….in the age of Gears of Wars, Call of Dutys, and your Uncharteds, it’s true.

The Ugly – The timing of these “Episodes”. Valve was supposed to start a new era by helping to introduce us to episodic gaming. We were promised 3 episodes to continue the Half-Life 2 storyline, it was basically supposed to be Half-Life 3. They were supposed to be 6 months apart. So Episode One drops a little over a year and a half after Half-Life 2, Episode Two drops nearly a year and a half after that…..and here we are almost 2yrs. later waiting for Episode Three with no announcement in sight

God Of War Collection Trailer

Hittin’  on the ‘yeah boyeee’ tip, Sony hits us with an awesome trailer for the upcoming God Of War Collection for the PS3, the HD cleanup of God Of War 1 & 2.

Netflix streaming finally coming to PS3

For those that care that is…..by the looks of it, alot of you out there really do. Me, I always thought it was a cool option when it came to the 360, but as far as actually using it….meh…I prefer to BMI my stuff, or buy the BluRays. But on the real, it’s good to see it come to other platforms, and also gives us another cool thing to do on our expensive consoles. Some info from 1up….

“The service will arrive on the Sony console next month and will be free to PS3 owners who already subscribe to Netflix (or $8.99 a month for those who don’t) — and unlike on the Xbox 360, people will not be required to pay the equivalent of the yearly $50 Xbox Live Gold membership to access it.”

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3176634

GBU game review for Left 4 Dead (360)

Left 4 Dead is a zombie survivor story. You are given 4 seperate places to escape the zombie invasion along with 3 other NPC’s. You can have the option to play locally 4 player, online co-0p or by yourself with the computer playing the other 3.

Good: The game is straight foreward in it strategy. Point, shoot and watch the aftermath. It’s extremely easy to pick up.  Trouble is. That’s the game. Literally. Run. Look Zombies! Blamo! Run. Look Zombies! Blamo! If you played exclusivly Co-Op I know for a fact you will have a blast. Literally. =)

Bad: The AI is slightly useful for one character, with the other times your two npc friends slightly above useless. To be fair though one normally acts as a healer.  To match the NPC there are 4 types of zombies. The knuckle draggers we all know, a very large patchwork looking thing, some spiderman things, and a tank. Called I think..a tank. yeah it was that memorable for me. So..there’s a lot of variety in this game (sarcasim).

Ugly: If you payed 59.99 for this game and told me you wanted your money back because you dont play Co-Op I wouldnt argue one bit with you. If you have lots of friends or are the type who puts up with the Xbox Live Kiddie Playland then none of what I wrote applyies to you.

GBU game review for Army Of Two (and my cat)

This game review will differ in many ways from my/our previous game reviews.  I won’t actually review this game so much as tell you what happened. And that’s not to say the game was bad and unreviewable. It’s because the last time I played this game was the last time I saw one of my best friends alive. One of my cats died sometime last night and I am currently unable to write a review of the game as this is clouding my judgement.  Please forgive me for my unorthodox review.

Good:  He was there through every up and down. He was there before many friends I’ve ever had.  He was there on a friday night when noone else was. He wanted to be with me when I was ugly and when I was beautiful.  He loved me when I was single and when I was in a relationship. He was there when I was poor and there when I was not. He listened when I recorded music even when it was good and when it was very bad.  He would sit on the sofa and watch me play my silly games, or he would join me upstairs on the computer. I would leave just enough space for him to lay down and he was always happy with that.  Every morning he would greet me in the bathroom and rub against my leg. When I was done showering he would follow me downstairs, scratch the post that only he would scratch then take up a nice lookout place for me to pet him on the way out. He would meow when he wanted the window open and loved to look outside.  He also loved going outside when I was working out. He would check out the yard first, then he would lay down and let me do my workout until I was done. Sometimes he would come over and rub against my leg and I could feel him purring.  He did not want to run away he just enjoyed being outside with me.  He did not cry loudly and repuslivly. He would simply do his one meow letting you know he needed something.  It was nice knowing how happy he got from the simple things we did together. and that is what love really is.

Bad: At 2am last night, when I put down Army of 2 I did not say goodnight to my friend. The spot he was laying on was the last spot I saw him alive. I regret not having done so.

Ugly:  One of my best friends is not with me anymore and I never got to say goodbye.

30th Podcast!

We get together and talk some, Dead space,Call Of Duty 4, Kill Zone, GTA 4 now on Demand, The new Wow Movie, ATI winning the next gen console deal, the PS3 getting top sales for the first time….ever? Check out the 30th_podcast

Holy Split! Beatles Abbey Road Released and I didn’t even know!

So, one of the >3< announced Beatles albums has been released. And by far and away my least liked album so you see me in the corner not giving a damn ok? That’s enough of the hate against this game , It was released on October 20th and the entire album is available to the fresh tune of 16.98 (what is this 1998 cd prices?).  At least the next two albums are going to be pretty nice, we get “Sgt Peppers” and “Rubber Soul”. No release date has been announced on those games but I’ll bet money it occurs before December 25
Rich and I talked about this on our podcast but it appears the other Beatles albums are t at best to become available for DLC.  Here’s something I stole from wikipedia. “While there is potential for the entire Beatles catalogue to be made available, such a scenario would be “stretching it a bit”, according to John Drake of Harmonix.^[34] Drake identified the costly development process as a potentially prohibitive factor: “Every time we do one song, it’s not like Rock Band where we wait for the masters to come in and just author them… its like, send people to Abbey Road, use the original tape, separate them out… it costs thousands of dollars.”^[68] Drake asserted that Harmonix would take sales of the currently announced albums into consideration before continuing development of downloadable content.”

Are you kidding me? I thought the albums were digitally remastered when Star Wars was raped and torn apart to the ugly beast it is now? Oh well.

Ratchet and Clank and Trailer

So, there’s a pretty informative trailer for the new game in the Ratchet and Clank series. The developers discuss the addiction(addition) of Trophy’s and using them to unlock challenges. This is something that we’ve discussed in depth on our podcast’s as something developers can do to break down a wall between the user and developer. Here you did ALL THIS, now you get this since you obviously love the game so much. For example I play through all of oblivion I now get a new town to go do quests with. Just sayin’ Bethesda. The developers also discuss the replay factor for the game one that I didn’t think was really there (although they say fans email them about this!). So that’s pretty cool!

Super Mario World Wedding Proposal

This is how a gamer nerd one-ups the now cliched JumboTron proposal.

From the guy’s YouTube page:

My nerdy way to propose. On October 15th 2009, it was our 5 year anniversary so i decided to propose. She may not look too surprised in the video but you should of seen her afterwords, she couldn’t sit still!!! And no it wasn’t staged, but I did sit her down told her to play some Super Mario World, but she totally didn’t know she was being recorded!!

Say it with me now, “Awwww.”

Good Bad Ugly Game Review for Fable 2: See the Future

I’m not exactly sure about the future. I’ve seen every Back to the Future so I suppose I have some keen awareness of generic time travel principals.  You probably wont see me writing the “How to Time Travel” for Dummies, so Peter Molyneux the man we all love to hate probably wouldn’t have hired me to create the latest DLC for Fable 2.

Good: I hate to list this as a good, but I will.  We get more Fable game play  which is never a bad thing. I’m not one to change things when it works just for the sake of change.  There’s more fun storytelling and zany blu-man group characters to kill. You’ll get some new clothes to go with the clothes that you don’t wear already. You’ll also get a solid 4 hours of game play if you race through this. It took me a span of 3 days of 4 hour play session to beat this which I found very delightful. You are given the ability to reskin your puppy which is beyond adorable as I became really attached to my dog. The dungeon’s are fun and engaging. They unfold before you instead of just running from end to end killing things inbetween.

Bad:  Clothing. Whatever, I’ve mentioned this as my main beef with Fable 2.  The rehashing of the gauntlet was cool but not needed. The single biggest thing is starting out in black and white. Be prepared after playing through the vibrant colors of the normal game that it turns into this. It’s part of the story but one that really needs to be noted.

Ugly: Nothing to note.

Super Mario Theme played on Hands

Ok, i’mma just going to let this one video fester for awhile. This has to be one of the more insane finds EVER. A video of a guy playing the Super Mario Theme on his Hands.