Product Reviews

Stanley Fubar

Does what you’d expect

Written on Saturday, November 24th, 2007 by lorien1973 :: Be the first to Comment

So I see a commercial on TV promoting a new tool called the Stanley Fubar. Best. Tool. Name. Ever. Fubar, if you didn’t know, stands for “Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition” (substitute your favorite F word, though). The tool, apparently, is simply designed to destroy something.

The video shows how well it accomplishes this task. Finally a tool with a perfect name that promises to do what it promises. I think it’s possibly the best invention ever.

Congrats to Stanley and their Fubar.

Best Buy Black Friday Store Campers

Some people don’t know the meaning of Christmas

Written on Friday, November 23rd, 2007 by lorien1973 :: 1 Comment so far

Having heard rumors about people parking outside of Best Buy looking for deals; I drove by one on the way home and saw the scariest thing ever. There -were- people lined outside the store, all the way around the store. I could see three sides of the store from my driveby and there were people camping on each side in a somewhat orderly line.

It was a crazy sight for the few dollars they will be saving. Is $100 off a TV really worth this much effort? I guess Thanksgiving is no longer about spending time with family; but more about the next day and getting a deal on a new TV or Wii. Retailers seem to be focusing more on Thanksgiving day as their sale day, much like movies release movies on Christmas Day, knowing that families want to get away from each other.

During the drive-by, we snapped a photo of the people sitting there. The picture sucks, but none of the people looked too pleased about being photographed looking like morons on Thanksgiving evening:

Nintendo Wii Light Saber: Adult Toy?

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

Written on Wednesday, November 21st, 2007 by lorien1973 :: 1 Comment so far

Caught this online and I’m almost thinking that this has to be a joke. I’m not sure what the site is trying to describe - a light saber or an LED based adult toy?

Here is the description from the website:

For use with Nintendo Wii games console. Simply slip your Wii Remote into the handle and press the on button to instantly power up your light sword, the power up and down effect is done gradually until the light sword is at its full length.

Power up and power down until at full length? Sounds kinda kinky to me. How fast do I have to power up and power down. If it do it too fast will the LEDS pop out and fall onto the floor or something?

And how long till we get our first amateur video using the Wii Light Saber as its apparently meant to be used? I say it’s less than a week.

Think Cash: A New Low in Short Term Loans

They should be ashamed of themselves.

Written on Tuesday, November 20th, 2007 by lorien1973 :: 3 Comments so far

A few months back, I saw a commercial from Cash Call which offered short term loans to those with bad credit. The interest rate on these loans were about 99% (plus or minus a quarter point) which made the payments outrageous on the amount borrowed. It sparked quite a bit of discussion on that point - and is still one of the most popular posts I’ve done on this blog.

I read each of those comments and respond when appropriate; but today I saw another commercial that makes Cash Call look like saints. This loanshark reputable lender offers short term loans - much like Cash Call - but their maximum interest rate is a whopping 365%. No. That’s not a typo. 365%. On some loans, they do offer a relatively pallitable interest rate of 171%.  As per their site:

The Annual Percentage Rate (APR) for an example $1250.00 loan is 171.5% with 36 bi-weekly payments of $91.66.

I’ll whip out my handy dandy calculator to figure out the total debt. 36 payments at 91.66 equals $3300 (plus or minus a few bucks). So on a $1250 dollar loan; you have to come up with over 2.5 times the originally loan value in 18 months. If the people applying for these loans could come up with that much extra cash in such a short period of time, why would they need a loan in the first place? Think Cash should be ashamed! This, much like Cash Call, is just another in the continuing cycle of poverty that pushes people further and further down, making it nearly impossible to improve their situation. I’m all for capitalism and making money; but capitalism without morals is no better than Communism.

But it gets worse. I went to an online loan repayment calculator and figured out much you’d have to repay on a $2500 36 month loan at 365% interest. Ready? Are you sitting down? Here you go:

Loan Balance:	$2,500.00
Adjusted Loan Balance:	$2,500.00
Loan Interest Rate:	365.00%
Loan Fees:	0.00%
Loan Term:	3 years
Minimum Payment:	$0.00
Monthly Loan Payment:	$760.47
Number of Payments:	37
Cumulative Payments:	$27,392.59
Total Interest Paid:	$24,892.59

Absolutely stunning. I’m almost positive there is something wrong with the math here, but 365% interest - I guess - does add up rather quickly. Apply for this loan and kiss your future goodbye. 

As an added bonus, Think Cash also provides 12 handy dandy tips on how to get out of debt. Here’s my tip: Don’t get a loan from Think Cash. And, apparently as a joke, Think Cash is asking for referrals. Like their service? Win $50. And they also let you refer a friend - which, I assume, is a great way to make sure you have one less friend in the world - “Why, gee, thanks Bill. I’m glad you recommended this service to me. Now I’m stuck with a loan with a 365% interest rate. You rock!”

Even Gary Coleman wouldn’t attach his name to this service. I guess in a few months, we can look forward to Ultimate Cash - get $2,500 next day with a 500% interest rate. It really wouldn’t surprise me.

Update: Are paid bloggers being used to white wash this mess? Here Here Here Here - and more are easily findable from a google blog search. All of them talking about “Think Cash” - but not a single one mentions the absolutely horrendous interest rates. Wonder why? If you are a paid blogger; fine. That’s wonderful, but please have some respect for yourself and your blog and don’t endorse programs like this.

Getting Links Thru Testimonials

It’s easy and people will like you!

Written on Wednesday, October 24th, 2007 by lorien1973 :: Be the first to Comment

All webmasters try for more links more links and more links. Obviously you want them to occur naturally - but sometimes naturally needs to be helped along a little bit.

A decent way I’ve found to getting links is to write testimonials for local businesses that have a web presence. We wrote one for Busy Beaver Express and they put it online with a link to our website. You can’t ask for more than that, can you? Cost 0. Time invested: 1 minute. Value of Link: priceless.

Of course, this is a very limited way to gather links because, frankly, how many local businesses does a web based company really need? We just started using courier services recently after I got tired of our tax payments being late. The $8 courier fee is far more pallatible (sp?) than a $500 late payment/interest penalty from Uncle Sam.

Give it a shot. If you deal with a local small business with a web presence; that is a link waiting to happen. You just have to give it a little push.

Puzzle Quest Challenge of the Warlords Xbox 360 Review

Ho-Hum.

Written on Thursday, October 11th, 2007 by lorien1973 :: 3 Comments so far

So I’ve been waiting for a good Xbox game to come out. No, I didn’t buy Halo 3. I hate first person shooters as I’ve said few times before. It did peak my interest though since it was an event game, so I watched some hour long video of some fat guy playing it over on Gamespot. It confirmed everything that I hate about first person shooters. The stupid hidden objects, can’t tell where you are being shot at from, oddly placed barrels to get in your way, no character building, etc. At least Gears of War had an awesome commercial. Didn’t make me buy it, but it sure made me -want- to buy it.

So anyways, yesterday I downloaded Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords from Xbox Live Arcade. 1200 points ($24? 50 points/dollar right? I forget now). And I was playing it for a few hours.

So the game is really just Bejeweled where you fight monsters and do quests. The quests are, from what I’ve seen, go there kill that (insert generic reason here). I did get a quest where I had to kill - don’t be shocked - 3 monsters to complete the thing and get the reward. The RPG element in the game is that you can level up your character and make him stronger. The different monsters you fight have different abilities which they can powerup by collecting gems from the board (matching 3 or more of the same color) and use their powers against you. Your character also has special abilities to do the same. I chose a knight so I’ve been leveling up my hit points and my attack power, which helps me do more damage.

So I’m fighting these monsters and trying to figure out the rules (I turned the tutorial off) and I get the fact that 3 or more skulls in a row cause damage to me, but I seem to take damage by other methods. But I’m doing okay (I’m not a Bejeweled fan anyways so take this into account) but the repetition is stupid. Yay, I’ve killed a Skeleton and got some experience points. Maybe a piece of equipment. So, let’s go kill more of them and do it all again!

Or not. Maybe I’d rather shoot myself in the head first. Really, come on. Every fight is exactly the same. Either you get lucky and get a ton of jewels to kill the monster or luck works against you and they kill you. I won’t deny there is an element of skill and pre-planning here but not it’s not quite enough to keep me interested.

One thing that I think could have improved the game is more puzzle varieties. Why is it always Bejeweled? Why not make like I’m fighting a bat in a Zuma type environment - shooting marbles before it gets me. Or, spelling words when fighting a monster to do damage. Or, making potions similar to Alchemy. A little variety would be nice. Bejeweled still gets old after a while. Yeah, going up against a skeleton instead of a rat is nice, but it’s still Bejeweled. I dunno, I’m not a game maker but variety is key (for me, at least) in video games. And I wish it existed here.

I played a much better version of this type of game a few months ago. It was called Bookworm Adventures. Where you are a worm dude spelling out words to defeat monsters and save the girl. There is some skill there. The better your vocabulary the better you’ll do. Yes, the element of luck is there as well (damn J’s) but your success is almost always determined by your ability to spell the longest word you can. Better monster animations, better power-ups, exactly the same linear gameplay. Except Bookworm Adventures also has a good sense of humor and cute dialogue. Want a simple adventure game? Bookworm Adventures is where it’s at.  No, I don’t believe its on Xbox Live Arcade yet, but it should be.

As for this, it’s passable (I’d maybe rate it a 5 or a 6) but not quite my type of game.

537,452,951 Virgins Murdered in 24 Hours

Will anyone miss them?

Written on Thursday, September 27th, 2007 by lorien1973 :: 1 Comment so far

So Halo 3 was released the other day. While I have an Xbox 360, I’m not a first person shooter fan, as I’ve previously stated in my BioShock review. I just don’t get a thrill out of a game where you are exactly the same at the beginning as you are the end of the game. I enjoy building up a character and making him unique to my experience. Anyways.

Halo 3 did rack up record sales at its release and nerds from around the world waited for midnight to happen so they could be the first to buy the game in their little corner of the planet. That’s a sad commentary on our life, isn’t it? It racked up over $170 million in sales in the first 24 hours, and over 4.9 million multiplayer games were played within 24 hours, accounting for over 500 million virgins dying a painful death.

I really just thought that those numbers were astonishing, seeing as how that beat any movie or book -ever- released, and maybe it’ll help Microsoft pull a profit from their video gaming division for the first time this year. Byran over at Hotair wrote up something about this today too.

Brief followup. I do not think that the dollar comparison is really fair here. Yes, Halo 3 did get a record dollar amount; but it is also priced at $60 each (or more if you buy the collector’s edition). So, let’s take the number of people buying and compare that instead.

The IGN article linked above says that Spiderman 3 took in $59 million opening day. Let’s say that each ticket costs $10, then 5.9 million people went to see it. Harry Potter sold 8.3 million copies in the first day. Way more than Spiderman. At $60 each, Halo only sold 3 million copies. In that perspective, the dollar amount is a little less impressive - even though gaming has come a long way in the past 5 years or so.

So I wouldn’t go crowning Microsoft as the King of all Media right now with the impressive figure. When the number of people buying a game equals or surpasses the number of people going to a movie or buying book in the first 24 hours, then I’ll be impressed. And I don’t doubt that Microsoft will be the company that does it either.

Two Worlds Xbox 360 Review

Is it good?

Written on Saturday, August 25th, 2007 by lorien1973 :: 23 Comments so far

After yesterday’s review of BioShock (and having finished it already - too short. Oh well), I’m glad I received my copy of Two Worlds today from EB Games. I’m writing this at about 2:30 am after having played it since 7 pm or so. I guess you can tell already where this is going. You might be a little surprised though;  so read on!

I’ll start from the beginning. The game gets off to a very tedious start, you watch an incredibly poorly written dialogue that sets the mood for what is going on (I’m still not quite sure what’s going on, to be honest). After a brief fight with a couple of goblin lookin’ guys, you begin another incredibly tedious conversation then you can start playing as you wish. Generally, you’ll hate the conversations - the voice over work is not very good and very monotone, plus the manner of speaking is unusual - if I hear “perchance” one more time, I’m gonna ace someone! All the text is spoken, but you’ll find yourself clicking through the repetitive ones to get to the buying/selling pages or whatever. While we are on the subject of speech, your character seems to have a mental disorder which makes him talk to himself an awful lot (complaining about the weather, saying Look what I found - in various forms, etc, but he does enjoy telling monsters that they just died and that’s kinda funny). The actual sound effects, swinging swords, movement, rain, etc are all very well done, though. Yes, the dialogue grates a little but I don’t consider that a major issue.

The graphics in Two Worlds are amazing. The grass sways in the wind, clouds cast shadows on the ground, butterflies flit in the breeze, etc. All very nicely done. The change from day to night and back looks gorgeous and looking at scenery in the distance is wonderful. There are some clipping issues - but this doesn’t bug me as much as others. I figure it’s a natural state in video games. The faces could have used a little more work and seem a little flat, and since you spend a lot of conversation time staring at faces, you’ll wish they put a little more time there. Your character’s look will change with each new piece of armour or weapon you put on, which is an awesome touch because you’ll spend an awful lot of time staring at yourself from the back.

The combat is really where the game shines. If you tried to play Oblivion on third person and found out how difficult it was; this game makes that work. The variety of moves is fantastic - each weapon seems to have its own swing pattern to keep things interesting. If swinging around a halberd, hitting 4 baddies with one swing is wrong, I don’t wanna be right!Unlike other RPGs, you do not have to focus on a sword or a mace or a bow. Your character seems equally skilled in all of them and you can trade them out at will - which is good, because you’ll be trading up weapons and armor an awful lot. Do not get too attached to any weapon or armor. From what I’ve seen, it’ll be replaced in less than an hour, sometimes in less than 5 minutes. Same with armor - new stuff is always around the corner. Each humanoid creature that fights with a sword or a shield will drop that item if you kill him; usually RPGs do not do this and its an interesting change. While it does allow you to amass a massive bankroll very quickly, it also makes the game more realistic. A skeleton fights you with a halberd. Kill it and you can have that weapon now. I like that.

But this is where a major gripe (for pack rats, like myself, at least) comes into play. As advice, I suggest you work very hard on completing the teleportal quests early in the game (there are 2 of them in the beginning both relatively easy). If you do not, you’ll find yourself going back into dungeons many times to loot baddies and either sell the stuff or upgrade your character. One dungeon took me 10 trips to loot all the bad guys and get all the new armor and weapons available. While you can carry stuff, your ability is very limited; so unless you complete those teleportal quests, and you enjoy looting dead people, expect a lot of back and forth trips.

Another gripe with the game is that it has an odd way of telling you not to go someplace - by killing you instantly. I’ve found 4 different spots so far that has a creature that kills you with a single hit. After leveling up a few times, that same creature dies like a cockroach. It’s a very odd situation, that I don’t quite understand yet.  It’s a good thing, though, that death is a natural part of life in the game and carries no real penalty - you get resurrected instantly a little distance away with all your gear in tact. While that takes away a little of the danger, I guess a save feature covers this anyways.

Your character is a mercenary at the beginning of the game and expect to play that roll out over the course of the game. During conversations, money seems to be his main motivator on the pre-recorded lines - so you aren’t playing the role of a saint who helps everyone. You’ll be asked to murder people, do things only because you are paid to, etc. While there is a main quest with clearly defined goals, the game doesn’t bug you to complete them so you can do things as you want. Much like Oblivion, you can do everything in the game, then get to the main quest as an after thought. The character also seems to possess a knowledge of the world that he doesn’t share with you (He’ll, more than a few times, say - I know where that is; when you don’t have a clue, in reality).

As you wander through the world, you’ll follow a minimap in the top left of your screen. While it does a good job at showing lots of colorful circles; it’s hard to make out what direction you are heading and nearly impossible to tell where they want you to go on a quest. You’ll have to visit the bigger in game map for that. In fact, that mini map seems all but useless except for telling you where you haven’t explored - areas in black of course.

Along with teleportal areas, you can speed up exploration by getting a horse and riding it everywhere. You can also fight from horsetop which is a very interesting dynamic that I’ve never seen before. The controls of the horse are a little hard to get used to, but it does speed up getting from point a to b.  I haven’t used the horses too much as I like to hoof it myself, but I did for a moment (5 free achievement points on Xbox for mounting a horse) and it was pretty interesting.

The controls are actually a problem throughout the game. The manual does not adequately explain how to map a spell or item to your quick access area (you click the directional pad at the direction you want it and hit left trigger). Also, navigating through your character screen is tedious. Zooming in and out of the map takes too much effort and isn’t intuitive at all, so it’ll take time to get used to that. Inventory management suffers from this same issue as well. Take time and learn the control scheme. If you leave your character screens and go back, it won’t remember what screen you were on, so you’ll have to cycle to it again. It’s a little tedious, but it does end up being functional, if not perfect.

I’ve complained a lot during this review; but they are all petty issues that, while they take away from the game a little, they do not destroy it. The game overall is wonderful. Fighting is fun, exploring is fun, there is lots to see and do - and stuff you can visit that doesn’t even make sense to you yet.

Summing up:

The Good:

• Wonderful Graphics
• Excellent Fighting and Combat System
• Good variety of quests and enemies
• Sucks you in - there is always something to do
• Limited Load Times
• Freedom to explore (just about) anywhere

The Bad:

• Awkward control system
• Poor voice over work
• Hard to understand navigation (maps)
• Odd barriers to exploring

In the end, I don’t think this game is as good as Oblivion - the game it’ll always be compared to - but it certainly stands on its own as a good game so far with compelling side quests and characters to talk to and a very fun combat system. Based on what I’ve done so far and explored up to this point, the game will probably occupy 50 hours of play time if you do all the side quests so there is a great value for the game if you enjoy RPGs.

Update (8/27):

My character is 50th level now. And the problems with the game are really highlighting themselves.  This is mainly a litany of complaints I have with the game. I enjoy it, despite its faults, but I feel it could have used a little more fine tuning to make the experience that much better.

Since the game began, I asked myself - why is there only 1 healing spell? Then I played around for a while and realized you can stack spell cards much like you do items! Duh! So I stacked 5 or 6 of them and now my healing spell does 2100 points of healing instead of 450. I didn’t read the manual too thoroughly, but I’ve never -ever- seen this in a game before. Very unsual. That also explains why my fire spell’s 24 points of damage never improved. And I’ve been selling extra spell cards as I’ve acquired them. Now I’ll hoard them whenever I see them. Geesh.

At 50th level, I carry 2 weapons (both 2 handed so I change them out as needed). A halberd type weapon (does about 6000 points of damage combined, with enchantments) which does a marvelous job at hitting 4 or 5 guys at once and a blunt weapon (that does about 3000 points, with enchantments) - the latter primarily for skeletons and undead. My defense is something like 3000 or 4000 according to everything I wear, plus I have some elemental resistances as well. I also have about 8000 hit points or something. There are now 2 types of creatures in the game. Those I kill in 2-3 hits and those that kill me in 1 hit. That’s stupid - there is no middle ground here what-so-ever.

Even to survive an ogre. The patten is RT RT RT B (to back off while it attacks cuz if it hits me I’m dead) move in RT RT RT B (to back off again) .. rinse and repeat until its dead. Same with the cyclops.  Then, there are these giant insect guys, I forget their names. The humanoid ones die in one or two hits. The giant ones kill me in one or two hits - and there are always 5 or 6 of them - attacking at once. RT RT RT B works unless they maneuver around you, then you are inevitably dead.

I’m a camel. This is my destiny. I found a cave with maybe 200 skeletons in there (several huge fights locked up the game a few times) - eventually killing them all. Each I looted completely - using teleport stones to bring back the loot, sell it, return, loot more. Rinse and repeat until its all done. By doing this at every encounter, I’ve amassed maybe 400,000 in gold so I’m set for a while. Without doing this, there is no way you could pay for the later armour and weapons you’ll find. There are two teleportal locations that are perfect for quick selling - the one in the first town (forget it’s name, but its the one where you get the teleportal stones) - the selling guy is right there; and in the southern half of the map, the japanese city, sellers right there by teleportals too. So it doesn’t take too long to empty off a ton of corpses.

If you aren’t worrying about the main quest; then go back and start working on it; after you’ve found the relic frame and earth element - those quests will not disappear from your “to do” list for some reason. If you do an action that will prevent a quest from being unsolvable, sometimes those will not disappear either from your to-do list. I have 3 unsolvable quests as far as I can tell (find the frame - I have it, but it won’t remove itself. Find the earth element - got it, wont remove itself, and find a missing child - I did something and now everyone is gone from excavations so that’s unsolvable too). Maybe others.

Dump your silly notions of morality. I found a quest in the game (Japanese city again - I forget its name), where - in order to get a key to find the air element (maybe water element, who knows) - you have to help a blacksmith get rid of his greedy sister. She has the rightful claim (judging by conversations and the will she gives you). But, in order to get the key, you have to kill her. Maybe him. I killed her. That made him happy and I got the key. Ah well. There might be others I’ll have to go back and look at as well that have a similar situation - someone just needs to die to get my point across.

The game also has a lot of loose ends. Japanese town again. Mayor wants you to get him a potion. Healer tells you the potion is to cure his lycanthrope (he’s a werewolf) and that he kills citizens on occasion. But, to finish the quest, you have to give him the potion as if nothing ever happened. Weird. Same thing with other quests. Your character doesn’t seem to want to inject his opinion into anything that happens, when, clearly what’s going on is wrong. Some quests may not appear to be related at all, but upon completion of one quest, you’ll get the message “xxx quest failed”. Well, I didn’t even know they were talking about the same thing!

Some quests have interdeterminate goals. One quest tells you to find 2 army deserters, but the guy has no clue where they are. Well, neither do I nor is anyone being helpful. Sucks to be you. Other quests almost demand you read the quest information to make them solvable; one in the beach town demands you go back to a mage (even though you know how its going to end) to let the quest proceed - so in all, you have 4 back and forths (good thing teleportals are close by) and 5 conversations for 500 experience points. Not tough, but it is a pain in the butt and pointless, given the obvious outcome.

Other quests you’ve completed before you realize it. Karga camp. Someone wanted me to locate a missing person. I got the quest and immediately it said it was completed. Apparently, the person I was supposed to find I already found dead in a cave 20 minutes ago. Well, anyways that was an easy set of experience points.

The game is predictable. If you follow the roads around the area; you will come to learn that at every intersection (either minor or major) there is going to be either a bandit camp or a grom camp or a goblin camp. I don’t believe I’ve found an intersection where this isn’t the case. Each camp will have between 2 and 6 guys. The more guys there, the more likely there will be an archer. Usually a camp will have a chest full of goodies as well.

Exploring the underground areas is just miserable. The minimap is totally useless and to navigate you have to use the world map on the closest setting. The mini map is already pretty useless on the surface. Underground, its just miserable. The entire map should turn when you do, not your little arrow in the center - that’s just common sense.

Ghost monsters at night? How stupid. They are boring, too easy to kill, leave no loot. Just generally a waste of my time. It is kind of a hoot to watch the wandering monsters fight the ghosts, even though they can’t damage them - no magic weapons.

There is a wonderful bug in the game - probably quite a few of them, but this is one I’ve noticed. If you are in city and find a door that is locked, you can pick it without being fined. If you opt to pick the lock (it’s silly that picking is the same button as opening, but anyways) and you back away after the door opens, but before your character completes the motion - no one will notice and you can walk in, steal everything and walk out. I’ve done this 4 times now in 2 different cities. Works great.

Update (8/28): (Spoilers Here - Warning. So it’s after the jump)

Read more about… Two Worlds Xbox 360 Review

BioShock: Xbox 360 Review

Here’s another one.

Written on Thursday, August 23rd, 2007 by lorien1973 :: 4 Comments so far

A quick review of BioShock for the Xbox 360 is forthcoming. It’ll contain a few spoilers; but nothing you won’t read in other reviews online. I’m not a professional reviewer, just a casual fan of some games who hates FPS in general, so take that into consideration as you read.

I purchased BioShock for Xbox 360 and going into it I hated FPS (first person shooter) games - but this seemed like an event game, so I took a shot on it. Usually, they are too dark, unlimited enemies that come out of nowhere and you can’t tell where you are being shot at from. I much prefer slower paced RPGs where you build a character, buy stuff, put it on him and generally improve as the game progresses. Most FPS games, you are what you are. Your weapons get bigger, but you have no chance of being any better at the end (besides strategy) than at the beginning. The enemies are just ramped up to add to the challenge.

Then we come to BioShock, which is probably the best mix between an FPS and RPG that I’ve seen. Yes, you see everything from that incredibly sucky tunnel vision FPS point of view. It still amazes me, that in the 21st century, we cannot make a game that somehow simulates a 180 degrees field of view. But, over the course of the game you’ll get missions and you’ll get the chance to upgrade your character how you see fit - do you want to use more plasmids (magic, in essence - lightning, fireballs, etc) or do you want to use more guns and upgrade your character appropriately. The choice of plasmids are pretty varied - from electricity, to fire, to ice, to swarms of wasps, to telekenesis. Lots of fun to be had. Especially frying guys standing in water with electricity. Yep - it kills em. The effect is very nicely done too. And if you are standing in water when you shoot lightning, you’ll take damage as well.

You don’t start out the game with plasmids, though. You have to acquire them over the course of the game. The first one you acquire is electricity - and is probably the most effective, all around. How you get it is ridiculously silly, so I’ll explain, with some very minor spoilers. At the beginning of the game you are in a plane that crashes. You land in the water and the only solid ground is a lighthouse nearby that you have to swim to. Once inside you take a bathosphere down into a city called Rapture; where you are immediately beset upon by some mutant or something - who knows. You grab a wrench real quick, climb some stairs - take a wrench to the mutant’s face and ace him. You wander up some some stairs and come across a machine with a syringe in it that is glowing red. Now; in real life, you are in this situation - do you jab yourself with some big ass syringe you find in a strange place where some mutant just tried to kill you? I didn’t think so. But you do, of course and awaken to find that you can now shoot electricity from your formally useless left hand. So as you explore through the game, you get more guns more plasmids and ways to upgrade yourself into a bad ass mutant killing machine.

The atmosphere in the game is absolutely fabulous. The architecture reminds you of Atlas Shrugged, if you’ve ever read the book. Since the city of Rapture is underwater, you’ll get a lot of interesting scenery when you look out windows - whales swimming around, fish doing the same and sometimes Big Daddy’s wandering the exterior of the structure. Very good stuff. The music is fabulous and sets a creepy tone as well. You can even play jukeboxes that have 1960’s music on them, which adds a nice touch.

And as you wander around the bad guys talk to themselves, argue between each other and do all sorts of interesting things. They aren’t just mindless zombies who are trying to kill you. If you light a bad guy on fire, he’ll find the nearest water to get rid of the flames. If you injure one; he’ll run to a vending machine to heal himself. If they are hurt really bad, sometimes they’ll run away and come back later. It’s a series of very nice touches that make the game enjoyable.

The problem arises though, as it does in all FPS games - who is shooting at me and where did it come from? Because you have tunnel vision, it’s hard to tell who is shooting at you and from where. So you’ll find yourself spinning around looking for the guy shooting you. The game does add some tracer effect to shots which helps, but in a smoky room, it doesn’t help a whole lot. But, by far, the most annoying aspect of the game so far is the security robots. They are helicopter like robots that fly around shooting machine guns at you if you happen to set off an alarm - which will happen. They don’t do a lot of damage, but if you kill one, another one comes after you - until the alarm is over (60 seconds). Very frustrating.

While you can hack the security cameras, turrets and security robots - they turn out to be ineffective allies all too often. The robots navigate poorly - which helps you in a fight against them - but in close quarters, as allies, this turns into a major issue. They will accidentally shoot you while defending you and generally make it hard to walk around. Hacking is an important part of the game and you’ll find yourself doing it quite often. Vending machines are usually the easiest, along with security cameras. Safes seem to be the most difficult. Hacking involves a short minigame where you have to connect a series of tubes to help a liquid get from one end of a maze to the other. It’s not difficult, unless you cannot locate the pieces you need to complete the tube - which happens a lot. Good news; is that there is an automatic hacking device to assist you or you can buy your way past the security system - both making your job a lot easier.

During the game, you’ll be sent on missions to kill someone or find something or do something. Along the way you’ll various various kinds of baddies but their variety is limited - perhaps 5 or 6 different kinds. You may also stumble along a creature known as the Big Daddy. They come in 2 flavors, one that has a huge drill and other that fires grenades at you. Both are tough opponents; but unless you kill them, you’ll find you do not have the strength you’ll need to progress, as they protect little girls named Eve, who have something you need to make you stronger and improve yourself even further. How you deal with the Eve’s is up to you and your actions have consequences.

The game features a nice plot which voice overs taking the place of most cut scenes - these are handled through diary entries of various crew members. Piecing together what happened in Rapture is part of the mystery and the fun. Having a plot in an FPS, besides go here/kill makes this game very enjoyable. And unlike many FPS games, you can save your game at any point where ever you want and pick up right there later.

On a slight technical side, I’ve noticed that if you play the game for a few hours in a row, the game will hang for a second then move on like nothing happened. It’s only happened to me twice so its not too serious, but certainly seems like it was fixable before release.

All-in-all, the game is very fun and has some depth to it that will probably attract RPG fans along with FPS fans. Is it the best game on Xbox 360 right now? Probably not; Oblivion still rules there, for me. But it’s close.

Xbox Live Achievements: Are You Addicted?

I think a support group is needed.

Written on Sunday, August 19th, 2007 by lorien1973 :: Be the first to Comment

I’ve been reading a lot of Xbox sites lately and many of them talk about getting achievements in games. Any game published for Xbox 360 must support achievements. Most of the retail games have about 1,000 points available; many of the Xbox Live Arcade games have about 200 points available. The ability to get those points varies by game - some are easy and some are difficult.

If you play on Xbox Live Arcade, then you know that having a high number next to your name is kind of fun (for no real reason at all - other than bragging achievements don’t have any value at all). Playing Uno (135 out of 200 points so far), I’ve come to realize that my score (about 2300 as of this post) is pretty low in comparison to others, where I’ve seen as high as 6,000. I don’t have the same amount of time to play games, so I’ll never be up there, but I confess, that I’ve played a game long after I was done with it, just trying to get 30 more points out of it.

Case in point. I spent about 4 hours this weekend playing Marvel: Ultimate Alliance using Magneto, in various areas, throwing people off cliffs (Sepulcor was great for this - his magnetic ability makes it easy to pick up people and whip them off the ledges) just to get the “Widowmaker” achievement, worth maybe 30 points or so. Previous to that, I played the game on hard just to get the “Excelsior!” achievement as well as keeping a few people in my party who suck to get theirs as well (the Dr Doom “Doppleganger” was the best, I wondered how that conversation would work out). Sadly, my patience doesn’t extend to completing all of the simulation missions - some heroes suck so bad to the point of being unusable (Deadpool comes to mind immediately, though I did get a gold on his mission) that I won’t do that. Believe me, I was saddened to come to that realization.

Some achievements seem near impossible. Ecco the Dolphin has an achievement (apparently - I didn’t buy this though) that gives you 20 points to finish the game 3 times without dying. I played the demo of this and I couldn’t even figure out what to do. I don’t need guidance in most games, but a gentle direction is nice. After about 10 minutes, I realized I needed to jump over a rock to start; but then going around randomly didn’t interest me. Oh well. I understand that other games just give them away, pretty much. It seems Two Worlds will be like that, when it comes out. Others are just plain dumb luck. On the Solitaire Xbox Arcade game, you get one for getting 4 aces in the hole on a Klondike game without drawing from the stack. This requires no skill; just dumb luck of the draw - that achievement sucks.

Still, the thrill of collecting all the achievements in a given game is pretty alluring and does add to the replay value of a game - as long as they aren’t too easy to obtain or too difficult. I really enjoy this feature of the Xbox 360 games; but I can see how it can be addicting.

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