CDGaming

I really liked this game, as it had a real Mass Effect feel to it. However, the pockmarks really come out after 10 or so hours in. You notice all the homes are the same, and all the palaces are the same, and all the portraits and paintings on the walls are the same. It feels eerily empty, as towns have very few people in them. This game really feels like it needed more time to be finished. There are so few bad guys, and the faces are downright PS3 era. The story is engaging enough, and the controls are tight. It's on PS Now, and to be honest, I wouldn't recommend anyone play it outside that service.

AC Odyssey is a game above all others. A truly immersive experience, with a full, living and breathing world. Everything, right down to a blade of grass, is rendered lovingly for you to run around in. After 110 plus hours at this one, I still feel the draw to go back to ancient Greece and kill a few Spartans, sink a few boats and have a few laughs. Check it out!

I really enjoyed this game. It is worth the time to download the demo and give it a go. The feel of the club in your hands isn't really there, and a little force feedback would have been nice, (for that "hit" of the ball). But otherwise, a fun experience.

Once every so often, you sit down with a game with so much promise that it almost makes you squeal like a little girl. This is what XM:D will do for many video game/ comic book geeks. You play as a NEW MUTANT? You get to PICK HIS/HER POWERS? Sign me up! The only issue we have here is a middling developer with no direction pumping out at an Activision-like pace, and in the end we get a thinly veiled excuse for a generic beat-em-up. Silicon Knights, whoâ

This week I was romanced by the thought of a Kinect game that I actually was interested in. Several review sites around the web, including my personal favorite IGN, say that this is the title that we were all waiting for, this is Eden. Child of Eden is a Kinect friendly (but controller capable) game for Xbox 360. If you don't have a kinect, don't bother. This title is MADE for motion control. The story? From what I could make out of it, it's sometime in the future, the internet is now called Eden, and mankind has moved into space, and there is a girl in a garden that needs saving... from Eden... thus the internet is eating a little girl. Hmm. If that sounds confusing to you, welcome to the club. It sounds completely asinine to me. Don't take that as a bad thing though, as this title is about the game itself, NOT the story. I never thought that this was able to happen. At it's root, Eden is a shooter title, but one, for lack of a better term, is Euro'ed up. Techno trance music, enhanced by your shooting capabilities, washes over you as you move yourself about shooting the likes of glowing worms, insects, and possible parasites. The neon colours are not just pretty things, they are not just '90's flash back, they are engaging and well planned. You have two styles of weapons. Your left hand is a machine styled light gun. It is fast and easy to use, but not very powerful. Your right hand is a lock on missile light gun. To call what you have guns is unfair, as this is the simplest way to describe what you have. They aren't guns though, they are more... sprayers? I'm not sure exactly how to describe it. But they work and work well. The motion control has very little to no lag, which is, to this point in Kinect life, unheard of . You seemingly can only have one or the other active at once, but that may change on later levels. If you like Robert Myles, a techno trance spinner from the mid to late '90's, then the soundtrack to this game will be right up your alley. Even in tense moments of the game, you will be tappin your toes to this very engaging title. Everything you do in the game adds to the musical experience, as shooting flying octopus' and eboli virus look a likes chimes notes that magically blend into the score perfectly. The motion on screen, while technically is "on rail" (definition of a rail shooter: see "House of the Dead" or "Time Crisis") is movable to a point to where you can pan around on screen and shoot at things that may have left your line of sight. Is Child of Eden worth getting a Kinect for? No. Not yet anyway, as the title is, at it's heart, a shooter title with a wacked out sense of style. Is it a good game? ABSOLUTELY. It's an experience that while not completely new, is fresh, and really fun to look at and even to play. The game is short, but it's a "play a million times" game. It's something to show off to your friends, when they say "Is Kinect worth it?" The Kinect has been a shameful disappointment thus far, but this game truly sets the bar higher on almost every level. It is what people say is "an experience to play", it's just that the experience is short and becomes a little repetitive. There are lots of things to unlock, and there are challenge modes as well. Hopefully, there will be some DLC levels in the future as well. You will come back to play this, just to see the difference of what real game planning is like. C

I finished 2W2 last night and I have to say, barring the little frustration I had at the beginning with the horse racing, it was an enjoyable experience that I would recommend to anyone looking for that "Western" action RPG styled game. The good: Excellent visuals and lighting in the well realized world Beautiful musical score fairly well laid out control (save for the horse riding) Beautifully designed monsters Excellent weapon, item, and spell customization The Bad: Last generation character models for humans Quite possibly the WORST Voice acting and translation in all of gaming VERY confusing quest log Graphical and Quest Glitching Annoying "safe area" text windowing. To start off, the question that many will have is whether or not it improves on the first game. Given that this wasn't a hard task, yes, it is an improvement. The world, while it has an occasional slowdown and pop in is well delivered and not choppy. The grass and foliage sways when you run through it, fences fall down when you run into them accidentally, and areas where you are supposed to "hate" to go do give you the ominous feeling of dread every time you need to venture into them. (See: The Swallows). The cities, while not super large, are designed well enough anddo give a sense that you are out of the woods and in civilized lands. Two cities in chapter 1, Hatmador and Cheznaddar were particularly well designed. The creatures of the game are incredibly well imagined, with zombies, ghouls, Varn (Jackal like dog people) and various critters populating the world. In contrast, the human character models looked right out of last gen technology. Yes, their hair wavers in the wind, but when you see games like Assassin's Creed (which someone painfully compared it to to get me to play this) it's impossible to understand why characters like this are created. BAD Southpeak, BAD. The music is gorgeous, but truthfully not original. (I can't hold that against it though, as a musical score of any sort in games these days is similar to most others) often times reminding me of games I loved in days gone by. In particular, in chapter two you land in the "oriental" portion of the game, with music strikingly similar to Guild Wars Factions, and even some visual elements looking similar. The voice acting, in STARK contrast to the music, is absolutely terrible. Wasn't there an article published recently about how disconnected the audience feels to their gravelly voiced protagonists? (I do believe it was IGN... SOUTHPEAK! READ THIS!) The lead character is ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE. Nobody talks like that! DEAR GOD. Do yourself a favor as well, turn off the subtitles. They are filled with typos and often times, do not even say the same things as what the characters are saying. The controls are somewhat simple, with the "A" button (I played the 360 version) being used for pretty much any interaction with the environment, and jumping. As strange as it sounds, it is fairly well realized. The fighting is good as well. Right trigger for "kill", left trigger for "keep from being killed". It's rather effective. The other buttons were assignable skills like spells or special warrior attacks. The story isn't anything spectacular, with many of the side missions being more engaging. Having said that, there were a LOT of side missions. A particularly good one was solving a well laid out murder mystery. It's too bad the quest log was so confusing. It actually takes away from the experience of playing the missions when you cannot easily check your journal/ quest log to keep yourself up on what needs to be done next. There was a great ending to the game though, look forward to being pleased. If you go into this game looking for the next Dragon Age, you will be sadly disappointed. It's a strong game with a lot going for it, but it isn't in the same league as games created by Bioware. If you go into this game looking for a fun fantasy experience along the lines **** no name book you find in some no name used bookstore, then you will be vvery pleased with what you come out of it with. Minor glitches and TERRIBLE voiceacting aside, this is a game for a fantasy fan looking to kill 30 hours of his life and to like doing it. Given that I haven't played the multiplayer portion of the game save for the first 10 minutes or so, perhaps my review can be considered incomplete. I was able to find games really quickly, and the multiplayer "questline" looks well designed and implemented. There was deathmatch, quest mode, and village mode (I guess it's something like Command and Conquer... I'll get back to you on that one.) The matchmaking looked a little broken though, as in a deathmatch, as a level 1 character, I was first paired with a level 390 player. Dear god.

I've sat through some very interesting games in my life. Mass Effect, Assassins Creed, Rock Band, The World Ends With You. The list goes on and on. But LA Noire, wow. LA Noire deserves to be on a list of it's own. Visually and technically, you will see one of the most impressive games of our generation. Musically and thematically, you will hear and feel one of the most impressive games of your lifetime. You, for the most part, play Cole Phelps, a decorated war hero turned beat cop then detective for the LAPD in the late 1940's. It's just after the end of World War 2, and we see a city not only growing into the city we know it to be today, but also healing from the scars of what the war truly did to it and the world as a whole. people who thought they'd be coming home to hero's praise are working dead end jobs and losing their minds. Families are picking up the pieces after their husbands and fathers come home with scars far deeper than the eye can see. Fear of communism and the red menace is everywhere, as are monsters who are willing to advance by taking advantage of everybody they see. The technological advances shown in this game will either be a boon or a curse for all forthcoming titles of similar design. The visuals provided in facial features and gestures is unprecidented. There has never been a game to have this calibre of detail. When you look at Cole and he's upset, or he's angry, or he's intense, you know it, and you feel it. It's not just from the unbelievable facial features and gestures provided, it's from the incredible voice acting and scripting. It's from the entire atmosphere that truly captures your imagination and wholly envelopes you as you watch the story unfold. There are 5 main types of gameplay involved. there is investigation, interrogation, driving, gunfighting, and action/brawling. In investigation, you survey crime scenes and discern what possibly could have happened. You gather clues and interview witnesses. It's not as difficult as it sounds, as the interface is incredibly user friendly, and your controller rumbles whenever you come across a clue, even if it may be hard to find. Not everything you see is useful either, but generally your trained gumshoe is able to tell you if the item is useless or not. Given that this is 1947 and not modern day CSI, you'll almost cringe at some of the things you'll see the detectives do with evidence, such as taking a dead body, slogging it over, grabbing the face, hands, and clothing. You'll go through it, looking for evidence or clues, with no concerns for destroying possible hidden evidence. In interrogation mode, you'll generally be sitting across from someone and asking them questions, trying to get the truth out of them using your skills and intuition as a detective. This is where the technology of fantastic facial features really shines, as youu must watch facial features and gestures to see if someone is lying to you or not. This can get difficult at times, given the situation. Sometimes you might get better information from someone if you go easy on them, like when you interview a child. They are generally afraid, or trying to protect someone they love. The car driving is simply flawless. Your control over a vehicle is very simple. Left trigger is gas, right trigger is break. If you want to take a turn sharper, simply tap the left trigger to do a sort of handbreak turn. The AI drivers can be a little dumb, but once again, it is 1947, and regulations for driving credentials were far less stringent back in the day, thus explaining this to a degree. The shooting and action/brawling segments are almost minigames in a sense. They are generally short sections at the end of a running or driving sequence where you either shoot a fleeing suspect to death or beat him to a pulp. The control in both sections is quite good, as shooting is a pleasure, and fighting, while tangly, is easily completed as well. This isn't a shooter or fighting game, this is a detective, thriller murder mystery. If there was too much of one or the other, you'd lose the true value of the game itself. LA Noire is not just a game, it is an experience. Not since my trying Super Mario 64 have a felt this sense of "wow" when playing a game. Mario 64 ushered in an era of real 3D gaming, far more than most of the inferior titles that claimed the same before it. LA Noire has ushered in a era of true "immersion". Yo will genuinely feel for every tough decision, grieving wife or husband, for every scared or abused child. There are no punches pulled, it is full on gruesome for bad scenes, full on joy for good scenes. This is a must game for anyone who has ever said "I like video games". It's not my favorite title by any means, but it ranks up there in the amazement and wow factor. Play this game. Experience the next generation of gaming, before it happens.

Given that not a single major outlet has reviewed this game yet, it gave me pause as to whether or not I should play it. It's a movie tie in game (bad) it was seemingly rushed out (bad) but has real Hollywood power behind it in Ryan Reynolds (good) and from preview shots of the game, it looked like it was put together a little better than most movie tie ins. (good) Check out my blog: ****/2011/06/green-lantern-rise-of-manhunters-review.html for a more fleshed out review, with visuals. The game plays out like many movie/book/comic book tie ins that you've tried before. If you like Spider-man: Maximum Carnage, you will like GL. If you liked Batman Begins, you will like this game. If you liked Thor: God of Thunder, chanced are you will like anything, hence you will like this game. As Green Lantern, you run around, beating up the original galazy policemen gone bad, the Manhunters. (Truly original name, hey). You are a rookie in the Green Lantern Corps, so your skill with the ring will be less that impressive. As you progress with beating badguys up, you will gain experience, thus gaining in capabilities with the ring. Your "contructs", as they are called, are your interesting ways of beating down baddies. You get a giant mallot (which is comical), you get a Giant Mech Warrior, a rope with a blade wheel, a missle launcher, etc. The story itself in the game is something to behold: it's good. This is a very uncommon thing when it comes to tie-in games. Yes, you have your generic beatdown villains, the manhunters, in their various forms. But there is an overlying story to the whole premise that works well from beginning to end. Not only does it work, but it can neatly seat itself within the canon of DC comics as well. Sadly, DC is rebooting it's universe this fall, so it won't fit after that, but who's counting. You start out as rookie Hal Jordan on the GL Corps home world of Oa, and you are suddenly attacked by the manhunters. Typically in a game such as this, it's just the "we're going to get you" storyline, then "insert movie hero and villain here". Right from the get-go, you start to wonder "why is this happening", and the story leads you to continue that train of thought throughout, to a satisfying , conclusion. Visually, the game carries itself well. The red and blue 3D glasses option just doesn't work properly, which is sad. The game also offers 3DTV support, butvery few have shelled out for a soon to be dated technology in 3DTV, so we have to stick with HD graphics instead. In their basic form, the graphics are passable. The manhunters themselves are very well designed, but there are only 3 or 4 of them total. One level has you take on purple amazon women, which is a pleasant distraction, but later on in the same level, we see our familiar manhunter badguys trying to run us through again. The boss fights are servicable and will challenge someone who hasn't playing through the game previously. The contstructs for Green Lantern are where this game shines, with that comical hammer and the blasting, and the fighter jet. 12 in all, giving fun and creative ways to smash familiar robots to bits. Reynolds shares his voice talent and likeness to the game as well, which truthfully is one of the biggest selling points of the game. In a sense, it will validate the title enough for a sale or two. He does a servicable job, but for a good story, the scripting dialogue is lackluster. You get the "noooooooooo!" cry from Jordan, you get the usual "I won't let that happen/ you'll never get away with this" lines... all things that do, in the long run, degrade the experience for the player. In the end, I believe that this game is for kids more than their parents. It's a basic beat em up that works on the levels that will keep a child entertained and wanting to see the movie that one more time, as well as to build the interest base in what is, in truth, a secondary character in the DC Comics universe. The parents and older players such as myself, have played this exact same game dozens of times before, dating back to Double Dragon, any number of Spider-man games (most notably Spiderman Friend or Foe, as this game feels templated from that one), and so on. Decent visuals and story will keep all players involved, but for about 6 or 7 hours, as the game will have run it's course by that time. It's a great rainy day weekend renter, or a quick pick and flip title for achievement hunters. Wait for it to drop in price, mom and dad. Your kids will love it, you can even play too, in only for the nostalgia "beat em up" memories.