rutulgandhi

Without a doubt, the first thing that will catch your eye after you slip The Darkness into your drive is the incredible job the folks at Starbreeze did on nailing all of the little details that immerse a player in a world. The presentation is top-notch, from the menus to the cutscenes, each of which happens in real-time. As you explore the world, you'll likely notice dozens of little things that catch your eye, be it the graffiti in the subway stations or the peeling paint in the abandoned buildings. There's no doubt about it: this is next-gen eye candy. Our only real qualms with the whole open-world thing is the fact that you need to travel across town using subway stations which, while very realistic, are just as much a pain in the ass as they are in the real world. The first half hour or so of the game feels like a fairly standard first-person shooter, albeit one that looks excellent. Jackie's weapons of choice are dual-wielded pistols, although you'll find plenty of old standbys (shotguns, rifles, etc.) as you progress through the game. When you're dual-wielding, each of the triggers fires a weapon, while the left trigger is used for melee attacks when using a single firearm. It's likely that you won't use the firearms that much once you unlock the Darkness powers, but it's always nice to have them handy. One of the coolest gunplay elements is the ability to pull off "execution-style" kills when you're close to a foe. It's a lot of nasty, noisy fun that fits in perfectly with game's twisted theme. Although the shooter is all well and good, it's the Darkness powers that really make the game special. After a little while, you'll gain the ability to send out a snake-like appendage called The Creeping Darkness. You can use this guy to sneak through vents (allowing you to open locked doors from the other side) or simply send it off to literally bite the faces off of your foes. They also have the ability to devour the hearts of your fallen enemies, which allows you to gain more power when you're in the dark. You'll also earn a tentacle that can impale foes and smash out lights, as well as Darkness-powered pistols that actually aren't quite as cool as they sound. You'll need to spend a bit of time in the shadows to fill up your stores of Darkness power. The most powerful of the Darkness powers is the Black Hole, which **** anything within about 20 feet into a swirling vortex. While this power is impressive, it's actually too overpowered and makes the last few hours of the action a lesson in repetitive gameplay. Actually, all of the Darkness powers are like that, and you'll probably spend most of the game killing enemies in an area, breaking all of the lights to power back up, then moving on to the next batch of enemies. This "lather, rinse, repeat" style of gameplay gets old around the 5 hour mark, which is only about halfway through the game. Of course, you could always just fight your way through with the firearms at your disposal, but then you'll be missing out on the gory fun. While the Darkness powers add a nice bit of fun to the game, the "Darklings" that you can conjure are simultaneous awesome and annoying. When you're in Darkness mode, you can stand near any of the portals on the ground and create one of several mean little imps. The Darklings come in a variety of flavors, from the Berserkers that jump on your enemies to the Kamikazes that will act as suicide bombers (they can clear paths or kill baddies). The one that comes in most handy is probably the Lightkiller, who can enter a room and destroy any light that threatens you. Although the Darklings are a blast to watch (they'll urinate on your dead enemies or say some horribly inappropriate things), they can be extremely frustrating to control at times. Once you're done with the single-player campaign (which, unfortunately, has a disappointing ending), you can take the action online against your buddies. The Darkness features some fairly run-of-the-mill multiplayer gametypes, but the proceedings are improved by the fact that you can play as a human, a darkling, or a shapeshifter. This make the multiplayer fun for a while, but the action is ultimately hindered by poor controls and an unstable framerate. The maps are all surprisingly small, too, which theoretically keeps the action intense, but in reality just makes everything that much more confusing. If you don't have an Xbox Live account you can play via System Link, but there's no splitscreen mode or anything for single-box play. In the end, the development team may have been a little too ambitious, as the game tries some new things, succeeding in some areas and falling just short in others. The presentation and visuals are absolutely top-notch, but the gameplay ultimately becomes a bit too repetitive and the multiplayer feels tacked-on. Still, this is definitely a promising next-gen start for the folks at Starbreeze, and I can't wait to see what they've got in store for us next time.

Jerusalem, 1911 AD, in the time of the Third Crusaders. The streets sparkle with action, but within seconds you, the feared assassin (Altair), will change all this. You play as a man called Altair living in a very futuristic world, and you have tried to forget your past but someday a couple of people bring you to this machine called the Animus...that forces you to reenact all your past days as an assassin...then the game begins. Personally i loved the way the creators of Assassin's Creed mingled history and science fiction together. As a first impression, in the first hour or so, the graphics and the gameplay was all i could think of for the couple of hours after switching the Xbox off. I got to say, the graphics are intense...i have never seen so much dedication to graphics before - it would seem just like you are watching a scene in a movie where the protagonist is walking through a very crowded area. I know it's hard to **** the graphics are even better than GoW and GTA IV. Even if you look at a pot ona shelve or something you can see the same texture as you would with a real pot. At first you don't have many weapons and skills to fight and defend yourself but as the game wears on, you increase dramatically with your skill - in the game with the swords and your skill with the buttons on your controller. The storyline is also quite interesting because in each level you can do a number of things to choose your personality in the game. You can be a pickpocket, you can help helpless citizens, be violent and kill all the guards or be stealthy and try and avoid them - or even you can do all of these. But each level as a certain assassination that the masters give you and you have to find information throughout the level about this person...then kill him. All this seems so interesting but finish a couple of levels and kill hundreds of guards the storyline gets a little repetitive and boring...destroying the excitement of killing people. There is one thing in the game that I will never get tired of and that is while fighting off a large group of guards. What I love doing is holding my dagger in defense and then pressing 'X' to counter attack the guard. If you do that at a certain time, Altair will eliminate the guard in a very smooth and swift **** there are many smooth and swift ways. Then, when the dagger goes through the body of the guard blood gushes out and increases the intensity of the graphics. The sound effects are also pretty impressive and exciting. The sound changes according to you status in the game, if you are unnoticed the sound will be cool, but if you are being chased by a large group of guards that music will change to something more drastic and fast. Then to loose that large group of guards you will have to hide in a haystack or a little box thingy with **** you are hiding the music will change into a heart beat rhythm. Then again, it gets repetitive as you go further into the game. At many points in the game, the map doesn't show you objective and what you have to do next then it gets quite difficult to go on because the cities are really big. This gets really frustrating and you feel like **** then after hours of search you might be able to find your objective. Also, the achievements are pretty hard to get. The cutscenes are also very cool and unique. They are unique because in the cutscenes of Assassin's Creed you can move around and change the camera views when there is a "glitch" in the game. (People who have played this game will know why I put "" around glitch). Lastly, my favorite thing about thing about this game is that you can climb up call building and synchronize with the city. The way the game shows the city when you synchronize with it is beautiful and very clever...i loved it. I also enjoyed climbing and jumping from building to building. Though the climbing can get pretty annoying because you have to be perfectly in line with the thing you are going to use next to climb with. Graphics = 9.5/10 Storyline = 7/10 Sound Effects = 8/10 OVERALL = 8/10

Every now and again one of those games emerge into the market. Those games which have an average hype into the market, but then is forgotten after some time. Turok has taken this very path, it has been almost forgotten, and sometimes while playing the game, i can see why. You play as a rough and tough guy named Turok. He has just been recruited into a squad with other people that look as tough as him, though nobody likes him very much at a glance. They don't like him because Turok used to be on another squad and he betrayed them, so nobody trusts him yet. But before anything else happens the space ship that you are in reaches its destination. However, before even entering the planet's atmosphere, you are hit by a missile or something. You then wake up still in the wreckage of the ship, you have one man by your side. The first mission teaches you all the controls of the game while you find a way out of this wreckage, the other man leads the way; though he soon dies and you are left **** a bit. As soon as you are playing as Turok in the first person perspective, you should notice the average effort put into this game while making the graphics. The wreckage is displayed really nicely with all the crumpled metal parts and the sparks of electricity emerging every few seconds. It can also get scary because the graphics allow you to see a small movement of a large piece of metal before it falls a few millimeters away from you. Then as the game wears on, the graphics are mostly presented with the dinosaurs. There are many species of dinosaurs in the game and all of them look very real, you can even notice a small amount of reflection of the sun on the dinosaur's body; or even on the knife that you are just about to use to murder the dinosaur. My favorite part of the game is stabbing the dinosaur; whether the dinosaur is the size of your leg or ten times bigger than you. Stabbing the dinosaur is done differently for each kind of dinosaur, and they are all done ruthlessly and very swiftly. Though they are all done in a different manner, all of them have the same result - a fountain of blood before instant death. Even though the fountain of blood looks a bit unrealistic, the satisfaction you get from doing that is amazing. Also, many times there are quite a few dinosaurs together so stabbing them one after the other can be really fun, though it can also get a little repetitive because the dinosaurs that attack in packs are all the same dinosaurs and so the way Turok stabs them is always the same. Another disappointment with this is that in some parts of the game, the dinosaurs come in too large packs and it is very easy for them to kill you before you get a chance to kill them. Throughout the game, the background music is always exciting and heart pumping. The sounds of the gun shots are very realistic. But the thing I loved best about the sound effects were the roars of the dinosaurs. I have no idea where the makers got the sounds from, but all I know is that they got it right. The sound of the T-Rex's roar is the most frightening of all because when it roars, you can hear it clearly over the sounds of the gunfire everywhere. Another sound effect that I loved is when you stab the dinosaurs, you can hear the blade ripping through the flesh of the dinosaur and then the sound of the dinosaur screaming in pain. Both these sound together sent a shiver up my spine, it was that realistic. One of the real letdowns in the game is the amount of checkpoints in a level. There aren't many. This can get really annoying because you might have just finished a very tough battle against the bad guys and then suddenly a dinosaur pops out and kills you. Even if you survive the attack from the dinosaur, another battle with the bad guys in bound to kill you, and then you will have to do the first battle all over again...happens a lot during the campaign. And it is at these frustrating points in the game that you feel like quitting and destroying the game. Finally, I just want to express how much I enjoyed the game at the start, because the first few levels were set to the right difficulty. But then, as I went further into the game, some levels are really impossible and frustrating because they were extremely difficult. Otherwise, a fun game to play to stab your way through.

When it comes to killing zombies, no one knows it better than Capcom, the makers of Resident Evil. Unlike Resident Evil, Dead Rising is an action game, with zombies that are much easier to kill but travel in great numbers. So if you ever dreamt of slaughtering thousands of zombies in a mall using everything from plotted plants and frying pans to baseball bats and assault rifles, Dead Rising is all that and a whole lot more. The game has thousands of brainless zombies to mutilate, hundreds of usable items, completely over-the-top gore and is by far one of the most imaginative horror games ever created on Capcom. You play as Frank West, a freelance photojournalist who has been to a lot of war zones around the world. However none of that has prepared him for what he sees in a small town of Willamette, Colorado. After being tipped off about the unfolding events, Frank charters a helicopter and flies into town to get images that could take his career sky-high. What he does find is a town overflowing with zombies desecrating everything around them. After being a witness to a scene in which a woman is thrown over the side of a building, Frank instructs the pilot to drop him off on the roof of a local shopping mall. It will take the game 72 game hours for him to figure out what is actually going on before his pilot returns to pick him up. So it's up to you to find the truth, save as many survivors as possible and get back to the chopper to catch your ride home. Make sure you gather Prestige Points (PP) when you start up, because Frank's run is as slow as a snail. Leveling up will not only give Frank more speed but also increase his attack damage, throwing distance and melee attack power, helping him to survive. Taking pictures can be a good hobby and you can also level up through Prestige Points by taking interests shots. After having taken a picture you'll be graded on the number of faces in it and the type of shot taken, be it brutal image of a human being torn apart, a dramatic shot like the reunion of the two survivors on the roof at the beginning of the game, or an erotic shot, such as pictures of some of the female character's assets. However, you tend to get so drawn into the zombie-killing parts of the game that you forget to take many pictures. Skills can also be gained by reading books that teach you everything from combat to driving a vehicle. Another way to earn experience is by accepting missions. Throughout the course of the game, Otis the janitor will call you every 30 seconds – at least that's what it felt like – to give you updates about what is happening in various areas of the mall. The updates Otis offers give Frank many advantages, such as being able to dodge large groups of his undead friends. By finding survivors and returning them to a secure room, Frank earns experience and levels up faster rather than exclusively sticking to the story missions. Once you have found and convinced your survivor(s) to follow you, you have a few additional commands at your disposal. You can have Frank command any followers to pick up speed, or you can command them to head to a specific place. You can also equip a few survivors with pistols, axes and just about anything that you can get you bloody hands on. The game includes a large array of murderous tools and Frank can use dozens of objects as weapons against the swarm of zombies. The sports shop will give you stuff like baseball bats and golf clubs, the hardware store offers sickles and chainsaws, and you'll find a variety of firearms at the gun shop. Every item has its own style of attack. While you can smash a zombie using a sledgehammer, you'll also find that a guitar not only has a space-clearing 360-degrees arc, but also hits multiple victims in its path. The most unique aspect of Dead Rising is the missions. Each part of the main story is broken down into cases that need to be solved. Since all the case files are connected, failing to complete them will hinder your progress and the trail might just go cold. Making your way through the game is a little tougher than it sounds; largely due to the fact that the game has a frustrating save system and time-based gameplay that will require players to replay large portions of the game repeatedly. You are only allowed to save one game at a time, as any save will overwrite the previous one. The overall sound effects in Dead Rising are truly disgusting in the best possible way. The sound of each weapon is created to perfection and some cut through the zombie with an amazing gushing sound. Every weapon makes a totally different sound and each one sounds exactly right…this is what I loved most about this game. Dead Rising is not meant for everyone, as it includes tons of violence and gore, but the endless number of possibilities in this game makes it a wonderful addition to almost every Xbox 360 owner's library.

A friend and I bought this game together and played it co-op, so I didn't get a chance to play the campaign single player. Don't think I'd want to. You work as a team of 4 - something that I realise is becoming a very generic amount - to stop the bad guys from using a chemical named 'FUSE' to destroy some ****. To be honest, I've already forgotten the story a couple days after completing the campaign, it just isn't compelling. You start of with the team discovering four alien 'Xenotech' weapons, each one pre-designated to each of the four members of the team. The leader, Dalton, receives the 'Magshield' that produces a plasma shield and has the ability to create a burst of power to completely obliterate nearby enemies. Cool. Jacob, the other male in the group, gets a 'Arcshot' which shoots sort of like a crossbow, but when the arrow hits the target, you have the option to burn him to death. Cool. Isabelle, a female member of the group, receives the '****' which 'freezes' the enemy with enough shots and then you or any other team mate can just shatter them to pieces. Cool. And finally, the other female member of the group (and my personal favorite), Naya. She gets the 'Warp Rifle' which creates a sort of black hole out of a person you just killed which then collapses and creates a slight explosion to knock out enemies that were close to him. You can also create a chain of "black holes" by linking enemies that you kill making it fairly easy to kill a large group of enemies standing close to one another. Cool. Only drawback is, that the 'Warp Rifle' overheats pretty quickly, which is fair otherwise she'd be virtually unstoppable. As you progress, you pick up skill points with which you can improve your stats and learn new abilities, which really adds to the excitement of the game. Although, we didn't seem to use the extra abilities all that much, but maybe that was just us. But once you learn to use your character well, it becomes really easy and a lot of fun to kill massive hordes of enemies. And, on the off chance that you get bored of your character, you can switch to any other member of the team. I feel that the game should have done a little more to make you have to switch player and perform tasks according to the ability of each character - I didn't feel as if switching character was a necessity, just a thing you could do if it got a little monotonous for you. And it does get pretty monotonous at times. Complete a wave of enemies, go forward a couple of room, complete another wave of enemies, pick up some ammo, complete another wave of enemies, chapter complete. Some of the chapters were a little dull and repetitive but the enjoyment of using your character's gun really offsets that, so you don't feel it all the much, it's fun. Then there are the parts in some chapters that seemed as if the difficulty just cranked to overload. It was extremely difficult, and the members of the team that are not played by you and/or your friend are just plain stupid. The don't get in cover when they're supposed to, the barely shoot the main target and a couple of other things, but those didn't annoy me as much. It really takes the fun out of the game when one of the characters is downed so many times, you have to keep dropping whatever you're shooting to go and revive him (Jacob, I'm looking at you!). There are other guns apart from the Xenotech weapons, but really not that many. If I recall correctly, there's one shotgun, one sniper, one or two assault rifles and two handguns. But again, you barely get the chance or even want to use those weapons - the xenotech weapons are just too much fun to use. The others are basically for times where you run out of xenotech ammo. Despite the repetitiveness, the dull story and the poor choice of weaponry. The Xenotech weapons really do a lot of offset all of that, and make the game worth a play, especially with a friend - I don't think this would be nearly as much fun playing the game alone. There is definitely a lot of room for improvement, but I'd definitely recommend it for anyone looking to play a fun all-out shooter with a friend. STORY: 5/10 GAMEPLAY: 8/10 MUSIC: 7/10 OVERALL: 6.6/10 (round up to 7)