Let’s just get into it, shall we?

Fallout 3 is probably the most complete game I’ve ever played.  Music, graphics, gameplay, story… it has everything necessary to give the player a full sense of immersion.  Bethesda was able to keep my interest long enough to do several side quests as well as actually finish the game!

It’s a perfect blend of FPS and RPG.  The gameplay, although not strictly unique, was perfected here.  Being able to pause the action and go to a menu driven combat system was both well executed and necessary.   While the action is spaced out, when you do get into a fight, it can get pretty intense.

Although I finished the game, I plan on going back to it and complete other side quests, as well as revisit it one dowloadable content becomes available.

 

Mirror’s Edge is as unique as it is difficult!  Another game that I thoroughly enjoyed, Edge reminded me of the 8-bit games of my youth.  Memorization of stage layouts… impossible jumps… enemies that seemed to be unstoppable at first glance.  But these are the games strengths!  It puts you through the paces, and delivers an experience that, while short, satisfies.

While played from the first-person perspective, it can hardly be called an FPS.  Infact, there is a bonus achievement for NOT using a gun to kill any enemies through out the game.  The game is based on parkour, and does an amazingly good job at translating this free-form physical activity to your controller.  The control scheme is elegant easy to get used to, although the combination of jumps, slides, and wall runs will take some practice.  The game is worth playing, if only for the breath of fresh air it lends to the FP genre, but you’ll keep coming back to see if you can shave a few seconds off your stage time.

We’ll see what comes in from Gamefly next week!!

So, I just DLed and played the demo to End War on the 360.  Now, I am of the school of thought that teaches RTSes should be played on a computer.  You have much more control over the, possibly, hundreds of units with a keyboard and mouse.  But, Ubisoft promises something very exciting with this game… voice commands.  Not just talking to your opponent, but actually controlling the game using voice commands.

I was skeptical at first, not knowing if the technology was ready for the idea, which is not new, and I’m glad to say that it is ready!  Although not 100% perfect, the game accurately picks up the voice commands without problem.  And when it doesn’t, your in-game assistant tells you so.

Also, there is a persistent, online war map which multiplayer games affect.  Combine that with being able to accumulate experience points and upgrade your units, and you have an RTS MMO type game.

If you haven’t checked it out yet, I recommend it.  This game will definitely be on my list of games to buy.

Planet Fallout

So Fallout 3 is coming out in about 2 weeks.  If you’ve played any of the previous Fallouts, you’ll know that they’ve been RPGs… and good ones, too.

So if you’ve seen the trailer, or any screens, you’ll know that F3 very, very much looks like an FPS.  Actually, it’s not… It’s still an RPG, played in the 1st (or 3rd) person, and allows you to freeze time and queue attacks, which then play back  “cinimatically”.  I am officially excited for this game!

if you haven’t started playing yet… here you go

http://fantasticcontraption.com/

everyone i know is stuck on this game, right now. so if you’ll excuse me… the big ball stage has a wooping coming to it!

This guy takes GH3 to school and destroys Through The Fire and Flames.  He didn’t miss one note, scoring 100% and 987,786. (NSFW: Language at the end.)

And in case you’re not familiar with it, here is Dragonforce performing the song: (more…)

So last weekend I re-did my media setup.  TV… computer(s)… XBox.

Along with re-doing the setup, I also realized that the default method of sharing media from your PC to your XBox (and consequently watching it on your TV), using WMP 11, KILLS your CPU cycles even when you’re not actually using it!

So I asked some friends, and a few of them are using TVersity.  It’s not specifically for the XBox, which is great, because there are A LOT of ways to share with this app.

The install took about 3 minutes (it installs a bunch of codecs to help play extra media file types), and as soon as I looked in my XBox… bam! there it was.  Easy-peasy!!

Hope it helps… now excuse me while i watch movies listen to music and look at my photo album through my XBox and TV.

The thing about technology is that you’re cutting edge one day, but by the next someone’s made it cheaper and smaller.

Protein[DS] software for your Nintendo DS is available here.

Yeah… that’s right… your Nintendo DS is now a performance tool.

Found via Create Digital Music

Music is interesting for many reasons; two are that it can be found anywhere and made with anything.  Case-in-point, the video above.  There are several video game themes throughout the level, and some music from anime as well.  Hacks exsist for all types of programs, and the one above is a hack that allows users to create custom levels for Super Mario World.  The user created a level that is completely automated; meaning all he did was start the level, and all the buttons, springs, and treadmills moved Mario along without further intput from the player.

Found via Kotaku