Call of Duty: Black Ops Playstation 3/Xbox 360 review

The Call of Duty franchise is one of the biggest and best-known out there. I actually had not played the earlier ones, as first person shooters were never one of my favorite genres. But some buddies of mine got me into Modern Warfare 2, and I loved it. Then I started to play a few others and eventually got myself real excited about the recent Black Ops game. Obviously there were videos and stories leading up to its release, and these coupled with a good marketing campaign has led to an amazingly successful launch for the series. So, what’s my take on it? Here goes:

Graphics – 8:

I liked the look and feel better than Modern Warfare overall, but I ran into some odd glitching more often than I cared for, where textures would pop in and out, and lightning effects would mar the otherwise nicely crafted experience. Still, the expressions are often very good, providing good emotional values to the scenes while the environment were varied and in some cases, wonderfully colored and realized.

Sound and Music – 10:

The voice acting was excellent, and the dialog was great as well. It really helped to carry along the story, which I thought was a lot of fun. The music was also generally very good, and in some instances simply amazing in choice and context. There were a wide variety of sound effects that add to both the action and the feel of the storyline itself. This is a game that makes excellent use of my surround system, and is actually helpful in giving away things like footfalls and bullet direction. If I have a pet peeve with any of this, is I have the game on my PS3, but I don’t have a headset for my Playstation. As such, I find myself muting people constantly in the online games because I can’t talk with them – so I sure don’t want to hear them. I found that trying to globally mute other players was a popular question online when I Googled it, whereas it is quite easy to do on the 360 using your personal preferences in Modern Warfare 2 (and from what I read online, easy with this game as well).

Gameplay – 8:

The game controls well – aiming and movement are sharp, and with a quick twitch game such as this – especially with the online mode, that is a must to have. There’s a ton to do as well, and the menus are generally pretty easy to navigate around in, though there were a few control scheme options I think that got neglected. I’ve seen a lot of people online looking for how to unlock perk pluses and not realizing what button they needed to press on the unlocked base perks to see it. Also, the online connectivity is borderline maddening at times. With the online being such an integral part of the package, I’ve found my connectivity most nights being really rough – at least half of the time I try to play, the servers are almost unplayable. I’d think it was me or my connection but I can A) hop on Halo with my 360 and have no problems b) play other online ps3 games and have no issue and c) I’ve been reading about a lot of other people having trouble with it as well. I’ve heard that this issue is being looked into and I am hopefully it’ll be improved upon, but I have to knock off a point or two just based on this.

Intangibles – 9:

The story mode is amazingly fun – but ridiculously short still. This is a common complaint/observation I’ve heard about the series since at lead CoD 4 – and one I levied against Modern Warfare 2 myself. This mission was a bit longer I think, but not by much. Still, the story was excellent, with my older daughter having watched me play through about 85% of it. Why is this significant? A) she’s not a gamer b) she doesn’t have any interested in war movies – but she sat through almost all of this, fascinated with the storyline and even commenting several times that it felt, looked and sounded like ‘one of those war movies you’d watch, dad’ – so kudos to the team for that.

Online is where the majority of people will play this game, and for good reason. The maps are well made, the classes and progression are fun. Instead of relying completely on levels and accomplishments (like in the prior games) to unlock things, you play for ‘currency’ you can spend as well. So at a certain level you may unlock the ability to get a gun, but you still need the credits on hand to purchase it. I suspect this will drag out the game’s playlife a bit for people like me who like to unlike pretty much… everything. This mode is more rewarding for me than Halo: Reach’s rewards system, because there the upgrades are only cosmetic and here they affect gameplay. However, a huge demerit for this mode is the online connectivity issues that appear to be anything but an isolated problem only for me.

Zombie modes are almost starting to annoy me in games. Bad enough that there’s so many ‘zombie’ games out there lately (between the RE series, Dead Rising – even Plants vs. Zombies), and now it’s creeping in as a ‘mode’ in a lot of games (I just saw something on IGN about how the upcoming Yakuza game would have one). Here however, it’s still pretty fun running around blasting zombies with a shotgun while trying to earn credits and repair broken doors and windows. It is not stand-alone game material, but for an add-on it’s pretty solid.

There’s some other pretty cool stuff in here, including an online training mode, a Smash TV-like overhead arcade style shooter, unlockable intel, a zork text game (though playing it on that keyboard they provide you with seems like it would get old and fast) – and this secret thing you can do in the main menu to stand up and walk around to access a computer (and some of these features). There’s a ton of content here, and most of it is very well done. If I could go 2 or 3 weeks without bad online connectivity issues, I’d probably bump the score to a 9.5, and if the online mode had just a *bit* more variety from say, Modern Warfare 2’s online weapon loadouts and options, it would be a 10 in my mind.

Overall – 8.75:

The game feels great overall. I was a day-of-release pickup for it. There’s a handful of things holding it back from complete greatness – online issues, some areas that feel like they’re a bit rehashed and a very short single player campaign mode (I beat it in a day). But there’s a lot going for the game too – from fantastic production values to a variety of modes that really add to the game’s depth. It’s definitely not one for little kids – the violence can be scaled back, which is what I make my son due, but there’s a good deal of strong language to keep the violence company.

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Random Odds and Ends

Interesting article on Yahoo! about the Onlive cloud system for playing higher end games on lower end computers. As someone with a fairly low-end cpu, the idea is intriguing - as someone with a 360, Wii and PS3, I'm firmly in the corner of having hardware that just plays games under optimal conditions. Probably not for me, but interesting all the same.

Got my Wii back. The first round of the process did not go so smoothly - my UPS shipping label never arrived, so after about 10 days I flagged them down. The next one got to me 2 days later, it was shipped out, repaired and back 3 days later. So that time the process ran about a week. Having picked up a handful of new Wii games, including one for the kids for Christmas, I'm rather hoping to roll out some Wii reviews again soon. Spent some time tonight playing Wii Sports Resort tonight with my son, rebuilding Mii's and fiddling around with Dr. Mario Online Rx. Good times. :)

Not sure specifically what was wrong with the Wii - they replaced the whole thing it looks like, so it must have been a fairly major failure. Still, $85 shipped, replaced, with a 1 year warranty isn't too bad - and I had heard horror stories about how ds's and wii's could be tough to get your downloaded games back onto. It wasn't bad at all, they associated the new machine with my old, and my prior downloads list was on there, so Mario Party, Ninja Gaiden, Final Fantasy, Pokemon Rumble and more simply had to be downloaded. Perhaps the biggest bummer was the loss of the save data. Makes me want to start using the SD card and see if that's a bit more reliable since between this and my daughter accidentally reformatting it this summer, we've had to rebuild our Smash Bros. and Mario Kart data for the 3rd time now.

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NBA 2K11 Review for Xbox 360 and Playstation 3

I’ve already detailed in length about my interest in sports games, with the Madden series being a long-standing favorite of mine. NBA games however, have always come in at something of a close second for me. It started with the old Tecmo Basketball, which to my knowledge was the first time an NBA game had full seasons, stat keeping and playoffs. Later there were NBA games by EA Sports that captured more unique aspects of the players and their likenesses, and eventually they introduced franchise modes complete with the kind of player progressions that really hooked me into most sports games. EA’s brand was the strongest for years, but then the 2k series started to show up strong around 2k5 (back when my Pistons were on top of the league), and the sales and reviews began to swing in favor of the 2K series. This year, EA was going to scrape its prior recipe for the NBA games and release a new series called “Elite” – that unfortunately got derailed for reasons of timeliness and – according to some sources – quality. So with NBA 2k11 the only contender in the space, did they put forth an All-Star effort or mail it in?

Graphics – 9:

The animations are generally very smooth. NBA games are some of the trickiest of any sport to model. In football or hockey, you tend to be a bit further from the action, so face and hair models don’t generally have to be as precise. They also tend to be covered with bulky gear. Baseball games still show less of the players’ physiques and the number of animations really are not as varied either. People have a tendency to play in space by themselves. This makes what the 2K series’ graphics so impressive –they have to account for facial models, physical accuracy (and things like tattoos), as well as varying playing styles and work it all into the context of a game where these already difficult to manager characters are jostling around and interacting with each other constantly. Sure, it’s not perfect, sometimes slightly canned animations do odd things like have you step out of bounds when you shouldn’t be, and some faces really give you pause.

The arenas look great overall. Crowds don’t do much, but they fill space and look convincing enough. Lighting, floors – all of it just feels very authentic. I also need to give a nod to the replay features. The Sprite Slam Cams, Gatorade Moment of the Game, and Jordan Brand Player of the Game replays all look very slick (I love the player of the game one, which shows various cuts of action from the game, played out against various filters. Rodney’s Stuckey’s whirlwind layup in my last game looked amazing).

Sound and Music – 9:

There is a very good mix of songs that make up the music in this game. In what my wife and her friend once called the greatest invention in a sports game, years ago many games started adding actual songs to the tracklists (apparently my buddy’s wife and mine got tired of the same old music playing over and over and over for hours on end when we were tweaking our Madden or hoops rosters. Who knew?) Hearing The Alan Parsons Project's "Sirius" play when you first fire up the game and take control of Jordan as he enters the court was an amazing video game moment.

The announcing is quite good as well. Of course these games do tend to get a bit redundant. I wish they could work in more variety, and while the contexts are usually quite good, I could only stand to hear the same thing said about my team so many times. If you play as the Wizards, you’ll hear about John Wall a lot – which makes sense, but they have 2 or 3 canned dialogs about him, and odds are, you will hear them each and every game of his rookie season. I haven’t gotten through enough seasons yet to be sure, but I’m curious if they’ll still be talking about him as some hot prospect in 8 years on there or not. Still, overall, the graphics, sound and music bits work wonderfully to create a live TV game environment.

Gameplay 8:

Overall, it handles really well. The movements are pretty good, and it’s easy to navigate around the various menus. There are some quirks though that can get annoying. You take too many shots down low that tend to hit the sides or backside of the backboard, and some of the canned animations can have you stepping out of bounds even if you’re pushing away from the baseline the entire time. Also, there are way too many steals and blocks. I don’t mind tight defense, but using the Pistons I’m getting at least 8-10 blocks a game, and while my steals are only around 5 a game, my opponents pick off at least a dozen a game. If anyone but a guard is dribbling, or you try to throw an outlet pass or a cross court pass regularly, you will be lucky to complete 2 or 3 a game, which is a bit frustrating as I prefer up-tempo (as do most players, which is probably why they’ve added this artificial layer of defense). The post game however is solid – probably the best I’ve seen it in awhile.

In the create a player mode, there’s a lot to do, but the game judges your actions oddly. If my opponent scores a bucket, I can lose an entire bar of ‘grade’ – but if I score one I barely see an increase. And it encourages you to play somewhat selfishly. For example it comes up with 3 challenges for you each game, and when my 7-3 center is asked to take 4 jump shots in the game? That’s hurting my team because it’s not my style, but if I want those 100 skill points, I’ll go ahead and force a few up anyway.

Intangibles – 10:

The integration of Michael Jordan is amazing. I grew up a Pistons fan. As such, I grew up disliking the Bulls a lot. But over the years I’ve come to really appreciate what Jordan did for the game and just how amazing he was, and the Jordan challenges are very cool. The additional Jordan sneakers for completing certain things in game, and then being able to apply them to your create a person is cool too.

There’s a ton of drills and practice modes, and the online is solid too, though it can get a bit laggy at times, and I’ve always felt like it hurts the NBA games more than NFL, NHL and MLB titles just due to the constant action and motion. With timing on jumpers being so critical, any lag can really mess with you – especially if you happen to be playing a perimeter based team.

I really enjoyed the crate a player mode. I sunk a ton of time into last year’s version doing that, and I’m at it again this year. It’s addicting getting those few points to spend where you want them, and telling yourself you’ll get even more on your next outing. The various goals and achievements you can earn by hitting milestones can be cool too.

Most people will spend the majority of their time in The Association/Franchise mode. It’s a solid game of hoops there, with lots to do as both the coach and manager. And the computer seems a lot smarter this year too. I remember last year’s game when the Bucks wound up with something like 5 point guards and 3 shooting guards and were just unable to field a proper team. The trades from what I have seen so far in 2k11 are made with better overall team awareness – from both a positional standpoint and respecting a player’s potential to improve. The trade finder is a cool new innovation too, that can be a real time-saver when you’re trying to tweak your roster or draft picks.

In case this isn’t enough game for your buck, there’s also the blacktop mode with 3-point shootouts and dunk contests too. There’s also quite a few classic teams out there. You won’t run out of things to do any time soon.

Overall – 9:

There’s still a few glitches here and there, and when they happen they can become very frustrating. Overall though, they don’t happen very often and what you do get is a great game of hoops that is brought to you a lot of different ways that help to keep the proceedings fresh and entertaining. At first I was worried that the Jordan stuff would be minimal or gimmicky – just an excuse to slap him on the cover and get a few extra sales, but it really looks like they put the work in this year. If EA’s Elite is hoping to come to market next year, they better bring their best playoff game, because right now 2K looks like the reigning champ for the foreseeable future.

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Scott Pilgrim vs. The World - Xbox Live and PSN review

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World immediately reminded me of the NES classic River City Ransom – a game that I played through and beat numerous times about 15 to 20 years ago. Based on a movie that had a lot of video game elements, it seems the perfect fit for an Xbox Arcade or PS3 Network game – the question is, how does it hold up?

Graphics – 8:

The style is perfect for what it is. This game is a throwback to 8bit and 16bit beat ‘em ups, and the vivid colors, pixelized characters and blocky yet busy backgrounds fit the theme perfectly. If there’s a complaint to be made about it is if you have too many people playing at once, it can be hard to keep track of what you are doing – the characters are large and visually appealing, but with 3 or 4 players at a time, they take up a lot of the screen’s real estate too.

Sound & Music – 7:

The music and sound all fits – the sound effects are rather bland in my opinion but I thought the music was quite good. A couple of the tunes really stuck in my head afterward and they were lively and matched the often frantic gameplay.

Gameplay – 7:

The controls are simple, but that’s not a bad thing. The game tries very hard to be one of the old-school games that only used 2 or 3 buttons and a special attack. There are times though where I felt like it was not being quite as responsive as I would have liked, and I’d get knocked on my butt. The game’s not impossible by any means, but there are parts where you will die and they can feel a bit cheap, especially if you were trying repeatedly to take a swing at someone and can’t pull it off.

Intangibles – 8:

The nostalgia is hard to ignore, so for me that’s a big one. One of the most endearing things River City Ransom had going for it was your character progression. You bought skills, food, things like that to advance your character. Here, you do the same – you gain levels, new combos and can do things to improve your overall statistics. You can also use this same built-up character (there’s several to choose from at the start of the game) that you can bring in and replay the game with. This plus hidden shops really help the game’s replay value. The multiplayer is fun – my son and I had a great time with it, but there’s a few missed opportunities here too. You can’t drop mid-level it seems, so you have to wait to join in, and the most glaring omission is I don’t see any means of online cooperative play, which is almost baffling for a game that gets so many other small things right.

Overall – 7.5:

Not a bad way to spend some Microsoft Points or PSN wallet dollars, especially if you’re a fan of these kinds of games – which I obviously am (one of my other somewhat recent acquisitions was the Final Fight/Magic Sword release by Capcom in the interest of full disclosure – so this is clearly a genre I enjoy). There’s a few small things that they could have done better, and one or two large ones that just keep the game from being just about perfect, but the challenging achievements and character progressions mean that the replay value gives you pretty good bang for your buck.

More Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game Videos

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Gaming News and Notes from 11-9-10

Been awhile since I've done one of these, but here goes:

Playstation 3 owners finally get to discover the Mass Effect universe - that's old news. but now there's some details released about how they plan to catch you up on the story and what you can expect to get with the Mass Effect 2 release.

Back Ops has been out and kicking butt in sales (while getting some good initial scores from critics) for about half a day now, and there's a secret mode that has already been revealed.

Interested in a Microsoft Kinect? Gamestop expects to be able to keep up with the demand, though one interesting thing I noticed on their online page yesterday when I was peeking at their weekly ad - my local Gamestop was listed as being out of the non-bundled Kinects already.

Anyone else out there a big fan of the Scott Pilgrim Arcade release? I was - and now here's a trailer about new content coming out for the game. Hoping to have a review out there on this game and EA's MMA soon.

Fallout: New Vegas released to pretty good reviews and sales - but was reported to have a ton of bugs including some that could ruin you game save. Yikes. Well, Bethesda has heard the complaints and are planning to release a very large patch for the game soon.

Last and... well, least in my opinion - there's some new games being confirmed - Naughty Bear 2 and Wet 2. Sales on these were okay if not great, and Wet had a lot of issues even getting released so this is a slight surprise, but good news to fans of the two games, which released to lukewarm reviews and sales, with Wet faring slightly better overall.

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Halo: Reach - Xbox 360 game review

Halo has always been one of the more polarizing series over the last decade of gaming. It came to reflect the Microsoft Xbox brand in much the same way Mario has for Nintendo, or Kratos has for Sony or even Sonic did for the Genesis. Thing is – I never played the series. I owned a Playstation 2 at the time, and did not have the budget for multiple gaming systems. So I missed the first couple of Halo games, and never really jumped on board for the Halo 3 and ODST releases either. First person shooters were never really my favorite genre. However, while they still do not top sports and RPG games for me, Modern Warfare 2 did a great job of getting me into first-person shooters and the competitive online aspects of such games.

So, when Reach came out, and a few of my co-workers were getting very excited about it, I was interested. I had let my Xbox Live gold membership lapse back around May of this year as well, with no intention to resume it. Then, Microsoft offered some good deals, including something like a good % off if you signed up during the Halo: Reach launch, and Walmart had a nice deal going where if you bought Reach during launch week, you got a free $20 gift card. So, I combined these deals, did the math and (most importantly) got my wife to agree to let me drop a few extra bucks on it.

Now, this was right around the time I quit writing for my blog here. Halo: Reach was the start of some serious game playing over the last couple of months, plus the kids starting school, plus work getting very busy so… the blog lost out. Well, since then, I’ve spent a good chunk of time playing Halo: Reach and I thought I would share my thoughts on it.

Graphics – 9:

This is one of those areas I see mixed responses on. Some people really love the Halo art style, and others come away very unimpressed. Overall, I liked them though. I found the color palettes appealing, the look of the environments to be engrossing, and characters moved pretty well. An additional detail I liked was that the customizations made to your armor appear to carry over in every aspect, including things like cut scenes. There were a few moments of slow down during some of the more intense scenes, and that is always frustrating, but they are relatively few and far between.

Music & Sound – 9:

I’ve never played any of the other games, but I first fell in love with the Halo theme song when they released a version of it for Guitar Hero 3 as a downloadable a few years ago. Since then, I’ve gone and listened to a lot of the more popular tunes and I’ve come away very impressed. That doesn’t really change for me here – the score fits the often epic feel of the game, and while some of the voice acting is a bit stilted, most of it is pretty good and really helps to advance the story. The surround sound is used to excellent effect as well, as you can hear a laser going off to your right, or hear a gibbering alien coming at you from behind. Excellent stuff all of the way around.

Gameplay - 9:

It’s smooth stuff – and I mean that earnestly. There’s a few different control schemes you can choose from, but they are all pretty intuitive. I picked up the game immediately and dove into the story and then the online modes with no problem. Menus were easy to get around in, and there is just a ton to do. The armor effects were pretty slick as well. I read about these, and they’re all new to the Halo series – but whether you’re using armor lock, jetpack, camouflage – they are all useful in the right circumstances. In the large team battles involving vehicles I find armor lock incredibly handy. In headhunter modes sprint does me a world of good. You versus everyone? Going invisible (or Predator Mode as I like to call it) is super fun. Jetpacks and holograms of your character also add layers of depth (and deception) to the affair.

Intangibles – 9:

The game has a pretty decent single player storyline. I still recall Modern Warfare 2’s being awesome – but really short. I could get through it in about 6 hours. Not so here. There are a ton of multiplayer modes, and that always helps replay value. There’s some custom side games like Firefight to keep you entertained as well. There’s a ton of extra polish here also such as the forge – that has some nice map making/adjusting qualities to it, and theater which lets you save images and video clips to store to your hard drive or upload to the Halo servers (like my entertaining sticky grenade one. It was fun – a guy tried to get away from me, and he leapt up an air/elevator so I launched a sticky that clung to his leg as he neared the next level, and it blew him up. I’d say you had to be there, but you don’t – I’ve uploaded it!). Perhaps my single disappointment is with the customization. It looks awesome, but I found the online rewards for Modern Warfare 2 to be more rewarding. Some people disliked the system of getting new items and attachments, and that sort of thing in Modern Warfare 2 because they felt it gave an advantage to more experienced players who probably didn’t really need said advantage. To me though, it was a lot of fun going through and making several loadouts with customized attachments and perk sets. Halo does have a more level playing field, but some of the game modes restrict the weapons and armor abilities you can have. It’s not a game killer by any means, but it did leave me wanting a little bit more.

Overall – 9:

Easy score to add up, but seriously – this game was a lot of fun and it made me interested in earlier games in the series. My son bought the first Halo for the Xbox awhile back (it retro plays in the 360), and I’ve considered picking up the others in the series to experience them and learn a bit more about the storylines. Tons to do, and a well-made overall game in terms of control, graphics and sound? That’s a recipe for success. Most of the people I work with really enjoy it too. One thing I do find interesting is that for most of them, the game’s not holding as much long term appeal as Modern Warfare 2 did, and most of them are using Halo to tide them over until Black Ops comes out. I’ll be curious to see how many of them, myself included, let Halo slip by less played once that happens this Tuesday.

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It's been quite awhile...

Since I posted. To be honest, I was strongly considering taking some time off from posting here. I may not match my earlier pace - time will tell, but I was trying to post quite regularly and then got very busy irl - and that mixed with the relatively small amount of traffic I get through here made it really easy for me to ignore my blog here. That said, two people emailed me in this past week just to check in and make sure all was well - which I really appreciated. And well, overall I do have a ton of new games to write up about.

I also had both good and frustrating news. I picked up some Wii games like Silent Hill and Metroid and then my Wii died a few days later. So now I'm waiting for my UPS package label so I can send it back - so hey, I can comment on how that process goes. So far? Not too well. We put in a request on 10/23 and finally yesterday emailed them and asked about the label I should have gotten. They agreed to send me a new one and said that I should get it in 4 business days, so if I count today as the first, hopefully I'll have it Wed - maybe Thurs at the latest.

So, that was the bad news. The good news? I won a Playstation Move set, complete with 2 Move controllers, 1 Playstation Eye and Singstar dance and some microphones to go with it. I still will probably want to spring for one of the $30 side-controllers for the move wands, but I'm hoping to get some detailed reviewing out in the somewhat near future. I want to get some time in on it with several games, that sort of thing.

I'm very curious about the Kinect. The release lineup has been getting better reviews and while the Move has always felt like a Wii HD, the Kinect has always felt to me like more impressive tech. Still, at $150 it's going to be a hard sell. Maybe I'll win one of those too. I'm curious if people have had a chance to use either yet and if so, what are your thoughts?

Hopefully I'll get a new review out tonight or tomorrow - I've had a handful of new games on hand: Dead Rising 2, Fable 3, NBA 2k11, MLB The Show 10 and EA MMA.

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