Category: Xbox 360

Halo 4 Has 343 Problems and Cortana is Definitely One

Videogames were changed forever when Bungie released Halo: Combat Evolved in 2001.  In that seminal release, the world met Spartan II cyborg Master Chief as he is awakened from cryo sleep to fight against the alien Covenant.  We also met Cortana, the AI that would accompany Chief and become the voice in his ear as he fights. Among many of its revolutionary ideas was its holy trinity of combat that mapped guns, grenades and melee onto an intuitive control scheme that provided a deep and flexible options and allowed players access to large maps and vehicles.  As the series progressed, it implemented a suite of online features and pared down gameplay into tighter design.  At the end of Halo 3, Master Chief re-entered cryo sleep aboard the UNSC’s Forward Unto Dawn as it drifts aimlessly through space with Cortana watching over him. The trilogy complete, Bungie flexed their creative muscles on Halo 3: ODST and Halo: Reach, two games that would expand the structure with new modes and matchmaking options.

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Dishonored: An Atmospheric Example of Stealth-Action Done Right.

When I try to make a concrete decision as to what my favorite game of all time is, the answer tends to change from day to day. More often than not, however, Bioshock is the first thing that comes to mind. My initial arrival in Rapture was a swift kick to the face, forever opening my eyes to how it feels to be in an atmosphere so thick I could taste it. Not since that precious moment so many years ago had I experienced a world so fully realized and enticing as presented in victorian Dunwall.

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Dark Souls ‘Artorias of the Abyss’ DLC

Why All We Needed Was More Dark Souls

If there even is a proper word for the confusing mixture of emotions I felt in the first 30 minutes of booting up the long-awaited add-on to last year’s utterly exhilarating Dark Souls, it’s not in my repertoire. What I do know, is I was immediately struck with a very profound childlike excitement that had me giddy, all due to the fact I was simply doing something new. Having spent well over 200 hours exploring the dense, beautiful and wholly unique world FromSoftware had granted me last year, I pretty much knew everything you could about Dark Souls proper. Every pressure-plate triggered trap, every well-hidden enemy, every nonsense attack a boss could throw at me. Every single obstacle the game could lay on me I had painfully experienced,  triumphantly overcome, and gloriously mastered.

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Mark of the Ninja

The stealth action genre has long been an echo chamber unto itself.  While many games have integrated its core ideas, its pure form hasn’t evolved much since Metal Gear 2 on the MSX.  It’s a genre that many critics have argued relies too heavily on trial-and-error, exists as puzzle games in action-game skin.  Mark of the Ninja shrugs these distinctions off while living inside them.  It’s a smart title that promotes a different kind of stealth: action not patience; the hunter, not the prey.

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Mass Effect 3 ‘Leviathan’ dlc

Mass Effect 2’s post-launch content was among the best examples of the practice this generation.  Not only did each flesh out the Mass Effect universe, they allowed custom built levels and their own cohesive story that could accentuate Shepard’s story while still existing outside of its confines.  Leviathan is the first such piece of content for Mass Effect 3 but that games controversial ending hangs heavily over this even before you embark on its mission.

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Bastion: The Kid’s Fairy Tale

A child’s eyes see a simple world.  For centuries, fairy tales have been tools to give those eyes a view on the world they might not see on their own.  They are a means of teaching lessons and giving metaphors, to see villainy and sorrow overcome by heroism and bravery.  In Bastion, Supergiant Games has crafted a new fairy tale in videogame form, one that allows you to revisit your youth while celebrating the games you loved when you were small and the world was big.

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Mass Effect 3

Since Mass Effect was first announced, skepticism about Bioware’s claims that choices made in its space opera would carry over its trilogy have given way to mounting pressure to make them a reality.  Mass Effect proper introduced a dense universe of characters and races with real history and threw them into peril against an ancient race of synthetic life forms called Reapers who threatened to eradicate all life.  But it also introduced us to Commander Shepard, the hero that took up arms to protect the galaxy.  Mass Effect 2 was an incredible story of bravery set against impossible odds as Shepard once again fought against forces no one believed in.

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Syndicate

Syndicate’s future world is about divisions; the divisions in the economic and political landscapes, between consumer and outcast where people are interfaced with the Datascape through neural chips that feed them a constant stream of data.  That world is run by the mega corporations who plot, steal, manipulate and sabotage for the sake of patents, personnel and profit and each employs its own military and special agents to safeguard its bottom line.  The original Syndicate from the mid-nineties offered a bleak, violent cyberpunk world- one perfectly suited to the brutal and creative skills of Starbreeze Studio’s.

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R&D – Prototype 2

Radical Entertainment’s 2009 release of Prototype was welcomed with open arms, even though it dropped a month after the fundamentally similar Infamous. Over 400 thousand people were happy enough to aid in its journey to reaching Platinum status (which it did fairly quickly) for obvious reasons. Being an open world game centered on a biologically enhanced anti-hero capable of scaling buildings and slaughtering entire military units in a fashion that brought to mind John Carpenter’s The Thing, none of this came as much of a surprise.

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Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

The aspects of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning that place it in everyone’s mind as an Elder Scrolls knock-off disguised in a bright, cartoonish atmosphere are probably the least important of all. Yes, you are in a rich fantasy world fighting typical fairy-tale type monsters. Yes, you can choose to play as a decent, upstanding individual or to roam the world looting what is not rightfully yours. In 2012, these are common facets in most great open-world games. It is the fully realized manner in which Big Huge Games offers these features here that make for a truly satisfying experience.

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