Red Dead Redemption

I know this review is a bit late but after thuroughly playing RDR here are some impressions. Firstly, this is an excellent game, it has an engaging storyline, fun gameplay, a great open world and hours of playability.

You start off as a classic western hero, part good guy, part bad guy, and you are forced to hunt down your former outlaw gang members and bring them to justice or else 'bad stuff' will happen to your family. The game starts simple enough doing menial tasks like helping herd cattle and then quickly picks up the pace and has to chasing down banditos, shooting the fuck out of outlaws and kicking a bunch of ass Clint Eastwood style. Not Paint Your Wagon Eastwood either.

The side challenges and side missions will distract you for a few hours and are very engaging, however towards the end of the game money is nearly meaningless and once the hunting challenges are complete there is no point to continue mercilessly slaughtering animals for their hides. The lack of anything worth spending money is a bit disappointing, especially considering the well executed upgradeable villa in Assassin's Creed 2, another excellent sandbox game. I imagined buying a ranch, buying livestock, hiring hands. Fanboys might argue something like "that may end up as DLC!" Yes it may, but it seems like a feature that should have been there to start with.

The missions are fun and get you into the action extremely well, it has been a long time since I chose to play through a game as the 'good guy' but I did for this game because Mr. Marston is very likable. However, some missions can be very frustrating, especially if you die and get transported all the way back to your last purchased living space, which could be very far away. Additionally some dialogue was not fully fleshed out, one instance that comes to mind is herding cattle where another character guiding me through the missions repeats the same few sentences in rapid succession over and over again. Very immersion breaking.

The game also has a host of glitches such as suddenly bursting out of cover, getting stuck walking through doors and occasional freezes. Also very agitating but a patch is on the way.

The world is very detailed and nice, not overcrowded like GTAIV, which is a breath of fresh air, it truly feels like a living, breathing western world. Animals kill each other, crimes happen without your involvement and life rolls on in the digital west. Despite this awesome realism comes the most irritating aspect of Red Dead Redemption, GTAIV took a large step forward for Rockstar's open world games by allowing us to SWIM, to move from that game to RDR where going in water above knee high is INSTANT DEATH is extremely immersion breaking and for lack of a better word, dumb as fuck. It is 2010 sir, instant death water is so 1995.

Overall despite the flaws, which every game has, the singleplayer is an excellent addition to the shelf of anyone who likes good story.

Singleplayer Verdict: 9/10

The multiplayer component sounds like it would be decidedly fun, which it is. Free roam is a triumph of game lobbies, allowing players to work cooperatively, solo, or competitively. Levelling up and unlocking new characters, guns, mounts and titles is fun, exciting and well executed. Forming a posse and whacking gang hideouts is also a blast, especially in private free roam with just some friends when you can terrorize each other by executing your friends' horses with a well placed shot to the head. It is even fun to become the victim of heinous acts, such as riding shotgun on a stagecoach that some dickhead you know decides to run full speed off a cliff or into the dangerous and instantly fatal thing known as 'water' for a few good laughs.

The downside to RDR's multiplayer comes in public free roam when trying to play cooperatively and do gang hideouts. The internet is full of assholes, and they WILL come to the gang hideout you are doing and they WILL kill the shit out of you while you're trying to do something. Sometimes this can be fun or amusing, but when you are sincerely trying to have fun and do something it can also piss you off enough to turn your Xbox off.

Additionally some of the multiplayer game modes are extremely laggy with poor hit detection, at times you may lean out to take a shot and be immediately blown away by someone who is hiding in a cheap spot, has a lower ping than you, or some other intangible reason you can't quite pin down. Sometimes it can be a blast where you wreck the other team's joint-anus open and dominate the scoreboards.

It is very hit or miss what type of game you'll end up with, leaving you with a love/hate relationship for RDR's multiplayer.

Multiplayer Verdict: 7/10

All we can do now is wait for the DLC to see how it adds to the game, this is a very solid game worth a purchase if you have the money to spare, if things are tight I wouldn't start getting too anxious about NOT having it despite all your friends playing it. It won't kill you to wait a while.

Game of the Year? No. Top five probably.

Overall Verdict: 8/10.

Bioshock 2

Just finished reading some user reviews of Bioshock 2 on Gamefly.com, I just finished and mailed back Bioshock 2 myself, first off some thoughts on the reviews.

Every single one of them is fan boy boner popping 10/10 gush fests. "omg the story is so amazing and the multiplayer is flawless! Best ever!" Essentially, all the reviews gladly look over downsides to the game and only promote the ups.

First off, the single player is quite good and fun, I enjoyed it quite a bit, though the whole protect the Little Sister while she harvests Adam can feel tedious and distracting in some parts, otherwise it was cinematic and quite enjoyable. Though I do personally feel the story is a little convoluted at times.

Secondly, the multiplayer despite everyone's inane ramblings is not "perfectly balanced" by any means. It is a gimmick fest of my plasmid/weapon combo is better than yours. Someone runs up, shocks or freezes the shit out of you and then shotguns your skull off. Rinse repeat over and over and over. Is levelling up cool? Yes it is. Is it "revolutionary" as one review claimed? Not by a long shot! The Call of Duty series has had such a system in place for several years now. The multiplayer CAN be fun, for instance every 5 minutes or so a Big Daddy suit is spawned in the level, allowing you to stomp around pwning the shit out of anyone you see. This can be extremely fun and can turn the game around for you if you start having a bad streak. However, the top player can ALSO get the suit and finish up the game.

The entire MP experience turns into a giant gimmick-fest. My cheap gimmick-combo beats yours! I stunned you and killed you before you could do it to me.

Imagine a Modern Warfare 2 map where everyone is running around with Akimbo Shotguns. It isn't a skill-based competition at that point, just a twitch party that ends up being as fun as touching your peehole against a light socket just before you start to urinate.

Overall... Bioshock 2 gets an 8/10. Game of the year? Not a chance.

Aliens Vs. Predator First Impressions

Aliens Vs. Predator is retardedly bad ass so far. Getting some bad reviews because Modern Warfare 2 and Halo 3 set a standard in FPS games but this doesn't PLAY like a FPS game. If you played the original PC games, this one is everything you wish had been in the originals and then some. Predator is glass cannon stealth mode, Alien is fast paced melee, Marine is paranoid survival horror-ish.

Give it a try, it rocks.

Additionally, the standard set by H3 and MW2 is irritating. While those are good games, Gamefly.com user ratings has The Orange Box ranked down to an 8.2 because it doesn't have aiming down the sights and gimmicks from H3 and MW2. The average retard glosses over The Orange Box's deep gameplay because it doesn't have the gimmicks of the more popular titles.

For my money, The Orange Box is hands down one of the BEST purchases you can make for an Xbox 360, PC or PS3. 5 games for one price? Not only 5 games but 5 games that all had critic meta reviews 80% and over. Anyhow enough tangent on The Orange Box.

Go buy or rent Aliens Vs. Predator and give it a fair shake, don't let the semi-complex controls throw you off, it has a lot of abilities it needs to slam onto your buttons, once you start to master them it becomes smooth and extremely satisfying. Nothing quite like rolling into a multiplayer death match and getting cornered by an alien on your puny marine goob only to end up curb stomping the big bad because you batted his claws away, punched him right in his dick-mouth and threw down some pulse rifle fire right up his gooch pipe.

Go, Play, Enjoy, Nerd Out.