Mass Effect 2

Ho. Lee. Shit.

RATING: 100%

Ghostbusters (Video Game)

A Month Of Halloweenie Reviews #28

This game, written by Harold Ramis and Dan Ackroyd and starring all the Ghostbusters from the movie, was pretty fun and hilarious. It managed to recreate the feel of Ghostbusters (the first movie, since Ghostbusters II sucks), including a lot of legitimately spooky parts in addition to all the humor and repartee we know and love. I beat this game on medium difficulty in about three evenings, so I really can't recommend buying it, but if you've got $8 to spare then you could certainly do a lot worse than renting this game.

RATING: 71%

PS - Finally done with month of Halloween reviews (never said which month it was going to be).

Mass Effect

Mass Effect is a terrific sci-fi RPG for the XBox 360, and I am once again the last to know about it. The story and characters are intricate and engrossing, the dialogue mechanic is the most natural of any I've seen in a game, and the game just feels epic (unlike Fallout 3, which just felt epic for like 10 minutes at the end). The plot is some future stuff with space and commandos - it's tough to explain, but they did a really great job of building up this new universe from scratch. Also there is a part where you can space do it with a space hermaphrodite.

RATING: 92%

Spider-man: Web Of Shadows

This game features the whiniest Spider-man in history, and since we're already talking about Spider-man that's a serious achievement. The plot is some Venom symbiotes take over the city and you've gotta stop them or join them, your call. It's a lot of fun to websling around and beat up people or cars, but it's only about a 10 hour game start to finish. Also, no Chrysler Building, so points off for execution.

RATING: 62%

A Month of Boring Things - Day Fourteen: Red Ring of Doom

Imagine an octogenarian buying an XBox 360 for his/her grandkids to play the once-a-year they come to visit. That's about how often I use my console. Less than one-half of one percent of my memory brick has been used. And yet today, after twelve months of bullshit, I decided to sit and play a little FIFA only to encounter the quote-unquote Red Ring of Doom, which basically means "General Hardware Failure," which basically means, since I think my warranty has expired, I'm fucked. This thing is a piece of motherfuckingshit. Thanks, Microsoft.





Rating: 0%

PS - I had a dream about R3 last night.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

This video game is based on the small independent movie series Star Wars. In it, you play as some dude who is Darth Vader's secret apprentice between Episode III and IV (nerdspeak). The story, dialogue, and acting are all immensely better than any of the prequel trilogy, but I guess that's like saying I personally have more hockey ability than a quadruple amputee. Anyway, it's pretty fun to throw stormtroopers around with the force or punt a Jawa, but the game is really short so my professional opinion is to rent it or something, who am I, your accountant?

RATING: 63%

Star Trek: Legacy

There hasn't been a great Star Trek game in 26 years, since the release of Star Trek: Judgment Rites, and this game from 2006 doesn't really change that. However, I can look past that and the trap of focusing solely on space combat that seems to beleaguer Star Trek games this time, because the graphics are great and skirmish mode is just so addictive. I can't tell you how satisfying it is to blow the Enterprise D out of space with the Enterprise A, but take my word for it, ole baldy and his Brady Bunch of a crew certainly had it coming.

RATING: 67%

Bioshock

I know I'm late in heaping praise on this game, but Bioshock is an amazing game, everybody was right. I'm not really that much into first person shooters anymore, but the way this game seamlessly weaves a great story into the gameplay (that is, no cinematic sequences) makes it stand out from mindless army shooters like Halo. Without giving too much away about the plot (part of the allure of this game is getting the mystery to unravel as you collect diaries, read phrases written on the wall in blood etc), you play as a survivor of a plane crash who finds, in the middle of the ocean, an artificial island that is the entry point for a vast underwater city. The city, Rapture, is deserted except for many crazed deformed people who want to kill you and a man named Atlas who wants you to help him rescue his family from Andrew Ryan, the megalomaniac who created the city. Along the way you can also pick up "plasmids," which are basically mutant powers. The game is often terrifying but always engrossing, and I recommend you pick this one up.

RATING: 83%

Fable II

Fable II is generally regarded as a pretty awesome video game, and as someone who likes pretty awesome video games, I was happy to make it my first purchase for my new XBox 360. What I didn't know: Fable II is like a cross between Diablo and The Sims, and certainly not as awesome as many people make it out to be. There are also a couple of truly, almost game-breakingly annoying things for me: (1) it substitutes plot for story, which I find just about unforgivable in an RPG (2) no one in the game appears to talk to you or really look you (you meaning your stupid emotionless avatar) in the face. If this happened in real life...oh wait it does happen in real life, but that's not the point.

Frankly, if I wanted to become a real estate maganate, slaughter innocent townspeople, and have bad aim during surprise encounters with curious beasts - well, I'd send away for one of those infomercial info-kits and start getting involved in adjustable rate mortgages. In Texas.

RATING: 45% (which means that its better than the jump-in-the-air-profile-photo, but MUCH worse than Fallout 3, which there's no review for, but trust me on this)

(P.S. - The gambling minigames are truly awesome, and I only wish a casino would be smart enough to institute a couple of them as a one-off deal. I'm looking at you, Snoqualmie!)