Video Game Quick Hits!

Happy Friday the 13th everyone. I'm in San Antonio visiting family and a new niece, and yet this is getting updated automatically somehow. I blame witches. So let's get to some quick thoughts about some recent video game releases, most of whom have copious amounts of colons in their titles for some reason.

Halo 3: ODST

If you could apply the word “premium” to any part of Bungie’s Halo series, than ODST would definitely have that stamped all over it. For all the fun that you can have as Not-Master-Chief played by the male cast of Firefly, this is hardly a good gaming value. Sure it comes with all of the Halo 3, including three disk-only Mythic maps and sure firefight is fun, and the campaign is cool and a lot of fun, but considering that most of the people buying this title already have a majority of the DLC, there’s very little new stuff. The campaign is short, even by today’s standards, although playing on Legendary does increase the playtime significantly. All in all, if you really like Halo, by all means pick this up. You should approach this in the same way you’d approach a meal at an expensive restaurant that you rarely eat at. Yes, you will enjoy it but it’s up to you whether it’s worth the coin. 7/10

The Beatles: Rock Band

This is another case of “if you like the series, you’ll like this game.” There are few new innovations to the Rock Band formula, and in fact there are fewer options available to players since you’re unable to change the appearance of the titular Beatles in the game. There are some additional features to make the game more appealing to kids and adults who suck at rhythm games but who like the Beatles. Overall, this is a good buy for Rock Band enthusiasts. 8/10


Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

The most-hyped game of year award was stolen away from a Halo game in 2009. I’d love to say that this game is terrible and not worth an iota of your time, because I love watching big projects and launches (not involving live astronauts) fail. Sadly and yet awesomely at the same time, MW2 is fucking sweet. This is the prettiest, most intense, most fun shooters I’ve played in a while. Yes, ODST is fun and I will be playing Halo again in the near future, but MW2 different in so many cool ways. I missed the boat on CoD4, but this whole FPS with XP thing is cool as hell. Sure you could level up in Bioshock, but you couldn’t play with your friends and you couldn’t level up and get more bad-ass with your friends and thousands of other online players. The single player is interesting so far, but I’ve managed to get hooked in Multiplayer faster. Likely, I’ll save the campaign for when I have no playing online and tear it up multiplayer otherwise. This is a must buy for shooter fans. 9/10

Quick Hits

• Reviews for Marvel Heroes, Jamaica, Halo 3: ODST, and Beatles Rock Band are coming soon. I've been pre-occupied recently, and yet slacking at the same time.
• What could possibly be so important to keep me from my gaming reviewing duties? I was asked to edit the most recent Awesome On Its Own video. What's Awesome On Its Own? It's a bunch of really cool people from the Red vs. Blue boards, making fools of themselves to either awesome or awesomely bad music. It's something that's been an absolute pleasure to be involved in, and I hope that we continue to entertain for a while more yet. Here's my first editing job, so be gentle. :)

• Speaking on ODST, the hardest part of the big coop achievements is actually getting the people together to play through them. Also, they're really hard.
• OU Football could be better, but it could be worse. Maybe the thrashing we're about to receive in Dallas will finally be the catalyst to make some coaching changes that we so badly need.

Quick Hits

Played a bunch of new games over this weekend so far. Reviews will be coming ASAP. For now, here's a sampling of the gaming goodness!