Halo 4 Review

Master Chief's latest adventure is a great new beginning!

   Halo 4, the first official Halo game created by 343 Studios, is the mark of a great new beginning for the Halo franchise!  The story, game play, high quality cut scenes, and the multi player all comes together to create a spectacular treat for any fan of the series, and I am looking forward to seeing much more of the series by the 343 Studios team and Microsoft.

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   Story (no Spoilers)

The story of Halo 4 is one of my favorite so far, featuring a great plot, good plot twists, and especially better character development. Previous entries in the Halo series had Master Chief with little to no personality, humorously being called a robot, because of his lack of character development and speech. In this game, he has personality and more emotion, especially when speaking with Cortana. 

  

I found the story to be more emotional and intense from the previous entries as well, and features several characters with their own personalities and agendas, which adds to an already great story plot. 

    Game play

The game play is where the game truly shines, featuring the story campaign, Cooperative and competitive game play, the Forge where you can modify and have your own map designs, and the theater, where you save, edit, and share footage from movies and screenshots you have taken! You can play multi player, where you design your own Spartan IV, altering their load outs, customizing their appearance with new armor pieces and colors, and leveling up your Spartan to unlock more options! As you level up you will gain a point, which can be spent to unlock load out items, each with their own unlock points requirements, so you can pick and choose the items you wish, instead of achieving them at a set level requirement.

   Spartan Ops

Spartan Ops is a cooperative game mode featuring a new story, with new episodes being released regularly. Up to 4 players can play this, and you will earn experience and level up, just like in competitive modes, with their own challenges and career stats involved.  With each new episode released, you can continue the ever evolving story of Fire Team Crimson, a team of Spartan IV's deployed on Requiem.

  War Games

War Games is the Competitive mode for Halo 4, featuring a wealth of game modes and types, including Slayer, Dominion, Oddball, Capture the Flag, and much more! These game types have their own rules and setups, such as Dominion being a capture and hold game type, and Oddball being a sports-like game where you carry the ball to gain points, and so forth.  The many variants of game types make the competitive war games interesting and never boring. 

  Forge

Forge is a map tool set, where you can modify existing maps, and use several tools to change them up and create new and exciting map designs, such as objects, spawn points, and many, many more! A person good at map design, can create entirely different designs, and share them with others so that they can play it too!  All game modes can be used for your Forge map, so if you favor a certain game type, you can create some interesting game play from the options available!

  Theater

Theater is the mode where you can save, edit, and share your favorite movies and screenshots from your adventures in any game mode. Got an amazing kill streak or funny accident that happened in multi player? You can go back, watch the film, and record at that particular time, take screenshots, and share them with the community.

  Overall

Overall, the combination of the story campaign's excellent story telling, cooperative, and competitive game play modes, plus the Forge and Theater, makes this game a must have for any Halo fan. I look forward to future installments of this game, and the multi player reminds me of Halo 3's in fun factor. The Multi player in this game offers long replay value, with the leveling up, multiple game modes, and customization options.  Spartan Ops feature new episodes on a regular basis, and multiple challenges and career statistics, you will be playing this game for a long time to come!

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Call of Duty Black Ops 2 Review (single player and Multiplayer)

    Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, the latest from Treyarch in the Call of Duty Series, offers a compelling single player story and a great multiplayer experience, featuring cooperative game play against zombies, and its versus game play with multiple customization options, challenges, and unlockables.

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   Story

  The single player story is one of the best Call of Duty campaigns I have ever played, featuring multiple endings and story arcs, where your choices at key points in the game will determine the future of the story and of course, it's ending. The characters presented offer a great narrative in back stories, leading from the Vietnam war era, up to the present day, where it all comes to a head. I did not have a hard time understanding the story, because the characters and cutscenes presented keeps you up to date with the events going on. The single player campaign offers multiple difficulties to choose from and is highly replayable, especially for those wanting to see and unlock all the endings. Also included is the Strike Force Mode, which is also canon with the single player story and is different from the rest of the campaign, see below for more information.

  Gameplay

 The gameplay in the singleplayer campaign is standard first person shooter fair, featuring a change of "loadouts" for each mission, and offers a great control scheme and can be changed in the options menu if the default isn't comfortable for you. You have access to grenades, non lethal grenades like smoke grenades, emp and other types. This game also offers multiple weapons to choose from, even high tech variants and attachments, altering the way the gun behaves, such as better reload speeds, fire rates, damage and so forth. You even have access to special weapons, such as crossbows, ballistic knives, rocket launchers, combat axes, and others that offer unique combat choices.

  Strike Force Mode

 Strike Force Mode is an operation mode within the single player campaign, which is a bit different from the rest of the game. In Strike Force Mode, you instead command a strike force similar to that of an real time strategy game, commanding infantry squads, and mechs to achieve certain objectives within a time limit and a limit on how many troops you have for that mission. Tactical view is where the Real time strategy mode comes into play, allowing you to move troops and mechs about and seeing where enemies and emplacements are about, as well as your mission directives. I found Strike Force Mode to be a fun and unique game play mode, especially for a game like Call of Duty.

Multiplayer (versus and Co-op)

  Multiplayer for Black Ops 2 offers you the cooperative mode, which is their zombies mode, and the famous versus mode. I found both to be entertaining, even with some of their faults.

Zombies Mode

 Zombies mode is the cooperative gameplay, which features a horde-like wave by wave scenario with a transit system to visit the 4 maps currently available. Survive wave by wave, using parts found to create special parts that will open locked doors and power on devices. Vending machines will give you access to power ups, which will give you a big boost, especially for when the zombies arrive in greater numbers and powerful variants. You can earn points by killing zombies, barricading windows/doorways, and helping others. These points will be used to purchase more weapons, powerups, and upgrades, to which there is a nice variety of these to choose from and find. Using the bus that arrives from time to time, offers you a chance to leave the current map and head towards to next, all the while defending yourself from zombies trying to get inside the moving bus. I found Zombies mode to be intense and satisfying, and a great choice for people wanting a cooperative experience.

Versus Mode

 Versus Mode is a mode featuring multiple game types to choose from, such as Team Deathmatch, Demolition, capture the flag, and other various modes. As you play and combat other players on the field, you will gain XP for kills, objective completions, assists, and support assists, such as UAVs for example. As you gain kills with weapons, you will unlock decals, and attachments. The decals make the weapon look different from it's original design, with different camos and other colors, while attachments will make the weapon behave better or differently, depending on your tastes. Leveling up you will unlock access to more weapons and items, as well as "Unlock Tokens". Unlock Tokens can be used to unlock anything you have access to your current level, as well as scorestreaks. Scorestreaks are special assists given to players who gain the amount needed to summon them, such as UAVs, Stealth Choppers, A-10 Warthogs, and other support. You can select up to 3 of them, and the more powerful scorestreaks require more points, but well worth the effect.

  You have access to your own emblems as well, which you can unlock decals by accomplishing the different challenges presented for each, which have lead to some interesting and well designed emblem designs by the Call of Duty community. Also alongside this is the calling cards, which are unlocked by completing various challenges as well, to which there is many to collect and unlock.

  The versus does have it issues with lag at times, which is dependant on whom the host selected is, which might be very good or very bad depending. The maps given at launch feature either narrow corridors or wide open areas, leading to different strategies and preferred setups for each, with more map packs being released soon. 

  Overall

Overall, I found the single player and Multiplayer modes to be very fun and engaging, each in their own way. Despite the lag issues and a few others presented in versus multiplayer, I found it to be overall a worthwhile engagement and fun to play, and the Strike Force mode offers a unique twist to the Call of Duty series with it's real time strategy elements. A must buy for First Person shooter fans and competitive multiplayer fans

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Far Cry 3 Review (Single and Multiplayer)

   Far Cry 3, the latest installment of the franchise from Ubisoft, offers an excellent story,single player experience, full of side missions, activities such as poker and races, and animal hunting to say the least!

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   Story

Far Cry 3's story is an emotional roller coaster of Jason Brody trying to rescue his friends and family from pirates trying to sell them into slavery. The game does a great job of telling the narrative through cutscenes and interactive quick-time events at times to be more immersing  I will not spoil anything with the story, but there is plenty of plot twists, advancement, and dealing with many shady individuals in order to find your friends. Characters such as Vaas, can really steal the show with his insanity and immoral methods. In some ways, he can really become a fan favorite for a great villian, and the other people you meet along the way are no slouch in their character.

  Gameplay

 The gameplay in Far Cry 3 is fun and offers you two huge islands to explore (the other later on in the story). There is multiple activities to do in this game, ranging from story missions, side missions, racing, knife throwing, poker, random elements such as aiding civilians, collecting relics and war letters, plus much more! Climbing on top of radio towers will allow you to open that particular part of the map and unlock free weapons for you to use later. Along the way you will encounter outposts, which you will need to liberate by killing the enemies residing there, bonus XP for doing it stealthy and without sounding alarms!

  As you do these activites, killing enemies, skinning, and so forth, you will gain XP and levels, and with each level you will have access to 3 trees of skill types, (Shark, Heron, Spider). Spider, for instance, is more about stealth and survival, Heron, is about long range take down and mobility, and the Shark is about assault takedowns and healing. Some skills are unlocked by completing more story missions, and doing certain requirements listed, like skinning certain creatures or other requirements.

 You will also encounter "Trials of the Rakyat", which are scoring mini-games with it's own theme that can be replayed over and over to get a better high score. There is also skinning, which is required to unlock better storage of ammo, wallet size, and other increases in weapon and equipment holding. You also have the War Letters and Relics, which are scattered across the islands, and be collecting enough, you will unlock  more syringes, weapons, and so forth.

 You will play multiple activities like Poker and such, and for me, the poker games were the most fun and immersive. If you ever play Red Dead Redemption's poker games, you will feel right at home, plus if you are good at it, you can make some good money! I tried the knife throwing, and it feel somewhat clunky, but the shooting challenges weren't bad for me. 

 Animals act more like real animals in this game and will proceed to stalk you, chase you, and proceed to maul you and pin you if you aren't careful. Tigers, bears, and sharks are especially deadly, but even the more docile animals can be just as deadly if they get close. You will see Tigers, for instance, hunkering down and ready to pounce on not just you, but their animal prey and other humans too, which adds to their realism. Aligators will grab you and death roll, Tigers will pounce on you and try to tear you apart, and bears will raise up on their hind legs, roar, and slash, and so much more!

Multiplayer (Co-op and Versus)

Before we head into each section, playing multiplayer you have selection to your own custom loadouts for both versus and Co-op. Loadouts are similiar in style to loadouts in the Call of Duty series, which you select your primary weapon and attachements, plus a secondary weapon and its attachments. After this you will select your skills and battle cry, and a battle cry is a shout which gives different buffs to any ally in ear shot. Upon completing either versus or co-op you will have access to Decoder items, which you will put into a decoder slot and decipher it in real time. These decoder items have XP and weapon mods inside of them, depending on item, plus sometimes you will recieve speed ups which you can gift to others in your friends list, and you can gift weapon mods to your friends as well if you don't want them.

 Cooperative Section

The Co-op for Far Cry 3 feels like left 4 dead in quite a few ways, and is its own story, happening roughly 6 months before the single player story starts. You have a rag-tag selection of characters, with their own personalities. You can use your load outs (created beforehand) and can play with up to 4 players in the co-op story, and you can choose different difficulties for each story chapter too. Each story chapter has parts of pure action and shoot em up, and at times you will have competing parts, which are minigames to where you and your friends compete to reach up points for more XP. Some sections of the chapters also have defending areas and grabbing bombs to set up to blow up a building, bridge, or whatever. Each Chapter can last for quite a while, like 30 minutes to an hour depending on how fast you run through it. If you love Co-op and have other far cry 3 friends this will be fun for you, and you gain XP and everything just like in Versus (see below)

 Versus

The versus in this game is similiar to the Call of Duty series, with game modes like team deathmatch, and a domination style match type. By killing enough enemies you can use support items to call in air strikes, a UAV style map system to discover enemy players, and can use the loadouts made earlier for versus too! At the end of a match, the best player gets to humiliate the best player on the losers team or give him mercy, depending on what has been voted on. You can do things like sharing a beer, kicking people in the nuts, beating them up, and much more, which I found funny and hilarious. The versus mode was giving me some bugs like dying spontaneously and falling through the map, but I hope they will address this soon. The Co-op is still a great choice if versus isn't your thing.

  Overall 

Overall I found Far Cry to be a great single player experience with a great story and has a decent multiplayer addition as well! If you are more into the single player you will have a great time with it, and despite the bugs in multiplayer, it is still a blast and fun to play, and I highly recommend it!

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Castle Crashers Review

Castle Crashers Video Game Review!

 Players: 1-4

Single and Multiplayer

Genre: Beat em up!

  Castle Crashers is a 2D side-scrolling Beat em up game that allows up to 4 players to play, and provides online play and local multiplayer. Castle Crashers is a fun game available on consoles and on PC on platforms such as Steam and other devices. An evil wizard and his minions have kidnapped the princess and a powerful gem and it's up to you, the King's knights, to put a stop to the wizard and his cohorts.

  The game features multiple playable characters to choose from, and each has their own powerful magics, as you continue the fight, you will level up, and at the end of a level, you are allowed to put your skill points into 4 different categories, (Strength, Magic, Defense, and Agility). Strength increases the damage of your melee attacks, Magic increases the range, power, and unlock new attacks with increases, Defense increases your health and resilence, and finally, agility increases your movement speed and archery damage with the bow.

 Along the way, you will encounter the humor of this game, which is laden throughout and never keeps you bored, along with cameos from other video games in their franchises, such as alien hominid. As you play through the game you will unlock more characters, and even a hardcore mode to keep you going with extra replayability. 

 You will find a wide variety of different weapons and pets in your travels as well, which offer different bonuses. Weapons can alter your stats, and some will even offer you critical attacks for extra damage, and these can be bought inside the shops. Pets are floating creatures you find along the way which offer different bonuses, such as finding extra health, items, knocking enemies over, secrets, and much more! Finding them all can be tricky and require you to do certain things or find secrets in the level, but keep the replayability up!

  There is also extra modes too like All you can Quaff  and Arena fights. Arena battles is a wave by wave battle inside an arena where you fight enemies in that particular level. All you can Quaff is an eating game where you have to push certain buttons rapidly then hit another button when you finish eating to call in the next food item, eat it, and repeat until you reach the top of the bar on your left side. The Extra modes are pretty fun in themselves and can be played with other players too.

  Overall the Game is a fantastic beat em up and I highly recommend it if you love these style of games and have friends you can play with too, although single play is just as fun too! If you are interested in other game reviews, we have them ready for you to check out!

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Dragon's Dogma Game Review

Dragon's Dogma Review

Capcom's Latest RPG/Action Game is a big hit!

Dragon's Dogma, From Capcom, is a great, unique Role Playing Game that offers lots of gameplay and unique character customization and player interaction. In this game, you play as an Arisen, one chosen to slay the Dragon and recover your stolen heart. 

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Splatterhouse (2010) Review

Splatterhouse (2010) Remake Game Review

Game Play

Splatterhouse (2010) is the reimagining, or reboot, of the classic arcade trilogy series Splatterhouse. Updated to modern times, this game follows the story of Rick and his adventure to save Jenny from West Mansion, and it follows somewhat to the original story, with different twists and turns. Jim Cummings is the voice actor of the Terror Mask, and does a good job of being a dark, humoring voice of the mask. The game starts you off with a quick tutorial and teaches you certain moves and tricks as your progress, so you can learn the basics of the game.

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Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage Review

Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage Game Review!

Genre: Beat em' up
Platforms: Playstation 3, Xbox 360

Game Play

Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage, is based on the Hokuto no Ken anime and manga series, and is a faithful game to the source material. If you have played any of the Dynasty Warrior series of game from the same company, then will be right at home with the control scheme, for example, using 360 controls, will be like X-X-X or X-X-Y or a familiar setup like that. The game's combat is easy to get into and you will quickly be decimating bandits and other foes alike, and by slamming enemies into walls and other obstacles you can receive addition damage bonuses and a slow-mo display of your enemies getting destroyed.

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Gears of War 3 Review

Gears of War 3 is the trilogy to the hit Xbox 360 series, and it definitely ended with a bang! Gears of War 3's story is a strong point for it, as it is full of action, suspense, and drama for the conclusion of the trilogy. The story really sets it home, and the campaign can be played in arcade mode and regular mode with up to 3 other players to assist you through the story completely. The game has multiple difficulty settings and rewards you with weapon colors and such for completion of some of the previous 2 games achievements, like golden hammerburst, lancers, and so forth. This game also has a strong multiplayer, with several cooperative gameplay like horde mode, campaign, and the new beast mode.

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Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon game review

Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon Game Review!

 EDF: Insect Armageddon
Platform: PS3, Xbox 360
Multiplayer: 3 player online coop, 6 player survival mode

Game Play

  Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon is a 3rd person shooter from D3 Publisher. This game features 4 different classes to choose from (Heavy, Soldier, Engineer, and Flight/Recon), a large selection of weapons to find, and all armors will level up from play. The game has a decent story, although it is a rather short story, but allows for multiple playthroughs, and offers a remix campaign, which changes the enemies on missions to allow for more variety, and you must play the game on tougher difficulties to unlock everything in the game and get the true ending.

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Borderlands Game Review

Platforms: Xbox 360, Playstation 3, PC
Multiplayer: Up to 4 players (drop in drop out Cooperative)
Genre: First Person Shooter/RPG hybrid


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Borderlands FPS-RPG Lootfest Game Review!

      Borderlands is a first person shooter/Roleplaying game hybrid which can best be compared to a first person shooter meets Diablo 2 style RPG Lootfest. You can select from 4 characters with multiple save slots, so you can eventually play all 4, and each character is unique and different, both in appearance and playstyle. Each character also has a unique action skill, when can be deployed at any time with a cool down, and each character has 3 different skill trees, which can be allocated points with each level up (after level 5).

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Dark Souls - Game Review

Dark Souls Game Review!

   Dark Souls, available on Xbox360, PS3, and PC, is the sequel to the hit Playstation 3 exclusive hit, Demon's Souls.  Much like it's original, Dark Souls is an unforgiving, tough, merciless video game in which you are to explore to undead land of Lordran. The game features a short tutorial to get you started in the Undead Asylum, then afterwards you are left to explore and die in the land of Lordran.

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