Shooter fatigue is at an all time high. Uninspired buck-fests drop nearly every Tuesday with “me-too” features without offering original experiences. Brink (PC, PS3, Xbox 360), Splash Damage’s new IP, aims to shift the paradigm by incorporating primarily online team-based combat with a dash of Mirror’s Edge. The game’s hurdles are plentiful but read on to see if it has enough upside to leap over its pitfalls. Read the rest of this entry »

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Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), the annual video game conference and show at the Los Angeles Convention center, and its unrelenting hype machine has taken over the gaming world once again. Tons of new games and tech dropped to a maelstrom of buzz at the show floor and online. We should be in for another solid year in gaming but there are some noteworthy trends on the horizon. Read the rest of this entry »

Fans of 2K Games’ award-winning BioShock franchise should be excited. Fans of video games in general should be excited. Known for deftly blending sublime first person gun play with eerie, unpredictable plot-lines, the BioShock series is getting a major overhaul come 2012 with the release of BioShock: Infinite. Read the rest of this entry »

Cautious optimism must be applied when anticipating a game like Battlefield 3. It’s predecessor dropped six years ago on the PC and touted features still absent in many of today’s first person shooters. A few miscues and some console romps occupied DICE’s, the series developer, time since then with varied response. Long time fans worry if the dev still has it in them to make a landmark shooter. Read the rest of this entry »

EA’s Fight Night franchise has been among the top sports games since it hit the scene in ’04. Each release touted visual overhauls and other considerable improvements that come with the territory of not having annual updates. Therefore one would expect Fight Night Champion (PS3, Xbox 360) to follow tradition. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s hard to believe NBA Jam debuted in arcades 17 years ago. The series launched arcade sports games to new heights with fast paced action and high flying, backboard breaking dunks that made Darryl Dawkins green with envy. However, Jam and its offshoots fizzled out by the turn of the century as sim basketball games gained ground. Somehow EA managed to bring the series back into relevance with NBA Jam (Xbox 360, PS3, Wii) serving as a throwback amidst the droves of super serious sports titles. Does it put up a brick or catch fire? Read on and see if this retread lives up to its name or stomps all over your childhood memories of the iconic arcade game. Read the rest of this entry »

The 2010-11 NBA season is underway and basketball heads with a penchant for gaming know NBA 2K11 (PS3, Xbox 360, PC) is the only sim basketball game in town. 2K Sports decided to one-up last year’s cover athlete in Kobe Bryant to grab Michael Jordan, widely regarded as the greatest player of all time, for its cover. MJ’s and Jordan Brand’s incorporation sets a new high for NBA 2K’s brand awareness. But does its offerings manage to live up to his Airness’s greatness? Read the rest of this entry »

The Fifa franchise has seen a renaissance in recent years. It’s widely considered as the soccer game of choice with steady improvements and solid gameplay holding down its thrown. Fifa 11 (PC, PS3, Xbox 360) may look like the same game as Fifa 10 at first glance. But there are plenty of tweaks and smaller additions that add up into a much different experience Read the rest of this entry »

The Halo franchise played a huge part in Xbox’s success since Halo: Combat Evolved dropped in 2001. Halo is still a phenomenon as evidenced by Halo Reach‘s (Xbox 360) huge launch. But it’s grip on the FPS genre has been shaken by the emergence competitors like the Call of Duty games. With that said Reach has some big shoes to fill as Bungie’s, the series’ main developer, swan song. So, is Halo Reach more of the same, inviting to new players, or an all around dud? Take a look and see if Reach is a fitting entry in the Halo series.

Starting off, Halo Reach‘s campaign takes place before the events of Halo CE. You play as a member of the Noble Team in a fight against The Covenant army, the series’s long standing archenemy, as they invade Reach: the last viable human colony in the galaxy. The story unfolds from there as you take part in a roughly 6-10+ hour operation depending on your difficulty settings and skill level. You can go it alone or invite three friends to play with you in person or mostly lag free online over Xbox Live. I’ve found the campaign to be most fun, and challenging, with at least a friend in tow on Legendary: the highest setting. The enemies seem crazy overpowered at times but they’re formidable opponents that try to pick apart your squad. The impressive visuals and fun set pieces with some twists throughout pull everything together and make the campaign well worth playing.

Halo Reach‘s many hallmarks greatly boosts its caliber. Changes like dropping dual wielding as well as the battle-rifle with its “spray and pray” tactics, re-introducing fall damage and health on top of the slow, regenerating shield makes Reach play like Halo CE in a few respects. Then the game touts new weapons, re-balances old ones, daily & weekly challenges, a customizable soldier and simple class based system with novel inventions that flesh it out. Some of my favorite new tricks include armor abilities like the jet pack and the active camo. They let you fly for a limited time and go invisible respectively. But the Holographic Decoy is the front-runner so far. It sends a body double to a location to distract enemies. Then, if you’re cunning enough, you can sneak around and get the drop on the opposition. It’s one of those things that sounds alright in words yet needs to be seen to get full effect.

Multiplayer modes are plenty with the new Invasion mode being a personal favorite. It’s a team based mode where each side takes turns attacking and defending points with a capture the flag-lite objective at the end. But much of the enjoyment online in Reach, like any shooter, depends on who you play with. Fun and tons of laughs aren’t hard to have with a team of friends. But It’s a crap shoot on your lonesome. You’ll end up with teammates that want to work together, a bunch of Ritalin-deficient kids or basement dwellers that could’ve used a hug, or a whupping, from mom & pops. Those types usually don’t play firefight: an enjoyable cooperative mode that pits a team of 4 against increasingly difficult waves of enemies. But, like anything else online, you’re bound to run into your fair share of idiots regardless. Thankfully the mute options are easy to use and robust file sharing system for game types, custom forge maps including the impressive forge world locale, flicks and pictures are compelling to mess around with when matchmaking isn’t enough.

Reach is rife with features and it shines with much needed improvements. I can’t fault it for much outside having few invasion maps, of some brief choppiness during hectic campaign fights, the inability to watch flicks in a party and a community that sometimes acts like they’re a few chromosomes short in the gene pool. You’re probably playing Halo Reach already if you’re a die-hard Halo fan. Shooter aficionados who are on the fence or, in my case, don’t like previous Halo games that much may likely find something entertaining about Reach. It’s worth it to at least rent the game or try it out a friends house to see if it’s right for you. With that said it’s one of the most complete games I’ve played this year and it has extensive replay value.

Looks like NBA Elite 11 isn’t living up to its namesake. EA Sports decided to pull the plug on the game’s launch next week after realizing it wasn’t ready for prime time. Its demo got a seismic ton of criticism across the internet mainly for it’s new, half-baked controls. Read the rest of this entry »

The sports demos just seem to pile on these days. This time NBA Elite (PS3, Xbox 360) would like to make you a believer with a sample of the game. Getting some of y’all to try Elite – aka NBA Live Electric Boogaloo – is akin to pulling teeth given Live’s track record. At any rate, I got some time to check it out recently and have a few impressions. Read the rest of this entry »

Fifa 11 follows NBA 2K11′s footsteps with a recent release on the PS3 and Xbox 360. It gives you a taste of what you’ll find in the full game with multiple difficulty settings, 3 minute halves and the following clubs: Real Madrid, Barcelona, Chelsea, Bayer Leverkusen, Olympique Lyonnais and Juventus. The demo also features some unlockables to bide your time with like the ability to play as well as play in Emirates Stadium. Read the rest of this entry »

Can’t wait for NBA 2k11 to drop? Fire up your console of choice (PS3 or Xbox 360), log on, and grab the game’s demo to tide you over until it hits stores on October 5. It’s only a sneak peak at the final product since your team choices are limited to the Lakers and the Celts. But sports demos are vital in that they show off much of what you’ll play in the final game. Read the rest of this entry »

MGM put the breaks on the next Bond film largely because the company is short on funds. That’s pretty discouraging considering how Daniel Craig was shaping up to be a good Bond since his no BS mentality brought new life into the character. Casino Royale is one of my favorite James Bond films and Quantum of Solace had its moments despite being worse in comparison. Still it’s a shame that MGM is holding up production on the next film since good action flicks, let alone good big budget flicks, are in short supply these days. Read the rest of this entry »

Crackdown sold over a million copies in ’07 with much of its success attributed to it serving as an entry into the Halo 3 beta. Those who bothered to play it found an enjoyable action game full of wanton mayhem and some loose ends. It became a sleeper hit and fans waited patiently for a sequel. Well three years later you’d think there would be cause for celebration since Crackdown 2 (Xbox 360) is on store shelves. Actually, it’s a little more complicated than that. Read the rest of this entry »