Archive for December, 2010

Impressions: Halo: Reach: Noble Map Pack

Halo: Reach has been my stomping grounds when it comes to online multiplayer for quite some time now. Initially, I planned only to complete the campaign (then my most-anticipated adventure for the year) and move on despite my love for the franchise. My ridiculously long backlog called out to me, you know. I couldn’t afford to spend hours online ranking up or perfecting the art of the sticky! Of course, my train of thought changed once I actually got back into the multiplayer grind I hadn’t enjoyed since the early days of Halo 3. When I started playing every night, I couldn’t quite stop, and thus found myself breathlessly awaiting the Noble Map Pack, the very first DLC offered for Bungie’s lavish love letter to Halo. And now that I’ve had a chance to play around with it, I can only hope their future offerings can live up to benchmark set by this set of maps.

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Impressions: Alien Breed 3: Descent

Alien Breed may seem like a newer franchise to the uninitiated, but it actually began back in the early nineties via Team17 (the same team behind the infamous Worms games). Fast-forward to today and it’s been given a new lease on life, thanks to the current trend of rehashing old franchises to “modernize” and “improve” them. This process began with Alien Breed: Evolution, continued with Alien Breed 2: Assault, and has most recently come around to Alien Breed 3: Descent, which is just as lackluster as the rest of the episodic installments, though has its moments. Despite its mediocrity, this type of game certainly could have worked as a replacement of sorts for a game such as Dead Space’s venture into the world of Xbox Live Arcade or PlayStation Network, rather than the atrocious cash-in Dead Space Ignition. Unfortunately, Team17 didn’t quite let this ambitious episodic series live up to the full potential it showed in the beginning.

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Impressions: Fable III

“Do you want to be happy or do you want to live?” It’s the question I found myself asking the citizens of Albion, turning away those asking for help in favor of defending my land from the threat that awaited at the endgame. For me, it was easy to betray those I had fought alongside for the greater good, but I can imagine for some players, those moral dilemmas were something of nightmarish proportions, and what gives Fable III (and the previous games) much of its charm. Decisions that may seem black and white at first glance might have drastic consequences later, meaning you’ll have to choose not just what weapons and magic to help aid your quest, but the direction of your very soul.

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Review: iCarly 2: iJoin The Click!

Games made specifically for children often seem to follow a very specific pattern. Either they mimic more popular “core” gaming titles and do this successfully, or they fail miserably. iCarly 2: iJoin the Click for the Wii and DS falls into the latter category. While, surprisingly, the first iCarly videogame outing was a decent offering of quick and easy minigames, the sequel’s attempt at parroting concepts popularized in MySims and Animal Crossing nosedives about as fast as some of the live action show’s jokes. It’s really a shame, especially when the show’s relatively talented cast and techno-ready world would have made for a pretty interesting variation on these themes.

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