I got Battlefield: Bad Company 2 on release day and I’ve been having a blast with it.  Both the campaign and the multiplayer are some of the most fun I’ve had with a shooter in a while. It has been a few months since I’ve had a solid multiplayer shooter to keeps me coming back for more.  I started writing up my review of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and it was getting really long so I split it into two parts.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Campaign Review

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Multiplayer Review

I generally don’t play a lot of racing games.  The only two I recall playing in the last few years are Pure and Mario Kart.  Both of which are very arcadey and not at all simulation racers. Before that I did play some Project Gotham Racing on the original Xbox. Blur sort of merges all these racing games that I’ve played and enjoyed.  It is a street racer, but with power ups.  I’ve only played about 5 hours so far of the Blur Multiplayer Beta  on the Xbox 360, but it is already becoming my favorite racing game ever.  Since the beta is not open to everyone (at least not yet) I put together my impressions so far here:

Blur Multiplayer Beta Impressions

I’ve been trying out some real time strategy games on my new PC now that I have one with decent specs. This weekend I spent some quality time with Supreme Commander 2. I’m really enjoying it so far but I’m thinking I may finish it on the Xbox 360 instead of the PC just because I like sitting on my couch more than at my desk.  We’ll see.  In the meantime here are my first impressions of Supreme Commander 2.

I spent way too much time playing Toy Soldiers yesterday, but it is just a blast to play.  The way that it combines shooter and tower defense elements makes it rally fun for me since I like both of those genres of games. The controls are simple but work well. They have made it really easy to get into the game and start shooting enemy troops. The multiplayer has a couple little annoyances, but if you are playing with a friend who is not going to grief you’ll be fine.

You can check out my full Toy Soldiers review here

The Secret Armory of General Knoxx, the third set of downloadable content for Borderlands, released last week. Since then I’ve put over 15 hours into it and I’ve still got a few side quests to complete. So far it has been a blast and I expect the rest of it will be as well.  It is fairly challenging on playthrough 2 but in a good way.  You definitely have to work as a team and use your class mods wisely to make it through some of the larger battles, but I appreciate it not being easy. As always the story is funny if you take the time to listen to it.  General Knoxx is a riot at times.  I’ll not spoil it for you, but the first time you meet him in person has me rolling.

The Secret Armory of General Knoxx is huge. It has long roads and large open areas. It was clearly intended to be driven around most of the time, and there are plenty of catch-a-ride stations to help with that. To go with all this driving there are also three new vehicles. The first new vehicle, the Racer, looks almost identical to the Outrunner but it goes a little faster and has a little less armor. The next new vehicle is a 2 person truck called the Monster. It comes with more armor, homing rockets, and a much longer turbo. The Monster is now my go to vehicle for almost every situation. While it does not have the speed as the Racer it more than makes up for it with the lengthy turbo and better weapons. There are some jumps that you just can’t make with the Monster but only a couple of them. The other new vehicle is the Lancer. This is the only 4 person vehicle and it is the most heavily armored. It also goes pretty slow, but with three separate weapons it can take on almost anything. It has a laser cannon, mines you can toss out, and a blast shot that explodes outward to take out anything close. While it is fun for a few minutes to drive around in the Lancer with all 4 of your team it just does not go fast enough to warrant using regularly with such a large playing area.

The DLC brings back a lot of regulars characters from the core game, but also adds a lot of new enemies. The normal crew of shop owners are back and there are a couple Claptraps throughout The Secret Armory of General Knoxx. For such a large area I was hoping for more Claptrap variations, but the ones in there are funny as always. The new enemies include General Knoxx, midgets riding skags, new bandits and prisoners, Crawmerax, and a whole lot of new Crimson Lance including massive mechs called Devastators. The variations of enemies types is a really nice change of pace and requires some new tactics be used.  It is nice after putting so many hours into a game to still find there are new strategies to employ.  Most of the enemies are scaled to levels of difficulty you would expect, but Crawmerax the Invincible is by far the most difficult boss in the game.  On playthrough 2 with 4 level 61 characters he was level 64 when we faced him.  He is absolutely mammoth in size, he has a huge amount of health, he spawns some other pretty tough enemies you have to take out, and hit attacks can drop your entire shield and most of your health in one hit.  The first could of time we tried to take Crawmerax down he slaughtered us within seconds.  After a few times of this we started to work out a solid strategy.  We still died a few time each when we finally finished him off, but as long as one person stays alive his health does not reset so we were careful to focus on staying alive first and foremost. Even with a shield capacity of over 2400 that still took consistent effort to do.  As challenging as Crawmerax was to fight it was also very fun and rewarding.  He dropped two or three of the best guns I’ve ever seen in Boderlands. He also dropped dozens of other guns that we were able to sell to more than cover the cost of all of our new clones we had to pay for when we died.  Even before I finished all of the other missions I was already wanting to go back and face him again.

With this the The Secret Armory of General Knoxx DLC the level cap is raised from 50 to 61. To go with the new levels there are new weapons and equipment to go with it. In addition to higher level weapons of the same style as previously existed there is also a new level of rarity called “pearlescent”. These are now the most rare gun in the game and I can attest that they do not show up very often. Our whole 4 member team has found 2 so far. We have found quite a few new orange guns that are really nice as well as class mods that are for level 55, 58, and 61. They are nice enhancements and and additions to our arsenal.  In addition to adding a lot of new weapons the The Secret Armory of General Knoxx also removes some weapons and equipment.  Before the DLC released it was fairly easy to mod weapons in a saved game to make then shoot a lot faster, do more damage, or have a much lager clip.  Some of the modded class mods even would allow stacking of mods and other cheats.  For me these overpowered modded weapons take the fun and challenge out of playing and I’m glad that they have been removed from the game with the DLC.  Some times it would be hard to tell if a gun was modded or not, and with the The Secret Armory of General Knoxx now I don’t have to worry about them being in my inventory.

I’ve got a couple missions left to wrap up and then a lot of Crawmerax farming to do still, but with it mostly complete I can say that it is well worth picking up.  The level cap increase and related perks are a blast, and the overall story arc is a lot of fun to play through.  There are also 10 new achievements to pick up with the DLC.  Most of them you get for completing story points, but there are a couple you’ll have to go out of your way to get.  If you like Borderlands then I would highly recommend picking up the The Secret Armory of General Knoxx add-on. It continues the Borderlands style of funny story plots and lots of enemies to fight.

I started playing Greed Corp last Wednesday when it released on Xbox Live Arcade and I’m really enjoying it. Greed Corp is a turn based strategy game where you manage just a few units and unit types while trying to control a map.  Most matches only take about 20 minutes and yet there is still a nice level of strategy required.  I’m about half way through the campaign and really looking forward to completing it. It is nice to have a fun strategy game to play in small chunks instead huge hours long segments.

Check out my full Greed Corp review

I’ve been thinking of playing Darksiders since it released because the trailers looked pretty fun. So, when they released a demo for Darksiders this morning on Xbox Live Marketplace I was pretty pumped to see how it is.  After spending 20 minutes with the demo I quickly found that it is not for me.  The game looks great and the fighting seems pretty fun, and I can even live with the little platforming elements even though they are not my favorite.  What bugs me is that I have no idea where I’m suppose to go next. At first it seemed pretty straightforward and linear, but I got to this large balcony that only has two ways off it.  Through a door that seems to lead to a dead end or to jump the the area below which is where I just came from.  I’ve played plenty of video games that generally, even when where to go next is not obvious, I can figure out where I’m suppose to be going.  After running around for 5 minutes I got frustrated and turned it off. I don’t need a big glowing door or anything but after running around for a few minutes the game should be smart enough to give me a hint or something.  With all the fun games out that I’ve still yet to play Darksiders is getting a pass because I just don’t have the patience to deal with the demo.

I’ve always enjoyed the campaigns in the Halo series as well as the Halo novels, but the  multiplayer is not really my style.  Because of this Halo ODST was a rental for me.  The story was fun to play through and Firefight was a blast, but I’m just not into the jumpy multiplayer of Halo 3/ODST. My plan for Halo: Reach was to rent it and play through the campaign like with ODST. Bungie has not said if there will be Firefight in Reach and they have not said much about the multiplayer components.  However, they have released a couple videos that have me really excited to play the campaign.  The return of Elites in the campaign is going to be great.  You can check out the trailer and a vidoc they released below.  They are reworking the engine and graphics from the ground up which should make for a really beautiful game.

Is it too early to start nominating games for the 2010 Game of the Year?  If not then Mass Effect 2 would be one of the top nominations. It is one of the best games I’ve played in a very long time and I’m already looking forward to completing the trilogy with Mass Effect 3.  For now I’ll have to be content with playing through it again on Insane.

My full Mass Effect 2 Review

I spent some time catching up on recent Xbox Live Indie Game releases this weekend and found two really fun games, Rotor’scope and Your Doodles Are Bugged. Rotor’scope is a puzzle game where you have to match 3 of the same color blocks, but instead of the usual block moving mechanic you rotate or flip the entire game board and gravity does the moving.Your Doodles Are Bugged is also a puzzle game, but on the opposite end of the gaming spectrum.  In it you have to drawl a path for the bugs on the level to escape with limited ink to get them to the  goal.  I’d recommend checking out both of them because they are both well made and a lot of fun to play. I’ve got a longer review of each available:

Rotor’scope Review

You Doodles Are Bugged Review

Here are the trailers: