I finished playing through the Transformers: War for Cybertron campaign last weekend.  I really liked how the story was laid out.  The first five missions you play as the the Decepticons and then the last five missions you play as the Autobots. Ten missions seemed short when I started the campaign but the missions are long so it was not as short as I thought it would be. Overall I enjoyed the story and the campaign. The only thing I had issues with is that you die a lot in a few specific areas.In talking to some friends they had similar experiences with dying repeatedly. So, I put together some tips for anyone who is going to play the campaign on the hard difficulty. Linky If you’re looking for a solid single player (or co-op) campaign to play for a long weekend Transformers WFC is a good one to pick.

I finished off the Supreme Commander 2 campaign this week.  I played the demo in PC originally but went with the Xbox 360 version for the full game.  I had a lot of fun playing through the three parts of the campaign.  They tied together really nicely at the end. The three races were similar enough that the units and tech trees were easy to switch between but different enough that playing each one felt unique. One thing I did not realize in the demo but found out quickly in the full game is that getting a lot research centers going early is the key to winning.  Because there are separate tech trees for Land, Sea, Air, Structures and your APC there are a lot of places you’ll want to use research points.  Personally, I would use all my tech points at the start on making buildings cheaper and faster, and then go on to upgrading units. But, my generally preferred RTS strategy is to turtle at the beginning, build up a massive army, and then wipe the board in one large sweep. So, getting a lot of tech going fits well with that.

The story overall was a little cheesy, but I enjoyed it like a made for SciFi channel movie.  The ending battle was satisfying and quite massive.  I ended up having to do it twice because the first time the game froze going into the final cut scene.  That was the only time it did that so I’m not sure if it was the game or my Xbox 360. Either way, when I replayed it a second time it finished without issue. The missions were not overly long either, which I find RTS levels tend to be especially later in the game, which was nice.  They averaged around 45 to 50 minutes I think.

My only issue with the Xbox 360 version is that I never did figure out all of the controls for more advanced things like setting up patrols and teleporting. All the basics were easy enough and I never had an issue winning because of the controls. It just would have been nice to setup patrols on a few of the levels.  Also, there was one level that required teleporting troops to win.  It took me a good 5 minutes to figure out how to do the teleporter once I had the troops ready.

Overall, Supreme Commander 2 was a pretty fun game. It is not the best RTS available or anything, but if you are a fan of RTS games it is worth playing through.

Splinter Cell: Conviction got its first paid DLC with the Insurgency Pack a few weeks back. I was luck enough to win a copy from Ubisoft’s Twitter account. Normally it is $10 (800 Points). It contains 4 new maps for the deniable ops game modes and 8 new achievements. The maps are fairly large. Each one has three sections for Hunter/Infiltration mode with 12 enemies per section.  So, less areas but more enemies per area than the maps that game with the game.  I liked this style of map layout because the size let me find multiple strategies for each level.  I was able to get all of the levels completed on Realistic mode in Hunter by myself, but one of the achievements does require co-op play so I’ll need to go back for that one.  All the other achievements I got solo.

While I has a lot of fun with these new maps it is hard for me to recommend people get them for $10.  If they were $5 it would be a must buy, but $2.50 a map is a little much unless you plan to play them over and over with friends. I tried playing them co-op a few times with anyone playing on Live at the time and I never did find anyone else playing Hunter mode on Realistic.  Maybe that was because of the times I played, but it was a tad frustrating.  I had a lot of fun with the Splinter Cell: Conviction Insurgency Pack and if it is ever on sale I would recommend picking it up.

Last week was E3 and I was able to attend Tue afternoon – Thursday this year. I got a lot of hands on time with some games and got to see demos of others. I’m nearly done with the articles I’ve been writing about it so I figured I’d put them all on one place since the are spread out across different sites. Makes them a bit easier to find.

Rock Band 3 Hands On Impressions

Xbox Live Arcade Hands On Recap

F1 2010 Hands On Impressions (Video)

Power Gig Rise of the Six String – Hands On Impressions & Developer Interview

Star Wars The Old Republic Hands On Impressions (Video)

Bodycount Hands On Impressions

Brink Hands On Impressions

Here are the Xbox Live Arcade games individually that I got time with.

DeathSpank

Bionic Commando Rearmed 2

Hard Corps: Uprising

Hydro Thunder Hurricane

I got to play the Crackdown 2 demo at E3 2010 for a little bit and now the same demo is available on Xbox Live Marketplace. If you played the first Crackdown then you have a pretty good idea of what Crackdown 2 is like.  It is a lot of the same gameplay but with new weapons, enemies and 4 player co-op. Plus you can unlock 10 of the achievements on the Crackdown 2 demo that will then unlock right away in the full retail game.  The demo is limited to 30 minutes and a blast. I can’t wait for this to release now.

I did not have a lot of hope for Transformers: War for Cybertron when I heard about it since it is a licensed title, but then we started seeing trailers that looked pretty good.  So, when the multiplayer demo hit Xbox Live last week I was curious to try it. After spending some time with the demo I’m pleasantly surprised.  The multiplayer is fairly deep and fun, and it has me excited for trying the 3 player co-op campaign.

My Longer Impressions of the Transformers: War for Cybertron Multiplayer Demo

I talked about Blur before when the beta was running and now that the full game is out I’m loving it.  The single player is a lot of fun with a mix of objective based races and normal races.  The destruction races in the single player might be my favorite because all you do is follow other cars and try to shoot them off the road.  Each section of the single player is broken down by race types and finishing with a one-on-one race. I really like this format because each section gets me to focus on a few aspects of the game. This leads to me playing better in the multiplayer races.

The multiplayer is still a riot. The World Tour section is quickly becoming my favorite as it is a mix of all the other game modes randomly sorted.  This keeps things interesting and fresh.  The number of cars and tracks is quite substantial. There are literally dozens of cars and the tracks feature a much wider range of layouts than the beta showcased.  You can have a lot of fun just racing and using power-ups whenever but if you put a little strategy into it you can really dominate a race.  I’ve put together a few tips to get beginners started.

Overall, I love Blur.  It is not a perfect racing game but it is a great car combat game that features races.

Has it been a few weeks already since I did the first Indie Garage post over on Evil Avatar?  Time seems to be passing quickly this spring.  Anyway, my second Indie Garage post went up today. This time taking a look at some of the best tower defense titles on Xbox Live Indie Games.

Evil Avatar’s Indie Garage – Tower Defense

A demo for N3II: Ninety-Nine Nights hit Xbox Live (download link) today. It has been a while since I played the original Ninety-Nine Nights, but I remember enjoying it.  Ninety-Nine Nights II continues the focus on the first with lots of enemies for you to slice to pieces, but it adds some special attacks that I don’t recall being there in Ninety-Nine Nights.  Even through these specials make the controls a little more complicated they overall are still pretty simple. X is your main quick attack and Y is your heavy attack.  Get use to pressing both of these a lot.  Considering the first mission in the demo I had over 600 kills there are plenty of enemies to clear.  As you do you fill up your special attacks which can take out large groups of enemies all at once.  Most of the enemies you face are mindless grunts but there are a few large enemies who will require specific attention.  If you played Ninety-Nine Nights then Ninety-Nine Nights II should seem pretty familiar with some new options.  The camera still does not zoom out as far as I’d like but you can control the angle of the camera somewhat which helps.  Visually it looks good and the game play is fun for what it is.  Like Ninety-Nine Nights before it I plan to play though Ninety-Nine Nights II when I’m in the mood for a mostly mindless hack and slash type of game.

A demo for Green Day: Rock Band hit Xbox Live today (download link). Green Day is not my favorite band or anything but I do enjoy most of their stuff and I’m a Rock Band fan in general so I figured I’d check it out.  The demo only has two songs in it, Welcome to Paradise and Boulevard of Broken Dreams.  Both were pretty fun to play on guitar on Expert.  Not overly hard but not so easy I was bored either.  Visually, the graphical style is very similar to Rock Band 2 while you are playing the songs and the menus have a Green Day theme that fits well.

My only frustration with the demo is that it literally took me longer to get it calibrated than it did to play the two songs. I tried the automated calibration and that failed to work on the video portion. So I switched to manually calibration but the sound portion did not play in sound for me to use to calibrate to.  I eventually just threw on Rock Band 2 and checked my calibration settings and then went back to the demo and set it the same.  Which still was off a little since the manually setting the values goes in increments of 5. I then had to go hunt down the over-scan option so that the video filled the screen instead of having a black bar around it on all sides.  It is a little annoying.  It would be really nice if when future Rock Band games, Green Day: Rock Band included, first are loaded up they look for previously played Rock Band titles and give you the option to copy over the setup settings automatically.

Other than the calibration annoyance the demo was fun. I’m not going to be getting Green Day: Rock Band the day it releases or anything but I’ll pick it up at some point. Seems like it will be pretty fun.