I got in the Battlefield: Bad Company Beta on the Xbox 360. It started today and runs for a month. I spent a while playing the it this afternoon and thought I’d share my first impressions. Before getting to that though here are the basic details. “The beta has 2 maps, Oasis and Ascension. Oasis has all the available vehicles (heavy tank, light tank, armored car, attack helicopter, and artillery) to use in a flooded desert valley near a bustling city. Ascension drops players into a mountaintop village surrounding a monastery. The beta has a single game mode call Gold Rush. This game style tasks one team of defenders with holding off the attackers as they try to destroy a series of gold crates scattered throughout the map. If the attackers manage to destroy all of the crates, either by shooting them or planting charges, they win the round. For every set of crates they take, the attackers get a boost to their number of reinforcements and a new area of the map opens up to fight over.”

So far I’ve only played matches on Oasis. The beta is having some issues right now with high loads which make for very long times searching for games to play in. I tried the option to join a quick match and waited over 10 minutes before it told me none were available. So, I then when to the custom match and basically left it to any and it found me a match in about 3 minutes. I’m hoping the full retail game doesn’t have these issues and that they are specific to the beta.

There are a few other things that I’ve found to be annoying right off the bat. First, in the beta there is no way to get in a room with your friends. You can only join random rooms and there is no option to invite. The full retail game will have an option to invite your friends, but they did not get that into the beta. The other annoying thing is there is no way to chat with your whole team. This is less annoying since none of my friends are in the match, but it makes it hard to coordinate attacks. The in-game chat is squad based . It also seems to have a proximity based chat. However, there is no way in the beta to set who your squad mates are so you just have to hope the people on your squad actually have heat sets on and they don’t have their voice setting set to friends only.

Once I was actually able to get in some matches the game is pretty fun if you ignore the fact it is virtually impossible to coordinate any kind of attack because no one is talking. However, if you can accept this and just run around on your own killing people it is pretty fun. There are tons of vehicles to use. I tried 4 or 5 different ones and the all handled pretty much like I though they would. The controls are a little different for some of the vehicles because you need to be able to shoot and accelerate, but once you take a look at how they lay it out under the Options menu it makes sense. The range of vehicles is staggering. Most of the vehicles will also allow you to take other teammates with you and have them man a gun. For the lighter vehicles like hummers having a second person is the only way to have the gun be used. For tanks the driver fires the primary gun and the rider fires the secondary guns.

In addition to all the vehicles there are a good number of weapons to use in the game as well. I find it hard to believe that anyone would not be able to find the type of weapon set they prefer. In addition to the vehicles and weapons there are also multiple types of turrets setup for the defending team to use. Sure, it a sniper gets behind you they’ll pick you off the turret before you know they are there, but that is a risk well worth taking when multiple tanks are bearing down on your base.

Another option I liked that I’ve only seen in a few other games is that when you die you can choose to respawn at your base or with your squad mates. If you reswawn at your base you have access to any of the available vehicles, but you then may have to drive 3/4 of the way across the map to get back in the action. If you spawn with your squad you come in with one of your teammates. If they are driving a vehicle you will be put in the secondary seat so you can man a gun for them, but if they are on the ground walking you’ll join in right beside them. Spawning with your squad gets you right in the action, but you don’t have your own vehicle. The one thing I’m hoping they have that I just could not figure out was to be able to choose which squad mate to spawn with. It seems like something they would have an option for, but I could not figure out how to switch which squad mate I would spawn with. However, since I did not know anyone in the games it did not really matter. It would have been more annoying if my friends were playing and I could not spawn with them.

I’m planning to spend some more time with the Battlefield: Bad Company beta over the next month, but I’m torn between it and Rainbow Six: Vegas 2. If I come across anything else noteworthy about the beta I’ll post and let everyone know.

I’ve been playing a lot of Rainbow Six: Vegas 2. Once I get some more time with it I’ll put a real review together, but for now I’ll leave it as I’m having a lot of fun.

I also have been playing more Rock Band. I’m really impressed with the in game store they added this week. If gives a preview of all the downloadable content they have and a breakdown of the difficulty for each song my instrument. It really helps me know which songs I might want to get.

I spent the last week playing Army of Two. It is a pretty short game. I played the full campaign mode, which is only 6 missions, in about 5 or 6 hours on the normal difficulty. The main story of the game takes you from training to be an Army Ranger to being a paid mercenary. Even though it was pretty short the main story line is a lot of fun. The game is designed to be played with a partner in co-op mode, but the times I was playing I had trouble connecting with other co-op players so I played through the game using the AI as my teammate. The game gives you a nice set of options for controlling how your teammate acts. By the end of the first mission I was getting pretty good at using my teammate to draw fire or sneak around behind while I distract the enemies. The game would have been more fun playing it with another person, but I still had fun playing it alone. The co-op related things they built into the game work pretty well. When you get shot to much you go down to the ground and your partner has to drag you to cover and heal you while you provide them with covering fire. Also, you can co-op snipe and boost each other up to higher levels as a human step ladder.

The cover system is pretty nice. If you crouch behind cover you automatically use it and lean out when you shoot without having to hit any buttons to enter/exit cover. The controls were well tuned and the options to dive and roll into cover help keep you from getting shot quite a bit. Also, the range of weapons and upgrades for them was pretty nice as well. Once I found a gun I liked I could upgrade it to make it more accurate and do more damage.

As you progress through the game you make money for completing objective that you use to buy these new weapons and upgrade your existing ones. The developers clearly expect you to play through the campaign multiple times because you don’t get nearly enough money to buy all the weapons and armor with one play through. Also, you can’t play the hardest difficulty of the game without playing through it once on normal. Personally, I found this really annoying. I don’t want to have to play through the game more than once to get all the cool weapons and armor. Plus, if I want to play of the hardest difficulty the first time through why shouldn’t I be able it. To make it worse you can’t skip any of the cut scenes. Even it you’ve alreayd played through that level once you still have to sit through the entire cut scene which could be up to 5 minutes in some cases.

While the actual game play was pretty fun there were some really annoying aspects. The load times were ridiculously long. At the start of each mission you’re waiting a minute for it to load. Then, any time you go to buy new weapon that menu system takes a minute to load up. Once you’re in the weapon’s menu each of the sub-categories takes another 30 or 40 seconds to load up. It was pretty frustrating to have to wait to load up the weapons purchasing menu and then wait again once you pick the category of weapon. It is not a one time thing either. Once you’re in the weapons menu each sub-category you go into takes time to load. Even if you were just in that sub-menu and switched to another one.

My other big complaint about Army of Two is that there is a lot of swearing in it. A lot of M rated shooters have some swearing as part of the dialog, but Army of Two has more than any other game I can remember playing. Not only is there some swearing being done by the main characters, but the enemies throughout the campaign swear a lot. Not just as part of the main story line of the game, but even the endless henchmen who are through the levels will swear like a drunken sailor. I ended up turning the volume really low and turning on subtitles because it was so bad. It would have been nice to be to turn off at least the swearing being done by the enemy AI.

I did not play a lot of the multiplayer because it took over 5 minutes to find a match. I chose for it to find me a quick match so it would put me in any game with an open spot. After 5 minutes it found me one. I can’t imagine how long it would have taken if I had tried to pick a specific game type. A played a few games of multiplayer and each time it took 4 or 5 minutes to find a game. Once I finally got into a game the multiplayer was pretty fun. It is 2v2 multiplayer where you and a partner try to get the objectives on the map before the other team can. To make things interesting there are also a lot of AI controlled enemies on the map that shoot at both your team and the enemy team. You can kill the enemy team – forcing them to respawn and giving you a little time to get the next objective while they are dead, but if you only get one of the enemy teammates the other can run over and revive them. So, the multiplayer requires good team work to play effectively.

You can get about half of the achievements playing through the game once on the normal difficulty setting but the rest are going to take at least a few games of multiplayer and a complete second play through on the hardest difficulty.

For anyone looking for a shooter to rent for a week or two I’d recommend Army of Two. The game is too short to be worth buying, but it was fun to play and then return once I finished it.

I’ve been playing a lot of the same songs over and over in Rock Band in preparation for the Battle of the Bands I’m participating in. So, when I saw that today’s songs were only $1 each I decided to get all three. The threes songs are “Shockwave” by Black Tide, “Crushcrushcrush” by Paramore, and “Beethoven’s C***” by Serj Tankian. I’ve not tried them on drums yet, but Crushcrushcrush is pretty fun to play on guitar. Beethoven’s C*** was alright on guitar as well. Shockwave on the other hand is really hard. I’ve finished the solo tour on guitar on hard pretty much without issue. Yet, my first try on Shockwave on hard I got 24% before failing. It is tough. The notes are all over the place and the rhythm takes a lot of practice, at least for me, to get down. Still for $3 I think these are worth getting.

I thought I’d have an Army of Two review for you all today, but instead when I played in a 6 hour Team Fortress 2 tourney on Saturday. It was a lot of fun, but I need a break from TF2 for a couple weeks now. That actually works out pretty well because I’m in a Rock Band Battle of the Bands so I need to spend some time practicing the Drums on Hard. If anyone has any tips for that let me know.

I almost was not going to be playing anything for the next 3 to 5 weeks because my Xbox 360 died on me yesterday. I got through the tutorial in Army of Two and the screen when white and the game froze. I restarted my Xbox 360 and I got the Red Ring of Death. I called up Microsoft and the guy in India who helped me said it would be 3 to 5 weeks once they ship me a box so I can send them my busted 360. However, since I have an HDTV now I convinced my wife to let me get an Arcade unit with the HDMI port since they are $280. Plus, the new Xbox 360 Arcade will give me additional 3 years of warranty. Then, when I get my old 360 back from repairs I’ll sell it to help offset the cost of the new one. So, I was only out an Xbox 360 for most of the day yesterday, but I’m still pissed about it since it is going to cost me quite a bit of money to play these next 3 to 5 weeks…even with selling my old one to help offset the cost.

So, anyway I’ll have an Army of Two review sometime soon.

As I mentioned my in-laws were in town last week so we went down to downtown San Diego one afternoon. We ended up having lunch at this pace called Hash House. For those of you in the area it is just off 163 on 5th street. Normally I would not bother posing about a restaurant, but this place was so good. I got the pork tenderloin sandwich and it was magnificent. I’ve had a lot of good tenderloin sandwich through the years since I was raised in the mid-west and about ever fair and carnival has a tenderloin sandwich stand somewhere. Plus, I’ve been to the Tipton Pork Festival more times than I can remember. The sandwich I got a the Hash House put them all to shame. I’m considering driving the 30 to 40 minutes down to get one later this week. My father-in-law got the ribs. He is a big ribs fan and he said they were great. My wife got a stuffed hamburger. This thing was huge. Two patties with mashed potatoes in the middle. I thought it sounded odd when she ordered i but when it came out it looked great. She really enjoyed it. Plus, it was huge. She literally could only eat half of it. If you’re in the San Diego areas swing by the Hash House. It is well worth it.

My in-laws were in town last week so my normal gaming was interrupted. I did play some more Commanders: Attack of the Genos and Rock Band. Both of which are a lot of fun. I also played through Call of Duty 4’s single player campaign last week. I have mixed feelings about Call of Duty 4. I’m not a fan of the controller layout. The story/plot of the campaign is great. I played through a lot of the levels more than once because they were so much fun, but I continuously found myself accidentally trowing grenades and the zoom/aim with the left trigger really bugs me. I prefer that to be done by clicking on the right thumb stick. Instead of zooming I was regularly swinging my knife around. I’m not going to be playing CoD4’s multiplayer because I can’t get the controls down. I know it is really popular, but I’ll be ok since Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 comes out in a few weeks. Until then Team Fortress 2, Shadowrun, and Halo 3 will have to hold mo over on the multiplayer front.

I’ve been playing a lot of Commanders: Attack of the Genos. Commanders is a turn based strategy game on Xbox Live Arcade. There are 15 levels to the basic campaign, another 15 levels of the advanced campaign, a battle mode, and online multiplayer. So far I’ve played a few battles and finished the basic campaign. The levels generally take between 60 and 90 minutes to complete for the standard campaign. And that is with the animations set to fast. It is not really a slow paced game though. You just have a lot to do each time it is your turn. You have to move, attack, build, and repair. The later in the level you are the more units you probably have making the turn take longer as you coordinate your attacks with all your units. In addition to your standard units like tanks, scouts, and artillery there are commander units. The commander unites have both a passive and active special ability. The passive abilities effect all the other units on the screen that are close the the commander. They do things like restore health and add more defense. The active specials abilities do things like rain missiles on all the enemy units. Personally I like the commander that has the passive ability the lets your artillery shoot one square further and the active ability to restore your action points. That way my artillery can shoot further than the enemies (so I can hit them but they can’t hit me). The active abilities take a few turns to charge up so use them wisely. The commanders add a nice level of strategy to the game. Without them it would be a simple rock/paper/scissors battle but with the commanders it adds a great level of complexity to the strategies available.

If you like strategy games Commanders is a pretty good one and with a lot of hours of game play it is well worth the $10 price tag.

Yesterday at the Game Developers Conference Microsoft announced the Xbox Live Community Games. The new Community Games brings games created via XNA to everyone’s Xbox 360s. Basically, Community Games let anyone make games for the Xbox 360 and post them for others to play. Yes, it is slightly more complicated than that, but essentially the are trying to make the “youtube of games.” Along with the announcement they released demos of 7 of the games. They have a lot more details on their site here as well as videos of how to get the new XNA based games.

I played through all 7 of the games yesterday and thought I’d post my impressions.

Little Gamers: I’m a fan of the comic so I was a little biased but this side scroller was fun. There are a lot of different weapons to choose from and there are some funny power ups. If you’re a fan of the Little Gamers comic be sure to check this one out.

ProximityHD: This is a math based strategy game. I liked it. It was simple and easy to play but with a lot of potential depth to the strategies you can employ.

Rocketball: This is a dodge ball game with power ups. I pretty much hated it. It was hard to figure out exactly how to control the guy to get him to do what I wanted. I’ll wait for a good dodge ball game on the 360 (Pirates vs Ninjas looks promising).

TriLinea: This one looks to be a fast paced fast paced puzzle/strategy game, but I could not find any directions on how to play so I gave up trying to figure it out after a few minutes. Unless I missed it they don’t even have a controller layout showing you what each button does.

The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai: This is a side scrolling platformer. It has a very unique, very bloody, graphical style. I had a lot of fun with it. There are some really fun combos and it looks like the full game will give you a lot of different weapons to try out. There few in the demo were a lot of fun.

JellyCar: This is basically a driving puzzle game. You have to get from the start to the finish by using the ability to make your car grow for a limited time to get past obstacles. It has a fun, crayon drawn, graphical style. Yet, after about 4 levels I was tired of it. Probably would be fun for kids.

Culture: This one was a little odd. You’re planting flowers on a planet while trying to get rid of weeds. It is a very simple game play concept that worked well, but it is not really my style of game.

They have a peer review proces so only decent games should make it to my Xbox 360, but I think they need more than that. To be the “youtube of games” they need the types of options youtube has. There needs to be a way for people who play these games to review them or leave a quick comment about the game. Even just a 1 to 5 scale would be fine. I would even be ok if that part was on xbox.com. If they are going to be the youtube of games we need info on how many people downloaded each one and what the overall rating of each game is – like youtube does with the 5 start system and listing the number of views. Otherwise it will be a pain to search through hundreds of games to find the good ones. That is what makes youtube great. Once you watch the video you can rate it and then on their front page they list the top rated and most viewed ones. These XNA games need that same type of thing. A section on xbox.com where we can see how many times each one was downloaded or played as well as the ratings and comments everyone is giving the games. Without this type of community based info the quest to play fun games would be a real pain.

The other thing that will make or break Xbox Live Community Games is the pricing. The prices will be set by the developer. They can make their games free or charge for them. Full details will be released on this aspect, but if they are going to charge for their games they had better be really good. Microsoft did confirm that it will be a revenue sharing model where developers who charge for their game will get paid based on the people paying to buy their game, but if your game is good enough for me to pay for it then try make it a full Xbox Live Arcade title with achievements and leaderboards.

Overall, I have high hopes for Xbox Live Community Games. Only time will tell how this works out, but hopefully prices will be free/low and there will be a good system for finding the games that are fun to play.

Mass Effect has been out long enough now that I think most everybody knows it is a great game. I’d even go so far as to say that anyone who owns an Xbox 360 should play through Mass Effect’s main story at least once. The things it does with the conversation system and combat are pure genius. However, today I want to focus on all the little things about it that pissed me off. Hopefully they’ll get addressed in Mass Effect 2.

First off, there are tons of load times. You load each time you go to a new planet. That much I can expect and live with. But even once you’re at a location and running around the game will slow down as you go into new areas as it loads that area up. Even within your ship, which is not that big, there are multiple spots where running from one part of the ship to another will cause the game to lag and have to load. Sure, each time it loads it only takes a few seconds, but it really takes me out of the game experience when ever few minutes the game pauses for a couple seconds.

In addition to the loading they have tried to cover some of the longer load times by having you take an elevator to get to the area that is loading. That would not be so bad if it only took a few seconds, but apparently in the future elevators are 3 or 4 times slower than the ones we currently use. Seriously, future space stations are not going to have elevators that move slower than I can walk.

Once you’re past the load times the inventory system could really use some help. You can only hold 150 items, and it lists each item individually. Even if you have a few of the same thing. So then, when you go to use or sell then you have to scroll through each one individually. It would be nice if they grouped all of the same items together and just listed how many you had. It would make the inventory list a lot nicer. I don’t need to see a list of 8 incendiary ammo upgrades. Just list incendiary ammo upgrade with a little x8 next to it. Also, if you’re going to multiple levels of upgrades for weapons and armor give me an option to automatically apply the higher level upgrade instead of having to go into my equipment and do it manually. For example, if my gun is equipped with a level 3 scanner when I pick up the level 4 scanner automatically put it on my gun.

I’ve heard a lot of complaints that the side quests are really repetitive. Personally, I did not find the side quests themselves to be really repetitive, but the worlds and bases they are on were. Why do all the planets that have side quests also have mountains you have to get over or around? Are there no flat planets anywhere in the universe? Plus, in the future are all caves and bases the same shape? In Mass Effect they are. There is literally only three base layouts and one or two cave layouts.

Also, if you’re going to have me drive all over planets to get to side quests that is fine, but make the vehicle fun to drive. The Mako is are pain to do anything besides go strait. Please work out the vehicle handling. Also, why does it always cost me the same amount to repair my vehicle no matter how much damage it was taken? It should cost less to fix one bent up wheel than it does when the whole thing is on fire.

Finally, the achievements. A lot of the achievements are pretty strait forward. Get a certain number of kills or play with a certain person in your party for most of the game. The annoying thing is to get all of the achievements you have to play through the game at least 3 times. Because I chose a mixed class (soldier and biotic) for my first play though now I’d probably have to play through 4 times if I want all 1000 achievement points.

I do play to play through it a second time once they have released the DLC. That way I can get a good chuck of the remaining achievements, play the DLC, and try out being less nice and more aggressive all in once play through. However, after playing through a 30 to 40 hour game twice I don’t want to have to play through the whole thing again to just to get a few more achievements.

Still, even with all these annoyance the game is still well worth playing. I just hope these types of things that distract from the core of a great game will be addressed in its sequel.