I just finished up playing through Looney Tunes: Acme Arsenal. Normally, I would never have played this game, but I figured the achievement points would be easy and I an in another Gamerscore Challenge. So, every achievement I can get helps. I was right that a good chunk of the achievements are pretty easy. Just beat the game and they unlock as you play. There are also ones for getting a certain number of kills and gold. Plus the usual find the hidden items ones. The others were for playing multiplayer which I did not end up getting. After completing the game I tried to play online, but there was literally no one else playing it online (I checked every game type twice) so I gave up on that part.

The game itself it aimed at kids, but I had fun playing it at first because I have fond memories of watching Looney Tunes on Saturday mornings as a kid. For the first few levels I had fun playing as all the cartoon characters and using the crazy weapons from the cartoons. After about the fourth level, out of 10, I was tired of the game. It is a button masher in the worst ways. There are a few combos but they are a pain to get. It is easier to just shoot all the enemies or use the primary attack. Plus, the later levels have really annoying jumping puzzles. I hate jumping puzzles. The first few levels jumping puzzles are pretty simple. Just time your jump to miss the fire, hole, or whatever the obstacle is. However, in the last few levels of the game the jumping puzzles have multiple parts that you have to do in a specific order very quick while enemies are shooting at you. A couple of them took me 4 or 5 times to get through.

The other annoying thing towards the end of the game was that they added a couple levels where you drive on a timed course. It was really odd that after 7 or 8 normal levels they through in a couple levels with a completely different play mechanic. The racing levels were not very hard one you figure out to just fold the shooting trigger and accelerator down the whole time. You don’t get going that fast so just gun it and never stop shooting and you can get through these levels pretty easy. Just jump any obstacles and never slow down.

For a kids game the last few levels were pretty difficult. I was playing on easy and with all the jumping puzzles and enemies the last two levels took a lot of effort. If you’re looking for easy achievements there are a lot of better games out there to get them out of. I’d not recommend this game to anybody. It is to hard in the later levels for kids and it is too annoying for adults.

I saw Shoot ‘Em Up this past weekend because a few friends recommended I check it out. I will not be listening to their recommendations any more. Shoot ‘Em Up Sucks! I knew going into it that they intentionally had unrealistic fight sequences, but seriously no one can use a carrot as a knife (multiple times even). It is not sharp enough to break skin. Setting aside the really lame fight sequences and cheesy lines the real disappointment was that they tried to give the movie a plot. If you want to make a movie that has extremely unrealistic shooting scenes that is fine, but don’t try to pretend it is based around a story. I’m not going into a lot more detail about all the other reasons why Shoot ‘Em Up was bad. It still makes me cringe thinking about how bad it was. Just let this server as a warning for you. Don’t bother seeing Shoot ‘Em Up.

I got this email from GameFly today and I thought I’d pass on the offer to all of my blog readers. For a limited time you can get a free one month trial to GameFly. Normally their trials are 10 days so if you’ve been thinking of checking out GameFly now is a great time to do that. This is a 30 day trial of the 2 Game plan.

Coupon Link

Good for: 1 free month of GameFly video game rentals

EXPIRES: 2/12/2008

If you’ve been reading my blog for any period of time you’ll know that when I’m not playing on my Xbox 360 I’m addicted to Tower Defense games. I’ve reviewed a few of them here before. Some I liked and others I did not. This week I came across Protector. Having played it quite a bit the last 3 days I can honestly say I like it better than any of the tower defense style games I’ve played before. The game has a lot of the same core components as a lot of the other tower defense games I’ve played. You have different types of “towers” you use to stop enemies from getting across the map. Each enemies has a weakness and strength and each type of tower can handles those different strengths /weaknesses.

Protector goes beyond the normal tower defense game n a few great areas. First, It is set in a medieval/fantasy setting so your towers are knights and mages. Second. after each level you get skill points you can use to boost specific unit attributes or increase your overall experience, lives, etc. I really like this, RPG style, skill aspect because I can level up the types of towers I prefer to use and make them even stronger and cheaper. The third thing they do differently is that each level has a unique map, but you get to choose which levels you want to do in which order on the map of the land. As you beat more areas more and more of the map unlocks. Also, each level area of the map shows you the difficulty and the number of waves of enemies that you’ll be facing in that area. Finally, the game keeps track of your progress so you don’t have to start over each time you play. Instead you get to pick up where you left off.

If you’re into tower defense style games then I’d recommend checking out Protector. It has a lot of hours of great play time and it offers a lot of different strategies with the skill based system.

I had not heard about Conflict: Denied Ops before today so when I saw that there was a demo released I looked up a preview online to find out more about it. The game is based around a 2 person squad and can be played entirely in co-op mode either via Xbox Live or split screen. So, from the sounds of it the game has potential because co-op is my favorite game mode. So, I downloaded the demo and gave it a try. The co-op aspect of the game is great. Even the demo allows for co-op play. I did not have anyone else to play with so I went it alone, but the game makes it easy to switch between players. Also, the make it easy to control your squad mate when you are alone. Just point at a spot and hit the left trigger and the guy will go there. Hit it again and he comes back to you. The two squad mates each have their own roll. Once is a sniper and the other has the heavy weapons. So, if you’re playing as the sniper you can sit back and send in your squad mate while you cover him. Or, if you’d rather go in guns blazing then you can have the sniper stay back and cover you. These aspects of the demo all worked well.

The demo itself is pretty short, but it has enough packed in to get to try out both team mates weapons and tactics. The weapons all performed ok, but they were nothing spectacular. All of them seemed to take a long time to reload. This is probably intentional so that you’re team mate covers you while you reload, but it was still annoying.

From here things go downhill fast. The graphics are really bad. I’m talking Playstation 1 bad. Plus, the enemy AI was virtually nonexistent. They pretty much just pick a spot and shoot at you from there. There was one point where I forgot my team mate in a previous room because I did not tell him to follow me, and I had no trouble clearing the enemies out by myself because they just stood in their spots and shot at me when I was in their line of site. I just went around the edges picking them off. The final thing that really bugged me, as if the graphics and AI are not enough, was the sound. It was bad. Really bad. The enemies would talk, but their weapons did not seem to make any sounds. Plus, you and your squad mate talk back and forth with really lame and cheesy lines. By the end of the demo I was tired of them.

The only way I can see playing Conflict: Denied Ops is if you have a little brother who wants to play a game with you and you don’t have any other split screen co-op games. This way you can play co-op split screen and have fun destroying the lame enemies. Otherwise you’ll probably want to stay away from this one.

I’m 2/3 of the way through a 30 day GamerScore Challenge. The winner of which gets a 1 year membership to GameFly. There are 22 of us competing to get the most achievement points. As of a couple days ago I was in second place. I was about 500 points behind the guy in first. So, I did a little looking around and found out that the 2006 sports games have some of the easiest achievements (other than Avatar). So, I swung by my local GameStop and found used copies of NBA Live 06, NBA 2K6, and College Hoops 2K6 for $5 each. In the matter of about 2 hours I had 2960 achievement points. Yes, I’m short 40 points from the full 3000. The last achievement I’ve not gotten yet was for winning a game online in NBA Live 06.

So, here is a quick rundown on how I got them points so quickly. For both NBA 2K6 and College Hoops 2K6 I played just a single game with the difficulty set to easy and the length of the game set to the maximum. Then, in the game I raised all the sliders making my team nearly perfect and the computer team really lousy. These two games just have 5 achievements each. They are a little different between both games so read up on each one to see what they are, but basically it comes down to scoring a lot of points, getting a lot of rebounds, stealing the ball a lot, and getting a lot of assists. Both games I won with a score of 200+ to 20. Yes, it was that easy.

They key to NBA Live 06 is to go into the roster and give your team all stats of 99. It takes a little while to do this for each player in each stat category, but it is worth it because you can simulate one or two seasons and get the majority of the achievements. To get the rest you have to create a player and then win a game on each difficulty setting. Use your super team and and set the quarters to 2 minutes and you can knock out each of the 4 difficulties pretty quickly. No, the achievements for difficulty are not stackable, but with 2 minute quarters you can still get them all pretty quick. The last achievement in NBA Live 06 is for winning a game online. Since it is only worth 40 points and I’m terrible at basketball games I just decided to skip it. I probably could have found someone to let me win a game, but for 40 points it just was not worth it when I already had 2960 points and Mass Effect waiting for me.

After playing the TimeShift demo quite a while back I finally got around to trying out the full game. I did not bother playing the multiplayer since I’ve got plenty of other multiplayer games I’m already playing, but I did really enjoy playing through the single player campaign. The ability to pause, stop, or rewind time for a limited period makes for some great tactics. Sure, pausing time, shooting a few guys and then restarting time to watch them all fall down is fun. But, more fun than that is pausing time, steeling the enemies weapon, restarting time and taking them out with their own gun. For longer range fights, like against a sniper or rocket launcher guy, slowing down time use their slow movement to your advantage to get a headshot. Get stuck by a grenade? Rewind time and have it fly back toward the person who throw it at you. I think you get the point…the time control abilities make for some really fun things to do. The plot of the single player campaign actually would make for a pretty cool movie. Here is the plot basics. There are two suits that allow for time travel. Bad guy takes one and goes back to rewrite history with himself in charge. You go back to stop him. In going back your suit has some issues so it can only temporarily control time, and you can’t go back home until you stop the bad guy. You join the rebellion against bad guy and work to take him down. Once you finally get him you can use his suit’s components to go back to your time. No, not very original , but it could be done well.

There are a few driving sequences thrown into the game, but they were not as bas as a lot of the driving sequences in other shooters. You get to drive a quad while using your time control abilities. I had a lot of fun pausing time and then running over enemies who stood in the middle of the road. Really, though, most of the driving parts were short and far between. There are also a few time based puzzles you have to get through to progress through the game. Most of them involve pausing time to get past lasers or rewinding time to ride conveyor belts backwards into deep parts of the base. These few little annoyances were not enough to deter me from enjoying the game.

The single player campaign just about the right length. The weapons all have a good damage amounts and nice secondary functions. This was one of the few shooters that gives you a flame-thrower that is fun to use. The few other games that give you a flame-thrower all seem to make the flames only go about 4 feet in from of you, but the one in TimeShift has a good range. Combine that with the ability to pause time and you can set all the enemies in a room on fire pretty quickly.

The one thing I did do that was multiplayer related was to host a dedicate server. There is an achievement for hosting a total time of 48 hours of dedicate server. I basically left my 360 hosting a room over night for a couple nights to get it. I get why the developers would put this in there. It encourages people to host rooms for their game, but in reality it would have been better if the achievement was for hosting a dedicated server or a regular room. Then I could have played part of that time as well. Instead I had to have my 360 running but was not able to play on it. Plus, given the Xbox 360’s chances for overheating and causing a Red Ring of Death trying for this achievement is just asking for trouble. Fortunately, my Xbox 360 survived the ordeal (knock on wood) but if an Xbox 360 were already having trouble this achievement would probably put it over the edge.

I’d recommend TimeShift be played through by anyone who is a fan of first person shooters. It is not the best shooter around or anything, but the time controls and weapons make for a fun game. Plus, the achievements for beating levels are stackable (like every game should be) so every level you finished can give multiple achievements.

In case you could not tell I was in the mood to try out all the demos I’ve been downloading last night. I remember reading a preview for The Club and it sounded pretty interesting. I played through the demo last night and I was pleasantly surprised. The Club is a third person shooter with a very arcadey style feel to it. Instead of a story line to play through you have a set of levels to go through killing all the enemies as fast as you can. The whole point of the being in “The Club” is to go through these arenas that have been setup for club memebrs and try to get th highest score. You score is based on keeping your multiplier and combo streak going. After each kill your multiplier goes up and you have a few seconds to get another kill before your combo breaks and you have to start your multiplier over again. The level in the demo had a predesignated rout to get through that you run along trying to kill everyone as fast as you can. The game has a sprint option to help you get from one area to the next without loosing your combo that I found very helpful. Without that my combo would have run out many times before I could get to the next person. As you go through the level you pick up the weapons that are dropped by enemies. I quickly learned that it is important to use the right weapon for each enemy. Most of the time you can use a shotgun for close range and a machine gun for medium range, but once in a while the throw in someone really far away that you’ll need to take out. Some of th guns do zoom for this, but I chose to use the rocket launcher to take out enemies really far away so I would not have to be as accurate with my shots and thus save time. The weapons in the game had a pretty good feel to them. The pistol felt like I was barely getting the job done and the mini-gun was ripping through everything in site. There are also different characters to choose from when you start the game; each with its own characteristics. The guy in the demo seemed average in all the stat categories. Personally, I think I’d rather play as someone who runs a little faster and has a little less health (assuming that is an option) because I kept getting low in the multiplier meter because I was moving to the next area. I guess if I replayed the level a few times I would know the layout better and maybe I would not need a faster moving character, but it seemed like I had way more health than I needed and more speed would have been nice.

After trying the demo I think I’ll rent The Club and give it a try. It was a nice change to have a shooter that doesn’t pretend to have you saving the world (not that those are bad) and instead just says go in and kill everyone. I got just a little over 300,000 on my run through the demo. What did everyone else get for their high score. I’m curious if the score I got is good, bad, or average.

I’ll start off by letting you know I’ve not played the Devil May Cry series before. I’ve seen it, but never played it. I played through both parts of the Devil May Cry 4 demo today and I think I’m missing why so many people lave the DMC series. I’ll admit that the graphics are gorgeous, and there are some really cool combos. Yet, I could a few things confusing/annoying. First, why do I have a gun that does hardly any damage? I don’t see the point in having a gun when using it is pretty much worthless. Second, why are there cutscenes every minute? I get that the look beautiful, but I don’t need them every time I enter a new room. Also, what is with the fixed camera location? It is not really a big deal, but it is the first game I’ve played in a long time where you can’t control the camera or it doesn’t follow you around automatically. It was not a bad, but it was different than what I’m use to. Another thing, I don’t see why I have to hit the jump button (A) to go through doors. And why don’t the doors open? Why does the game just pause and move me into the new area? Maybe that is how the DMC series has always been and I just don’t know. In anyone has played previous DMC games please let me know your impressions. The fighting was ok. I figured out a few cool combos and I’m guessing there are more I did not figure out, but even with the combos I was getting a little tired of hacking up enemies with the same attacks. Will the full game have more attack options that unlock?

Yes, that was a rambling mess, but I just finished with the demo and I wanted to get it out before I forget. If you’re more familiar with the DMC series can you please fill me in. The game is beautiful and I’m thinking of checking out the full game when it is out, but I’d like to know what I’m getting into first.

With all the demos released this week I’ve been having trouble keeping up. I got a chance at lunch today to check out the demo for Turning Point: Fall of Liberty. I’m going to start with the one thing I did like (yes, things are going to go downhill quickly). I really like the concept for this game. Instead of the normal World War II battles where you play a US/Allied soldier in Europe you play as a construction worked in New York. The plot is setup by the idea that the Nazi’s are attacking the USA. The demo starts with you on top of a building being constructed. The Nazi’s start attacking and you need to get off the construction site. Instead of just going down the building they give you a puzzle type setup where you have to walk along narrow steel beams. It is lame start to the game like this because it is not a very good puzzle, and it is annoying. There is only one path way down the building, but you have to walk real slowly around the edges of the building to get to the ladders. Once you’re off the building it is a very linear game. You work your way through the city killing nazis you come across with a gun you take off a nazi paratrooper who lands in front of you. They try to make the game better with some gimmicky attacks. You can walk up to nazis who are knocked down grab them. You can then either kill then or use them as a human shield. After the first human shield I did I stuck with using the instant kill because the human shields block about 1 bullet before they are worthless. The instant kill seemed pointless too. It was easier to shoot them from a distance than risk them getting up before I could get close enough to grab them.

The guns are setup like Call of Duty where you need to pull the left trigger to have any type of accurate shot. Personally, I don’t like this style of control. I prefer to click the right thumb stick to zoom and then only when I want to. In Turning Point if you’re not using the aim option your spraying bullets so wildly that you might as well not be shooting. The guns themselves were pretty unremarkable. They were generic machine guns with no noticeable features.

The graphics and enemy AI both seemed like they were strait out of an original xbox title. The graphics were trying to look nice, but were all blocky. The enemies had a single attack plan. Hide behind cover and then pop out for a second to shoot. Literally every enemy I came across except the one who was knocked down used this tactic. It made killing them all pretty easy. Just aim right above the cover and wait for them to pop out.

After trying the demo I can see no reason to play this game. It lacks in every way that makes a game fun. If you tried out the demo let me know if you agree with me on it or if I got it wrong.