Yes, I played through TMNT. If you’ve been reading my posts for a while you’ll know that I like a button masher from time to time. I decided to try TMNT for a couple reasons. First, I heard that the achievements were really easy. Second, TMNT brings back memories of my childhood and the original TMNT arcade games. The game is mediocre, but as button mashers go it was not to bad. I beat the whole game with all 1000 achievement point in under 5 hours. The game play is pretty linear. You work your way through linear levels until you get to a group of people to fight. Fight those people and then move to the next area. There are some jumping puzzles to get through a few areas, but for the most part it is just a matter of running and jumping form one area to the next. You have two options for attacking. The Y button kicks and the B button hits. Kicks do less damage, but they knock the opponent down. Hits do more damage, but can be blocked. For the most part I would keep hitting enemies until I was surrounded and then kick a few to give myself some room to work. After you take down 10 enemies without getting hit you active the special attack mode where it goes in slow motion and it only takes one hit to take down enemies. Additionally, after the first couple levels where you learn each Turtle’s individual unique move you can use them together to do powerful combo moves. Each Turtle also has a unique special team combo move they do. The special moves and combos keep the fighting from getting really boring and repetitive. The only real annoyance I had was the stupid one liners the turtles randomly say as you’re running through the levels. They each only say 2 or 3 things and it gets old hearing them over and over. As I mentioned the achievements are really easy. You get all of them except two just for playing through the whole game. Those other two achievements are not hard either. One of them if for beating a level without taking any damage. I got this on the first level of the game which essentially is a tutorial level and there are only 2 simple fighting parts. The last achievement you get for finding a gold coin. This requires you replay a level because the gold coins only unlock once a level has been beat once. I just played the first level a second time and got it withing a couple minutes.

As button mashers goes this one was pretty good. The easy achievement were nice. I would not have played the game through a second time or anything to grind out any harder achievements so I’m glad they were all pretty strait forward. If you’re looking for a mindless button masher or easy achievement points then I’d recommend TMNT.

I played the demo for Turok this weekend that is on the OXM demo disk this month. Going into it I was expecting another run of the mill shooter with a dinosaur theme. I’ve been underwhelmed by the shooter demos I’ve played recently so I did not have my hopes very high. I was pleasantly surprised with the demo. It seems to be about a full level of the game, but not the very first level. The graphics look pretty good but not the best I’ve ever seen or anything. The demo starts you with a partner who follows you along and basically shoots at whoever you shoot. He does teach you a few important things though. First, dinosaurs are attracted to flares. Second, every weapon has a secondary fire option. Third, if a dinosaur doesn’t see or hear you they will leave you alone. After learning these things and killing a few dinosaurs you get separated and have yo find your own way for a little bit. You find your way out of the area you are in and meet back up with your teammate. The game then points out a few other key things as you find the first human enemies in the game. Most importantly, when you crouch in grass and use a knife to get kills enemies will not hear you. Also, dinosaurs can be killed with one attack of the knife as well. The bow and arrows are actually pretty fun to use as well. After getting a few stealth kills you get to have a nice sized fight with 12 or 15 enemies. You start the game with dual pistols and early on you get a shotgun you can dual wield with the pistol. During the large battle you get a plasma gun that was pretty fun.

The AI and weapons are what have the potential to make Turok more than just another average shooter. The weapons were all fun to use and the secondary fire on each one adds a nice variety of attack options. The AI for the enemies and dinosaurs seemed really well done. For example, you can use the gun with the flares to get dinosaurs to attack enemies for you. This is just one example that I tried in the demo, but I’m looking forward to trying other cool tricks like this. The other interesting thing is that these type of tactics carry over to the multiplayer because dinosaurs roam the multiplayer maps just like they do in the campaign.

I’d recommend giving the Turok demo a try if you can get your hands on it. It was better that I anticipated and I’m looking forward to playing the full game. I’ll probably rent it since Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 is coming out in a couple months and it will most likely fill my multiplayer needs for many months, but I am looking forward to playing the campaign and giving the multiplayer a try.

I’m not going to make it a habit of reviewing songs from Rock Band, but I thought i was interesting that Official Xbox Magazine got three exclusive songs for Rock Band on their demo disc this month. I’ve mentioned it in the past, but every time I think about not renewing my OXM subscription they have just enough to keep me subscribing. Besides these three songs they also have the Turok demo exclusive to the USA and a nice in depth exclusive look at Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 last month. I’m guessing the Turok demo will hit the Xbox Live Marketplace at some point, but it is nice to be able to play it now.

The three exclusive songs for Rock Band they put on the demo disk are:
– Rock Rebellion by Bang Camaro
– Shake by Count Zero
– Sprode by FreezePop

I had some friends over yesterday to watch the football games and play some Rock Band. We played Sprode as a band. The drums were pretty strait forward and not to hard, but the main guitar part had some complex sequences that required some fast finger movement. It was not so hard the guitarist failed, but it did give him some trouble. The vocals are really high pitched so the guy singing had some trouble with it, but once he dropped an octave he was ok. Plus the lyrics are pretty funny so it we all got a good laugh out of him singing them. The one thing I found odd was that this song was not really a Rock song. It seemed a lot more Techno us. Still, it was pretty fun to play.

As a band we did not get too the other two songs, but I did play them both on guitar on the hard difficulty setting. Rock Rebellion was not very hard for the most part. The solo had some semi-complex HOPOs in it, but nothing like some of the really hard songs that come with the game. Shake gave me a little more trouble, but I still got through it without failing. I could probably get 5 starts on it when I try it again, but I was not ready for the mix of strumming and complex sections. It caught me by surprise, but one I got a little ways into the song I got it figured out. Overall, both songs were fun to play on the guitar and I look forward to playing them with a full band.

I came across this video from Portal today. I really enjoyed portal (and the rest of The Orange Box), but I had not heard about an alternate endings. Apparently there is one. Here is the video of how to get to it:

Has anyone tried this? I always wondered it there was a way to save the weighted companion cube. Seems like there is. Anyone found any other cool things like this in Portal?

I’ve been meaning to write this review for over a week, and every time I have some spare time I end up playing instead. It turns out that works in my favor for this review because I’ve spent a lot more time with Rock Band in the last week. To start off with, yes, I acknowledge that the game is expensive. The bundle with the guitar, drums, mic, and game cost $170. However, having played it for a total of 18 days in a row now I can honestly say that it is well worth the cost. I picked it up on New Years Eve and proceeded to head over to a friends house to pay if for about 5 hours with about 12 other people to bring in the new year. We had a lot of fun. We had people of all skills ranging from never played video games (let alone Guitar Hero type games) to people who can play Guitar Hero 2 and 3 on Hard. None of us there had played Rock Band before that night though and it was an overwhelming consensus that the game was great fun for everyone. The game works really well when you have 4 or more people together to play. Even if people are different skill levels. The better players can save the ones who are having trouble if they need to, and before the start of each song each individual can pick what difficulty they want to play at.

Since New Years I’ve had people over to my house a few times to play for a Saturday afternoon and every time we have a blast. I’ve also got a band tour going with my wife. Even though it is just the two of us playing it is still a lot of fun. And her idea of gaming consists of Solitaire and MindSweeper on the pc. When we first started she was playing bass on easy, but now she has moved up to where she can play everything on Medium and some songs on Hard. I point this out because Rock Band does a great job of slowly increasing the difficulty to help you keep building your skills. Most of the guys I play with had all played Guitar Hero and could beat songs on Medium. On Rock Band they can easily start on Medium and move up to Hard within a few hours of playing.

So, as a social party game Rock Band is the best I’ve come across. We also tried the new Scene It game on New Years which is the other party game that was recently released, but after a single game of that we promptly went back to Rock Band because it is just so much fun. They really nail the feeling of playing in a real band. When one team mate is struggling th rest of the band gives them a hard time, but in the end can save them if they need to.

When it is just me gaming I still have a lot fun with Rock Band playing thought the Guitar and Drum solo tours. No as much fun as playing with a large group of people but still a lot of fun. The solo tour are pretty similar to playing Guitar Hero’s campaign mode, but with better songs and graphics.

On that note, I should spend a minute on Rock Band vs Guitar Hero. I’ll start of by saying while I really enjoy Guitar Hero 2 and 3 they, by far, are not in the same class as Rock Band. Rock Band’s graphics make Guitar Hero’s graphics look really lousy. More importantly, the songs in Rock Band are just more fun to play that in Guitar Hero. It feels more like I’m playing the songs on a real guiater in Rock Band. When I go back to Guitar Hero now it feels like I’m playing a cheap knock off of Rock Band. The other area that Rock Band dominates Guitar Hero is in the Downloadable Content. Guitar Hero 2 and 3 both had a little DLC, and the songs available for both to download are pretty good additions. Yet, Rock Band’s DLC cost less, you can buy the songs individually instead of being forced to buy 3 song packs like Guitar Hero does, and there is a lot more DLC for Rock Band. Yes, you have to pay for it, but they have released at least 3 new songs every week for Rock Band.

I know a lot of Guitar Hero fans don’t agree, but I like the Rock Band guitar better than the ones from Guitar Hero. It is a little bigger in size and feels less like it will break at any second. The buttons are not raised up so it is easy to slide my fingers from one not to the next when playing on Hard. Also, I like that the strum bar does not click. For me it makes it easier to play the fast parts strumming up and down. I know a lot of people have broken their instruments and had to have them replaced, but I’ve not had any issues with mine. I’ve put a lot of hours into Rock Band already and the instruments are holding up fine.

In case you have not figured it out by now let me recap as quickly as I can: Rock Band is the best music game you can buy right now, and it is well worth the cost.

I finished the campaign for Blacksite: Area 51 last week and spent a little time with the multiplayer. I had fun playing the campaign. It was not the best first person shooter I’ve played by any means, but it was fun. The environments were mostly destructible which leads to some fun tactics like shooting at walls that enemies are hiding behind until they are destroyed and the enemies has to run for new cover. The campaign is not very long and the plot is kind of cheesy, but the developers got the amount of enemies perfect. There were not so many coming at me that I could not keep up and died a lot, but there were enough that I never got bored or let me guard down while running around. Plus, they give you plenty of ammo for the appropriate weapon for the types of enemies in the area. Towards the end of the game there was plenty of ammo for the plasma rifle which is a blast to use. You can control when the plasma explodes so you can shoot it just past the corner of a building or just over a short wall where enemies are hiding, and then blow it up and kill the enemies from behind. Also, the driving levels were not to bad because the AI teammates actually shoot the most appropriate enemies instead of randomly shooting at whoever happens to be closest. The squad controls in the game are pretty simple. Basically you just point where you want your squad to be and hit the Right Bumper. If there is something there, like a door, they will interact with it, but otherwise they just go to that spot. They also added what they call squad moral. Basically, the better you play the better your teammates play too. If you take a lot of damage and have to hide to heal then your teammates moral goes low and they hide a lot more than shoot, but if you get a lot of kills your teammates will get more aggressive and start charging enemies. Overall it was a decent campaign with a fair number of achievements to be picked up. Nothing off the charts great, but still fun none the less.

After completing the campaign I spent a little time with the multiplayer. There were the normal deathmatch, team deathmatch, and capture the flag game types. In addition to these there is one called Abduction that is essentially the same as Zombies from Halo 3. One person starts on their own team with everyone against them and as they kill people they join their team. The one game play mechanic that did not have much effect in the campaign but made a huge difference in the multiplayer was that the larger the weapon you’re carrying the slower you move. So, with the pistol out you’re practically running, but with the rocket launcher you’re at a crawl. It adds a nice balance because there are plenty of every weapon on the map so at first people would try to grab rockets, but I was picking them off pretty easily with the assault rifle and the sniper because I could move so much faster. Like the campaign the multiplayer was fun, but nothing special. After trying a few rounds of each game type I ended up giving up on it because there were so few people playing it took 3 or 4 minutes just to get 4 people in a room so we could start matches. It seemed like most of the people player were just trying to get the achievements for playing each game type and getting 100 kills with each weapons. Because of this hardly anyone was playing CTF, but there were still enough for a couple matches.

Sorry for the lack of post recently. I’ve been playing Rock Band a lot, but I’ve not spent enough time with each instrument to be able to do a good review yet. I also finished Blacksite: Area 51 yesterday and I’ll get a review of it together once I try out the multiplayer. So, in short, more regular post are coming soon.

I’ve been on this remote control vehicle kick recently. It started with the mini r/c helicopter, but those are hard to fly so I wanted something a little easier for when I don’t want to concentrate so much. So, I was thinking of getting an r/c airplane but they are expensive even for beginner models. Then I stumbled across these Tyco R/C Sky Force planes. They are essentially foam glides with little engines attached to them. I like them a lot. They are a little to big to fly indoors and they are very light so I can only fly them when there is no wind. However, they don’t take a lot of room to fly so the park around the corner from my house works great. There are only two controls which give it more power (or less) and turn. You toss them gently while giving a little power to take off and then they fly for about 10 minutes on a charge. For being made out of foam they are pretty well constructed. I crashed mine into trees and bushes multiple times with no ill effects. If you’re looking for a fun little toy to play around with but don’t want to spend a lot of money I’d recommend trying out something like this. No, you can’t do tricks or anything, but it is fun to just fly them around for a while.

So a few weeks back I picked up a couple micro remote control helicopters. Now that I’ve been playing with them for a while I though I’d share my thoughts on them. I’m still not great at flying them because they’re are not easy to control. Since buying them I’ve learned that the larger the r/c helicopter the easier it is to fly, but since I don’t have a lot of area to fly them and these can be flow indoors I’m working on getting better with them. Taking off and landing is not to bad. It is the maneuvering that takes practice. These micro helicopters come ready to fly out of the box. You just need to charge them up, which takes 15 or 20 minutes, and then you’re ready to fly. For the first flight you have to do a little adjusting so that it flies strait and does not spin in circles. Once you have that done it should fly strait up and down pretty easily. The instructions recommend getting to the point where you can keep it hovering at a level height before trying to maneuver it. Of course I did not do this at first and proceeded to crash and break my first one. It was completely my fault and now that I have taken some time to get hovering place down I can fly the second one around my living room fairly well. Even through I’m still learning how to keep it under control I’m having a lot of fun with it. I was thinking about getting a slightly larger one so that it would be a tad easier to fly, but I don’t have a good area around my house to fly it so when I found a mini r/c airplane today on sale for $10 I could not pass it up. Once I’ve spent some time with it I’ll let everyone know how it is. I suspect it will be easier to fly than the helicopter, but that it will take more room since I can’t just have it hovering in place. If you have any experience with r/c planes or helicopters let me know any tips you might have.

I watched Live Free or Die Hard this past weekend and I was pleasantly surprised by it. I was a little hesitant about it before seeing it because I was worried it would not be as good as the first two. Not that the third one was bad or anything, but the first two are classic action movies. Live Free or Die Hard goes a little more along the lines of the third movie where John McClane (Bruce Willis) has someone helping them. In this movie it is a college age kid named Matthew Farrell (Justin Long). I’m going to try and stay spoiler free and skip a plot synopsis, but I liked the way McClane and Farrell played off each other. It was a nice mixture of action and those two trying to understand each other. I also liked the little hints at the previous three movies that McClane would make in his comments when he would say things like he had not done anything like this for a very long time. Live Free or Die Hard follows the Die Hard formula pretty well. Lots of action and Bruce Willis kicking butt with whatever weapons and vehicles are available followed by some cheesy one liner. I’m not really picky about my action movies, but I do think classic movies like Die Hard generally should not have sequels this long after they are released (Alien: Resurrection I’m looking at you). However, in this case it worked well and I really enjoyed it. I’d recommend Live Free or Die Hard to anyone who is a fan of action movies. or Bruce Willis.