A demo for Splinter Cell: Conviction hit Xbox Live Marketplace today and I decide to take an early lunch to check it out. I enjoyed the previous Splinter Cell games but I was just planning to get to Conviction whenever I can find it for a good price.  However, after playing the demo I’m seriously considering getting it the day it releases (April 13th).  The demo starts with an intro cut scene giving you a little background from the perspective of Sam Fisher’s enemies.  It was an interesting take on filling you in on what you might need to know about the main character.  After that you play through a scene where you interrogate a guy to get the info you need for the next mission.  In many games this would just be a cut scene, but in Conviction you have control to move around and control the beating you give.  The environment reacts realistically with walls getting damaged and other people in the area running away scared.  While you get info from the interrogation it is not only the audio of what is being spoken, but on the walls it plays clips of the things being described.  It is one of the more unique ways I’ve see a game have what is essentially an interactive cut scene.  I really like how it worked and hope that you get more stuff like this in the full game.

Once you finish the questioning you get a full mission.  Lets see if I can cover everything in this level. You start outside this building and have to take out a few guards. Then get inside, disable a bomb, free some prisoners and escape. It took me a few tries to get through it all, but there is a check point system that was really great.  You never see an icon that the game is saving or anything, but when I was spotted and killed it respawned me to the room right before the one where I made the mistake.  It was pretty much the perfect spot to restart because all the previous work I had done before messing up was still finished and I could just retry the part that got me killed. The mission was about 15 or 20 minutes long with multiple ways to approach just about every area of the level.  There are multiple way into the building, once inside there are various rooms to work through and ways to approach the goals.

Splinter Cell: Conviction has a Mark & Execute feature that is really fun. After you take out a enemy with hand to hand combat you get the ability to mark two enemies and then hit Y to have Sam take them both down.  I really like this because sometimes you get to an area where you can see the enemy perfectly but just not quite get more than one lined up at a time.  With the Mark and Execute you can tag two people on opposite sides of a room, as long as you can see them both, and then take them both down cleanly.

The graphics in Splinter Cell: Conviction look really good. Even though there are a lot of dark areas there is still a great level of detail. One design choice I really like is that they use the various walls and cover objects to write the mission objectives on. Instead of starting a mission with a set of goals listed off you just get put into the game and then find out what you need to do as you go.  They also put instructions on how to do things are on the items related to them. So, the jump icon is next pipe you can climb and the cover indicator is next to the cover.  It seems like this would take you out of the game, but I found it much more immersive than just giving a generic tutorial or popping the icon up in the middle of the screen like many games do.

Like I mentioned, I’m really looking forward to Splinter Cell: Conviction after playing the demo.  The demo does not give you a lot details about the overall story plot, but what it does give you seems like it will make for a great game.  If you’re even a little interested in Splinter Cell: Conviction I would recommend downloading the demo and checking it out.  You can add it to your download queue here.

I just finished playing through Dark Void this week and I found it really disappointing. There are some really fun levels in the beginning of the game, but as the game progresses I found it more and more frustrating. You have a jetpack/rocketpack and at any time you can go from on foot to flying around or hovering, but they don’t have levels that let you effectively switch back and forth very often.  Most of the time it is either one of the other.  Which is a shame because jetpacks are awesome.

My Full Dark Void Review

At some point soon I’m going to have to start writing for my own blog again, but for now I wanted to point my few loyal readers to my Scrap Metal Review on VGRevolution.com.  Scrap Metal is pretty fun but I don’t think it s worth the $15 price. If you want to ready why here is my review:

Scrap Metal Review

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.