Skate 2 review

I will be reviewing the Xbox 360 version, so I don't know anything about PS3 framerate issues.

Tony Hawk games have been pretty much the only skateboarding games for well, since the PSX era of games. Don't get me wrong, Tony Hawk used to be very fun, but there are too many of them, and it's just a boring series now where it's the exact same thing every year. Now here's Black Box, a company that made some of the Need for Speed games, decides to finally challenge Tony Hawk and make a skateboarding series of there own, Skate.

Controls: 9/10
Instead of using buttons for the main controls like in the Tony Hawk series, you will instead control the game mostly with the analog sticks, and the shoulder butons. Left stick controls your body, right stick controls your board. Flick up the right stick, you do an ollie, flick the stick down, you do a nollie, tilt the stick slightly back or forward to do a manual. Those are just some examples of how tricks are done, it's very intuitive and feels great. I perfer analog control to button mashing. The only problem I have is that it is too easy to hold a manual or a grind. Also, when you jump right near a rail, it will move you a bit so you go on the rail, even if you don't want to, this is great for beginners, but for regular players it can ruin a bit of challenge, there should have been a option to turn that on or off.

story: 5/10
The skater you make in the create a character system has just gotton out of jail, (I have no idea why he, or she, was in jail) and the world has changed a lot, after a natural disaster, the city has been rebuilt and is now run by Mongocorp, who hates skateboarding, and you have to stop them. It's a crappy premise, but really, who cares about a story in a skateboarding game. That being said, the voice acting is entertaining, as it is voiced by real skaters.

Gameplay: 9/10
In carreer mode you have to do all kinds of challenges to get money and sponcers, these challenges include racing, trick contests, games of S.K.A.T.E, photo shoots, and more. They aren't bad, and are fun for a while, but by the end of the game, the challenges get way too difficult, way too fast, and there are no difficulty settings. Most of my time was spent in either freeskate, where you just skate around the city doing whatever you want, and online, where you can do all kinds of games and challenges with friends, or random people. You can also create spots and put them online, and try to see if other people can beat your score on them. Oh, that reminds me, you can also get off your board in this game and move objects around, though you cannot move objects while online, so they arent there at all, which makes the world feel emptier while online, though there is still tons of spots to skate. You have to choose an area to skate online, you can't skate around the whole world like in freeskate, but the areas you choose from are fairly large.

Replayability: 8 or 10 depending on some things.
The carreer mode in this game is not all that long, though there are tons of optional challenges you may want to do to unlock more places and characters to play as. If you are goal oriented, that might bother you a bit, so the score for you would be 8, if you are like me, and just love to skate around the open world, make videos, make spots, and just play around with friends, then I give it a 10. Some people say the world in the first game is better but I did not play it so I can't compare the 2.

Overall, this game gets a 8.5 or 9 out of 10(depending how much you care about career mode), it's very good, but a few problems keep it from being exellent, the carreer mode could be better, the grind magnetism is annoying, and there are a few framerate problems here and there when there are too many cars and pedestrians around. Also, the controls are a bit difficult at first, so it isn't good for casual gamers. If you are a skateboarding fan, and want a more realistic skateboarding game then Tony Hawk, definately check this game out.

America's Army True Soliders review for Xbox 360.

Oh, what to say about this game. It's a first person shooter. Well, it's realistic, not quite for the better, but still. Um, it doesn't crash your console, or at least, it didn't crash mine, that's always a good thing. Lets get the graphics and sound out of the way. The graphics aren't horrible, far from it, but they aren't very.... good. With graphics that aren't great, you expect the game to run well, right? Well, sadly that isn't the case here, the game isn't really laggy, but it feels somewhat slow. The sound is very average, the same stuff you hear in most shooting games.

Now to the controls. The movement is not very responsive. You can't go a tiny bit, you always take a big step. Another annoying thing is you change directions very slowly because you can't change mid step. This is a big deal considering you can be killed in a few shots. Aiming is also slow and feels clunky. It's hard to move the aim just a bit.

Finally, onto the gameplay. Needless to say, it's bad. The enemies can shoot you from a mile away, and they're very accurate. There's also a training mode where you shoot targets! How exciting. Oh, wait, here's the best part, the multiplayer. There are barely anyone playing. I found one match and it was already in progress, with 4 players. This game supports sixteen player co-op. Thats not possible because it seems the entire population of the game CONSISTS OF 4 PEOPLE.

Don't play this game, don't rent this game, and don't even look at the box too long, you will probably go blind.

I give it a 2/10.

Cheers,
Future42

Mythos has been shut down.

I'm a little late, but yeah, Mythos, the action mmorpg from Flagship studios is closed indefinitely. I was in the closed beta, and its sad to see it go before it was even released to the public. It was my favorite free mmo. I think there transferring it to a Korean company or something. They will probably change it a lot though. Well, maybe people will get better at making free mmo's and we will see more like Mythos.

Flagship studios is not totally closing down.

They recently reported that the company has fired most of the staff but kept the most important people. More info here. http://www.mythos.com/underground/flagship-studios-still-operating

Defend Your Castle on Wii Ware.

This game is really fun! It takes the original idea of defending a castle from the original flash game, and makes it even more exiting. Its made by the same creators as the original, Xgenstudios. Lets start with the graphics. The first few things you will notice are 1. Graphics look like they were drawn with crayons with buttons and bottlecaps glued on to them. 2. Theres no blood, while this is a bit of a disappointment, it doesn't affect the game at all, and it still is funny when the stick figures die.

The gameplay consists of a few things. Throw stick figures into the air by dragging them with the wiimote. Repeat until night. Buy stuff. Things you can buy include, health, adding more heath, archers, spells, and other things. Once you buy the converter, which is the can of paint, you can drag sticks into it. From there you can turn them into suicide bombers, archers, spell makers, and builders.

Not much to talk about with the sound. Pretty simple sound effects, I liked them. The explosions are done by people making explosion sound effects, its amusing. I never got annoyed with the sound effects.

Enemy wise, theres enough variety to keep you interested, it starts out with only plain stick figures but other enemy types are added as you progress. I really recommend this game, for 5 dollars, you probably won't regret buying it.

Review, Space Intercepter.

Heres another one from www.game.giveawayoftheday.com

This one is a space ship fighter, and thats pretty much all. The graphics are really good. Theres blur effects and good nice textures. The controls take a little to get used to, Its controlled by the mouse. The gameplay, (from what I played) was just shooting, in the first mission I had to protect a ship from waves of attacking ships, I ended up losing, partly to my bad sense of pilot games and party to the so-so controls. I would recomend this game to people who like space games, but its not great, maybe it gets better, but I don't care to find out. 7/10

Remember, this game is only free TODAY. If you don't get it today, its gonna be 20 dollars, I wouldn't buy it, maybe theres a demo. But if your going to play it, try to get it today 2/29/08.

Future42 review. eXtinction

Ok, ok, so I was checking www.game.giveawayoftheday.com and they usually have dumb games like Pac Man clones or Arkanoid clones. The site gives a different game away almost everyday. But today, the game caught my attention. The picture they showed was quite cool too. Its a 2.5d shooter. The graphics aren't very good, but I think this is an old game, so I wont blame it on that. Theres some nice blood affects too.

Now on to the gameplay! It feels sorta like a 2.5d version of doom. You go around the environment getting keys, weapons, health, power, and special abilities. You use power to use your jet pack, it recharges over time but its very slowly so its better just to find one of the power items. Enemies respawn, which I don't like, because they sometimes respawn right next to you and it feels out of place. The controls are pretty smooth. When you get more keys it feels like theres tons more enemies coming at you, thats my main complaint with this game, it feels like theres tons of enemies, but they all look they same and its pretty easy to pwn them all. The levels are too big, I was too bored I couldn't finish the first level, It was confusing to go through. The map didn't help much.

I give this game a 6/10. Its ok for the great price of free, but you could find much better free games. But if you do want this game, you can get it for free today on http://game.giveawayoftheday.com/

Tell me what you think of my review and tell me games you would like me to review, preferably a free game.

Cheers,
Future42