Games on John's Random Review

Random Review: Deadpool

Wed, 29 Jul 2015 01:48:47 +0000

I randomly got Deadpool for xbox 360 from my gamefly.com queue. I have no idea when I added it, I’m presuming a long time ago since this game was released more than 2 years ago. But it finally came up to the top of the queue, so I played it. Went in with low expectations, since it was so old…

It was hilariously awesome…for adults!

My kids love Deadpool in the Lego: Marvel Superheroes game; he has lots of funny animations, and quips like “I’m not dead. I don’t have a pool.”, and so my children will just say that, for no reason at all while playing. But there’s no way I would ever let them see me playing this game. It is brutally violent, has tons of swearing, and lots of sexual innuendos, hence the Mature 17+ rating. Playing this game made me super excited for the upcoming movie with Ryan Reynolds!

Random Review: Dragon Age: Inquisition

Fri, 16 Jan 2015 02:30:07 +0000

Simply stated: Dragon Age: Inquisition is the best game I’ve played in a long, long time. It was so good, that now that I’ve finished, (twice! After I finished the first time, I loaded a save from several days prior and did several companion quests, finished up some loose ends, and finished the main storyline a different way), I am kindof on a Dragon Age hangover. I really just haven’t been in the mood to play anything. Since I’m not in the mood to play, I figure I better write about it!

Random Review: Dead Rising 3

Mon, 24 Feb 2014 01:12:35 +0000

Way back when the XBox 360 came out (2006!), I did a review of Dead Rising. It was a great game, one of my favorites of that first generation of 360 games. When Dead Rising 2 came out in 2010, it was lost in a sea of other games, so I never ended up playing it. I did play through part of their free “preview” game, Dead Rising: Case Zero, but I never finished that either… When the Xbox One released a few months ago, Dead Rising 3 was one of the launch titles. I didn’t buy an Xbox One right away, instead I waited for the holiday drama to subside, and watched for people selling consoles they might have bought only to flip to people that were desperate for one during the holidays. And indeed, I did get a great deal on a bundle with an extra controller, Dead Rising 3, and Lego Marvel.

Random Review: Lego Batman 2

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 17:01:25 +0000

It should almost be called “Lego Superman,” as he’s probably the best character in the game :). Most of the Justice League makes appearances in the game, but they don’t have much importance in the story, which is a shame. hopefully it’s a setup for a full fledged lego justice league game? (related: why is there no lego:Avengers game?!!?)

Easton and I have played through several Lego games now, and of all of them, this was definitely the hardest. In most of the other games, you have to learn how to move the characters. In the first Lego Batman, you also had to drive some vehicles, but that’s it. Lego Batman 2, you have to learn how to:

Random Review: Alan Wake

Mon, 30 May 2011 03:10:24 +0000

Alan Wake was one of the most interesting games I’ve played in a long time. The story was an actual story. Well, it was really a story about a story, in the form of a game about a story.

A lot of companies have tried to do some kind of “episodic” game, and of any, I think this game could have actually pulled it off if it had been released that way.

Random Review: Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots

Tue, 19 Apr 2011 05:17:49 +0000

The game begins in disappointment: you’re forced to install a console game. So before I can even do anything, I’m forced to wait 8 minutes. Great initial experience there.

During the install I’m forced to watch a dude on screen chain smoke the whole time. Some of the “hints” it gave during this install (emphasis/commentary added):

konami is not responsible for any damage resulting from misuse (misuse of what?)
this game is intended for use exclusively with the PLAYSTATION3 system. (no crap, really? is that why its only available on the PS3? where else would I play it?)
cigarette smoke has detrimental effects to you and those around you, particularly infants and children.
put litter in its place. dispose of ashes in ashtrays.
ensure that you play in a brightly lit room and sit as far away from the screen as possible (except sony makes this impossible, as I need to charge my ps3 controller, and the cord they give you for that is like 3’ long, and apparently the controller only charges if the PS3 is on!)
avoid playing when you are tired
be sure to take a 15-minute break every half hour
if you begin to feel ill, stop playing immediately

THANKS MOM, for the life coaching while waiting for your game to install.

Random Review: Torchlight

Mon, 21 Mar 2011 02:32:02 +0000

While Torchlight has been available for the PC for a long (long!) time, it just came out last week on Xbox 360 as an arcade game. And it is a great game! It’s probably the best value for an Xbox live arcade game so far. I can’t believe how much stuff they fit into that ~400 meg download!

It wasn’t the best story ever, but I thought the story made more sense than Borderlands! The side quests were ok, but I think I “broke” some by going through the area and doing something before I got the quest for it. There were other things where I swear I scoured the whole level, and the thing that was supposed to be there wasn’t there. And I wasn’t going to spend a lot of time looking when there was so much other stuff to do.

Random Review: Medal of Honor

Thu, 03 Mar 2011 07:11:42 +0000

This is one of the few sequels that doesn’t have a number or subtitle. It should be something like “Medal of Honor: Tier 1” or something, as the game was mostly following some Tier 1 special forces operators through the storyline.

Like the Call of Duty series, I played through MoH on the hardest difficulty (until I saw the “Tier 1 mode” or whatever that I didn’t go back through and play). But unlike recent CoD games on hard, I didn’t see any real “bugs” with the “good guy” AI. And the special forces guys in this game could shoot. While you, as the player, still have to do the majority of the work, the computer controlled players could at least draw fire and provide cover so that you could flank the bad guys. So for this game, I don’t have to write a version of my “letter to my idiot squadmates” posts. The effectiveness of my squad did make the game feel a little easier than CoD, but it did make me feel like a good player on a great team, instead of the great player on a crappy team. However, the game not being as hard didn’t make the game any less enjoyable.

Random Review: Call of Duty: Black Ops

Sat, 26 Feb 2011 07:19:24 +0000

This is the (by my count) 7th game in the Call of Duty series. Of the recent ones (since CoD:Modern Warfare), this one had the best story.

It had a very interesting psycho-drama going on, with the main character being captured and interrogated by someone, causing flashbacks. The missions occurred in the flashbacks, not entirely in order, and interestingly, sometimes without clear beginning or end. I liked that. Several times you’d be what you’d assume 3/4 of the way through something, and then you’d see something that didn’t make sense, and you’d get shocked back to the interrogation. I thought I had figured out what was going on, but I hadn’t. I like it when a game keeps me guessing.

Random Review: Red Dead Redemption

Thu, 20 Jan 2011 06:05:52 +0000

Red Dead Redemption was one of the best games I played in 2010. Well, I’m finished playing it in 2011, so it might be the best game I played in 2011 too :). If you haven’t played it, its Grand Theft Horse, basically. Same developers, same engine. But the story in RDR was a lot more interesting to me than GTA was. I think when you set a game in modern day, you really have to get every little detail right, because people’s brains are so used to seeing that stuff, that you will notice if the cars are too shiny, or the windows don’t reflect right, and all kinds of other things just won't look quite right. But when you set a game in the wild wild west, not a lot of people are used to riding horses, or herding cattle so you aren’t going to notice little things that are incorrect.

Random Review: Assassin’s Creed 2

Mon, 29 Nov 2010 06:31:50 +0000

AC2 was probably one of the best games I’ve played this year. Most of the time sequels aren’t as good as the original, but this one was as good, if not better than the original. Yes, it was a little formulaic, and there was a fair amount of repetition, but I really liked the story. It had one laaaaaaame moment, but I’ll let it go and see if AC3 cleans it up. I thought the addition of the interaction with Leonardo Da Vinci was pretty clever. There’s also a part now where you kindof run a city in a very minimal way, so that was an interesting way to make money. Towards the end I had so money I didn’t know what to do with it all, so I wish there would have been something else to do with it :D

Why I'm buying a Kinect

Thu, 04 Nov 2010 06:26:52 +0000

Now that Kinect for XBox360 has officially released, i’m allowed to say that we participated in the beta program for Kinect, and that we’ve been playing it now for a few months. (i even got a avatar t-shirt and a 0 point achievement, yay!)

There’s a very simple reason that i’m buying it: Easton can play it. He’s only 2, and doesn’t have the dexterity to do anything with a wii-mote or an xbox360 controller, but he can run in place, and he loves to play Kinect. Supposedly, the recommended minimum height for players is 3 feet, but for the most part he can play some stuff.

Random Review: Bioshock 2

Sat, 21 Aug 2010 07:14:11 +0000

Hey, that rhymed! The story in Bioshock 2 wasn’t as quite as good as the original, but was still very good. Helping the little sisters harvest was pretty cool. The big sisters were a clever idea. the most interesting part was the part where you see what the world looks like through a little sister’s eyes. That was pretty cool. Like the first game, the art direction and theme were magnificently done.

Random Review: Dragon Age: Origins

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 07:28:41 +0000

Dragon Age: Origins is probably the best RPG I’ve played since Lunar on Sega CD. Or maybe the Might and Magic series on PC. Or *maaaaaaaaaaybe *the original Final Fantasy on the NES.

None of those had the kind of character development that Origins had though. It was simply amazing to me how many conversations a pair of characters would have in the background. I’d be walking around town or the woods or whatever, and two of the characters in the party would start bickering. so I’d have to stop and turn around so I could watch the full conversation. Some of the characters did not get along at all!

Random Review: Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

Thu, 13 May 2010 05:03:55 +0000

Recently, film critic Roger Ebert said (again!) that “video games can never be art.” He has obviously never played Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. It was one of the best games i’ve ever played. If I’m not going to say it was the best i’ve ever played, because it did have some repetitive things and some other weird issues. But this game is art. There’s no way it ***can’t ***be. As much as I respect Roger Ebert, he’s just plain wrong on this one.

Random Review : G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra

Sun, 25 Apr 2010 20:31:52 +0000

Just finished the game G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra on Xbox 360. The idea of the game was good. The execution was rather….meh.

The game is kindof a 3rd person top down/isometric shooter. but you have absolutely no control over the camera! In most of the games like this you have at least some control over the camera. you might not be able to rotate the full 360 degrees, but at least you can move it so you can see your characters on the frigging screen! there were several places in the game where you had to make a left or right turn to go around the corner. and for several seconds, you couldn’t even see your characters until the camera caught up with you! That’s just insane. Instead of having the right thumbstick control the camera, it controlled what you were targeting. I would have much rather had camera control and then use the left/right bumpers for target control.

Random Review: Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2

Sun, 04 Apr 2010 22:49:23 +0000

I really liked the first Ultimate Alliance, and the sequel fixed almost every problem/annoyance that i had with it. Ultimate Alliance 2 was, in a word: Awesome.

It’s a top-down action game with RPG elements, reasonable multiplayer, and comic book heroes (and villains!) galore. It has a good story with a great moral dilemma, which is (mostly) meaningful to the story. The pace of the game was good, the story was really good.

Random Review: Overlord 2

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 05:08:04 +0000

The first few hours were very enjoyable, much like the first Overlord was. I didn’t see much new stuff, other than that the minions could have mounts that would let them get to other places.

I really liked the original Overlord, and in fact while i was playing it, Laura was pregnant with Easton. In one of laura’s first ultrasounds, easton looked just like the overlord, so that was funny timing.

Random Review: Modern Warfare 2

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 06:13:31 +0000

Fastest review: Call of Duty 4:Modern Warfare was better.

The AI might have been crappy in the first one, but at least the story made sense. Yes, there was a controversial section in this one. But it should have been more controversial that it was horrible horrible writing. Hey, I’m standing here with a fully loaded machine gun, and the world’s most wanted terrorist and his dudes, I could end this whole story RIGHT HERE and be the hero of the world. But instead, i think i’ll let some terrorists waste a bunch of idiot tourists who just stand there. Um, no. And you’re telling me that airport cops in Russia are armed with pistols? God, i hope not.

Random Review: Ghostbusters (the video game)

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 10:18:57 +0000

I really liked it! It had a few glitchy things at the beginning, though.

You’d think that if you were making a game about ghosts you would maybe maybe write your code in such a way that said ghosts don’t get stuck in the environment. Several times i’d get to a spot in the level where nothing was happening. All of the other ghostbusters are standing around, obviously waiting for something to happen. So i had to run around in the whole level, looking for that one stupid ghost that was stuck somewhere. On one of the first levels, he was stuck between a building and a car. Other times, having the ghosts stuck somewhere turned out to be very convenient, as it meant that there was one less ghost to deal with.

Random Review: Mirror's Edge

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 06:27:55 +0000

In haiku form:

mirror’s edge, the game
it is a jumping puzzle
and that’s about it.

Well, maybe it had other things, but i never found them. I just couldn’t get into it, because it was just jumping puzzles, so i gave up. I’d just finished Tomb Raider before that, and at least it had puzzle puzzles. And swinging puzzles, and fire puzzles and shooting puzzles, etc. There are just too many other games out to play something that pisses me off.

Random Review: Fallout 3

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 01:36:13 +0000

Fallout 3, by Bethesda Softworks is probably the best game I’ve played so far in 2009. Personally, i think the world felt a lot bigger and a lot more immersive than GTA4.

There was so much to do, and so many places to go, i found myself just wandering unexplored areas of the map to see what i could see. There were some great quest chains, and other not so great, but on a whole it was a great mix of RPG and action. There were some quests that were secondary that could be completed regardless of the main quest, and then there were a fair amount of “mini” quests that don’t show up in the quest list, but showed up as notes instead…which was annoying. Some of the mini-quests were literally seconds long: a dude ran up to me in the middle of the wasteland, and said

Random Review: Too Human

Sun, 01 Mar 2009 06:29:49 +0000

Very weird game. It ended in the middle of the story. It took me a while to get a hang of the controls and equipment, and then about the time i was really getting into it, a cutscene ends, and the credits start rolling…

The lack of any kind of in game map was a giant pain, especially in the “cyberspace” thing… which should have had a better name. I mean, to most people that word has a meaning, and that meaning is not “lush green forest”.

The Xbox360 repair process got WORSE since last time...

Sat, 06 Dec 2008 23:24:14 +0000

So last night i tried to go to the xbox support website to get my 360 repaired. But the site was down for maintenance.

Today i went to the support website to get my 360 repaired. I get a useless page that tells me to fill in fields that don’t exist:

That’s awesome. So i have to call the 18004MYXBOX number and talk to the robot. Then i got a guy, and we went through the troubleshooting. Yes, 3 red lights, yes the upper right one is off, yes the power supply light is green. Tried it without the hard drive, tried it without a memory card, i’ve done this before, the console has been repaired before. If you leave it off for a few hours, it will start up and you may or may not get into the dashboard. I got in long enough to copy my profile to a memory card so that worst case i can play on jimbo’s xbox during xmas…

Not again!!!!

Sat, 06 Dec 2008 06:35:53 +0000

Almost 2 years ago (Feb 3, 2007)	Today (Dec 6, 2008)

Ah, crap.... RRoD #2 on my 360. March would be 3 years and the end of the free replacement warranty... maybe i need to buy a new one? I could just get a new jasper/arcade one for xmas for myself...but that would be sad! What really sucks is that the xbox 360 is the "hub" of our theater room entertainment center. Without the 360, there is no dvd player, no netflix instant queue, no music, no games...crap! If netflix was on tivo (coming in december?) we'd at least still have that available, but nope. And the web based "repair my console" registration is down for maintenance, so i can't even get a replacement box sent asap!

Almost 2 years ago (Feb 3, 2007)

Today (Dec 6, 2008)

Ah, crap.... RRoD #2 on my 360. March would be 3 years and the end of the free replacement warranty... maybe i need to buy a new one? I could just get a new jasper/arcade one for xmas for myself...but that would be sad!

What really sucks is that the xbox 360 is the "hub" of our theater room entertainment center. Without the 360, there is no dvd player, no netflix instant queue, no music, no games...crap! If netflix was on tivo (coming in december?) we'd at least still have that available, but nope. And the web based "repair my console" registration is down for maintenance, so i can't even get a replacement box sent asap!

Dear Bad Company Squad Mates

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 05:22:47 +0000

An open letter to my computer controlled squad-mates in Battlefield: Bad Company. I wrote a very similar letter to my computer controlled squad mates in Call of Duty 4.

The Xbox 360 NXE is pretty cool!

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 08:14:33 +0000

You can’t really tell, but that is totally a camo hat! too bad i couldn’t figure out how to put it on backwards! I already signed up for a netflix trial membership and threw stuff into my instant queue and was watching superbad within 1 minute! sound was a little quiet, picture not super-awesome, but its still going to be so convenient, given that we can’t get on demand through the tivo.

Dear CoD4 computer team-mates: shoot that guy 3 feet in front of you!

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 03:24:53 +0000

An open letter to my computer controlled squad-mates in Call of Duty 4.

Mass Effect was awesome!

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 08:19:46 +0000

For the first time in a long time (portal is a close second: portal better ending, mass effect better story), this game actually made me want to to watch cut scenes. It felt kindof like a movie, kindof like a “choose your own adventure”. Being able to choose the direction things were going was cool, while the game was “on rails”, at least there were some switches along the way to push the story in a direction. The voice acting was great, and included some big names, which was really cool. I saw probably 100 people in the “other voices” section alone. The little interactions between the crew when out moving around, or overhearing conversations as you walk through a bar was very immersive. The main story line was really good, with a few twists now and then to keep it interesting. A couple of the little details in the story really made it feel plausible. All of the main characters had backstories and somewhat interesting conversations. It would have been nice if the side missions that you do would affect the story more. I spent time doing some of them because i hoped they might.

i wanna play cod4!!!

Sun, 30 Dec 2007 19:55:13 +0000

So my brother got me Call of Duty 4 for Xbox360 for xmas. he also got me hooked on CoD4 during xmas. While home in WI, i downloaded my xbox live profile to his xbox so i could get my own ranks and stuff on live.

Now i’m home, and xbox live is all messed up, so i cannot recover my profile back to my own xbox. So i can’t use any of my saves on any games, i can’t play multiplayer anything, i cannot really do anything without starting over from scratch in any game, knowing that once i do get my profile back, i’d lose whatever progress i get offline. I understand that a lot of people might have gotten xboxen for christmas, but they should have had much worse during the halo3 launch.

The year in review!

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 07:02:10 +0000

I review the year’s best (imo!) TV shows, and Games! Follow the jump for the whole thing. Its a little long!

Just finished Portal. Awesome!

Wed, 17 Oct 2007 08:14:47 +0000

Just finished playing through portal. It was the most enjoyable ending and credit sequence i’ve ever seen in a game, and I’ve played a lot of games!

The antagonist computer chick was also one of the best characters in a game so far. Leave it to Valve to come up with a great story, and involving exactly zero human characters (although that might be “Blade Runner” style debatable!) Without giving any spoilers, i liked the style of the puzzles/challenges in the last half of the game a lot more than those at the beginning half, probably because of the things the computer was saying.

GRAW2 Review

Wed, 05 Sep 2007 04:19:27 +0000

When i reviewed Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter back in March of last year, i said this:

The AI enemies seem to be a bit smarter than the AI friendlies though. it seems that the enemies will hide behind cover and fire, but if the friendlies are told to attack a target, they’ll move from behind their cover into the open instead of shooting over/around their cover. Some sections i need to just have them hold somewhere while i pick people off one by one. My biggest peeve is that if a teammate is incapacitated right next to them, they just stand there like a dufus and watch him die. Sure, you can tell him to give first aid and he’ll do it, but come on, you saw your buddy get shot! Hide and fix him already!

What do i have to say about GRAW2? Follow the jump!

A dichotomy of purchases!

Wed, 18 Apr 2007 04:44:32 +0000

This weekend, I purchased 2 items which are almost the complete opposite of each other. While they are very different items, they have some interesting similarities! Both are going to be a lot of fun, in their own little way!

	Item #1	Item #2
It is:	Guitar Hero II for the Xbox 360	A General International Table Saw!
It looks like

For a more detailed table of differences and similarities, follow the jump!

So maybe my signed XBOX360 isn't so great...

Sat, 03 Feb 2007 23:00:31 +0000

If you’ve read the, My XBOX360 is cooler than your XBOX360, then you know how about a year ago, i bought an XBOX 360 at a charity auction which was signed by Steve Ballmer.

I’ve had some “This disc cannot be read” errors, requiring a restart, but they only happend in 2 games (PGR3 and Oblivion), and after restarting, the system generally worked fine.

That all changed today when i was going to continue co-op Gears of War with a friend. The dreaded “Ring of Light” appeared….

My "Best Games of 2006" Post.

Tue, 30 Jan 2007 08:13:17 +0000

I played a TON of games this year, on the PC, DS, and XBOX360. Here are my top 5, and mini-reviews of them.

Follow the jump for the rest of the details!

MY Dead Rising Review

Sat, 02 Sep 2006 19:27:49 +0000

Awesome. The best game i’ve played since Lego Star Wars last year. Best story since HL2. We’ll see if Lego Star Wars 2 can top Dead Rising! Follow the jump to read more specifics, including some things i’ve found that weren’t mentioned in any of the walkthroughs. (nothing that exciting… :))

Game Nerds.

Tue, 23 May 2006 05:41:28 +0000

A status page for us to see what everyone is up to from one place.

My XBOX360 is cooler than your XBOX360!

Sun, 12 Mar 2006 22:08:05 +0000

Because my XBOX 360 is autographed by Steve Balmer! So there!

I won this autographed XBOX360 at a charity auction for Clyde Hill Elementary school in Bellevue, WA. It is the pro version, with an extra wireless controller and the media remote, and PGR3 and Kameo. HD Gaming here I come!

Reviews of the 360, Project Gotham Racing 3, Kameo, and the new Ghost Recon game after the jump.

My XFire "Gamercard" hack.

Sat, 18 Feb 2006 23:09:11 +0000

With Xbox Live, you can get yourself a snazzy little “gamercard” for your website/whatnot by inserting a little html. XFire has the same kindof thing with their “miniprofiles”, but i like the look of the live version better, so i did a little hackery.

XBox Live version

A famous person's gamercard.

My Xfire version

XFire Gamercard

Specifics after the jump! bonus points if you know what “famous person” HiroProtagonist is. :p

Dance Dance Revolution?

Tue, 24 Feb 2004 21:47:08 +0000

just got one of those solid metal heavy duty dance pads for DDR for my XBox. It works a LOT better than my plastic pad duct taped to a large piece of polystyrene. It doesn’t have start or select buttons though, so i can’t sort the songs without unplugging the controller…