Colin McRae: Dirt Review

American Box Art

I decided in celebration of the holidays to do a non-violent game for my last review before Christmas, so I choose Colin McRae's Dirt. (Commonly known as DiRT in America)  Dirt is a racing game and the sixth Colin McRae Rally series, it is also sadly the last game in the series that was published before McRae's death.  The game was developed and published by Codemasters.  The game was released in June 15, 2007 in Europe and June 19, 2007 in North America. The single player game plays out through 3 modes. Career, Championship, and Rally World, which is a single race set up. The Career mode is set up in a stylized pyramid that has 11 "tiers", with the bottom tier having 11 different events. Each event consists of one or more race events of a single type requiring a specific type of car. The player earns up to 10 points for their placing in all the races within the event. Most events require a specific number of points within a specific tier to unlock, and thus as the player earns points, more of the pyramid becomes unlocked, moving up to the "Champion of Champions" event at the very top. By winning races and earning money the player is able to purchase cars and liveries (skins) for the cars. In total there are 46 different cars and 186 liveries. The amount of money earned is based on the difficulty level picked by the player when selecting the event; higher difficulty levels have more challenging AI opponents and more realistic damage effects. Completed events can be repeated at any time, although unless challenged at a higher difficulty level, the player will earn significantly less money than when they first raced it. In Rally events with multiple races, the player has the opportunity to repair damage between races, but is only allotted 60 minutes of damage repair at each point based on time estimates to fix each component of the car. Championship mode offers up a series of races in which the player's combined time throughout each stage is cumulative. Multiplayer allows the player to race up to 100 other players in rally races through solo competition, as there are no other cars, ghosts or players present on the track. Fastest time determines who wins. DiRT is a good racing game overall and its sad that Colin McRae died and with him, the series.  Hope you have enjoyed this post and I will see you in two weeks. MERRY CHRISTMAS!!! This has been Jacob Arnold, signing off. 

Left 4 Dead Review & Storyline

Left 4 Dead box art

Honestly by my opinion one of the best zombie games of all time, Left 4 Dead has received numerous awards and still immensely played throughout the planet. Released in November 2008. developed by Turtle Rock Stories, but purchased by Valve during development, and also published by Valve.  Left 4 Dead (abbreviated as L4D) is a cooperative first-person shooter arcade-style video game. The game uses Valve's proprietary Source engine, and is available for Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360 and Mac OS X. Development on the game was completed on November 13, 2008, and two versions were released digitally: A downloadable digital version, released on November 17, 2008, and a digital retail disc version, with a release date determined by region. The digital retail disc version was released in North America and Australia on November 18, 2008; and in Europe and Japan on November 21, 2008. Set during the aftermath of an apocalyptic pandemic, the game pits its four protagonists—dubbed the "Survivors"—against hordes of the infected. There are four game modes: a single-player mode in which allied characters are controlled by AI; a four-player, co-op campaign mode; an eight-player online versus mode; and a four-player survival mode. In all modes, an artificial intelligence (AI), dubbed the "Director", controls level pacing and item placements, in an attempt to create a dynamic experience and increase replay value.  One of the first experiences like, this makes the difficult and fun at the same time, making you constantly having to think outside box in order to survive.  Pennsylvania suffers an outbreak of "Green Flu"; a highly contagious virus causing extreme aggression, mutation to the body cells, and loss of higher brain functions. Two weeks after the infection four immune survivors—Bill, a Vietnam veteran; Zoey, a college student; Louis, an IT analyst, and Francis, an outlaw biker—make their way through the city of Fairfield, only to discover that the virus is creating more dangerous mutations. After narrowly avoiding these new infected, along with hordes of others, the survivors are alerted to the presence of an evacuation point at the nearby Mercy Hospital roof by a passing helicopter. Fighting their way through the city's streets, subway and sewers, they are rescued from the hospital's roof by the pilot, only to discover he is infected.  When Zoey is forced to kill him, the helicopter crash lands in an industrial district outside the city. Finding an armored delivery truck, the group uses it to make their way to the town of Riverside. However, they find the road blocked, and travel the rest of the way on foot. After an encounter with an infected lunatic in the local church, they discover that the town is overrun, and decide to head to a nearby boathouse for rescue. Contacting a small fishing vessel, they manage to reach the city of Newburg on the other side of the river, only to find much of it in flames. Seeking cover in a large greenhouse, their rest is interrupted when a military C-130 passes overhead, leading the survivors to travel through the city's business district towards Metro International Airport. Upon arrival, the group see that in an attempt to contain the infection, the military had bombed the airport while infected pilots crash planes in an attempt to land; the runway however is largely intact, allowing the survivors to fuel up and escape in a waiting C-130. Despite this apparent rescue, it crashes as well, and the survivors once again find themselves alone on the outskirts of Allegheny National Forest. Following a series of train tracks through the area, the group find themselves at a functioning, but abandoned, military outpost. After answering a radio transmission, the survivors make their final stand against hordes of infected, before a military APC arrives to transport them to Northeast Safe Zone Echo, supposedly the only uninfected area yet to be overrun. Instead, they are kept at a military installation and informed that even though they are immune, they still carry the virus. They are temporarily held by the military before the base is overrun with infected. The four escape via train and travel south at Bill's insistence; Bill believes that they can find long-term safety from the infected on the islands of the Florida Keys. At the portside town of Rayford, they find a boat but must raise an old rusty bridge powered by an aging generator to get the boat into open waters, assured that the machinery noise will alert a large horde. Bill sacrifices himself in order to restart a generator when the lift jams, so that the others may reach safety.  So for me I wanted to cry when Bill died, him being awesome as he is.  So Bill's tale ends here for the greater good.  Overall the game is awesome and never gets old, the zombie better is Left 4 Dead 2, which I might do a blog on next year.  So I hope you enjoyed this and I'll see you Thursday.  This has been Jacob Arnold, signing off. 

UK Introduction Teaser Trailer   

The Impossible Game Review

The Impossible Game Logo

The Impossible Game is a Xbox Indie Game and a App for the iPhone that was released November 23, 2009 for Xbox, couldn't find out when iPhone version was released. The game was developed by FlukeDuke and is an Indie Game, meaning that it wasn't published by a company, just made by a single person. The iPhone version was remade into a small compact version by cocos2d which is my favorite app of all time. Gameplay is really simple and straightforward it just consists of an automatically fast moving square through a level and while you make your square jump over smashing objects the game becomes more and more exciting and interesting. As the name already tells you, the game is really impossible and when you fail, and believe me you will undoubtedly fail, you will be more excited to start over and over again. There is a practice mode, so starting this mode you can place flags down as you progress through the level so you could restart from your last dropped flag. Although, the thing that makes this game really impossible is that if you do not play in a practice mode but you must beat all the levels from start to finish only with one life. It takes a lot of practice and motivation to accomplish. Impossible Game is known as the “Insanely Addictive” – the music consists of techno beats and it increases your focus as well as the tension. The soundtrack is synced with the game to make it ever more suspenseful  Each time you start the game you will experience something new and harder. However, if you are a person who is capable of beating the Impossible Game levels, then you are definitely an exceptional one. l You will feel you have beaten something amazingly difficult that only a few could do globally (just kidding, but it really is hard to beat the game). The Impossible Game is available on the Xbox Market Place for only 80 Microsoft points and $.99 on the Apple App Store. Hope you enjoy it and I'll see you next week. This has been Jacob Arnold, signing off.

Lot harder than it looks, trust me

                                                      

Half-Life Review & Storyline

Half-Life box art

I think PC gaming really got going when Half-Life came out. A Valve game released for Microsoft Windows November 19, 1998 in America. Published and developed by Sierra Entertainment. As of 14 July 2006, the Half-Life franchise has sold over 20 million units. Half-Life was followed by the 2004 sequel Half-Life 2, which also received critical acclaim and praise. Half-Life has had a notable cultural impact with its community mods and sequels spawning a large fanbase and other praising communities. Half-Life is a first-person shooter that requires the player to perform combat tasks and puzzle solving to advance through the game. Unlike its peers at the time, Half-Life used scripted sequences, such as a Bullsquid ramming down a door, to advance major plot points. Compared to most first-person shooters of the time, which relied on cut-scenes to detail their plotlines, Half-Life's story is told entirely by means of scripted sequences, keeping the player in control of the first-person viewpoint. In line with this, the game has no cut-scenes, and the player rarely loses the ability to control Gordon, who never speaks and is never actually seen in the game; the player sees "through his eyes" for the entire length of the game. Half-Life has no "levels"; it instead divides the game by chapters, whose titles flash on the screen as the player moves through the game, I do miss cutscenes though. Progress through the world is continuous, except for breaks for loading and when the game has to save. The game regularly integrates puzzles, such as navigating a maze of conveyor belts, (which is a pain) or using nearby boxes to build a small staircase to the next area the player must travel to, also annoying. Some puzzles involve using the environment to kill an enemy, like turning on a steam valve to spray hot steam at their enemies. There are few "bosses" in the conventional sense, where the player defeats a superior opponent by direct confrontation. Instead, such organisms occasionally define chapters, and the player is generally expected to use the terrain, rather than firepower, to kill the "boss". Late in the game, the player receives a "long jump module" for the HEV suit, which allows the player to increase the horizontal distance and speed of jumps by crouching before jumping. The player must rely on this ability to navigate various platformer-stylejumping puzzles in Xen toward the end of the game. The game is entirely campaign with no multiplayer, which is fine cause this is a really long game. Most of the game's setting takes place in a remote desert area of New Mexico in the Black Mesa Research Facility, a fictional complex that bears many similarities to both the Los Alamos National Laboratory and Area 51, at some point between the years 2000 and 2009. The game's protagonist is the theoretical physicist Gordon Freeman, an MIT graduate. While I personally think is cool, that you get to be someone that hasn't had years of combat experience or handled a gun before, its a new experience Freeman becomes one of the survivors of an experiment at Black Mesa that goes horribly wrong, when an unexpected "resonance cascade"—a fictitious phenomenon —rips dimensional seams, devastating the facility. Aliens from another dimension known as Xen subsequently enter the facility through these dimensional seams (an event known as the "Black Mesa incident"). As Freeman tries to make his way out of the ruined facility, he soon discovers that he is caught between two sides: the hostile aliens and the Hazardous Environment Combat Unit, a U.S. Marine Corps special operations unit dispatched to cover up the incident by eliminating the organisms, as well as Dr. Freeman and the other surviving Black Mesa personnel. Throughout the game, a mysterious figure known (but not actually referred to in-game) as the "G-Man" regularly appears, and seems to be monitoring Freeman's progress. Ultimately, Freeman uses the cooperation of surviving scientists and security officers to work his way towards the mysterious "Lambda Complex" of Black Mesa (signified with the Greek "λ" character), where a team of survivors teleport him to the alien world Xen to kill the Nihilanth, the semi-physical entity keeping Xen's side of the dimensional rift open, really complicated to explain.  The rest is history, which you can find out for yourself, you can get the game on Steam for $9.99 or get the Playstation 2 version, which I haven't played personally. Hope you've enjoyed and I will see you Thursday. This has been Jacob Arnold, signing off. 

Official 1998 Gamespot Trailer 

Halo: Combat Evolved Review & Storyline

Halo 4 came out today and I'm looking forward to it.  Even though it looks awesome I am still bent on the fact that 343 Industries is making it instead of my beloved Bungie, who I still miss. For those of you who do not know the last six Halo games have been made by Bungie; and they did an awesome job at making every single one.  So in memory of their awesome games, I decided to begin where it all started; Halo: Combat Evolved.  The first installment in the Halo franchise caught the world by surprise, but was quickly welcomed with open arms. Selling a record-breaking high of over five million copies worldwide by November 9, 2005, the highest sold video game of its time.  Developed by Bungie and published by Microsoft Studios. Bungie is responsible for the last six game Halo games, but for an unknown reason handed over the reigns of the series to 343 Industries about a year ago, and if your a die-hard-Halo-fan like me, I was saddened by this.  343 looks likes it shows some promise, but I don't think their ever going to be able to fit into Bungie's shoes all the way.  They are more than likely making Halo 4 because they want to make a name for themselves, but its gonna be pretty damn hard to make it better than Halo: Reach.  But I gotta give them credit for going all or nothing like this, they are either going to receive love or hate from the long time fans of the series, including me.  Anyway about the game.  Halo is set in the twenty-sixth century, with the gamer assuming the role of the Master Chief, a cybernetically enhanced supersoldier part of the Spartan II program, he is also supposedly the last Spartan alive.  The player is accompanied by Cortana, an artificial intelligence who occupies the Chief's neural interface.  Players battle various aliens of the Covenant as you attempt to uncover the secrets of the mysterious Halo, a ring-shaped artificial world.  The game has an awesome story, award-winning mutiplayer and never gets old.  Beginning immediately after the events of Halo:  Reach, the game opens up as the Pillar of Autumn exits slipspace near a mysterious ring-shaped artificial world, called "Halo" by the enemy of the game, the Covenant.  Also in-lies the title of the game and why its named Halo.  A Covenant fleet attacks and heavily damages the Autumn.  Captain Keyes initiates "The Cole Protocol", a procedure designed to keep the Covenant from finding Earth, in which could find out by capturing Cortana.  Thus, to prevent this he orders Master Chief to escape with Cortana and protect her at all costs.  While Keyes prepares to land the ship on Halo, Chief and Cortana escape via escape pod, which then crash lands on the ring. Cortana and Master Chief are the only ones who survive the impact of the escape pod crash.  Keyes survives the  Autumn's crash landing. but is captured by the Covenant.  In the second and third level of the game, the Chief and Cortana gather human survivors and rescue Captain Keyes, who is imprisoned aboard the Covenant ship Truth and Reconciliation.  Once rescued, Keyes orders the Chief to beat the Covenant to Halo's control center and to discover what the Covenant want with Halo.  Chief and Cortana travel to a map room called the Silent Cartographer, which leads them to the control room.  There, Cortana enters the systems and, discovering something urgent, suddenly sends the Master Chief to find Captain Keyes while she stays behind.  While searching for his commander, the Chief learns that the Covenant have accidentally released the Flood, a parasitic alien race capable of spreading itself by overwhelming and infesting other sentient life-forms. Keyes falls victim to them while looking for a cache of weapons.  The release of the Flood prompts Halo's AI monitor, 343 Guilty Spark, to recruit Master Chief in retrieving the Index, a device that will active Halo and prevent the Flood from spreading beyond the facility.  After the Chief retrieves and prepares to use the Index, Cortana re-appear and warns him against the activation.  She has discovered that Halo's defense system is a weapon designed to kill all sentient life in the galaxy, which the Flood requires to spread, a revelation which Guilty Spark confirms.  Faced with this information, the Master Chief and Cortana decide to destroy Halo to prevent its activation.  While fighting the Flood, the Covenant, and Guilty Spark's Sentinels , Cortana discovers that the best way to prevent its activation is to cause the crashed Pillar of Autumn to self-destruct.  However, Captain Keyes' authorization is required to destroy the Autumn, forcing the Chief and Cortana to return to the now-Flood-infested Truth and Reconciliation to search for him.  By the time that they reach Keyes, however, he has been infected beyond the piont of no return by the Flood.  The Master Chief retrieves Keyes' neural implants directly from his brain and retreats to the Autumn, where Cortana activates the ships self-destruct sequence.  However, 343 Guilty Spark reappears and deactivates the countdown, discovering the record of human history in the process.  The manually destabilizes the Pillar of Autumn's fusion reactors, and he and Cortana narrowly escape the destruction of Halo via a long sword.  Outside the campaign you could team up with friends, although considering that Xbox Live did not exist, you had to team up with friends on a LAN party.  Overall the game is awesome and is still available as an Original on the Xbox Live Marketplace.  I'd also like to say thanks to Bungie for making these last ten years of Halo awesome all the way and I'm gonna miss you guys.  So get the game, start where it all began, remember all the good times, and hopefully look forward to more good memories.  Heirs to the next ten years of Halo.  Farewell and see you Thursday.  This has been Jacob Arnold, signing off.    

Halo Combat Evolved: E3 2000 Trailer

Star Wars: Battlefront II Review

If you haven't heard already, a new Star Wars movie is coming out, which I completely mortified about.  I know most of you are all exited about this announcement, but I'm not.  This is just like the Call of Duty Black Ops II and Halo 4 situation: they just don't want to let it die when they should.  We can all agree that Star Wars had one hell of a run and it's time to just look back and smile at the past, not frown at the future.   All the actors are older or have passed, which will not allow them to build off the original plot cause Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford are too old to resume their former characters.  It also means that they might try to make a new story line with a new hero and on top of all this crap Disney's making it!  Disney!  Look when I was six I loved The Lion King and Aladdin, but come on, it wont be the same as when Lucas Films was making it, which also means George Lucas isn't even writing the script anymore, which means its not Star Wars, which means its going suck, which also means that there will be no more Star Wars games cause they sold their trademark to Disney.  Anyway, in memory of the good times I decided to do a review on the best Star Wars game of all: Star Wars Battlefront II.  Even though the game is pretty old, its the best, fun for all ages, and probably was one of the best games ever when it was still on Xbox Live.  The game came out in October 31, 2005 in Europe and  November 1, 2005 in North America.  The games platform is on the original Xbox.  It was published by LucasArts and developed by Pandemic Studios. Battlefront II is fundamentally similar to its predecessor, albeit with the new gameplay mechanics.  The general objective in most missions of the game is to eliminate the enemy with lethal force.  Like the first game, Battlefront II, the game is split into two eras, the Clone Wars and the Galactic Civil War.  Players have the ability to choose between six classes during gameplay, each with their own different abilities.  Four of these classes are common to all factions; infantry , heavy weapon  sniper, and engineer.  In addition to the four standard classes, each faction has two unique classes which are unlocked by scoring a certain number of points   For the Rebellion faction, the Bothan Spy and the Wookie; for the Empire, The Officer and The Dark Trooper; for the Republic, the Commander anf the Jet Trooper and for the CIS, the Magnagaurd and the Droideka.  You can also play as heroes, such as Luke Skywalker, Mace Windo, Bobo Fet, Darth Vader, and other such characters.   This game is just awesome and is fun to play with friends, local or system link.  It deeply saddens me to inform you that the game is no longer online via Xbox Online, and I miss it almost as much as Halo 2 online.  They don't sell the game new anymore, but you can probably get it on Amazon or eBay, I have my copy from when the game first came out.  So find the game, get it, and love it.  Hope you've enjoyed and I will see you next week.  This has been Jacob Arnold, signing off.

       

Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock Review

This week I decided to do one of my favorite games.  You know one of those games that you can keep on playing after you finished the initial objective, Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock is one of those games.  Warriors of Rock is a music rhythm game that was released September 24, 2010 for Europe, September 28, 2010 for North America, and
September 29, 2010 for Australia.  It is the last game in the series develop by RedOctane and Neversoft prior to the termination and closures by their parent company and publisher Activision, in part as a result of week sales in the rhythm game market from 2009.  Additional development for the Wii version with a not-so-decent Nintendo DS version as well.  The Wii and DS version of the game were crated by Vicarious Visions, who took over future development of the Guitar Hero series before it was placed on hiatus.  Warriors of Rock continues to retain the gameplay style of the franchise,  challenging the player to match scrolling notes on screen to actions on special game for lead and bass guitar, drums, and vocals. To rise against the withering rhythm game market and the perceived lack of focus of its predecessors, the game was designed to return to return to the series roots, focusing heavily on lead and towards the existing base of skilled players of the series.  The game features a remade career mode called "Quest" set to a story influenced by heavy metal.  Throughout Quest mode, the player recruits eight characters each with their own unique power that allows you to score higher, have more Star Power, or get more points for each note.  Eventually this leads to all these powers combined together and used to free the Demigod of Rock from enslavement form a metal machine called the Beast.  Part of the story is interestingly enough influenced by the lyrics of the song "2112" by Rush, who narrate this portion of the game.  While the finale is is set to a new song preformed by Magadeth and written by Dave Mustaine specifically to challenge players, but its still a fun song.  Other single and multiplayer modes feature improvements form previous games in the series as well as incorporation of the new gameplay powers from Quest mode.  The game features 93 songs on disc, and compatibility with existing exportable songs and downloadable content from several previous games in the Guitar Hero franchise.  The game recieved mixed reviews about it's gameplay and soundtrack. Praising certain highlights such as the '2112" segment of the game and it's improved Quickplay+ mode, which is what I usually play, but thy also cited other elements such as lackluster as the Quest mode's story or the lack of focus within the soundtrack, I disagree with this, for I thought the game had a great soundtrack.  Overall it's a great game, but my favorite part of the game was the hundreds of customization options that you could use for your Quickplay+ charcter, I even made a whole band.  You can also custamize instraments such as guitar, bass, drums, and micraphones.  I tell you, there is nothing cooler than creating a sick guitar that you equip to your awesome character.  The only problem with the game is that you need the set controllers to play the game, so its a little pricy, but worth it.  Also Assassin's Creed 3 is coming out next week on the 31st, it's going to be AWESOME! So keep an eye out for it and get it quick, cause I guarntee that as soon as it hits the shelves, its gonna be sold out, so grab it.  Im a huge Assassin's Creed fan, so I'll probaly be waiting at the midnight launch, like I did with Revalations.  So I hope you've learned something new today and I will see you next week.  This has been Jacob Arnold, signing off.

Poker Night at the Inventory Review

This is not your average poker game, this an Inventory poker game, unusual, and interesting.  Four legends, Heavy from Team Fortress 2,  Strong Bad form Homestar Runner , Max from Sam & Max, Tycho Brande from Penny Arcade Adventures, and they are playing playing poker with you.  The game is developed by Telltale Games, released on November 22, 2010, and available on Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. The game really really doesn't have much of a plot. The general basis is that the game takes place at a secret underground club below a video game ware house called the Inventory which was founded in 1919 due to a early draft of the 18th amendment.  It was discovered that it would not only outlaw libations, but games and amusements too.  Even though this never came to pass, the club has remained in secret, just in case Congress ever tried to set the prohibition into law.   Every time the player starts the game a cut scene is triggered in which the player takes a secret elevator down to the Inventory and then is greeted by Reginald Van Winslow, former caption of the Screaming Narwhal and sidekick to Guybrush Threepwood in Tales of Monkey Island, a Sam & Max concept. He explains the back story of the Inventory, and raises the blinds for the poker games.  In the game you always play Texas Hold 'Em style poker between you and the other four characters in the game, Strong Bad, Max, Tycho, and Heavy.  Every game each player buys in with $10,000 in which they are awarded a certain number of chips to play with and are given two cards in which they will play their hand off.  The game applies to basic poker rules, you stay in the game until they are broke, with the goal of being the last man standing. The game uses no-limit betting and a gradually-increasing blind bets over the course of several rounds.  Once in a while, one of the other characters will not be able to cough up the money, but will offer one of their possessions as a buy-in for the game. The player can win these items as Team Fortress 2 unlockable equipment only if it was the player that knocked that character out of the game to receive their personal item.  This was honestly the reason I bought the game, I really wanted the Iron Curtain (a awesome looking mini-gun that Heavy buys in with), that and I like poker.  The game keeps track of the player's statistics over the course of several games, and by completing certain objectives (such as number of hands or games won) can unlock different playing cards or table artwork to customize the look of the game.  So its an okay game, but not an awesome game.  Its fun if you like poker and you want something to spice up your character in TF2.  It is $4.99 on Steam, and now that I got all the items, it was totally worth it.  Hope you've enjoyed, see you next time.  This has been Jacob Arnold, signing off.

Team Fortress 2 Review

Stand alone cover for Windows

One my favorite games and without a doubt my favorite PC game, Team Fortress 2 is just an endless world of possibilities.  Released by Valve on April 9, 2007, but was originally released October 10, 2008 with The Orange Box for Xbox 360 and Windows. On June 23, 2011 it became a free-to-play game, which dramatically increased the amount of gamers and I remember that day; I was just playing with my buddies on a server playing payload and the game crashed. Turns out all the nine year olds that just got the game, jumped online all at once, and it crashed the game afterwards.  A few days later I jumped online and my worst fears had been confirmed.  Let me tell you something about PC gaming, its where I go when Im sick of listening to all the little kids screaming and cussing at you on Xbox, because PC gaming is mainly free of that kind of thing and people are nice and good sports..  So nothing annoys me more when I get on my laptop and run into the same scenario.  Thats pretty much what that day was like, along with the rest of the month.  It was bugging me because I knew how to play, at first this was good because I always beat these kids.  Then about half way through the month they figured out how to boot you with a vote, which is an option that TF2 has, but is rarely used because people are nice. Although these kids usually played together so they  used to their own skill level and when a experienced player like me or my friends comes along they think that were hacking because we know how to play the game, so we got booted. It was like Combat Arms all over again, but in a game I loved and cherished.  Anyway back to the game.  TF2 is mainly a multiplayer game but has a general background plot that is revealed through comics on the official website. Redmond, Blutarch, and Gray Mann were born in 1822 as fraternal triplet sons of Zepheniah Mann, the owner of a successful arms manufacturing business. Gray, already sentient, intelligent and capable of fluent speech, was kidnapped by an eagle within minutes of birth during the Great Eagle Scourge of 1822; Zepheniah would withhold knowledge of Gray from everyone else. Redmond and Blutarch were extremely competitive, attempting to vie for favor from their elderly father as to inherit the company after his death. In the 1860s, they convinced Zepheniah to purchase numerous pieces of land in the United States as assets for the company, but once they traveled there, they found the land to be barren dustbowls and gravel pits. Further, the travel caused Zepheniah to come down with numerous maladies, and soon died thereafter. In his will, Zepheniah bequeathed his munitions company, Mann Co., to his aide and tracker, the Australian hunter Barnabas Hale and his estate to his maidservant, Elizabeth. As punishment for their reckless and short-sighted scheme, Zepheniah's will ordered that Redmond and Blutarch were to fight over the worthless land they had made him acquire. Soon, Blutarch created his own company Builders League United (BLU) and hired mercenaries to fight for him; Redmond followed suit with his own company, Reliable Excavative Demolition (RED).  Their battles continued for forty years, with neither brother relenting. Blutarch realized that they would die soon, and hired an engineer, Radigan Conagher, to build him a life-extending machine, believing that by outlasting his brother, he will have won. Conagher was later met by a mysterious woman that offers him a stash of the valuable metal Australium in exchange for building Redmond an identical machine. Conagher agrees, but later it is shown that he also built a third identical machine for an unknown entity. Battles between RED and BLU continued for over sixty years; both Redmond and Blutarch hired new mercenaries to fight for them in 1968. By that time, their battles are overseen by the Administrator, the granddaughter of Elizabeth, while the Australian Saxton Hale, (who is just awesome you should read about him)  has become CEO of Mann Co, the company that provides all the weaponry, equitment, and hats for both sides of the war.  Some time in the future, Redmond and Blutarch are brought together through letters they believed were sent by the other; both having cheated death for many years realize their folly and propose a truce to create a machine that will make one of them pregnant as to continue the heir. Gray reveals himself as their brother and arranger for this meeting, trying to convince them that instead of fighting over worthless gravel, to instead take over the technology-savvy Mann Co, which should be theirs by birthright. Neither Blutarch or Redmond agree to budge on the new technology, having become obsessed by gravel in the long conflict, and Gray kills them both.  Gray uses his own army of robots to attack Mann Co. facilities all across the world. Saxton Hale hires the mercenaries, who are jobless since their employers were killed (RED and BLU unite as a result), to defend the Mann Co. sites against Gray's army of robots (who are themselves based on the mercenaries) There are nine characters awesome classes, not just with different abilities, but with different looks and personalities, I like that in a game.  (I've included videos introducing all the characters at the end of the blog that I think you'll like)  My favorite classes are the Heavy and the Sniper which I think you'll understand if you play the game.  Now I'm going to take a moment to pay tribute to the awesomest guy in the game, Heavy.  Hes Russian, hes big and hes got a great personalty.  Where you ever having lunch with your friend and he said "Sanvich", Heavy said that. So Id like to say thank you Valve for making someone so awesome.  Valve would make millions if they put Heavy and Ellis in a game together, I can see the headlight now, WOO HOO. This is my favorite PC and one of my favorite games of all time, and you want to know why?  Because you can never stop adding to it! Weapons, equipment and hats, all yours to customize forever. And its free to play, so why not try it out, all you need is a Steam account, a computer and your ready to go.  Multiplayer is fun with countless game modes and co-op allows you to work together with your teammate to stop endless hordes of robots.  Hope you've enjoyed and I know you will enjoy the game. This has been Jacob Arnold, sighing off.

Super Smash Bros. Review

North American box art

Probably the most successful Wii game ever and my favorite Wii game of all time, Super Smash Brothers Brawl is just awesome. Developed by Ad hoc development team, directed by Masahiro Sakurai, and of course published by Nintendo. The game development started in October 2005 with an amazing team that consisted of a few members of Nintendo and several third party development teams. After delays involving software problems, the game was released January 31, 2008 in Japan, March 9, 2008 in North America, January 26, 2008 in Australia and June 27, 2008 in Europe. A interesting fun fact is that actually the game was not released in Korea until April 29, 2010, twenty-seven months after its original release in Japan. The game is the successor of Super Smash Bros. Melee and the original Super Smash Bros. on the Nintendo 64. The objective of the game is to know the opposing player from the screen to win. My favorite part of the game was the amount of playable characters, in Brawl you are allowed to play as other characters other than those created in the Nintendo universe.  Its a good mix, you can be Snake from Metal Gear Solid, Pikachu from Pokemon, Sonic the Hedgehog, and even Mr. Game & Watch.  My favorite character is Ike from Fire Emblem with his huge sword that just take your enemy out. A big concept was the Smash Ball, a multicolored orb (as seen in the trailer below) allowing the player to use there special ability depending on there character. As of March 2012, it is the eighth best selling Wii by selling a total of 10.79 million copies worldwide, though in my heart it will always be the best Wii game of all time. Another new feature is the solo campaign for the game, for those who didn’t know Super Smash Bros. has never had a campaign. Its called The Subspace Emissary (SSE), in which all the characters in the game team up to take on the bad guy, complete with cinematics and all. So basiclly its a classic scenario of good vs. evil that’s worth some playtime, though its not as the classic Brawl between opposing players. I love this game and I think you will too. So get up, get the game, and jump in. This has been Jacob Arnold, signing off.  

 

Official Trailer

Garry's Mod Review

Official Garry's Mod logo

Of all the games I've played, Garry's Mod will always hold a special place in my heart.  Garry's Mod is a sandbox game developed by Facepunch Studios, developed by Valve, and designed by the one and only Garry Newman.  Created using the Source engine used in games such as Half-Life 2, Portal, Counter Strike: Source, and Team Fortress 2, in which it is required to own one of these games if Garry's Mod is to run properly. Other than being a sandbox game, the game is also commonly used for making machinimas on YouTube. Once a mod for Half-Life 2, it was later made into a full game by Garry Newman and then published by Valve.  Originally released in  December 2004, but was officially released for Steam on November 29, 2006 for purchase.  Its only ten bucks on Steam and totally worth it and more.  One of my favorite games of all time, I'd like to give you reasons why I love this game.  The game play consists of pretty much anything you want it to be, from a shooter, strategy, or a race variant, anything. One of GMod's many features include spawn props in which you can make your own environment that you can then game in and even add NPCs to make it seem more real.  Garry's Mod signature tools are the Physics gun, sporting a similar look to Half-Life 2's gravity gun but blue.  This tool allows the player to pick up props, adjust, and freeze objects in place.  Then there's the Tool gun,  a multi-purpose tool for performing various tasks, such as combining props, attaching them via ropes, and creating controllable winches and wheels. The Tool Gun is also used to control add-ons created by the community via Toybox.  One of the most popular concepts in Garry's Mod is ragdoll posing, which you can pose a ragdoll from a Source game to make them smile, frown, or have their face explode in a assortment of pixels.  GMod allows the player to online to a server to play with friends or just random people, though certain servers have certain restrictions, depending on the server.  In recent news Garry's Mod 13 releases October 24 for those of you who might be interested, this is your change to score the latest version.  I know this is a short review for such an awesome game, but its one in the morning and Im kinda tired.  But I probaly will add to this post as I have more time, so thanks for listening.  This has been Jacob Arnold, signing off.

Combat Arms Angry Review

Normally there is a good and a bad side to every game, a positive and a negative.  But honestly I can see nothing positive about Combat Arms.  Combat Arms is first-person shooter computer game created by Doobic Studios and published by Nexon, a website that makes free to play games such as Maple Story, Dragon's Nest, and Atlantica.  Nexon decided to create a shooter and Combat Arms was the sad failed result of a game. Since this was created before Sudden Attack, another Nexon shooter, this was their first shooter. When it came out all the Nexon fanboys thought "Oh look a new game, yippee".  So since none of these ten year olds have ever played a first person shooter, they sucked, and they still suck.  Also Nexon thought it would be a good idea to give the player the right to ban you with a two thirds vote, and since these kids suck so bad if you get three or four kills, they think your hacking.  So you usually don't make it till the end of game because you get banned for knowing how to play a shooter.  The games graphics are terrible, there probably somewhere between Half Life 1 & 2 graphics, which is pretty bad if you didn't know.  Another thing is the game is supposed to have hack protection, which means if you modify the game to your advantage, such as flying through walls, being invincible, and so on, you get banned.  But I still see people flying around shooting knifes out of their face, so yeah crappy hack protection.  Sorry this review was so short but theres not much to say about Combat Arms, other than it sucks. The reason I picked this game was because I wanted to do a PC game instead of a console game. So by the end of the year you'll probaly see me spanning out a bit on different platforms and consoles.  Also the piont of this review was to tell you not play this game if you didnt catch on already.  If you suck at shooters than this is the game for you, if you want a good PC game on the other hand I suggest Garry's Mod or Team Fortress 2.  Hope you've enjoyed my construcive critism, this has been Jacob Arnold. signing off.