Assassin's Creed Brotherhood

 The third installment of the Assassin's Creed series, not counting the online game, Project Legacy. Assassin's Creed Brotherhood brought something to the table that none of the other Creed's contained, Multiplayer. It had a short storyline as usual and took Ezio to Rome. "This was bound to be a great game", I thought, but was I correct?

   Singleplayer will be touched upon first. There are a few new combat implications, the crossbow, which is probably the coolest long range weapon of stealth ever. The development team also created the use of the hidden gun while using swords and hammers seen in the picture above. The poison blade has gained the ability of long ranged poison, which is pretty awesome, but overshadowed by the more powerful and quicker weapon of destruction, the crossbow. The base combat has been upgraded to be faster and a lot more awesome. This sometimes makes combat too easy, making it feel like your swatting a group of flys instead of elite guards. Assassinations stay in the same basic concept, though you dont start out with your hidden blade from Assassin's Creed II, you have to buy it from Leo. The additons of the Assassin recuits lets you train them and use them to battle foes on the field. After training them long enough, they can become full fledged assassins, which are almost invincible. The game gains a lot from these awesome assassins.

As every Assassin's Creed game has been for me, once you finish the story mode and complete any side quests, it becomes boring. The same is true for Brotherhood. Though the storymode is amazing and gives you a feel of living Ezio's deadly life, it is extremely short, as mentioned before. There are more side quests than in Assassin's Creed II, but in an overall feel, Brotherhood seems like the same game. The only differences between Brotherhood and #2 seem to be a slight graphics upgrade, multiplayer and a different story, combined with a few new weapons and a different combat setup. It is still worth it's cost for the singleplayer if you're a fan of the series.

The multiplayer has a few modes, Wanted, Manhunt and Alliance. If you get the free DLC you also gain Chest Capture mode. There are variations of a few modes, resulting in a hardcore mode. Multiplayer though is a lot more enjoyable than singleplayer. Duking it out with serveral friends, or participating in a ranked match against battle hardened foes who are constantly owning you give Brotherhood a new edge. There is a normal level up system with perks, abilities, death and killstreak rewards and character customization that are unlocked at various levels. This leads players to have a reason to play, if not for just plain old fun. The graphics, if it's not just me, seem to be better on the character models in multiplayer. This is probably because lots of Brotherhood singleplayer models were salvaged from #2.

 Overall Score: 8.0

More E3 Coverage: Battlefield 3

Hello everyone!

 I've got something special yet again, some Battlefield 3 gameplay. This game is the one thing I'm counting on to drown MW3 in it's dust. Battlefield 3 is probably one of the games I really cant wait to have it come out. Here is a link to over 15 Battlefield 3 gameplay videos. Awesome huh?

 Battlefield 3 Gameplay E3 2011

Battlefield Bad Company 2

 Battlefield Bad Company 2 is one of the most visually stunning games of it's time. The visuals pop out of the screen, the characters have perfectly created models, and crisp looks. This game takes what Modern Warfare 2 has given the community, fast paced destructive action, and makes it way better. Bad Company 2 makes it so much better, I hate to say it, but it was far greater in value and awesomeness than any Call of Duty game.

 The destruction of scenery in this game is beautiful. It should be way better in Battlefield 3, which is coming out this year though. Anyway, the destruction is amazing. Blowing a building to bits with C4, or a 'nade launcher can't be more fun. Each weapon has different amounts of terrain destruction power, but the tanks and helicopters seem to have a lot less explosive power than they should. A tank round should be able to tear through a house and do major damage. In Bad Company 2 it does around the same damage as a grenade launcher. Helicopters NEED to have more destructive power, as their missiles are very deadly. Yet the less potent rounds seem to be Dice's way of trying to balance vehicle warfare between on foot warfare. I could find this is be done a lot easier if they would have just added something like more powerful rounds, but then give a more powerful rocket launcher that could possibly lock-on without tracer darts.

 Moving on to one of the less important issues of this game. Singleplayer is pretty cool. The storyline is not anything amazing, Russians have a super weapon, bla bla bla. The AI aren't that smart, and building destruction isn't important. Singleplayer turns into a small shootem up game with a bland story. There are a mild assortment of different locations, and enemy types and every once in awhile you come across a different objective other than, "Move up and kill stuff,".It's nothing I would recommend as a must buy, luckily multiplayer picks up the game and makes it superb.

 Multiplayer consists of Conquest (A capture the point style of play), Rush (Blow up a bomb and move to the next bomb), Squad Rush (Rush with less people per team), and Squad TDM (Team deathmatch). With a large assortment of maps, and the different modes to play on, it makes the replayability high. On different consoles the player count changes, on Xbox the player cap is 12 per team, for a max of 24 players a match. As I only own the game for Xbox, that's what I play at. Though I believe the max cap for PC is at 64 in a match. Which is completely awesome and makes the frantic action in this game almost 3 times more epic. Multiplayer lets you play with all the guns you could need, and scopes, perks, equipment, and secondary weapons. My main annoyance in this picture in this equation is that the scopes are only usable is you let go of one perk. All the vehicles in the singleplayer are in multiplayer, and are extremely fun to use against real opponents. In truth, Multiplayer is this game's only hold on it's good reputation. I loath the singleplayer.

Overall Score: 8.5

Assassins Creed Revelations

Hello again!

 Just wanted to throw out a few amazing Revelations trailers and gameplay from E3 2011. Have fun! This seems to be an amazing game, and I will be waiting for the realease of this great title!

 Assassins Creed Revelations Trailer, E3 2011

And guess what will be returning form brotherhood... Multiplayer! Oh yeaah!

Assassins Creed Multiplayer Gameplay (Cam), E3 2011

 Some more trailers:

Assassins Creed Revelations Intro and Gameplay E3 2011

Assassins Creed Revelations Ezio's Journey Interview E3 2011

Grand Theft Auto 4: The Ballad Of Gay Tony

 Are you tired of blowing stuff up on normal Grand Theft Auto IV? Do you want more rockets? New weapons? New cars? More awesomeness? You need look no more. For $20, this game is just about the perfect GTA add-on.

   Remember, this isn't a new game. It's still Grand Theft Auto. Nothing has been changed drastically except that new things have been added. There are some new character animations which I prefer over the normal GTA and which look a lot more realistic. Blowing stuff up is still the main idea, and what better to add to GTA than a APC. Exactly what the community has been waiting for since The old GTA titles. And if you think that's awesome already, then think again, because the Buzzard has been added. A light attack helicopter with chainguns, and (OMG) Fully automatic rocket launchers attached to it. This helicopter would probably be the reason I bought the add-on.

The Buzzard

   There is, of course, a new story mode. But it's fairly short compaired to the original GTA4's story line, and is not that interesting. The characters are funny, and most of them want to kill you as usual. You cross paths with most of the main GTA4 characters including Niko, Roman, etc. This leads to cutscenes that are interesting to watch, since you are from a different view point than you were with Niko.

   More vehicles have been added, which is completely awesome. And also more weapons, including the SAW, P90 submachine gun, the C4, and much more. For a $20 value though, I wouldn't buy this unless I really would want to play with the new items and vehicles, or am a huge GTA fan. The amount you get is a bit little. Yet the quality is good enough to warrent a still ok score.

Score: 7.0



Gears of War 2

 Want blood? Lots of blood? Epic gore? Cutting out gigantic worm's hearts? Cutting people in half? CUTTING? You need Gears of War 2, or medical help. But get Gears, for it has all the killing you can ever get in a video game. Oh, yeah, and I forgot, you can blow shit up.

 As mentioned above, this game is totally filled with gore, and it's awesome! Though the graphics aren't the best, they somehow help portray the action, and make the game look very fast paced. Blood splatters are realistic, but the blood doesn't catch on armor, unless the scene calls for it to (Like when you cut open a bunch of hearts inside a huge worm, and practically dissect the thing, from inside!!). The graphics on character animations are smooth, but I always feel that the characters are like big moving blocks, and way too bulky. Sure, the guys are covered in armor and equipment, but they still seem like huge blocks. The third person prospective is quite nice, and let's you see much more of the map at once. If it were a game like Halo, I wouldn't like it, but Gears makes third person look awesome.

Extreme GORE!

 The AI is not great, and not bad. It's just ok, enemies will react to what you do, move around the battlefield, accurately fire upon you, dodge grenades. They don't know when to retreat, though many games don't know how to do that either. Your team mates are also pretty good, they'll follow you around and do the objectives, I've yet to see anytime when my partner got stuck on a lamp post and I had to restart my console. Another great thing about the AI is that it doesn't glitch.

 Multiplayer is provided, but didn't work for me, I tried connecting for about 30min, but it didn't let me through. May be a problem with my internet, or the multiplayer may not even be active anymore.

 There are weapons, but I would hope for a few more than are provided, yet the weapons function nicely, and I find them very fun to shoot stuff with.

 Also, a firefight style, hoard mode gameplay type is playable. This lets you fight multiple waves of enemies, that are increasingly harder. Very fun to play with friends, or alone, after you have beaten the singleplayer.

 Overall, the story is actually really great, graphics suppliment the game's focus (GORE!!) and help the player feel a sence of action and drama. Game dynamics are pretty cool. Hoard mode add to the value of the game greatly. Multiplayer not working, or is it? And not many weapons, lower this games rating, but not by too much. It's still something I would buy.

 Overall Score: 7.5

Minecraft Beta

  Feel like building an empire? A Roman city? Even something like the Empire State Building? Well, you can do that in minecraft, from scratch, from the very earth itself. Live in a city, out in the wilderness, in a cave, on a floating island. The options are endless.



 As stated above, the gamer can do anything. The gamer starts with nothing, survives his first night, build a small base, and hopefully starts to create a huge empire. The game is huge. People say it can randomly generate (Yes, the whole game is randomly generated) enough land to cover the surface of the earth 8 times. But someone would need a huge computer, for it uses your computers memory when it generates the new land. This game lets the player build up, as high as the clouds, or down to the bedrock of the earth, encountering several useful materials along the way.

 Another amazing feature is crafting, you can build crafting tables to let you make axes, swords, armor, blocks of ore, buckets, and many, many others. The only way to survive in this game is crafting.

 Anyway, kind of off topic up there, (I'm kind of ranting about how great the game is...) onto the more important things. Multiplayer is supported in this game, but it is quite hard (If you're not a tech geek) to set up a mulitplayer server, yet you can still play in other people's servers. Singleplayer is really fun, and if you really want to you can hack it with downloaded materials from other sites. Updates come very often to this game, sometimes monthy, or weekly, and the developers and very good about repairing the game. Graphics are old school, but thats not important. This game isn't about graphics, it's about creativity, and fun. Texture packs can be downloaded to your computer to modify the games textures, and make it look better(Or in some cases, worse).

  Another very, very major issue is bugs. This game is riddled with them. Game crashes, game glitches, etc, this game has it. Of course, the developers are trying to fight them off, and have almost completely rid the singleplayer of them. Multiplayer though isn't free of the occational crash, and glitch. This doesn't really make the game any worse, (And I will say this again) since it is very clear that the developers are not going to let it go on, the bugs will stop.

 Below are some pictures of the game... Oh man, I love this game... xD Check it.

A cityscape. Urban life.

 Life in the Wilderness... I think this one is on a texture pack.

Is that a floating island? This one is on a texture pack.

A small, but pretty cool forest castle.

 Overall Score: 9.0

 And that's it guys, I'll be back sometime this weekend or sometime soon for another review, possibly an old game known as Gears of War 2 shall be reviewed.

 Jay