Xbox

Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4

January 21, 2003

Reviews / Xbox / by Chris Rasco Make a comment! / Tweet it!

My only real experience with the Tony Hawk series has been with this game. I know many people that have long since been burned out on the repetitive nature of this game, which is actually why I dislike the Grand Theft Auto series so much. I have seen my brother play Tony Hawk 2 on PS2 and briefly played Tony Hawk 3 on Pickle’s Cube when he still had the game, but that was the extent of my experience with this series of games. I simply bought this game for Christmas without even playing it, which is not a practice that I generally engage in. It’s generally wise to rent games that may get old or boring after extended amounts of playing, but I felt confident that I would enjoy it.

It would be difficult to compare this game to the last Xbox release of Tony Hawk, which was THPS 2x. There have been a significant amount of graphical updates not to mention being able to harness more of the available graphics power on the Xbox as Activision had more time to develop this game. From a fresh viewpoint, I was impressed with the overall look of the game. The character likeness of Tony Hawk and the other skaters was dead on. They also did a superb job in capturing the personalities of the featured skaters. I felt that they did a great job of creating realistic (for the most part) levels and maps that were very accurate graphically. Having been to the Fishermans Wharf area in San Fran and seeing pictures of the Kona Skatepark (here or here) that was featured, I can attest that they did a superb job accurately recreating these hot skating spots. None of the moves, aside from the nasty spills and falls, looked unnatural or choppy. Overall, I give the guys at Activision 02 two thumbs up for the graphics on the game.

I absolutely loved the soundtrack from this game. To me, it was a nice mixture of rap, hip hop, new and old rock. The list can be found here. Another plus for the realism in this game is the character voices, which are money, and the sound effects sound real as opposed to some digitized wanna-be effect. With the proliferation of home theatres and great sound systems being standard in many of today’s homes, it makes a lot of sense for game developers to really put a lot of thought and effort into having a great sounding game. There is nothing better than having a great looking game that is a whole lot of fun and then powering up your high end sound system and seeing that the game developer went the extra mile and put something in to utilize your sound system. Its apparent to me that Activision went the extra mile in regards to realism in their sound.

You may ask yourself at this point of the review if I actually have any negative thoughts on the game. I do and I am about to get to them. Up until this point, the only sports games I deemed worthy of purchasing was SSX and SSX Tricky for the PS2. Now, I hate the PS2 controller with a passion, but the L and R buttons made playing SSX very easy. It made it simple to not get confused about what buttons did what since you knew all the L and R buttons performed grabs. I was eager to see how a game of similar nature would be laid out on the Xbox controller. Most of my friends know that I prefer the layout of the original large Xbox controller over anything I have used to date, but in Tony Hawk I continually hit the wrong buttons for whatever reason. I can’t seen to remember which one is X and which one is B. I find myself peeking at the controller during challenges when I have to hit the tricks as they are called out. That is the one thing that frustrates me in this game. I will be doing great in a challenge and I will hit down and B instead of X to perform a certain trick… I have pretty much gotten used to it, but it still annoys me at times. I guess when a few of your flagship games are shooters then your control tends to be geared more towards that type of game. Since I am not a big sports game player, control layouts are seldom a negative point for me, this being the exception.

Let us now move on to game challenge. One of the features that they added in this game was the ability to free skate the levels and just mess around. This is not really what the game is all about, the game is about the goals or challenges, but it’s a welcome addition. You start out with a single level (The College) and 8 or so goals that you can do. Initially, you don’t know what the goals are. You must skate around and talk to various characters, denoted with a large blue arrow above their heads, and they will give you a challenge. After you talk to them the first time you can simply select the goal from the list in the start menu instead of finding that person and talking to them again. This is a great thing since sometimes the characters are in very hard to reach places and you don’t always complete a goal the first time you try it. These goals get harder and harder as the game progresses. The completion of a goal will give you money and possibly a stat point, which you use to improve the abilities of your skater, custom or standard. I currently have 80 of the 190 Pro Points (1 Pro Point per completed goal) and its almost to the point where I have given up. Some of these goals are so hard and frustrating that the thought of your precious console meeting its end out a window actually cross your mind. I think they did a great job of not making this game too easy, but I am not so sure that its easy enough for even the avid gamer to complete while maintaining sanity. I WILL finish this game if it is the last sports related game I ever play.

While I mentioned how frustrating and insane you will feel at times in Tony Hawk 4, its only fair to mention that I wouldn’t have made it 80 points into the game had it not been very entertaining and fun. Let me say that of the games I got around Christmas (Nightfire, Splinter Cell, Mech Assault, and Bloodrayne) I have played Tony Hawk the most. I had heard nothing but negativity in general about the Tony Hawk series due to patience restraints I am guessing, so I went into this with a negative thought already on my mind. It wasn’t long before that was all changed. It took me a little while before I could fluidly perform tricks and I still wonder how I have completed half of the goals that I have because I still don’t consider myself to be great at this game by any stretch of the imagination. The point is that I really truly enjoy this game. Having been a skater in the past (inline), I have always wanted a cool skating game that was realistic. Somehow Street Sk8er for PS didn’t cut it.

All in all Tony Hawk 4 is a great game. I am not sure that I would agree with some other gaming sites and be so quick to give it Game of The Year recognition, but it is in fact worth playing. If you have played Tony Hawk in the past and you are burned out on the concept, then at least give this game a try and rent it for the weekend. I don’t regret the purchase of this game and I don’t think you will either. I may not be into many sports games, but aggressive sports like skating and snowboarding are definitely games I get hyped up to play.

BloodRayne

January 7, 2003

Reviews / Xbox / by Chris Rasco Make a comment! / Tweet it!

BloodRayne is a game based around a character named Rayne who is half vampire. She has a full vampire father and a full human mother. The outcome was a Rayne, born with all the powers of a vampire but none of the weaknesses, well almost none. Rayne was taken in by an underground group which called themselves the Brimstone Society. Agent BloodRayne protects humanity from things that ordinary people should not have to deal with. The game takes place between the World Wars and takes you thru 2 missions that are five years apart, but are connected by one man. This man collects occult artifacts; which he believes will bring Nazi Germany into a new age of domination. As BloodRayne, you must face his Nazi army to prevent them from releasing creatures of immense terror onto the world in their quest for these ancient artifacts.

I first played the demo for BloodRayne in the December issue of Official Xbox Magazine. I felt that the game had a lot of potential so I picked it up for Christmas. The first thing that came to my attention on this game was the controls. You have your choice of 3rd Person, 1st person, or 1st person w/ strafe. You also have all the previous options for Left Handed people in which the two joysticks on the Xbox controller are reversed. I started out w/ 3rd person controls because that is what your view is like, but it was too damned hard so I ended up w/ Halo style controls on 1st person w/ strafe. The controls are not hard at all to learn which makes jumping in and hacking up some Nazi’s all the more fun since there is no learning curve. There is a slight curve on learning how she moves in the game since she is supposed to be all acrobatic and stuff, but nothing too difficult.

The graphics were alright. I wasn’t blown away, but I wasn’t disappointed either. They were adequate, but somewhat choppy in regard to some of the enemies, like the Daemites (aka the floating heads). I wouldn’t say that the lack of stunning graphics impaired the game in any way as it makes up for it in other areas quite easily. There were times where you could maneuver against a wall and the camera would be stuck behind the wall or you could see thru to the other side etc etc. Could they have put a tiny bit more into the graphics and had the game improved? Probably, but I am glad to see that they focused more on fun factor/gameplay than graphics.

Ahhh gameplay. You ever play a game and wonder why the game developer didn’t put a little more into the game so that you could break barrels and basically destroy everything in the game? You don’t ask that question about BloodRayne because you CAN. I spend half my time breaking crates or barrels checking to make sure I have every last gun or just to make sure I broke everything just cuz it could be done. This is probably one of my favorite things about this game. Call me nuts, but guys just like to break things and this game lets you break it all and it is absolutely wonderful. Not to mention the fact that you are expected to break glass and climb thru windows and walls. So from my perspective, it’s already a great game… Then you add in the fact that she sucks the blood of the enemies to replenish her life (thru the use of a Scorpion style spear and chain to drag the enemies towards you if need be), she can carry like 10 guns, she slashes around her long blades and cuts off limbs and heads, and she learns new combos in normal mode as well as her blood rage mode. Blood rage is like a “super killing” mode where time slows down and she performs some rowdy extra cool slashing combos. Don’t forget about the 3 additional “vision modes” that lead you where to go, show you thermal views of the area, and a “Matrix” style mode so you can dodge bullets.

As far as sound is concerned, I still feel very weary about giving an excellent or a very poor rating to a game unless I really notice it at this point. The reason I feel this way is that I am just using the sound from my TV. My TV is a nice 27″ Sony WEGA, but I would be in a much better position to comment on sound if I was using a 5.1 Dolby Digital system. Just suffice to know that I didn’t notice any terrible things about the sound, but I didn’t notice anything spectacular about it yet either.

When you first start out the game, you tear thru the Nazi’s like a hot knife thru butter, but don’t get cocky. This game gets a lot harder in certain places. There are times where you will die trying to figure out where to go next. There are times where a boss will absolutely destroy you. Just make sure you take advantage of the save points. I am currently stuck deep in the mine trying to get my vampire ass to the source of the Daemites so I can kill the three 3 headed freak monsters that are sitting up there. Unfortunately, I have tried 9 times already and I keep getting killed before I can even get up there…I am actually glad that there is some sort of challenge to this game. I hate games that you whiz thru and toss in the closet. If I am going to plunk down my $50 for a game, I better play it for a long freaking time and it better be freaking fun.

My final take on the game goes like this…If you are short on cash or weary about games that may or may not be totally kick ass, then by all means go rent it. If you like killing Nazi’s, sucking their blood, and breaking stuff, then please do yourself a favor and go buy this game. I know for a fact that it has dropped in price on the EB site to $29.99 so there is no reason you shouldn’t have it already. I am not sure exactly how long the game is, but I have been playing for at least 4 hours and since I reload a game when I die, that doesn’t include the countless areas I have had to play over and over because I got my ass kicked.

P.S. Hot vampire chicks rule.

Medal of Honor: Frontline

December 18, 2002

Reviews / Xbox / by Marco Ortega Make a comment! / Tweet it!

Soda: Hey Everyone. I’ve been getting a lot of questions about the guest columns we run from time to time. People keep asking who these guest writers are and how we select them. I thought it might be nice to give you an intro to some of them. Panama Pretzel is a friend of ours that we have known for forever. As you will probably be able to tell by this article he is an absolute Xbox nut. It’s odd that he is though because he’s also obsessed with Macintosh computers. Panama is an interesting character, you can push his buttons and get him to freak out over pretty much everything. We’re hoping that his energy and ability to spazz out over nothing will carry over into his articles and it will give our readers something to laugh about every now and then. Let me know what you think about our guest writers, feedback is always appreciated.

Ok, those of you who love anything that has to do with WWII or anything that is military related will get a kick out of this game! Let me first tell you that everyone should own at least one copy of this freaking game. For those of you who have played Medal of Honor then you know what I mean by everyone having a copy. This game freaking rules! Many of you might have already played this game on your PC’s. Since this game has like fifty expansions on PC you may not get the longevity you might be seeking from it on Xbox. But don’t be disappointed, there are plenty of missions and levels that you will give you the chance to kill many Huns. The levels are pretty intense as you progress in the game… obviously!!! The graphics are pretty cool, its no Halo but it will do.

The story line is very accurate to actual battles and events that took place in WWII. The weapons to choose from are really cool. Killing the Krauts with a Thompson, B.A.R or bazooka doesn’t make a difference because your blowing them off the screen anyways.

Throughout the missions you find that the dialogue from the Nazis is pretty funny. The missions take you the landing on D-Day (Saving Private Ryan), to being a stowaway on a German u-boat (U-571), parachuting from an airplane for Operation Market Garden (Band of Brothers), to sniping massive Germans from left to right and pilfering German planes. The game play is quite entertaining; throughout every mission you have certain objectives to accomplish.

You are Lt. Jimmy Patterson, an all around soldier who is skilled in demolition, sniping, recon, full frontal assaults, spying and many other tactics that will come in handy throughout the game. You also come in contact with spies that have infiltrated nazi lines, British soldiers, American troopers, many civilians that get in the way and of course the freaking Krauts.

This game is great, it’s on all platforms so make sure if you have an Xbox I suggest buying it on Xbox. The reasons why to buy it on Xbox are simple… multiplayer! The multiplayer is ok, the reason I say its ok is because when you are playing with four people the speed of the game becomes slower, the locations you play at become smaller and darker and the weapons you use become very limited. Its kind of like playing License to Kill on Golden Eye. If there are any first person shooter fans out there or if you like wasting Nazis off your screen then I suggest buying this game. Out!

Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell

December 5, 2002

Reviews / Xbox / by Patrick Maese Make a comment! / Tweet it!

Now that I am about half way through Splinter Cell, I am able to review this bad boy. Splinter Cell is yet another iteration in the Tom Clancy saga of military “kill-the-bad-guys” games. However, this one is a slight departure from the usual multiplayer team forces games (like the recent Ghost Recon), this one is solely single player. You play the role of Sam Fisher, a retired military operative, who has come back to join a new intelligence gathering initiative called “Third Echelon,” which is long for “get lots of juicy information for the government, and oh, by the way, kill some people while your at it.”

Splinter Cell is labeled as a “stealth action” game, which pretty much means you are supposed to sneak around and not get caught. Those familiar with the line of Thief games will feel very familiar with this style of gaming. However, not all of it is sneaking in shadows…I tend to get caught a lot, which then ensues into a gun fight of some sort and me ending up dead. But again, the goal of the game is not to be detected, so you will do a lot of creeping behind people and taking them out.

Now Metal Gear Solid 2 inspired this game, and I had just finished it on Xbox before Splinter Cell came out, and I have to tell you, aside from it being an entirely different story, the two games are almost identical. I would say, though, that Splinter Cell is a more polished game, both in graphics and in game play. Oh, did I mention the graphics?! They are beautiful!! As I mentioned above, a lot of the game is spent in shadows and behind objects, so lighting is an essential part of the game, so it no surprise that the developers spent a lot of time perfecting the lighting in the game. And I can say, without doubt, it is has the best lighting I have seen in a game (well, except from Doom 3 alpha). You are also equipped with night vision goggles, which unfortunately, you spend most of the time wearing, because you are always in the damn dark. It is kind of ashamed too, because you miss a lot of the lighting effects the developers spent so much time working on.

Game play is very satisfying and frustrating at the same time. Since it is based around stealth, patience is the name of this game, and because you are not loaded to the teeth with ammunition, finding your way around guards and enemies takes a good amount of time. Although you can kill the opposition, you have to make sure their bodies are well hidden…otherwise the guards will find the bodies and alert the others to your presence. I found that I had to retry sections five to ten times so I could get through without losing too much ammo or health (maybe I just suck).

Splinter Cell was heralded as the Xbox game of the year, and yes, although it is indeed a very good game, frustrating parts can wear at your civility. By in large, the game is a must buy if you enjoyed Metal Gear Solid 2, and if you have never played Metal Gear Solid 2, you will definitely enjoy this game much more. As an added bonus,Splinter Cell adds the ability to download extra missions though Xbox Live, so when you have finished the game, you can count on an ongoing saga of espionage and aggressive hostile encounters (for an added fee of course).

Let me know if you guys have any questions!

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