Great time for gaming

It’s that time of year again where game studios crank out their biggest titles for the holiday season. This year there are a slew of great games out for the Xbox 360. Here’s a few that have been sucking up my time over the last couple of months.

NHL 09

NHL 09 may be the greatest sports game ever made. I’ve never been a big hockey fan but I have enjoyed EA’s hockey series since the first one debuted in 1991. The game has definitely improved in leaps and bounds since the last version I played, way back in 1995.

Besides the excellent graphics, animation and gameplay, the greatest feature of NHL 09 is the ability to create your own player and play an entire career as only that player, as opposed to controlling an entire team. After entering your vital stats and selecting a position, the game starts you out in the AHL - the minor league of hockey.

Each game you’re graded on your positioning on the ice, your team play and your stats. The better you perform, the more points you accumulate to improve your skill attributes. As your play improves, you move up from the third line to the second, and then to the first line. Eventually you get called up to the NHL, where the competition is much improved.

You can also take your custom player online and join a club of other players for games where all 12 players on the ice are controlled by human players from around the world.

Even for non-hockey fans, NHL 09 is a ton of fun. The Be a Pro mode is a blast and keeps things interesting even if you’re not familiar with any of the other players. Playing online with a team of other human-controlled players is intense.

Rock Band 2

Rock Band 2 is less a sequel than an all-around improvement to Rock Band as a platform for playing music on fake plastic instruments. Rock Band 2 features 84 new tracks, all original masters - no covers this time around. For five dollars you can export all but three of the 58 tracks from Rock Band to your Xbox 360 hard drive, making them playable in Rock Band 2.

The latest edition also supports all of the downloadable songs that Harmonix has been putting out on a weekly basis since the original game launched in November of 2007. As a result I had over 200 songs to play in Rock Band 2, and Harmonix has stepped up their weekly releases to include more hit songs and even full length albums from artists like Foo Fighters and Nirvana.

The game itself has improved considerably. You can now play the World Tour mode with a single player, or play with other players online via Xbox Live. Gone is the old standard of playing sets of increasingly difficult songs to unlock them. Rock Band 2 now has a challenge mode where you can choose from several different themed challenges based on difficulty, instrument, genre or time period. Depending on the songs you have available, you may have access to special artists sets, such as the Weezer challenge.

There’s also an ever-changing set of challenges called Battle of the Bands, which lets you compete against thousands of other players for the highest scores. Some challenges are based on score, others on note streaks or stars. Some may also have modifiers that prevent you from using Star Power. New challenges are added by Harmonix every few days and run for a limited time.

Although Rock Band 2 is sold as a stand-alone game or with all new instrument peripherals, the game works with the original Rock Band instruments as well as instruments from Guitar Hero World Tour - Activision’s first entry into the full band market.

Rock Band 2’s game improvements as well as it’s excellent song catalog and compatibility with Rock Band 1 songs and DLC make it a must buy for music fans.

Mirror’s Edge

Mirror’s Edge takes the first person shooter and throws all its conventions out the window. The first thing you’ll notice in Mirror’s Edge is its sharp, bright graphics. Instead of the usual dirty, grimy, dark textures, the city is clean and white with lots of primary colors. As Faith, the main character, you tasked with uncovering a conspiracy involving your sister.

Faith has no weapons. Instead, she has an array of acrobatic moves that allow her to run, jump, tumble and climb to navigate the city’s rooftops and building interiors. (The game is strongly based on Parkour.) Along the way you’ll encounter armed opponents who can either be out-runned or out-maneuvered with a series of weapon disarm moves or hand-to-hand combat moves. Faith can take and fire her opponents weapons but has only the ammo available in the gun and carrying a weapon generally slows her movement. There are no ammo stashes or health pickups.

“Runner Vision” helps you navigate the environment by turning various ramps, boxes and ledges bright red, indicating the various paths Faith can take and the items she can interact with. Unlike most shooters, there is no HUD to indicate your health or location. Just a simple dot that indicates where your head is centered and whether you have “Reaction Time” available. Reaction Time builds up as you perform different jumps and can be used to slow down time, which can be very useful in hand-to-hand combat or in making especially dangerous leaps.

While the game is relatively short, there is added replay value in the Time Trial mode, in which you try to navigate the levels in record time. You can compete against the “ghosts” of other players best times, though there is no actual multiplayer to speak of.

Mirror’s Edge is a big departure from the standard FPS. It has the feeling of the opening scene in The Matrix, where Trinity is looking for a pay phone while escaping the pursuing agents. The fluidity of the movement and the ability to chain moves together to access hard to reach areas makes the game flow nicely. There can be a lot of trial and error, which leads to frustration, but that can also be said about most FPSs. It’s definitely worth a look.

Left 4 Dead

It seems like this game was announced years ago and it finally came out yesterday. After playing it for just a few hours, I can already tell it was well worth the wait. Left 4 Dead pits you and three other players against hordes of zombies as you try to get from point A to point B to be rescued.

The game is broken up into four chapters, each of which is like it’s own little B-movie, complete with its own movie poster. In the first chapter, No Mercy, the players must battle through streets, subway tunnels and sewers to a hospital rooftop where a helicopter is en route to rescue them.

Left 4 Dead’s AI director randomly inserts zombies at various points, including special boss-type zombies that have special abilities which will make your life a living hell. The pace of the game ebbs and flows with waves of attacking zombies followed by eerie silence. Each time you play the game the placement of the zombies and hidden weapons are different.

Players start with a limited selection of weapons including pistols and the choice between a machine gun or a shotgun. As they battle through the levels they’ll find better weapons as well as pipe bombs and molotov cocktails, pain pills and health packs. If the zombies wear down your health (and they will), you are stuck in place with only your pistol available until a teammate is able to revive you.

It sounds easy enough, but these are not your typical slow, lumbering zombies. These zombies can come at you at a full sprint and from all directions. The special zombies can pounce on you out of nowhere, or use a long tentacle to separate you from the group, or spew ooze on you which attracts the zombie hordes to you. There’s also a Tank zombie which is tough to kill and can throw large objects at you or even throw YOU across the room.

Left 4 Dead is incredibly intense and does a great job of capturing the terror and suspense of some classic zombie movies. The ability to play solo or locally and online with other players is great, but the game also features a versus mode where players can control the special zombies to keep the players from reaching their objective. The randomness that the AI director provides ensures that each game is different and adds to the overall replay value. If you’re a fan of zombie movies and/or first person shooters, you definitely owe it to yourself to check out Left 4 Dead.

Posted in Video Games

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