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Forza Motorsport 3 Review (Xbox 360)

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October 8, 2009 - Sony's Gran Turismo may still sit in the pole position among racing sims for many, but Microsoft is making a hard charge with Forza Motorsport 3. Developer Turn 10 has adopted a new philosophy for Forza 3: Make it accessible. The result is a hardcore simulation racing title that can also be enjoyed by the most casual of fans. The career mode is easy to get into but offers an immense challenge; you can auto-tune every car or dive into a rich set of tuning options; and driving can be toggled between a simple point-and-go system and the most physics-driven sim every created.

Simply put, Forza 3 is one of the best racers ever made.

It starts with the cars, of course. Forza 3 has more than 400 vehicles you can take for a spin and the crazy part is, they're all unlocked from the outset. That's right, with the exception of a few cars available only to those who pre-order Forza 3, every car on the disc can be driven from the get-go. Sure, you'll need to earn some credits to make your purchases, but if you can drum up a million creds, you can take the Bugatti Veyron for a spin. If you've played racing games your entire life, this fact alone may just blow your stack. It goes against everything we've ever thought about racing games. You're supposed to start with crappy cars, suffer through a few hours of slow-paced driving, then graduate to a sleeker class of vehicle. Well, Forza 3 is throwing racing conventions out the window.


Colin Mcrae Dirt 2 Review (All Platforms)

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September 3, 2009 - The Colin McRae series has long been considered king of rally racers. With Dirt 2, Codemasters pays fitting homage to the late McRae while trying to appeal to a larger audience. The result is a gorgeous racing game with some satisfying rally sections and a whole lot of wheel-to-wheel racing. While hardcore rally fans may be a bit bummed to find pure rally racing makes up only a fifth of the Career Mode, those who just want a good racing game will be happy.

The original Dirt, released in 2007, has one of the best menu designs of all time. It's truly a stunning piece of art, just on the frontend alone. Dirt 2 has an equally impressive interface that puts you into a RV that you (somehow) drive across the world. Everything you could want is in and around this trailer -- from a world map used to select from 100 different racing events to the multiplayer board on the wall to a TV that shows off instructional videos. Step outside your trailer and you get a look at the festival-like surroundings for each locale and can buy and customize new cars or see the latest tournament results. It's an immersive experience and is in many ways better than the first Dirt.

The core of Dirt 2 is the Career Mode, which starts you as an up-and-coming racer and builds you into a champion. Each race earns you experience points, which in turn increases your driver's level. Through Level 30 you gain new liveries, unlock new races and earn some lovely parting gifts. These include dashboard items such as a hula girl and fuzzy dice to hang from your rearview mirror. Rewards are always welcome and Dirt 2 makes certain to spoil you early and often.

Though you can choose from six different difficulties, they don't affect your progression (though you earn a little less cash and experience at lower levels). No matter your skill level, you can make it up the ranks, starting with Amateur events, moving up through the Pro offerings and finishing off with some challenging All-Star races. The 100 events are locked based on experience level, cars owned, or specific races you need to win. Along the way, you'll unlock a series of special races. First, there are a trio of X-Games (Asia, Europe, and North America) to open up and then five World Cup tournaments, each in a different discipline. There's also a special Colin McRae tribute event, which is a very loving touch from a team that had worked with McRae for years.

One of the best aspects of Dirt 2 is the variety of locales. Rally racing games can start to feel a little redundant with endless desert terrain. Okay, so Dirt 2 has a lot of off-road tracks, but the unique locales are really brought to life -- the small villages of Morocco with their narrow streets, the marshes of Malaysia, the serene hillsides of China.

The rally cars have weight to them and give that sense that you're driving along the edge of losing control. Rookies will struggle as they fail to understand the benefits of braking and pros will be tested at the higher levels by near-flawless AI competitors. The trucks and buggies don't measure up in the same way. They're easy to lose control of, especially with the generous bump of a competitor. This creates a curious dichotomy as any events featuring rally cars (including wheel-to-wheel Rally Cross races) seems to have an element of technical finesse while the bigger vehicles offer more of an arcade style.

For the most part, Career Mode is well-executed, offering the right balance of challenge and a good variety in locations and tracks. But I must admit that I am one of the previously mentioned rally fans who expects a rally game to have, well, rally racing. Sadly, only about 20% of the events in Dirt 2 are pure time-trial rally races. There are a few other time-based races including Trailblazer (rally races without a co-driver) and Gate Crasher (hit gates to add time to your run) that use elements of rally, but if you just want pure rally racing, it's in short supply. There are no hill climb events either, though there is a track in China called "Hill Climb" that amounts to a half-minute of speeding up a twisting hillside. I'd like my rally games to be two-thirds rally racing and other stuff thrown in for fun, not the other way around.

Over All Review

Dirt 2 is prettier than its predecessor, has more varied tracks and a functional multiplayer offering. What it doesn’t have is a focus on pure time-trial rally races, which is really what I expect from a rally game. The other disciplines are fun to dabble in, but I’m old school and want a bit more tradition from a racing game. Dirt 2 is a solid racing game with some really fun events and a slick menu system, but it could use a little less of the arcade action and a bit more of the sim. I think the vast majority of racing fans are going to love what Dirt 2 has to offer, but there will be a few who long for the days when a hill climb was considered the ultimate racing experience.


Rock Band 2 (XBOX 360, PS3)

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September 12, 2008 - Harmonix launched music games into a whole new arena with the release of Rock Band last year. No longer did music games have to be about just playing the drums or the guitar or singing. All three elements were merged together into a cohesive and thoroughly enjoyable package. But while Rock Band was a breath of fresh air, it did have some issues. With the release of Rock Band 2 less than a year after the original, Harmonix addresses many of the past concerns and adds an awesome new online mode, certain to keep gamers rockin' for another year.

The biggest addition isn't a new feature or function, but 84 new songs. All master tracks, these 84 songs represent the single greatest collection of songs in a game to date. Headlining the new tracks is the first Guns N' Roses single in more than a decade, "Shackler's Revenge." Along with these are a slew of incredible songs that span the '60s right up to today. AC/DC, Metallica, The Talking Heads, Pearl Jam, Journey, Megadeath, Modest Mouse, Rage Against the Machine, Bon Jovi, Jane's Addiction -- I could keep going, but you get the point. There are some brilliant songs here. And while there are going to be a few tracks each person will not care for, there's far more good here than bad.

What makes Rock Band 2 special is that it doesn't end with 84 tracks. All of your previously downloaded DLC for Rock Band 1 is automatically useable with Rock Band 2. For 400 MSP ($5), you can export 55 of the Rock Band 1 tracks for use in Rock Band 2. Add to that an additional 20 free DLC songs available to anyone who purchases Rock Band 2. Though the songs in this 20-pack haven't been announced and the only release date we have is "before the end of the year," it's still an extra 20 songs at no additional cost. Both the RB1 tracks and DLC are integrated seamlessly in all of RB2's game modes. There are challenges built into different modes just for specific DLC and original Rock Band tracks. Plus, your bonus content appears in mystery set lists in World Tour. Conceivably, you could boot up Rock Band 2 for the first time and have more than 300 songs available. That's pretty awesome.


FIFA 10 (All Platforms)

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29-10-09

Pro Evolution Soccer finds itself in the Liverpool role these days. Demoted to second-best in 2008 after a few years of increasing stagnation, Konami will not enjoy FIFA 10. Conflicting embargoes mean that we can't put the two latest instalments head to head until our PES 2010 review on 15th October, but unless something dramatic has happened since last month, the gap is ever more significant. If last year saw FIFA knocking PES off its perch, this year it's chasing it around the birdcage with a plank of wood and a sledgehammer.

FIFA 10's 360-degree control is the key revelation. FIFA 09 still worked on diagonals - although not in such a pronounced way as PES 2009, to the latter's cost - but you don't realise how restrictive that was until you've played FIFA 10 for a few hours and try to go back. You can angle runs, shots and passes to your exact specifications, and it makes the world of difference to a game that was already a splendid simulation of the real thing. It's tempting to say that if FIFA 10 was simply FIFA 09 with 360 degrees of control, it would be worth that elusive ninth mark out of 10 anyway.

But that's not quite true - EA Canada did have some work to do, and while the range of refinements isn't all that sexy, it is meaningful. Ball physics remain excellent, with passes and shots accelerating and slowing with believable zip and inertia, but the ball is no longer so prone to ballooning over the crossbar, and cross-field passes are flatter and faster.

Another key factor in settling last year's nearly excellent game down a bit has been programming in suitable margins of error. For example, in FIFA 09 a tall player who won a header in the box generally scored. FIFA 10 understands that he may be under pressure that puts him off scoring, or he may be poorly positioned to score, or he may actually be rubbish at heading despite his height (I'm looking at you, Former People's Hero Peter Crouch).

Elsewhere, the physicality that had grown to prominence since FIFA's 07 rebirth has been ratcheted up yet again, and it can be jarring to observe players like Lionel Messi, with his low centre of gravity, shrugged so easily off the ball by a lumbering centre-half. With that said, while a strong player can knock a smaller one almost completely out of contention, going in too hard is penalised by the referee, and the 'drag' on a fast player caused by someone at his side can now be mitigated by angling the analogue stick a few degrees further away - something that would have surrendered any advantage and perhaps even angled the ball into touch 12 months ago.

Visually, FIFA 10's probably less of an upgrade than we're used to, but with the console lifecycle going deeper than ever, and the game already handsome, it's not too surprising to discover that spare processing cycles have been fed back into things like off-the-ball movement AI. As it stands, the likenesses are generally strong for anybody in the prestige leagues - Spanish, Italian and English - with Rooney particularly convincing, and weaker the further afield you go, albeit with some impressive howlers in the icing (Luka Modric, for example, looks like a Scream mask).

Otherwise, production values are typically high. There are more licences in place than ever (including the elusive Dutch national team one), and the menuing's very slick and a bit more responsive. Commentary seems less repetitive than ever (put that on the back of the box), although allowing Martin Tyler and Andy Gray to improvise their rambling banter has mixed results.

Off the pitch, the one big new idea is Virtual Pro, not to be confused with Be A Pro. You design a player (who can even have your "Game Face", if you've uploaded one to EA's servers), as you would in Be A Pro, but rather than limiting him to one area of the game he's available in any offline mode, and Pro Club and ranked matches online. So, if you fancy blooding him a bit in random Exhibition matches, you can do that, and you can even gain experience in the Arena - the third-person perspective kickabout area that masks FIFA's loading screens. It's a long, hard road from a 65-rated nobody to top of your profession, but if Be A Pro: Seasons proved anything it was that these modes can work, and Virtual Pro is a thoughtful progression.

I think it will succeed in being one of the best football games to be created by fifa and of coarse we cant exculd EA Canada.


AC/DC ROCK BAND (XBOX,PS3)

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You Want to Rock on Rock Band well this is a Game you Need AC/ DC rock band has it all .if you are a big fan of ac dc you will love this if you are not you will get to like it when you play it AC DC rock Band has 18 songs with over 99 minutes of Game Play ,Also with this you do not need Rock Band 1 or 2 to play it is a standalone and for the price it its it is good to buy .When you buy this game new like rock band you can import all the songs to Rock Band 1 or 2 and play away on that online with your friends. AC/ Dc Rock Band also have a story line and you can play all the songs During this. The downfall of this game is that there is only 18 songs AC DC could have put more of their times classics in this game and made it much better but that is not a big downfall .




Over all this game is well worth getting for the price it sells at and it is Great fun for the whole Family to play over and Over again

Rating : 8/10  :)



Call Of Duty 4  (Xbox, PS3)

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1/11/09

In common with most modern day war games, Call of Duty 4 picks at the scab of the West's ongoing insecurities for an excuse to shoot an awful lot of people in the face. Deranged 'Ultranationalist' Russian hatches evil plan to destroy FREEDOM? Check. Access to an illicit nuclear arsenal? Check. Based in the lawless Middle East? Check. A sympathetic, faceless nationalist army ready to do his bidding for no logical reason? Check. Dozens of nuclear weapons heading for the East Coast of the United States unless you don't do something to stop the 'Four Horsemen' of this demented apocalypse?

Although, once again, told through the eyes of the Americans and the Brits, the interwoven storyline builds a greater sense of character (and therefore purpose) than many war games manage.

As you might expect, the dismantling of entrenched terrorist cells with evil plans of mass destruction requires a) very best soldiers and b) lots of high powered weaponry. So, from the Brit side you'll follow the events of the hilariously gobby British 22nd SAS Regiment, as well as various "Ooorah"-spouting personnel in the United States Marine Corps 1st Force Recon. None of that is especially important once you're embroiled in the nuances of each mission, but as a means of framing each mission in presentational terms, it's quite engaging, even light-hearted at the most unexpected moments. And, for once, the Brits don't have cut glass accents, favouring the more comedic potential of the kind of propa' geezers you're likely to get the wrong side of if you spill their pint.

In terms of its long-term appeal, there are a number of things that make Modern Warfare stand-out. For a start, the majority of the Achievement points only come from playing it at Veteran level, while finishing the main campaign unlocks a score-based Arcade mode that has its own leaderboard. And, of course, the expansive, experience-based multiplayer mode (up to 4 players split-screen, 18 players online or up to 24 via System Link) is certain to be a huge draw for many

In the meantime, you can expect a vast array of game modes (Free For All, Team Deathmatch, Team Objective, Team Tactical, Search and Destroy, Headquarters, Domination, Sabotage, Team Hardcore, Old School, Oldcore, and Ground War) to suit all tastes. The game will offer five preset classes (Assault, Special Ops, Light Machine Gunner, Demolitions and Sniper) with the lure of a Create-A-Class option once you've ranked up a touch.

I give this 9/10 rating. Bring on Modern Warfare (There will be a review on Modern Warfare when its out)


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