Corona | Coming Attractions

I am staying away from Mercs 2. I just can not bring myself to even try that game.

Lets see, I finished Ghostbusters the game which was totally worth the money and now I am just messing around with Saints Row 2. Its a chill game and I am mostly just playing it because I don't have anything else right now.

Dead Space is such a good game. I would go as far as to put it in my Top10. Between story, atmosphere and action, there is nothing holding this game back.

I actually broke down and bought the extra maps for COD:WAW. Been playing multiplayer on those.

Lately, I've been playing some pretty epic multiplayer matched in Red Factiong: Guerrilla. The sheer amount of destruction going on at once sometimes can be mind boggling. When gas tanks are exploding, a giant smokestack is collapsing, several people are hacking apart walls with sledgehammers, several more people are blowing things up with mines and rocket launchers, even more people are healing the same building for all they're worth, bullets are whizzing everywhere, and all of this is happening without any lag whatsoever....you have to take a step back and be impressed for a moment. Of course, that's when you receive a hammer upside the head.

The best two modes are Siege and Demolition, in which the destruction of the environment takes center stage. Both are team games. In Siege, both teams take turns trying to destroy a group of buildings while the other team defends. In Demolition, one player on each team is designated "The Destroyer". Your team gets points for everything they destroy, so it's a good idea to protect your own and take out the Destroyer on the other team.

I need to get into it. Problem is, I am so used to playing FPS, that playing 3rd person like GTA or RF:G messes me up :)

If any of you guys have/get Red Faction, I'd love to play with you sometime. I've been having a blast with it.

Omi, I see you've played just a little bit of it. If you're having trouble with the shooting aspect of it, you can try a couple things. First off, if you click the right stick, the camera moves into an over-the-shoulder mode that makes precision aiming much easier (excepting the sniper rifles of course....they go into sniper mode). Alternatively, the sledgehammer is a very potent weapon, especially in close quarters. Add in a stealth backpack, and you can run around like a ninja, killing people before they know you are there. I've found that this "ninja" technique works especially well in damage control games.

Gentlemen Death wrote:

Lets see, I finished Ghostbusters the game which was totally worth the money and now I am just messing around with Saints Row 2. Its a chill game and I am mostly just playing it because I don't have anything else right now.

FYI, the guys who made Saints Row 2 (and 1 for that matter) are the same guys that went on to make Red Faction.

I played a couple hours of Batman Arkham Asylum last night, and so far it is just as good as all the reviews make it out to be. If you like Batman at all, there is no reason that you shouldn't play this game. It's a lot of fun.

I've been playing a lot of things recently. I've finished the story mode for Batman Arkham Asylum, and I've played a few of the challenge rooms. It's probably going to take me a while before I can get all the medals in there.

I'm also still playing the Red Faction multiplayer, hoping to get a few more of the MP achievements soon. I am dangerously close to the one for 250 matchmaking wins, and hopefully I'll get the one for 100k experience points (currently somewhere around 70k or so). However, it's going to take me a lot longer to get the one for 5000 kills. I normally find myself playing a support role, healing building and playing defense a lot. It doesn't get me kills nearly as fast as a couple of the guys I play with who prefer the front lines....although I have over 1000 kills with the sledgehammer, something they can't say. The sledgehammer and shotgun are the weapons I use the most, so I guess I like my combat up close and personal.

I also got in the mood this weekend to finish off a few older games that I had one or two achievements left for. So, I got the 100% complete achievements for Lego Star Wars and Bully. I had been stuck at 99.60% on Bully for a long time and had stepped away from it quite a while ago after searching for that one last little thing I needed to do. It turns out that I just needed to mow a particular lawn in order to finish it.

I also collected all the flags in Assassin's Creed just because I like running around the world in that game. I also found that I never got the achievement for having all the conversations with Kristen Bell's character in the game, so I am currently making my way back through the story again. Once I've finished that, I will have three games that I have all the achievements for. Yay!

Do you guys have any games that you were able to get every single achievement for?

I've been neglecting my City of Heroes account and finishing Ghostbusters in favour of Batman: Arkham Asylum. It's nice to have the animated cast back. Conroy's pretty much the definitive voice of Batman as far as I'm concerned. I could argue with myself over who makes a better Joker, Hamill or Ledger, but Hamill's up to his usual vocal greatness here. The rest of the cast is also very good. Dini's story is pretty good, and the setting is lush and detailed. At least on the PC, combat's pretty simple - left click to attack, right click to counter. You can stun with the middle button (or "E"), quick batarang with "Q", and grapple with "C". But the moves the system comes up with are really frickin' cool. Even though you're just clicking a mouse button and not trying to pull off an elaborate joystick/button combo, it feels like you're kicking serious ass.

I love it.

I was playing CoD4 for the 3rd time and CoDWaW for the 2nd time, with Ghostbusters still in the pile to to get my thumbs around.

Then Batman : Arkham Asylum came into my life and I have played it through twice now. Damn, it's near perfect. It is keeping me from Ghostbusters.

I have also learnt the hard way that when it comes to games, just about anything with a title that begins "Tom Clancy's......." is really just not quite good enough.

Batman: Arkham Asylum is a damn good game, no matter what you are playing it on. I've gotten a gold medal on all the Silent Predator challenge rooms now, but I'm not even clsoe to getting them on the combat rooms. I'm much better at sneaking around, messing with goons, and dispatching them in creative ways than I am at keeping my combo count high enough to get a ton of points in combat.

I got silver on the first combat challenge, but it's hard, yeah. I need to figure out what all of the challenges are for the silent predator rooms. I've gotten some of them down.

If you hit the back button on the 360 during one of the silent predator challenges, it will tell you the three different tasks that will get you a medal. I assume you can do the same thing on PC.

Currently, I've been replaying everything in The Orange Box. I had almost forgotten how much I love the Half-Life universe. Episode 3 needs to come out like....now. Also Portal is always damned funny, even if you've already played it several times.

I am also playing through Uncharted on my new PS3 and just messing around with the system in general. I like it a lot, but the DualShock controller is inferior to the 360 controller for me. I have never liked the stick placement on Sony's controllers, and the triggers on the PS3 controller feel a bit spongy and cheap to me. I always feel like I'm about to break it, unlike when I am using the 360 triggers. Maybe I just need to get used to it or something.

I haven't gotten used to the 360 controller. I have a Saitek controller for the PC that's very much like a 360 one and I almost never use it.
Hopefully, I can get in some more bat time tonight. busy week thus far. Probbly busier next week, too. *sigh*

I have been off my PS3 lately. Real life has intervened. Bugger! Still need to get round to Ghostbusters, still need to never get suckered into buying a Tom Clancy game again.

I am playing Panzer General (http://panzergeneralalliedassault.us.ubi.com/XBLA/home.html)

I am not a player of collectable card games, never have. But I love tactical turn-based strategy games, so I went and got it. Only costs 800 points, and there's a demo out there to try to see if you like it.

Between breaks from MW2 I have been playing Assassin's Creed2 and I have to say, that it's the best game I have played this year. Much more in depth then the first and the improvements they have made are dramatic! Check it out if you get a chance!

I have been bouncing between Dragon Age, Assassin's Creed 2, and Modern Warfare 2. All three games are excellent for different reasons.

Dragon Age has a great story populated by a diverse group of characters, and it manages to be a blast to play no matter which character class you choose. Most games seem to be tailored towards a certain type of character, but I have had as much fun playing as a warrior as I have playing as a mage or a rogue. There is a ton of room for character customization, and there is a lot of different side quests to distract you from the excellent (and lengthy) main storyline. If you like RPGs at all, Dragon Age is a "must play".

Assassin's Creed 2 is a major improvement over the first game in every way imaginable. I loved the first game myself, but AC2 has made the original seem pretty outdated. AC2 has a lot of humor in it, something completely missing from the first game. The mission structure is much more organic, the combat is subtly improved, climbing around has a few added twists that makes it better, there is much more variety to the random people on the street, the setting is much more colorful than the first game (the time spent during Canivale is especially beautiful), the monetary system gives you a reason to track down all those treasures, the characters are written better (Ezio is much more likable than Altair), and it adds enough new wrinkles that the game feels fresh.

One thing that seems like a minor tweak on the surface is the ability to swim. Anyone who played the first game knows that the water was a deadly place to fear. This is not the case in the sequel. Swimming into places is a viable approach now, and it is even possible to pilot a gondola through the canals in Venice.

Modern Warfare 2 is yet another quality game coming out during the holidays. The single-player campaign is excellent, if too short. The Spec Ops mode is fun by yourself and a blast with a friend. The multiplayer is just as addicting as COD4 was, but it has enough new things about it to keep from feeling like old hat. MW2 is right up the alley for anyone who loves FPS games.

Oh yeah! I have to mention that the ending to Assassin's Creed 2 is a big WTF moment that leaves the door wide open for the third game to do just about anything. The ending is so crazy that the main character literally says "What the fuck!" when it happens. I was a bit annoyed when the credits started rolling, but I was quickly delighted to find out that there is an epilogue level that you get to play while the credits scroll by. IMHO, the only bad thing about AC2 is the fact that we'll have to wait at least a couple more years for the third game to come out.

I'm looking at getting a Wii for the kids for Christmas. Any good starter games for a 7 and (nearly) 4 year old?

They've also gotten infatuated with Guitar Hero. For my existing PS2, I picked up GH World Tour for $75 new at Amazon on Black Friday. It's now up to $110, so yay. My son actually had it on his Christmas list. He says it's because his big sister wants to play the drums. He also wants DJ Hero, but I doubt that'll happen.

I'm looking forward to the PS2 remake of Silent Hill. The first one is still the best, IMO.

The WiiSports games are great for that age group. Boom Blox is probably also a good bet.

Downloaded the Battlefield Bad Company 2 demo. Was playing in online this weekend. Pretty fun, and as usual, there's plenty of vehicles and destruction to go around.

The first Bad Company was a lot of fun. I'll have to check out the sequel's demo to see what they've improved on.

I've been playing a hell of a lot of Football Manager Live since July last year. Are any of you British or Canadian lads into manager simulations?

I played the multiplayer beta for Blur for a couple hours last night. There are only four tracks in the beta, but I never got tired of playing it. When there are a bunch of cars together on the track, mayhem is practically guaranteed. One little thing I especially liked about the game was the color separation effect whenever you crash your car or get hit hard by an opponent's power up. Like most previews of the game that I've seen around the net, I would describe the game as a combination of Burnout and Mario Kart.