Complete: Rainbow Six Vegas 2

Complete: Rainbow Six Vegas 2

This is another game whose main draw for me is in the coop, as it's the sequel to one of the greatest coop experiences I've ever had.

The AI is terrible just like it was in Vegas 1. As far as I know, there's no way to turn off babysitting your useless partners when you're in a splitscreen coop game, which is a big deal to me, if I'm having people blocking my path, I'd much rather have it be someone that I can tell to make like a tree. What you can do, to alleviate the AI from being useless, is tell them to wait at the very beginning of the map where they'll certainly stay out of trouble. The problem with doing this, lies in the fact that you are REQUIRED to bring them back when you get to areas that require the lockpicking or demolitions skills they have in lieu of any self-preservation instincts.

Luckily, should you be playing without the benefit of another human player to back you up, when your suicidal henchmen are eventually struck down by a hail of bullets as punishment for their crimes of stupidity, they aren't dead for good. They lie on the ground wounded, waiting for you to bring them back to life. This is good, considering how easily they die, but it makes it frustrating that you die for good in singleplayer, even though I understand the tradition of a little more death realism in the Rainbow Six franchise.

A useful change that they've brought over is the ability to choose to sprint, instead of always walking at the same metered pace. It makes dodging from cover to cover much less of a gamble. The cover mechanic employed in the game, which is brought over from the first game, has to be the best I've ever seen. Once you get used to it, ducking in and out of cover to keep yourself safe from the thousands of bullets flying at you. Unfortunately, the cover is broken in some spots of the maps, with some useful walls seeming to not be marked out properly for you to hide behind them, leaving you to uselessly cower in a corner to be shot dead. Normally, I dislike shooters on consoles, as I feel I lose too much precision moving from a mouse to thumbsticks, but the cover system really makes this game into a console-centric experience to me. The manipulation of ducking in and out of cover just comes completely naturally with thumbsticks, which is a VERY rare occasion for me.

The graphics in Vegas 2 are a big improvement over those in Vegas 1, making for a greater spectacle as you're doing battle in the neon-infused casinos that Vegas is home to. Even the outside areas look better, ridding itself of the low res textures that I assume are a result of Vegas 1's relatively early 360 development period. A feature to use the Xbox Vision Camera to map your own face to your player model makes a return with an addition; now everyone who's playing on the same console can use their own face. Seeing yourself on the screen sneaking around corners and pumping terrorists full of lead is surprisingly cool.

I'd say you owe it to yourself to pick this game up if you have a friend to play with and you're a fan of the series, especially if you missed out on the first one.

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Call of Duty 4: Top 5 Moments

Call of Duty 4: Top 5 Moments

Call of Duty 4 was an amazingly cinematic game, with a very well-paced story that rivals that of must action films. I remember one time I fell asleep watching a movie on my 360, and when I woke up, I thought I was still watching a movie, but in fact, my brother was playing this game.

There were 5 moments that especially stuck out as memorable to me from this game.

5. Blowing off Imram Zakaev's arm with a headshot from 900 meters.

4. Being the gunner of an AC130 as it flies over a town infested with enemy combatants.

3. The end, where your entire squad is gunned down by Zakaev in front of you, and you take revenge for them with your dying captain's pistol.

2. Being President Al-Fulani as he is murdered by Al-Asad.

1. Surviving a nuclear explosion... for a minute.

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Complete: The Darkness

Complete: The Darkness

The Darkness was one of first 360 games I bought, but I didn't get very far in it to begin with, but I finally finished it last month. It was a rarity for me though, while I found the gameplay interesting, it didn't strike me as all that gripping, luckily it was made up for with its excellent story. There will be spoilers here, as the story is what I mainly want to talk about.

The Darkness is a game that is based on a comic. Jackie Estacado is the main character, he is a hitman for the New York mafia with a heart of gold. Uncle Paulie, the mafia's don, is Jackie's boss, and a very unscrupulous man. Jackie is returning from a hit, he is betrayed by Uncle Paulie and a high speed car chase ensues, ending in a crash, with Jackie narrating that the event was "the first time he died".

Jackie wakes up in a cemetery and finds that he is the host to a supernatural being known as The Darkness that gives him inhuman powers of regeneration and other abilities while Jackie is standing in darkness. These powers are shown off in an empowered first person cutscene showing destruction done by The Darkness in first person. The gameplay mixes using those supernatural powers, be it by skewering enemies with a tendril of The Darkness's, or sending out one of The Darkness's hungry mouths to bite people's faces off. I thought the gunplay was a little lacking, and mostly I was using bullets as light switches to ensure Jackie's Darkness powers were available. You also have the ability to summon minions to do battle for you, but they seemed far too stupid to ever be of any help to me.

I should point out here that the voice work for the game is amazingly done. The real standout character is The Darkness himself, he's voiced by Mike Patton(of Faith No More, Tomahawk and even Portal fame) and is just the perfect evil sound. Jackie is narrating the game during loading screens as you play, and it's actually interesting hearing what he has to say, as it fleshes out the game's backstory a little further. I really wish more games would put at least some sort of content into loading screens, beyond turning them into elevator rides.

Shortly after Jackie leaves the cemetery, where Jackie hides his predicament from his girlfriend Jenny and relaxes on a couch watching tv with her. What made this payoff emotionally was that shortly afterwards, Jackie is forced to watch while Jenny is murdered by Uncle Paulie and a corrupt police chief. The Darkness is holding Jackie back, stopping him from saving her. Directly afterwards, Jackie pulls a Romeo and commits suicide in an effort to end his emotional suffering and rid The Darkness of his host.

Jackie is resurrected, but he is now in hell, where The Darkness has complete control over him. Here, Jackie actually gains more powers, but has to fight The Darkness to regain control and return to the world of the living to get revenge on Uncle Paulie. As Jackie starts to pursue his goal of revenge, he goes on a murderous killing spree of Uncle Paulie's henchmen, with The Darkness sometimes taking control, with more cutscenes showcasing just how powerful he makes Jackie. At the end, Jackie is holding a gun to Uncle Paulie's head while he begs for his life and The Darkness coaxes Jackie on. As he pulls the trigger, he surrenders himself completely to The Darkness and the game begins a final dream sequence. This is a touching sequence that is mirroring the moment that Jackie and Jenny shared on the couch at the beginning of the game, and actually brought a tear to my eye as the game faded to black.

I've never been much of an advocate for story in games, seeing them mostly as a tacked-on addition, but this one showed me that when story is done right, it can be very rewarding.

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