Team Fortress 2

Title: Team Fortress 2 (TF2)
Platform(s): Xbox 360, PC, MAC
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_c3iQImXZg
Soundtrack Clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eDGD7kwsxM&feature=related
ESRB information: M for Blood and gore, intense violence

TF2 is a unique first person shooter from the phenomenal developer and publisher Valve. The game is basically what happens if Warner Brothers were allowed to use strong violence in Looney Toons, though the game is cartoonish the violence is still a bit gross but not realistic like Black Ops. It's a Player vs. Player online shooter with tons of different maps and game types.

     There are nine different character classes you can play as, Number one: Scout. the scout is faster than all the other characters, and has a thick Boston accent, he runs past enemies with his default weapons being a shotgun, an automatic pistol, and a baseball bat. Scouts are good at capturing things in different game modes such as the flag or a control point.Number two: Pyro. If you play as Pyro and know what you're doing then you really can be the most dangerous player on the field by devastating the enemy with the flame thrower, shotgun, and fire axe. Number three: Soldier. In the TF2 youtube videos by Valve the soldier is usually used as a target for other characters but is still a good class to play as, unless you buy him a hat his eyes stay covered by his helmet, he carries a rocket launcher, shotgun, and shovel, I actually think that the soldier is the least interesting class but I have seen some people who really are good with rocket jumping and instant kills. Number four: Engineer. This is some of the best gameplay stuff ever designed, he has a shotgun and pistol for combat but creates turrets, teleporters and dispencers which are little box thingys that give extra ammo and heal. Number five: Heavy. This big Russian runs around with a giantic machine gun that can plow through other players, he also has a shotgun for close quarters and his fists for melee. Number six: Demoman. Demo is the Scottish with the eyepatch who only blows stuff up, he doesn't have any guns, just a grenade launcher and a stickybomb launcher, the grenades blow up by them selves but the sticky bombs can be stuck to walls, ceiling, or floor and detonated with the press of a button, which is great for setting traps. Number seven: Medic. this is one of the hardest classes to play because as Medic your team depends on you to run to their rescue while under fire for you to heal them with your giant ghost bustery looking medical healy thingy......i don't remember its name! but still this class is important, especially for the "Ubercharge" which makes the person you ubercharge and yourself glow and become temporarily invincible.  Number eight: Sniper. This is my overall favorite class because you get to camp out somewhere and shoot people without getting hurt at all! Wrong, you do get to take people out from a distance but you have to check for spies constantly or you'll get killed. And finally number nine: Spy. As spy can disguise yourself as enemies and turn temporarily invisible, but the enemies who you run to backstab with your butterfly knife will check to see if you're a spy which usually ends in death.
    The trailer I linked to above is a trailer from the TF2 beta version, so it has some stuff that isn't in the real game like the scout's handgun, designs for some objects, and how insanely high the soldiers's rocket jump was.



    The game can come for Xbox 360 on the "orange box" which is the Valve collection pack of Team Fortress 2, Portal: Still Alive, and Half Life 2, but it really is better on PC or MAC.
    In the game there is the "Mann Co. Store" where you can buy hats, glasses, and weapons for characters from fifty cents to one dollar.
    The game is incredibly fun and addicting, it has basically no story but is really worth checking out, especially because it's FREE on Steam, in the game there are game types like captures the flag, control points, attack defend, and you know..other stuff.
    9 out of 10 from me, go like get it or something!
Pictures from IGN

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

Title: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Platforms: Xbox360, PS3, PC
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXWYWfFqlSw
Soundtrack clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3kV1QqQIDM
ESRB information: M for blood and gore, language, sexual themes, use of alcohol, and violence.

Earlier this year I saw a trailer for Skyrim, the fifth elder scrolls title, and it looked awesome, so I bought the fourth one Oblivion. In the story you start as a prisoner in the imperial jail, captive in that place makes you the lowest of the low, but then you are visited by the last person you would expect to visit an inmate, it's the emperor, he tells you that he is going to die and gives you something that you have to take to the leader of Blades. The Blades are like the secret service for the emperor, when you give it to the Blade's grandmaster you find out that there is a secret heir to the throne named Martin. 
    You go to the city where Martin lives as a priest who doesn't know he's the emperor's son, but when you get there you find that a gate to the hellish realm of Oblivion opened and the monsters called Deadra are coming through the gate to attack. The city where Martin lives is called "Kvatch" which sounds dumb because.....The Game is great and controls are good, the art could be a bit better but what made this game not as good was the animation, lip sync was pretty bad and the jump animation made it look like I was being yanked up into the air by invisible ropes every time I jumped.
    Something that the developer Bethesda Game Studios does with all the Elder Scrolls  games is that you can switch between playing in first person or third person at anytime in game play.
Overall I give this game an 8.6 out of 10, because it was great but story and animation could be better, and will be better in Skyrim which comes out on 11.11.11.

Halo 4 is announced at E3

seven year olds who shouldn't be playing halo and gentlemen, I am now happy to say that Halo 4 has just been announced at E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) and it looks great. this page on IGN talks a bit about it and has the trailer for the next chapter in the groundbreaking Halo series, no information is clear yet accept that it's obvious that this is the next battle with Master Chief after the events of halo 3.

Alan Wake

Title: Alan Wake
Platforms: Xbox 360
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0MsWKJVQ84
Soundtrack clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rqbvEfXJ1Q&feature=related
ESRB information: T for blood, language, use of alchohol and drugs, violence.

I'm sitting at my computer two hours after beating one of my favorite games I've ever played: Alan Wake. I just drank a whole can of monster and don't feel good, I can't think very clearly but still I can explain how amazing this game was.
    You play as a writer named Alan Wake(of course). Wake and his wife Alice are going on vacation, they go to the rented cabin on the lake, after Alan and Alice have an argument, he walks outside but then the lights go off in the cabin and Alice starts screaming, he runs inside and she's gone, the railing on the back porch is broken to look like she was thrown through it into the lake, Alan jumps in after her and somehow wakes up in his car with a nasty bump in his head. A strange dream told Alan how to fight people possesed by darkness called Taken, but Alan finds out that it wasn't just a dream when he finds himself shining a flashlight at Taken to weaken them and then shooting them, he soon finds that a week had past between when he jumped into the lake and when he woke up in his crashed car, he not only lost Alice but also a week of his life.
    The game is supposed to be scary, to me I wasn't scared shooting down Taken with a revolver or shotgun but nothing made me more freaked out than being out of ammo or low on health.
    Wake's agent named Barry flies in, he helps with the fight to find out how to end the dark attacks.
    Shortly after waking up in the car, Alan starts finding pages to a book he doesn't remember writing, but what happens on a page starts coming true, either a page he finds is of something that already happened or is going to.
    Alan Wake is made by Microsoft Game Studios and Remedy, they created great cutscene animations, buitiful nature setting and an unpredictable story line that stays with you long after the strange ending. 9 out of 10 is what I'm giving to this fantastic work of art.

Pictures from IGN.

Portal 2 (single player mode)

Title: Portal 2
Platforms: Xbox 360, PS3, PC, Mac
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s79wHKe3DDM
Soundtrack clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZYPTK3J3H4&feature=related
ESRB information: E10+ for fantasy violence and mild language

In the sequel to original 2007 blockbuster Portal: Still Alive, Chell finds herself in what appears to be a hotel room, but a male computer voice speaks and it sounds like Chell is still in a testing, but Chell is soon put into suspension and forgotten, Chell awakens to the hotel room looking a hundred years older, because it is. A small robot who travels around on a ceiling rail named Wheatly comes into the room and helps Chell escape.
So playing as Chell you run around a bit with your portal gun trying to escape, solving some minor puzzles, but then Wheatly accidentally powers up GLaDOS, the evil robot running the portal gun tests, she tosses out Wheatly and sends you into hardcore testing.

Portal 2 has the same game play mechanics as the original with slightly different controls. Portal's physics are amazing, the portal gun shoots a blue portal and an orange portal, these two portals connect to each other, you can go through the orange and come out the blue and viseversa. If you shot a blue portal on the wall next to you and then shot the orange portal at the bottom of a long shaft, jump down through the orange one and the force of gravity will shoot you out the blue like a cannon.

There are multiple gels that do various things, there is repulsion gel which is blue and if you jump on it, it bounces you into the air, there is propulsion gel which is orange and increases your speed when you run on a surface covered with it, there is conversion gel which is white and makes a surface able to have a portal shot onto it, and finally something that isn't actually a gel: water. water washes repusion, propulsion, and conversion gel of surfaces.
    Portal 2's artwork is great, the original game's graphics were amazing for 2007 but Portal 2 has some of the best animation and artwork I've seen in games.
    Developer and publisher Valve put the best writing ever put into a game with hularious diologue and an unexpected ending with great cutscene animation.

9 out of 10 for this great game. you can buy Valve products at their site called Steam

Pictures from IGN

Halo: Reach (campaign)

   

Title: Halo Reach

Platforms: Xbox 360
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iWyoxv_V8o
Soundtrack clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuS5O7tYFr4
ESRB information: M for blood and violence

Halo: Reach Is the sixth in the phenomenal Halo franchise, coming after Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, Halo 3, Halo 3 ODST, and Halo Wars. It seems like the entire franchise has been leading up to Reach with amazing graphics, animation, game play, and great voice over in the campaign mode.

    In the campaign mode you play as Noble Six, the sixth member of Noble team. Your mission is to defend planet Reach from the invading Covenant forces.

    As for story, Reach doesn't have much creativity in the grand scale, but certain levels involve flying spacecraft for orbital defense, jumping around in zero gravity during a shooting, destroying massive anti-air guns, manning a huge cannon to shoot down banshees, and since it is a Halo game, loading your alien enemies full of bullets.

    Developer Bungie really put a lot of work into Reach.

 The game takes place a year before the events of Combat Evolved. Weapons have something new in store including concussion rifles and DMRs, dual wielding is taken away, but to take its place is a whole bunch of new stuff like jetpacks, armor lockup, sprint, hologram,evade, and active camo.

Your fellow Noble Team members are Jorge, Kat, Carter, Emile, and Jun.
    Game play is great and controls a good, but what I think Reach could have but doesn't is gameplay as the enemies, you can always play as an elite in custom game mode, but I've always wanted to run around in campaign as a brute or even a grunt.
    So even though Reach doesn't let you be a grunt running around yelling about heresy, I give it a 9 out of 10, this is definetely the best FPS right now, but will probably be remembered as an arcade classic in twenty years.

Final Fantasy XIII

Title: Final Fantasy XIII
Platforms: Xbox 360, PS3
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJPbozRomX4
Soundtrack clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HiZe2y41Og&feature=fvst
ESRB information: T for mild language, suggestive themes, violence

Final Fantasy XIII  looked like a great game to me, graphics and artwork looked great, so did the story, I thought that the soundtrack was a bit uninspired but I thought it looked great, I got this game and returned it the next morning, and why was this?
    Controls. I admired the artwork of the opening cutscene which dragged out a bit and the game told me how to control my character in combat, it said that I had to go to a menu and choose my attacks, I thought that this meant I had to choose what my attacks do when I use them but instead I got a side menu where I pressed one button to leap into action and swing my sword all over the place at a giant robot, I looked up a video review on IGN and it looked like you do eventually get to actually use your joystick to move your character around, but still not in combat. I decided that if I can't have my control in battle then I don't want to play the game.
    But before you make a decision about this game I have to tell you that I talked to the Game Stop staff and they said that 50% of people loved Final Fantasy XIII and the other 50% hated it, I'm with the people who hated it but I can't say I completely hated this game because I didn't consider story or characters, I didn't want to play this game because I didn't like the battle system, you can not make your own decision about this game until you've played it.
    Even if you played and hated this game, still don't completely forget about the developer Square Enix as they have a bunch of other titles and I think that FFXIII was the only game that they really screwed up, and it was only the controls.