Need for Speed: Undercover (360) – Review
Blackbox/EA’s Need for Speed series has been suffering in the most latest offerings by focusing less on driving hard and fast, and instead focusing on more technical driving, and most consider the last good title being Most Wanted. The latest offering, NFS: Underground, does try to recapture the flavor of Most Wanted while ditching several modes such as drifting and drag racing that were met unfavorable by critics, the game still suffers both design problems that make the game too easy, and technical problems that mar its presentation. It’s still a fun racing game, but just not a tight package that older NFS have been.
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Guitar Hero: Aerosmith is the second expansion/spin-off of the Guitar Hero, the first being the rather dismal Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s. This time around, RedOctane and Neversoft have focused the game on the career of one of rock’s more influential bands, Aerosmith, providing a song list with more than half the titles from the band, the rest from groups that Aerosmith based their style on or similar genre-wise. While the game shows a lot more effort by the developers than Rocks the 80s, the fact that the game is short is a major problem, and likely puts this in the rent column for all but die-hard Aerosmith fans.
LEGO Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures is another LEGO-based game from Traveler’s Tales, who have previously done both LEGO Star Wars games. While there are several elements that are reused, and much of the general gameplay hasn’t changed much, they have refocused the general approach on the adventure genre and solving puzzles to progress in the game, making it feel pretty fresh and showing that the series has more legs with other popular franchises. The game is generally on the easy side and is a bit short, but it is entertaining throughout.
Lost Odyssey is a turn-based role playing game developed by Mistwalker studios and distributed by Microsoft Game Studios. The game has a number of similarities with Blue Dragon, also from the same studio, in both looks, gameplay, and other aspects. However, while it introduces a number of interesting game elements, the overall approach to the game as well as odd loading times for a next-gen console game make it very tedious to work through.
Rockstar’s latest entry to the Grand Theft Auto series, GTA IV, has finally arrived after several months of delay, and is one of the most anticipated titles this year. The first game on the next-generation consoles, there has been a lot of promotion about the game, to the point where it could have been a failure easily. For the most part, however, the game is very good; the story and characters are very engaging, the new features, if not borrowing from other open-world games, are well done, and there’s a lot of content to keep one busy for quite a while. The major place where I found the game to be lacking was that despite several new toys to play with as part of missions, the bulk of the missions in game were essentially nothing new from previous games in the series, and that some new features in the game made the game a lot simpler than I remember it being. Certainly these are not enough to ruin the game, as it is still a instant buy for anyone that’s played the series before, but there are signs that unless the formula is mixed up a bit, there’s potential for GTA burnout before too long.
Condemned 2: Bloodshot is Monolith’s and Sega’s sequel to one of the 360’s launch titles, Condemned: Criminal Origins; while the original game was not a huge seller, it was pretty decent in combining a dark, terrifying atmosphere and the idea of observing crime scenes to make a good story. Fortunately, the sequel provides exactly more of the same, fine tuning some parts, expanding the repertoire of make-shift weapons that can be used, and basically providing a stronger story that builds on the first while strongly suggesting that a third game will be developed. Beyond a few minor problems, this game definitely is as good if not better than the first.
