Kevin and I spent the better part of last night, between our usually productive comic creation process, testing a few delicious samples from the box that is the, uh, Xbox.
Dead Rising
The first game we tried was Dead Rising, which in concept sounds like a lot of fun – basically, you are trapped in a mall with hundreds and hundreds of zombies and you have three days to survive. You can basically use anything you can pick up as a weapon. With a mall full of stores and time on your hands, the idea of being creative with fighting off zombies got us pretty excited.
In execution though, the game’s only so-so. Sure, it was fun watching our character peel through fifty zombies with a shopping cart, as well as, throw cans of pop from a box, but it did get a little tiresome pretty quickly. While we didn’t exactly dive into the story whole-heartedly, it seemed as though it would be enough to hold interest for a few hours and nothing more.
The final verdict was Dead Rising is fun, but fun in the “rental” sort of way. Once you’ve played it, the freshness fades faster than a budget can of feminine hygiene product at an all girl rugby tournament.
Gears or War
The proclamations are largely true. Our jaws collectively dropped upon popping this into the Xbox 360. I’m not a “shooter” guy and even less so a “tactical shooter” guy, but this game had me at “finish him.”
Gears or War is graphically the best game I’ve seen on a console; from the minute our character went running into a firefight in some bombed out hotel with couches flying apart, pictures falling off walls and wood splinters kicking up with bullet ricochets, Kevin and I knew this deep within our very souls.
The gameplay supports graphical muscle in a way few games with nice graphics do. My first thought upon seeing the game was, man this blows me away like “Resident Evil 4.” The way characters roll, hide against cover and scan for enemies is top notch. The movements are smooth and surprisingly fast, plus there seems to be levels of complexity getting to know the intuitive controls. When we played, we were handed our rear-ends more often than I’d care to mention; this isn’t your grandma’s run-and-gun game like Doom. You need to know your environment or your likely going to be on the wrong end of a chainsaw gun; yeah, it’s as pretty as it sounds.
The final verdict; this game looks and plays great. And, I hear there is a feature where you and your friends and can together over live on a solo campaign (but sadly not multiplayer) which sounds like good chainsawing fun.
Call of Duty 3
Like the familiar hobo you threw epithets to every morning at the train station, Call of Duty comes around, whether you want it or not. This was the last game we tried and it was basically my idea to rent it because I heard the multiplayer could support some unheard number of people on one map (24, 24?)
The presentation is standard, the gameplay is exactly the same as it’s always been. Basically, it’s the game you know and love less and less each time.
One important “however” however. Call of Duty 3 lets you and your friends play together on one console while playing multiplayer. This in of itself is mind-blowingly fun. Kevin and I took to a map like cat people attacking one-dimensional Stephen King characters in a bad horror movie. There is something to be said about playing multiplayer with a friend where you can coordinate attacks, laugh at your foibles and basically have fun with your friend, instead of forcing them to watch.
The final verdict – the solo missions probably compete with “paint drying” in terms of entertainment, but Call of Duty 3 is built for the multiplayer and built on rock-and-roll, especially with friends over.
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