Out Of Mana

I came across the trial of Chime on the Xbox Live Marketplace the other day. It became the primary reason it took me so long to finish Bioshock 2, I'd play for 2 hours and just think "man, I wish I was playing Chime".  

Chime was created by a new dev, OneBigGame, as their first title. It was developed as a non-profit title, with a minimum of 60% of all sales going to a variety of charity foundations.

The game itself is an interesting puzzle game, having you try and cover as much of the screen as possible, instead of the normal screen clearing method. The shapes change depending on the level so you can't always carry over the same strategy to the different levels.

The game really shines when it comes to the music. Each level has it's own song, and the better you do, the better the music gets. There are only 5 songs/levels, but the music fits it perfectly, and it's only 5 bucks anyway and has infinite replay value. So buy Chime and feel good about yourself while you're having tons of fun.  

More sequels it is then. Bioshock 2 came out last week and I managed to get my hands on it. After completing it I still have mixed feelings about it, but since we need content and nobody else on this site is going to play it anytime soon; here goes nothing.

In Bioshock 2 you will return to Rapture, but this time as one of the Big Daddies you fought in the first game, one of the first Big Daddies to be exact. You will fight through new areas of Rapture all the while uncovering the mystery of young girls disappearing from the mainland, and your own origins.

Review is after the cut.

So Evan and I were noticing that so far the AvP demo seems to be getting at least decent reviews, so we decided to try it again and see if it would grow on us. It didn't.

I still find the controls awkward, although I did start to get used to them a bit. I did manage to end up with my controller sidways in my hand trying to hit all the different buttons I needed at the same time. Combat feels sluggish and unresponsive, and the instant kill moves take forever to complete. By the time I finish an instant kill someone has noticed me and kills me while I'm still looking at the person I just killed.

My favorite part of the game is when the announcer says that there is only one minute left. My least favorite part of the game is when I'm playing it. I don't really have anything else to say on this game that Evan hasn't already covered in our first impressions review.

Brandon and I just got finished playing the Aliens vs. Predator multiplayer demo that was released today. I got a chance to play as all the races, so I'm writing this, but talking to Brandon about it we both pretty much feel the same way.

Now I haven't really played a lot of games I would describe as "bad" lately, it's been a pretty good year so far with Mass Effect 2,

Darksiders, and something else probably pretty decent that I can't quite remember. That being said, the Aliens vs. Predator demo, is bad, plain and simple, neither of us could find even a single redeeming factor in this game. The shooter mechanics for the marine are ripped right out of the 90s, although the guns are the only weapon that seems to give you feedback when you hit the enemy, that's about all there is to say about that race, it's a sub-par shooter. The predator's melee attacks are sluggish at best, even for the lighter/faster attack, I thought this may have been intentional as the predators would have to be slower than the incredibly agile aliens, but no, the alien's melee attacks weren't noticeably faster at all. The special jump mechanics for the 2 alien races, which allowed you to perform long distance jumps seemed broken as neither Brandon, nor I, could figure out why it only worked half the time.

The controls can be very confusing, specifically while playing the aliens, which can climb on any surface and often don't seem to go in the direction you want to. Not to mention the alien's body parts keep popping into your field of view causing needless distraction (Brandon managed to break the camera so you could see your own head while playing within
10 minutes of loading the game). The outdated graphics are just the cherry on top of this horrible experience of a demo. 

It's important to remember that this is only a demo, which the game is quick to remind you of when you load it up, but unless the note at the beginning means they will be releasing a completely different game, I don't see this title going very far. Does it offer a unique multiplayer experience? Yes, I suppose it does. Does anybody want this experience? Probably I guess, but I don't really want to talk to those people. I'm sure we'll come back to this; maybe after playing the  campaigns for each class the controls will seem more natural. That is a pretty big "maybe" though.

The second chapter of Bioware's epic space opera has finally been released after two years. The story of Commander Shepard continues about two years after the end of the first game, with Sovereign having been defeated and the galaxy safe for the time being. Or at least it would have been, if an enigmatic race known as The Collectors hadn't begun abducting entire human colonies. 

The heads of galactic government are turning a blind eye as always, so Shepard teams up with a shady group dedicated to stopping The Collectors at any cost. The cost probably being: several billion dollars and the lives of you and your crew. Your mission? To hit The Collectors where they live and show them that humanity won't sit idly by as hundreds of thousands of colonists are being abducted. To accomplish this goal you traverse the galaxy recruiting the most powerful, skilled, and generally badass people around. Human and alien alike, you need to convince them to join you on this suicide mission if you plan to have any hope of completing your mission, let alone surviving it.

So was the wait worth it? Find out after the cut.