The Beatles: Rock Band

Title: The Beatles: Rock Band
Platform Played On: Xbox 360
Release Date: September 9, 2009
Date Played: September 2009 - 2011
Time Played: 20+ hours
Completed (Y/N): Yes
Score: 5/5



Opinion:
I should probably start by stating that I am a fan of Beatles. I do not go crazy about them, but I would recognize any of their songs and do generally enjoy listening to them. I also do enjoying playing the Rock Band and Guitar Hero games, I feel that they tend to have a good music selection and fun gameplay. All of that being said I feel that The Beatles: Rock Band is a damn good game!

The Beatles: Rock Band offers a journey through the entire Beatles career. You get to play all of the most famous Beatles albums and songs, and with DLC you could get virtually the entire Beatles library to play through. The presentation in The Beatles: Rock Band is phenomenal, as you play songs from different eras of the Beatles career the backgrounds will change accordingly and the fab four will wear appropriate clothes. This detail makes the experience totally awesome and makes you feel like you are playing right by their side.

Overall The Beatles: Rock Band is an awesome experience. It feels like Harmonix (developer) took everything they have learned from the previous Rock Band and Guitar Hero games and improved upon every aspect. The visuals are stunning, and the cinematics are breathtaking. All in all The Beatles: Rock Band is a great package, it may even be the best Rock Band game to date.

EVE Online

Title: Eve Online
Platform Played On: PC
Release Date: May 6, 2003
Date Played: 2009,  March - October 2012
Time Played: 500+ hours
Completed (Y/N): N/A
Score: 4/5



Opinion:
Eve Online came out quietly; however over the years it has become one of the most notorious video games in the world. It is the one MMO that makes headlines and refuses to die with the rest of them.

I am not a huge fan of Sci Fi MMOs, none of them managed to grab me, and so naturally EVE Online's launch and first years of service went by unnoticed by me. It wasn't until 2009 when I came across a notorious article about a multi thousand dollar scam in EVE that it gained my attention. I decided to check it out and promptly made an account.

There were a few things I learned immediately. One being the fact that EVE is not a welcoming game, the tutorials were barely sufficient enough to figure out how to move from point A to point B and in general trying to understand what was going on was reminiscent of taking an advanced calculus class in High School. After playing EVE for about 3 months (most of which consisted of just training skills and running a few rat missions here and there) I decided to end my subscription.

In the spring of 2012 I decided that I was bored with the monotony and sameness of all current MMOs and decided to give EVE another go. This time I was a lot more successful at learning the ropes and even established my own supply chain of PI (Planetary Interaction) goods from within a wormhole that my corporation captured and built a base in. These goods provided me enough dough to keep paying for my subscription, and so I continued on for the lack of a better term farming the materials and turning them around for profit in Jita. The first couple of months I found myself running missions, mining asteroid belts and zipping through wormholes. Eventually though I got right back into the mode of basically logging in a few times a day to check up on my PI and skill queue. And by October with Guild Wars 2 to fill the MMO void and a ton of my corp members leaving for greener pastures I decided that it was time to end my subscription. I still was raking in more than enough dough every month to keep my subscription for free; however I grew tired of needing to log in a few times a day to maintain my factories. And so when my subscription ran out on October 7th 2012, with nearly a billion ISK in the wallet and half a billion in assets (PLEX, the 30 day subscription goes for about 500 million) I froze my account. Perhaps I will return to it one day.

Eve Online is a very interesting MMO. It is unique in many way that is for sure. Just the mere fact that everything goes in the world of EVE is a pretty big departure from care bare MMOs. If all of a sudden all game development stopped and I had no other games to play I would definitelly consider EVE to be my one game. It's vastness and unpredictability is luring. However with so much other stuff going on I simply do not have the time for it. EVE's learning curve may be astounding; however it is a very deep and enjoyable game. I really enjoyed playing it; but at this point I feel like I got everything I wanted out of it. EVE as an MMO is stronger than ever, with its dozen expansions and ever evolving true to its definition "world" EVE is an amazing game. Perhaps we will meet again pilot Duxa Chaeros of Minmatar descent.

My Corp and I Destroying a Customs Office In Our Wormhole So That We Can Establish Our Own

Syndicate

Title: Syndicate
Platform Played On: Xbox 360
Release Date: February 21, 2012
Date Played: September 2012
Time Played: 10 hours
Completed (Y/N): Yes
Score: 4/5



Opinion:
I never thought there would be a 'new' Syndicate game. While the 90's Genesis/SNES game made quite a stir among gamers the franchise has been largely forgotten, so when EA announced in 2011 that there was going to be a new Syndicate game I got really excited.

The original (and it's few remakes) were all top down (isometric) squad shooter/RPG hybrids. This new take on the franchise is a straight up first person shooter with some of the elements from those old Syndicate games.

The overall plot stays the same, corporations rule the world, and you are an agent of one of those corporations (EuroCorp). You are not a good guy, or a bad guy, you are a tool. Your objective is to protect the interests of the company, beyond that everything is permitted.

Syndicate (1993)

In the world of Syndicate everyone has a chip in their head that enhances their natural abilities. You as a super duper agent of awesome are able to hack those chips and use them to your advantage to turn the tide of battle. There are three main things you can do when hacking someone else's chip. You can force them to suicide, you can force them to turn on their friends and fight at your side, and you can make their weapons explode. All of these hacks are fueled by adrenaline, so you can not just spam them on every guy, you need to do some traditional fighting in order to recharge the adrenaline. The chip also allows you to see people through walls, and hack electrical devices, armors and just in general be a bad ass.

As you progress through the game you will encounter other people with bad ass chips in their heads (generally bosses). By killing them and ripping out their chip you can backwards engineer the technology and earn upgrades to your own tech.

Syndicate runs in a proprietary "Starbreeze" engine, it resembles the Battlefield 3's Frostbite engine, and looks pretty damn good. There is a lot of blur and occlusion effects as well as really good lighting and particle effects. Syndicate easily looks like a PC game running on the consoles.

Syndicate's story will take you through many unfamiliar looking yet familiar sounding locations (such as Inglewood and Los Angeles), but since its the year 2069, anything hardly looks the same.

Syndicate has a few very minor flaws. There were a couple of times where it was unclear as to what my objective was, I would spend as long as 5 minutes running around trying to figure out that it wanted me to do a hack on some hidden back panel and then do a leaping jump into nothingness. I have found myself in a situation like that 3 or 4 times while playing through the game. Another issue is the pretty crazy difficulty spikes. The game will go from normally paced level to a boss that will take 10 thousand bullets to the face, or a room full of enemies rushing you from all sides. While some of those sections were a bit frustrating, the fun of shooting things up in Syndicate made it easy to overlook.

Overall Syndicate is a very competent shooter. It can be compared to the last year's Deus Ex (minus the choices), and I really enjoyed playing it. The difficulty spikes and confusion on where to go can be easily overlooked when the rest of the package is so damn good. I feel that if you like futuristic shooters playing through Syndicate is a no brainer.

My Statistics Upon Completion Of The Game

Rock Band 2

Title: Rock Band 2
Platform Played On: Xbox 360
Release Date: September 14, 2008
Date Played: September 2008 - 2011
Time Played: 100+ hours
Completed (Y/N): Yes
Score: 5/5



Opinion:
Rock Band 2 is not really as much of a sequel as it is a refinement of the first game, which is completely acceptable considering that the first game was basically perfect across the board.

Rock Band 2 comes with a whole new set of plastic instruments. The drums and the guitar have been improved, they are built better, and the drums specifically are made quieter, which overall tremendously improves the experience.

You can spend about $10 and import the tracks from Rock Band 1 (almost all of them) into Rock Band 2, in essence merging the two games into one. This makes Rock Band 2 an amazing package , not only can you choose from any song you played in the first game, now your song library is basically doubled, with this many tracks everyone is bound to find something they would enjoy to play.

Rock Band 2 continues to dominate house parties and hang outs around the county. It remains an excellent package and is still as fun as ever. Just like the first game, this one should be a part of everyone's collection, especially since the new instruments are backwards compatible, and the old instruments are forward compatible. This means that you do not need to shell out for the new instruments, you can just buy the game and get ready to rock!

Rock Band

Title: Rock Band
Platform Played On: Xbox 360
Release Date: November 20, 2007
Date Played: Fall 2007-2011
Time Played: 100+ hours
Completed (Y/N): Yes
Score: 5/5



Opinion:
Guitar Hero shook the gaming world. It wasnt the first rhythm game to hit the market, but prior to it's release rhythm games were a niche subculture of gaming (think DDR). Rock Band took what Guitar Hero did and ran with it.

While Guitar Hero allowed you to shred on the guitar to some of the best rock songs ever writeen, Rock Band introduced a whole rock band (pun intended) array of instruments into the mix. Now you can play drums, bass, guitar or sing, or even have a couple of friends come over and rock out for several hours as a full ensemble.

While most rhythm games before it were played by yourself, or with a few onlookers Rock Band made the rhythm genre a must have attraction for any college (or otherwise) party. It is the perfect game to play in such situations because not only could a bunch of people enjoy it together, the rest of the crowd could rock out to the tunes being played.

Overall Rock Band is a pretty amazing experience, aside from playing the real instruments and being a part of a real band this is probably as close as you can get, and with the game to game import feature and an online store with thousands of tracks you will never run out of fresh stuff to play. If you drink just enough, you will feel like a true rock star. Rock Band (any one of them) is a must in every gamer's collection.