If you’ll turn Gears of War off for just a few minutes and
pay attention, we’d like to tell you about some of the other games you could be
playing now. While you were out slaughtering
locusts with your chainsaw, you probably failed to notice all the other great
Xbox games that came out last month, so here’s our September Xbox Review
Round-up.
The Gunstringer
The Gunstringer manages to be both silly and gritty at the same time. It’s narrated in authentic frontier gibberish by a grizzled old cowpoke, and tells a yarn about a feller who was betrayed and murdered. But he was too mean to die, and crawled from his grave in search of vengeance against the sidewindin’ bushwackin’ hornswaglin’ cracker croakers what done him wrong. Read the full review.
Bloodrayne
Betrayal
The shooting, slashing
and sexy goth chick are still present in Bloodrayne Betrayal, but this a completely different game, and that’s
actually a good thing. Every game is someone’s favorite game, but I doubt that there are
many hardcore Bloodrayne fans who’ll lament the changes to the series. The
older games weren’t terrible. They were just unremarkable, aside from the visual
design of the main character, and the cleavage-jiggling component of the
physics engine. Read the full review.
Dead Island
Will
you shoot zombies? Yes. Will you slash them to pieces with
machetes? That too. But you’ll also talk to NPCs about their woes, and
run quests for them, while doing yet more side quests for other NPCs.
You’ll also gain XP for doing so, and level up a character chosen from four
classes with different skill trees. This isn’t a complaint. Dead
Island gives the
player zombies by the truckload, but rather than being Left 4 Dead meets Dead Rising, it feels more like Mass
Effect with
zombies, or even Grand Theft Auto: Raccoon City. Read the full review.
Warhammer
40K: Space Marine
The ‘space marine’ trope
has been used in many games over the years, but now the originals are here to
reclaim their crown in the newest Warhammer 40K game to hit the 360: Space
Marine, a third-person
action-brawler/shooter which treats the venerable WH40K franchise with the
respect it deserves. Relic and THQ, the team behind the critically-acclaimed Dawn
of War series, have brought
the camera in a little closer than on their previous RTS games, allowing the
player to directly control the actions of one of humanity's greatest warriors
in the unending struggle against Chaos and the Xeno threat. From the off, Space
Marine feels like the
Warhammer 40K game that should have happened a long time ago. Read the full review.
NHL 12
NHL 12 can be summed up
in one word: refinement. Over 300 gameplay improvements have made the game
more balanced and appealing to newcomers of the franchise. One of the many
tweaks in this year's version is the goaltending play. For far too long,
goaltenders were a soulless defender. Even though goaltenders are
the last stand against opposing offenses, they do so much behind the scenes
that previous NHL games have
failed to capture. NHL 12 reinvigorates
the goaltending position in the NHL
series. Read the full review.
Ugly
Americans: Apocalypsegeddon
I’ll
save everyone the trouble of bringing up the less than stellar relationship
between game adaptations of films/television shows and their original
medium. Those of you who spend even a moderate amount of time playing
games usually know well enough to stay away from these abominations. Ugly
Americans: Apocalypsegeddon is by no means an abomination (unlike some of its
characters), but there are enough problems with both the gameplay and the
overall design that it comes perilously close. Read the full review.
Resident Evil 4 HD
Resident Evil 4 is the greatest Horror game ever. I was eager to buy it due to my interest of seeing a HD version of the game and improved controls. What we have here is a direct port with no touch ups. It's a missed opportunity to bring RE4 into next generation but instead it will be easily forgotten. - Alex Martinet
Gears of War 3
What can I
say? Gears of War 3 was
the biggest blockbuster this month by far, with 3 million copies sold in its
first week. For Gears
fans, the game delivers just as much as one would expect from the finale of a
triple-A trilogy. For those who could never get into the first two games,
it doesn’t really do anything different enough to change your mind. That
being said, the incredible amount of content and polish has me still pumping
hours and hours into Gears 3
with no sign of slowing down anytime soon. I have a lot of games on my
backlog that I want to get through, but the majesty of Gears of War 3 will force them to sit on my shelf for a little
longer. Read the full review.
