Xbox 360

Need for Speed Hot Pursuit Preview

People who say Facebook isn’t the future of gaming have not tried out the new Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit demo. Developed by Criterion, the studio behind the Burnout series, Hot Pursuit’s most touted feature is “AutoLog,” a type of in-game social network that keeps constant tabs on the progress of other racers on your friends list.

This goes beyond just a regular leaderboard, though, and makes an earnest attempt at making a community out of a racing game. After going back to the main menu after my first race, message posts advertising my friends’ best race times continually floated past my screen, egging me on to try just one time.

Xbox 360 Kinect Bundle Missing AC Adapter

Those of you with multiple Xbox 360 consoles may want to take heed. If you buy the new Kinect Xbox 360 bundle, you will not receive a Kinect power adapter. The reason of course is that the new 360’s do not require the power cord as they have a dedicated port so the Kinect can draw its power directly from the console. If you want to use the Kinect on another 360 in your house, say one that is not a Slim, you may be out of luck. The only way to get the cord is to buy the standalone Kinect.

Rock of the Dead Review

Small game developers have a hard time these days. It may be easier for smaller developers to get their name out there with download titles on XBL or PSN, but when it comes to full featured retail titles they still have a hard time breaking through. That’s why I’m sympathetic to the plight of Epicenter Studios and their most recent title Rock of the Dead. This is only the studios third title, the first two not really catching the gaming community’s attention. If there was a game that could find a niche and make a name for Epicenter Studios it would be Rock of the Dead. The game has all the makings of a cult hit; it features Rob Zombie, his music, Neil Patrick Harris, and Felicia Day. People in the know will recognize Neil and Felicia from Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog; most others will at least recognize Rob Zombie from his multi-platinum solo albums and as part of the heavy metal band White Zombie. Needless to say the game has an enormous amount of potential but fails to live up to what could have been.

Xbox 360 Holiday Bundle Announced

Yesterday Microsoft announced a special Holiday bundle that is sure to get your yule log growing. Over the next few weeks, retailers will be selling a special version of the new slimmer Xbox 360 250 GB console paired with not one—but two games to get you started.

The Xbox 360 Holiday Bundle comes with a physical copy of Forza 3 as well as a token for the full game download of Alan Wake. Both games are exciting Xbox 360 exclusives and are great starters to new Xbox owner’s collections. Alan Wake going digital introduces gamers to the ease of downloading games of the Xbox Live Marketplace while Forza 3 gives people something to play right out of the box.

Fable III Review

The Fable franchise is famous for some serious pre-release hype. Before each installment releases, Peter Molyneux tantalizes us with features that never seem to make their way into the finished product. In the first Fable, it was the promise of an acorn that could be planted and would mature into a full tree over in-game years. The exclusion of the acorn did not particularly hurt the game’s sales, but it became a marquee for the broken promises that have plagued the Fable series. Fable III was announced to be compatible with Kinect (Natal at the time) but development constraints would keep the Kinect features from seeing the finalized product. Despite this, the latest installment in the franchise manages to shake any negative effects and emerge looking like a healthy step forward for the franchise.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II Review

I had pretty high expectations for The Force Unleashed 2. I was a big fan of the original and despite some big flaws it was still one of my favorite games of this generation. When a sequel was announced it seemed too good to be true, a chance to fix all the mistakes in the original while potentially improving on everything I loved about the first—Yes please! Unfortunately The Force Unleashed 2 fails to deliver on those ambitions.

The story opens with Darth Vader’s signature Tie Advanced landing on the stormy world of Kamino. We learn that Vader has been trying to clone an improved version of the Starkiller from the original game—And unsuccessfully at that. It seems that due to the accelerated cloning process each previous clone has succumbed to madness because of residual memories from the original Starkiller. In fear of being the next clone Vader casts aside, The cloned Starkiller lashes out against Vader and manages to escape the cloning facility in search of the Rebel allies from the first game.

WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2011 Review

In the past few years, the Smackdown! vs. Raw games have entered a niche market that has been near impossible to break out of for the developers. In last year’s installment, it seemed like they had completely given up on getting out of that market by delivering a game solely for wrestling fans. Its introduction of the WWE Story Creator mode was probably the best thing to happen to the series in a long time. In this year’s installment, THQ introduces WWE Universe among even more additions. Some of which work out fine, most of which fall slightly short.

The aforementioned WWE Universe is by far the biggest addition to WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2011. It takes all the matches you perform in single player (excluding Road to Wrestlemania ) and blends them together to form storylines, and help people rise through the ranks to the point where they eventually earn title shots.