The Mario Kart formula hasn’t really changed much since it started on the Super Nintendo, but there hasn’t really been any reason for it to. It’s still the best of the not-so-serious racing games out there. Races often come down to blind luck, but it is still fun.

The controls are a simple as can be. Even though it comes with the steering wheel attachment, the game doesn’t cost anymore than normal; more proof that Nintendo really cares about it’s gamers. Turning the wheel to steer is incredibly responsive. The game can actually be played using only two buttons. The 2 button accelerates and any direction arrow uses the items gathered around the track. There are more complicated controls once a player gets good at the game; the different direction buttons do different things with each item. For example, if you get a green shell, Up shoots the shell forward, down shoots it behind, and holding either left or right keeps it stuck to the back of your cart and protects you from many of the other racers attacks. There are also two controls modes: automatic and manual. This would imply shifting gears, but that isn’t the case. Automatic will allow your car to power slide around turns on it’s own when you turn the wheel enough. Manual requires you to press the B button, which makes the car hop into the slide. The advantage to manual is that if you power slide long enough, you get a mini-boost out of the turn whereas automatic doesn’t have this option.

While the vehicles control great, that doesn’t mean the races play out based on your skill at driving. Many races are won more by luck than ability, especially since one of the attacks the enemy can get will blow up the person in first place and can’t be defended against. This means if you are winning, there are eleven other racers that have a chance to blow you up anytime they cross the item boxes scattered all over the track. There was one particular race that I was in first the whole time until the last turn. Once I got there, I got hit by three attacks, one right after the other, without any warning. I ended up in eleventh place and this blew the whole tournament for me.

Each racer has their own strengths and weaknesses that make big differences in how you race with them. There are the expected ones like Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, Toad, and the always under appreciated Koopa Troopa. All of the characters come from Mario games or spin-offs but I would have liked to see some other popular Nintendo characters, such as Link from Zelda or Samus from Metriod. The game starts with thirteen different characters to choose from with more being unlocked. You can also unlock the ability to race as your Mii. I didn’t like the fact that the game doesn’t tell you what you have to do in order to unlock characters and I had to search the internet to find out how.

My absolute favorite thing about the game is how winning is figured. The tournaments consist of four races and points are given depending on what place you finish in. The person with the most points at the end wins. This means it is still possible to win the tournament even if you never win a race. I don’t know why the more realistic racing simulations make you get first every time if a cartoon racing game can have such a great way to handle tournaments. There are eight different tournaments to choose from  which gives us a total of thirty two tracks. The first sixteen are new for this game while the last sixteen are from past games, making up a ‘best of Mario Kart’ list. I would have prefered if there were a few more from the first SNES game since that is where the series got it’s start. There are only two tracks from that version. All the tracks are varied and there wasn’t one that I didn’t like or was too confusing.

Battle mode isn’t nearly as fun as I remember from the SNES version. The battles take place on an arena track and the goal is to get to the item boxes to gather weapons and attack the other team. Whoever gets the most hits on the other team wins. It’s a good idea in theory, but that tracks are so large that much of the time is spent trying to hunt down the other team. Since there are no battle tournaments and no rewards or unlocks for this mode, it almost seemed pointless after a while.

The online mode is cool, but doesn’t stand up to the options in most Xbox 360 games. Opponents are randomly selected based on their user ranking that starts at five thousand and goes up or down depending on race performance. I did like having the ability to play split screen with a friend while racing online against others. There are also tournaments that are started by Nintendo from time to time. I haven’t joined one yet since there have only been two since the game came out and none since I started playing. Due to a lack of voice chat, I wondered if I was actually racing real people at all from time to time.

I expected more from the graphics. I know that it’s basic graphics are supposed to be part of it’s charm, but many things looked rather bland. The smoke and sparks are dull and the explosions don’t look good at all. Most people won’t mind because this is what was expected, but after playing other Wii games like Resident Evil 4 and The Legend of Zelda, I thought that Mario Kart could have looked much better.

Writing a review on the game almost seems pointless since everyone will buy the game because Mario is on the cover, but the game does live up to it’s namesake. It could have been better, but it’s still one of the best racing games on the Wii. Also, don’t forget that this is one of those games that your friends will expect you to have when they come over to check out the system.

Mercenaries 2 provides a level of freedom that you can’t find anywhere else. Every game, open world environment or not, has sequences at some point that are designed to let you go along a single, predefined path. That never happens here. When attacking an enemy location, you have the choice to go in guns blazing on foot, have a tank airlifted in for you, steal a helicopter that is in mid flight, or just drop a bomb on them and pick up the pieces. This is just a small taste of the freedom and you can go about the destruction any way you see fit. Had it not been for the excessive amount of glitches, this game could have been great. As it stands now, it is just a good title that is still a lot of fun.

The game is very easy to pick up and play if you have played any other action or open world game. The weapons are the same that you have seen in every other war game. Commandeering a vehicle is done with a single button press when in the right spot, almost exactly like Grand Theft Auto. Land and air vehicles handle great, but sea vehicle are jumpy and unpredictable. This is made worse because nearly every sea-based mission is a timed race through obstacles which you cannot predict how your craft will react to. Air-strikes and bombs aren’t as readily available as in the last game, but they can still be used liberally. The game begins with a single contact, but more are added as you complete missions, though usually there are only two to choose from. What is different from other games is that many of these contacts will send you on missions against other potential employers. If you attack a faction, they will eventually not allow you to work for them anymore unless you pay them a bribe. There was a missed opportunity for the developers here in that you cannot play the factions against each other by doing jobs for both. Basically, the best way to play through is to do all the jobs for one faction, then bribe the other and do their missions. If you upset one side, they will no longer allow you to buy their supplies, but the other side usually has something equivalent. The mission variety is a bit lacking also. Almost every mission is no more than go take over that outpost, go kill that guy, or go blow up that building. There are a few glimpses of brilliance. Delivering the ‘Devastator’ in one of the first missions was ingenious (I won’t ruin it). Also, escaping a collapsing oil rig with a tied up captive was intense, but most of the mission quickly just become ‘more of the same.’ There are a number of side missions that usually consist of checkpoint races. They are referred to as different things, like test the prototype vehicle, deliver the items, or simply beat the clock. The delivery ones were fairly original. They consist of transporting anything from rum to human organs. You are given a pickup truck with supplies in the back and you have to make it to the destination in time without the stuff flying out. The physics behind the items in the bed are very impressive. They slide around, bounce off each other, and fly up in the air. As long as enough are left in the bed by the time you arrive, you pass the mission. The entire game can be played as co-op, although the difficulty is not scaled for a second player which makes the game much easier. If one player dies, the other can revive them so being just mildly careful can lead to never having to restart at base. While it is a fun game, there isn’t much in the way of replay value since there aren’t multiple difficulties. There are hidden items to hunt for (which have a tendency to disappear from their spots when you are looking for them and then reappear later), and the rewards may be fun to mess around with but they won’t help you play the game better. The main enemy of the game doesn’t actually seem all that bad in the big picture and actually seems to want to help the country. Of course, you play mercenary and he didn’t pay you. Screw politics and give me my damn money.

I did really like the way resupplying works. Everything, from bullets to bombs, must be purchased from the headquarters of the faction that is selling the item you want and only a very few items are available from multiple sides. It’s a good idea to make sure you have bought everything you want from a faction before you attack them, including a few of their spare vehicles to use as a disguise once they don’t like you anymore. Once purchased, the item is added to your stockpile. At any time after this, the item can be airlifted to your location. Just make sure that there is no enemy anti-air weapons in the area or you supplies will be lost and your money wasted. In addition to money, you must also collect fuel in order for your helicopter to fly the items to you or the jet to perform the air-strike. The only problem I have with the system is that you are unable to sell items back. For example, I bought a bunch of helicopters to make it easier to get around. I used one to complete a couple of missions and then unlocked the ability to buy a much better helicopter. Now I was stuck with about ten choppers that I will never use. Even if they could be sold at an extreme price cut, it would have been nice to get them off the list of supplies.

While the game is an absolute blast to play, it is marred by an insane amount of glitches. Several times I had to save and restart my Xbox 360 because the voices stopped working during all mission briefings. A grappling hook can be used to steal helicopters and on a few occasions, the running animation continued to play while I was in the air. Far more often than is acceptable, I ordered one of my helicopters to be delivered and the pilot would land it on top of a box or piece of debris. This would make him think he hadn’t landed yet and so he wouldn’t get out or let me in. After a minute or so, the chopper would simply disappear from right in front of me, but my money and fuel was not refunded. One of the more strange ones was when every time I called for a supply drop during one particular play session, after the chopper left he reported being under attack by an enemy I could not see and then the chopper damage bill appeared on screen. This would have been incredibly annoying if it weren’t for the fact that it actually gave me money when this happened instead of taking it away like it was supposed to. Everyone in the game talks way too much for the small amount of recorded statements that are in the game. This is really more of a design flaw, but the hundredth time you hear someone yell ‘Hey, it’s the Merc,’ you’ll think of it as a glitch. There are tons of other problems like this in the game, such as people hovering in mid-air or invisible vehicle when driving at high speeds. None of these are game breakers, but they are incredibly disappointing to see (let’s hear it for EA’s quality assurance department).

The graphics look great in some places and sad in others. The explosions are awesome and the environments look very realistic, especially from the sky. Basically everything is destructible: buildings, trees, the aforementioned oil rig. Drop a nuke on a city and everything is flattened. The only thing that can’t be blown up is the ground itself. On the other end of the spectrum, the tracer fire looks bad, mostly because it moves so slow. Helicopters always make a loud, metallic bang and throw sparks when they land (including the ones with tires) even though they are designed to not do exactly that. Also, the swimming animation plays at about ten times the fastest speed of Micheal Phelps. It just looks ridiculous.

This is basically the original game with some next gen polish on it and a new location. I’m not sure why there were so many glitches in the game since there was so much time for development. Even with it’s faults, the game is still a lot of fun and worth a look from any action junkies that get a kick out of excessive destruction.

It’s hard to say exactly why this game is so good because everyone is going to be in one of two categories: the long time fans of the series that already love the game and the people who can’t understand why this series is so popular. This game wraps up the Metal Gear Solid storyline perfectly. There may be more Metal Gear games, but it closes Solid Snake’s part of the series.

The stealth action continues to get better. The already good controls have been tweaked to near perfection. Although it takes several button presses to do a simple action (like aiming your gun), the scheme is so intuitive that it quickly becomes second nature.The aiming moves a bit slower than I liked and it lead to some confusing moments during some of the more intense battles. Many people won’t like the game’s slow pace, but that is exactly why I loved it. Waiting for the perfect moment to pop out and quietly take down one guy is so much more rewarding than mowing down a hundred enemies while running through a level at full speed. Instead of having to switch camouflage like in the last game, you get a new suit that automatically takes on the pattern of anything you lay down on or lean against. This makes sneaking around a bit more fun, but still keeps the challenge because you will have to be extra careful when going through an area with several different floor patterns. It is also much easier to run and gun in this game than past ones, but I still wouldn’t recommend it. In addition to monitoring Snake’s health, you now also have to keep an eye on his stress level. Actions like getting shot at, being spotted by the enemy, or even just walking around in the open will raise his stress. If Snake gets too stressed, he will not perform as well in combat.

One of the reasons it is a bit easier to get away with not sneaking is the addition of the character Drebin (and his always entertaining hairless monkey with a soft drink addiction). He is an arms dealer that you meet early in the game who will allow you to buy weapons and ammo from him using Drebin points. You can also automatically sell any weapons you find to him as soon as you pick them up as long as you already have another one in your inventory. This adds a new, unexpected aspect to the game. After watching a squad of rebels get mowed down by the enemy, I would debate whether or not it was worth it to expose myself to gather their weapons or just play it safe and move on. By the end of the game, it is possible to have so many points that ammo will never be an issue. Some players will like this, while others will feel it isn’t really faithful to the series since in every other game, you had to work so hard to conserve ammo.

The boss battles are hit and miss. Some are a ton of fun and quite memorable while others are completely lame. All of the bosses are named for the bosses in the first Metal Gear Solid and are a bit similar, but still unique. The Screaming Mantis battle was awesome and reminiscent of the Psycho Mantis battle. I can’t really describe it without ruining it for you, so you will just have to take my word for it. The Crying Wolf fight, however, was disappointing. The series is known for it’s sniper boss battles, so I was ready for a long fight. I ran to a tank to hide under it and was able to see the boss. I shot her with my rifle which caused her to run around looking for me. When she was done running around, she returned to the same spot and I could shoot her again. After repeating this several times, I won the battle. Even though this fight was a little boring, it doesn’t even begin to compare to how bad the final fight is. The final boss battle is a fist fight and the controls are completely changed. I had to die a few time before I even got the feel for how to fight. Even once I got the controls down, the fight is so poorly constructed that I died several more times. The hit detection basically doesn’t work and always seemed to favor your enemy. I would throw punches and my hand would go right through them. They would swing at me and clearly miss by a couple of feet but it would still register as a hit. During the fight, Snake only takes small steps and cannot run at all, making avoiding attacks near impossible. After an insane amount of practice, I got to the point where I can win the fight most of the time, but I still hated it.

The cutscenes, as always, are top notch. Every camera shot and angle is Hollywood quality. Although they are impressive, many of them drag on way too long. It will take more than a half hour from the first time you put the game in your PS3 to the time you actually start playing. There are a few scenes that are about forty five minutes long. The final movie, including credits, is almost an hour and a half. You can pause during these movies, but you cannot save and quit. If you don’t have more than an hour of free time, you might as well play something else and wait until you have some more time on your hands, because you won’t get anywhere with this one. The game took me about eighteen hours to complete, but I would guess that less than ten was actual gameplay.

Even though the scenes can be lengthy, the story is amazing. The main purpose of the plot is to explain all the past games, so newcomers will easily get lost. Just about every question you ever had is finally answered. What happened to your allies from the first game? Why is Snake so old? Is it possible for Raiden to go from sissy to bad ass? I’ll spoil this one: yes. Why can’t Vamp seem to die? Hell, they even go as far as to explain why the guard in the first two games had stomach problems that made him go to the bathroom so much and tie that into the story. How’s that for closure. Almost every character from the series makes an appearance (some only in flashbacks) and everyone has an impact on the story in some way. I can’t think of a better way to tie up the story I have been following for ten years and three console generations.

This is the just about the perfect end to the Solid Snake saga. Aside from a few poorly designed boss fights, I loved every bit of this game. Finally, there is a reason to own a PS3.

Games that try to contain elements of both simulation and arcade usually don’t succeed at either. MX vs ATV is no exception. It doesn’t help that the two are combined in ways that they never should have been. Taking off from a jump has a very arcade feel because you can get ridiculous air. Landing has a very simulation feel because you will crash horribly after falling from the aforementioned ridiculous air.

If you have played any of the earlier games in the series (including the very first one from about ten years ago), you can stop reading now because you know exactly what to expect. Absolutely nothing about most of the game has been improved. The same things you liked about the rest of the series is unchanged. The races are extreme and action packed. The same things that were frustrating and needed to be fixed still remain. The computer racers have a tendency to crash and actually appear a good 50 feet in front of you.

This brings up my biggest problem with the game and made me hate playing it. Crashing has no lasting detrimental effect on the race. Most of the time, you can crash and barely lose any time because the game respawns your vehicle so fast and many times further up the track. This can be good because the action never really slows down. The problem arises because the same applies to the computer racers and they crash all the time. Countless times during a race, I was neck and neck with a computer racer and he would crash. I would get excited because I thought I was going to gain a position. Then my hopes would be shot when I saw the opponent that crashed appear way in front of me and I ended up a couple of seconds behind him. This led to many frustrating races.

In an effort to remain family friendly, the game will automatically respawn your vehicle if it thinks you are going to drive into the crowd. Sometimes the crowd is so close to the track in some of the outdoor races that you can get respawned even though you only drifted off the track by a foot or two. This is a dumb problem to run into because it could have been fixed by simply not putting the crowd so close. This just added to the thrown together feel of the game.

The difficulty and computer’s skill is also horribly scaled. You have the option to choose the difficulty before each race. Most of the races I can win by insane margins on the first two difficulties (so much so that I entertained myself by driving across the finish line in reverse), but I still regularly get dead last on any super cross stadium event on the easiest setting. The computer opponents don’t maintain the same skill during a whole race either. During some segments, they will race so well that you will have no chance at catching up with them. Then suddenly, they will decide that they must slam on their brakes to make a wide turn that you don’t even have to let off the gas for. There were also times when they would slow down on straight sections for no reason. This made my close wins feel more like luck than skill.

This game does add some new events that allows you to race as monster trucks, stadium trucks, or dune buggies. I personally very much enjoyed these events, I think because they remove the ability to crash since you can’t fall off of these vehicles like the bikes or ATVs. Actually, the monster truck events are more fun than Monster Jam, which is sad since that game is devoted entirely to monster truck racing. Unfortunately there aren’t very many of these events since they are more of a bonus gimmick than a main gameplay feature. Oh, and here’s a random fact. Apparently monster trucks have better acceleration than any other vehicle in the game. Talk about realism.

The physics are way too random to be relied upon. Most of the time, if you hit a box on the side of the track, the box will go flying but your vehicle will stay on it’s path. Every once in a while, those same boxes will stay stationary and throw your vehicle into the air which would cause you to crash. There was one race I recall where I took a turn way too wide and ended up riding the guard rail around the corner. When I hit the same rail in the same spot at about the same speed on the next lap, it was completely destroyed and I went flying off the cliff on the other side. During the start of a race with a bunch of other racers, you will bounce around between them with almost no control and it looks terribly unrealistic. It seems like they are using the same physics engine that the series has been using for a while. This was fine a few years ago, but doesn’t stand up today.

While MotorStorm on PS3 seemed determined to show us what the future of off road racing games could look like, MX vs ATV seems content to remind us what they used to look like. Aside from some better up close textures, nothing is improved from the last game. The flyover of the track before the event looks terrible. The ground is blotchy and unrealistic. The trees stand out and don’t look like they belong in the environment. The vehicles look good, but don’t begin to compare to other games. Tire tracks in the mud are either real looking or simply solid lines on the ground, seemingly at random. When you hit any kind of large bump, your tire will go toward the wheel well and become part of the fender for a moment until it falls back into place. When crashing, your body will almost always go right through your bike or ATV. These types of clipping problems really don’t have a place in next gen games.

The game can be fun at times, but it is the same exact fun as the last game in nearly every way. If you love the series and haven’t played the last couple of games, this could be worth checking out to see what has been added. Otherwise, there are too many problems that have remained in the series for far too long for me to recommend this game. If you need some off road action, MX vs ATV Unleashed (the last game in the series) or Motorstorm can be picked up for a much better price by now.

Almost from the moment I turned the game on, I could see ‘destined for the bargain bin’ written all over this one. It isn’t a bad game, it just isn’t up to par with what gamers have come to expect for fifty bucks.

The game is fairly fun, but also very bland. Just about any theme could have been put into the racing for this game and it would have fit. Nothing, outside of the freestyle events, says ‘monster trucks.’ The action can be addicting, but many of the races are won more by luck than skill. The trucks also feel very light and floaty for what are supposed to be 10,000 pound vehicles (the average weight is one of the interesting facts the game gives you during the loading screens). The trucks have a speed boost that is similar to nitrous and is almost unlimited (you know, just like real monster trucks). Excessive use can over heat the engine, but that won’t slow you down. It only prevents you from using the speed boost for a few seconds. The tracks are littered with objects that are destructible, but most of these things will send you bouncing in random directions. Other times, you can get hit by an opponent and get stuck to the front of their truck resulting in you being dragged around the track for several seconds with no way to get free. Almost everything on a track is destructible, which is a blast to play around with. I found myself aiming for things that aren’t right in front of me just to see what happens. The only problem with this is that the marker for the finish line is also destructible and is usually destroyed in the first couple laps. This makes it difficult to know exactly where the line is at the end of a race. For a while, I actually thought there was no finish line until I learned to look for the broken pieces of the the sign that was above us at the beginning of the race. There also isn’t much variety in the tracks. There are five championships, but each consists of only one track with slight variations.

Progress through the game isn’t based on winning races, but on earning points by destroying objects and performing stunts. Items are unlocked at set amounts of points. At first, only new trucks are unlocked. This becomes fairly pointless once you realize that every truck handles the same and the world’s most popular truck, Gravedigger, is available right off the bat. Much later in the game, movies of monster trucks in action are unlocked. These are cool, but it isn’t anything you can’t find on YouTube. Aside from earning achievement points on the Xbox 360, there isn’t really any reason to actually win races. The next event is unlocked by placing higher than third. In the case of the head to head drag races, losing means second place, which is high enough to unlock the next event.

There are several different race types that try and keep your attention. Of course, there are the basic races with a set number of laps. Eliminator is similar to lap races with last place being eliminated at the end of each lap. I really didn’t see much difference between the Stadium Circuit and Stadium Racing. Both were similar to the real life drag races but are a little longer and have more stunts during the race. The Freestyle are the main draw. Just like the real events, you have a set amount of time to perform as many stunts as possible. The damage modeling during these events is a little more realistic. Pieces of your truck will fly off and if you are too rough, you can actually loose a few wheels. The game says the event will end early if you come to a stop while overturned, but my truck always had the magical ability to somehow always roll back over. Not only are the freestyle events the most fun, they also provide you with the most points to unlock other trucks. The total lack of a replay option is incredibly disappointing, especially in the case of freestyle.

The graphics aren’t particularly good, but they did grow on me after a while. The trucks look pretty good and are fun to watch. They collect mud during the race that looks really cool. Panels fall off and expose the roll bar underneath. During particularly brutal races, all that will be left of the truck is the roll bar with the driver fully exposed. The action moves a little too quickly to really feel realistic. The tracks look alright, but aren’t great. A lot of the objects are repeated over and over. The destruction looks good, but I would have expected more debris effects from a game involving monster trucks.

The game is simply OK. There isn’t very much variety to it (and no variety between the trucks at all) but is still fun to play. It can be frustrating at times and wins can come down to lucky breaks. Monster truck fans will get a kick out of it, but for anyone else, there are too many far better racing games available to warrant a purchase on this one.

After the writing of this review, the PC version came out and is priced at $29.99. The game plays basically the same but the graphics look sharper. This is definitely a budget game and is appropriately priced on the PC. This makes it more ridiculous that the are still charging $49.99 for the console versions.

This is the closest any game has ever come to living up the the hype. No one thing about it makes it great. There are many things that are rather annoying about the game. If you look past the individual problems, the game as a whole is an amazing achievement. This is the first game I have ever played that upon completion, I immediately started my second play through.

Designed by the same people that made Knights of the Old Republic, that game’s influence can be seen everywhere. It plays nearly identically and many of the ideas are the same. Imagine Star Wars without lightsabers and a little better technology and you will basically get the gist of Mass Effect. The battles play similarly to Gears of War. The action is seen from an over the shoulder third person perspective. There is a cover mechanic similar to Gears but a targeting assist makes gun battles a little easier. It needs to be easier to target because, until you get a few levels under your belt, the game is incredibly difficult. There isn’t much of a tutorial to help you out either. Once your abilities get some experience behind them, you really become a force to be reckoned with. You need to be, because your party members are complete idiots in battle and you will find yourself doing almost all of the fighting. You can issue basic orders to them, but much of the time they will just ignore you and end up getting themselves killed. Luckily, they are returned to life as soon as any nearby hostiles are eliminated. The game ends only if you are killed.

The story is everything a scifi epic needs to be. Every life in the galaxy is in danger and you are the only one who can save them. It is nice to see that people actually appreciate what you are doing in the game. You will start to be recognized for your deeds and even get some fans that want your picture or autograph. I was getting tired of games where you are the toughest SOB in the universe and everyone still talks down to you the whole time. Listening to the local news channel put it’s own twist on what they think happened during my last mission always brought a smile to my face. These things don’t have any real bearing on the game play; they just add to the depth. There aren’t as many difficult decisions in the game as the television ads (or even the game’s intro video) would like you to believe. Never will you have to sacrifice one quest to go do another the way the ads imply. Only twice did I have to actually think about which decision was the best one. The main quest was a little shorter than I would have liked. As far as the time to complete is concerned, I had no problem with that. My first play through took just under 25 hours and unlockable difficulty levels make it quite a long game. The problem was that there weren’t enough main story missions to really make you feel the epic scale of the game. Most of your time is spent on side missions, and many of those have mini storylines that are nearly as good as the main one. There were a few times when I didn’t even care about the main story until I found the person I had been tracking down for a side quest. The ending of the game is the first to come along in a long time that really just felt right. I got the closure I like to get from a game but there is enough left open in the event of a sequel. You can even play the game again with your leveled up character once you complete it, but since you can’t change the difficulty without starting a new character, this option felt a little useless to me.

The graphics overall are amazing. The character’s faces portray very real emotion and look more realistic than any other game I have ever seen. The character creator allowed me to make a guy that looked almost exactly like myself. One of the alien races, the Krogan (seen in the above screenshot on the left), actually look like they were taken right out of a movie. Put next to Hollywood’s best CG special effects, they would fit right in. I wish the loading screens were a bit longer because the graphics don’t completely load until after a scene is on the screen. Many times, the game looks terrible for just a couple seconds. There are also a few glitches here and there that bothered me. Occasionally a NPC would walk straight through a crate or box. Many of the enemies will twitch on the ground until the game decides they have settled properly. These are somewhat forgivable problems given the scope of the game, but they are still disappointing to see. Also, the building interior for nearly every side quest is one of two layouts. I find it hard to believe of all the planets in all of the solar systems in all of the star clusters you will visit, that every building used these same two floor plans. Many other games implement some kind of random map generator and I am not sure why it couldn’t have been done here. Two other design decisions that happen quite frequently bothered me a bit. When entering an elevator, no matter where they are, your party member warp to your location instantly. When getting out of your vehicle, the party appears about a foot above the ground and falls into place. Both of these situations could have been fixed by a quick fade to black and back. While these issues do detract from the immersion level of the game, many of the locations look so amazing that you will quickly forget about the games problems. One level in particular takes place along a shallow river valley with waterfalls and scenic views along the entire stretch. You almost forget that you are in the middle of a firefight.

The game features some great music and voice talent. The right type of background music is always playing to fit the scene and the entire soundtrack is awesome. All the voice acting is top notch and features recognizable stars like Keith David (Imam from Pitch Black and Chronicles of Riddick), Marina Sirtis (Deanna Troi from Star Trek: Next Generation), Seth Green (Scott Evil from Austin Powers), and several others. Not only does having such talented people add to the believability of the conversations, but it also adds to the epic feel of the game.

It is very easy to tell you about the problems in the game, but I don’t want you to think I didn’t love every second of it. is a little slow at first, but only gets better as time goes on. This is definitely a ’sum of all it’s parts’ type of game. Individually, nothing about it is great. Added together, this is one of the greatest gaming experiences in recent memory.

EA Sports, how I hate thee, let me count the ways. I have never been so pissed off while playing a sports game, and we only played the game for 2 days. Here’s the sign of a problem; if a player is screaming at the TV screen in rage for 90% of the time, you made a bad game.

We started our first game as Tampa Bay (because they kick ass) against Green Bay (because they blow chunks) and played as two of us on the same team. The first thing we noticed was the new graphics. The second thing we noticed was that they weren’t new graphics; just the old graphics with a dark film laid over everything. About 5 different times during our first game, the quarterback magically slid sideways before the snap and was no longer under center when the ball was snapped to him. I guess since it only happens 5 times per game, EA didn’t feel like this was a problem. The rest of our first game went smoothly, other than our complete inability to get the ball in the endzone. I’ll allow this to be chalked up to us not having played a Madden game in a few years. Then the fourth quarter comeback kicked in. Every fourth quarter, no matter how bad the computer has been playing, they will start pulling plays out of their asses. You could call a prevent defense every play and they will still drop a bomb over your defenders for a touchdown or two. We started watching replays to find out why. Several times, our defender started to backpedal as if the ball were being throw to him and the other team’s wide receiver ran in front of him to catch the ball. Since the defender was running backward and the receiver was running across the field, the defender had no chance to make a tackle either. Sure, I don’t play football professionally, but this doesn’t seem like the best way to play defense. Other times, we watched the defender run away from the ball when they had a clear shot at it. Several times, both defenders dove for the receiver, brushed against each other and missed the tackle. Only 3, maybe 4 times did my defender’s make an intelligent play against the ball. They didn’t intercept it, or even tip it, but they at least made a shot at either the ball or a tackle. All these problems weren’t noticed over extended play; they happened in our first game. I never lost a game because the computer played better than me. I lost because my defenders were complete morons.

I decided to give the superstar mode a chance. I created a new rookie halfback and got drafted to the Patriots. All the activities are fairly fun to prepare for a game, even if the training camp and practices seem a little pointless. Your goal is to run good plays in practice in order to increase your players influence during the next game. The problem is, you can run whatever play you want as many times as you want. Just find a play where you can get a yard or two every time and run it over and over. This setup doesn’t really promote switching up plays and actually ‘practicing’. Once gameday came around, the game completely fell apart. I played six games and every single play, my runner was hit in the backfield. Occasionally I could break a tackle and get some yards. This was the Patriots for Christ sake. I was under the impression that they had a halfway decent offensive line. I played a couple of terrible teams during those six games, but that didn’t stop their linemen from playing like superstars. I did break a big run and it was quite an adrenaline rush, but it didn’t make up for being completely pissed off at the game every other moment of my time with it. Before EA decided to be jackasses and buy the NFL licence, I never remember getting pissed off at NFL 2K5. In that game, you felt as if you earned both your wins and losses. Madden has been around for nearly 20 years and they can’t seem to figure out how to make a fun and rewarding football game. I did absolutely nothing with any of the other gameplay modes. The way I see it, if I hated almost every aspect of the game I have seen so far, extra modes can’t save the game.

The graphics are fairly decent, but you still see the same tackle animations you have been seeing since the first version on PS2 (the last Madden worth full price). There was still a ridiculous amount of clipping issues. A defender’s arm will go through a runner’s chest and out his back when making a tackle. The ball still freezes for a split second in mid air to magically rotate to fit better into the receivers hand. They added more animations to this year than in the past, but it still isn’t very much. Why if they have been rehashing animations, commentary and…well…every other gameplay aspect from old versions of the game, do they feel like it is OK to charge us $60 for what is basically an expansion pack with a roster update? The answer is simple. EA knows we will buy it because there aren’t any other options, so what point would there be in putting any new effort into the game or give gamers a deal on price?

I have heard several people say this game is as good as Madden 05. That means EA has made 0% progress in three years. I guess my recommendation if you must have a football game is to go buy Madden 05. Wait, forget that, go buy NFL 2K5. Don’t waste your money on EA.

For some reason, I actually went into this game with high expectations. I knew it was EA, so it was probably crap, but I still actually expected something from it. Never before had I been so disappointed in a game.

The game plays fairly decently. Each time you use a gun, it gains experience and gets easier to use or gains abilities as it levels up. This is actually fun, if unrealistic. The game starts to fall apart when your allies engage in battle. They run past the enemies, stare blankly at walls while being shot at, and just generally act like morons. I have no idea how we won the war if this is any indication of how our real soldiers acted. EA boasted the ‘paradrop anywhere’ gameplay, but if you don’t land in the drop zones, you will die in seconds. I did learn about history from the game. I learned that Nazi snipers had the ability to stick the end of their guns through a wall and crack shot Allies in the head without exposing any part of their body. Seriously, did anyone test this game? How do they not notice this? The game becomes nearly impossible because of it. The snipers never give me a clear shot but can still headshot me in one try. I had to die several times in a row just to find out where the shot was coming from, until I noticed the end of a gun sticking out of a solid wall. This wasn’t a rare occurrence; every sniper in the game took advantage of this.

The game is also one of the shortest in history. I have played demos longer than this. The game contains 6 levels. The first takes about a half hour and the last about an hour. I finished the game in under 6 hours. At $59.99, that is more than $10 an hour. That wouldn’t even be worth it if the game was good.

The graphics…how can I put this…blow. The character models are PS2 quality and the environments are very blocky. The ground is the only thing a dead soldier can land on. If there is a board on the ground and the enemy falls on it, he falls through the board and becomes part of it. If a soldier is falling into a wall, he will go through the wall and land with part of his body on each side of the wall. I haven’t seen textures this bad since the days of 256 color on computers. For example, the sky textures…well, remember Duke Nukem 3D? Yeah, it’s that bad.

Do not buy this game. Buy Call of Duty 2 used for like $20. If you already played COD2 and traded it in, buy it again. You will have way more fun with that than this steaming pile of crap. I can take comfort in the fact that it only stole less than 6 hours of my life. Thank you EA, I hate you a little more now.