Hi everyone. Before I get into the weekly rant, I feel the need to say goodbye to Eddie Guerrero. I’m not a writer for the wrestling side of the site, and I didn’t know him, no better than any other wrestling fan anyway. He entertained me for many years and for that he deserved my thanks and my goodbye. To think that less than two years ago he was standing in the ring with Chris Benoit, both their arms raised as the champions they truly are. And now he’s gone. It’s really hard to fathom.
Now then, onto lighter things. In past columns I filled you in on what I had played in the past week and what I thought of each game, sort of a mini review. Of course, when something newsworthy happens in the game world I like to focus my attention on that. But since the only thing thats going on right this second is the build up to the 360 launch, I think I’ll save that for another week and instead bore you with my gaming habits.
Surprisingly I’ve actually gotten my mitts on a variety of games this week. Star Wars Battlefront 2 was purchased on the Xbox, From Russia with Love and Call of Duty 2: The Big Red One were rented. So guess what you get to hear about? That’s right. Pokemon. Hah, fooled you. Do I LOOK like a famous Internet star like Lucard? Hell no. I’m much better looking. You get Battlefront 2, COD2 and 007.
Since I actually beat From Russia with Love I think I’ll start there. The game is very similar to the last good 007 game, or rather the last 007 game period since Rogue Agent (I won’t use that insult of a first name here thank you) didn’t feature the debonaire one. By that I mean Everything or Nothing, which was a pleasant surprise itself when I first played it. By taking a third person perspective they allowed gamers to feel more like Bond than previously possible. Sadly From Russia With Love isn’t quite as good as Everything or Nothing. This might be because EA didn’t seem to go as far in the presentation of the game as they did with EoN, or maybe they paid Sean Connery all their presentation money. EoN had it’s own original theme song, which I found to be excellent, whereas FRWL had it’s own existing theme music and they chose not to include it. If I were doing the review I’d probably mention the horrible driving portions of the game and some other bits, but since I’m not, find out for yourself! HAH!
Alrighty then, onto Battlefront 2. I remember playing the first one and thinking gee, I really wish they’d put some more time and effort into controlling the game, or making it feel more like star wars. And it seems like when it comes to offline combat at least, they’ve done a good job at doing just that. And no I don’t mean boring and intolerable like the prequel trilogy. I mean exciting and interesting like the originals. The addition of Jedi are interesting, but the addition of space combat is a very pleasant surprise. While the controls during space flight are very similar to the ones I complained about in my review for Heroes of the Pacific, I’m gonna let it slide here because I’ve become kinda used to the controls by now, and because the space combat isn’t the main portion of the game. Had Pandemic been making the next Rogue Squadron game and chosen to use these controls then I’d be pissy. Otherwise they seem to have fixed just about every complaint I had about the game last time. So on the Xbox at least, go forth and enjoy you some Battlefront 2.
Lastly we get to Call of Duty 2: The Big Red One. I loved the first one when I didn’t think it was possible for me to love a WW2 FPS anymore. So I was hoping when I gave this a rent that the magic would continue into part 2. And I’d love to tell you that it has. But the sad fact is, on the Xbox version at least, that it hasn’t. The game has the right presentation, very epic in the way the first game was, and theres enough variety here in the gameplay types to satisfy anyone, but the delivery is just off. There’s no freedom of movement, you are herded from one fight to the next. Maybe the devs were so busy trying to get the game to look awesome on the 360 that they were willing to make some sacrifices on the older system, I don’t know. All I know is I haven’t run into this many sticky walls in many many years.
So that’s it for this weeks edition. Hope you have a good week and I’ll see you again next Tuesday.