Category: Xbox 360

In 2011 Andy, Ryan Fadden, and I were at PAX Prime in Seattle, because where else would we be, and we decided to get in the The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim line, but we quickly got out of due to the fact it was three hours long, but as fate would have it that put us front of the Prey 2 booth.  A game none of us had any interest in, but that would change as soon as the guy started the demo.  We were floored, and it was my game of show for PAX that year.  Two years have past and it looks like the game is in trouble.

The first Prey was about a Native American named Tony that is captured by aliens, and then tries to save his girlfriend, and along the way he has to use his Native American super powers to help him survive.  The game was a straight up shooter that was only notable for its questionable architecture, and use of portals, yes like from the game Portal, but before Portal came out.  You shouldn’t play it.  It is not good.  This is why we didn’t care about the sequel, but they changed everything for the sequel.  It was about U.S. Marshal Killian Samuels and he was also captured by the same aliens, but he escapes and becomes a bounty hunter on an alien planet in a cool Blade Runner like city.  It had free running and an open multi-tiered level design.  It was really sweet looking.

Last year the publisher Bethesda announced that Prey 2 would not come out that year because it was not ready yet.  That is not too strange it happens all the time, but then this year they announced the game was pretty much just a demo and that they were taking the game away from its developer Human Head studios.

This was a shock to me because they had a demo in 2011, and I saw it.  It was great, so to have nothing a year and a half later sounded questionable, and developers from Human Head are saying that Bethesda is lying, and they had a near complete game.  Bethesda is just mad because they offered to buy out Human Head but they refused so Bethesda pulled their funding, and then finally gave the game to their studio Arkane, and gave the game a new release date of 2016.

I find this story hard to believe as well because that would mean Bethesda is willing to throw away tens of millions of dollars to spite an independent developer, and most companies don’t like to waste that kind of money based on spite.  Especially ones in the tumultuous video game industry.

I think the truth is between those two stories.  I think Human Head was behind in development, so Bethesda got antsy and asked to buy them so they wouldn’t loose the talent working on the game, but they could bring the quality control in house, and when Human Head refused then Bethesda pulled the plug and moved the game to a new studio, and one that was in house so they could monitor the quality personally.

I am sure there is even more to it then that, and it would great to get truthful account of what is going on, but doubt that will happen.  I hope in 2016 the game is as cool as it was promised to be in 2011.

Alan Wake is a game made in 2010 by Remedy Entertainment, and published by Microsoft Game Studios.  It is Remedy’s second franchise after Max Payne, and I am glad to say that they continue their tradition of quality with this game.  I know your asking why I took three years to try it, but that is because I am cheap and it was five dollars on the Xbox Live Arcade.

Alan Wake starts off with the title character Alan Wake and his wife Alice on a trip to a secluded Washington town called Bright Falls.  They are going there to take a break and hopefully find a cure for Alan’s crippling writer’s block: Alan is a writer but he hasn’t been able to write anything for two years.  During their first night in Bright Falls something happens and Alice goes missing, and Alan can’t remember what happened, and the town’s inhabitants seem to be turning into monsters when the lights go out.  Can you save Alice and Bright Falls?

The game is separated in to six episodes, and each one starts off with a “Previously on Alan Wake”.  The creators did this because they love the show Twin Peaks, and used it for some of the setup for this game.  There is also a lot of Hitchcock and Stephen King to found here too, but it all comes together and works.  This is a very creepy game, and it made me jump more then once.

The gameplay is deceptively simple, you must shine your flashlight on the bad guys to where down their darkness and then you can shoot them with whatever gun you have with you.  It makes it kind of a dual wielding/lock on mechanic that works very well.  You can also make light traps to end the foes that follow you in the dark.

Also along the way you can collect pages to the book that you are apparently writing, it fills in the story, and lets you in on some of the secrets of Bright Falls.

This is a great game, and it was well worth my five dollars, and if you are looking for a game to play this summer you should add this to your list.

Just Cause 2 is an open world action game by Avalanche Studios that takes place in the fictional foreign country of Panau.  I picked it up because it was cheep.  Is it worth the $10 dollars? Yes it is.

The game starts off with the hero Rico Rodriguez in a helicopter being told about the political situation in Panau.  Basically it was US friendly, but recently it has taken a bad turn, so your job is to destabilize the country, so someone new can take over, and the way you do that is to use your awesome grappling hook to steal helicopters to blow the government’s stuff up, or what ever else you want with whatever else you can find.

You can do missions for some major rebel forces if you want, or you can just cause Chaos freestyle, and Chaos is capitalized because you get Chaos points for the crazy stuff you do, and the more Chaos you cause the more cool stuff you unlock.  Your major weapon is your grappling hook.  It pulls bad guys off towers, allows you to skyjack helicopters, or just about any other moving vehicle you could want.  You can also buy weapons and cars off the black-market and have them dropped at your location.

It is a crazy fun game that rewards you for the crazy fun stuff you can do, and unlike other games, the entire world is open to you from the start so can really just have fun the way you want to.  It is a great game that you can find at an even better price these days, so if you haven’t played it yet, you should add it to your list.

El Shaddai is video game based off the Book of Enoch.  It came out in the summer of 2011 for most major platforms.  I decided to give it a try when the price dropped to two bucks on the Xbox Live store, but was it worth the reduced price?  I think so, but two dollars is probably as high as I would go.

The game pretty much works like this.  You run in a straight line, and then when you get to an open area people pop up and you hit them a bunch of times and then you run some more.  What makes this game interesting is the story since it is based of the Book of Enoch, which is not Biblical canon for most Christian groups, but is viewed like ancient historical fiction.  The game also has great visual style, and every new chapter shows you something cool, but sadly the game still is just you running and then hitting stuff, so it gets old.

If the game is ever on sale again it might be something you want to take a look at.  It might help you kill some time, or you could just read the Book of Enoch, and call it a day, your choice, but I do applaud the people that made this game for trying something different.  It was just a shame they couldn’t vary the gameplay a bit.