Hello, and Welcome to the first article
of the new Video Game column.
Starting off, here is a list of all the many games that came out last month:
Wii:
Petz: Catz 2
Petz: Dogz 2
Petz: Horsez 2
Power Golf
Monster Jam
Game Party
Indoor Sports
Ghost Squad
Big Rig Racer 2
My Word Coach
Ferrari Challenge
Godzilla Unleashed
Smarty Pants
Alien Soldier
Bee Movie Game
Cranium Kabookii
Super Mario Galaxy
Luxor : Pharaoh's Challenge
Medal of Honor Heroes 2
Need for Speed ProStreet
Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn
Cabela's Big Game Hunter 2008
Super Mario Bros. 3
Soulcalibur Legends
Brothers In Arms Double Time
Tomb Raider: Anniversary
WWE SmackDown! vs. RAW 2008
Rayman Raving Rabbids 2
Code Lyoko: Quest for Infinity
Spy Games: Elevator Mission
Link's Crossbow Training
AMF Bowling Pinbusters
Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga
Indianapolis 500 Legends
Mythmakers Orbs of Doom
Cars Mater-National
Geometry Wars: Galaxies
Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games
Star Trek: Conquest
Trauma Center : New Blood
Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles
History Channel: Battle for the Pacific
SpongeBob's Atlantis SquarePantis
Hannah Montana: Spotlight World Tour
Dance Dance Revolution Hottest Party
Showtime Championship Boxing
Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords
PS3:
Beowulf
Rock Band
TimeShift
Time Crisis 4
Assassin's Creed
College Hoops 2K8
Need for Speed ProStreet
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga
Kane & Lynch: Dead Men
Soldier of Fortune: Payback
WWE SmackDown! vs. RAW 2008
Medal of Honor: Airborne
History Channel: Battle for the Pacific
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune
The Elder Scrolls IV: Shivering Isles
Blazing Angels 2: Secret Missions of WWII
Bladestorm: The Hundred Years' War
XBOX 360:
Switchball
Beowulf
Word Puzzle
F.E.A.R. Files
Assassin's Creed
Monster Jam
Undertow
Rock Band
Mass Effect
College Hoops 2K8
BlackSite: Area 51
Need for Speed ProStreet
Popcap Arcade Volume 1
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga
Kane & Lynch: Dead Men
Soldier of Fortune: Payback
Scene It? Lights, Camera, Action
Cabela's Big Game Hunter 2008
America 's Army: True Soldiers
WWE SmackDown! vs. RAW 2008
History Channel: Battle for the Pacific
Final Fantasy XI: Wings of the Goddess
Final Fantasy XI: Vana'diel Collection 2008
Avatar: The Last Airbender -- The Burning Earth
Bladestorm: The Hundred Years' War
Here are some of the new games coming out this month:
Starting off, the Wii will be getting
Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 3 on the Third
Alvin and the Chipmunks and Pimp My Ride on the Forth
Jenga World Tour on the Seventh
Super Swing Golf Season 2 on the Eleventh (I pity you if this is the #1 game you want for Christmas)
Kidz Sports Basketball, Kidz Sports Ice Hockey, and Kidz Sports International Soccer on the Fourteenth (lots of kidz games for you)
MX vs. ATV Untamed on the Seventeenth
NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams coming out on the Eighteenth
And right before Christmas we have Monster Trucks: Offroad on the Twenty-First
The upcoming releases for the PS3 are
Haze being released on the Fourth
BlackSite: Area 51 on the Tenth
NCAA March Madness 08 and The Orange Box (one word: Portals!) are out on the Eleventh
MX vs. ATV Untamed on the Seventeenth
The Xbox360 has some new games coming out too, such as
World Pool Championship 2007 is out on the First (though I doubt any of you are going to get it)
Dance Dance Revolution Universe 2 is out on the eleventh
NCAA March Madness 08 is also out on the Eleventh
MX vs. ATV Untamed is out on, guess what, the Seventeenth
And now a few highlights from last month:
A new PS3 model has come out. It comes with Spiderman3 on Bluray, does not play PS2 games, and is $399
The 80GB PS3, which comes with Motorstorm, is now priced at $499.
Firmware 2.00 has been released for the PS3
SSBB has been pushed back to February
Halo3 has helped Xbox to make its first ever profitable quarter.
EA bought out Bioware. EA is known for multiplat and Mac games, so prepare to see bioware exclusives on other platforms and Macs.
Happy birthday PS3 and Wii!
This month the PS3 and the Wii are one year old!
Featured Game: Halo3
Halo 3; a game I'm sure you've all come to know and love. Throughout the whole entire series, every thing has been leading up to this game, and many people have been on the look out for it. While Halo 3 has been out for a while now, many people are still unsure whether or not they want to dabble into this game, but I'm telling you now, If you've never at least tried this game, you're seriously missing out.
The campaign starts off kind of tying together the ending events of halo 2, which, for those who have played halo 2, know that this in and of itself is a quite a noteworthy feat. But, of course, that's not where it ends. Rather, that's about scratching the huge surface of this game. Right off the bat you'll notice the superb graphics. While they aren't necessarily the best there is, I think it's safe to say that for the particular art scheme that Bungie chose, they're unbeatable. As you continue to play, the wow factors continue to pop up all over the place. You notice that the enemies have seemingly been revamped, and the environments are absolutely spectacular. Then, once again, Halo 3 “wows” you when you get your hands on the equipment.
If you haven't kept up over the years on all the news on halo 3, let me clue you in. Equipment is a vital part to Halo 3, being tools that you can activate to help you throughout your gaming experience. The first piece of equipment you use in campaign, is probably one of the coolest; the bubble shield. This little doodad puts a temporary invincible shield around you that's completely invulnerable to all enemy fire from the outside of the bubble and the inside. Of course this isn't the only piece of equipment, but more on that later. Continuing on throughout the campaign mode, you may notice that it's relatively short; a feature that takes away from the game (it's the third in a trilogy, and is really hard to understand for those who haven't played the other two games, but if you have played them I'm sure you'll be fine with it), but something that you can fix. You can collect “skulls” as you progress through the game. The skulls are basically a little Easter egg that gives you, or your enemies, a tactical advantage. Most of the time, your enemy. There are about 15 skulls that you can find in the most random places, and most of the time are pretty hard to get to, that do things like give you less ammo, make your opponents explode into confetti when you get a head shot, and take away your HUD. Like I said, most of the time these skulls work to your enemies' advantage in that it makes the game more challenging. Then, like in all halo games, you can set the difficulty easier or harder by setting it to easy, normal, heroic, and legendary. This is merely the campaign feature, however, which isn't really where this game really shines.
Halo 3s multiplayer is probably the best multiplayer that's ever been my great pleasure to have experienced. It combines necessary multiplayer features such as online play up to 16 players, capture the flag, and other standard things, with new innovative features. You can use the equipment in multiplayer, which include the shield, the power drainer, the shield regenerator, the radar jammer, the bubble shield, the gravity life, and the trip mine, which add some excitement to the multiplayer matches, and there are also many new game types such as infection where one person starts off as a “zombie”, who has inclined features such as the ability to take more punishment, lower gravity, and other augmentations but, depending on how you modify the game, can only use an energy sword. As you play infection, the other players main task is to keep themselves away from the zombie, because if you are killed by the zombie, you become one yourself, and the last man standing that hasn't been infected is the winner of that match. And, naturally, you can use vehicles in multiplayer which include some old favorites such as the warthog, the scorpion tank, the banshee, and the ghost, but there are some new faces on the scene, The hornet is basically a flying tank. It's a bit of a helicopter with heat seeking missiles and a fully automatic machine gun, but even though it's extremely well armed and pretty darned near impossible to destroy, it's slow. Much like the elephant, which is not available in the campaign mode, but in multiplayer it acts as a huge moveable base, armed with two turrets on the side, and is invincible. Then there's the prowler which carries a driver, two people on the sides, and has a mounted turret, and the mongoose, which is an unarmed four wheeler, but can carry a passenger and is crazy fast. Also there is the brute chopper. It's a one man vehicle that blasts its way through any thing and every thing, armed with two little rocket launchers on the side, and is one of the coolest vehicles in the game. Next to vehicles, there are the new weapons, which there are plenty of, the coolest being the gravity hammer. The gravity hammer acts much like the sword from halo 2, only it quite literally blows every thing out of its way with a powerful blast. There is also an array of support weapons such as the flame thrower and the missile pod and there are two new grenades. Next to these additions, you can also change the look of your character by giving him/her (that's right, you can even change the gender of your character) different armor. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands of different thing that you change to the match by going into match settings and messing around there. One of the biggest add-ons to this game though, is the online and system link co-op mode which allows you to play through the campaign with up to 4 players. Unfortunately though, you can't do it with just one 360, you have to do it over Xbox Live or System link.
I haven't even gotten into the forge yet! The forge lets you turn into and fly around the map as a monitor, a little hovering robot, and make things for the match while playing against other people! You can just pull up the menu and make any thing your heart desires, ranging from the new spike or fire grenades, to tanks, to safety cones. Every thing is changeable. Also, there is the theater mode which lets you go back and watch your favorite matches that you played. You can follow a player around with camera and slow down, pause, or fast forward the video of a match that you played either in multiplayer or campaign, or you can break off and explore around the map taking screenshots or recording videos of whatever you think is cool. Then you can upload these videos or pictures to bungie.net for the whole entire world to admire that sweet headshot you got.
Well, I'm out of time for now, but I'm hoping I touched on all the vitals of halo 3. Of course, I couldn't get to every thing from this game, but I'm hoping I listed the gist of it. In the end, I give halo 3 a snazzy 9.1 out of 10.
Graphics: 9.5
Physics: 9.5
Game play: 10
Story: 7.5
Creativity: 9.5
By Bobby Blair \,,/>.<\,,/
