Sorry your browser is not supported!

Just finished CoJ:BiB yesterday and I have to say it's a great story based shooter. Plays a lot like the early CoD games, lots of set pieces and story based enemy spawning, with a few free-roam sections thrown in. Of course there are duels to do with end level bosses, they're tense and quite satisfying - shooting someone in the groin then spinning the gun into the holster never gets old. The graphics are pretty good, not gonna blow your mind but they suit the gameplay and even on my humble PC with details set to max it runs smoothly. The way they allow 2 characters to play interactively is quite cool too, each brother has their own style, I favored the skinny brother with the knives and rope but it's good to know I can go back and play as the fat brother later. It has co-op as well, which I haven't tried yet but I imagine it would work nicely. The way you can aim around cover is simply genius, I expect that will migrate to other shooters as it's so realistic - kicks Gear of War in the chops in that regard.

The AI is pretty impressive for a change, I never felt once that I had to babysit the other character, they seem to do a very good job of dealing with enemies and only died a couple of times due to my neglect. The enemies put up a good fight, they go down hard when shot in the face, body shots work quite realistically. Whenever a FPS has a second character, they tend to annoy me, babysitting them, having to contently be in front just in case - it's the first game like this that I never got frustrated with once.

The major problem is that it's only like 8 hours long, so maybe wait and get it pre-owned unless your a die-hard, action-starved western fan. The plot is great while it lasts, kinda echoes a few classic Eastwood movies and the bosses could have walked straight off the set!. It's a similar situation to that LOST videogame Ubisoft made a while ago - very cool game that was far too short. I kinda hoped there would be more free-roaming missions, as those were really fun and much more like how I imagine an ideal western shooter, RockStar have got that in the bag for next year with their cowboy game.

So if you don't mind the short storyline and like the idea of a cowboy FPS, give it a go, I was surprised by how much I got into it and enjoyed the plot - I actually watched all the cut-scenes which must be a first for me. I don't remember ever playing the first game, so I'm gonna buy it for peanuts from Amazon.




If you've played a new game, then why not expunge your opinion in this thread - personally I'm more interested in what you guys think about games than so-called reviewers, so rant away please .

Game-wise I'm stuck in a nasty situation right now. I just moved overseas and I'm waiting for my main PC that I do all my gaming on to catch up with me, so I'm stuck with a 5-year old PC and my netbook. Yeah, not so good for gaming. Fortunately, I was able to get Republic Commando off of steam for $10 bucks, and I've got to say, it was worth it, especially since it runs on my crappy PC. It's a pretty awesome squad based shooter that captures the Star Wars universe without coming across absolutely awful.

What's impressed me the most so far is how easy the squad mechanics work. Being the leader, you have to run around giving orders to guys while shooting up guys yourself, but the way it's set up let's you do it quickly and pretty efficiently. You can order one of your guys to set up in a sniping position while another can get on wiring explosives pretty quickly and in such a way that it feels like a chore. The only problem is that your fellow commandos AI isn't so great when they don't have orders, as they sometimes like to run head long into turrets getting shot to bits in the process.

This game is also a must play for anyone who's read the Republic Commando books, as they might recognize the names of the main characters. The game definitely feels like Star Wars, with my only gripe being that all of the commandos sound different. I can see why it makes sense from a gameplay perspective, but for me, the whole point of telling the story of clone troopers was that even though they all look and sound the same, they've been affected by the war in different way and have completely different personalities. For $10 though, it's a pretty awesome shooter, and I really wish they'd make a sequel and update some of the mechanics. I'd love to play a 4 player co-op republic commando with my friends.

That's my main game for the moment, I've also been playing Battle for Wesnoth and Soldat on my netbook, which run quite well despite it not being a technical powerhouse. Those 2, republic commando, and diablo 2 have kept me from going insane before my main pc rolls in. I wish I could play Call of Juarez, since I really like games with a good story, but I'm not sure if I'd be willing to shell out what they want for it now. Regardless, I liked your mini-review of it Van, hope other people put some good stuff up.

I quite liked the humour in this. It really sounded like what brothers would say to each other in the situation, the first Call of Juarez was great, darker storyline. But this really reminded me of a classic western. Where they fight over a woman. I completed it, twice now one with Ray and one with Thomas. But the fact the level changes it course depending on the character is a great idea, as your not always with your brother.

I've been looking at Call of Juarez, it looks interesting, but your review I think makes me want to try it, so once it's cheaper and I've got some spare cash, I'll nab it.


The game I've played a lot of and haven't complete was released early last month, Star Ocean: The Last Hope for XBox 360. It has poor voice acting, though not as bad as Resident Evil 1 mind you, but there are a couple of annoying characters. Lymle says "'kay" at the end of every sentence, which is quite annoying, apparently there's a word in Japanese that's apparent cute for a child to say, but it really doesn't translate well for an English audience, Meracle and Sarah I think have annoying voices too, but once you get your head around that and anything else typically 'Japanese' you'll be fine...even some of the 'keen' eye the designers had for their costumes. Also, was it really necessary to make Myuria's boobs jiggle? But if you're an anime pervert, then that aspect is perfect for you.

Put that aside and you have a very good game, it is addictive, it is fun and it is interesting. It will have you playing for hours on end. Make sure you do some of the side stuff and explore here and there.

It is a JRPG, though it is neither turn-based or requires for random battles - though it isn't a button mashing hack and slash either. You can run from your enemies, but when you encounter them, you fight - in battle you can switch between characters and have 4 characters at one time attacking with their own styles. You can assign special techniques to the trigger button, or go in for normal attacks, depending on the character's chosen weapon (sword, bow and arrow, laser cannon, staff etc.) you're also able to bring up a menu to choose any skills you don't have assigned, so you can heal with items or 'symbology' (their magic system), or a special skill, like Lymle summoning her pet Cerberus. Enemies have different strengths and weaknesses and thus you must think more for battles - and your strength can sometimes be moot. On the bit I'm stuck at, you have to defeat a series of Phantom Soldiers, who are very strong against physical attack - meaning you need a team of magic users and healers, but that isn't enough either - they can build up some tough attacks, so you need to think tactfully and you need to make sure none of your characters are dying, and that's a part of the difficulty. Critical hits can cause them a lot of damage (critical hits ignore defense) so there's a useful technique called 'Blindsiding', which you have to time right to get a critical hit - it's a really effective skill...though some enemies can defend themselves against blindside, so they're not always sensible.

So the battle system I feel is really good and is quite challenging as it avoids the mundanity of button mashing and the sure battle win level-grinding in a JRPG can have. The worlds can be vast and different, as you're travelling the galaxy, you get to see different kinds of societies - the world you land on first is akin to the Jurassic period, but your friends set up a hi-tech base camp, but Lemuris is akin to the Dark ages and Roan is akin to the Middle Ages, you even get to visit Earth, but I'm not going to spoil that one - but the Earth mission was one I quite enjoyed.

The plot is the interesting part - there's great space for character development, usually when you're in warp there's the opportunity for you to observe the goings on between different characters and I think is well-done and each time you have a new character on your ship, you can introduce them to Welch the hologram (who is another Japanese character type, who you might find annoying...or funny, it can go either way). After the Earth mission you'll see the MC's (Edge) whiny side show, but he gets over it. There are different story and goals for each planet and secrets behind their problems - like the villagers on planet Lemuris turning to stone. But the ultimate goal for your characters is to find new homes for humans to move to, as Earth is in a terrible state. The game is set after World War III where countries used Nuclear weapons against each other, after the disaster there was peace agreed by all those who lived, but it brought pressure on for space travelers to find a planet suitable for them to move to.

It's a great Sci-Fi epic and the prequel to the original Star Ocean game on the SNES.


I hope that has made it sound interesting.

That's perfect game length for me nowadays, especially with an FPS

Hehe yeah, I agree with that, 8 hours is plenty for a game storyline - it's just a shame there was no free-roam bit at the end to pad it out. Really, 8 hours gameplay for £25 is not as bad as say, buying it on the 360, but I still think it's a shame that there's no huge reason to go back.

It's almost like the 'free-roam' bit was added as a second thought, like inbetween missions, got some time to kill, so you grab a wanted poster and go on the hunt. Sadly that only happens twice, and you'll be sorry if you skip those side missions... I guess I just don't see why there couldn't be much more of that. Maybe I was expecting the same openness as with Farcry2 and Juarez is just not built that way.

The Rockstar cowboy game should be much more freeroaming, much more cowboy type antics, but I expect the plot will fall short of Juarez just a bit - we can't have it all ehh?