At 11/22/05 08:30 PM, VGRCL wrote: I am leader of this crew and will never leave my post.

lol, bull shit.

I'll join.

Conflict Desert Storm II

This game is probably a 6 out of 10. There are ok graphics in the game, but they need to work on them. There are also problems with how you control your squad. It is tough controlling the character, and I wouldn't advise that you buy it. There are no cheats for the game which brings it down more. The game isn't really good. I've heard that the first one is better than this. The weapons in the game are good, but it still is hard to use them.Though it is only $10 at Gamestop, this game is worth about $3.

At 1/15/07 09:04 AM, camobch0 wrote: Conflict Desert Storm II

nice for a first review. But usually we require users to post in the required format
Thanks for joining. I hope to see more reviews from you.
If you want you can also post in the official Review Crew message board, Your review might get featured on Silent Magazine.
wow, I feel like a salesman or some kind of scam artist... but Im not.

Somebody has probably already reviewed this game but I don't care. Also, I ran out of room so I broke it down into two different posts.

Dead Rising (XBox 360)
Producer: Keiji Inafune (Capcom)
Genre: Survival Horror
Category: Video Game

Storyline:
You're Frank West, a small time free lance reporter that runs like a retard with two broken feet.... also, you have to poop. You're young, attractive, and currently on your way to Willamette, Colorado in order to investigate an anonymous tip and the possible story of a lifetime.

Long story short, the game is about zombies. Lots and lots of zombies; and they're everywhere. You take refuge inside of a mall but within seconds of your arrival some crazy old lady freaks out and opens the front doors to go searching for her dog. This, of course, lets in the thousands of zombies that where standing outside. Unfortunately for you, your ride left has already left you leaving you stranded in hell and isn't due to return for another 3 days.

About the game:
To sum it up, the goal of the game is to figure out where the zombies came from while trying to survive long enough to get a helicopter ride out of town. It's not as easy as it sounds though. Everybody gets separated from one another as soon as the zombies come crashing in through the front doors and the only people Frank has contact with are two mysterious strangers that won't say anything and an annoying old bastard named Otis that constantly begs Frank to go find survivors.

To make matters worse, the entire game is one big time trial. Everything you do has a time limit in which the task must be completed. Failure to complete the task in time leads to the death of survivors or the loss of your big story. Often times you find yourself with multiple people waiting to be saved, a case file waiting to be uncovered, and only 5 minutes on the clock. Time management and speed is a must so if you really want to master this game get use to the idea of playing it multiple times. Although, I have to admit, it's not nearly as painful as it sounds.

An hour in the game is roughly five minutes in real life. Throughout the game you'll get phone calls about the location of possible survivors and strange happenings going on inside the mall. These are known as "scoops". Each scoop is on a time limit and it's up to you to figure out how, or which ones, you want to take on. Certain scoops lead to the main story line known as the "Case Files" while others are little more then pointless side missions good for nothing but the chance of unlocking an Accomplishment. Uncovering all of the Case Files will reveal the story of the zombie outbreak. Regardless of what you do and don't do your main goal in the game is to survive for 3 days (6 hours) and be standing on the Helipad when you're ride comes to rescue you from hell. Depending on what you've done, depends upon the ending your displayed at the end of the 3 days.

Game Play:
The game play itself is pretty straightforward. You run around a zombie filled mall and kill things with just about anything you can get your hands on; and I do mean anything. The mall is broken up into 8 (maybe 9) different section. Each section of the mall contains thousands of zombies and a wide selection of different stores, window displays, restaurants, and sometimes even construction sites. Each store has it's own set of items that can be used to break open the skull of nearby zombies. For instance, hardware stores will have items like 2x4s, sledgehammers, and a few lawnmowers. Where sports stores will contain Golf Clubs, Baseball Bats, and Hockey Sticks. Almost everything you see can be used as a weapon. Benches, Trash Cans, TVs, Mannequins, even other zombies. And when all else fails, some zombies carry knifes, others have handguns, antique stores carry Battle Axes and Swords, and the gun shop comes loaded with Sniper Rifles and Shotguns. That's the cool thing about the game. With hundreds of weapons to choose from you'll rarely find yourself empty handed. Of course, you'll never run out of zombies either so regardless of how many items you do have, it's never enough.

One of the major problems you'll constantly run into through out the game is the simple fact that all items have a lifespan. You can never get too comfortable with a weapon because chances are, it's about to break any second. It's not a bad thing though. Although it might not make much sense to have a lead pipe break when smacking a zombie upside the head in real life, it does make sense in the game as it's Capcoms way of constantly forcing you to pick up and utilize almost everything that you can. At one point, I was throwing rocks... talk about intense.

As I said earlier there are two main things to do inside the mall. Uncover the mystery of the zombie outbreak, and rescue any survivors that my have escaped the wrath of the old lady and her dog "Pookie". This is where Otis comes in. One of the few people Frank has contact with is an old security guard named Otis who has been working at the mall for decades. His one and only job is to sit in the safety of the security room watching the security cameras looking for survivors. If he sees one, he calls you and tells you where they're at. The problem is, Otis has a bad habit of calling you at the worst possible times. To make matters worse, Frank isn't very bright and struggles with simple tasks like "calling somebody back" or talking on the phone and swinging a baseball bat. Otis will call you twice. If you don't answer, you miss the scoop and you lose any chance you had of saving the survivors. If you do answer the phone, you can't jump or wield a weapon which leaves you completely helpless. Otis is also very old and doesn't talk very fast so phone calls take much longer then they need to. Especially when you consider the severity of the situation at hand. Frank also has a problem with hanging up if gets attacked while on the phone. If this happens, you have to wait for Otis to call you back and, because he's old and senile, start the conversation over. Plus, you get a lecture about being rude. To put is simply, Otis is an annoying jerk.

Once Otis has informed you of where a survivor is, it's your job to rush to their location, find them, talk them into coming with you, and then escort them back to the safety of the security room. This part gets a little tricky. Not all survivors are by themselves. And not all survivors are healthy, young, or even sober enough to walk. Most of them are scared, and often times there isn't enough time to run each set of survivors back to the security room before searching for another set. This leaves you with no choice but to save 2, 3, or even 4 sets of survivors at a time. Escorting 2 people back can be a challenge, 8 can be nearly impossible.

This is where I noticed the first real problem of the game. The Survivors have the worst AI programming I've ever seen. They run slow and many times I've seen them get stuck on closed doors or the corners of buildings because they're too stupid to realize they're running into a wall. Before making decisions they often stop and do a little spin dance wasting precious time and women have a bad habit of wandering off to push stray zombies down to the ground. What's worse, is that some survivors are so scared that it's not uncommon to find them stopping in the middle of zombie filled hallways to cry or ask stupid questions like "What are we doing here?". You can give most of the survivors weapons to protect themselves but don't count on them making it safely without you're help. They're slow to attack and often times think it's a good idea to run towards large groups of zombies. You're best bet in saving them is to set way points (places for them to run to) and then following behind them hacking down any zombies that give them some trouble. You don't have to rescue anyone, but ignoring the survivor scoops often leads you with a lot of dead time between cases with nothing to do. On the other hand, rescuing survivors can be a massive headache and possibly the source of a brain aneurysm if you're too weak to help them.

Which brings me to the leveling system. Capcom created a very strange, yet fun, way of handling how a player levels up through the game of Dead Rising. At first it seems pretty straightforward. Frank can gain PP (Prestige Points) by doing certain tasks. Taking pictures, rescuing survivors, killing zombies... you know, the usual. Like all leveling systems, after so many points your character levels up and Frank gains a new ability. Sometimes it's more life, other times is an increase in speed, a new hand-to-hand combat move, and sometimes, extra inventory spaces. Here's where it gets weird. When Frank dies, you're presented with two options. You can either load your last saved game and lose any of the stats gained between your last save and now, or you can save and quit. I think the first option is pretty self-explanatory so I'm going to skip it. Save and Quit, on the other hand, can be a bit misleading and confusing at first. If you save and quit, you literally quit your game. You save all of your stats but you lose all progress you may have made in the game. The next time you decide to play, when you load you're game, you'll find yourself back at the very start of the game but with all of the upgrades you have managed to gather in previous games. So if you played, put on a pimp suit, and leveled Frank up to lvl5 before dying. Save and Quit allows you to start the game all over, but with a lvl5 Frank in a pimp suit. It's a strange system the leads to a lot of frustration your first couple of plays. When you first start the game you'll be weak and slow... chances are, you won't live past the first Case. But the more you play, the more you level up and eventually the game becomes easier. Until then, you're often forced to restart many, many times, which gives the game a false sense of monotony at first. By the time I was level 10, I was so sick of saving the fat couple on the roof I started having nightmares about them. On the upside, being able to start the game with a high level character adds a lot to the games replay value. The game does get easier, but it never gets so easy you can just cake walk your way through it... not unless skill is involved.

On the downside, that's all there is to do in the game. You run from point A to point B killing zombies. It can get a little old. There where a few other problems with the game I noticed as well. For one, Capcom has a hard time figuring out a decent font size to use. When survivors die the text on the screen is so big you can't see what you're doing and often leads to an unnecessary loss of life. Other times, the text is so small and blurry you can't make out anything anybody has said to you. Needless to say, this can cause some confusion when Survivors want you to do specific tasks for them... like bring them food.

Other problems include the Save System, or lack there of. You can only save in the Security Room or a bathroom forcing you to go out of your way before you quit playing, and you're only allowed one save per XBox profile. Because of the time aspect of the game, it's easy to save yourself in a corner just to realize much too late that your only option is to start the game over. On top of that, there is no way to load a game without resetting your XBox and Capcom was so lazy they didn't even code their own Save features. Saving, and loading, are all done through the XBox dashboard.

The running controls are good but aiming a gun or using your camera can be a bit sluggish. When running, you use the left analog stick. For some reason, when you aim, Frank roots his feet to the ground making him unable to move and you're forced to use the right analog stick to aim. While you're aiming, you lose all sense of sensitivity. Lightly pushing the Right analog stick does nothing and pushing it all the way moves the curser at a very sluggish speed which often makes you feel as if the cursor is locked to some sort of invisible grid. Snapping the perfect picture or getting off quick headshots becomes unnecessarily difficult and becomes a huge source of aggravation when dealing with bosses or those pesky psychopaths.

You get a lot of hand-to-hand combat moves as you level Frank up but most of them turn out to be completely useless when you realize their terrible execution design. Most of them require you to actually stop and press down on the left analog stick and those that don't have a bad habit of firing off when you least expect it. Unfortunately, one of the first moves you get is a front summersault that serves absolutely no purpose and often triggers at the worst times leaving you rolling into piles of zombies that proceed to eat your face while you struggle to stand back up.

Achievements:
Since this is an XBox game I think it's relevant to discuss the list of possible achievements to unlock. You'll find some of them to be extremely easy. Without even trying you can probably unlock 3 or 4 of them. A few others might require you to go out of your way but turn out to be much easier then expected once you put a little thought in to it. Others can be extremely difficult. Like 7-Day Survivor for example. One in game day is 2 hours in real life. The only way to play for 7 days straight is in "Infinite Mode" where saving is disabled. That means, to get 7-Day survivor, one would have to play the game for 14 hours straight. I feel bad for the poor guy that played for 13 hours just to suffer a power outage, a game freeze, or just simply died. To me, it's not worth it.

On the upside of things, certain achievements are awarded with in game prizes. A few of which will allow you to dress up like Capcoms famous Mega Man... and yes, the Real Mega Buster is included.

PROS:
- Lots of weapons. You'll play the game multiple times and probably still won't use every weapon in the game
- Lots of zombies. Last I heard up to 800 zombies appeared on the screen at a time.
- 3 modes of play, 2 stories, multiple endings, good list of achievements, and lots of replay value.
- Achievements unlock in game bonuses.
- Good graphics and rarely any slowdowns... impressive considering the massive amounts of zombies hanging out.

CONS:
- Text size. It's either too small or too large. They need a happy medium
- Aiming is sluggish and has no sensitivity making simple tasks difficult
- Poor save system
- Bad survivor AI
- Hand-To-Hand Combat system could use some work. Seriously, who uses L3?

Score: 8/10.

Bottom Line:
Personally, it was worth every penny I spent.

At 1/26/07 07:13 PM, lolomfgisuck wrote: Somebody has probably already reviewed this game but I don't care. Also, I ran out of room so I broke it down into two different posts.

oddly, this hasn't been reviewed before. I skimmed through a couple parts and I think you did a very thurough review of this game.
thanks.
Also if you want you can use the Review Crew forum to post some reviews. We havent had a lot of posts lately as you can see, so thanks.

Im back. This review should give a reason why I was gone so long.

Game:World of Warcraft
System:PC
Developer/Publisher:Blizzard Entertainment/Vivendi Universal
ESRB:T
PEGI:12+
Learning curve:30 min.

Summary:Based on the well-known war strategy series Warcraft, World of Warcraft is one of the greatest PC games, and certainly the most addicting, MMORPG ever released, rivaling great PC games such as Doom, The Sims, and Everquest. With over seven million players worldwide, WoW is the largest subscription-based MMO in the world.

Graphics:Not very stunning for a 2004 game, but in a way, that is good. This game does not take much to run on your computer, and if you don't meet the requirements, isn't it time to upgrade your computer anyway? 7/10

Storyline:There is a backstory involving a few of the previous Warcraft games, plus major world events that progress as you play, but other than that, there is none. 6/10

Gameplay:Probably the greatest part of this game. There is just so much to do in WoW, that it would take many, many years to do every quest, master every race and class, learn all the skills of all the professions, kill every single monster in the game, go through every dungeon, and get every item in the game. If you think you did it all, think again. 10/10

Audio: Background music is okay, and there is a lot of voice acting that went into it, but some of the sound effects are a little too loud for high volumes. Don't listen to heavy metal at max volume while playing, or you might get scared half to death when invited to join a guild. I was originally going to give Audio a 6, but then I remembered the trolls had a Jamaican accent. 7/10

Controls:MMORPGs don't usually have good controls, and it stays the same here. Be prepared to click a lot of buttons to use abilities. 5/10

Level design: This game is HUGE! There are over 30 different zones to explore, and lots of dungeons as well. 9/10

Replay value: Anybody who hasn't been living under a rock for the past few years should know the rating of this section already. Just remember, this game has taken lives. If a game can do that, it definitely gets the highest rating in this section. 10/10.

Expansion packs and addons: World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade offers two new races, a new area called Outalnd, and allows you to play until level 70. However, if you don't plan on going past level 55, then this expansion might not be right for you. If you are a complete WoW nerd, game mods can help you in your pointless tasks that you do once you reach those high levels. 8/10

Overall: Definitely one of the best games ever made. With so much to do, it doesn't surprise me that people waste their entire lives on this game. If you want to get addicted to it too, or just want to see what it is like, there is a 10 day free trial at http://www.warcraft.com/ . You dont have to give them any billing info, which shows how awesome they are.

Overall rating:9/10

At 1/8/07 09:11 PM, Silent-G wrote:

At 11/22/05 08:30 PM, VGRCL wrote: I am leader of this crew and will never leave my post.

lol, bull shit.

hey! fuck you!

sweet a few new posts. Also if you want feel free to post them at http://com1.runboard.com/breviewcrew

im gonna join

legend of zelda twighlight princess

its a good game thats for sure but it just misses some of the darkness yes its a dark game but its completly diffrent from what it seemed to be in magezines whitch is one of the reanonse it was so hilghy anticipated i give it an 8.5 out of 10

At 3/18/07 08:46 PM, dan00012 wrote: legend of zelda twighlight princess

Thanks for joining and doing a review, but next time could you post a review in the proper format.
Thanks.

TOPIC REVIVE! I'm going to get a review up as soon as I can. I'm not 100% sure what game I'm doing yet, but my brother just got Pokemon Diamond with some of his birthday money so I might do that. I haven't played much of it so far, and I'm not liking it much. I'm going to give it longer though, as I haven't tried its online features or anything yet, which could change the score drastically. From what I've heard and seen though, the game doesn't seem that great. Especially for an old Pokemon fan like me. Seriously, DANCE CONTESTS?! DRESS-UP?! WHAT IS POKEMON COMING TO?!?! ...

very long needed review.
this has possibly already been done by someone pretty sure it hasn't though.

Gears of War
Epic Games
$59.99
ESRB: M

Before I say anything about this game, let me just say it is the best game I've played on the 360 so far. When you first start the campaign you'll notice Gears of War borrows things from a few other shooter games, yet adds so much it creates a new and fun type of game play for a very overused genre. The first thing you'll probably notice is the graphics, very nice ones. As you walk, run, and shoot your way through all the levels you'll really get a feel for what a large scale war can do to certain areas. The artists did a great job of mixing old and modern architecture with new technology such as weapons, transports, and other things. The only times I noticed the graphics degrade is rarely when you die and restart at a checkpoint, and occasionally on online play when you respawn. Other than that the graphics are incredibly detailed.

The first time playing through GoW, it will take some time to get used to the controls and camera. First of all the camera is over the shoulder, and does a good job of limiting, and enabling your peripheral vision depending on your position. When your just walking or running normally, your vision is pretty much limited to everything in front of you allowing someone to sneak up behind you at any time. If you start aiming your gun accurately your peripheral vision will decrease even more, zooming in a certain amount depending upon your equipped weapon. And when you start doing a ducking sprint, the camera will pull out a bit, but people in front or on your flanks will be able to hit you easily. This may sound a bit frustrating and confusing, but it makes the game more realistic and challenging. Pretty much the only way to do this is find cover when a gunfight breaks out, and hope your buddies have your flanks covered. finding cover is really an important part of the game, especially if your enemy is using explosive ammo, or has good aim with a long shot. whenever you take cover, the camera pulls out a good amount and opens up your peripheral vision so you can see almost anything. If you like you can jump out from cover and find a new position, jump over your cover, or switch to cover on an opposite surface such as on a door way or under a bridge.

Another cool part about Gears is the active reload feature. You kind of have to experience it to know what I'm talking about. Pretty much when you decide to reload a small mini game will appear where your ammo is usually shown. depending on when or if you press the reload button, your reload time can be increased, decreased, or if you push it at the perfect time you'll reload instantly and receive a damage boost from the ammo you reloaded. Gears of War really takes time to master.

The storyline of Gears has a good start, but at times I wish it would explain more. Most games either look good, play good, or tell a good story. Gears of War looks good, plays even better, and unfortunately tells a mediocre story. First of all I wish it would show more background about what the hell has just happened on earth, where the hell did the locust come from, when did they attack, why etc. Second I wish it would show more about where the characters come from, instead it just starts out in whats supposed to be an abandoned jail. Marcus Fenix, the main character, and Dom, his main counterpart, talk to each other at first like they're good friends, but you cant tell throughout the entire game if anyone has ever met each other before or not. Also, near the end of the game, they start talking about Marcus' family and they go to the "Fenix Estate" like I'm just supposed to assume I know who the hell the Fenix's are. Anyway, the storyline has an okay middle, but not really a constructive beginning or end.

One of the last things I need to talk about is multiplayer. Simply put, its good. There are 4 types of gameplay. Execution, your usual team deathmatch set up, but whenever you shoot someone enough times they fall down, unless your able to "down" them more than 3 times, or if you make them explode by using certain weapons at certain ranges. For example, a headshot with a sniper gun, a close range shot with a shotgun, or something like a direct rocket launcher shot. Warzone, pretty much the same as execution, but after you "down" an opponent, you can kill them without making them explode. Annex, pretty much the same as king of the hill, but after holding a location for 60 seconds, the location changes, all the locations are predetermined by the spawn point of a weapon. And lastly Assassination, which forces players to protect a leader for the round, once the one of the leaders is killed, the player on the team that one that killed the leader becomes the new leader.

And lastly the most satisfying part of Gears, the weapons. The first weapon you'll learn to use is called the Lancer, your standard average machine gun with a maximum of 660 bullets. And with all the weapons you'll get a melee attack, the Lancer has the best though, a chainsaw bayonet. Yes, whenever you walk up to someone with the chainsaw revved up, you'll go into a very dramatic downward attack with the chainsaw, with both people yelling, and blood spraying all over the screen and everything, its the most satisfying attack. The other weapons are pretty general, a shotgun that's very effective at close range, a sniper rifle called the long shot, which has a very nice headshot effect, a pistol for when you run out of everything else, a smoke grenade for distraction or just for sticking in a noob and watching them run around, a rocket launcher called the boom shot, a bow with exploding arrows called the torque bow, and lastly the grenades, which can be thrown to eliminate enemy entrance points, get them out from cover, or tag them with (make sure you run away afterwards though).

Summary: good game, fun game, pretty game, nice graphics, fun and often hilarious multiplayer gameplay, and an unfortunately confusing storyline.

Good:
+graphics
+gameplay features
+multiplayer

Bad:
-difficulty
-storyline

Score:
9.5/10

Final Decision:
If you have a 360, are a mature gamer, and have Xbox live gold, you should already have this game, if not go buy it right now!!!

Nice review.
I agree that game is great!