Jigsaw hc's Rants and Reviews

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The Club Demo Impressions
2008-01-25 17:35:00
In case you could not tell I was in the mood to try out all the demos I've been downloading last night. I remember reading a preview for The Club and it sounded pretty interesting. I played through the demo last night and I was pleasantly surprised. The Club is a third person shooter with a very arcadey style feel to it. Instead of a story line to play through you have a set of levels to go through killing all the enemies as fast as you can. The whole point of the being in "The Club" is to go through these arenas that have been setup for club memebrs and try to get th highest score. You score is based on keeping your multiplier and combo streak going. After each kill your multiplier goes up and you have a few seconds to get another kill before your combo breaks and you have to start your multiplier over again. The level in the demo had a predesignated rout to get through that you run along trying to kill everyone as fast as you can. The game has a sprint option to help you ...
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Devil May Cry 4 Demo Impressions
2008-01-25 02:17:00
I'll start off by letting you know I've not played the Devil May Cry series before. I've seen it, but never played it. I played through both parts of the Devil May Cry 4 demo today and I think I'm missing why so many people lave the DMC series. I'll admit that the graphics are gorgeous, and there are some really cool combos. Yet, I could a few things confusing/annoying. First, why do I have a gun that does hardly any damage? I don't see the point in having a gun when using it is pretty much worthless. Second, why are there cutscenes every minute? I get that the look beautiful, but I don't need them every time I enter a new room. Also, what is with the fixed camera location? It is not really a big deal, but it is the first game I've played in a long time where you can't control the camera or it doesn't follow you around automatically. It was not a bad, but it was different than what I'm use to. Another thing, I don't see why I have to hit the jump button (A) to...
More About: Demo , Impressions , Devil May Cry 4

Turning Point Demo Impressions
2008-01-24 22:48:00
With all the demos released this week I've been having trouble keeping up. I got a chance at lunch today to check out the demo for Turning Point : Fall of Liberty. I'm going to start with the one thing I did like (yes, things are going to go downhill quickly). I really like the concept for this game. Instead of the normal World War II battles where you play a US/Allied soldier in Europe you play as a construction worked in New York. The plot is setup by the idea that the Nazi's are attacking the USA. The demo starts with you on top of a building being constructed. The Nazi's start attacking and you need to get off the construction site. Instead of just going down the building they give you a puzzle type setup where you have to walk along narrow steel beams. It is lame start to the game like this because it is not a very good puzzle, and it is annoying. There is only one path way down the building, but you have to walk real slowly around the edges of the building to get t...
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TMNT Review
2008-01-22 18:45:00
Yes, I played through TMNT. If you've been reading my posts for a while you'll know that I like a button masher from time to time. I decided to try TMNT for a couple reasons. First, I heard that the achievements were really easy. Second, TMNT brings back memories of my childhood and the original TMNT arcade games. The game is mediocre, but as button mashers go it was not to bad. I beat the whole game with all 1000 achievement point in under 5 hours. The game play is pretty linear. You work your way through linear levels until you get to a group of people to fight. Fight those people and then move to the next area. There are some jumping puzzles to get through a few areas, but for the most part it is just a matter of running and jumping form one area to the next. You have two options for attacking. The Y button kicks and the B button hits. Kicks do less damage, but they knock the opponent down. Hits do more damage, but can be blocked. For the most part I would keep...
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Turok Demo Impressions
2008-01-21 20:21:00
I played the demo for Turok this weekend that is on the OXM demo disk this month. Going into it I was expecting another run of the mill shooter with a dinosaur theme. I've been underwhelmed by the shooter demos I've played recently so I did not have my hopes very high. I was pleasantly surprised with the demo. It seems to be about a full level of the game, but not the very first level. The graphics look pretty good but not the best I've ever seen or anything. The demo starts you with a partner who follows you along and basically shoots at whoever you shoot. He does teach you a few important things though. First, dinosaurs are attracted to flares. Second, every weapon has a secondary fire option. Third, if a dinosaur doesn't see or hear you they will leave you alone. After learning these things and killing a few dinosaurs you get separated and have yo find your own way for a little bit. You find your way out of the area you are in and meet back up with your teammate. The ga...
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Exclusive Rock Band Tracks From OXM
2008-01-21 19:47:00
I'm not going to make it a habit of reviewing songs from Rock Band , but I thought i was interesting that Official Xbox Magazine got three exclusive songs for Rock Band on their demo disc this month. I've mentioned it in the past, but every time I think about not renewing my OXM subscription they have just enough to keep me subscribing. Besides these three songs they also have the Turok demo exclusive to the USA and a nice in depth exclusive look at Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 last month. I'm guessing the Turok demo will hit the Xbox Live Marketplace at some point, but it is nice to be able to play it now.The three exclusive songs for Rock Band they put on the demo disk are:- Rock Rebellion by Bang Camaro- Shake by Count Zero- Sprode by FreezePopI had some friends over yesterday to watch the football games and play some Rock Band. We played Sprode as a band. The drums were pretty strait forward and not to hard, but the main guitar part had some complex sequences that required some fast ...
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Portal Easter Egg Video (spoilers)
2008-01-21 19:24:00
I came across this video from Portal today. I really enjoyed portal (and the rest of The Orange Box), but I had not heard about an alternate endings. Apparently there is one. Here is the video of how to get to it:Has anyone tried this? I always wondered it there was a way to save the weighted companion cube. Seems like there is. Anyone found any other cool things like this in Portal?
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Rock Band Review
2008-01-16 18:59:00
I've been meaning to write this review for over a week, and every time I have some spare time I end up playing instead. It turns out that works in my favor for this review because I've spent a lot more time with Rock Band in the last week. To start off with, yes, I acknowledge that the game is expensive. The bundle with the guitar, drums, mic, and game cost $170. However, having played it for a total of 18 days in a row now I can honestly say that it is well worth the cost. I picked it up on New Years Eve and proceeded to head over to a friends house to pay if for about 5 hours with about 12 other people to bring in the new year. We had a lot of fun. We had people of all skills ranging from never played video games (let alone Guitar Hero type games) to people who can play Guitar Hero 2 and 3 on Hard. None of us there had played Rock Band before that night though and it was an overwhelming consensus that the game was great fun for everyone. The game works really well when y...
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Blacksite: Area 51 Review
2008-01-12 18:10:00
I finished the campaign for Blacksite: Area 51 last week and spent a little time with the multiplayer. I had fun playing the campaign. It was not the best first person shooter I've played by any means, but it was fun. The environments were mostly destructible which leads to some fun tactics like shooting at walls that enemies are hiding behind until they are destroyed and the enemies has to run for new cover. The campaign is not very long and the plot is kind of cheesy, but the developers got the amount of enemies perfect. There were not so many coming at me that I could not keep up and died a lot, but there were enough that I never got bored or let me guard down while running around. Plus, they give you plenty of ammo for the appropriate weapon for the types of enemies in the area. Towards the end of the game there was plenty of ammo for the plasma rifle which is a blast to use. You can control when the plasma explodes so you can shoot it just past the corner of a building...
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Lack of Posts
2008-01-08 18:31:00
Sorry for the lack of post recently. I've been playing Rock Band a lot, but I've not spent enough time with each instrument to be able to do a good review yet. I also finished Blacksite: Area 51 yesterday and I'll get a review of it together once I try out the multiplayer. So, in short, more regular post are coming soon.
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Tyco R/C Sky Force Review
2008-01-02 19:52:00
I've been on this remote control vehicle kick recently. It started with the mini r/c helicopter, but those are hard to fly so I wanted something a little easier for when I don't want to concentrate so much. So, I was thinking of getting an r/c airplane but they are expensive even for beginner models. Then I stumbled across these Tyco R/C Sky Force planes. They are essentially foam glides with little engines attached to them. I like them a lot. They are a little to big to fly indoors and they are very light so I can only fly them when there is no wind. However, they don't take a lot of room to fly so the park around the corner from my house works great. There are only two controls which give it more power (or less) and turn. You toss them gently while giving a little power to take off and then they fly for about 10 minutes on a charge. For being made out of foam they are pretty well constructed. I crashed mine into trees and bushes multiple times with no ill effects. If ...
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Micro R/C Helicopters
2007-12-17 22:58:00
So a few weeks back I picked up a couple micro remote control helicopters. Now that I've been playing with them for a while I though I'd share my thoughts on them. I'm still not great at flying them because they're are not easy to control. Since buying them I've learned that the larger the r/c helicopter the easier it is to fly, but since I don't have a lot of area to fly them and these can be flow indoors I'm working on getting better with them. Taking off and landing is not to bad. It is the maneuvering that takes practice. These micro helicopters come ready to fly out of the box. You just need to charge them up, which takes 15 or 20 minutes, and then you're ready to fly. For the first flight you have to do a little adjusting so that it flies strait and does not spin in circles. Once you have that done it should fly strait up and down pretty easily. The instructions recommend getting to the point where you can keep it hovering at a level height before trying to m...
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Live Free or Die Hard Impressions
2007-12-12 22:58:00
I watched Live Free or Die Hard this past weekend and I was pleasantly surprised by it. I was a little hesitant about it before seeing it because I was worried it would not be as good as the first two. Not that the third one was bad or anything, but the first two are classic action movies. Live Free or Die Hard goes a little more along the lines of the third movie where John McClane (Bruce Willis) has someone helping them. In this movie it is a college age kid named Matthew Farrell (Justin Long). I'm going to try and stay spoiler free and skip a plot synopsis, but I liked the way McClane and Farrell played off each other. It was a nice mixture of action and those two trying to understand each other. I also liked the little hints at the previous three movies that McClane would make in his comments when he would say things like he had not done anything like this for a very long time. Live Free or Die Hard follows the Die Hard formula pretty well. Lots of action and Bruce Willi...
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Spider-Man: Friend or Foe Impressions
2007-12-10 22:40:00
I've been playing Spider -Man Friend or Foe for a few days now and I figured I'd post a few quick thoughts about it. It is not quite a button masher, but it is pretty close. The only thing stopping it from being a button masher is that there are some cool combos that work only on specific enemies. The story is new and unique to the game. You're play as Spider-Man who is fighting waves of holographic based enemies. There are 20 missions in the game and after ever couple missions you unlock a new friend or foe (hence the name) who fights along side you. You can only have one sidekick at a time, but by the end there are 14 different ones to choose from including Green Goblin, Rhino, Doc Oc, Venom, Blade, and Silver Sable. Because you have a sidekick the whole game you can play the full game in 2 player co-op. Co-op is on the local system only and not over Live, which is a shame. I did have a friend over who played a few levels with me and we had a blast. There are some fun co-...
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Guitar Hero III Downloadable Content
2007-12-06 23:49:00
I know I've not had a good review or rant recently, but I'm still playing the same games I have been for the last few weeks; Halo 3, Team Fortress 2, and Guitar Hero III. I did however download the Foo Fighters and Velvet Revolver Packs for Guitar hero III. I was torn about getting them because they are pretty expensive for the number of songs included, but after watching some clips on YouTube I knew they would be a lot of fun. So, I caved and ignored my cheap ways and bought them both the same day. The Foo Fighters Pack contains "The Pretender"off of the "Echoes Silence Patience & Grace", "All My life" off of the "One by One", and "This Is A Call" off of the "Foo Fighters." The Velvet Revolver Pack includes "She Builds Quick Machines" off of the "Libertad Allbum", "Slither" off of the "Contraband Allbum", and "Messages" off of the "Libertad". Having played all 6 songs quite a few times now I'm happy with my $12 purchase. The songs are a lot of fun to play. They seem ...
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Gaming This Past Weekend
2007-12-03 18:14:00
It was a good weekend in gaming for me. I got a ton more songs with 5 starts this weekend in Guitar Hero III. I can tell I'm getting better at it, but I'm still not as good as I could be. I also finished off Episode 2 of Half-Life 2. It was a lot of fun. The ending caught me off guard, but I'll not spoil it by telling you anything about it. I'm really hoping there is an Episode 3 in the works or that Half-Life 3 picks up where Episode 2 left off because I'm dying to see where the story goes. I also played in a 1-Flag CTF tournament in Halo 3 this weekend with about 24 other guys from AGE. My team, despite my numerous betrayals, ended up winning by one point. It was really close, but in the end our defense held. Special thanks to my sister for babysitting my son so I could play in the tournament without any distractions. Finally, this weekend was topped off by getting an email from GameFly letting me know I had 5 referrals so I get six months of GameFly for free. Sin...
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Half-Life 2 and Team Fortress 2 Impressions
2007-11-26 22:34:00
I've been playing Team Fortress 2 for a few weeks now and I'm loving it. It might be the most fun multiplayer game I'm playing right now. For those of you not familiar with Team Fortress 2 it is a multiplayer only first person shooter. You can play as any of the 9 classes. Each class has its own weapons and abilities, but they all are really well balanced. For example, the big guy with the chain gun moves really slowly, but the little guy with the shotgun runs really fast. The best part of Team Fortress 2 is that the maps are designed specifically for certain game types. It makes them a lot more fun. You're not going to run into lame game types like you can have in Halo 3 (4 person slayer on Sandtrap I'm looking at you). The game gives you a good amount of stats at the end of each match including how many kills, how much healing, etc. The other great thing Team Fortress 2 does is that it alerts you in game when you've been killed by a person 4 times in a row, or if ...
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Halo 3 Theme for Guitar Hero III
2007-11-22 17:36:00
The Halo 3 Theme song (MJOLNIR Mix edition) was released for Guitar Hero III today. Not only is it a lot of fun to play with some really fun HO/POs in it, but they released it for free as well. When I first saw it was being released I did not thin it would be that great, but having played through it now I'm glad I gave it a try. It is a lot of fun. It is also longer than I remember, but then when Halo 3 is starting up I generally don't sit and listen to the intro song. I normally head strait into a game right away.

$10 for 3 Maps! Are You Kidding Me?
2007-11-20 18:30:00
By now most of you probably already have seen the news that Halo 3 is getting new maps on December 11. It is called the Heroic Map Pack and it will cost $10 when it is released or you can get it free in the Spring of 2008. I've listed the info about the three maps included below, but seriously, $10 for 3 maps is just ridiculous. Sure, a ton of people will buy them since it is Halo 3, but I will not be one of them. $3.33 per map is just to much money. It is worse than paying $2 per song for Guitar Hero songs and those were to expensive to be worth the cost. I realize they have a business to run and that business is about making money, but if they had just released these for $5 they would have sold more than enough to make a profit on them and then they would not have pissed of so many games with their bend over and take it high prices.Halo 3players will be able to enjoy three all new multiplayer maps on December 11 as part of the Heroic Map Pack, the first in a series of downl...
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Get a Wii for $79 through the Amazon.com
2007-11-17 16:51:00
Does anyone else remember last year when Amazon .com ran the promotion where you vote on what item you want them to have on sale for one day for a ridiculously cheap price? Last year is was an Xbox 360 Core for $99. This year the options are between a Wii for $79, a 40GB PS3 for $139, and an Xbox 360 Arcade for $99. I voted for the Wii since I already have an Xbox 360. Currently the Wii is winning with 55% of the vote. Assuming it wins the vote it will be on sale on November 22nd. Keep in mind that you can only buy the sale item if you voted for it so vote carefully. To vote for which sale you prefer: click here. In addition to this sale on the 22nd there are five other great deals you can vote on as well. The other cool thing I found over there today is they are having a sweepstakes to give away a $10,000 shopping spree. To enter click here. I figure I'm probably not going to win, but at least by telling all of you there is a chance someone I know will win it.

Plenty of Demos Yesterday
2007-11-15 19:59:00
I played a lot of the demos I've downloaded and not gotten around to until now. The first one I tried was America's Army: True Soldiers. What a bunch of crap. The game use based on GRAW2 but with a few changes. The game looks like crap. If you were thinking of playing this one just play GRAW2 instead. GARw2 is more refined and looks better than this garbage.After promptly deleting America's Army I tried out the Scene it? demo. I can see where it would be a lot of fun to play with friends. By myself it was not really that challenging since no one was competing against me, but I really like the setup and the big button controllers would be cool. If I can find a good deal on it I'll pick it up for when friends come over. I really like that the game keeps track o the questions it has asked so you don't get the same ones all the time. That should help me beat my friends who own the original Scene it and have all of the questions memorized. If you're looking for a good pa...
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Portal Impressions
2007-11-11 00:48:00
I finally got my hands on a copy of The Orange Box this week and the first thing I decided to check out was Portal because all of the people on my friends list have been raving about it. After playing through the main levels twice I can definitely see what everyone was so excited about. The game is a blast. Besides the fun of playing through the levels and beating the puzzles it is also a lot of fun to just play around in the levels and see how high you can get yourself to fly. No spoilers here on how it ends, but the last level of the game is one of the best levels I've played in a long time. If you have not tried Portal yet go rent/borrow a copy of The Orange Box and try it. It is only about 3 hours to beat the whole game, but it is some of the best 3 hours you'll ever have. If anyone hears any news about an expansion or Portal 2 please let me know because that it would be great to hear more Portal is coming.
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More Halo 3
2007-10-04 19:51:00
I've been playing a lot more Halo 3 and I'm loving all the different parts of it. I've found all the skulls. My favorite so far has to be the Grunt Birthday Party. It never gets old to have grunts explode with confetti. I'm also really enjoying playing around with the theater. Taking clips and pictures from the games and sharing them with my friends is pretty cool. The picture here is a grunt that landed in a tree during a co-op mission. You can see another perspective of it here. I also have some videos of some matches I was playing the last few days shared here. If anyone has cool videos or pictures shared leave me a comment with the link and I'd love to check them out. I love that I can go back into the theater after multiplayer matches make clips of my friends dying spectacularly and send it to them.I've also been having a blast playing co-op Legendary with some friends. I've only turned the scoring on once so far, but once I finish the game on Legendary I'm ...
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Halo 3 Impressions
2007-09-27 18:23:00
I beat the Halo 3 campaign on Normal last night. I really enjoyed the story. It was nice to finally finish the fight. I don't want to give anything away and give spoilers, but I'm still unsure how I feel about the ending. If you've beat the campaign let me know what you think of the ending in the comments. I'm planning to go back through and play it on Legendary so I'm interested to see how the ending changes, if it does at all, when I complete it on the hardest setting.The new weapons were a lot of fun to play with and I'm glad that both the enemy and squad mates AI are smarter than in Halo 2. I actually could ride the gunner in the Warthog and not have the AI roll it over all the time. I still prefer to do the driving and let my squad mates man the gun, but it is a lot better. The new vehicles are a lot of fun to try and get use to controlling. I'm glad they added some new stuff to drive. The level designs are a nice reminder of the first two games with similar arc...
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Crash of the Titans Demo Impressions
2007-09-26 22:42:00
I've never played a Crash game before, but I had a little time today (but not enough to put in Halo 3) and I thought I'd give it a try. It is clearly geared at a younger audience than me, but if I had kids between 10 and 14 they would probably enjoy it. Crash of the Titans is a pretty linear platformer, but it does the basics very well. One thing I really liked was that when you fight larger opponents after you beat them you can then ride on their backs and control them. This made the fighting more fun as I kept trying different opponents to see what their attacks were. Graphically there is nothing spectacular here, but it is fine for a younger audience. I'll not be buying or renting this game, but if you are a pre-teen or you have a pre-teen you night want to give it a try.
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Eets: Chowdown Puzzle Pack 1 Review
2007-09-25 18:21:00
I have the new Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 sitting next to my Xbox 360, but since I know starting today I'll be playing Halo 3 for a few weeks I did not want to start into Tiger Woods and then take a break from it. So, last night I was look for something to play for a while, and I remembered that Eets: Chowdown released a Puzzle Pack with 20 more levels in it a while back. So, I played through the new levels last night and really enjoyed them. I beat all of them in a little over an hour, but since I had already finished the rest of the game I was familiar with what to expect. This made it a bit easier for me to beat them quickly. For the most part I'd say the new levels are about in the middle of the difficulty level, but a couple of them took quite a bit longer to figure out. The new levels do have some cool new items in them that were fun to use. The giant chocolate chips that melt and then explode are a lot of fun to use. I had forgotten how much fun Eets: Chowdown is to play. ...
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You Can Make Money Reading Emails
2007-09-18 20:26:00
So a friend of mine told me about 2 weeks ago that he found a great way to make some extra money in his spare time by read emails. I did not believe him until he showed me the $40 bucks he had made the two weeks before. So, I decided to give it a try. BrightSpot.tv does a similar thing where they pay part of your GameFly account when you watch their videos so it did not seem too far fetched. I signed up with the five sites he recommended 10 days ago and so far I've made $46.73 and a $25 gift card for Chili's/Macarroni Grill. I'll give you a brief overview of each site and how to get the most money out of them.MyPointsThis doesn't pay you actual cash like the other 4 sites do, but instead you earn points that you redeem for gift cards. I quickly earned enough points to get a $25 gift card fro Chili's/Macarroni Grill, but a large part of it was from bonuses that are a one time deal when you first join. I suspect my next gift card will take longer to earn. Most days I get 4...
More About: Reading , Money , Make Money , Emails , Make

Tiger Woods '08 Game Face
2007-09-17 20:10:00
I got Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 from Game Fly Saturday. I've not had time to play much, but I did try to at least create my character. First, I tried to do it on EA's web site because I've heard that the face looks more like you when you have their servers do it. Unfortunately their web site for the game face was down do to high demand. So, I used the vision camera to do it and after two tries I stuck with my first one. It doesn't really look like me, but I'm not sure what I could have done differently to get it to look better. When i did it with Rainbow Six: Vegas you can tell it is me (without hair) , but with Tiger Woods 08 you can't even tell it is me. Has anyone tried creating your game face on Tiger Woods 08? If so, did you get it looking like yourself? Hopefully more EA games in the future will have the option to scan your face in when you are creating a character. It would have been cool to have this in skate, but as far as I know it is not in there.
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Spiderman: Friend or For Demo Review
2007-09-15 00:22:00
Before trying the demo for Spider-Man: Friend or Foe today this game was not even on my radar, but I'm really glad they released a demo for it because it is a lot of fun. It is a basic brawler/beat-um-up type game set in the Spider-Man universe. However, instead of fighting his normal enemies Spider-Man is forced to team up with them after they all attacked by an even stringer enemy. The graphics have a cartoon style that work really well for a Spider-Man game. I like that instead of just following the script from the last movie they decided instead to make a completely new storyline. The game is designed to be played on the same box. There is not co-op over live, but this is the kind of game that is best played sitting on a couch with a friend anyway. When playing it alone you can easily switch between the two available characters (Spider-Man and a teammate). Each character has their own unique attacks and combo moves that you and your teammate can exploit to hammer on the...
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Tony Hawk Proving Ground Demo Review
2007-09-15 00:10:00
I spent some time with the THPG demo today and after being completely frustrated with the skate demo it was good to get back to a familiar skateboarding game. If you played Project 8 then you're already pretty familiar with the gameplay style. Yes, it is arcadey and completely unrealistic, but it is fun. In addition to everything they had in Project 8 there are some cool new additions. First, they have expanded the Nail-the-Trick mode to add the Nail-the-Grab and Nail-the-Manual. Nail-the-Grab flows well with the already existing Nail-the-Trick and I'm looking forward to trying out the Nail-The-Manual because in a couple of the videos I've seen it looks really seamless. They have also broken down the skaters into three types. The competitors, the hard core, and the rigger/builder. Each skater type gets new attributes/skills and plays the game differently. Additionally there is a built in Video Editor for showing off all the cool tricks and lines you skate. This Tony Hawk ...
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