Jigsaw hc's Rants and Reviews

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Free Month of GameFly
2008-05-06 16:05:00
GameFly sent me another coupon for my friends to get a free month of GameFly. Here are the details:For a limited time, we're giving you a special opportunity to send your friends and family an entire month of GameFly for FREE. That's three times the length of our regular free trial, and a $22.95 value to your friends! Quantities are limited and this special offer expires May 20, so forward this e-mail to your friends and family today.-The GameFly TeamGood for: 1 free month ofGameFly video game rentalsExpires: 5/20/2008Link to Free Month of GameFly: http://www.gamefly.com/promo.asp?strpromo code=GFFFWR9MH6XJTRTR

Kings of Babylon Impressions
2008-05-01 21:15:00
I've been playing a new web based game. Unlike most of the online flash games I play this one actually is slow paced and rewards you for playing over time. Here is a brief synopsis of the game from their viewpoint "Kings of Babylon ("KoB"), is a team-based, empire building wargame where you will start as a peon with a single village and build your way up the ranks and to control multiple villages. All the while you'll be coordinating with other realm members to protect each other and to conquer your enemies." It reminds me a lot of Civilization but with hundreds of people playing. There are 12 Realms, or teams, in the game that work together to protect each other from the other Realms and to build their towns faster.The game is very slow paced, but has a ton of depth and strategy that I'm really enjoying. The game keeps going while you're not there so you can start a new farm or mill building and then leave and come back to check in on the game the next day. Also, the gam...
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Out of Town
2008-04-27 17:01:00
I'm out of town right now so I've not been able to finish Universe at War: Earth Assault. I have finished the first race in the campaign and started on the second. So far I'm enjoying the game but the graphics are nothing special. Once I get back I hope to finish it up pretty quickly and get that review I've been planning on doing.
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Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 Title Update
2008-04-25 00:29:00
When RS:V2 released there were a couple issues with achievements not unlocking properly. It is not the first game to have that issue. Most of the time issues like this are corrected in an update after 3 or maybe even 4 months. Ubisoft surprised me yesterday with an update to RS:V2 update that addresses these issues and a few others. I'm not surprised that they fixed the issues, but I'm really impressed with how quickly they got these items fixed. Here is the full breakdown of what all was updated.>>> IMPROVEMENTS Weapon SwitchSwapping to & from Pistols are now faster in Multiplayer.Sound LoopsOptimized sound bank to improve weapon firing and helicopter sound clips that loop over and over.PingsServers now update their pings more often so that players have a more accurate value of server performance.Team Leader Respawn ModificationSpawn Shield is shorter when respawning with the Leader.XP ModifiersWhen there are more people on a team than the other, there is an overall XP ...
More About: Update , Rainbow , Title , Vegas , Rainbow Six Vegas

Lost Cities Impressions
2008-04-23 23:14:00
I also checked out Lost Cities today on Xbox Live Arcade. I generally don't play a lot of board and card games on XBLA. It is not that I don't like them, but there are just other types of games I prefer more. Lost Cities is pretty fun - not great, but still fun if you like this type of game.The game is a strategy card game basically that is played with two people. You have to play your cards in a strategy that gets you more points than your opponents. There is an element of chance that effects the outcome because you draw cards from a random deck. So, if you partner just gets much better cards and has an ok strategy he could probably beat you even if you have a great strategy but get lousy cards. Fortunately the cards are randomly drawn so you'll most likely get pretty even cards. Then it is up to you to have a better strategy.I played the trial a few times and was beating the AI pretty badly. It was actually kind of boring after about the second time. I think this game wo...
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Rock and Bullwinkle Impressions
2008-04-23 23:05:00
I decided to check out Rock and Bullwinkle on Xbox Live Arcade today. What a waste of time. This game is garbage. It is designed to be a party game with a Rock and Bullwinkle theme. Basically you have a lot of little games all in a row, but the games are so ridiculously short and easy that it was annoying. Most of the mini-games you play using just a single button or thumb stick. I'd guess that somewhere around half of the mini-games that I tried I literally pushed one button and either won or lost. Most without even knowing what I just did. Going into it I did not know that it was a bunch of mini-games I thought it would be like playing through some episodes of the story in and adventure game mode. If you're looking for a party game try Rock Band or Scene It. Leave this piece of garbage alone.
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Iron Man Demo Impressions
2008-04-21 22:11:00
It has been a while since there was a demo on the Xbox Live Marketplace that I really cared to try. Normally games based on movies are not ones I'd bother checking out, but I'm a fan of the Iron Man comics and the new movie looks pretty good so I gave the demo a shot. Maybe it was intended to be that way sine it is a demo, but it seemed pretty easy to me. Since you pretty much auto lock-on to targets you only miss if you are to far away to get a lock. Still, I had fun flying around shooting stuff and punching things to blow them up.The one aspect of the game that has me really intrigued is the options to upgrade your suit. The demo only gives you two upgrade options, but it looks like there will be a lot of available upgrades in the full game so you can really customer Iron Man's abilities to the situation. Additionally, you can reroute power to different parts of the suit so that if you want to fly faster or have more fire power for a while you can.The entire demo pretty m...
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Again ... More RSV2
2008-04-15 23:40:00
I started playing through the campaign of Universe at War: Earth Assault and am enjoying it so far. I'm only a few levels in but they definitely spent a lot of time thinking how a RTS could work with a controller because it handles nicely. Once I've played through more of the game I'll get you all a full review. I thought I would be much further into the game right now, but every time I get ready to play someone invites me to RS:V2 and I play that instead. I can't help it. As much as I want to play Universe at War: Earth Assault I just can't pull myself away from RS:V2. Maybe this weekend all my friends will not be online and I'll get some solid time in with Universe at War: Earth Assault.

Still Playing Rainbow Six: Vegas 2
2008-04-10 00:49:00
Yep, I'm playing tons of RS:V2. I made Officer last night. I noticed while playing some Terrorist Hunt last night that now that I've maxed out all 20 levels in the ACES categories the leveling up goes much slower because there are no more experience bonuses. I'll make Elite eventually but for now I'm just happy I made Officer.
More About: Rainbow , Vegas , Rainbow Six Vegas , Rainbow Six , Rainbow Six Vegas 2

Rock Band Drums Best Streak
2008-04-07 17:58:00
For the Rock Band - Battle of the Bands I'm currently participating in over at AGERocks.com one of the songs this week was Wanted Dead or Alive. Our band actually got a higher score than the one in the photo above, but the 574 note streak I had was the longest one I can remember getting. I regularly get 250 to 300 note streaks on Medium and Hard, but I don't recall breaking 500 before. For everyone else playing drums on Rock Band what is your best streak
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Lost: Via Domus Review
2008-04-03 20:17:00
*** Spoiler Alert ***I decided to play Lost : Via Domus because I'm a fan of the Lost and I thought it might give some cool back story stuff. I'm glad I only rented it because I beat the whole thing in around 4 hours without much effort. It is suppose to be a mystery style game where to try to remember your past and learn about the island but really your just walking through a story with very little mystery solving to do.I'm pretty disappointed with the game. Besides being ridiculously short there was very little you do in the game besides walk from one area to another and talk to people. There are a few puzzles you have to solve to unlock areas, but mostly they are pretty simple. Additionally, there were only a few things you actually learn about the show. The first is that the shark that was seen during the episode where a few people try to escape the island on the raft turns out to be a mechanical shark. The other thing you find out is that the Swan Station, where Desmond...
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Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 Review
2008-04-02 19:30:00
I've been playing Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 almost every day since it came out and I'm having a blast with it. I know a lot of people are calling it Rainbow Six : Vegas 1.5 in the same way that GRAW 2 was called a 1.5. However, I loved Rainbow Six: Vegas so the new additions in Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 make it worth the purchase for me. First off, the biggest new addition is the ability to sprint. It took a little for me to get use to, but the sprint option is really nice for running from cover to cover and to get away from grenade throws. Now that I'm getting the hang of using sprint it has really come in handy. There are also about 10 new weapons in Rainbow Six: Vegas 2. My favorite has to be the silenced sniper rifle. It is so much fun to snipe guys and not have them be able to figure out where the shot came from.They also expanded the experience leveling from Rainbow Six: Vegas's multiplayer to all game modes in Rainbow Six: Vegas 2. I really like this because now I can rank up ...
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TiQal Impressions
2008-03-27 19:31:00
I played through the trial of TiQal last night and was not impressed. This Xbox Live Arcade title is a mix of Tetris and Luxor 2. Basically, you drop Tetris like pieces on the board and when you make a square of pieces that are the same color they form a cube and get ready to blow up. You then have a few more seconds to add to the cube to make it even larger. The larger the group of pieces the more points you get. When I started the trial I was liking it. The game play is simple and has a nice pace to it. Plus, it was fun to catch the power ups and take out big chucks at once. However, after a few levels I started to get frustrated. When you blow up a section it obscures your view of that area of the screen for a few seconds so you can't drop your next piece in that same area, but the blocks continue to come up from the bottom. Also, most of the power ups seem to take out random section of the board, but it may take out a part that you've been working on building a large...
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Battlefield: Bad Company Beta Impressions
2008-03-25 22:52:00
I got in the Battlefield: Bad Company Beta on the Xbox 360. It started today and runs for a month. I spent a while playing the it this afternoon and thought I'd share my first impressions. Before getting to that though here are the basic details. "The beta has 2 maps, Oasis and Ascension. Oasis has all the available vehicles (heavy tank, light tank, armored car, attack helicopter, and artillery) to use in a flooded desert valley near a bustling city. Ascension drops players into a mountaintop village surrounding a monastery. The beta has a single game mode call Gold Rush. This game style tasks one team of defenders with holding off the attackers as they try to destroy a series of gold crates scattered throughout the map. If the attackers manage to destroy all of the crates, either by shooting them or planting charges, they win the round. For every set of crates they take, the attackers get a boost to their number of reinforcements and a new area of the map opens up to fight ...
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Fun New Stuff
2008-03-24 04:44:00
I've been playing a lot of Rainbow Six: Vegas 2. Once I get some more time with it I'll put a real review together, but for now I'll leave it as I'm having a lot of fun.I also have been playing more Rock Band. I'm really impressed with the in game store they added this week. If gives a preview of all the downloadable content they have and a breakdown of the difficulty for each song my instrument. It really helps me know which songs I might want to get.
More About: Stuff

Army of Two Review
2008-03-17 18:04:00
I spent the last week playing Army of Two. It is a pretty short game. I played the full campaign mode, which is only 6 missions, in about 5 or 6 hours on the normal difficulty. The main story of the game takes you from training to be an Army Ranger to being a paid mercenary. Even though it was pretty short the main story line is a lot of fun. The game is designed to be played with a partner in co-op mode, but the times I was playing I had trouble connecting with other co-op players so I played through the game using the AI as my teammate. The game gives you a nice set of options for controlling how your teammate acts. By the end of the first mission I was getting pretty good at using my teammate to draw fire or sneak around behind while I distract the enemies. The game would have been more fun playing it with another person, but I still had fun playing it alone. The co-op related things they built into the game work pretty well. When you get shot to much you go down to the ...
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Rock Band DLC This Week
2008-03-11 21:39:00
I've been playing a lot of the same songs over and over in Rock Band in preparation for the Battle of the Bands I'm participating in. So, when I saw that today's songs were only $1 each I decided to get all three. The threes songs are "Shockwave" by Black Tide, "Crushcrushcrush" by Paramore, and "Beethoven's C***" by Serj Tankian. I've not tried them on drums yet, but Crushcrushcrush is pretty fun to play on guitar. Beethoven's C*** was alright on guitar as well. Shockwave on the other hand is really hard. I've finished the solo tour on guitar on hard pretty much without issue. Yet, my first try on Shockwave on hard I got 24% before failing. It is tough. The notes are all over the place and the rhythm takes a lot of practice, at least for me, to get down. Still for $3 I think these are worth getting.
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Another Week
2008-03-10 18:23:00
I thought I'd have an Army of Two review for you all today, but instead when I played in a 6 hour Team Fortress 2 tourney on Saturday. It was a lot of fun, but I need a break from TF2 for a couple weeks now. That actually works out pretty well because I'm in a Rock Band Battle of the Bands so I need to spend some time practicing the Drums on Hard. If anyone has any tips for that let me know.I almost was not going to be playing anything for the next 3 to 5 weeks because my Xbox 360 died on me yesterday. I got through the tutorial in Army of Two and the screen when white and the game froze. I restarted my Xbox 360 and I got the Red Ring of Death. I called up Microsoft and the guy in India who helped me said it would be 3 to 5 weeks once they ship me a box so I can send them my busted 360. However, since I have an HDTV now I convinced my wife to let me get an Arcade unit with the HDMI port since they are $280. Plus, the new Xbox 360 Arcade will give me additional 3 years of w...
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Hash House Impressions
2008-03-03 19:38:00
As I mentioned my in-laws were in town last week so we went down to downtown San Diego one afternoon. We ended up having lunch at this pace called Hash House . For those of you in the area it is just off 163 on 5th street. Normally I would not bother posing about a restaurant, but this place was so good. I got the pork tenderloin sandwich and it was magnificent. I've had a lot of good tenderloin sandwich through the years since I was raised in the mid-west and about ever fair and carnival has a tenderloin sandwich stand somewhere. Plus, I've been to the Tipton Pork Festival more times than I can remember. The sandwich I got a the Hash House put them all to shame. I'm considering driving the 30 to 40 minutes down to get one later this week. My father-in-law got the ribs. He is a big ribs fan and he said they were great. My wife got a stuffed hamburger. This thing was huge. Two patties with mashed potatoes in the middle. I thought it sounded odd when she ordered i but w...
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Last Week
2008-03-03 19:30:00
My in-laws were in town last week so my normal gaming was interrupted. I did play some more Commanders: Attack of the Genos and Rock Band. Both of which are a lot of fun. I also played through Call of Duty 4's single player campaign last week. I have mixed feelings about Call of Duty 4. I'm not a fan of the controller layout. The story/plot of the campaign is great. I played through a lot of the levels more than once because they were so much fun, but I continuously found myself accidentally trowing grenades and the zoom/aim with the left trigger really bugs me. I prefer that to be done by clicking on the right thumb stick. Instead of zooming I was regularly swinging my knife around. I'm not going to be playing CoD4's multiplayer because I can't get the controls down. I know it is really popular, but I'll be ok since Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 comes out in a few weeks. Until then Team Fortress 2, Shadowrun, and Halo 3 will have to hold mo over on the multiplayer front.
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Commanders: Attack of the Genos Review
2008-02-25 23:55:00
I've been playing a lot of Commanders: Attack of the Genos. Commanders is a turn based strategy game on Xbox Live Arcade. There are 15 levels to the basic campaign, another 15 levels of the advanced campaign, a battle mode, and online multiplayer. So far I've played a few battles and finished the basic campaign. The levels generally take between 60 and 90 minutes to complete for the standard campaign. And that is with the animations set to fast. It is not really a slow paced game though. You just have a lot to do each time it is your turn. You have to move, attack, build, and repair. The later in the level you are the more units you probably have making the turn take longer as you coordinate your attacks with all your units. In addition to your standard units like tanks, scouts, and artillery there are commander units. The commander unites have both a passive and active special ability. The passive abilities effect all the other units on the screen that are close the t...
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Xbox Live Community Games Review
2008-02-21 18:49:00
Yesterday at the Game Developers Conference Microsoft announced the Xbox Live Community Games . The new Community Games brings games created via XNA to everyone's Xbox 360s. Basically, Community Games let anyone make games for the Xbox 360 and post them for others to play. Yes, it is slightly more complicated than that, but essentially the are trying to make the "youtube of games." Along with the announcement they released demos of 7 of the games. They have a lot more details on their site here as well as videos of how to get the new XNA based games.I played through all 7 of the games yesterday and thought I'd post my impressions. Little Gamers: I'm a fan of the comic so I was a little biased but this side scroller was fun. There are a lot of different weapons to choose from and there are some funny power ups. If you're a fan of the Little Gamers comic be sure to check this one out.ProximityHD: This is a math based strategy game. I liked it. It was simple and easy to play bu...
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Mass Effect Rant
2008-02-21 18:45:00
Mass Effect has been out long enough now that I think most everybody knows it is a great game. I'd even go so far as to say that anyone who owns an Xbox 360 should play through Mass Effect 's main story at least once. The things it does with the conversation system and combat are pure genius. However, today I want to focus on all the little things about it that pissed me off. Hopefully they'll get addressed in Mass Effect 2.First off, there are tons of load times. You load each time you go to a new planet. That much I can expect and live with. But even once you're at a location and running around the game will slow down as you go into new areas as it loads that area up. Even within your ship, which is not that big, there are multiple spots where running from one part of the ship to another will cause the game to lag and have to load. Sure, each time it loads it only takes a few seconds, but it really takes me out of the game experience when ever few minutes the game paus...
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Looney Tunes: Acme Arsenal Review
2008-02-19 00:01:00
I just finished up playing through Looney Tunes : Acme Arsenal . Normally, I would never have played this game, but I figured the achievement points would be easy and I an in another Gamerscore Challenge. So, every achievement I can get helps. I was right that a good chunk of the achievements are pretty easy. Just beat the game and they unlock as you play. There are also ones for getting a certain number of kills and gold. Plus the usual find the hidden items ones. The others were for playing multiplayer which I did not end up getting. After completing the game I tried to play online, but there was literally no one else playing it online (I checked every game type twice) so I gave up on that part.The game itself it aimed at kids, but I had fun playing it at first because I have fond memories of watching Looney Tunes on Saturday mornings as a kid. For the first few levels I had fun playing as all the cartoon characters and using the crazy weapons from the cartoons. After about...
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Shoot 'Em Up Review
2008-02-12 22:12:00
I saw Shoot 'Em Up this past weekend because a few friends recommended I check it out. I will not be listening to their recommendations any more. Shoot 'Em Up Sucks! I knew going into it that they intentionally had unrealistic fight sequences, but seriously no one can use a carrot as a knife (multiple times even). It is not sharp enough to break skin. Setting aside the really lame fight sequences and cheesy lines the real disappointment was that they tried to give the movie a plot. If you want to make a movie that has extremely unrealistic shooting scenes that is fine, but don't try to pretend it is based around a story. I'm not going into a lot more detail about all the other reasons why Shoot 'Em Up was bad. It still makes me cringe thinking about how bad it was. Just let this server as a warning for you. Don't bother seeing Shoot 'Em Up.
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Free Month of GameFly
2008-02-07 22:36:00
I got this email from GameFly today and I thought I'd pass on the offer to all of my blog readers. For a limited time you can get a free one month trial to GameFly. Normally their trials are 10 days so if you've been thinking of checking out GameFly now is a great time to do that. This is a 30 day trial of the 2 Game plan.Coupon LinkGood for: 1 free month of GameFly video game rentalsEXPIRES: 2/12/2008
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Protector: Tower Defense with RPG Elements
2008-02-07 22:32:00
If you've been reading my blog for any period of time you'll know that when I'm not playing on my Xbox 360 I'm addicted to Tower Defense games. I've reviewed a few of them here before. Some I liked and others I did not. This week I came across Protector . Having played it quite a bit the last 3 days I can honestly say I like it better than any of the tower defense style games I've played before. The game has a lot of the same core components as a lot of the other tower defense games I've played. You have different types of "towers" you use to stop enemies from getting across the map. Each enemies has a weakness and strength and each type of tower can handles those different strengths /weaknesses. Protector goes beyond the normal tower defense game n a few great areas. First, It is set in a medieval/fantasy setting so your towers are knights and mages. Second. after each level you get skill points you can use to boost specific unit attributes or increase your overall ...
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Conflict: Denied Ops Demo Impressions
2008-02-02 05:26:00
I had not heard about Conflict : Denied Ops before today so when I saw that there was a demo released I looked up a preview online to find out more about it. The game is based around a 2 person squad and can be played entirely in co-op mode either via Xbox Live or split screen. So, from the sounds of it the game has potential because co-op is my favorite game mode. So, I downloaded the demo and gave it a try. The co-op aspect of the game is great. Even the demo allows for co-op play. I did not have anyone else to play with so I went it alone, but the game makes it easy to switch between players. Also, the make it easy to control your squad mate when you are alone. Just point at a spot and hit the left trigger and the guy will go there. Hit it again and he comes back to you. The two squad mates each have their own roll. Once is a sniper and the other has the heavy weapons. So, if you're playing as the sniper you can sit back and send in your squad mate while you cover him....
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3000 Easy Achievement Points
2008-01-29 22:27:00
I'm 2/3 of the way through a 30 day GamerScore Challenge. The winner of which gets a 1 year membership to GameFly. There are 22 of us competing to get the most achievement points. As of a couple days ago I was in second place. I was about 500 points behind the guy in first. So, I did a little looking around and found out that the 2006 sports games have some of the easiest achievements (other than Avatar). So, I swung by my local GameStop and found used copies of NBA Live 06, NBA 2K6, and College Hoops 2K6 for $5 each. In the matter of about 2 hours I had 2960 achievement points. Yes, I'm short 40 points from the full 3000. The last achievement I've not gotten yet was for winning a game online in NBA Live 06.So, here is a quick rundown on how I got them points so quickly. For both NBA 2K6 and College Hoops 2K6 I played just a single game with the difficulty set to easy and the length of the game set to the maximum. Then, in the game I raised all the sliders making my tea...
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TimeShift Review
2008-01-28 19:23:00
After playing the TimeShift demo quite a while back I finally got around to trying out the full game. I did not bother playing the multiplayer since I've got plenty of other multiplayer games I'm already playing, but I did really enjoy playing through the single player campaign. The ability to pause, stop, or rewind time for a limited period makes for some great tactics. Sure, pausing time, shooting a few guys and then restarting time to watch them all fall down is fun. But, more fun than that is pausing time, steeling the enemies weapon, restarting time and taking them out with their own gun. For longer range fights, like against a sniper or rocket launcher guy, slowing down time use their slow movement to your advantage to get a headshot. Get stuck by a grenade? Rewind time and have it fly back toward the person who throw it at you. I think you get the point...the time control abilities make for some really fun things to do. The plot of the single player campaign actually...
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