Ever see the movie the Expendables? You know the one with all the great action movie actors in it. If you have you know that the movie had tons of action and expositions and not so much of a story. That’s the way Modern Warfare series seemed to be headed. MW2 had some great levels but it seemed more like they designed the levels and then tried to put a story around it. The problem was it didn’t really work and on top of that they had you changing characters so much it was hard to keep up. In Modern Warfare 3 they have fixed some of that.

Most of the game you play as Frost or Yuri, this makes it easier to follow the story and seems to give it more of a flow. The story isn’t going to wow you but it is a decent story. This series has done a couple of things well, the first, have lots of tension and incredible scenes, this game isn’t any different. The other thing this series does well is mix up the levels. Between driving boats, sniping, running and gunning it, or trying to sneak around, this game mixes it up enough that you are never bored or get that been there done that feeling. My only problem with the game is I felt that they over used the slow motion action scenes. In games past those were some of the epic moments but I felt like they went to the well too often in this game.

It will be interesting to see where the next Modern Warfare game goes with the story or if this is it. Because of somethings that happen in the story I get the feeling this is the end of the Modern Warfare series as we know it. I’m not saying the end of Call of Duty just the Modern Warfare part of the series.

Overall (3/5)

The game is short but it’s fun and we all know the multiplayer is where this game makes it mark.

Questionable Content (4/5)

Maybe because I’ve gotten too use to it but I don’t remember a ton of language but I’m sure there was. There are some scenes that could be disturbing, nothing as bad as the No Russian mission in MW2.

Achievements (3/5)

It’s a Call of Duty game and with that you know that some of the achievements are going to be very challenging. In one play through on normal I got a little over 300 points.

When Batman Arkham Asylum came out it quickly became one of my favorite games of all time. The way the game made you feel like Batman with the gameflow was nice. So when Arkham City was announced I was excited but also a little nervous, I know how hard it can be to follow up a great game. After beating it though I am very happy to say that they followed it up well and put out another must buy.

The game is based in Arkham City, a part of Gotham that has been walled off keeping all of Gotham’s criminal masterminds inside. The city isn’t huge but it’s big enough to take a few minutes to get from one side to another. One of the great thing about Batman are the villains and Arkham City makes use of some of the different villains that didn’t get used much or at all in Arkham Asylum. I don’t want to give away who is in the game or any of the story line but I will say this, I loved the story. The main storyline of the game I thought was great and since I don’t want to give anything away I’ll leave it at that.

The big question about a single player game is how long is the campaign and is there replay value. If I had to guess I would think the campaign is about eight hours long. Also once you beat the game you can play through again with all your weapons upgraded and the enemies are smarter. Like Arkham Asylum there are Riddler challenges that add to the game play, that alone adds hours to the game. Also there are still challenge rooms were you fight bad guys and in rounds and get scored for how well you did. These rooms can get pretty challenging to get your score up and can get pretty addicting trying to do better than last time. New to this game are the side missions.

The side missions in this game will get you pretty distracted. I know I played for a couple of hours one night and didn’t advance the main story at all. They are mixed in and you stumble upon them. If you buy the game new you also get several Catwoman missions. These were nice but I didn’t enjoy these near as much as the rest of the game. In fact at one point I was wondering if I could skip it and get back to Batman. They did do a nice job though of making Catwoman different with different skill sets than Batman. You may have gotten across one room one way with Batman but have to rethink it playing as Catwoman.

Overall (5/5)

This game is great. I don’t say that about a lot of games but so far this is the most fun game that I’ve played this year. I would say it is a must play and a game that you should buy.

Questionable Content (3/5)

Batman keeps it classy but some of the thugs well not so much. The violence in this game isn’t too bad as most of it are fist fights and even when guns are used there is no blood. The language of the bad guys is pretty bad. I don’t think I ever heard an F bomb dropped but just about everything else seemed to be fair gain. Harley Quinn also makes several sexual jokes that might just slip right by you but they are there.

Achievements (3/5)

For completing the story and doing some side missions I got 390 points. It’s not terrible on achievements but you are going to have to work to get them.

There are always two things I wonder about when I play movie tie in games, the first is will it spoil the movie if I haven’t seen it yet and the second is how bad will is this game going to stink. The answer to the first question is no this game will not spoil the movie, as it has a different plot. Surprisingly the answer to the second question is not at all, as this is a pretty good game.

Dez asked asked me last week if the combat was similar to Batman Arkham Asylum because of the one button for everything and not only is that the same but most of the game is similar. This borrows so much from Batman and why wouldn’t they, that was a great game. The combat is very simular to Batman AA with the one button to do kicks and punches. If you haven’t played AA you may think that sounds dumbed down but it works very nicely. Also when you push up on the d-pad Captain America enters a special vision mode. In this mode you can see where you can jump, collectables glow even more, and enemies glow, very much like you guessed it AA. Unlike AA you can’t stay in this mode, it only last several seconds. Like Batman and his batarang Captain America can throw his shield and target more than one enemy at a time. This is an upgrade that you get as you go along. I got up to four people I could target in one throw.

Like many other games you get the same enemies over and over however in this game it makes sense. For the most part the game is enjoyable but there are some boss battles that get annoying. Not because they are cheap or impossible but because you have to wait on the boss to do something. Sometimes they just run around and it takes forever to beat them. This was really only the case on one or two boss battles.

If you like collectables then you will love this game. It is filled with different things to collect and do in the game. Almost so much that at points it seems over the top. Most rooms will have at least one collectable, a fair amount have three. If you take your time you can rack up some achievements finding all of them.

Aside from the campaign which is fun there are challenge rooms, yes you guessed it like AA, in which you have different goals to reach in a certain amount of time. These challenge rooms can be addicting trying to get the gold in each of them and give the game replay value.

Overall (3.5/5)

If I judged this game off of other movie tie in games, it could be game of the year. As a game overall it has fun gameplay, the graphic are good but not great and it has about five to six hours of gameplay through the campaign. I might would buy it at a bargain price but it’s defiantly worth a rent.

Achievements (4/5)

In one play through and playing one challenge room I was able to get 550 achievement points. If you like looking for collectables you will get a bunch more. Also don’t skip the credits as there is a 13 point achievement for watching them.

Questionable Content (0/5)

I don’t remember anything in this game that would keep me from letting my kids play it.

In Bulletstorm you play as Grayson Hunt, the leader of a black ops unit named Dead Echo. It’s Dead Echo’s job to take out some of the most violent people like drug dealers or so they think. When they learn that General Sarrano has used them to take out innocent people for political gain the squad goes AWAL. Now with bounties on their heads they are bent on revenge.

In a drunken rage Grayson takes down General Sarrano’s ship killing lots of innocent people and most of his own crew. All that’s left is him and Ishi Sato. Ishi however had to be fused with mechanical parts to survive. Now he battles for control of his brain from the computer that is a part of him. That’s all in the beginning, from there you are battling to get to Sarrano. Ishi wants to reach Sarrano just to get off the planet but Grayson has other ideas. That’s the story plot and it’s a decent story for a FPS.

The game itself is very entertaining. In the beginning Grayson finds a whip that attaches to his hand. This whip can be used to pull things down or more importantly used to pull people towards him. When you grab a guy with the whip it jerks him towards you in slow motion, during which you can shoot them or wait until they are close and kick them. Once you get the hang of it you can move Grayson to make him kick the guy into things or off cliffs. You learn pretty quickly to pay attention to what is around you, so that you know what you can use to kill your enemies. The whip works really well for that however sadly pulling things down with the whip on works on certain items. The items you can use it on usually has a bright light that will shine over it every couple of seconds.

There are also several types of guns in the game. My favorite was the sniper rifle. The nice thing about the sniper rifle was at the end of every shot you take control over the bullet and guide it. The enemies try to dodge the bullet, which adds some difficultly. You can only equip two guns at a time but you can change which two you have at the dropbox, which leads into the dropboxes. Dropboxes are how you equip what weapons you are carrying, upgrade weapons and refill you ammo. They are located throughout the game and you use your whip to tie into them.

To buy things you don’t use money but rather skill points. Skill points are awarded for the different ways you kill people. You get points for headshots, kicking someone off a cliff, kicking someone into spikes, shooting someone in the butt, and many more. If you don’t have enough skill points then you can’t buy ammo or upgrade weapons.

You are able to duck to take cover or go under something and of course you can also run. One feature I found myself using was the slide. By double tapping the A button it made your guy slide and he will slide until he hits something. This was a great way to get out of trouble or get behind someone. Also you could use the slide to slide into enemies and it will knock them into the air, making them easier to kill.

Overall (4/5)
If you can get past the middle school humor and all the cursing than this game is pretty fun. Many of the monsters are very Gears of Warish. I think I even heard one of the big guys saying boom when he shot his gun. I did not try the online but would of liked to been able to try.

Questionable Content (5/5)
This game is one of the worst for language that I’ve played in a long time. F bomb’s all over the place and lot of adult jokes. There is also drinking in the game and not only in the cut scenes. There is an achievement for finding and drinking 20 bottles. After drinking the bottle the screen gets blurry and anything you kill during this time you get extra skill points, the skill points awarded are called “Intoxicated”. Because of this I have a hard time recommending this game to anyone even though it is fun.

Achievements (2/5)
In one play through on Easy I got 230 points and that took me about five to six hours.

Here is some gameplay footage.

Most everyone reading this knows what this game is but in case you’ve been living under a rock for the past 20 years NBA Jam is a 2 v 2 over the top basketball game. This game became popular in the early 90′s and now is making a return. For the most part the game is just how you remember it, with guys catching on fire, jumping into the rafters before making dunks, and crazy catch phrases.

This game was originally going to be a downloadable free game with the purchase of NBA Elite but when Elite was shelved, EA decided to put it out as a stand alone product and charge $50 for it. They did go in and add some features that wasn’t suppose to come with the downloadable version but did come on the Wii version.

This game does include several different types of game modes including the classic 2v2 game. You can still play four players on one console or you can play against AI or online. Other games includes Domination, a game in which you have to shoot from inside circles on the floor. Once you make a shot you control that circle and the idea to maintain control as long as you can. The longer you control that circle the more points you get and the first player to 100 wins. This can be played everyman for himself or teams. The next game type is Elimination. In Elimination the clock is ticking and the player with the fewest points when the clock goes off is eliminated and the other players are reset to 0 and start again. The Remix mode which is 2v2 but with power-ups. Grab a power-up and your guy may become super fast, taller or a couple of others. Smash is another addition in the game. In Smack you play 2v2 but the goal is to break the backboard. Dunks are the way to here and every time you dunk you see how much closer you are to breaking the backboard.

Within the game there is also a classic campaign. You and one other person (has to be local no online here) can pick one team and beat every other team in the NBA. Along the way you unlock classic NBA Jam players like Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and several others. To go through the campaign once will take you about 6 to 8 hours. Then there’s the remix challenge. To beat this you have to play 180 different matches and the matches range from Elimination to Domination to Remix to Boss fights.

Now that you got what’s in the game let’s get to the game it’s self. For the most part it works pretty well. You have the choice of using either buttons or analog sticks. I have personally started using the analog sticks and prefer that but both work well. For the most part this is just like the game we all remember and loved but it does have it’s issues. First after playing through a campaign I started to notice the rubberband AI. I was playing on easy to get all the achievements I could while playing and I would be dominating them until about one minute left in the third quarter. At that time every single game the AI would go from Kwame Brown to what Micheal Jordan was on his best day. As soon as the ball got passed in they are stealing it and make it almost impossible to do anything. Added to that your AI partner then goes dumb. He not longer jumps to block shots until the ball is already on the rim and just plays at a much less level then he did the rest of the game. This drove me nuts.

Now lets talk about online. This is a nice feature they added and one that could of made this game great and does make it more fun. However there are several problem here as well. One, which could be easily fixed, is if you and one other player wants to play on the same team the AI is then on the hardest difficulty setting and there is no way to change this. Then the next problem is the dropped games, which is two problems. The first problem is players quitting to boost achievements. If you play at least a minute and your teammate quits then you get the win. Notice I said teammate and not the other team. So what’s happening is people are going after the ten wins online achievement and boosting it. The other problem online is EA servers are constantly dropping players. These online problems almost break the game. Out of ten games online you might be able to finish four of them.

Overall (2/5)

This game is a lot of fun and could of been great but it comes up short. The AI troubles and online problems are just too much. I would still pick it up if you can get it under $20.

Questionable Content (0/5)

It’s a sports game, nothing to worry about here.

Achievements (2.5/5)

Most people think sports game ok there’s easy achievements but not here. While the achievements may not be that hard to get it will take you some time. To get the bigger point achievements you have to play through the campaign six times and that will take you at least six hours each time.

We first saw Joy Ride at E3 in 2009. At that time if memory serves me right it was going to be a free arcade game that featured the new avatars. That’s what it should of been. Instead it was postponed for a year and brought out to be a launch title for the Kinect with a $50 price tag.

The game is a cartoonist racing game that uses your avatar and the Kinect features. You can’t control how fast you go only boost and steering. To steer you put your hands out in front of you like you are holding a steering wheel and pretend to drive. This works ok but it’s not something you want to be doing for any length of time. To boost pull your arms back and when the boost meter fills push them forward. You can also do stunts during jumps by simply leaning back. Most of this driving aspects work pretty well but the menu can be a little touchy.

Overall (0.5/5)

This game should of stayed a free download. Even then it would not get much playing time.

Content (0/5)

Nothing to worry about here

Achievements (4/5)
I didn’t really care to go after them but they seem to be pretty easy just time consuming.

I wasn’t that excited about Black Ops coming out if I am to be honest. I really enjoyed the first Modern Warfare, couldn’t get into the World at War, and was disappointed with the single player of Modern Warfare 2. My main problem with Modern Warfare 2 was the story wasn’t good and it was really hard to follow. That’s not the case in Black Ops.

From the beginning I was drawn into the story, so much so that I beat the game with in 24 hours and that’s not something I usually do. Most of the game you play as Alex Mason who starts out being tied to a chair and questioned from another room using a voice changer. Mason is having a hard to remembering all of his past and passes out from time to time. That’s about as much of the story as I can tell without starting to give away part of the plot.

In Modern Warfare 2 it seemed like you were playing as many different characters and it became confusing who you were. They did a great job in this game of keeping it clear who you are playing as. The story was one of the best I’ve played through from start to finish. There are also some funny parts that you will pick up on if you’ve played other Call of Duty titles.

The changes in levels was also handled nicely. There was a nice mix up of different type of levels so you never felt like you were doing the same thing over and over. There are also some nice twist in the plot. Things that at least I never saw coming.

Overall (4.5/5)
The story was one of the best I’ve played in awhile. The gameplay worked and I didn’t see many if any glitches. Overall the game was what you expect out of a triple A title.

Content/Language (5/5)
It is a war game so there is lots of blood and graphic killing scenes. Also more F words than I could count. If bad language bothers you stay away from this one.

Achievements/Trophies (3/5)
This is better than most Call of Duty games. There are still the beat on veteran achievements but the majority of them you could get in one play through if you paid close attention. However if you want the 1000 out of this one you will have to work for it.