The Force is Unleashed!

Star Wars has been a major phenomena in the American culture and across the world. From the movies to the games everyone loved Star Wars at one point. Lucas Arts’ newest game is called Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. In this game you will see a whole new side of the Star Wars games. Usually you will play as the Republic or the Rebels in games but in the one you will play as the Empire.

The character you play as is Darth Vader’s secret apprentice. Your mission is to travel around the galaxy and kill off the remaining Jedi. The game is set in between the Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope. It explores the aftermath of  Order 66 and the evolution of Darth Vader. I have also learned that you will be aided by a sidekick named PROXY who is a prototype holodroid with amazing abilities and a beautiful Imperial pilot named Juno Eclipse. You will battle powerful force wielders including a Zabrak warrior named Maris Blood and General Rahm Kota. Some of the planets that you will visit are Kashyyyk, Felucia, and Racus Prime.

As you move through the story line you can upgrade 4 core force powers. They are Force Push, Grip, Repulse, and Lightning. You can also combine all of your force powers  to create ultra-destructive combos never scene before. Some examples of this are instead of just Force pushing enemies into walls you will Force push them through walls; and instead of Force griping your enemy and throwing them aside you can force grip them in mid air, zap them with lightning, and then throw them to the ground only to explode like a bomb! Now I don’t know about you but that just sounds sweet!

This game will be out for Xbox 360, PS3, PS2, PSP, and Wii.  In the Wii you will have a 2 player duel mode with 5 maps that is not included in Xbox, or PlayStation. The game will be coming out on September 16, 2008 in North America. You can learn more about the game and watch the trailer at this link.

Assassin’s Creed Review

Assassin’s Creed as been a great hit with console gamers and now just recently on PC as well. The game starts out as you being a guy named Desmond. You were kidnapped and taken to a high tech facility. You are being put on a machine called an Animus. The animus is a machine that lets you recall the memories of your ancestors. In this case Desmond is the ancestor of Altair. Altair was an assassin during the crusades. He is a member of the Assassin’s Creed which is where the game’s name comes from. So you are in the animus and they first put you through a tutorial so you learn how to play the game. After the tutorial you are put right in to the game. Altair is supposed to get a treasure in some caves. In doing so he disobeys 3 of Assassin’s Creed’s rules. When they find the treasure they are caught, Altair and one other escape but one is killed. After the the master learns about the rules he broke Altiar is demoted. You lose all of your weapons and special abilities.

So the objective of the game is to move up the ranks again and keep a war from being started. You will travel to a number of different cities like Damascus and Jerusalem. Here you will do things like pick pocketing, eavesdropping, interrogations, save the citizens, and finally assassinations. When ever you do the assassinations you move further into the story. You open up new parts of cities and other things. When you complete objective your memory bar (in the top left) gets larger. The memory bar is basically your health bar. 

The fighting parts are definitely the parts that make the game fun to play. When your social icon turns red then you can hit the LT button (Xbox 360) and go into fight mode. It this mode you can hold in RT to block the attacks and press B at the right time to counter the attack. The counters can be anything from just throwing your opponent to the ground to stabbing them in the foot and swiping your sword up to thier head. Another feature that I thought was very cool was the ability to climb very tall building and dive off of them into carts or hay. Although this is very unrealistic it is still fun to jump of of huge buildings for fun. The coolest feature I think is the hidden blade that Altair has on this left forearm. This is your assassination tool. You can use this to sneak up on guards or if you want to civilians. But I don’t recommend doing this because you will fail if you kill to many of them.

This is a great game for anyone who likes games with a lot of killing in stealth or in public. This is also good for people who like the times of the crusades. The graphics of the cities are very good and it feels like you are actually there. I am giving this game a 5/5.

Call of Duty 5?

Everyone in the gaming industry knows that Call of Duty 4 is probably the best shooter out now. With it’s great graphics and war intensity no one can stand up to it. So the game is called Call of Duty 4. There has already been 1-3 so it makes you wonder if there will be a 5th game released.

So lets look at some history of the Call of Duty franchise. Call of Duty “1″ was released on October 29th, 2003. This was a fairly good game and started the franchise in World War II. The only real competition during this time was Medal of Honor but even that was a little short of Call of Duty. One great thing about the earliest Call of Duty game is that it was able to be played in multiplayer this is something that most other war game’s of it’s time didn’t have.

On October 25th, 2005 Infinity Ward release the second game in the franchise Call of Duty 2. This is a great game for its time, and it has a great multiplayer feature. I have this game an I know first hand that it is a fantastic game. I personally think that this is the point when Call of Duty really starts to break away from all of the over war games out there.

The next game to be released was Call of Duty 3. That was on November 6th, 2006 and it was only released for the Xbox 360, Wii, and PS3. This also was a WWII game and turned out really good for some of the big consoles out there.

The newest and I think best Call of Duty ever made was Call of Duty 4. Call of Duty 4 was released on November 5th, 2007. This game is great because they put in some big multiplayer enhancements that made the game very famous and exciting to play. The two big ones where the ranks and create a class. I have played Call of Duty 4 and can tell you that both of these features work very well.

So, most of the Call of Duty’s are released around late October or very early November. The question is “will there be another Call of Duty?”. To answer this in one word I would say yes. But, personally I don’t think it would be soon. The reason why is, they are still working on Call of Duty 4. As you probably know the new map pack is coming out anytime now (which should be some great maps) and there will most likely be more on the way.

Even though it might not be coming out soon, there is still some talk of Call of Duty 5 already. At this link it refers to Call of Duty 5 as “in the pipe” so we know that someone is thinking about it. One thing I am interested to see is what they change from Call of Duty 4 to 5. I’m guessing that they will still stay in Iraq in the current war because they were on WWII for 3 games, I don’t think it will change anytime soon.