Skinit New York Giants Microsoft Xbox 360 Wireless Controller Skin Review

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My kids really wanted a NY giant and a Raven's controller but did not want to steer away from the original xbox controller so this was a great alternative! They love the new skins and it's easy to know who's controller is who's!!!

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Review of Sprint Cars 2: Showdown at Eldora - PlayStation 2

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Always been a huge fan of this genre of game and most reviewers do not give the dirt track the respect it deserves. Unfortunately, Sprintcar2 Showdown at Eldora deserves every bad review it gets. I will not get into too many specifics as to why this game should never have been released but here's what SAE offers.

-The same tracks as Sprintcar Road to Knoxville

-The same models and paint schemes for the Modifieds, Midgets and Sprintcars as RTK

-Three new classes Prostock, Latemodel and Wingless Sprintcar (all with paint schemes that look like they took as long to name as they did to complete.

-A Tractor pull mini game (Don't laugh, it's the best thing you will get for your $19.96!)

Sounds like Big Ant just added to an OK game and no harm right? Wrong! What was smooth, fast racing in RTK is now so jittery with a frame rate flucuating like my waistline during the holidays that it completely unplayable even with everything (including all sound turned off.) Also, don't bother starting a career, I had a driver win every race in a series and still finish 6th and under a different name.

If you are even considering purchasing this game please consider games such as Saturday Night Speedway, World of Outlaw 2002, NASCAR Dirt to Daytona and yes even Sprintcar Road to Knoxville.

"Better crippled in body then corrupt in mind"

Imperial Comissar Yarrick addressing Imperial Guard units during an Ork siege

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This game is far from perfect, however it provides the best available video game dirt track action for race fans. Until someone makes a game with dirt late models, sprint cars, and modifieds for PS3/360, this is the game to get.

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I was a big fan of the World of Outlaws PS2 game that came out in 2002 and Road to Knoxville when that came out in 2006. This version really has a lot more to do. They've added late models, pro stock and wingless sprints. The new challenge mode is fun and the tractor pull, while pretty simple, is cool because you can post your pulls to their website. I'd like to see this game on the Xbox 360 someday!!!

Honest reviews on Sprint Cars 2: Showdown at Eldora - PlayStation 2

Got this for my husband he loves it. He had been looking for this for awhile keeps him occupied and out of my hair. Lol

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like this game alot, had been looking for it for awhile. sprint car racing is one of the most fun games you can play. anyone will love it.

Best Two Worlds 2 - Xbox 360 Deals

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List Price: $19.99
Sale Price: $9.45
Today's Bonus: 53% Off

I wasn't expecting too much from this game. I personally was not a big fan of Oblivion. I tried to be, but there were aspects of the game that really bothered me such as all the monster leveling up with you. Having said that, I still bought this game hoping it would entertain me. For the first two hours, I really was not impressed. I did not like the character models, the way they moved, and I didn't like the voice acting. But I decided to give it a longer chance because I read someone say it took them an hour to get into it.

I am so happy I did. I love this game. Absolutely love it. I like it much better than Oblivion. I enjoy the combat much more as it feels more hack and slash. I like the fact that certain monsters will kill you with one or two blows. I have 9 1/2 hours logged into this game, and there is so much to do. The horse is difficult until you get used to it, once you do it is no problem. Remember that if you buy it and hate the horse.

For me, this game reminds me of an improved Diablo with the fighting, rapid looting, selling equipment, spells. If you ignore the voice acting which becomes easy to do as the game progresses, you will find yourself immersed in this game wanting to play more, to make your character stronger, and to make your weapons and armor stronger. There are graphical glitches, you definitely should load it onto your harddrive, and there are minor bugs here and there but they do not reduce the amount of fun this game is. As everyone else has stated, map is huge and there are so many side quests to do. Even though the voice acting is poor, the dialog is great and the characters have believable quests for you to do which makes them that much more enjoyable. I have played World of Warcraft, Oblivion, Sacred II, and I like the quests much more on this game than those. These quests actually have a bit of thought into them, instead of just making you "kill that guy because he has wronged me." Instead, you will hear him talk to you and tell you (and I am somewhat telling one of the quests but changing it a bit)"I want you to take care of this guy. By take care of this guy, you know what I mean. The reason I want you to deal with this is because when the Orc war was going on, he offered safe passage to my family in exchange for 500 gold. We paid him. On the day we were supposed to meet him, he disappeared. We knew the route of the passage, so we went. Little did we know he had led us straight into an ambush. It seems that is his way of making money..." and there would be more but you get the picture. It gives you an actual reason to want to do the quest instead of simple two line words that scroll across the screen. Anyhow, great game. I am glad I bought it.

I forgot to mention, so I will just throw it in here. If you like Rockband you may appreciate one part of this game. If you choose to, you can play musical instruments to earn money from people. To play an instrument, you need to buy one and you need to buy the music sheet. Each music sheet is different. To play, you have to use your controller and use both trigger buttons and both bumper buttons. Just like Rockband or Guitar Hero, the notes scroll down the screen and you have to hit the trigger or bumper when it passes the bar. But, it's hard. They scroll so fast. I would compare it to Expert on Rockband. But if you are good you'll enjoy it.

Edit: I am addicted to this game. Been looking for so long for a game to get addicted to and this one has done it. If you have been addicted to a game in the past but just couldn't find one give this one a shot.

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Let's go in this from the start and say that you need to play this with any expectations to match up to Oblivion will be gone.

If you go into Two Worlds II with low to average expectations, you may actually have some fun.

This game did nothing more that take bits of Lord of the Rings and Star Wars and mashed it into a pedestrian RPG that may be ok for the dry months of gaming until more AAA titles come along and by the time you have forgotten about this game, Elder Scrolls V will be here.

So far it's more playable than the original version. I bought the first one with high expectations and within 3 days I took it back. This so far looks and plays better and it's MUCH better than Gothic 4 which just came out 2 months ago.

The story is somewhat interesting where your character is actually so far working WITH the orcs that occupy Antaloor. It almost starts like Oblivion where you have to escape the King's dungeon and figure out how to rescue your sister Kyra with whom you share a mystical bond with. King Gandohar is torturing her to find out how to get her power so he can become a god and of course, you are what's stopping him from doing so.

As per usual, the first few levels act as a bit of a tutorial for you to learn the mechanics of the game. One of the issues that arises of course is there are still some things you have to figure out on your own, one being the lock picking mini game the other is how to create spells for the spell book but at the same time the game takes it time to show you have to kill multiple enemies with a bow.

Another little surprise is the ease of switching gear in the game. I was mixed about the fact that I have 3 slots in which to mix and match armor and weapon setting and that you can switch it on the fly. While it may seem like a good idea in some instances, it takes away from what is usually standard in RPGs that when you go into combat, you go in with the gear you have on and not be able to 'pause, change and fight'.

Something else that I caught is that the setting for this game isn't your standard medieval type setting. Most of the game feels more of an African/Middle Eastern/ Asian type of flair although most of the armor looks standard for this type of RPG.

Also it's one of those games where your choices do seemingly affect the outcome. For instance, early on, you get a mission to try to get through a gate to get to another city. I have so far the option to: fight my way out, get someone to forge a note, pay someone to smuggle me through work with town leaders to earn their trust to let me out. Not all of them work of course and depending how you do certain sequences, you relationship may change with one or several NPCs based on what you do...that's a big plus for this game.

Graphically speaking, it's a fairly decent game but part of the problem that I have with this game is that during daytime sequences, the back drops looks too washed out from the sunlight and no matter how much I adjust the graphics settings, it won't change. But when you do find a happy medium, the game looks pretty decent other wise. There is a lot of texturing and bump mapping that looks just great, when it works the lighting effects really work with the background. The buildings are very well detailed also. In some places it does tend to look better than Oblivion but considering that was 5 years ago it should! Some of the character models are outstanding including one who has some serious headlight issues going on!!!

The character creation is fine and a bit more detailed than what imagined and if it had more hairstyles to choose from it may have even beat Dragon Age in this category.

As far as game control goes, it's the one main reason why i have not given up on this game yet. It's pretty easy to get around, use in combat and do what you need to do to get through. Some games of this type fail because they try to make the control scheme overly complicated. But once you get it figured out, you are pretty much set.

The only combat issue I have to far (and I will have to refer back to the instruction book) is that creatures you come across you don't always know how and what you can beat. I have beaten things as large as an Ostrich, as fast and numerous as baboons, but a fire ant kills me in two blows...there is an unbalance in that somewhere!

That is the other quirky thing with this game. While you still have a number of bizarre monsters to kill, nothing will bug you the most than the fact that you are in a fantasy safari hunt and you track down wild boars, and rhinos. Well it beats having to always fight dire wolves or enraged rats in other RPGs...LOL

The voice acting in this game is just bad, bad baaaaaaad. It's laughably bad. The guy in the cemetery, the street beggar, heck even your character who sounds suspiciously like Geralt from the Witcher (I mean Two Worlds 2 is another Polish game) try but they all don't quite fit. One leg up it does have is that your character has his own dialogue through out the game. But this again comes back to that this is not a game done in America by the tops of the industry. There are a few other minor issues where the cut scenes don't quite fade right when transitioning, lip synching sometimes is off and the music rises and ebbs and some of the most peculiar of moments but the bottom line is that this game is more playable than the first one was but you have to be willing to give it a chance. You get tons of gear, an easy crafting guide, on the fly customization, multiple missions and side quests right out of the gate and even a multiplayer side which I have yet to try and it's really a decent package. I repeat if you go in not expecting this to be on the level of Elder Scrolls, then you can do ok. Get it only if you have an Oblivion itch you need to scratch but don't feel like closing about gate...

On a scale of 1 to 5 it gets a 3.

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I was a purchased of the original Two Worlds. I loved that game despite its mountain of problems (and believe me it had plenty). I love open world RPG's like Oblivion and Fallout. When I heard the developers were pledged to fix those problems in the next game and continue what made the original great my interest was peaked.

Now that I have the game, I can say the developers kept their promise. This is far superior to the first one (while keeping and adding to the RPG features that made it great) and in my opinion deserves merit and comparison on the level of other mainstream games.

Short but sweet;

+++ Beautiful graphics The draw distance is nice and the colors bright and vivid. The shadow and lighting is amazing and the level of detail on the character and monster models is very pretty. I kept finding myself impressed with something different as I went into each new area. 30fps for me throughout with the very occasional stutter.

+++ Interesting Innovations The magic system is awesome. You could play for days with the different combinations. I like the "equipment sets". Lets me hot swap various equipment builds with the touch of a button. Context sensitive actions are well done such as using the same button for Dash (while running), Sneak (while standing), etc. Crafting is a ton of fun and so is Alchemy.

+++ Game is just fun I really enjoyed walking around and checking out the scenery. The battles are fairly fast paced and the quests progress at a good speed. The inventory screen is standard fair and I found it pretty easy to use. You will find little details like spiders (not the kind you kill that are the size of a cat) hanging from dirty bookshelves and lightning flashes through skylights when the weather outside is bad. I just plain have been having fun playing it so far.

--Voice Acting I have heard worse actors, but not much worse. I am pretty sure they got Christian Bale to come in and do his awful Batman voice for the main character because that is what he sounds like in every situation. The Orc women you meet in the beginning was pretty good (The Orcs in general were serviceable) but most of the human characters just don't have any emotion or worse just don't sound like they fit the part.

-- and +++ Story What can I say about the story. It had been a long time since I played the first one so I couldn't remember what was going on. Man was that hard to find online. What a convoluted story. The new game doesn't do a very good job of recapping or explaining either. The opening cinematic while gorgeous is really confusing. Its clear there was a human/orc battle but not why, what happened, or who won. The NEW story seems a little easier to follow (a bit) than this but fair warning I think they assume you know all the details of the last one before you jumped into this one. I can tell the jist of whats going on but I like a bit more of that in my RPG's from the beginning. I like to know and feel WHY I am traversing the countryside trying to do whatever im doing.

--and +++ Cut Scenes I see what they were going for with the cut scenes and for the most part they are done pretty well. Unfortunately you get yanked from immersion when the cut scene starts and stops in completely different places with little explanation why. I think the story folks and the level folks needed to work closer together. Some of the animations in the cut scenes are pretty hilariously bad but can also be really good. Lip syncing is awful.

--and +++ Camera System The game seems to employ some sort of free running style shaky cam for any fast movement. I personally thought it was kind of neat and liked it but my wife said NAY! it was making her seasick. So be aware of that if you have a sensitive stomach. The camera can be a bit jarring/shaky with fast movement.

I admittedly have only logged a few hours so far but I keep thinking about when I can sit down and play some more and that is always a good sign with me. With Fallout: New Vegas to compete with for my time those are higher marks than normal. I say pick it up. If you like this type of game you won't regret it.

NOTE: I gave the game 4 Stars because it isn't perfect because of above mentioned issues but if there was a half star I would give it 4.5 stars.

Honest reviews on Two Worlds 2 - Xbox 360

I like RPGs. Dragon Age, Dragon Age 2, Oblivion. But Two Worlds sucked. I hated it.

I got Two Worlds 2 as a gift. And boy am I glad. This is an entirely different game that the first Two Worlds. Here's a few things about it:

Exciting Play:

Every few minutes, you're doing something exciting. And it's often something you didn't intend to do. For instance, you may be delivering someone's mail and then get side-tracked when you spot a group of creatures guarding some treasure.

The world is choked full of fun things to do.

Good Combat:

I enjoyed the combat of 2 Worlds better than any non-turned-base RPG I've played to date. You can quickly access your skills and equipment. And chopping into opponents with swords, spells and arrows feels quite visceral. The game has very solid animations for when you or enemies get hit.

A bit rough dialog and other Animations:

Some animations are a bit sad. When you're unarmed, you execute a very sissy kick. You look like a tween girl taking a swing at a mouse. And a lot of the dialog isn't much better (it's eons better than the first game, just not in a class with Dragon Age or Oblivion or other major works out right now). You'll often have to sit through the slow dronings of the elderly as they recite entirely useless information with tiny specks of usefulness buried within.

Although the animations and dialog aren't top notch, they're not so horrible that you'll want to quit the game.

Mini-games and Side-Quests:

There's too much to do. I'm nowhere near completion yet, but I've already run into dozens of side-quests and mini-games that are perfect distractions.

Overall:

There's tons to do. And I haven't even hit the multiplayer aspects yet. If you like RPGs and you're needing one right now, I think you'd do very well with Two Worlds 2.

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I've now logged around 14 hrs with this game and have still barely even scratched the surface. Granted I love to do side missions and there's plenty here. I'm also very blown away by how HUGE the world is, I also love how the culture and even plant and animal life changes based on the different area's and climates. I love going into battle, it's a bit tricky at first because you're so low leveled everything seems to kick your butt. Once you get around lvl 20 or so though it's not an issue. I highly advise anyone who's a fan of a great open world RPG to get this game!

Discount Jade Empire - Xbox

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List Price: $19.99
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From the people who brought us Knights of the Old Republic comes another genre-blending game with a fabulously twisting plot. If you own an Xbox, you should own this game. It is not only the best Action RPG on the Xbox but one of the best RPGs played in recent memory.

For those who have played KOTOR, this game will be instantly familiar. At the offset, you pick a character and are thrust into a world of moralities. Unlike KOTOR, the morality system is a little more complex for the most part. Instead of focusing on good and evil, your character has the choice of being endlessly helpful, understanding and tolerant of everyone (in other words believes in the power of the human spirit) or someone who reveres strength. As an example of this strength concept, there is a decision early on about a dam that is open and has caused problems for a town because the sailors are land locked. A wine merchant wants the dam to remain open so he can make a killing off of the sailors. If you follow the Way of the Open Palm you would probably close the dam so that the town can prosper in what is should be doing. If you follow the Way of the Closed Fist, on the other hand, would decide that if the town were strong they will survive this current hurdle and that it is only that, a hurdle. It gets a little more tricky than that and does open some areas for roleplaying your character and deciding what you would really do in that situation. Bioware is also wonderful at making you think about your decision as they give you new information just as soon as you make a decision that might change how you feel about the situation.

My only complaint with the system is that while they say that the two paths are different from looking at things as good and evil, there are still some instances where there is a "good" and an "evil" way of doing things. I might have rationalized why I would be doing something that way, yet I would get points from the side I didn't want because it was clearly delineated as "good and evil choice." So, that's a bit frustrating given that their system isn't supposed to be good and evil. But, overall the system works well and really makes you think.

I didn't really care for KOTOR because of the battle system and that is probably the reason I'm enjoying Jade Empire much more. The fighting system is simple yet deep. As you progress you will learn different martial arts style that you can map to the D-pad for quick and easy access. And you will be constantly changing your styles as the techniques to defeat enemies will constantly evolve. Some monsters are immune to certain attacks so you will have to experiment and find the best ways of devastating your foes.

On the simple side, the combat is really about rock, paper scissors. You have a quick attack and a time-consuming attack (and a knock back attack that really only helps when you are surrounded and need some space). When someone blocks you use your time consuming attack, otherwise you mostly use your quick attacks to offset their own long attacks. It's pretty simple and easy to used to. However, some battles can become a button masher either way you look at it. But it's still exhilarating and fast with many ways of deciding how you want to play. Do you want to focus on using weapons, martial arts, magic, transformations? A little of the above? It's all up to you.

The game is beautiful most of the time. The art style is impeccable and really helps create a full-flesh universe. Since it's based on oriental myth, it doesn't take place in the Orient as we know it but a mythical world that incorporates themes from oriental culture. Because of this, the desiginers are free to create whatever their imagination can make. And it's beautiful. There are some places that I stood for awhile and just looked because it was so surreally beautiful and soothing. It made me wish that sometimes our world wasn't so industrialized and that we could go back to what was a more simple beauty. It was that affecting. However, sometimes, the backgrounds look painted on. Some of the hills and areas that act as blockades for where you can't go aren't that well designed. Also my character's body type makes me laugh because his pecs are super large and his abs are indented in his body that I laugh whenever I see it.

The game moves impeccably fast as well. Your character runs and I mean runs through the areas. The framerate is great. But, like KOTOR before it, the game stutters sometimes when you are running and turning the camera. When the camera pans, the game flutters sometimes as it tries to take in everything that happens. In battles, the game hardly ever stutters. And the battles can end up having a good dozen or so enemies fighting you and your partner so they can get pretty hectic and the graphics engine does a great job keeping the motion moving.

Aurally, the game is a treat. You will find some cameo voice actors that are immediately familiar (look for John Cleese in a hysterical role). The music is well done and has a wonderful oriental bent to it (of course). Also, Bioware hired a real linguist to help create the fictional language used in the game. It is very familiar to oriental language but isn't real. It was created solely for this game. And that's amazing.

Unfortunately, my problem with the dialogue in the game is the same problem I had with KOTOR. It's great and all but all too often the plot developments and dialogue becomes a "talking head" type situation where anyone who has something important to say gets a close up of their face while their lips move and the dialogue is heard. This is unfortunate for me because I get impatient sometimes and will just read the subtitles and skip through most of their dialogue. It's never "dynamic" in cutscenes like in some RPGs I've played (hands down the best use of dialogue in an RPG goes to FFX that used dialogue to move the plot but it wasn't a novel dialogue, it was like movie dialogue). The dialogue in Jade Empire is sometimes like a novel. So, for those who aren't interested in talking heads delivering dialogue this might get annoying after a time. But the dialogue is genuinely well voiced and excellent.

My only other complaint is the load times. While not as annoying constant as Fable where each and every small zone no matter how small had to be loaded for a good 5-10+ seconds, it still is a pain when you have to go through zones for a quest. For instance, in the beginning of the game you have to go through the town to the school (a load screen) to get a quest, go back to town (load screen) to talk to someone, then back to the school (load screen). And it's unfortunate because the actual quest takes maybe a minute, but a good 20 seconds of the time is spent in load screens. That's a uncharacteristic load time though as generally the areas are big and don't usually require many loads. Although another incident where it is very noticeable is in an arena combat situation where before and after each arena battle it has to load for a good 5-10 seconds. The kicker is, some of the arena battles are over in about a minute or much much less and yet you have to deal with two load screens comprising a good 10-20 seconds. So, in some areas it can be annoying and definitely pulls you out of the game when you should be pulled further in. And, it becomes especially annoying considering that games like Halo 2 are seamless after the original load.

Overall, though, this game is gold. It's perfectly plotted and paced and has Bioware's trademark in excellence stamped all over it. It ranks as one of my favorite games this year so far along with God of War and Psychonauts. I would definitely recommend buying this game. There are some problems that I have noted but you know regardless of the problems, this is an excellent game with an excellent story. And, at 22+ hours, this adventure is worth taking.

**NOTE: You should definitely pick up the Limited Edition of it if you can still find it. For the initial run they are all Limited Edition and after they are gone, you will only be able to get this, the standard game. The Limited edition has a new character and weapon style and a making of as well as some other fun things. Same price, so definitely check out the limited edition over this version if you want the game.

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I've loved most of the Bioware games over the last several years. Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, Neverwinter Nights, the Baldur's Gate series and all the spin offs based on that same engine by Black Isle. So while I hadn't really tracked the development or feature set of Jade Empire, and I haven't been playing many games at all the last year or so I decided to pick it up.

So I got it home, tried it out, and got into the old pattern of a week-long, late-night playing spree until I reached the end.

It was good.

The characters and writing were pretty decent. The quests were pretty varied (although I got really sick of ghosts and spirits by the end). The dialog was funny at times. You had choices about whether to be good or evil throughout the game. It definitely had an Eastern flavor and philosophy throughout. There were some really original segments and nice cinematic sequences and some fairly well-done plot twists. But overall I'd say the story and characters were just decent not as good as an average novel. Not quite as good as Knights of the Old Republic. And not innovative still plagued by the same issues that have affected previous games in the genre (e.g. no real freedom to make choices to avoid big plot quests or go in your own direction, not much subtlety in the good/evil choices and rewards given for being either as good or as evil as possible, smashing barrels and boxes and urns around towns and houses to find loot without any consequences).

Where the game really shined was in combat. Your character is skilled in Kung Fu, and starts with 2 fighting "styles" that he or she can switch between at any time. Each style is relatively simple in it's own right. There's a basic attack. You can sequence 2 or 3 attacks in succession before needing to pause a second. You can block. You can "power attack" which takes a second to warm up and leaves you open to regular attack but can break through an enemy's block. And there's an area attack that knocks foes down but doesn't really hurt them. And you can roll and flip around to evade enemies. That's it. So basic strategy is "rock, paper, scissors." Block beats regular attack power attack beats block regular attack beats power attack (during warm up).

So in the beginning of the game you get used to this strategy against one opponent or a few at a time. But before long you start learning new styles. There are new "martial" styles (different forms of kung fu), there are support styles which tend to hinder opponents and set them up for finishing combinations, there are magic styles that usually let you blast enemies at range, there are weapon styles, and there are transformation styles (which let you become a big baddie of some sort for a short while to kick some butt).

Each of these styles has the same categories of moves described above... but very different versions. E.g. with the dire flame magic style, the basic attack fires a small flaming projectile at your enemy, the power attack fires a large flaming projectile that immolates the enemy for a time and makes it impossible for him to attack back, and the area attack summons a dragon to breath flame in the area.

So the core mechanic of the game stays fresh throughout, since you're continually collecting new styles, trying them out, learning their strengths and weaknesses, and investing your limited pool of points into improving the ones you like best. Then at some point you start to really experiment with the "hamonic combinations" in which you have to use a support or magic style, get someone with the slow power attack, then quickly switch to a martial style and hit them with another power attack to finish them off and produce a power up. This can be fun, and it very efficient when fighting large groups of enemies at once.

I have to admit at times I really felt like a bad-ass kung fu master during the game. Start with my "Flawless" staff style, then switch to "Spirit Thief" to suck up some of their spiritual energy, then flip over their back and use "Thousand Cuts" for some quick punches, then finally to "Stone Immortal" to encase my enemies in rock. The switching between styles is very fast and natural and before too long I became very familiar with many of the styles, and I could recognize and name the styles that foes were using against me. This really brought scenes of kung fu movies to mind such as "Ha you don't think you can beat me using "Leaping Tiger" style do you?" or "Ahh, Tempest style. You must be a master who follows the way of the closed fist and I must take care to avoid your vortex area attacks."

And in the end that's what makes a game memorable. The way it made you feel when you were playing it. This game made me feel like a Kung Fu master in a way that straight fighting games with never could.

-Mike Arcuri

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I brought this game for my sister for Christmas. I called her on her day off from work and was told "Can't talk now, I am playing." I was surprised by her reaction. She doesn't normally sit down and play a game and then finish it so quickly. So when she brought it over for me to play, I was looking forward to it. Needless to say, I was not let down. I spent all my free time immersed in a wonderful story that had me in a trance. The beauty, the story, the adventure. I highly recommend this game for all, it was a truly spectular pleasure to play.

Honest reviews on Jade Empire - Xbox

I thought this was an overall great game. Great storyline, though a bit confusing and disappointing/sad in the end. The Only thing I really criticize was the fighting and the number of styles and how they are earned. The Buttons for fighting have been seen a million times. You press one or two buttons (mostly one) and thats how you defeat everyone. The other thing is that when they said you would learn transform skills by fighting many of a creatures, I assumed you'd be fighting more than one or two before the game activates it at a planned moment. I expected to be able to into a wilderness and find many many creatures that respawn and attack again. Also, there were too few weapon styles. You end up using only 1 or 2 kinds of weapons. My last criticism is the lack of things you could buy. More armor, more weapons, less gems. I know I've made the game sound terrible by now but truely, great storyline, excellent graphics and sound, average stats system, good variety of styles and ememies, etc. If you like RPG's, buy it, you'll like it.

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Here's an example of how good this game is. I bought an xbobx for this game. Its just that worth it.

once the menu screen shows up on your screen, I promise, you will be immediatly anchanted. The music is so deep and overwhelming, sorrowful and yet noble. And the visuals, although choppy at very rare times, are heavenly.

When you start out, you will of course pick which character you want to use for your adventure. There are plenty to choose from, ranging from fast-fisted warriors to huge barbarians. This just begins one of the greates aspects of the game character customization. True, it may seem simplistic at first, but through the game you can gain so many styles and techniques that for one moment your character will be beating the heck out of his opponents with brute force, and then seamlessly meld into movments as graceful yet deadly as Crane.

Magic aspect aside, the martial arts are fairly true-to-life. For example, if you are using a longsword, the stance has you holding it above your head (note that not all styles have you doing this, just the one in Jade Empire). Now, when fighting someone with a spear, you might want to switch to either hand-to-hand or a weapon with a longer range. This is because the way that you hold your sword, its takes an extra 1/10 of a second (which in martial arts is precious time). The enemies spear can take advantage of that, and then your dead.

You start off in your martial arts school. When I saw this, i couldn't believe how beautiful it was. It was so peacful and enchanting. Even subtle details were payed attention to, such as the students going through REAL forms and excersises from Tai-Chi Chuan and the Lohan system.

The names are great. Furious Ming. Wu the Lotus Blossom. Gao the Greater (and lesser). Segacious Zu. I mean c'mon thats just classic.

And perhaps most importantly the story. Thats right people, there IS something MORE important than graphics (although Jade Empire's are phenomanal). This is an RPG after all. At first, it seems pretty formulated. I was a little dissapointed. But, don't lose heart. Very soon some amazingly creative and origional writing comes into play. The story is great.

Sadly, there is one thing that I just really do not like about this game at all. For starters, there is the Airship transportation. Its just a remake of Space invaders with a Chinese twist. Very big letdown there.

Secondly, all of the close-ups can get tiresome. I mean, with envoirnments so beautiful, I want to see more than just some warriors face, no matter how cool he/she looks.

But, despite these factors, I still give this game a 5 out of 5. And here is why.

Bad things about the game 2

Good things about the game 100+

Bottom line; If you have an XBOX, then there is no excuse not to have Jade Empire.

Discount BestDealUSA Dual Quick Charger Dock Kit + 2 Battery Pack for Xbox

Customer Ratings:

If your getting this item just because of the rechargable batteries, then dont get it. The batteries that came with this don't even fit in it's own charger. It doesn't even fit in the controllers. You could tape it on so that it would stay on the controller or the charger, but I would rather just get another prouduct or other rechargable batteries. The charger it's self is awesome. I give it 5 stars, actually I would give it 10 stars if I could, but you can't do that. I give the rechargeable batteries 1.5 stars. They are still good, but its annoying that they don't lock in place. You need to tape them on to the controller or the charger. I'm still going to keep this item, because the charger charges the batteries really fast. I love it! The only thing that sucks is the batteries.

So in the end, if your getting this mostly for the charger, then get it! But if your getting it mostly for the batteries, then don't get this, get another item!

I hope that I have helped you.

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i agree with the previous person...one of my batteries did not fit but it stays if u arent rough with the control...it looks and feels cheap but if u want something quick and cheap i would suggest buying it...im satisfied

Best Deals for BestDealUSA Dual Quick Charger Dock Kit + 2 Battery Pack for Xbox

The charger works for our wireless controller batteries, but the 2 batteries came with the bundle are dead. if you need the charger then go for it.

Honest reviews on BestDealUSA Dual Quick Charger Dock Kit + 2 Battery Pack for Xbox

Kids are happy and so am I. They have lasted 6 months now and don't seem to losing battery life.

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My 6 year old gas recently killed a few batteries so didn't want to spend a whole lot of money replacing. This charged the batteries quickly and our other rechargeable batteries fit in it. I also like the up and down design compared to the side by side design. Takes less real estate

Best Saints Row (Platinum Hits) Deals

Customer Ratings:

Saint's Row is a game that is a blantant rip-off of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, from everything right down to the way you steal cars out from people driving them on the street. But make no mistake: This isn't some rushed piece of garbage simply set out to make money off the GTA franchise. It has a little bit of TLC put into it by the game developers, as well.

Similarities to GTA:

-You can do storyline and free roaming missions

-steal and customize cars

-participate in Turf Wars taking over neighborhoods for your gang

-customize your main character

-wield a large variety of guns

-listen to a large variety of music

-and generally play the game however way you want.

Enhancements over GTA:

-Much superior graphics

-better map

-a GPS system for your maps and vehicles

-customizable cell phone, with allies you can call for backup

-customizable music playlists (in case you get sick of the randomness of the radio stations and want to hear your music anywhere, anytime)

-the hands-down BEST car customization in any non-racing video game, ever!

-health items (food) you can access anytime

-self-regenerating health that heals up from about-to-die to full health in about one minute or so

-superior firearms (albeit none of them look very unique)

-a slightly better menu interface to access your firearms (I just wish they hadn't put the food and weapons in the same system; it gets confusing)

-the police are the most minor threat in the game

-public transportation is available to you (although you more than likely will never use it)

-if you find yourself stuck in water, you can skip having to swim to shore with the "warp" feature, which will do that for you. Pretty cool feature! Why aren't things like that in other games?

-shooting style & difficulity are fair (The shot target is in the fixed-center of the screen and you move the camera to aim, but it's a little harder to use then in GTA)

-both men, AND women, can be recruited as allies in your gang, or killed in other gangs. Hurray for murder equality!

-celebrity voice acting (I instantly recognized Mila Kunis as Tanya and Michael Rapaport as Troy)

Worse from GTA:

-No bikes or motorcycles to ride which is diaspointing

-no boats or planes either (not that they're really needed here)

-character can barely swim

-only one safehouse in the entire city/game

-clothes choices are lame and uninspired

-despite the good voice acting, the dialogue is terrible and it sounds like it was written by the whitest people on the planet (shades of "187: Ride or Die")

-an excessive overuse of cursing (if you're going to use it in every other word, it's impact and gravitas is completely lost)

-the A.I. is stupid, and the enemy gangs have that "random spawning" effect whenever you have a "wanted level" by them

-it's mandatory to do the side missions as you have to earn "respect" in order to do the main storyline missions, and respect is only gained from the side missions

-many of the side missions are hard or just plain annoying, like the later level Escort missions

-your character, although he has great stamina, has terrible running animation, and trying to shoot while running just looks retarded.

-the prices of things are way too high/too much (if you're just staring off and haven't saved up any cash, a fifty dollar hamburger may be a bit much). I'd prefer them if they kept them at "real-world" prices.

-the "humor" of the game is just weak and lacks any level of subtlety whatsoever, like the Wendy's burger chain parody, "Freckle B*tch's" for example

-the radio stations are horribly put together, and their names are awful, too.

-the music is generic and lame, and there's only a few "name brand" artists contributing to the game's soundtrack. Mainly, the Clipse and Twista.

-there's no difficulity setting and the main missions in the game are a bit too easy (while the side missions are often too hard)

-the "escape the police" method in this game is weak and lame. It's a drive-thru confessional booth, not that you'll ever really need to use it. I never even been in "Forgive and Forget" before.

-your recruited allies are complete idiots and you'll spend more time than anything reviving them because they rushed headlong into a dozen or so shooting enemies. They're more of a hassle to use than any kind of help, sort of like bringing young children along for grocery shopping.

-it's pretty easy to die in situations that don't call for it. Your health bar, despite it's regeneration, can't take much damage and a few shots from two or more enemies can take you from full health to death pretty quickly. Like, in three seconds quickly. This is darn frustrating and happens A LOT in the stupid Pushback missions that pop up randomally that you can't avoid skipping over.

-there's NO Body Armor, anywhere in this game, which only adds on to the annoying "easy to die" problem I mentioned above.

-the randomally popping up, mandatory "defend your turf against invading gangs" Pushback Missions. They were just as random and annoying in San Andreas and they're even more annoying here. What's worse is, in order to successfully defend your turf, you'll have to seek out special "lieutenants" instead of just killing everybody in sight. And these 12 or so lieutenants tend to hide out in weird, hard-to-reach places, and you'll have to make your way through dozens of enemies, risking your life, just to make your way to them. It was easier in GTA when you just had to kill everybody invading your land. Here, you'll literally be in an urban battlefield going against dozens of enemies, making your way to one of the four spots in the area your enemy lieutenats are at. (they only hang out three at a time and are scattered wide across the entire neighborhood warzone.) The worse thing about these missions are that they're more or less mandatory, and you won't have time to save whenever they pop up, and they'll pop up often after JUST completing a really hard mission or side quest. At least in San Andreas, it was fun to do these missions, partly because they were do in intervals and all you had to do is be the last man standing. Here, they're just a REALLY annoying chore.

-each gun has it's own set of bullets, making it hard to get ammo. In other games like GTA, bullets are shared between guns of similar types (universal pistol ammo, universal shotgun ammo, etc.), but here, each gun is different with it's own unique bullets in them, and you can only have one gun type (pistol, shotgun, etc.) at a time. BUT, because you can't use ammo from other guns, that you'll often find off of dead bodies, you'll constantly be having to decide whether to swap your gun that's low on ammo out for the one of a gang member you just shot. If so, you'll quickly run of of ammo for that, too. If not, you'll just have an empty gun on you. And thus, you'll be deciding which gun you have that is more fuel efficent, quite often in heavily heated turf wars or in missions with tons of enemies to kill. What's worse is every single gangster carries different random guns on them. If the Vice Kings just all had Vice pistols and the Carnales had a different pistol type they all shared, it'd be a lot simplier. But, no, every time you kill someone, it's "do I run out of ammo, or pick this up instead, even though it only has five more bullets in it than the one I already have?" Basically, you'll easily use up all the ammo for whichever gun you have and will have to replace it for another gun (which only has a few bullets in it) and back and fourth like so. (In other words: YOU'RE *ALWAYS* RUNNING OUT OF AMMO!)

Overall, Saint's Row is a worthy edition to the GTA genre of video games. Although it's a rip-off, in every sense of the word, it's defintely not of inferior quality. In fact, Saint's Row is even better than most of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The game, at it's core is nice, but what really bogs it down are the minor negatives, which as you can see, really begin to add up. The game is much better than Three Stars, but all these little things keep it from being Five Star worthy. Other than the numerous minor flaws, the only problem is the story, which is pretty lame and generic, and the script, which is just laughably cheesy in it's attempt to sound "urban" or "gangsta" or "hip hop" or whatever. San Andreas' dialogue and script felt 100% genuine. Saint's Rows, however, sounds forced, like they were too lazy to do their research and just decided to "wing it."

It would be easy to just make a Grand Theft Auto clone that's pretty bad (True Crime has proved that, for us). It would also be pretty easy to try to make your own game, using many of the famous GTA elements involved (I.E, CrackDown). But Saint's Row, however, is a true Grand Theft Auto imitation, that manages not to photocopy the game, but use it as a worthy starting off point for their own series. I like mostly everything in this game, and the only real things keeping it from being superior to every GTA game ever made on the older consoles, is it's cheesy dialogue, numerous small annoyances, it's and cheesy writing, and lame attempts to be "funny."

Other than that, Saint's Row is a worthy duplication of the "sandbox shooting and driving" genre created by GTA itself, and it definitely deserves to be played, even if only as a week-long rental, by ANY Grand Theft Auto fan.

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So long as you don't include originality as part of your game evaluation process, Saint's Row is a stellar, stellar piece of programming. It fixes five of the six problems with the GTA series, and offers tons of little "next-gen" improvements that make it more palatable for older gamers.

1)Graphics: The draw distances and general graphical ... "cruddiness"... of the PS2 (and even the XBOX) versions of GTA are a thing of the past. The game looks great. There's some pop-up with long streets, but the explosions, character models, and polish is simply a vast improvement. I actually thought San Andreas looked worse than Vice City, so this is almost a two-step improvement for me. The explosions, weather and lighting effects, and reflections are really incredible when you consider the lack of loading times.

2)Auto-Aiming: It's gone. I'm not quite used to the borrowed FPS style yet, but anything would be better than the broken auto aiming feature of GTA. It shan't be missed.

3)Save Scheme: No longer am I limited to the GTA "one save per half an hour of playing" madness. Hallelujah. I can't devote large chunks of time to a game, and if I can't save frequently, I lose interest fast.

4)Restarting Missions. Recovering your weapons and restarting missions from the beginning (actually, before the beginning) was asinine in GTA. It wastes time and annoys gamers without really upping the difficulty. Also won't be missed.

5)On-line. Haven't had a chance to play with my own copy yet, but watched someone else play. It might suck, it might be great, but at least it's there.

6)Timed, pizza-delivery missions. They haven't really reared up yet, but hopefully these annoying time-wasters are gone. We'll see.

The main problems I see with Saint's Row I *suspect* will be solved with Xbox live "updates"/purchases. It took me an hour to realize that there were tons of cars, but no motorcycles, etc. I have a feeling we'll have to pay for the privilege of flying a chopper or driving a boat. That will suck. It better be cheap, because the lack of these vehicle options doesn't feel like a game limitation, but like a conscious programming choice.

The story seems pretty derivative, but I'm not far enough along to really evaluate it.

I can't really see myself ever playing any current version of GTA ever again. After only a few hours of Saint's Row you realize that GTA has too many annoying idiosyncracies that should have been fixed long ago.

For fans of the sandbox genre, this is the game to buy, and may be for quite some time.

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Look, this game is not as good as GTA, especially the amazing experience that is San Andreas. However, this game is still very good and will hold over GTA fans until IV comes out later this year. If you enjoy playing GTA, chances are you will enjoy this game, especially where this franchise made some significant improvements. If you didn't like GTA games and are offended with overt violence, strong language, and direct sexual references, then steer away from this game. Here are the pros, cons, and "washes" as they compare to GTA:

Pros:

Better graphics

Better sound effects of cars and weapons

Cars are cooler

Superior implementation of the map functionality.

Save system is improved, but I can not understand in today's day and age of gaming why RPG-action games like this don't have a "save-at-any-time" functionality or at least provide reasonable interim mission save points which this game did not.

Ability to save up to 70 cars in your garage

Insurance Fraud missions are arguably the most enjoyable missions ever envisioned for a sandbox game.

Some other missions that were direct rip-offs from GTA are arguably more fun like the pimp missions, hijacking, and hit-man.

Cons:

There is no mistaking that overall feeling of an awesome atmosphere you get in any GTA game that just wasn't present in this title. I can't put my finger on it, but you will see what I mean if you get to experience this game vs. any GTA game.

Story was a little better in San Andreas

No planes, boats, motorcycles, helicopters, or bicycles.

Voice acting is superior in GTA San Andreas. With that said, there was just way too much cursing. Cursing in any game or movie is good for adult entertainment when it is appropriate for the setting. This title just went way over the top on the cursing and was mostly out of place.

Music selection is superior in San Andreas in both amount and quality.

Washes neither better or worse than GTA:

Open world sandbox environment enabling diverse ways to execute missions

Driving mechanics of the cars

Despite popular opinion, weapons functionality, though different, have about the same difficulty/ease factor.

Map size and mission amount/scope is more epic in San Andreas, but this title is probably a little bigger that GTA III and possibly Vice City. Not too shabby.

Honest reviews on Saints Row (Platinum Hits)

This game is basically like the Grand Theft Auto series, but in HD and with more options. I am a huge fan of the Grand Theft Auto series, so this game is right up my alley. I would highly recommend this game to anyone that has similar tastes in video games.

Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for Saints Row (Platinum Hits)

Welcome to Stillwater, a modern American city full of great food, commerce, and unrestricted gang warfare. With the 3rd Street Saints, Vice Kings and the Carnales waging a city wide turf war for supremacy, there has never been a better time to visit.

The game opens up with your customized character getting caught in the crossfire of a gang war. You are saved by Julius, the leader of the 3rd Street Saints, and are recruited into his gang in an effort to clean up the streets. The first couple of missions serve as a sort of introductory sequence that teaches you the mission structure of the game and introduces you to some core characters. The game has three different story arcs, one for each rival gang, for you to tackle in whatever order you would like.

After each story mission you must build your respect before you will be offered the next one. There are numerous ways to build your respect, but the easiest way to do it is to take on various side missions located throughout the city. These missions range from drug trafficking to street racing. The activities get harder as you complete them, maxing out at level 8 and awarding you a prize such as unlimited shotgun ammo at your crib or taking less damage in car crashes.

Almost all of activities are pretty fun, but the two most enjoyable are probably mayhem and insurance fraud. In mayhem, you are tasked with going to a certain area of the city and causing as much damage as you can within a certain amount of time. You are always given a few weapons with unlimited ammo and bonuses for destroying certain targets. Destroying everything in sight with a rocket launcher on mayhem's level 8 is one of the most enjoyable moments of the game. In insurance fraud, you attempt to throw yourself in front of traffic to collect money from lawsuits. You earn bonuses based on things like air time, hitting police cars, and the number of witnesses.

Besides those side missions, there are a few other ways of gaining respect. Robbing any store you want will give you a small amount of respect. Tagging over other gang's graffiti will also net you some respect. To help you speed up the time it takes to earn respect, you can spend your money on clothes, jewelry, and tattoos for your character. These items give you respect bonuses when you complete missions. Overall, the side mission system works pretty well. It creates a good pacing for the game, preventing you from blowing through the missions in just a few hours.

Besides allowing you to unlock new missions, as you gain more respect you will be able to recruit more "homies" (up to three at one time). "Homies" are friendly gang members which will help protect you by shooting out of car windows while you drive and following you around on foot. They do a pretty good job of helping you kill whoever is attacking you and hardly ever get stuck on objects such as trees. When they die, you have thirty seconds to revive them before they are permanently dead. At first this sounds like it would make the game too easy, but the "homies" are not overly effective, and don't take too much to kill. If you had to go find new ones every time one of them died, it would become pretty frustrating. So having 30 seconds to revive those that died turns out to be pretty convenient.

When you are not building up respect, you will literally be taking back the city block by block. Completing a story mission in a certain area of the city will put that area under the control of your gang. Controlling areas of the city actually has some impact on the gameplay. You will see friendly gang members patrolling the streets, providing you a safe area to run to if you are being chased by police or enemy gang members. Controlling different districts also gives you money every day that you can get from your safe back at your crib. The more territory you control, the faster you gain money. You also get new save points as well. The game allows you to save whenever you want, placing you at the closest save point from where you saved when you reload the game. So controlling more save points is definitely nice. Sometimes rival gangs will attack territory that you control, at which point you need to stop whatever you are doing and rush there to help push back the attack. If you wait too long, you risk losing your territory. This is a nice touch, and makes you feel like you are just one small part of a larger turf war.

The story missions themselves are pretty well designed and not overly difficult or annoying. There were many missions in Grand Theft Auto 3 and Grand Theft Auto San Andreas that I personally found extremely annoying and simply not fun to play. While the missions in Saints Row are challenging, I didn't run across any annoying missions like those in the GTA games. I always felt like I was making progress. The cinematic sequences for each of the missions are pretty well directed. The voice acting is great as well. The storyline turns out to be memorable and one of the highlights of the game.

While playing the game, it's safe to say that you will be doing a lot of driving and shooting. The game features tons of cars, all with rock solid control. While none of them are real licensed cars, they all look different from each other and handle differently as well.

There is a pretty good selection of weapons in the game as well. Most of what you would expect to see is here, including pistols, machine guns, rifles, rocket launchers, grenades and more are present. The shooting controls are vastly improved over those of Grand Theft Auto, allowing you to control the player like you would in a first person shooter. You won't find any lock on targeting here. This goes a long way in making the firefights much more intense and fun then those in GTA.

The game features other big enhancements over Grand Theft Auto, the most important of which is the map system. At any point during the game you can bring up the map to set waypoints and locate new activities and missions. You can sort the map by stores, activities, missions, strongholds, and cribs to make finding locations very easy. The on screen minimap will show you the most efficient route to your waypoint or next objective, which makes navigating around the city a breeze. This is especially helpful during fast car chases.

Another small but significant improvement is the ability to shoot enemies in cars through the windshield. So instead of having to fill the car full of lead to get it to stop, you can instead take out the driver with one well placed shot to the head. This is extremely useful while in car chases. Since you can drive and shoot at the same time, it's not that difficult to shoot the driver of the car chasing you through his windshield.

Besides those gamplay enhancements, Saints Row is also packing some amazing visuals. The entire city of Stillwater is rendered in glorious high definition. Everything in the world is extremely detailed. The game also features pretty good looking lighting and real time weather effects. The cars in the game look excellent, especially the way they crumple on impact. When cars explode, they send pieces of metal and tires flying everywhere. The frame rate is mostly pretty solid, though it can take a dive at times when there is a ton going on. However, this never hindered my enjoyment of the game.

The biggest criticism that you could have against the game is its lack of originality. In my opinion, there is nothing inherently wrong with a game copying another, especially when it manages to improve on its inspiration. The fact that Saints Row sticks pretty close to the Grand Theft Auto formula means that inherits many of the good qualities of the GTA series, making Saints Row a pretty good game in the process. Since it does manage improve upon GTA in many aspects, it's worth while for fans of the GTA series to play it. It's probably fair to say that if you liked Grand Theft Auto then you will enjoy Saints Row. If you found some aspects of GTA annoying, as I did, then it may turn out that you like Saints Row even more. In my opinion, Saints Row is the best game of its kind to be released. When GTA 4 comes out later on it may vary well topple Saints Row, but until then, Saints Row is the king of free roaming action games.

Cheap NFL® 2011 Super Bowl Green Bay Packers Vinyl Skin for 1 Microsoft

Customer Ratings:
List Price: $19.99
Sale Price: $11.24
Today's Bonus: 44% Off

A simple decal for an xbox controller. Yep, this is it! I can't really say much more about it. It took a little longer than I'd have expected to get here, but that can be due to lots of things.

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There was a slight pucker upon application, otherwise it looks sweet and holds up well on regular use. Would recommend!

Best Deals for NFL® 2011 Super Bowl Green Bay Packers Vinyl Skin for 1 Microsoft

Who needs to pay an extra 60 dollars for specialized controller when i can do it myself bwahaha they weren't even that hard to put on just be patient

Honest reviews on NFL® 2011 Super Bowl Green Bay Packers Vinyl Skin for 1 Microsoft

I ordered these as a gift and believed them to be something you put over the controller to "protect" it and your hands wouldn't sweat and stick to the plastic controller. I was disappointed to find, what I purchased was nothing more than a sticker. $30 for 2 stickers. Really? How much money are you making off this product, Skinit?

Dark Summit Review

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List Price: $19.79
Sale Price: $9.95
Today's Bonus: 50% Off

Dark Summit really has little to offer since it is a cross between a platformer and a sports game it typiclaly lacks at both. Befor purchasing this game know that SSX tricky has better graphics, sound and gameplay as well as THPS 3 for that matter and genre. This game really seems like somthing that could have been released on the PS One a couple years ago and been great but for todays generation of games it really lacks a physics system feel and overall level of fun. Not Recommended, possible rental.

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This game is horrible. There is no real object to the game. The missions are no fun and they are pointless. THis was supposed to be a snowboarding game, right? It's basically running from the cops while on a snowboard. 2 stars.

Turtle Beach Audio Advantage Amigo II USB Sound Card & Headset Reviews

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List Price: $24.95
Sale Price: $24.73
Today's Bonus: 1% Off

May 2010 Update:

Just an update to say the sound card is still working fine. I've moved over to Fedora Linux now and this beast installed without a hitch (no restart required of course, unlike Windows!). All in all happy with the Turtle Beach amigo. If I had to do it all over again I'd probably go with the Micro II since that seems to be offered in the real black color I was looking for (don't need the mic input that badly), but this is still a good product!

INTRODUCTION:

My 1 year old Star Tech USB Sound Card (Model # ICUSBAUDIO) decided to break literally two days before Turtle Beach released their updated Amigo and Micro cards. The reason it broke was a phsyical design that I wasn't happy about with nearly all USB sound card adapters, including Turtle Beach's previous Micro iteration.

I can't explain it well, but they have the metal connector fused right into the card. My Star Tech literally had the metal connector eventually come apart. Just really cheap, but for the price you can't complain.

So, rather than ordering another cheap USB sound card that will probably give out in another few months I put in a pre-order for this Amigo II refresh that was slated to be out March 16 2010.

MINUSES:

First, let me get the bad out of the way and list why I don't think it's deserving of a perfect 5 stars.

This comes in a clam shell type packaging so it's an inconvenience to have to go find some scissors just to get it out.

The color of the adapter is not a dark gray/light black as the stock picture might lead you to believe. It is actually a very light to medium gray color. Kind of disappointing to me because I wanted it to match the black laptop it was being used with.

There is this really annoying blue indicator light that just keeps flashing on and off every second (unfortunately, it's on the side where you will have it be facing up in clear view to you).

It still makes that little pop sound when you put it in your computer like the older USB sound cards, but not as annoying.

POSITIVES:

New design should have this last for years. This comes as a little cable attached to the card. Now the USB metal connector part is no longer "fused" into the card itself, rather there is a short little cable that is attached to it, making a distinct separation between card and connector. This should make the product last a long time (I hope). I have never had a USB cable go out on me, and this looks like that, so it should be ok. Of course, I have only just got the Amigo II today so I can't say for sure if this will be the case...

When driving the volume up, it's not like the other USB sound cards you might have used where it's really, really loud even at the lower volume settings (I think I had my old Star Tech only at one or two volume bars out of like 20!). It looks to me like Turtle Beach toned it down where you really can up your computer sound a bit more bars/notches and not have to worry about it being too loud. Even at the loudest possible setting on my laptop, I find plausible to listen to (just like using my native sound card built into my laptop -but definitely louder of course!).

Sound quality wise, it's pretty good to me. I wouldn't say it's a noticeable improvement to my old sound card. I'm not much of an audiophile, but I know there's products that sell for way more than this that will probably give you better sound quality if you are really willing to pay for it. I honestly don't notice much background static noise even on the highest volume, so I think this is reasonably good. My old sound card had a lot of static noise at those type of volume levels...

I haven't used the microphone input. Most people will most likely get the Amigo II over the Micro II because the Micro does not have a mic input. If you need the Digital Audio Out feature though, you should get the Micro. Since I am going to be using headphones with this only and not connect it to another sound system, there was no real advantage to get the Micro for me personally, as I assume both products would give you the same analog sound quality.

Also, this is just plug in, let your OS do its thing, and play. Although I did have to restart Windows 7 after it installed the drivers (automatically). But no software or additional processes taking memory away needed to make this work.

CONCLUSION:

Overall I recommend this because I think it will last a longer time than the other conventional sound cards. I will try to remember to update this review in case this sound card ever breaks down in the near future. If it breaks within a year, you should be covered because Turtle Beach has a 1 year warranty.

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I was primarily wanting to have a 2nd output device for my headphones, so I didn't constantly have to fiddle with cords to answer calls when switching from my desktop speakers. I wanted my 3.5mm Razer headset to just work independently, and this accomplishes that very well.

Unfortunately, the mic input port is absolutely useless. It plays the input back directly to the audio out port (headset speakers)! This isn't utilizing the Windows option, either. It happens directly in the hardware, making it impossible to disable.

This makes that feature of the product absolutely useless. I don't need to hear myself, I do that just fine already.

I ended up plugging the mic directly into the computer, since it doesn't need to be isolated.

It's astonishing to me how stupid of an engineering decision there must have been to decide to play back input through the output. It makes absolutely no sense, and this is NOT what most people want.

Best Deals for Turtle Beach Audio Advantage Amigo II USB Sound Card & Headset

Others have reviewed this product (thank you!). From the many USB sound devices available at Amazon, I chose this one because it requires no software drivers, because the soundcard is not rigidly attached to the USB, and because of the of the reviews here at Amazon.

No software required. Using with linux is easy. Plug it in and Ubuntu identifies it. In Preferences / Sound, tell it which audio hardware to use. That's it. It is just as easy to use with Fedora and Sabayon Linux. I have not checked it with other versions of linux yet. It can't do 5.1 audio without the 'Windows-only' driver. If Turtle did not mention 5.1 audio, then I would not feel disapointed that I can't get 5.1 on linux. The bad reviews I have seen for this product are from users of the optional 5.1 drivers. I have decided to be happy without 5.1 audio.

The short bit of cable between the USB plug and the soundcard allows it to plug in any USB without blocking adjacent USP connectors. This also adds some flex so that accidental bumps and tugs do not damage the connectors. This has the benefits of a USB extension cable without the extra cost and extra clutter.

I got this product to replace a broken headphone jack on a laptop. It works very well for that. Sound is louder and clearer, a big improvement over the original audio. Also, the audio jack on this product has a very firm grip on the headphone plug so there is no 'loose conector' audio noise.

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Having an older generation Macbook Pro running Windows XP, I find that I've got a good sound card that works in both OS's and delivers good quality sound and microphone. The crop of Macbook Pros that mine are a part of don't have mic in ports (only line in), so I've been bouncing back and forth between a usb headset and AKG k-44's for video editing (I'm a film major). It was supremely annoying to have to switch the audio drivers every time and also annoying to know I was packing two headsets for no good reason. Enter the Amigo II, which works with both os's no questions asked.

The mic comes through nice and loud, and the audio is good (no discernable pops or humming, clicking or other artifacts). I'm no audiophile, but I need decent audio to do film editing, and I don't think I'll have any problems with this.

The only reason I didn't give this a five is because I've had it for all of four hours and there's no driver, which means no equalizer. Not a big deal, but a little annoying. Also, with the mic plugged in, it always transmits into the headphones. This can get a bit annoying, but isn't a big problem.

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Good product, meets my expectations. Have been using it for a month

now without any problems. The sound is clear without any interference

or noise, thus really good.

Midway Arcade Treasures 2 - Xbox Reviews

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This collection of Midway arcade games includes a lot of classics that haven't seen the light of day for over a decade.

Midway's website lists the following games as appearing on the collection:

A. P. B.™

Arch Rivals™

Championship Sprint™

Cyberball 2072™

Gauntlet® II

Hard Drivin'®

Kozmik Krooz'r™

Mortal Kombat® II

Mortal Kombat® 3

NARC®

Pit Fighter™

Primal Rage®

Rampage World Tour®

Spy Hunter® II

Timber™

Total Carnage™

Wacko™

Wizard of Wor™

Xenophobe®

Xybots™

I was a little disappointed not to see the original spy hunter, or the original mortal kombat. I was also disappointed that Joust is missing from the lineup. The collection remains pretty outstanding I haven't played NARC since back in the day. So if you're old enough to be playing for nostalgia's sake, this looks to be a pretty good buy.

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THE SHORT: The ridiculously cheap price is worth spending on some of these games on their own, let alone in a double digit package. But while most of the games run great, there are some slight issues here and there that make some of these games not quite arcade-perfect.

THE LONG: I love Mortal Kombat II. Adore it. I always have, and though the SNES version was great in 1994, no console has ever had an accurate version of it. That's why this was an exciting releaseit promised arcade accurate versions of this game as well as a bunch of other good ones. And if you're just thinking about getting this now, then you didn't have to go through the debacle of having the original Mortal Kombat removed from the package and thrown onto the more cost-prohibitive MK: Deception.

So I checked out message boards and waited for the game, and once it came out and I chatted with others, I noticed a disturbing trend: no one console had a release of this collection that was entirely flawless. The PS2 supposedly had trouble with, I believe, Hard Drivin', and the Gamecube had sound problems or something. The Xbox version was supposed to be flawed in some way too, but I honestly can't remember what that was supposed to have been. All I know is that I was a devoted MKII fan to notice some fanboyish inaccuracies. I won't go into them all here, and while there aren't a lot they are noticeable: stuff like flickering shadows when a character jumps, and screams that go on past death when a character lands in the Pit, etc.

But for every thing the programmers somehow messed up, there are ten it gets right. MKII, as with all others on the disc except for the somewhat muffled MK3, has sound so crisp I'd forgotten how much better it was than past console offerings. The graphics are sharp and the colors bold, and the animation is fluid and correct to how I recall it. Nothing is left out, not even something that a great deal of players never knew about MKII: The computer fights more lazily and gets worked into patterns more easily when using controller 2. This strange, small trick, as well as others such as Shang Tsung's Sub Zero freeze/ fatality skin glitch, were emulated perfectly.

But that's the thingthere are still disappointments despite these best intentions. In making the game, someone neglected to re-map the start button. In MKII, pressing start was part of two tricksselecting a random fighter and accessing hidden character Smoke, but since pressing start in this collection brings up the main pause menu, start is rendered obsolete in-game so apparently these details are inaccessible. That's probably the biggest mistake, and while it doesn't make the package suck, it'd definitely worth mentioning.

Otherwise, the collection is pretty fine. Most of these games are well suited to the Xbox or PS2 controller's simple layout (The GC controller is absurd for the fighting games) and more importantly, the rest of the games seem about the same as I remember them in the arcade. Like with me and MKII, it would take a devoted veteran to notice any changed details that aren't egregious. More so than the original Midway Treasures, this disc has some great titles90's classics such as Narc, Primal Rage, Total Carnage, and of course MKII and 3 are on a disc that by this point costs less than twenty bucks. At that price, imperfections and all, it's hard to pass up on such a modern collection of proven greats.

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Warning, this is does *NOT* work on the Xbox 360!

I saw a recent nostalgia article on several of the games, and picked up this collection expecting to play it in emulation mode on my 360, and it does work. Now to drag the xbox out of the closet...

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Enjoyed old memories as well as creating new ones with my son. CyberBall rocks!

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Midway Arcade Treasures 2 is a sweet collection of old school arcade hit titles. The collection of arcade hits are at a very low, low cost and worth a buy for those missing games of yesterday. May people are grippin' over the loss of Mortal Kombat 1 (who cares, its packed with MKD Kollectors Edition). There are other sweet games included in this package like MK2 (my favorite 2D fighter to Street Fighter 2), MK 3, Pit Fighter and Rampage World Tour. I hope in the next collection Midway adds MK3 Ultimate and MK4, so gamers can complete the Mortal Kombat collection on there xbox's. So, get toasted and play this game at parties, happy gamin...

Cheap Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day!

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List Price: $19.99
Sale Price: $18.89
Today's Bonus: 6% Off

I'm not entirely sure whether I can call a game like Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day a video game. Its graphics are hardly groundbreaking, its audios are almost monotonous, and its core gameplay involves reading aloud, counting syllables and solving mathematical problems. Surely, that's not what video gaming is all about, is it? Well, not if you hail from the Nintendo school of gaming, no. As mundane as Brain Age sounds, it's actually strangely addictive, and once you begin your journey of improving your brain age, you'll find yourself deeply immersed in the various activities aimed at giving your brain a daily workout.

The primary objective of Brain Age is to "exercise your brain". This is done through doing activities that are designed to stimulate your prefrontal cortex, which is the part of your brain that influences how you apply what you've learnt (whatever). It's believed that doing these activities on a regular basis will have a positive effect on your brain. Whether or not this holds any truth, I'm not sure. But with 15 activities to choose from, at least the game can keep you occupied for quite a while, even though some of these activities are less desirable to do than others.

Some of these activities include a calculation game, which puts you through a series of simple mathematical problems. 2+6, anyone? Or 8x7, for that matter? Well, you get the picture. The idea is basically to get the brain to start thinking quickly with a succession of simple questions, instead of forcing the player to spend too much time dwelling on one. There're different variations of this calculation module, but the underlying gameplay doesn't divert from the idea of rapidly solving a problem.

Reading aloud is another activity in Brain Age. Obviously, this makes use of the DS' mic, and it basically requires you to read through an article as quickly as possible. While you may have problems pronouncing words like "epoch", you can actually breeze through this activity by simply bulldozing through without pronouncing the words properly. Just remember to wipe the saliva off your DS screens. Syllables counting is another mini-game on Brain Age. This one requires you to count the number of syllables in a short sentence, and then write the answer down on the touch screen. If you're not exactly sure about what is a "syllable", just remember that the word "syllable" itself has three syllables, and you should be fine.

Of course, there're more to just calculation, reading aloud, or counting syllables in Brain Age, but as you can see, the activities in the game are not exactly the "saving the world from an evil force" kind. Yet, the game's appeal comes in the form of its simplicity. At times, when playing this game, I feel like I'm doing one of those online IQ tests, and the eagerness to score well is impetus enough for me to keep going despite the dryness of the questions. This basically sums up the charm of Brain Age.

To spice things up a little, Brain Age also included a substantial amount of Sudoku puzzles. Now, if you can believe my wife, Sudoku is the best thing on Earth since sliced bread. The popularity of this grid-based puzzle game is immense, and it's not surprising to see it being included in the game. As with the usual Sudoku books, the Sudoku puzzles in Brain Age are sorted according to difficulty. The easy ones are, well, pretty easy to solve, while the advanced ones require more logical thinking. Anyhow, Brain Age contains more than 100 Sudoku puzzles, which should keep fans of Sudoku occupied for quite some time. Having Sudoku as one of the 15 activities in Brain Age basically provides additional value for an already value-for-money budget game.

And, to top it up, Brain Age also has a multiplayer mode, which allows you to host up to an amazing 15 players with one cartridge. Unfortunately, the only playable activity in this mode is the calculation module, which lets you take on others in 30 mathematics questions. This gets old really quickly. It'd be fun if you can challenge your friends to a game of Sudoku (duh!), really.

Brain Age also requires a unique way of playing. You play it with the DS being held vertically, much like reading a book, with the touch screen on the right. The concept is to recreate the scenario of solving puzzles in a puzzle book, and to a certain extent, this blends in very nicely with the objective of the game. And, true to the game's out-of-the-box nature, Brain Age is played entirely with the DS' features. That is, via the touch screen and the mic. These make the game more "book-like" than the usual DS games. The game also caters to left-handers. If you're a leftie like me, simply tell the game so, and you can turn the DS "the other way round" so that the touch screen switches to the left. This is a nice touch, or the game may just lose a lot of potential buyers!

The problem with how the game plays, however, lies in the sensitivity of the touch screen and the mic. Somehow, it seems to have problem registering my pronunciation of "black", and doesn't really recognize my "8" on the touch screen properly. As a result, I've an initial brain age of 76 (!) because of unnecessary errors. It appears that players will need to adapt to how the game receives input to do well in their own results. This is not exactly a big issue, but it could be frustrating when you're trying to beat a certain timing, only to be let down by your poor handwriting or diction.

In conclusion, Brain Age is a very different sort of game, even by the DS' selection of quirky titles. It may not boast the usual features that sell a video game, but in their place, we've something that is simple, unassuming, and ultimately very addictive. Moreover, the game is supposed to improve the functionality of your brain, so what's there to lose? Brain Age is highly recommended.

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Thinking. Analyzing. Solving Problems. Reading. Logic. These are just some of the skills that Brain Age will help you develop (or re-develop).

No, it's not Resident Evil or Splinter Cell. But it is as fun and addictive; it's certainly as challenging if not more challenging, and it's a nice pallet cleanser from the plethora of pure entertainment value games that my kids and I play.

Brain Age is a bit advanced at times for my grade schoolers, but the parts that they do get really help them develop the skills that they are concurrently working on in school. Big Brain Academy is a much easier (not better) alternative for younger children.

There's a daily training area that gives your skills a workout. And there's a test area that challenges you to quickly and accurately work through various tasks, then provides you with a calculation of your Brain Age based on how well you did on the test. Sudoku has it's own area to train the brain on number logic.

Kids reading this will NO vote me to death for saying this, but this is a great game for parents to get for their kids. It's one of the only ones (Big Brain Academy is the other) that I never take away from my own kids when they've misbehaved or simply just had too much video gaming. They never complain.

One word of advice: Brain Age has a hard time recognizing an "8" if you write it the way you'd skate a figure 8; it likes it better when you draw an 8 as two circles on top of each other.

Addictive fun. Buy it.

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From the moment you begin playing Brain Age you'll realise that it's unlike any other experience. It's probably the only game ever made that begins with a doctor addressing you a prominent Japanese neuroscientist to be exact. He asks a few quick questions to get the ball rolling as he scopes out your "brain age". It's kind of unnerving actually. After displaying a couple of brain scans in various states of activity (or inactivity), the doctor explains that your brain is like any muscle and will shrivel without exercise. Old brains are bad, young brains are good.

Once you pass the opening formalities the doctor runs you through a more rigourous series of tests (math problems, memorization drills, concentration sets...). The good doctor then assigns you your first daily brain age rank. If it's good (low) he'll congratulate you and encourage you to keep working hard. If it's bad (high) he'll chide you and issue a warning about the dangers of aging brains. As the game progresses he'll ask you random questions which contribute to your overall profile. This is where the genius of this game truly shines. Anyone could assemble a collection of mini math games and assorted brain teasers. Nintendo however has wrapped this all up in a diagnostic package. It feels like the game is studying you. Each day you log in the goal is clear and the feedback perfect. The interface is quick and simple, the touch screen works remarkably well and the voice recognition is a nice touch too.

I must lower my brain age!

Honest reviews on Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day!

I purchased a Nintendo DS specifically for this game and was not disappointed. I'm 65 and on a good day can get my "brain age" into the 30s. I gave the game and a DS to an 80 year-old friend, and she can get into the 40s. We both struggle with the test that calls for memorizing from a list of words.

After learning to play Sudoku in Brain Age, I switched to playing it on my Palm Pilot (game from Astraware) which lets me enter the game from the daily newspaper. I've recently lent my DS to a 6th grader who is learning Sudoku. (By the way, avoid the DS game called "Sudoku". It's unnecessarily clunky for entering data.)

This is an appropriate game for seniors who like math/logic challenges even if they've never used a computer. Plan to spend some time tutoring a newbie, and then watch as he or she enjoys the challenge.

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There isn't so much when it really comes to mental games for consoles or handhelds, unless it is something you'd see in the newspapers like the typical crossword puzzle, or the recently popular numbers game sudoku. They all have been so well-rendered to keep your mind in tip top shape. As for Nintendo, they have also made their mark with the way we play video games on the home market, and the handhelds with the Game Boy rendiditons, and the Nintendo DS nearly over a year ago. Well, Nintendo has put that mental challenge to the extremes for the DS in more ways than one.

Brain Age for the Nintendo DS, is a compilation of all different kinds of games and puzzles that test your ability to read, and apply yourself mentally. The game consists of certain evaluations that reflect on how you remember words, simple math problems, and how fast you can also read. The game also includes sudoku on it, and it tells you how you are with the game, and what you need to do better. The stylus is really used quite well, and much better than most of the other games that rely on it. There also are challenges that test you verbally as well, like the stroop exam where you have to read the color of the text of a word, instead of the word itself. There is one big disadvantage, you have to say the words clearly through the stroop exam, because there are times where you may get the answer right, it might not be registered properly and your score may be affected.

Despite a few flaws on the microphone, Brain Age really is a great mental challenge for Nintendo DS. It is a must buy for the mind as well as the pockets. I love how stimulating the challenges are, and there is so much to go around. I just hope there are more of these mental games for other systems like this one soon, it is definitely something missing for the video game market.

Graphics: B+

Sound: A-

Price: A-

Microphone use: C+

Control: B 1/2+

Fun & Enjoyment: B

Overall: B 1/2+