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Works extremely well. Never have to worry about batteries again! Induction charge is nice, but you still need to place in the cradle ... So not a distinguishing feature. Still, gets the job done fast and simple.
Showing posts with label xbox one handed controller. Show all posts
Showing posts with label xbox one handed controller. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 4, 2015
Discount Rapid Charge Induction Station Black for Xbox 360
Works great, even after the length of time since I bought it! The batteries don't seem to work very long for over-extended playing (as in more than 3 hours) but switching between two controllers doesn't bother me too much. :D definitely saves on the AA battery costs though!
Sunday, December 28, 2014
Cheap Just Dance 2014 - Xbox One
List Price: $49.99
Sale Price: $49.00
Today's Bonus: 2% Off
This is way more fun than I figured it would be. I got my son Just Dance Kids for the Xbox 360 a year or two ago and he enjoys that, but he's seven now and since we got the new Xbox this is one of the games we decided to get. It is actually very nicely done.
I have been playing it a little on my own, but it is really fun to play with my son. You can play with up to six people at a time, which is amazing. The most we've done so far is three, and it works perfectly with that.
Wish there was a little better mix of music. Music categories I'd like to see included are: techno/house, folk rock, some 90s alt rock, and would absolutely love it if they released some songs from musicals.
It's pretty good exercise, too. I've worked up a sweat more than once, and there's a workout mode where you can just dance to whatever song you want for a set or infinite amount of time.
I definitely think it's worth a buy.
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My husband and I are both 30 and we are big kids. Since the new XBox One came out a couple days ago, we've spent at least an hour, more like two playing this each night. I love the songs on this Just Dance, especially...the "Get Lucky" song and dance. It's really really smooth and easy to get into, like a real dance...not as much of a stiff choreographed feel, so you get a lot of "I'm just dancing like I'm a boss" feel from it, haha. Also, it's got "Blurred Line" and one of my other favorites to dance to on this one was "Wake me up" which we had to pay an extra $2.99 for. Anyway, I love Just Dance games, this was is a fresh addition. My husband thinks that the Xbox is funky with sensing who is playing and keeping it straight. Sometimes it would switch me back and forth between 2 characters and mess my points up and he'd win...that's not good. Enjoy! ;)Best Deals for Just Dance 2014 - Xbox One
Just Dance is ok, but I prefer the Dance Central interface. I wish there was a new Dance Central out for the system, but there isn't yet. JD is good enough that I will play it though.Honest reviews on Just Dance 2014 - Xbox One
For the price.. I'd expect more songs. Also, I'm into techno and house music and it's all pop songs. The technology aspect is cool though as it recognizes your face and body and plays back the song. But, the playback is off as well and not that entertaining to watch.Tuesday, December 23, 2014
NFL® New England Patriots Vinyl Skin for Microsoft Xbox 360 Review
List Price: $34.99
Sale Price: $22.49
Today's Bonus: 36% Off
Absolutely love this Xbox skin! It was easy to put on (as long as you do a section at a time, keeping the backing on the part you're not working on). It fits perfectly and my son's friends keep asking him where he got the 'custom Patriots' Xbox! It really looks sharp.
Thursday, December 18, 2014
Buy Global Game Gear VGA Cable for Xbox 360 with stereo audio and 3.5
This cheap piece of garbage was not only an unwatchable ghosty mess, the audio component had an irritating static hum. Avoid this piece of trash at all costs. Complete waste of time.
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I already own the official Microsoft VGA cable, and when we added two more Xbox 360s to the family over Christmas I knew I needed an extra VGA cable to my son's room. I placed the order before Christmas, so that I would have everything I needed. I tried to save money by not buying the official Microsoft cable and that was a mistake. The images are blurry... and there is definite ghosting on all of the letters. Maybe the people who are satisfied with this cable got lucky, or maybe they don't know what they are missing. There is a night and day difference between this and the official cable.Best Deals for Global Game Gear VGA Cable for Xbox 360 with stereo audio and 3.5
I bought this because i wanted to hook up my 360 to my computer monitor. As soon as I started up my xbox after hooking it up i noticed horrible ghosting, that made everything look blurry and ugly. Just pay the higher price for the official microsoft vga cable this may be cheaper but you get what you pay for.Honest reviews on Global Game Gear VGA Cable for Xbox 360 with stereo audio and 3.5
Works great for the price not disapointed at all just ajusted the resolution on my xbox and it looked graetFind helpful customer reviews and review ratings for Global Game Gear VGA Cable for Xbox 360 with stereo audio and 3.5
Do not be discouraged by other reviews, this cable gets the job done quite well. Furthermore, the fact that it includes a 3.5 mm to RCA adaptor makes it a great choice for connecting using stereo speakers. For the price, this combo simply cannot be beat! While I have noticed minimal ghosting on occasion, it is hardly visible and goes away with game play or other activity.Saturday, December 13, 2014
Review of Guitar Hero (Bundle with Guitar)
I think I've hit one of the must-have games for any PS2 owner that enjoys rock music. You get a physical "guitar" controller with this game, and it's amazingly fun!
You hold the controller just like a real guitar, and it's switchable for left handed players. The neck of the guitar has 5 buttons on it that you play with your left hand. In the center of the guitar is a "strum" button that you hit to play the notes. There's even a metal bar to wiggle, to cause the notes to "bend" to give an extra crowd boost.
If you're not a big hard rock / metal fan, there's only a few songs to choose from. You get Ziggy Stardust, Crossroads, Killer Queen, Sharp Dressed Man, More than a Feeling and a few more. Those who like harder rock will be quite thrilled, though. There's Iron Man, I Wanna Be Sedated, Symphony of Destruction, You've Got Another Thing Comin' and much more.
There are four difficulty levels. You start with easy of course, where it's great fun to play along with your favorite songs and just have fun. When you crank up to the higher levels moving through various venues and unlocking different characters and guitars the keys get VERY difficult. Still, it's a blast hammering away at the notes, waving your guitar around in the air and having fun.
The sound is quite good, and you get a real boost from hearing the crowd cheer and yell for you. The visuals are reasonable but really, this isn't a game about visuals. You just watch for the buttons to press, and press them. It's really about the music.
Now, I do have to mention some complaints. The first is the song list. I wish they'd offered more of a wide selection of song types. I suppose that new games will come out soon with more song options, which I'll look forward to.
Next is the key layout. I really love the strum bar. But the buttons up on the neck of the guitar are AWFUL. They have 5 wide buttons all in a straight line. The buttons have to be pressed straight in to work well. Human fingers simply don't work that way. They should have put the buttons at an angle both angled a bit diagonally the way a hand holds a guitar neck, and also angled up-down so that your fingers press into them at an angle. As it is now, the buttons tend to stick and jam. When you fail at a really complex song because the keys have stuck, it's very frustrating.
That being said, you can usually get through an hour or two before your fingers really start to kill you. If you play with a group of friends, passing the guitar around between songs, that means an afternoon can go by before all of you end up with finger pain. I suppose it's a built in way to ensure that you don't play video games all day long :)
Pros:
Addictive gameplay. The customized guitar-shaped controller gives an added cute factor over other simulation games of this type.
Terrific graphics, backgrounds, and characters. Their in-game activities and details are very endearing.
Fortunately, they didn't forget the guitar-loving gals and included two female characters you can choose from. There's also a terrific Donnas song ("Take It Off") you can play along to, plus that perennial air-guitar classic, Joan Jett's "I Love Rock and Roll". They could've gone even farther with the gender balance -imagine trying to play something by Sleater-Kinney, with those twisty Carrie Brownstein guitar lines -but at least they tried.
Good songs with diversity. I hadn't expected to see "Godzilla" on here -Donald "Buck Dharma" Roeser is a grossly underrated guitarist, and playing this song might make you appreciate him much more. "Bark at the Moon" and "You Got Another Thing Comin'" are classic metal; "Texas Flood" and "Crossroads" represent the blues spectrum; "Higher Ground" supplies the funk; "Stellar" and "No One Knows" represent modern alternative rock. "Cowboys from Hell" is an apt tribute to the late, great Dimebag Darrell, and Megadeth's crushing "Symphony of Destruction" is my favourite song selection. The songs aren't their original versions (imagine the licensing fees), but they are great-sounding recreations of the recordings.
I had originally been skeptical about the SG guitar controller's ability to respond to lightning-fast notes, but it turns out to be quite sharp.
Rock-star dreams. Who wouldn't get a kick out of this?
Cons:
While there's a good diversity in the song choices, like Stevie Ray Vaughan ("Texas Flood"), Edgar Winter Group ("Frankenstein") and Queen ("Killer Queen"), at a certain point, it still ain't quite enough. Given the huge pantheon of rock/blues/jazz music out there, of course there'll be omissions, and licensing problems probably added to the limitations in song choices. No Led Zeppelin, no Nirvana or Pearl Jam, no Guns N' Roses, no AC/DC, no Allman Brothers Band, no Joe Satriani, no Van Halen, no Santana, no The Band, no Bruce Springsteen, no U2, no Neil Young and Crazy Horse, no Metallica, no Evanescence, no Aerosmith, no Living Colour, no Bon Jovi, no Dream Theater. And where are "Hotel California" and "Layla"? Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb"? Eric Johnson's "Cliffs of Dover"?
While some of the unlockable bonus songs are fun to play -Freezepop's "Get Ready 2 Rokk" is just fabulously weird, and Artillery's "The Breaking Wheel" is challenging, twisty fun -some of them are trite, and some are downright annoying, included only because a certain member of the band is on the Harmonix design team. The Acro-Brats, The Slip, Made in Mexico, Count Zero and Honest Bob and the Factory-to-Dealer Incentives are especially irritating -bad music, repetitive and overlong. And there's way too much skater punk-pop in general.
Having Gibson Guitars' endorsement means you get to play some genuine Gibson guitar designs. Hey, I play one myself and I love them. But not being able to use classic designs like the Stratocaster, the Ibanez R-type, the Telecaster, the Rickenbacker and the Jackson Rhoads is conspicuous, to say the least.
Remember to rest your hands...the SG controller has what we'd call a "baseball bat" neck, thicker than any electric guitar I can think of, and playing this thing can be even more tiring than playing a real guitar...this coming from a guy who plays acoustic 12-string.
There are already plenty of wishlists on the web for songs that haven't been included, and I can only hope there will be a Guitar Hero 2. Terrific fun.
And that's exactly what'll happen if you buy it.
One stipulation:
You better at least like rock music. And by Rock, I don't mean Sheryl Crowe, I mean Head-thrashing, Fingers-shredding, Bite-the-head-off-bats rock. Oh sure, there's the occasional genre buster, they've got a modest Queen piece, and Texas Flood, a slinging blues piece. But the meat of the playlist comes from bands with guitarists who have one-word nicknames. From punk to classic to metal to some of the bands on the radio today, the common denominator is that the songs rock.
Still, it's ridiculously addicting, like a Dance Dance Revolution for the hair-band crowd, and while there are a limited number of songs (around 30 once everything's unlocked), it's a testament to the quality of the game that even if there were 50 songs, you'd probably still want more. The difficulty is high enough that finishing the game on Expert level would leave you with enough skills to pick up an actual guitar and play some extremely easy tab. That's not to say it's a music-teaching tool, it's not by any stretch of the imagination, but it certainly wouldn't hurt your eye-hand coordination or your rhythmic sensibility.
The hardware itself is a miniature SG-style sturdy piece of plastic. There's even a whammy bar which, while it's not integrated into gameplay, is available for all your pitch bending needs.
Given the right environment, it's the kind of game that you could lose sleep over the first few nights you got it. It's good for either a party-environment, or rocking out yourself in career mode. Two thumbs, two index fingers and two pinkies up!
You hold the controller just like a real guitar, and it's switchable for left handed players. The neck of the guitar has 5 buttons on it that you play with your left hand. In the center of the guitar is a "strum" button that you hit to play the notes. There's even a metal bar to wiggle, to cause the notes to "bend" to give an extra crowd boost.
If you're not a big hard rock / metal fan, there's only a few songs to choose from. You get Ziggy Stardust, Crossroads, Killer Queen, Sharp Dressed Man, More than a Feeling and a few more. Those who like harder rock will be quite thrilled, though. There's Iron Man, I Wanna Be Sedated, Symphony of Destruction, You've Got Another Thing Comin' and much more.
There are four difficulty levels. You start with easy of course, where it's great fun to play along with your favorite songs and just have fun. When you crank up to the higher levels moving through various venues and unlocking different characters and guitars the keys get VERY difficult. Still, it's a blast hammering away at the notes, waving your guitar around in the air and having fun.
The sound is quite good, and you get a real boost from hearing the crowd cheer and yell for you. The visuals are reasonable but really, this isn't a game about visuals. You just watch for the buttons to press, and press them. It's really about the music.
Now, I do have to mention some complaints. The first is the song list. I wish they'd offered more of a wide selection of song types. I suppose that new games will come out soon with more song options, which I'll look forward to.
Next is the key layout. I really love the strum bar. But the buttons up on the neck of the guitar are AWFUL. They have 5 wide buttons all in a straight line. The buttons have to be pressed straight in to work well. Human fingers simply don't work that way. They should have put the buttons at an angle both angled a bit diagonally the way a hand holds a guitar neck, and also angled up-down so that your fingers press into them at an angle. As it is now, the buttons tend to stick and jam. When you fail at a really complex song because the keys have stuck, it's very frustrating.
That being said, you can usually get through an hour or two before your fingers really start to kill you. If you play with a group of friends, passing the guitar around between songs, that means an afternoon can go by before all of you end up with finger pain. I suppose it's a built in way to ensure that you don't play video games all day long :)
What the game does is play cover songs that sound astoundingly close to the originals, with the guitar parts broken down note-by-note, so that each note only sounds when you press the indicated button on the fretboard while "picking" with a two-way rocker switch on the guitar controller. If you miss a note, that note doesn't sound (or you get a slight "error" type noise), and the results are pretty funny. With a real guitar you can fudge your way through a smokin' heavy metal solo by playing random distorted notes as fast as you can. Only other guitarists will know the difference. But here, it becomes painfully obvious to everyone around when you blow a note--the guitar silence is deafening, the audience shows its disapproval with boos, and the animated character hangs his or her head in shame. But when you nail it, you are rewarded with praise from the audience, "Star Power", and the character even smashes the guitar or sets it on fire in celebration. This game is pure entertainment. Even the fonts for your name are "fun", and just wait until you see what happens when you enter your name into the high scores!
Oh, and don't forget to look closely at the financial statements after each show. Just like real life, the artist who does all the work gets the smallest piece of the pie, while the "businessmen" get 90% of the artists' earnings. The only thing missing is the RIAA suing your grandmother, your children, or your dog, for music piracy.
There is a Quick Play mode, which allows you to jump right in and play any unlocked song at any difficulty level. The Career mode is where you unlock most of the 30 well-known songs, and earn the money you'll need to unlock songs, guitars, characters, skins, and even special feature videos on how the game was made. I went straight to the Medium difficulty mode and could unlock all the songs quickly without struggling through the Expert difficulty first.
The Expert mode is very difficult because you already have your four fingers on the "frets", and then they add a fifth fret, so you must move your pinky or shift your entire hand over one fret. It's not easy! The guitar controller looks like a cheesy toy, but it's actually a solid product. Be sure to plug it in to your first controller slot before booting up your PS2 though--it wasn't exactly plug-n-play for me when the game was already running and I plugged it into the second controller slot.
The only way Guitar Hero could be better is if you could use a real guitar with real strings. Some day in the future I'm sure we'll be able to use a MIDI guitar to do just that. Until then, Guitar Hero has got to be one of the most entertaining video games ever made. You can play these songs over and over again without losing interest. Trust me, when you're alone, you'll be writhing and grimacing musically like a rock star when you play this game. Pete Townsend windmills and the Chuck Berry "duckwalk" are all possible while playing the guitar controller.
Songs run the gamut from Classic Rock (Jimi Hendrix, Cream) to your favorite 90's bands (Pantera, The Donnas), along with several unknown new bands. I was originally concerned about playing songs I never heard before. But those are fun in their own unique way precisely because you don't know how the song goes. Even songs I hated before (Joan Jett--"I Love Rock 'N Roll") are fun to play. I'm so glad they also included some unique songs like Frankenstein and Godzilla, and especially a great blues tune by Stevie Ray Vaughn (Texas Flood). One of my favorites to play is Ziggy Stardust. Best of all, there's NO METALLICA (I can't stomach even hearing Metallica ever since Lars started whining about impoverished consumers "stealing" music from multi-millionaire rock stars). Despite the lack of Van Halen, I was more bummed that Rush wasn't found here. But good news--Guitar Hero II will feature both Rush and Van Halen!
I've been a frustrated guitarist for 20 years. This game allows me to max out what little skill I do have on the controller, while hearing guitar work out the speaker that I could only dream of producing myself. That makes Guitar Hero a genuine treat for me. I think that's why it is so addictive--it really does make you feel as if YOU were producing those incredible riffs and solos.
Bravo to the developer (Harmonix), and the musicians who created the covers (Wavegroup) for putting so much thought into Guitar Hero! RedOctane is just the publisher, and I think it's a shame they get all the credit when Harmonix and Wavegroup did all the work!
The only conceivable thing missing is brands of guitars other than Gibson. Yet it doesn't really matter since tone and fret action aren't even an issue with a plastic guitar controller. Hopefully somebody is working on a wireless guitar controller, which would allow you to do even more crazy stunts while playing.
I'll end this review by repeating what others have already said: This game is so good, it's worth buying a PS2 system just to play Guitar Hero.
You hold the controller just like a real guitar, and it's switchable for left handed players. The neck of the guitar has 5 buttons on it that you play with your left hand. In the center of the guitar is a "strum" button that you hit to play the notes. There's even a metal bar to wiggle, to cause the notes to "bend" to give an extra crowd boost.
If you're not a big hard rock / metal fan, there's only a few songs to choose from. You get Ziggy Stardust, Crossroads, Killer Queen, Sharp Dressed Man, More than a Feeling and a few more. Those who like harder rock will be quite thrilled, though. There's Iron Man, I Wanna Be Sedated, Symphony of Destruction, You've Got Another Thing Comin' and much more.
There are four difficulty levels. You start with easy of course, where it's great fun to play along with your favorite songs and just have fun. When you crank up to the higher levels moving through various venues and unlocking different characters and guitars the keys get VERY difficult. Still, it's a blast hammering away at the notes, waving your guitar around in the air and having fun.
The sound is quite good, and you get a real boost from hearing the crowd cheer and yell for you. The visuals are reasonable but really, this isn't a game about visuals. You just watch for the buttons to press, and press them. It's really about the music.
Now, I do have to mention some complaints. The first is the song list. I wish they'd offered more of a wide selection of song types. I suppose that new games will come out soon with more song options, which I'll look forward to.
Next is the key layout. I really love the strum bar. But the buttons up on the neck of the guitar are AWFUL. They have 5 wide buttons all in a straight line. The buttons have to be pressed straight in to work well. Human fingers simply don't work that way. They should have put the buttons at an angle both angled a bit diagonally the way a hand holds a guitar neck, and also angled up-down so that your fingers press into them at an angle. As it is now, the buttons tend to stick and jam. When you fail at a really complex song because the keys have stuck, it's very frustrating.
That being said, you can usually get through an hour or two before your fingers really start to kill you. If you play with a group of friends, passing the guitar around between songs, that means an afternoon can go by before all of you end up with finger pain. I suppose it's a built in way to ensure that you don't play video games all day long :)
Click Here For Most Helpful Customer Reviews >>
Finally, a PS2 game that deserves five stars. Guitar Hero is one of those high-concept games with such a great premise that many people will buy it without having seen a single screen capture. And the cincher is, it fully lives up to its promise.Pros:
Addictive gameplay. The customized guitar-shaped controller gives an added cute factor over other simulation games of this type.
Terrific graphics, backgrounds, and characters. Their in-game activities and details are very endearing.
Fortunately, they didn't forget the guitar-loving gals and included two female characters you can choose from. There's also a terrific Donnas song ("Take It Off") you can play along to, plus that perennial air-guitar classic, Joan Jett's "I Love Rock and Roll". They could've gone even farther with the gender balance -imagine trying to play something by Sleater-Kinney, with those twisty Carrie Brownstein guitar lines -but at least they tried.
Good songs with diversity. I hadn't expected to see "Godzilla" on here -Donald "Buck Dharma" Roeser is a grossly underrated guitarist, and playing this song might make you appreciate him much more. "Bark at the Moon" and "You Got Another Thing Comin'" are classic metal; "Texas Flood" and "Crossroads" represent the blues spectrum; "Higher Ground" supplies the funk; "Stellar" and "No One Knows" represent modern alternative rock. "Cowboys from Hell" is an apt tribute to the late, great Dimebag Darrell, and Megadeth's crushing "Symphony of Destruction" is my favourite song selection. The songs aren't their original versions (imagine the licensing fees), but they are great-sounding recreations of the recordings.
I had originally been skeptical about the SG guitar controller's ability to respond to lightning-fast notes, but it turns out to be quite sharp.
Rock-star dreams. Who wouldn't get a kick out of this?
Cons:
While there's a good diversity in the song choices, like Stevie Ray Vaughan ("Texas Flood"), Edgar Winter Group ("Frankenstein") and Queen ("Killer Queen"), at a certain point, it still ain't quite enough. Given the huge pantheon of rock/blues/jazz music out there, of course there'll be omissions, and licensing problems probably added to the limitations in song choices. No Led Zeppelin, no Nirvana or Pearl Jam, no Guns N' Roses, no AC/DC, no Allman Brothers Band, no Joe Satriani, no Van Halen, no Santana, no The Band, no Bruce Springsteen, no U2, no Neil Young and Crazy Horse, no Metallica, no Evanescence, no Aerosmith, no Living Colour, no Bon Jovi, no Dream Theater. And where are "Hotel California" and "Layla"? Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb"? Eric Johnson's "Cliffs of Dover"?
While some of the unlockable bonus songs are fun to play -Freezepop's "Get Ready 2 Rokk" is just fabulously weird, and Artillery's "The Breaking Wheel" is challenging, twisty fun -some of them are trite, and some are downright annoying, included only because a certain member of the band is on the Harmonix design team. The Acro-Brats, The Slip, Made in Mexico, Count Zero and Honest Bob and the Factory-to-Dealer Incentives are especially irritating -bad music, repetitive and overlong. And there's way too much skater punk-pop in general.
Having Gibson Guitars' endorsement means you get to play some genuine Gibson guitar designs. Hey, I play one myself and I love them. But not being able to use classic designs like the Stratocaster, the Ibanez R-type, the Telecaster, the Rickenbacker and the Jackson Rhoads is conspicuous, to say the least.
Remember to rest your hands...the SG controller has what we'd call a "baseball bat" neck, thicker than any electric guitar I can think of, and playing this thing can be even more tiring than playing a real guitar...this coming from a guy who plays acoustic 12-string.
There are already plenty of wishlists on the web for songs that haven't been included, and I can only hope there will be a Guitar Hero 2. Terrific fun.
Best Deals for Guitar Hero (Bundle with Guitar)
You may have seen it in arcades, an undersized plastic "guitar" with 5 colorful buttons on its bridge, but balked at the $2.00 it costs to play the thing. Well for only $70.00 you can now get the game for your PS2 and play it over and over and over again.And that's exactly what'll happen if you buy it.
One stipulation:
You better at least like rock music. And by Rock, I don't mean Sheryl Crowe, I mean Head-thrashing, Fingers-shredding, Bite-the-head-off-bats rock. Oh sure, there's the occasional genre buster, they've got a modest Queen piece, and Texas Flood, a slinging blues piece. But the meat of the playlist comes from bands with guitarists who have one-word nicknames. From punk to classic to metal to some of the bands on the radio today, the common denominator is that the songs rock.
Still, it's ridiculously addicting, like a Dance Dance Revolution for the hair-band crowd, and while there are a limited number of songs (around 30 once everything's unlocked), it's a testament to the quality of the game that even if there were 50 songs, you'd probably still want more. The difficulty is high enough that finishing the game on Expert level would leave you with enough skills to pick up an actual guitar and play some extremely easy tab. That's not to say it's a music-teaching tool, it's not by any stretch of the imagination, but it certainly wouldn't hurt your eye-hand coordination or your rhythmic sensibility.
The hardware itself is a miniature SG-style sturdy piece of plastic. There's even a whammy bar which, while it's not integrated into gameplay, is available for all your pitch bending needs.
Given the right environment, it's the kind of game that you could lose sleep over the first few nights you got it. It's good for either a party-environment, or rocking out yourself in career mode. Two thumbs, two index fingers and two pinkies up!
Honest reviews on Guitar Hero (Bundle with Guitar)
I think I've hit one of the must-have games for any PS2 owner that enjoys rock music. You get a physical "guitar" controller with this game, and it's amazingly fun!You hold the controller just like a real guitar, and it's switchable for left handed players. The neck of the guitar has 5 buttons on it that you play with your left hand. In the center of the guitar is a "strum" button that you hit to play the notes. There's even a metal bar to wiggle, to cause the notes to "bend" to give an extra crowd boost.
If you're not a big hard rock / metal fan, there's only a few songs to choose from. You get Ziggy Stardust, Crossroads, Killer Queen, Sharp Dressed Man, More than a Feeling and a few more. Those who like harder rock will be quite thrilled, though. There's Iron Man, I Wanna Be Sedated, Symphony of Destruction, You've Got Another Thing Comin' and much more.
There are four difficulty levels. You start with easy of course, where it's great fun to play along with your favorite songs and just have fun. When you crank up to the higher levels moving through various venues and unlocking different characters and guitars the keys get VERY difficult. Still, it's a blast hammering away at the notes, waving your guitar around in the air and having fun.
The sound is quite good, and you get a real boost from hearing the crowd cheer and yell for you. The visuals are reasonable but really, this isn't a game about visuals. You just watch for the buttons to press, and press them. It's really about the music.
Now, I do have to mention some complaints. The first is the song list. I wish they'd offered more of a wide selection of song types. I suppose that new games will come out soon with more song options, which I'll look forward to.
Next is the key layout. I really love the strum bar. But the buttons up on the neck of the guitar are AWFUL. They have 5 wide buttons all in a straight line. The buttons have to be pressed straight in to work well. Human fingers simply don't work that way. They should have put the buttons at an angle both angled a bit diagonally the way a hand holds a guitar neck, and also angled up-down so that your fingers press into them at an angle. As it is now, the buttons tend to stick and jam. When you fail at a really complex song because the keys have stuck, it's very frustrating.
That being said, you can usually get through an hour or two before your fingers really start to kill you. If you play with a group of friends, passing the guitar around between songs, that means an afternoon can go by before all of you end up with finger pain. I suppose it's a built in way to ensure that you don't play video games all day long :)
Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for Guitar Hero (Bundle with Guitar)
Guitar Hero is that rare product that gets a five star rating from nearly every person who uses it, and with good reason. It succeeds on every level. It's an incredibly audacious game. Everything in it, it seems, is turned up to eleven.What the game does is play cover songs that sound astoundingly close to the originals, with the guitar parts broken down note-by-note, so that each note only sounds when you press the indicated button on the fretboard while "picking" with a two-way rocker switch on the guitar controller. If you miss a note, that note doesn't sound (or you get a slight "error" type noise), and the results are pretty funny. With a real guitar you can fudge your way through a smokin' heavy metal solo by playing random distorted notes as fast as you can. Only other guitarists will know the difference. But here, it becomes painfully obvious to everyone around when you blow a note--the guitar silence is deafening, the audience shows its disapproval with boos, and the animated character hangs his or her head in shame. But when you nail it, you are rewarded with praise from the audience, "Star Power", and the character even smashes the guitar or sets it on fire in celebration. This game is pure entertainment. Even the fonts for your name are "fun", and just wait until you see what happens when you enter your name into the high scores!
Oh, and don't forget to look closely at the financial statements after each show. Just like real life, the artist who does all the work gets the smallest piece of the pie, while the "businessmen" get 90% of the artists' earnings. The only thing missing is the RIAA suing your grandmother, your children, or your dog, for music piracy.
There is a Quick Play mode, which allows you to jump right in and play any unlocked song at any difficulty level. The Career mode is where you unlock most of the 30 well-known songs, and earn the money you'll need to unlock songs, guitars, characters, skins, and even special feature videos on how the game was made. I went straight to the Medium difficulty mode and could unlock all the songs quickly without struggling through the Expert difficulty first.
The Expert mode is very difficult because you already have your four fingers on the "frets", and then they add a fifth fret, so you must move your pinky or shift your entire hand over one fret. It's not easy! The guitar controller looks like a cheesy toy, but it's actually a solid product. Be sure to plug it in to your first controller slot before booting up your PS2 though--it wasn't exactly plug-n-play for me when the game was already running and I plugged it into the second controller slot.
The only way Guitar Hero could be better is if you could use a real guitar with real strings. Some day in the future I'm sure we'll be able to use a MIDI guitar to do just that. Until then, Guitar Hero has got to be one of the most entertaining video games ever made. You can play these songs over and over again without losing interest. Trust me, when you're alone, you'll be writhing and grimacing musically like a rock star when you play this game. Pete Townsend windmills and the Chuck Berry "duckwalk" are all possible while playing the guitar controller.
Songs run the gamut from Classic Rock (Jimi Hendrix, Cream) to your favorite 90's bands (Pantera, The Donnas), along with several unknown new bands. I was originally concerned about playing songs I never heard before. But those are fun in their own unique way precisely because you don't know how the song goes. Even songs I hated before (Joan Jett--"I Love Rock 'N Roll") are fun to play. I'm so glad they also included some unique songs like Frankenstein and Godzilla, and especially a great blues tune by Stevie Ray Vaughn (Texas Flood). One of my favorites to play is Ziggy Stardust. Best of all, there's NO METALLICA (I can't stomach even hearing Metallica ever since Lars started whining about impoverished consumers "stealing" music from multi-millionaire rock stars). Despite the lack of Van Halen, I was more bummed that Rush wasn't found here. But good news--Guitar Hero II will feature both Rush and Van Halen!
I've been a frustrated guitarist for 20 years. This game allows me to max out what little skill I do have on the controller, while hearing guitar work out the speaker that I could only dream of producing myself. That makes Guitar Hero a genuine treat for me. I think that's why it is so addictive--it really does make you feel as if YOU were producing those incredible riffs and solos.
Bravo to the developer (Harmonix), and the musicians who created the covers (Wavegroup) for putting so much thought into Guitar Hero! RedOctane is just the publisher, and I think it's a shame they get all the credit when Harmonix and Wavegroup did all the work!
The only conceivable thing missing is brands of guitars other than Gibson. Yet it doesn't really matter since tone and fret action aren't even an issue with a plastic guitar controller. Hopefully somebody is working on a wireless guitar controller, which would allow you to do even more crazy stunts while playing.
I'll end this review by repeating what others have already said: This game is so good, it's worth buying a PS2 system just to play Guitar Hero.
Monday, December 8, 2014
Reviews of Peter Jackson's King Kong - Xbox
List Price: $19.99
Sale Price: $13.58
Today's Bonus: 32% Off
I am playing this on my non-360 XBOX,and it looks gorgeous. I am anxious to see if all the hype about the 360 is true. I will have to wait because the prices are still too high for the initial offering.
However,360 or no 360,this game rocks. Yes the graphics are beautiful,and sometimes creepy;and yes,the soundtrack and ambient noises are perfect.But the game play is really sweet. No health-meters,no quick saves,no nothin' but you and the creatures who come after you,either loudly or very sneakily.And random ammo for a gun is not lying around all over the place,as in other games,so the only weapon you have is a spear. I finally learned to ration my bullets and my spears.(And you can't carry more than one gun and one spear at a time.) It's kind of creepy to be out of weaponry/ammo when you are facing a hungry creature or two. I just hate those sneaky, giant, nasty centipedes.I have gotten killed so many times by them,I'm embarrassed.
You play as a human,Jack,and once in a while you play as Kong himself,albeit too briefly. I love the frenzy-factor with Kong.
I'm sure for you young hard-core gamers,this game will be fairly easy,but for my middle-aged thumbs and hands,the pace is frenetic enough,thank you.Easy or not, a lot of thought went into the creation of this game,and since Peter Jackson was very much involved, I expected a class game,and I got one.
If you are not an experienced gamer(shooter), be patient.You may die a few times until you figure out just how to get from A to B without getting slaughtered by a T-Rex or two, but figuring it out for yourself is half the fun,as it is with any action/role-playing game,in my opinion.
Finally,I just heard on the news a couple of days ago that over-50 gamers are purchasing games at a steadily rising pace. I'm 57, a female and very much into FPS and RPG's. I consider this game to be among the best of the genre.I'm only half-way through and I am having a lot of fun. I'm addicted already,of course.
Read all of the available reviews of this game and others at the web's most popular game review sites before you get this or any other game. This is a lot of money,but I think the fun-quotient makes up for it.
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Much of the community is undoubtedly prejudice to adaptations, whether that be game to movie, or in this case, movie to game. Although many would argue that most film to game adaptations are cash-ins with little to offer, King Kong, Michel Ancel's latest epic, is neither of these. Michel Ancel is well known for Rayman aswell as Beyond Good & Evil, so it comes as no shock that King Kong delivers. But nothing could have prepared me for this experience......Director Carl Denham takes an American crew to uncharted territory called "Skull Island", a place crawling with dangers. The island is inhabited by all sorts of giant creatures and even savage inhabitants. Skull Island is where the crew docks and must explore in order to escape. Denham, Ann Darrow, Hayes, and Jack Driscoll, all play a large part in the movie and game. The story itself is quite good, it maintains interest and keeps you going to see the ending resolve. King Kong really blurs the lines between film and game, with countless cinematic moments that make you feel like you are there. Overall, Kong's premise is simple enough, but entails a tale of love, heartache, danger, and adventure. And it all comes together very nicely.
While the game is called King Kong, you will only use Kong for around 25% of the game. The bulk of the experience involves you and anywhere from one to three friends, these include Ann, Jimmy, Hayes, and Carl Denham. The opening scene has you sitting in a boat with a few men, one of whom being Carl Denham, Jack Black's character. After a short exchange of words, you row off onto Skull Island, where many nasty creatures and treacherous environments await. Throughout the game you will be making use of sniper rifles, pistols, machine guns, spears, and even bones from leftover dinosaur skeletons. Yes, there are dinosuars. A kind we had assumed completely extinct, exist in abundance on Skull island. Among those, you will face Venatosaurus, and V-Rex. Not to mention those ugly giant bat-like creatures, who will swarm you and take down your health quickly. There is no health bar, ammo counter, or anything else on-screen. This is in order to create a truly cinematic gameplay experience. You truly feel like you are there, struggling to find your friends and get off of this nightmare of an island. Without a health bar, you are left with only the examination of Jack's movement. This functions very simply: If he's okay, he will walk normally. But if he is seriously hurt, he will limp along. Without an ammo counter, you have only have Jack's dialogue(voiced by Adrian Brodey) to know where you're at. For example, if you need to reload, he will tell himself. And if you want to asess your remaining ammunition, just press the B button and Jack will tell you. Ammunition exists in perfect balance throughout Skull Island. The gunplay is surprisingly well done, aswell. And while there are only four weapons(Sniper Rifle, Pistol, Shotgun, Machine Gun), all provide a satisfying combat experience.
But by far, the spears are the best weapons in the game. With a spear, you have a number of options. You can pierce enemies by throwing your spear at them, Poke/repel them, light them on fire and burn obstructing bushes with them, use them to light a friend's spear, and finally, use them to spear small larva with the objective of clearing a path covered by deadly spiders. This attracts them to the speared creature, which you have to throw near them so they'll take the bait. Before I figured out how to do that, I wasted my Shotgun and Machine Gun ammo trying to kill them. So watch out for that.
The gameplay is reasonably varied. You will shoot, spear, raft, run for your life, puzzle solve, and play as Kong. There is one section where you are fighting off the savages residing on Skull Island while escaping on a raft. This section requires you to light spears and throw them at the bushes on the hills, resulting in the destruction of the bridges they were throwing flaming spears from. This was a highlight. But even better was the short lived, but exhilarating cliff jump, where you and Ann must dive off of a cliff and into the river below. I was thinking, "are you crazy?!", but had no choice but to wing it. So I did! And once I hit the water, I went straight to the bottom and bobbed back up. You had to be there, it was something. The level design is excellent. Of course, it all looks the same and there really isn't any variation in locale outside of architecture, fittingly. But you'll always feel like you're on the edge of your seat at all times, because you really are! Whether you're fighting off Venatosaurous or crossing dangerous water or creaky planks, it's always a constant adrenaline rush.
Another definite highlight was the V-Rex encounter, where you are tasked with the difficult feat of distracting the dinosaur while Ann opens a large wooden door. You will rely on spears to get his attention away from Ann, and then to protect yourself, you'll have to hide behind stone structures, which you'll eventually run out of, as he knocks them down. No amount of shooting will help, V-Rex is completely invincible, only Kong can hurt them. Moments like this are nothing short of humbling, the sheer size of these things makes you feel like your in Jurassic Park. The way they shake the ground when they chase you, your blood is pumping, you're tempted to look back, but know that his mouth could be right there waiting for you. The sheer immersion of it all is just something only experienced in a select few action games.
The Kong sections have received mixed critical results within the community. But personally, I thought Kong controlled wonderfully. You just need to get a handle on how he interacts with his environment, aswell as working simple combos, which are essential to winning a fight. In order to kill your enemies, you will need to wear them down, and grab them with the B button, rapidly pressing B until Kong kills them. B is also used when pushing obstructions out of the way to clear a path. We've seen this done more recently in videogames, and while this proves fun, it is very strenuous to the hands. I found the combat relatively enjoyable, but the travel element is much more rewarding. Kong climbs and swings along, avoiding lava, and usually attempting to prevent the death of Ann. Kong can actually travel with Kong, you can pick her up and put her down with the B button. She will then defend herself with her environment, which brings me to the AI. The artificial intelligence in King Kong is astounding compared to most games of this type. 90% of the game is essentially an escort mission, but while this usually proves annoying, in Kong, your allies will defend themselves, hide when needed, and path find extremely well. I was actually surprised at how good it was. Which is a breath of fresh air. Overall, the gameplay in King Kong is certainly more than I bargained for, I was surprised at how enjoyable and varied it was.
Going into King Kong, I didn't quite know what to expect. I had seen some of the Kong sections in brief video form, but nothing had prepared me for just how rich and beautiful this game is. Considering the technical limitations of the Playstation 2, Ubi Soft covered up this fact with amazing art direction. Clearly the textures aren't normal mapped, and polygon counts aren't staggeringly high, but it didn't matter all that much because the art direction is so rich. For the most part King Kong looks fairly realistic, but the characters have a sort of animated way about them, sort of like Timesplitters, but a little more realistic. The texture detail on the character models isn't immense, but they animate so well that you have no choice but to be convinced. Every environment has something interesting to look at. After rowing ashore, I stood on high ground, looking out into the expanse, and the water is so beautiful, I couldn't believe it. Now Kong's water doesn't have any of the fancy technological prowess seen in games like Half Life 2 and Oblivion, but it makes up for this in style. The way the water actually moves is a lot more animated, less realistic. And it sort of plays to the Playstation 2's strengths, and I don't know, I think it's a better game because of it. Standing on a creaky rotting plank, looking out into the Island's expanse is extremely immersive, you really feel like you are on this Island, this nightmare of an Island, and that there may be no way out. There is always another obstacle, another trial, and all of this takes place in an extremely immersive and believable world.
The gun models are very well crafted, with the appropriate amount of polygonal and textural detail. The same goes for the spears, who can be lit aflame, resulting in a great fire effect prevalent throughout Skull Island. The effects are appropriately well done, considering the fact that there are many throughout the game. In one situation, burning bushes illuminate the darkness while you dodge flaming spears in an attempt to escape harm's way. It creates such a strong sense of environmental believability.
The dinosaur models are reasonably detailed, although up-close they are a tad behind the times. But then again, when facing a V-Rex you are either turned in the other direction, or at a reasonable distance. The sheer size of the V-Rex is quite impressive(about Kong's height), so considering this, the details are quite sufficient and realistic. The other dinosaurs look average for the most part, but in all honesty you will be too busy spearing them and running after your next goal to look at a few low resolution textures. I think that the msot visually amazing part of Kong was when Jack(your character) is crossing a patch of water, and these giant long necked dinosaurs begin to stomp their way through. I swear I sat there for ten minutes marveling at their beauty(texture detail is exceptional), they dwarfed both Kong and the V-Rex. And actually dodging their giant feat was a humbling experience. This is yet another example of the game's constant surprises.
The Kong model itself is modeled with exceptional detail, when zoomed out, Kong looks absolutely breathtaking, and you can truly appreciate his mass. Zooming inwards shows his flaws, however. The fur shading isn't the strongest you've ever seen, up-close it isn't very impressive. However, most of the time you will be zoomed out behind Kong, and this is where he is truly convincing. The animation is superb in King Kong, I couldn't believe how amazing it was. I would even go as far as to call it near flawless. Ubi Soft clearly spent an exhaustive amount of time on this aspect of the visuals, and it scores big points for that fact. You can even move Kong's head in different directions, up, down, left, right. When he jumps, swings, punches, grabs, it's all pulled off in a very realistic fashion. The only real complaint I have with Kong himself is that he sort of opens and closes his mouth rapidly. He never calms down in that sense. But that's really just a superficial complaint.
Another intelligent use of hardware is the draw distance. It is actually very short, but there is a lot of fog on Skull Island, and when it isn't foggy, it's dark. This clearly allowed for more environmental detail, and truly makes sense. The only real complaint I have with King Kong's visual facet is that, while playing Kong in some sections, the framerate is atrocious. I was actually surprised. But just as surprising is how it hardly affected gameplay, since all I was doing was climbing and swinging around without having to actually fight any enemies. In the end, Kong manages to strike a balance between console technology and smart art direction, and ultimately this pays off.
I couldn't possibly convey Kong's sound quality in text form, you just have to hear it. There is literally a detailed and realistic sound for everything! For instance, when you've been limping around for a long period of time, and finally slow down, Jack will actually huff and puff and sort of try and catch his breath. And it sounds so realistic, I'm telling you this game has some of the best voice acting ever seen! Done by the original cast aswell. Many times, events are triggered by NPC alert. For example, maybe after a brutal up close and personal battle with an enemy, Ann might say, "oh my God", or something similar. She acts so genuine, not as if she's reading off of a script, but actually as if she is really there! Jack Black really takes it though. Not only is he utterly hilarious, he's just animated in general. I mean when you're fighting off giant bugs, he's off somewhere with his camera shooting footage and saying things like "this island is amazing!", his mind is totally fixed on this film. Actually one of the funny parts was when we were wading through some deep water, and I happened to ask him if he was okay, and he's like "NO, my camera's getting wet!". I mean we're in such an intense situation, and all he can think about is this film, and redeeming his reputation regardless of who he puts in danger.
I almost want to call King Kong a survival horror, partly because when you hear a blood curdling sqawk or scream, you're on the edge of your seat, and sometimes even feel paralyzed in fear. Because you want to run, but you can't think straight. Next thing you know these horribly ugly giant bat-like creatures are attacking you, or there are savages screaming and throwing flaming spears at you. Sound truly does play a large part in videogames. I don't know about you, but over the last few years I've really come to appreciate good sound in my games. King Kong delivers in spades. The sound effects are top notch, the music is excellent, and the voice acting is superb. Speaking of the music, in fact. When you are badly wounded, the game will actually go into slow motion and the screen will beat red, and this dramatic violin will play over everything. Sometimes you think you're dead, but you're not, you are still being chased by a V-Rex who just hit you in the back with his head.
In the end, King Kong isn't terribly long, nor is it particularly short. Instead, it strikes a balance between the two and stays fresh for the time it lasts. It has absolutely everything going for it. Superb sound, visuals, story, and gameplay. King Kong proves that movie based videogames can be good when you put the appropriate amount of time and talent into the project. Peter Jackson and Michel Ancel really care about their craft, and I couldn't be more pleased with the way this game turned out. Ladies and gentlemen, this is a videogame. This is an example of how far we've come in every way.
Best Deals for Peter Jackson's King Kong - Xbox
Wow what a beautiful game. I am very impressed by the graphics on this one. But what about the gameplay. It is very unique. Most of the game you are a human running around in first person shooter mode. This is pretty cool. Sometimes you will have to look around in the environment to find things to use. An example would be finding a spearlike object to hurl at a t-rex. THis sounds like it would be tough, but it really isn't. While you cock the spear with one hand, your other hand points to where you will throw the spear. THis brings up a very unique aspect of the game. There is no health meter, no reticle for shooting, no ammo readout. NO nothing. You are IN the game just as a real person would be. This helps with the immersion in the game. But what about the Kong Levels? They are way fun and way short. they are probably only about %25 of the game. They are fun though. A little clumsy on the controls, but fun. All in all this is a good game. Not great, but pretty good. (...) Whatever the case, you will be pretty happy with your purchase.Honest reviews on Peter Jackson's King Kong - Xbox
King Kong! A thought of a Giant Gorilla, a Ship with explorers..King Kong plays as you set the ship abound for the island. You have machine guns, but you also use branches and hiding. King Kong has a replay value because, you play as the explorers and sometimes as King Kong Lot's to do in the game.
The moves are plenty cool and fun to pull off. finding where to go can be the best challenge. Visualy awesom as you are King Kong fighting a Tranasourus and then breaking it's jaw and you can pick up cars and flip them. Trees with moss, Skyscraper Buildings and people that bring you in to the time of 1933.
Sound is so mached up. This is one movie game thats worth your time. If you liked Predator Concrete Jungle XBOX game like I do, than King Kong is right up your alley.
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My 10 year old really wanted a XBox 360 for Christmas to replace his old XBox. We have a Wii so instead I suggested we buy some more titles for the Xbox. I purchased this one in the group and my kids love this game. They played it all day when they opened it. They were yelling and screaming the whole time cause the graphics were just that good. They were 13, 10 and 7.Thursday, October 23, 2014
Buy Cabela's Big Game Hunter 2010 with Gun Bundle
Just purchased my first WII at the new reduced price. Wanted a new shooter that came with it's own gun peripheral. The Top Shot Wii sawed off shotgun peripheral worked well once I got the right configuration selected from the options. The game controls are very intuitive and the first few levels of the game that I have played through have proven enjoyable enough without being too difficult. The continue is a great help whenever you come to an untimely demise and being pretty much of a pacifist, I find the action fairly comfortably paced. Someone who is pickier about constant action, high intensity and challenge from a first person shooter, probably would find this a bit of a yawner, but as a recreational hunting simulation it definitely satisfies. Of course there is the familiar problem with occasional invisible walls, but from what I've seen in video reviews of other hunting games, it is fairly minimal. The multiplayer is reminiscent of Deer Drive with a lot larger variety of animals. I have had gamers between the age of 10 to 74 play this game and it appeals to all age groups.
I really like the big orange shotgun and think it works well. Gives you more of a "Big Buck Hunter" arcade game feel. Controls are fairly intuitive. The trigger is actually up on the barrel, and the scope button is where the trigger should be, which took a second to figure out, but actually works well. I unlocked a bunch of guns while playing in the Mission mode, but I have no idea how to use them or where to find them.
This is the frist hunting game I've bought for my wii, so I can't really compare it to any others. However, I like it and my guy friends like to stop by and shoot stuff with me. Good fun and $40 is reasonable, although its not a long or complicated game.
same deal here. the xbox demo looks pretty but no light gun. Wii version looks muddy graphic-wise but shooting with the shotgun that comes with the game is a serious blast.
plus the Wii has 13 shooting galleries, in addition to the career mode, were you try to blow away as many animals as possible in a time limit.
As far as any other issues in the game i would only mention that navigating in the main career mode can be a little tricky,
i kept on running into cliff walls, trees, and looking up at the sky, you gotta swing the shotgun every time you want to look around.
all in all, i'm giving this game 3 stars just because the graphics look so horrible compared to the other next gen versions. gameplay is great.
I picked up the Top Shot bundle on sale for $, wouldn't really pay more than that for it.
The controls are great, make sure you get the Top Shot gun, it's a very good peripheral. The default settings are moronic as the trigger is up by the barrel but the Top Shot control setting puts the trigger in the back by the grip where it belongs. I recommend switching to Top Shot control immediately and then playing the first career mission as it will walk you through the controls.
You are awarded points for examining sign you're asked to press 'C' to examine sign and it's worth it to poke the button for the points. You also get points for shooting animals from cover; there are always 2-5 cover areas with different point values, you get 10, 20, 30, & 50% multipliers for finding and using these covers you get the most points if you stalk through all of them and then shoot from the 50% marker. It's actually a lot of fun because you have to sneak around the animals avoiding noisy brush and ducking their line of sight.
Once you put your sights on an animal, the vitals light up, also some info about the critter. The second you put the crosshairs on it, the points start going down so it pays to shoot quickly. You get points for a lung shot but you get more for a spine or heart shot. It's fun to make head shots but they feed you this crap about "wrecking the trophy" so you don't get many points.
Bullet cam is fun but if you'd rather watch them crumple up in the scope you can turn the feature off. I like bullet cam myself.
You will pass the hunt if you kill the animal but if you rack up some points you will be awarded a bronze, silver, or gold medal. In order to unlock new hunting areas, you need more experience points which are most easily earned by getting medals or better medals on the hunts.
It's a short game but the hunts are fun to revisit and shoot for gold. Also, the Shooting Gallery cannot be beat, it's extremely fun! The animals just keep on coming, kill as many as you can extremely fun. The dangerous game sections are hard because the Bears/Cougars/Leopards charge you 1 at a time, then in pairs, and 3's until you're dead FUN!
From what I've read, this is the best hunting game you can get and other, earlier versions are disappointing. I eagerly await the next Cabela's/Activision release.
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Bought this game about two weeks ago, and I think it's alot of fun. It has 2 modes of play one where you go on "missions" seeking out certain animals, sneaking through cover and getting points and medals based on how well you shoot. The second mode of play is a shooting gallery, where the animals just run across the screen and you try to shoot as many of them as you can. Think of the Big Buck Hunter arcade game that they have in some bars. I enjoyed the missions, but I've pretty much already beat the game didn't take too long. The shooting gallery is fun if you have friends over and just want to shoot alot. The shooting gallery is multi-player, but you're not shooting at the same time you take turns and it compares the score.I really like the big orange shotgun and think it works well. Gives you more of a "Big Buck Hunter" arcade game feel. Controls are fairly intuitive. The trigger is actually up on the barrel, and the scope button is where the trigger should be, which took a second to figure out, but actually works well. I unlocked a bunch of guns while playing in the Mission mode, but I have no idea how to use them or where to find them.
This is the frist hunting game I've bought for my wii, so I can't really compare it to any others. However, I like it and my guy friends like to stop by and shoot stuff with me. Good fun and $40 is reasonable, although its not a long or complicated game.
Best Deals for Cabela's Big Game Hunter 2010 with Gun Bundle
Remember Tigerwoods 2010, the xbox and ps3 version looked amazing in the graphics dept., but the wii version was just so much more fun to play.same deal here. the xbox demo looks pretty but no light gun. Wii version looks muddy graphic-wise but shooting with the shotgun that comes with the game is a serious blast.
plus the Wii has 13 shooting galleries, in addition to the career mode, were you try to blow away as many animals as possible in a time limit.
As far as any other issues in the game i would only mention that navigating in the main career mode can be a little tricky,
i kept on running into cliff walls, trees, and looking up at the sky, you gotta swing the shotgun every time you want to look around.
all in all, i'm giving this game 3 stars just because the graphics look so horrible compared to the other next gen versions. gameplay is great.
I picked up the Top Shot bundle on sale for $, wouldn't really pay more than that for it.
Honest reviews on Cabela's Big Game Hunter 2010 with Gun Bundle
I'm 65 years old, and I love this game. I've stomped the hills for deer and elk a lot in my lifetime, and though I don't get out much anymore, this game is a great substitute. You can play it without being a hunter, but you won't score well. You can kill the animals without much hunting skill, but to get silver and gold medals, you have to be patient and hunt just like you do in the wild, with stalking skills and knowing when to take the shot. I like the fact that if you're unhappy with your score on a hunt, you can replay the hunt as many times you want to improve your score. The Top Shot gun works very well with the Wii remote and nunchuck; the Z button on the nunchuck serves as the trigger and is very realistic. I highly recommend this game if you're a hunter.Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for Cabela's Big Game Hunter 2010 with Gun Bundle
My dad and I played this game all day and we're one level short of beating it. Which is a real bummer because it's a blast. There are 12 missions, each mission is comprised of 6-7 hunts. 3-4 of the hunts are for big game, 2 for small game or fowl, and usually you must either hunt or are attacked by dangerous game.The controls are great, make sure you get the Top Shot gun, it's a very good peripheral. The default settings are moronic as the trigger is up by the barrel but the Top Shot control setting puts the trigger in the back by the grip where it belongs. I recommend switching to Top Shot control immediately and then playing the first career mission as it will walk you through the controls.
You are awarded points for examining sign you're asked to press 'C' to examine sign and it's worth it to poke the button for the points. You also get points for shooting animals from cover; there are always 2-5 cover areas with different point values, you get 10, 20, 30, & 50% multipliers for finding and using these covers you get the most points if you stalk through all of them and then shoot from the 50% marker. It's actually a lot of fun because you have to sneak around the animals avoiding noisy brush and ducking their line of sight.
Once you put your sights on an animal, the vitals light up, also some info about the critter. The second you put the crosshairs on it, the points start going down so it pays to shoot quickly. You get points for a lung shot but you get more for a spine or heart shot. It's fun to make head shots but they feed you this crap about "wrecking the trophy" so you don't get many points.
Bullet cam is fun but if you'd rather watch them crumple up in the scope you can turn the feature off. I like bullet cam myself.
You will pass the hunt if you kill the animal but if you rack up some points you will be awarded a bronze, silver, or gold medal. In order to unlock new hunting areas, you need more experience points which are most easily earned by getting medals or better medals on the hunts.
It's a short game but the hunts are fun to revisit and shoot for gold. Also, the Shooting Gallery cannot be beat, it's extremely fun! The animals just keep on coming, kill as many as you can extremely fun. The dangerous game sections are hard because the Bears/Cougars/Leopards charge you 1 at a time, then in pairs, and 3's until you're dead FUN!
From what I've read, this is the best hunting game you can get and other, earlier versions are disappointing. I eagerly await the next Cabela's/Activision release.
Sunday, October 19, 2014
Best Pelican Pelpl2026 Xbox 3-in-1 Starter Kit Deals
I bought a similar Pelican starter kit at circuit city for cheaper and so far it is great. The controller feels well built and is like the newer controller put out by Xbox. It is not to bulky it is just the right size. The case that mine came with feels kind of flimsy but it does not matter that much. I don't know why they would include an extension cable because the cable on the controller is already long enough.I also don't understand why on my controller they put two sets of black and white buttons. One set in the regular place and the other up by the left and right triggers. If you want to get this a little cheaper I suggest going over to Circuit City.
Friday, October 17, 2014
Discount Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 - Playstation 3
List Price: $29.99
Sale Price: $16.99
Today's Bonus: 43% Off
This game currently holds the record for sales in a week and sales in one day for any video game. People like to say this is a bad game that only sells well because of advertisement and hype. If that were true it would not explain why people continue to play it or why they continue to pick this up year after year. Are all these COD fans just miserably playing online not having fun? The series maybe boring and unimpressive to many but it appeals to a demographic and it appeals to it well.
It's simple: if you've liked the previous CoD games then you'll like this one. If you were expecting something ground-breaking and new then this game is not for you. This game is like Madden. All you're going to get is new weapons, maps, some tweaks, and some new features. Whether or not this justifies the price tag is a different story. I'm purely basing my review on entertainment.
As a long-time fan of the series I'll start off with the bad. The singleplayer is as useless as ever with a non-sense story that you simply will not care about. It is repetitive and linear with overwhelming spawning enemy AI shooting from all directions serving as the only challenge. The only variation is some vehicle levels reused from previous Call of Duty entries. There are no tools at your disposable to change things up. It's the same shoot, cover, grenades mechanic in place since the first Call of Duty on PC. At least back then the firefights felt intense and you were part of an actual historical event. While Call of Duty 4's campaign was entertaining the following MW2 and MW3 don't add anything, the surprises and thrills are gone. SPOILER: when Jackson died in COD4 it was dramatic and unexpected. When this same trick is used in MW2 (twice) and MW3 it's just not as interesting.
**My major gripe is that there's no consistency of characters. Characters are constantly being introduced and killed off in every entry. Soap, Price, and Nikolai are about the only consistent thing about this series in terms of story. Even then they are just empty NPCs providing orders and guidance to the player. There's never any interaction or personality shown to make you care.
I'll move on to the reason why most people buy this game or any CoD game for that matter: the multiplayer. As usual thing are played out on medium-sized maps between 6-player teams. The most popular game modes are TDM and Domination. Multiplayer is fast, intense, and catered towards those with short attention spans like myself. You won't have to traverse much ground in order to find something to shoot at. Some prefer more variation, obviously Battlefield 3 being the main example. There's nothing wrong with that game but I prefer the down and dirty street fight. If you do too, you'll feel right at home.
The new "strike packages" are welcome giving players different options in terms of playing style and tactics. For instance, the support strike package does not rely on consecutive kills. It continually stacks and does not reset after dying. This allows players to be more aggressive while still supporting team members. Likewise the specialist strike package allows players to add perks to their original 3. After getting 8 kills they player will have all perks becoming a super soldier. Now they won't be able to call in any killstreaks but the advantage of additional perks is a great advantage in a gun vs. gun situation.
Maps were advertised as being more balanced. This is a matter of opinion but I'll have to agree. For the most part the maps have been designed to weaken camp areas. Most sniping/camp spots will have too many alternate routes to enter and flank. Other spots will just be awkwardly placed not giving the player enough view over heavy traffic areas. There are plenty of camping players but what do you expect in an FPS game.
Perks have been reorganized in a way that forces players to make some hard choices on how they set up their classes. Of course the specialist strike package remedies that but in general I've seen people go with the normal killstreaks. For instance, in previous games the player would use a perk to be invisible to radar. This perk would also double as protection against air support. They have now been separated into two different categories. The same goes for the popular 'sleight of hand' perk that allowed faster reloads as well as faster aiming. Now as two separate perks players will need to rely more on careful playing and good old reflexes.
Not such a big deal since it's identical to MW2 but the weapons are great. In Black Ops each category (assault, light machine gun, sub machine guns) had only a couple of weapons worth using. These weapons were so good there was no point in using anything else. MW3 has the reverse effect where everything works great, almost too great, where gun selection sometimes feels like it doesn't make a difference. It comes down to preference.
The downsides of multiplayer is the lack of dedicated servers which I've complained about since CoD switched over from PC. This causes you to rely on the host system. I'm not sure why but every now and then I'll be 'slower' than everyone else usually getting shot after getting behind cover or just a second before I actually spot an enemy. Sometimes I can tell this is working in my favor and I'll have an amazing time but I'd much rather everyone just be on the same level in terms of online latency.
This system prevents users from joining games. It'll just randomly throw you into any game that has a slot for you or your party. This results in throwing players into a lot of losing games. Why? With a lot of people getting frustrated and leaving a losing round it creates gaps on the losing team. Innocent players looking to join a game are suddenly thrown into a round with a 30 score gap that's about to end. The game counts this as a loss! You literally can join a game, do nothing, and still lose.
Another issue is the auto-balancing system. I don't play in a party so when I do well the next round assures that I get stuck with all of the less skilled players to make sure I lose so things stay 'fair.' I'm not using anything that puts me at an advantage over anyone else so I'm bothered that the game feels I need to be punished for playing well. To put things in perspective I have a 2.00 KDR for TDM but only a 1.20 win record. In theory that is about right since the autobalancing is doing it's job. 50 percent of the time you should be put on a good team and the other 50 the losing team. So maybe this is a good thing for some?
I've ranted on long enough but I will repeat what I said before. People do not like this game and never will. The people that do (there are obviously many) wilkl play it and enjoy it as always. The graphics are aging, the game is very similar to MW2, and if you had problems with the series before most of those problems are still there.
The game is FUN. That's all there is to it. If it's not for you that's fine. To be fair I think this is the last COD game for me. It's a solid final entry to the series but if they make another one and it's still the same I'm probably satisfied with this one.
I look at the progression of this series like this:
COD4 Introduced classes, perks, modern setting, and more arcade-like gameplay
MW2 Introduced "super power" type perks, pushed the game over the top in terms of arcade style, introduced killstreaks which would become a staple of the series, finalized the game to a console audience in terms of style, maps, and controls/weapons
Black Ops balanced the game, took a step back in terms of style, map design, weapons, and was actually a little too watered down from what MW2 was.
MW3 Balances between COD4 and MW2 very well, really no where for the series to go from here
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Let me just start by saying this is only a review of the online play after a few hours logged in. I will come back and update more as I log more hours online.Up front, was very disappointed in the presentation of the game. Graphics I thought came up very short. I actually think they took a step back in the before/between game presentation. Everything is very cold and nothing jumps out at you. I expected to be impressed before even getting into the game but I wasn't but then again it's not the gameplay so I can get passed that. The emblems and banners were different but looked cheesy compared to Black Ops. The maps were pretty cool but once again the graphics didn't impress. The cars looked cartoonish to me. But this may not be important to you as is it to me.
What is up with the voices of the players in multiplayer? Everyone sounds very tinny and I know it's not my headset because I have not experienced this in Black Ops or Battlefield. It's almost like they sacrificed voice quality for improved bandwidth for gameplay. I asked others I was playing with if they were experiencing the same thing and they said they were.
The online gameplay was laggy. I am going to give this a pass and attribute it to the first day of online play and likely a high traffic experience. It was really tough to play. For example, while playing Headquarters, I shot someone 5 times with a shotgun at close range only to have them kill me. Watching the replay from their vantage point right after, It showed me only getting off 2 shots cleanly while dying as a third shot was being fired. A 2 shot lag was a bit much. And don't say it's my connection as I have a high dedicated bandwidth connection. I will give this a pass for now since it was day 1.
One thing I did like a lot about Black Ops was that you could buy attachments and equipment early on which sort of evened the playing field a bit as opposed to having to rank up and earn the right to these things. Well it's back to the latter again.
Some of the new killstreaks are pretty cool. I especially like the attack drone (I think that's what it's called) which could be great for Headquarters games. But why do we have to unlock these for each different class we setup?? UGH!
Game invites took a step back as well. Remember in Black Ops how you could go to your friends list and just hit "select" to invite them? Well, no more! Not sure why they didn't adapt this into this release.
I used to be an Infinity Ward fan and always thought they put out a better product than Treyarch. I think the tables have turned. I am not alone on this either. Everyone I played with last night that was mic'd up agreed with me that Black Ops is a better online experience except for one person that liked this game better.
Who knows. I might feel differently the more I play it but as of right now, I may spend more time playing Battlefield 3 and Black Ops than MW3.
**Update**
I've given it another week and I have not changed my opinion of the game. I am not sure if I am the only one experiencing this issue but this game lags terribly. I did not have, and still do not have these issues on any other FPS game including all of the previous CoD releases or the Battlefield games. On almost every match, I am seeing the game freeze for a split second then jump forward. It doesn't happen in the beginning of games, only when the action picks up so I am left to believe that the game is coded in such a way that it's being overloaded with data at the host. I also believe this to be the case because in one game I was in, my game aborted and I got an "out of memory" error on my screen. What is that?? Never seen that happen before on any other game. I've seen less of this on the smaller tactical games where the number of players are kept to 6-8.
I still have not got into the campaign but think I will spend most of my time there since I cannot tolerate the multiplayer any longer. I did however play the Survivor mode and really liked that a lot. It actually might be the best part of this game.
I still stand by my rating.
**Update**
Ok so I played the game off and on for about a month and I got to be honest, my feelings have not changed. The lag issue is not as bad as it was the first week the game was out but there is still noticeable lag. Let's face it....when playing online there has to be some aspect of lag and I completely accept that but I don't know why it's so much worse in this game than it was in other CoD releases. For me, it seems for the most part, the online games start ok with the lag not being that bad in the opening seconds, but as each match progresses it starts to become more noticeable. I am not sure if this is a memory issue or not but it seems the more action that is taking place, the more I notice the lag issue. I have not been back online in a few weeks, which is a CoD record for me. I've actually been online enjoying the BF3 multiplayer much more but that's not for this review.
Because of my frustrations with the online multiplayer performance, I turned to the single player campaign. I had no issues with the performance of the game in this mode, nor did I expect to. The single player campaign was actually pretty easy even on Veteran difficulty. Now I am just going back and completing the trophies to close it out.
Overall....the feeling is still the same and my rating will stick. I don't think it's a bad game but I expected more, performance wise and also in terms of creativity. I don't think this game delivers but it's just my opinion. ;)
Best Deals for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 - Playstation 3
Pros:-Good campaign, but if you haven't played MW2&MW1 you'll be entirely lost
-Nice new multiplayer additions, such as bettys and scramblers
-Amazing new killstreaks like Strife Run and Overwatch
Cons:
-Not much originality. The multiplayer feels like a map pack for MW2
-The online maps all feel dull and similar. Hopefully the map-packs will bring some originality but we'll have to wait and see.
-Unsatisfying conclusion. Three games for... I'm not gonna spoil it.
Conclusion:
If you're a COD fan like me, this game seems old. The gameplay is fun, but if you're looking for something original try Battlefield 3. If you're new to COD, try Black Ops instead so you can understand the storyline. The Black Ops maps are also much more memorable.
Honest reviews on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 - Playstation 3
I have owned all the call of duty titles, and I feel that this one fell way short. The single player is entertaining as usual, but the multiplayer, which is why most people get the game is a step in the wrong direction. The multiplayer maps are very unimaginative, just a bunch of buildings with little creativity compared to other COD titles. Weapons are basically the same but with more options. The gameplay is the worst yet. I have a 35MBPs connection with a 35ms ping to the closest major city yet each game I play is laggy as heck and many games I get booted due to server connectivity. You would think that they would have servers all over to accomidate all the users across the US! I still think due to poor online gameplay and lack of map creativity this is near the bottom of COD titles.Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 - Playstation 3
Ok so Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 3 is finally out and I finally got a chance to play it and here are my thoughts of the game.Campaign
The Campaign picks up from where MW2 left off. If you plan on playing it on Veteran i will admit that its not stupidly annoying like MW2 which was a huge ragefest!!!!!! The campaign is solid and is worthy enough to be that of a sequel.
SPEC-OPs Survival
I've played the Zombie mode in W@W and Black Ops and i wasn't sold on it. Survival adds that element of fun for the ppl who did not like Zombie. After the 1st wave you'll unlock the Armory support, 2nd Wave Explosive and Armor Support, last but not least 3rd Wave Air support. I managed to get to Wave 31 all by myself until i blew myself up tryna cook a gernade when i saw a Juggernaut coming out of nowhere lol. Unlike Zombie how you can have 4 players, Survival only allows up to 2players which sum ppl might not be to happy about. If you haven't played this mode yet i will say it's definitely worth playing you'll be hooked for hours playing it.
SPEC-OPs Mission
Like MW2 Spec Ops after you get all 48 stars its not worth playing anymore. Hopefully this time around they'll come out with more mission when they come out with DLC.
Multiplayer
MW2 all over again.
Conclusion
Besides the Campaign and Survival the game failed to impress me. IW/Sledgehammer(mostly IW) attempted to make MW3 have that COD4 gameplay style but fell short horribly. The multiplayer maps are god awful and it still has that MW2 gameplay style. This game would of been better off as a $30 DLC to MW2 rather then a brand new $60 game. Rent it or wait for a lower price!
Saturday, October 11, 2014
Cheap Who Wants to Be A Millionaire - Xbox 360
List Price: $29.99
Sale Price: $12.89
Today's Bonus: 57% Off
Overall, Who Wants To Be a Millionaire 2012 Edition for Xbox is a pass. While the Kinect voice controls are good, and the graphics are spiffy and match the show the gameplay and audio need some serious work:
Controls:
The Kinect controls are unnecessary but work well. Saying the answers worked great for me, and confirming my Final Answer via voice was fun.
Graphics:
It's the new 2010 set rendered in full glory. Initially, the camera starts out with a pan just like the show, but then just stays fixed on your avatar the whole game.
Gameplay:
Clearly the developers haven't seen the actual show, because this plays more like the Facebook game than the actual show. The dollar values are incorrect on the questions, and the lifelines are not correct. Instead of having all three lifelines available when you start the game, you only get 2 "Jump the Question" lifelines in round one, then you get "Ask the Audience" in round two. It's such a no brainer that Millionaire allows all three lifelines from the start of the game, they must have copied this from the code for the Facebook game.
Audio:
The 'host' is bland and boring, and at this price they should have licensed Meredith to host the video game. The audio cues are all wrong, and commonly overlap creating a messy sounding game that has me reaching for the remote to turn it up and down.
Overall, as a person who loves the show, I can't recommend the game. It's clearly rushed, and no production value was put into it.
What's the point of a "Game Show" game, when I can't even play the same game I see on TV? Play the free Facebook game instead, it's more fun.
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Why is this kinect? I think everyone I know with this game asks this. The game has horrible detection it contastanly says i am not there. Also to get all the achievements you need a good 3 hours with another person. What good is that if you see player 1 answer first?Best Deals for Who Wants to Be A Millionaire - Xbox 360
This game is a prime example of when Kinect is poorly implemented, or at least the motion portion of the game. Tell me, what's the point of having standing in front of a TV selecting trivia answers with your hands? You know, besides it taking twice as long... Well as far as I can tell, there isn't a point.The game also lets you select answers via voice which is really all the game needs, but even this is destroyed. I figured I'd be able to sit on the couch and select answers with my voice, but the motion controls are CONSTANTLY getting in the way. 80% of the time I sit down it tells me to stand back up so the Kinect can recognize me (and there's no way to disable the motion controls and just use voice as far as I can tell). The other 20% of the time it lets me sit down and play with voice, the motion controls think my hands are erratically moving around and the game ends up selecting random answers. Oh, and if you're sitting and someone else happens to walk into frame (just beside you, not even in front of you), the game instantly gets confused and needs you to stand back up to identify yourself again. It's ridiculously frustrating for something that should be so simple.
Oh, and since it's a Kinect game it doesn't seem to allow you to select answers with your controller either, so you're either stuck with pointless motion controls or voice controls that are absolutely crippled by the motion controls. Oh and if you're playing two player, you can forget about using voice controls as that's not supported.
The game itself is alright, even though the format doesn't seem very true to the real game. The host that's never seen is fairly lifeless and your avatar doesn't do much. I paid $20 for the game and I truly feel I overpaid by about $15. This game is crippled by a poor control scheme, and that's an insane thing to say for as something as simple as a trivia game. Microsoft created a technological wonder with the Kinect and its sad to see games like this utilizing it in such a poor manner.
Honest reviews on Who Wants to Be A Millionaire - Xbox 360
It is not like the game on facebook or TV. Only used it once. Maybe I will use try it again. Can not see my family getting into it.Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for Who Wants to Be A Millionaire - Xbox 360
good price for game hate that its only kinect gave away to sister shipped fast was new okay for price and if you like kinectThursday, August 21, 2014
Buy Mad Catz Control Pad Pro for Xbox 360 (Colors May Vary)
I don't have many complaints when it comes to my XBox 360, but the standard controller was one of the few exceptions. The X, Y, A, and B buttons were way too stiff. The shoulder buttons weren't as good as they should have been, and at one point one of them fell off from being used too much, and worst of all, the D-Pad was beyond horrible.
Well no more. The D-Pad on this controller is much more reliable. Especially for games that requires you to use the D-Pad often. For example, I play Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 often, and before the other controller's D-Pad would make me do moves that I didn't want to. This one, however, doesn't give me that problem.
The one downside is the microphone interference. Whenever your using your microphone over live, other players your talking to may here static and such. It's not horrible static, but I'm told it's there. Just be warned that if you're the type of gamer who plays online with other people alot and want crystal clear communication with other players, this controller may not be for you. Otherwise, buy this controller.
It obviously worked right away for the xbox 360. For the computer, it was perfectly recognized as a MadCatz GamePad and worked with the XBOX 360 drivers for Windows and for Mac OS X. (Had to download both from different websites).
Controller wise, this thing is great. The triggers are much more concave than the original Microsoft controllers, which is how a trigger should feel. Also, the bumper buttons actually FEEL like buttons. They never really felt like anything other than a few clickers on the original controllers, but the MadCatz one makes them big and provides a satisfying click.
The D-Pad is also vastly superior to the original controllers. You can actually click the diagonal with ease. Of course, any D-Pad is probably better than the original 360 ones. But these are extremely good, it's definitely a big plus sign so you can hit the buttons.
My only complaint with it would be that the bumpers and the triggers are too far apart. I would of preferred if the distance were more close, similar to the original 360 controller. This isn't really much of a problem, except it made playing Castle Crashers slightly annoying since the triggers and the bumpers are both used and switched off quickly. However, it does allow the two buttons to be more defined and less prone to accidently hitting the wrong button.
I have not tried the headset input, so I can't comment on that.
Cheap Price
Standard Design
Reliable and Consistant Performance
Corded Controller (faster than wireless)
LONG Cord
Light
Do not Need Batteries
Cons:
Location of start and select keys are in non-standard locations
Right Trigger Squeaks after hundreds of hours of use
I've used this for a couple hundred hours at least, and it is very, very consistent. Unlike every other controller I've used, the thumbsticks don't eventually "get loose" and get that wiggly feeling that you hate.
I only play during weekends so I've had to plug and unplug this at least dozens of times and so far the USB connection is tight and firm, no sign of anything wearing down so far.
The only possible bad thing is that the right trigger squeaks when I press it now. It's very minute and soft, the only reason I heard it was because I was trying to wrap up a campaign at like 2 in the morning and the tv was on mute. I'm going to order another one of these as a backup in case the squeak turns into anything else, but again, this lasted way longer than any other one I've had.
Well no more. The D-Pad on this controller is much more reliable. Especially for games that requires you to use the D-Pad often. For example, I play Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 often, and before the other controller's D-Pad would make me do moves that I didn't want to. This one, however, doesn't give me that problem.
The one downside is the microphone interference. Whenever your using your microphone over live, other players your talking to may here static and such. It's not horrible static, but I'm told it's there. Just be warned that if you're the type of gamer who plays online with other people alot and want crystal clear communication with other players, this controller may not be for you. Otherwise, buy this controller.
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I was looking for a wired 360 controller for use with an xbox 360 as well as a Mac and Windows. The store ran out of original controllers (which cost $40) and only had these for $25. It was well worth it!It obviously worked right away for the xbox 360. For the computer, it was perfectly recognized as a MadCatz GamePad and worked with the XBOX 360 drivers for Windows and for Mac OS X. (Had to download both from different websites).
Controller wise, this thing is great. The triggers are much more concave than the original Microsoft controllers, which is how a trigger should feel. Also, the bumper buttons actually FEEL like buttons. They never really felt like anything other than a few clickers on the original controllers, but the MadCatz one makes them big and provides a satisfying click.
The D-Pad is also vastly superior to the original controllers. You can actually click the diagonal with ease. Of course, any D-Pad is probably better than the original 360 ones. But these are extremely good, it's definitely a big plus sign so you can hit the buttons.
My only complaint with it would be that the bumpers and the triggers are too far apart. I would of preferred if the distance were more close, similar to the original 360 controller. This isn't really much of a problem, except it made playing Castle Crashers slightly annoying since the triggers and the bumpers are both used and switched off quickly. However, it does allow the two buttons to be more defined and less prone to accidently hitting the wrong button.
I have not tried the headset input, so I can't comment on that.
Best Deals for Mad Catz Control Pad Pro for Xbox 360 (Colors May Vary)
Pro:Cheap Price
Standard Design
Reliable and Consistant Performance
Corded Controller (faster than wireless)
LONG Cord
Light
Do not Need Batteries
Cons:
Location of start and select keys are in non-standard locations
Right Trigger Squeaks after hundreds of hours of use
I've used this for a couple hundred hours at least, and it is very, very consistent. Unlike every other controller I've used, the thumbsticks don't eventually "get loose" and get that wiggly feeling that you hate.
I only play during weekends so I've had to plug and unplug this at least dozens of times and so far the USB connection is tight and firm, no sign of anything wearing down so far.
The only possible bad thing is that the right trigger squeaks when I press it now. It's very minute and soft, the only reason I heard it was because I was trying to wrap up a campaign at like 2 in the morning and the tv was on mute. I'm going to order another one of these as a backup in case the squeak turns into anything else, but again, this lasted way longer than any other one I've had.
Honest reviews on Mad Catz Control Pad Pro for Xbox 360 (Colors May Vary)
The controller is cheaply made but hey, that's why I bought it. Overall it isn't bad for the price but the button layout is a little poorly thought of. The start and back buttons were moved from where they are on a normal controller to next to the guide button. They are not the most used buttons, but it is still poor placement.Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for Mad Catz Control Pad Pro for Xbox 360 (Colors May Vary)
I tried it as a computer controller and amazingly enough it works just find, but you have to go to the manufacturer website to download the driver.Friday, July 25, 2014
Best Red Dead Redemption - Xbox 360 Deals
List Price: $19.99
Sale Price: $18.45
Today's Bonus: 8% Off
Please ignore the reviewer that stated (repeatedly) that "this game is just like GTA IV... If you hated that you will definitely hate this." That could not be further from the truth!!
Red Dead Redemption is Rockstar's newest sandbox game, and it is a very good change up on the already popular GTA series. Let me start off by saying I have always been a huge fan of GTA games... until GTA IV. Tried and tried to play it, just could not get into it. Everything about it was wrong for me, and I know a lot of others felt the same. Sure RDR is very similar to GTA IV, yet everything about it is so much better.
Graphics are amazing, game play is easy to pick up and hard to put down, shooting system is improved, horse riding is intuitive, and hunting is a blast, just to name a few. This is GTA on steroids. Don't get me wrong, the huge cities and fancy sports cars were a ton of fun, but this is so much better. Set in the early 20th century, Red Dead Redemption takes place in the ever changing Wild West. Dusty old towns, bustling saloons, and family ranches are presented with such accuracy and clarity, you'd think you are back in the old west yourself!
Red Dead Redemption's scale is beyond HUGE!! The Wild West has never looked so good. There's a fullness to the sunsets that's so breathtaking you almost forget about the task at hand. The characters play a role nearly as big as the landscape, if not more. The dialog is smooth and witty, and the hometown feel of McFarlanes ranch only adds to the beauty.
There are so many side missions and quests, it's tough to get bored. From helping a stranded women on the side of the road, to tracking and shooting trophy bucks, there is truly something for everyone. Don't feel like shooting or riding around on your horse? Play some cards! Drink a shot!
Your thinking what I'm thinking aren't you? GTA on horses. Yes, but as you play on through the game you will quickly realize it is so much more than that. It's a nice change up in the video game world, and quite a surprise in the western genre.
Now I know this was a very short, somewhat random review, but I hope it provided enough insight to help you decide on the purchase.
***********UPDATE**********
I have gotten a few comments about my review. Some feeling that I have not experienced all the game has to offer, and should wait until I'm further along and write a detailed review. My review was an attempt to give a quick firsthand look, and to knock dead a few misconceptions. I believe all first time buyers need an initial review to help them decide to buy it or not. The game experience should be left up to each individual.
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I'll admit, I had some reservations about Red Dead Redemption. The studio that released it (Rockstar) hadn't done too much to distinguish it from GTA with horses. Within the first 2 hours, however, I was blown away. The story starts with our hero John Marston attempting to track down his former gang leader Bill Williamson and bring him to justice. After a short cut scene, he's shot and left for dead. The game opens up after some dialogue and tutorials, leaving you to your devices in 1912's Texas and Mexico. The first thing you'll notice is the beautiful visuals. Everything has an incredible amount of detail and draw distance, and the character models animate wonderfully. Watching the sunset on horseback is a truly visceral video game experience, and won't soon be forgotten. Combat works in a very fun, gritty way. You have a large variety of period weapons to deal the bad guys (or good guys). Quests can appear by talking to certain NPCs essential to the story. They can also appear at random, forcing you to act quickly or watch an innocent die. What really surprised me was how well the minigames were made. Poker could be sold as a separate game in of itself, with AI "tells" and bluffing. Five-finger-fillet is pretty funny to watch if you make a blunder. Horseshoes and bar fights provide some enjoyable distractions. You can waltz over to a local movie theater and watch some very funny silent films that convey the mindset of the times. Red Dead Redemption has the most believable open world I've ever played, with every feature one would expect. The atmosphere is simply unmatched in terms of immersion and realism. I haven't even mentioned multiplayer yet. RDR supports up to 16 players over Xbox Live or PSN for full-on gunfights and skirmishes. Game types can range from free-for-alls to CTF-structured team based modes. There is also a separate mode called "Free Roam" that lets you and your friends form a posse and explore the entire single player map. You can slaughter gangs, hunt down wild game, and duke it out with other posses over an enormous map. There's a fully featured ranking system that tracks your progress throughout your online exploits. Multiplayer should keep you hooked for weeks on end as you shoot up the West. Overall, Read Dead Redemption is an incredibly good game that can't be missed. Pretty much everything is perfectly polished and consistent, and you'll find yourself loving the Wild West's final days. Go buy it now.PROS
+ Awesome, deep combat
+ Breathtaking visuals
+ Addictive multiplayer
+ Strong voice acting and writing
+ Best open world in a video game to date
Cons
Occasional animation glitches
Some network problems, especially in Free Roam
Could be a little more difficult
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Not many games am I willing to shell out 50 bucks to buy. I decided to go against my better judgement, and buy it because it had a pretty good reputation . . .IT ROCKS!!
I was a little nervous about it being in the old west because that wasn't something that sounded that interesting for a videogame. Believe me, I take it all back. It only takes 10-15 minutes from when you start until you're sucked in for good.
Not gonna lie: I'm not the best when it comes to some video games, and I'll admit that I may agree with others: The game can be a bit easy at times (Just warning those hardcore gamers who may say "Psh, way too easy!"). But there are so many things to do, and they are all so much fun thing to do that, in my opinion, who cares if it's a little easy.
Clearing up some issues I read from others:
Someone said that "It takes forevor to ride from town to town". Yes, this may sometimes be true, but you can hire a stagecoach for a small fee, OR set up camp in the wilderness and say "Travel to ________" for FREE! I prefer to ride from town to town because you may stumble into a group of deer you can hunt for money to purchase a new weapon or horse, or you may find an opportunity to help strangers to gain Fame and/or Honor.
Things to do:
Go on main missions, hunt, become a bounty hunter to bring back criminals (Dead or Alive! The choice is yours!), go on stranger side missions, help those in need on your way from town to town, Patrol the MacFarlane Ranch at night to stop any cattle thiefs/rustlers, be a cowboy (herd cattle), play a game of horseshoes/blackjack/poker/mumblypeg, go to the saloon for a drink (and walk out so drunk you can't stop falling), jump on a moving train and kill the "driver", look for treasure, clear out a gang headquarter, JUST PLAIN EXPLORE!! Over time you'll find what side hobbies you like, and do them to take a break from the storyline. I, personally, like to do a main mission or two, then do some stuff on the side to keep things different.
1 thing that is truly great: The scenery. Nothing beats riding around during sunrise or sunset when the sky is a mixture of purple, orange, and red. It's just great.
I really hope this review helped you make a decision about whether or not you'll purchase the game. Make sure you click yes if it did. ;) Happy travels
Honest reviews on Red Dead Redemption - Xbox 360
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Graphics9.5 Excellent details and textures, everything from the wool jackets, to the animal pelts you collect is highly detailed and gorgeous in HD. I did have a few hiccups and a freeze up during a cut scene, it happened one time, and could very well be my Xbox.
Sound10 The surround sound is top notch in Red Dead Revolver, from a steam engine barreling down the tracks, a cougar growling from the bushes, to the small things like birds chirping and wind blowing...the sound envelops you and keeps you on the edge of your seat.
Gameplay10 Excellent control setup (GTA vets will be right at home) the only thing that took a bit of getting used to was riding a horse, its not bad, just a bit different than a car in terms of handling. Plenty of story/mission hours to waste away, followed by double the hours you'll spend just exploring and causing havoc (or helping the kind settlers).
Re-playability-9 Just going home and being able to run around the Wild West is enough for me, Rockstar included a solid story, but you can make your own as you go, helping damsels in distress, or massacring an entire settlement, its all up to you. This is gonna be a great game for a bit of relaxation...or some stress relief.
Multi-player9.5 I only played a bit of MP, since the rest of my "posse" hadn't received the game yet (or were struggling to get one at the store) The premise seems really interesting though, and the game of death match I played was a real nice change from the normal FPS death matches I've been playing lately. The open world MP game has always been something I wanted to see more of, and I'm sure once this game gets into more peoples hands its gonna be a real treat for the gaming world.
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I've been a fan of the Grand Theft Auto series since it had a top down view, so when this was announced by Rockstar I was pretty interested.
The first thing I must say is Rockstar has really outdone themselves, this game takes GTA to the next level, while taking it back a hundred years on the time line. The first thing you notice is the vast area you get to call "home". The colors and sand blowing and swirling is truly beautiful eye candy. I hate to compare this game to GTA, but the undertones are all there.
I don't wanna share any of the story, and honestly that's icing on the cake for this game. The graphics are simply gorgeous, from the leather straps, and jackets, to the grizzly beards on the characters...all very well done. One thing I must say is not being in the big city setting is a breath of fresh air, no car horns blaring, police sirens at every corner, just the wide open Western range...at times I thought I could taste the fresh air.
As far as game play goes, its hard to beat. You can do anything, and I mean anything (*Ill give a example at the end of this) The stores and shops are fantastic, and walking into a new town just makes you feel like a real gunslinger! Again I don't wanna get into the story to much, but the voice acting and cut scenes are almost Hollywood movie grade, its always nice when you feel for the characters, and this game does an outstanding job of delving into their history and stories!
As another reviewer said the game takes about 20 hours to play through the main story, however getting 100% completion will take you some extra time. The problem is playing through the game, no matter how hard I tried to go to the next mission, I ended up going way off track, killing a bear, saving a stage coach, or just getting a bunch of horses together to test a dynamite stick on. No matter what path you choose, your in for a surprise...Red Dead Redemption really delivers.
If you haven't picked this gem up yet I would highly suggest it, I said I'd give an example of doing whatever you want and here it is: Find some poor townsfolk, give em a round from your six shooter in the kneecap, hogtie them, drag them behind your horse to the nearest railroad...and leave em on the track, sit back and wait for the train to come through, nothing better to relieve the stress of those long days at work/school.
Red Dead Redemption far exceeds anything you've played before, pick up this game, and I'll see you behind the saloon at high noon!
Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for Red Dead Redemption - Xbox 360
I heard about Red Dead Redemption just after it was released and was immediately intrigued. I saw here the potential to fix the flaws of GTAIV-the opportunity to take GTAIV and craft from it a more refined experience: a tighter storyline, improved controls, and a more focused world. The Western setting seemed perfect for the task. Not to mention the Western theme is, for some unknown reason, generally unused in video games. (I suspect that will now change.)In the end, RDR improves on some aspects of the GTAIV formula but falls short on a few other aspects.
The world is much more refined and focused in RDR. Almost all buildings can be entered. NPCs have genuine conversations with one another. In general the world is better. Most impressive is the way the developers simultaneously allow the player to take in the loneliness of the empty deserts while still making the world feel alive and inhabited. This is accomplished by adding in a lot of wildlife (all of which can be hunted; you can even go catch and tame wild horses!), a system that introduces the player to random but dynamic encounters (for instance, you may find while riding along a road in the middle of nowhere that a gang is lynching someone on a nearby tree; you can choose to save the person or move on), and the stranger system (these are NPCs marked with a special icon on the minimap who provide Marston with special tasks to complete--simple, nonessential missions).
The controls are still just as unresponsive as they were in GTAIV. When playing RDR it sometimes feels less like I'm controlling Marston and more like I'm just giving him a nudge in the right direction. That said, combat controls are quite improved--the indoor combat mechanics are now quite functional and significantly better than those of GTAIV. Also, the controls are certainly not bad, and you will master them after a few hours of play. But for me at least the nagging feeling created by the general unresponsiveness has never went away.
GTAIV has a severely flawed save system which caused you to have to often repeat entire missions, including driving to the location (taking many minutes sometimes) and listening to the same dialogue many times. RDR has a much improved save system. You can save at safehouses as always, but you can also put up camp anywhere in the wilderness and save there. Furthermore, missions contain well-placed checkpoints at which you can respawn upon failure.
Now we come to the first of Red Dead Redemption's two great faults: the storyline. Like GTAIV, RDR takes its storyline seriously. Very seriously. There are a LOT of cutscenes in this game, and unlike the dialogues in such games as Mass Effect 2 the cutscenes in RDR aren't interactive. That means that I have higher standards for the narratives they present to me.
GTAIV's plot was certainly nowhere near the perfection of The Godfather, but many of the characters were believable, and the most believable among them stayed around for the whole game, allowing for nontrivial relationships to develop. In this way the story was at least effective enough to justify the numerous cutscenes.
Red Dead Redemption has a decent premise (I'll explicitly mark when spoilers might appear). Marston is a former outlaw who, for reasons unknown, grew a conscience, left his gang, and started a family. In events prior to the game the government threatened to hurt Marston's family unless he agreed to hunt down the members of his former gang.
That's a premise that could be made into a fantastic plot. Unfortunately RDR does relatively little with it. For a very long time essentially nothing will happen in the overall plot. And it won't be until the game's conclusion or "epilogue" that you'll meet the family you're supposed to be saving--far too late for you to develop feelings about them and hence really care about saving them.
You'll meet a lot of characters. Nearly all of them will be ridiculous and extremely abnormal in some way. I actually found it nearly intolerable how every single character in the game was almost a parody, a joke. There are very few humans here--Bonnie is one of them, a girl who saves you at the game's start and helps you recover. Unfortunately, Rockstar tosses Bonnie away after the beginning of the game. This is, in fact, the general pattern in RDR: once a real relationship is established with a character, that character will be eliminated from the game--the character will just disappear from existence.
There will be a few sideplots here and there. Most of them will be as ridiculous as the characters. But the overall plot advances shockingly slowly, if at all. Tension is nonexistent. Character development is nonexistent. And even though the premise I gave you above is printed all over the game's box, it takes the game an astoundingly long time to actually present all that information to the player.
Some minor spoilers follow.
The first half of the game is spent tracking down Bill Williamson. The game will come up with all sorts of ridiculous reasons why you can't just go find him. You'll have to do really ridiculous tasks for really ridiculous characters, and it's even more ridiculous that of all the people in the world only the most ridiculous could help you find Williamson. That's the word needed to summarize this part of the game: ridiculous. When you finally confront Bill Williamson, of course he escapes, but not without throwing a veritable army at you. Once more, ridiculous. You spend half the game trying to kill him, putting up with artificial plot device after artificial plot device, and then you fight through a ridiculous army at his fort... and then he escapes. How satisfying. As I said, it's ridiculous.
Spoilers end now.
Ordinarily the plot of RDR would be perfectly suitable for a video game. But most games don't take their plots as seriously as RDR takes its plot.
The ending, though, is just unacceptable in all mediums. It's completely unnecessary and reminds me of the Fallout 3 ending. It feels like it was tacked on just to make the game feel "serious" and "emotional" and to make up for the total lack of tension throughout the entire game.
The second great flaw of RDR is its system of morality and the illusion of choice. RDR, like GTAIV, has a very thorough system built in to make wrongdoing fun and entertaining. So you've got this vast framework to facilitate all these morally questionable activities. But then the game encourages you left and right, at every juncture, constantly to do what we all know is morally right. You almost universally get more rewards for sparing the lives of enemies than for killing them. Very, very, very few of the missions in the game ever require you to do anything considered wrong in the game world, and when they do they often provide some mechanism to avoid taking a hit to your honor if you don't want it to go down.
After having played RDR, it actually comes off as rather preachy to me. You're placed in a world in which you can do good and bad and yet the game tells you to do good pretty much as often as it can. It seems that when writing the story the writers forgot that this is a video game that should be at least minimally reactive to the player. As it is, you--the player--are absolutely irrelevant to the story.
I don't consider this a great flaw like the previous two, but it's worth mentioning that a vast amount of this game feels automated. The Dead Eye component (read: magical aiming) aims and shoots for you. And unless you have it set to "expert" aiming, to shoot somebody this is all you have to do: look somewhere in their general vicinity; hit the left trigger; the game aims for you; fire with right trigger. If you want a head shot, no problem: after the game aims at their torso for you, just slightly nudge the right thumbstick upwards. It's almost guaranteed.
For a game that seems so obsessed with realism, many missions in RDR will have you think that some of the gangs you're up against could rival the U.S. military in manpower. For instance, when you first transition from the initial area (called New Austin) to Mexico, you'll float on a raft down a river separating the two regions, and I'd wager at least 30 bandits come out of nowhere on the Mexico side to kill you. Of course, using Dead Eye or the left trigger makes it easy: the game aims for you.
Finally, I'd like to comment on something I hear being said about RDR a lot. I've read in many places (and in many reviews here at Amazon) that the game gives the player an unprecedented amount of choice. This is not at all true for several reasons. First, as I said above the game is greatly biased towards what it considers morally right actions. But more importantly missions are all completely linear, straightforward, and have precisely one path for the player to take. In the end, RDR tells you how to play the game and rarely gives you a choice to meaningfully deviate from its recommendation. When you do have a choice, it generally provides greater rewards for taking its preferred path.
As an example of a game that truly does present meaningful choices about how to approach a mission, I offer Deus Ex. But even the Elder Scrolls games (Morrowind, Oblivion) give the player more options for approaching quests than RDR does.
In the end, RDR is a fun game but it flounders in its own seriousness and aspirations.
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