Titanfall Beta (8 out of 10)

There is your Titan, reaching out to grab you and put you in your seat.

I've been playing it for about an hour now and although it is hectic I can see the possibilities.

The Beta starts you out with some training missions. You learn your pilot is able to double jump and run along walls and comes equipped with a fancy lock-on pistol. Then you do a couple of sample missions and bam you on your way to some multiplayer.

I've just played Attrition so far, which is Team Deathmatch. Your team consists of 6 or so players and grunts. Grunts are AI that are just there for racking up points it seems. I don't like the grunts and would rather just kills regular people. My feeling is that the maps were too big for just 6 players and too small for 12 Titans. To make it a little more just right they added grunts so a pilot wouldn't go so long without killing something.

You drop from a ship where a handy robot opens the door for you. Then you scramble around some rubble until you see either an enemy grunt of enemy pilot. Since it is just Beta there aren't many guns to choose from. An assault rifle, pistol, or shotgun. They all handle well but the most effective is the assault rifle, for the pilot and also the Titan. After 3 minutes or so (each time you kill a pilot 30 seconds gets chopped off) you can call your Titan from the sky: which is called Titanfall. That's the name of the game!!

Titans have big guns and are able to quickly dash backward, forward, side to side to dodge projectiles and such. They can't jump though which is a little frustrating. They also come with shields that last for about 4 seconds and allow you to collect whatever is shot at you and blow it back at your foes, this bit is particularly satisfying.

You have the option of getting in your Titan or letting it go on its own with simple orders from you (follow, or protect the area it is at). Couple this with the Pilot's ability to run along walls and quickly traverse the field of battle I believe this game will develop infinite possibilities and strategies.

Instead of just reaching the end score and the game ending the losing pilots have a short amount of time after the announcer declares defeat to reach a drop ship and exit before they are killed. This allows both the victors and losers a chance at some extra xp. Once the drop ship is on its way you only get one life and if you die you get to watch, like in Gears. It is a nice little touch and gives the developers another instance to distance themselves from the competition.

I see some opportunities for improvement but overall the game looks excellent and I'm going to go play it now.

Xbox One (8.5 out of 10 with lots of potential)

The game selection is pretty weak. I rented Need for Speed: Rivals, Assassin's Creed 4, and Call of Duty. Later I bought Dead Rising 3 which seems to be the best of the bunch.

The graphics are quite amazing and most of the time very polished. The best looking game I've read is Tomb Raider. If I had known I would have waited and played it for XO instead of the 360, but life is what it is I guess.

The voice recognition and Kinect features I was weary of because meh. Besides having trouble with the commands "turn on" and "turn off" it works well beyond my expectations. It responds to my demands very quickly and with little lag time and I would say 90% on the first time. It may seem like an extra feature that is nice but unnecessary and I would disagree with you there. Instead of turning on the controller and scrolling through menus I can just tell my xbox what to do and am at my destination faster and without having to move my digits.

The controller is basically the same except for the toggle sticks feel more in your control and the whole thing just seems well put together and streamlined for efficiency.

I know either this year or next that Fallout 4 is going to come out and so buying an XO was inevitable. Also today, Titanfall Beta came out and I've only played for about an hour but it is definitely worth buying the system for so far. Some jerkwad on Live called it "definitely a Call of Duty killer". Well, no, CoD will be around making another eerily similar game a year from now and on and on for the holiday season and people will buy it just like Madden. I am bored with CoD now and there is a void that I'm happy to let Titanfall fill.

I was never a fan of the Playstation's controller or its layout which is why I chose the Xbox One.

Anyway it is 500 clams right now which is pricey. It does come with Kinect, a respectable headset, and hdmi cord. 5 years ago that would be about a 225 dollar value. Today not so much but it is nice. I think throwing a copy of Dead Rising 3 or Need for Speed would have been swell of them.

The actual hardware seems much more long lasting than the flimsy xbox 360 and I haven't been hearing any red ring of death horror stories. So, here's to hoping. Anyway, back to Titanfall. I am Righteousice just so you know who did the killing.

Tomb Raider (8 out of 10)

Shipwrecked on a mysterious island with an attention hungry archaeologist, a hefty Hawaiian, an old handsome, salt and pepper father figure, a gruff, Irish captain, and a black bitch, we've all been there right?

In case you haven't then this game is for you.

2013 was really the year for bad bitches amirite or amirite? Beyond: Two Souls, (which I had to play on the DL because I've got a crush on Ellen Page and the gf doesn't appreciate it.) Last of Us, Bioshock Infiinite, and a revamped Tomb Raider.

The story and the atmosphere draw you in almost instantly as you recover from a devastating shipwreck in the Devil's Triangle along the coast of Japan. You were in search of a lost civilization centered around the Sun Queen, a powerful ruler back so many bla bla years ago.

Turns out this Devil's Triangle is the Bermuda Triangle of the east and this little island is the center of it all. Planes and boats from centuries ago until now litter its shores. Some mad men ruled over by a priest by the name of Mathias run the island and are just terrible bloodthirsty monsters.

There's all that. The graphics are top notch on the 360 and I think top it out I do believe, something like Halo 2 did for the Xbox. The story is intriguing and for Pokemon players who have to collect them all there is plenty of shit everywhere to grab up.

Lara finds relics along the way which are nice way to inject some history lessons into a game about a young girl who murders hundreds of people. Journals and other trinkets add a little back story to the whole kaboozle.

You have your basic weapons: bow, pistol, rifle, shotgun. Along the way you collect salvage from convenient wooden boxes and dead bodies which you use at campfires to upgrade your equipment.

The first 1/4 of the game is awesome and terrifying at the same time. From there is starts to wane until you reach a tepid, predictable end. I was hoping for some scientific answer to all the happenings on the island but I came away disappointed.

It keeps with the original Tomb Raider from way back on the ps1 quite well. Puzzles and shooting and action and plenty of adventure. I would have preferred they just do away with the whole salvage thing and make the game more realistic. Upgrading weapons and gear didn't seem to do much and wasn't very satisfying. Eventually I stopped looking in every nook and cranny because I wanted to just get on the with the story (plus I have gamefly and I'm trying to get my money's worth.)

The puzzles weren't much. Once you figure out the dynamic of the puzzle and get past the first obstacle it's over.

The voice acting and the music were lacking but the atmosphere and graphics more than make up for all that. Plus, the gameplay is quite enjoyable with plenty to do and explore while not letting you off the beaten track too much.

I was pleasantly surprised at this reboot of a franchise that I thought has lost its allure. There is definitely going to be sequel and plus some I imagine.

Loadout (7 out of 10)

Good little Team Fortress ripoff. The possibilities for gun design and modification seem to go quite deep.

It's free and fun.  I'll probably throw 10 bones there way and get some customization stuff. But the real currency of the game is Blutes which you use to upgrade your weapons and such.

The problem was finding a game and staying with that game. If you only have 7 players then it will kick you off and supposedly put you in queue for another game but it never quite works out that way. So, then you have to leave matchmaking but the game thinks you're in the middle of the game and so on.

But, the good people at Edge of Reality are still working on it and I'm sure will get all the kinks figured out.

The Banner Saga (7 out of 10)

Three guys left Bioware to found Stoic Games and made this little gem after raising 700k on Kickstarter.

Think Oregon Trail meets Final Fantasy Tactics (as a side note I meticulously tracked Final Fantasy Tactics story to try to piece the story together and finally came up bored).

The artwork is stellar. The brights colors against the drab, snow ridden background comes across as quite beautiful. The sounds and old viking war songs will stir up something deep inside your anglo-saxon heart.

You drag a caravan across a wartorn land doing your best not to run into the dredge. The dredge are heavily armored robots that also have wives and babies somehow (never got explained). Man teams up with Varl in this world where all the old gods are dead and there is little hope. Varl are these giant man beasts with huge horns protruding from there scalps that live for hundreds of years.  Since the gods made the varl and all the gods are dead then soon all the varl will die out and so on and such.

You gain renown for killing enemies and your various choices as caravan manager. With renown you can either level up characters or buy supplies. I made the mistake a couple of times of leveling up and then running out of supplies. When that happens people start dying.

There are a couple of plot twists along the way that keep it interesting but ultimately the battles and the caravan ride became monotonous and doesn't quite prepare you for the final battle.

It isn't a long game, you could probably leisurely beat it in a couple of nights. I imagine there will be an add-on or a sequel considering the story and when the credits started rolling.

Well worth the play and you know, buy the thing and whatnot.

Day Z (7 out of 10 and lots of potential)

Life 1: Graphics and everything were out of whack and I could barely move before 2 zombies attacked me. It was all over in

Life 2: Still fighting with the graphics. I chose a night server because of ignorance and appeared to have spawned next to some barn. I spent about 10 minutes trying to get into the barn before moving on. I found a small village and groped around literally not being able to see anything. I turned shadows off and then I had night vision. Eventually a zombie attacked me and I bled out. (I found out later you can tear a shirt apart and stop the bleeding, around life 5).

Life 3: I became a small Asian woman and after finding a nice orange rain coat was immediately killed by 2 fully equipped gentlemen in full army gear. They left me unconscious choking on blood on the side of the road.

Life 4: I am a black man who apparently frequented the gym a good bit before the apocalypse. I find an axe, designer sunglasses (badly damaged) and a green beanie. I was starting to get the hang of it when a zombie got me. I had thrown away my shirt before I found out it could safe my life. I bled out in the city searching for a dirty rag.

Life 5: My connection just timed out as 3 zombies pummeled me, so this one is probably over as well. I immediately found a well to drink from (your character spawns with an enormous thirst) and a violet backpack. You'll quickly find that space to put things is the number 2 priority. First is not dying. A backpack gets you 25 spaces, whereas pants and shirts can give you 2-6. But, a fire extinguisher will take up more room than a pen. I was doing quite well (I did get glitched into a room that didn't exist and which I couldn't escape from but I found out that if I run at the wall and vault I'll storm through it). I had found plenty of food and pop to hold me over and also a shotgun (no ammo) and axe. By this point I looked up the bleeding to death and found out about the shirt rags. (The forums quickly answered all the questions I had). Apparently the loss of blood with begin to turn your world grey. I ate some beans and spaghetti and drink a pop but my world didn't improve.

Once I fixed the graphics to fit my computer's apparently anemic means the game ran quite smoothly. If you're having trouble running it, change it from first to 3rd person. That made the game look and run much cleaner. It looks good as long as you don't experience massive blood loss.

I recommend getting your guy geared up and fed on a PVE server and then hopping over to another server. From the sounds of it if you don't gang up pretty quick you'll be dead or starving quite soon.

You don't level up, there are no missions, you receive nothing from killing zombies, and all there is to do is get better gear and survive.

This game is The Road it isn't Fallout. You have your destination (wherever your mind takes you) where you hear things are nicer and the people are sweeter and canned sardines (damaged) fall from the sky like manna and once you get there it is grey and dead like the place you started.

It is $30 on steam and was made by Bohemian Interactive. From the voice of the characters and the signs on the road they must be a bunch of Ruskies. At first I thought I was duped because my graphics were all wrong and it looked terrible. Once you get it figured out though you'll spend plenty of hours going through houses.

The game is in alpha stage I believe and there is still quite a bit to do. My wishlist would be: 1. Be able to open cabinets and all the doors; 2. A wider variety of items 3. A wider variety of environments 4. And other listy stuff.

First thing you should do is get an axe or shovel and go hit a wall. Sounds like ricocheting bullets. Also I get an error message every hour or so telling me the military beret is unavailable. Take the good with the bad.

I'm a zombie apocalypse survival junky and this game is what I've always wanted. It hasn't reached its full potential yet and I can't wait until it's all polished up and ready to serve.

Her (7 out of a 10)

A sweet little ride through a non-apocalyptic future. I prefer pillaging and scrounging in the future and the thought that all the fish and bees will be long gone and humanity will be on its last peg leg waiting to die. But this is ok too.

Classic man meets sexy operating system AI Sleepless in Seattle with some strange sexytime thrown in for the tweens.

It follows a predictable love story pattern. What stands out most is the setting. It was shot in Japan to look like a futuristic American city; presumably clean, bumless, and full of whites. It is a world where most people are casually cool with humans dating robots even though Futurama taught us all what that could lead to:



Throw in a dash of a quirky job of 'writing' handwritten love letters for other people and a little of this guy:

and you got yourself an Oscar nominated film right there.

The Oscars are a little thin this year. Blue Jasmine was quite bleh. Honestly Gravity has pulled at the ole heartstrings and brainbone more than any other film.