Leveling Down

While this review may seem to have arrived somewhat late, cmfl3x and I recently agreed on an article writing system here at Leveling Down that differentiates between impressions and reviews. Going forward, please keep in mind that when we write “impressions” articles, it means we’ve played a bit into the game, and are therefore writing what our initial impressions are. Reviews, meanwhile, will only be named as such when we want to write about a game that we’ve completed already so we’ve fully realized what the game has to offer. Often times if we come out with impressions for a game first and do not put out a review later, it implies that our initial impressions carried through the rest of the game and it wasn’t necessary to “set the record straight” by writing a review of the game after completing it. Borderlands doesn’t quite fall into the category of being exactly the super awesome game I professed it to be in my initial impressions, and so I want to follow up on it with this review now that I’ve collected the 1000 Achievement points.

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In Special Ops, two is always better than one

espion4ge and I finally finished our week long quest to conquer Modern Warfare 2’s Special Ops so I figured I’d write a little bit about it. This is the last I’ll write about Modern Warfare 2 ever…maybe. Anyway, if you haven’t checked out Special Ops yet, I highly recommend you find a friend and get to it! Hit the jump to see why.

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Now that I’ve beaten the campaign in Modern Warfare 2, I’ve been spending the last several days of my solo gaming time playing Assassin’s Creed II. This was a game that I wasn’t actually planning to purchase, as I didn’t love the first one (which amusingly, wasn’t a game I had planned to purchase when it released either) but I took the leap anyway. What’s interesting is, this time around, Assassin’s Creed II looks to be a much better game than the first, and a shining example of a sequel where the team addressed a lot of the negative feedback from the original.
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Having recently picked up another 360 (courtesy of Amazon), I was surprised to discover that even the Jasper chipset, with its new graphics chip and internal memory, still has not fixed the 360 HDMI No Signal issue. This issue has been plaguing me ever since the 360 was released with HDMI support years ago and is present for anyone that tries to hook up a 360 to a TV with an HDMI cable lacking 1080p support.

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Modern Warfare 2’s plot was out of control. Did everyone catch the AT-AT? [via Gizmodo]

Since espion4ge has been dedicating most of his Modern Warfare 2 coverage to multiplayer, I figured I’d give a few of my thoughts on the single player campaign. Since practically everyone has bought the game already, instead of doing a straight review I figured this would be a good chance to talk about all the ridiculous yet awesome stuff that went down in the campaign. For those who haven’t finished yet, I would put it like this: Modern Warfare’s plot was improbable but possible, while Modern Warfare 2’s plot was out of control and completely implausible. It’s like Modern Warfare 2 was directed by Michael Bay or something. Since it’s a video game, I’m not complaining – the plot was all over the place but led to a lot of awesome set pieces. I’ve highlighted some of my favorites after the jump, so be warned, SPOILERS WITHIN! Don’t click if you don’t want to be spoiled.

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The last two big holiday titles of the year were released yesterday, and delivered to my door courtesy of Amazon. Yet, after checking out my friends list during prime time last night, it wasn’t quite apparent that these big holiday titles had arrived. Scanning through the dozen or so people online on my list yielded just one guy at the bottom playing Left 4 Dead 2, with no Assassin’s Creed 2 in sight. About half of my friends online last night were playing Modern Warfare 2, which is a pretty respectable number as the night of Modern Warfare 2’s release, about 3/4 of my friends list were playing it. I was surprised to see that even Brutal Legend got more of a spotlight than either Left 4 Dead 2 or Assassin’s Creed 2 last night among my friends. Maybe Left 4 Dead 2 won’t ruin the holidays for me after all and I’ll still have people to play it with when I get to it later.

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Headbangers serve as your basic infantry unit. Yes, Brutal Legend is a RTS game.

Monkey Island. Full Throttle. Grim Fandango. Psychonauts. What do these games all have in common? One thing: Tim Schafer. The man has been cursed the past few years: he has created critically acclaimed games that have been flops at retail (see: Psychonauts). Brutal Legend is his latest offering, and it contains star power like Jack Black, Ozzy Osborne, and a whole slew of metalheads. Will this heavy metal epic find the retail success that has eluded Schafer recently? More importantly, is the game worth your precious dollars, and more importantly, your precious time in the wake of all the holiday releases?

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Obviously my claim that Left 4 Dead 2 will ruin the holidays is a little far-fetched, but let me explain. While I didn’t love the recently released Left 4 Dead 2 demo, I think the game will still be an enjoyable co-op title. I still have it pre-ordered, yet the primary reason for my crazy accusation is this: Left 4 Dead 2 is releasing 1 week after Modern Warfare 2.

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With Modern Warfare 2 being the biggest title of this holiday season (and probably the year), many gamers may pick this up and are interested in getting into the multiplayer, but are overwhelmed by all of the things that Modern Warfare 2 expects the player to understand. That’s where this article comes in. I’m writing this article from a viewpoint of you as a reader having never played any of the recent Call of Duty games online (but of course, I’m hoping you’ll have understood general first person shooter mechanics). In this article, I’ll explain what perks are, kill-streak rewards, leveling up, general strategies and tips for improving your game, etc. I will focus the article towards Team Deathmatch, since it is the most popular mode for Call of Duty multiplayer games and the easiest one to learn. Once you digest this information, the skills you learn for Team Deathmatch will be more than enough if you decide to move towards more the objective-based multiplayer modes in the future.

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In Half-Life 2: Episode 1, you fight the Eye of Sauron……just kidding.

I ended Half-Life 2 on such a high note that I decided to jump straight into Episode One (though Episode Two will have to sit on the sidelines for a while since Modern Warfare 2 is out!). Half-Life 2 ended on an incredible cliffhanger, so I can’t imagine having to wait to see what happens next. Luckily, these games came out years ago so I could just move my cursor over one game to the right on the Orange Box and see what Episode One had to offer. Was this groundbreaker in “episodic gaming” (/sarcasm) as good as its predecessor?

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