Leveling Down

Metro 2033 paints a dark underground future for humanity.

I’m on business travel and out of town all week, but I wanted to write a review on the latest game I played through on the Xbox 360, Metro 2033. Unfortunately, as I sit here in my hotel room typing up this review, I have very limited time so I’m going to call this review a “Quick Review” since I am going to limit the amount of details to provide on this game. Hit the jump to read my quick review on the sci-fi post-apocalyptic Russian FPS game, Metro 2033.
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This guy may look big and dumb, but the infernal brute splicers are deadly

I wasn’t too thrilled with the idea of BioShock 2 – I was amongst the camp that felt the original was nearly perfect and figured a follow up was a cash-in that might ruin the franchise. I finally picked the game up when it was on sale for cheap around Christmas, and finished it last week. Wow, was I wrong, I really love the gameplay in BioShock and thoroughly enjoyed the sequel. espion4ge already reviewed the game way back when though, so I picked up the Minerva’s Den DLC (also on sale) and gave it a whirl. Another cash in, or worth it? Hit the jump to find out.

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Our Awards & Holiday Shopping Guide are just about done, but today I get to talk about some of my favorite categories. Which stories really stuck with me this year? What new IPs are out there that might stand the test of time? And how do all the sequels this year stack up? Hit the jump to find out!

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As someone that is a big fan of gaming in all of these categories, I’ll be presenting the best shooter games, games with the best gameplay, and the most addictive games of this year. See if you can guess the winners before the jump!

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It’s been a long road, but we have weeded 32 games down to 2, and it’s a fight to the death to find out who will be the winner of Leveling Down’s Video Game March Madness 2010! Hit the jump to see the last two standing (although I suppose you could just look at the above image), and let’s take a look at how the Final Four shook out in two results that were as close as humanly possible. For some reason, the polls didn’t close at 6 PM so the results are as of 6 PM. And voting is now open, so vote for the CHAMPION!

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With only a few games left in the running, cmfl3x and I have decided to combine the results discussion from Round 3 along with the starting the polling for Round 4.

Round 4 polls will close Monday, April 5th, at 6pm EST. cmfl3x will announce the two games moving into the Finals and open the voting on Tuesday. Hit the jump to see some commentary on the results and to vote for the Final Four…

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Voting for Round 3 is now open.

Polls will close this Thursday, April 1, 2010 at 6PM EST, so you will only have today and tomorrow to vote. I will post the winners for each of the four regions on Friday. These winners will move onto the Final Four next week as we get closer to the 2010 Finals. Hit the jump to cast your votes!

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After another furious round of voting, the Elite 8 is set! There were some pretty interesting Sweet 16 matchups, and a lot of the polls were closer than in the first round. At this point, 75% of the field has been eliminated, and we are 3 rounds away from finding out who is the winner of Leveling Down’s Video Game March Madness 2010! Hit the jump for a full recap, and feel free to express your utter outrage at the results in the comments!

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Voting for Round 2 is now open.

The polls will close on Monday March 29th, 2010 at 6PM EST. cmfl3x will announce the 8 winners moving into Round 3. Hit the jump to cast your votes!

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After 3 days of voting, the first round of Leveling Down’s Video Game March Madness 2010 is over! There were some close matchups, some blowouts, and of course, some surprises. As a reminder for those of you who may feel that some of these games were unfairly seeded, we seeded all the games based on Metacritic scores. It’s all their fault!

Anyway, thanks to everyone for voting! The first 32 have now been cut down to the Sweet 16. After the jump, check out who I voted for, my thoughts on the results, and a preliminary look at the Sweet 16 matchups.

Tiebreaker note: I decided that casting a tiebreaking vote was too arbitrary and I felt uncomfortable with the power! So for tie polls, I tallied up the registered commenters who voted as the tiebreaker. It seemed like the fairest thing to do, so make sure you’re logged in to make your vote count the most!

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