XBOX 360

Battlefield Bad Company - A humoristic shooter, with good graphics. I like the destructable environments. Grade: 9-

Battlefield 2 Modern Combat - A mediocre shooter with good netplay. Grade: 8

Bioshock - A first person shooter with nice graphics. The storyline can be very submersive and complicated. Grade: 8+

Burnout Paradise - Great driving game with nice graphics. The crashes are nicely done, and the gameplay feels nice. Grade: 9

Burnout Revenge - Nice driving game, the difficulty setting feels right. Grade: 8+

Call of Duty 3 - Yet another World War II shooter, feels like a small step back from Call of Duty 2. Grade: 8-

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - An awesome, modern shooter, with many varying missions. The multiplayer is one of the best I've ever played!
Grade: 10-

Call of Duty: World At War - A World War II shooter, but feels surprisingly good, as it is built on the Call of Duty 4-game engine. Grade: 9+

Colin McRae Dirt - A good-looking rally game that feels good. Grade: 8

FarCry Instincts Predator - An otherwise mediocre shooter, but the user-created maps save the day! Grade: 8

FarCry 2 - A good-looking shooter, based in Africa. Africa is a nice change from small, indoor maps, that so many games abuse. The controls are a little off though. Netplay is fun and the connection is quite solid. Grade: 9+

FIFA 09 - The best soccer-game on the market at this time. Overcomes PES by far with it's netplay. Grade: 9

Forza Motorsport 2 - A racing game (simulation), driving feels very nice. Grade: 9-

Gears of War - A third person shooter with very nice graphics. Using the different weapons is alot of fun, e.g. Chainsaw. The story levels are nice, especially with a friend, with one exception; the driving level. Netplay is awesome, when playing with fair opponents. Grade: 9.5

GRID - A fun, arcade driving game, with cool crashes, and good overall graphics. Grade: 9+

Guitar Hero III - A great music game, with a nice soundtrack. Fun with friends or at a party. Grade: 8.5

Halo 3 - A good game, but it's basically more of an add-on to Halo 2 instead of a full game; same gameplay, 70% same weapons, just better graphics. Halo 2 was great, but Halo 3 is the same thing, nothing new. Grade: 7+

MX vs. ATV: Untamed - An arcade off-road racing game. Fun to play, sounds aren't so nice though. Grade: 8-

Need For Speed Most Wanted - A nice driving game, with good car customization and fun getaways with the cops on your tail. Grade: 8.5

Need For Speed Carbon - Same as Most Wanted, with a bit more advanced car customization. Grade: 8-

Need For Speed ProStreet - A polished version of the older games from the series, but no open world - that ISN'T good. Grade: 8

NHL 09 - Great hockey game, fun to play. Leaves behind NHL 2K9, in my opinion. Grade: 9

Orange Box - 5 great games all in one; Half Life 2, Half Life 2: Episode 1, Half Life 2: Episode 2, Team Fortress 2 and Portal. The Half Life-series is awesome, and Portal was a fun puzzler/platform. Team Fortress 2 was the weakest of all games in the box. Grade: 9-

Project Gotham Racing 3 - A nice driving game, with very nice graphics. Grade: 9

Project Gotham Racing 4 - Very much like PGR 3, but still quite fun. Grade: 8+

Pure - A fun, surrealistic srcade driving game, with nice graphics and lots of cool tricks. Grade: 8.5

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2 - A polished version of Rainbow Six Vegas, lots of fun with a friend in co-op. Grade: 9-

Tony Hawk's Project 8 - A nice conversion to next-gen graphics, Nail the Trick-mode was a good idea. Grade: 8+

PS3


Ferrari Challenge - A nice driving game with mediocre graphics, but pointless if you don't own a racing wheel for your console. Grade: 8

Gran Turismo 5: Prologue - A small taste of what Gran Turismo 5 will feel like. Great graphics and realistic driving. Grade 9-

Gran Theft Auto IV - GTA at its best. Great gameplay, with lots to do. The story is just a bit boring, but the characters are very likeable. Grade: 9

Haze - A semifuturistic shooter that feels O.K. when playing. It didn't quite live up to the hype, and some good ideas were poorly carried out. Grade: 8+

Motorstorm - An arcade off-road driving game, with nice graphics. Sometimes driving doesn't feel quite right, and the locations all look the same. Grade: 9-

Motorstorm: Pacific Rift - A better version of the original Motorstorm, with awesome graphics, and a more interesting location. Grade: 9.5

Resistance: Fall of Man - An alien shooter, with a susrpisingly small weapon arsenal. The Chimera all seem the same, and the game overall is boring. Fun with friends in co-op mode, but you wont really play it alone. Grade: 7.5

Ridge Racer 7 - A nice-looking driving game, and driving feels good. Grade: 8+

Warhawk - A great online action game, which can be really challenging, but is easy to learn through experience. Grade: 9

Wipeout HD - A fast, futuristic racing game, playing this brings back memories, especially after playing the original game for hours and hours on the PS 1. Grade: 9.5

AREA: THE BIG REVIEWS

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

Developer: Infinity Ward         Publisher: Activision      Platforms: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC      Multiplayer: Yes      Offline: 2-4 players      Online: 2-18 players

Call of Duty 4: Modern warfare is everything an action-gamer can ask for. Nice controls, great graphics, and the game runs at a full 60 frames per second, no matter what happens on-screen. The story missions are diverse, swapping from front-line battles in the middle-east to a commando mission in cargo-ship in the middle of the ocean. And then there's my personal favourite, the sneaky sniper mission based in Chernobyl. Every mission is different, assuring you won't get bored even after completing all the levels a few times. The difficulty setting is great, with four different difficulties to choose from; Recruit, Regular, Hardened, and Veteran. These difficulty levels are very well made, insuring every kind of player, wether casual of hardcore, will find a difficulty level best suited to his skill. All of the levels are designed very well, and the graphics are very photo-realistic, and light and shade look very nice. The weapon arsenal is very diverse, with many different weapons of the same class, including many snipers, assault rifles, light machine guns and such.

Then, the best part of the game: the online multiplayer. The online multiplayer is filled with great ideas, and all of them are carried out with great success. Gathering experience to climb up ranks and unlock new weapons and perks quickly gets very addictive, and is alot of fun. This also assures the game isn't all about winning or losing a round, as you can gain experience even when losing. The perks add another level of diversity to the create-a-class mode, and many different kinds of classes can be made. For example, for a total radar ghost class, you could choose a silenced weapon, along with the UAV Jammer-perk, to make you fully disappear from the enemy radar. Playing is alot of fun, and the level design in the multiplayer is very well done. Each level has lots of different kinds of opportunities for different kinds of players, giving you all kinds of choises as to how you would want to attack the opponent. Maybe you should try to use that ally to flank the enemy, or maybe get to that balcony and use your sniper to pick out the enemies one by one. All these small details make playing the multiplayer an awesome experience.

The feeling you get when playing the game is great, and hours quickly go by as you play the multiplayer. Even if you complete the story levels once, it's always fun going back and trying to complete the levels on a harder difficulty setting, and the trying to find the collectibles to unlock the cheats. Getting through the ranks again and again in the multiplayer is very addictive, and the create-a-class mode gives all kinds of opportunities for different kinds of players. Overall, Infity Ward did an awesome job with the game, making this the # 1 shooter of 2007.

Score: 10/10

Far Cry 2

Developer: Ubisoft Montreal   Publisher: Ubisoft   Platforms: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC   Multiplayer: Yes   Offline: -     Online: 2-16

An open world. Great views. Realistic fire. Realistic weapons. Lots of them. And lots of vehicles. Far Cry 2 is filled with great gameplay ideas, but, unfotunately, some these ideas aren't carried out too well. The open world isn't really as 'open' as you'd think. Most of the time you'll find yourself driving through narrow canions, having to fight any enemies you encounter. What I would love would be that you would really have a possibility to NOT fight at every enemy guard post when trying to complete another hard mission. This would make travelling across the large map alot faster, and you'd save lots of ammo, too. The realistic weapons, which break and jam if they are used for too long, are a great idea. But, because of the fact that you can't really avoid the tens of guardposts, you will have to visit a weapon shop to get new, better conditioned weapons very, very frequently. But, again the wearing out of the weapons adds a nice touch the game, as you have to keep an eye out for the condition of your weapons. For example, running straight into the enemy camp with a worn-out AK-47 isn't a very good idea, as it will probably just explode intoyour hands in the middle of the action.

Dispite these minor problems, Far Cry 2 is still an awesome game. Why? Because none of these setbacks are bad enough to make you want to just put down the controller and quit playing. You will have to fight through tens of guardposts just to get to your objective marker during a mission, but this won't bother you too much, as every guard post has many different ways of approach. Instead of just running in there, guns blazing, you could buy a silenced pistol and sneak around, doing silent kills. Or maybe you'll want to go get your sniper and take 'em out one by one from a distance. This variety in approach methods applies to almost every mission and guard post you'll come across during the game. The views are breath-taking, and Africa looks realistic, with not only hot deserts, but also jungles, rivers and small clay-hut villages. The main reason you'll play the story mode will be the map. The map is huge, with 50 square-kilometers to explore, with many different kinds of areas. You are given quite a few ways to explore this area, including many cars, boats and a even gliders.

The online-multiplayer is fun, with a variety of game modes and maps, to suite every player. Some maps are fairly small, while other are very large, making the players use vehicles to get close to their opponents. The upgrade-a-class-system by gaining experience-points and ranks is again a good idea, but I'd love to be able to modify my own classes, like in Call of Duty 4. The connection is quite solid, but some times starting the match can take painstakingly long, as there's always a few players who want to shuffle teams, or change maps etc. Overall, the netplay is great fun, and it works well, but I'd like the tempo to be just a bit faster. The user-created maps can be great, and are a fun to play, instead of grinding the same levels in the game over and over again.

Score: 8/10