GTA 4 first impressions

 GTA 4 is here, and it's everything its cracked up to be.  Even though you play as illegal-immigrant Niko Bellic, the real star of the show is the city itself. Liberty City is an unbarred satire version of New York City. People behave exactly like they do in New York: Pissed off and on a Mission! Rather then get your license plate number when you hit them, they flip you off and start attacking you. All the landmarks are in place along with the boroughs (although they are all under different names). 

 One of the most talked about parts of the new Gta is the gunplay system. You pop in and pop out of cover at will, and can even blind fire. You can now free aim, but this is sort of finicky as it requires you to half pull the trigger. This as stupid as it sounds, and I think it would have been better off as a toggle option somewhere in the menu or something.  Combat is pretty thrilling , but the police chases are really the highlight here. Its now radius based, so you might need to get a qaurter mile away from a cop before they stop chasing you. You can't kill them either, as all that does is raise your wanted level. 

 The driving is very good, but its all to clear these are not sports cars. Just jacking the first one you see will often get a ride that simply does not want to turn using a powerslide. At higher speeds they bounce along realistically, and will occasionally flip over. There's no "press rb to flip" option, so your pretty much hosed once they flip. The cars also take damage realistically and wont just explode out of the blue. You can shoot out of the car to, which is pretty cool.

Dark Sector First impressions

Dark Sector has really been a long time in the making. It was the first announced next gen game,but back then it was a sleek sci-fi shooter rather then dark and gory game it is now. The core of he gameplay is very similar to Gears of War: Spirt from cover to cover and pop out occasionally to shoot at enemies. Your health regenerates a bit slower, although you have more of it.  You tend to fight more enemies, and with no squad these are quite a challenge. However, the game gives you a quite interesting tool: The glaive. This little three bladed death frisbee is allot like a boomerang that decapitates people. It returns to you within a few seconds of throwing, and will glitch through walls to find you. If an enemies is hit by the glaive, they most commonly lose a limb. 

 Chopping someone's head off with it is a bit finicky though. I don't know whether hitting someone in their neck or  their head will trigger it, and its nowhere near as satisfying as hitting someone anywhere else. The glaive is actually really easy to use, and is easily your weapon of choice, but only because it makes the game too easy. Since 60 or so percent if hits with it result in death,  and it functions almost exactly like a gun ( just aim and hit RB ), you end up breezing through firefights. The game tries to make it less of a firearm and more of a super death frisbee with after touch ( slo-mo that makes the camera follow the glaive and lets you guide it )  and power throw ( cheesy timing minigame ). Both of these are optional, but are so good you feel guilty about using them.

 Hopefully the complaints will resolve themselves later into the game (I'm only halfway through).

Super Smash Bros Brawl Review

  Super Smash Bros is a side scrolling, multiplayer centric beat em up action game. These have always had single player, but thats never been the focus. One of the series key points is huge amount of depth concealed in this while still being easy and fun to learn. 

 Not much (if anything) has changed in Brawl. Up to 4 fighters still desperately clamber to knock opponents off the stage, but it feels allot better then melee. Most of the balance issues are fixed and the game feels a bit more floaty, but this is a good thing as melee was a bit overprecise. The stages are good, but allot of them are just too random.

 And this brings up another point: Brawl has been made for the newcomer. Roughly half the stages try to kill you, and most of those are just frustrating, not another threat to watch. Take spearhead. Sometimes the stage flips upside down, and then your controls get inverted a by a second effect. This almost always leads to death. Another thing is the smash ball. Its a little orb that comes in and floats around until some hits it enough, then gives the person that broke it an awesome move. If these were balanced, they would be great. But many of them cant get a kill in ideal situations. Lucario's and Jigglypuff's  barely do any damage, and Metaknights does damage but not much else.

 Overall these complaints don't take much away from the game. Its great fun and anyone who owns a Wii should check it out.

9 out of 10