I Give Up On Supreme Commander

I tried playing it some more, but the crashing at the end of missions finally pissed me off to much. It takes too long to save and load to have to replay part of the level each time you complete a campaign mission. In addition to the freezing/crashing the camera issues have put me over the top. I'm sending it back to GameFly today. It is really to bad because the game was a lot of fun when it worked. If they patch it to fix these issues I'll rent it again, but for now I'm done with it.

SoulCalibur IV First Impressions

I don' play a lot of fighting games because I'm not very good at them, but I did rent SoulCalibur IV. I played a lot of SoulCalibur on the Dreamcast back in the day, and I could not pass up the chance to play Yoda. I had a firend over and we played for a few hours against each other. We tried all the characters you start with, and we both agreed that all the characters we remembered play pretty much like we thought they would. Overall, we had a lot of fun playing each other. I will say it is hard to fight against Yoda because he can't be thrown and high attacks go over his head. After we had played for a while we checked out the option to create a character. I think the create a character option is going to be what makes me love this game because I can create a player that fits my play style perfectly. I spent about 5 minutes just throwing a guy together and I was already dominating with him. With more time I cold have made him even more perfect. I'm planning on playing some more tomorrow and this weekend to see if I can get everyone unlocked and figure out some of the cooler combos/moves. Once I spend more time with it I'll get a better review together.

Supreme Commander First Impressions

I started playing Supreme Commander this weekend. It is a very traditional RTS with a lot of micro-management. I am enjoying it for the most part, but it is quirky about saving. I started playing the campaign and found that the missions are very long. Like between 1 and 2 hours per mission. I don't mind this, but it would be cool if there was an option to speed up time when you're waiting for things to build and then slow it back down when you are ready to attack. The controls work well for a RTS on a console. They give you access to everything without going through a lot of levels of menus.

My big complaint is that the game has a tenancy to freeze/crash when it saves at the end of a mission. It has done that to me twice. I looked around xbox forums and it seems it is pretty common occurrence with this game. I get around it by saving right before I finish a level so that if it does freeze I can just load it back up and try again. It seems to be about a 50/50 shot on if it will freeze or not. It is bordering on making me send the game back to GameFly, but I have not even tried the other races yet and I'd really like to. Additionally the camera has a tendency to stop moving for a few seconds when a lot is going on. Everything continues, but the camera will not move for you. It is like the game can't keep up with everything in has to control so it pauses the camera while it catches up. With hundreds of units/buildings on the map I can see where that would be an issue, but I with they had worked that kind of thing out.

I'm planning to play some more and if I finish the game it will be a while until I get a full review because it is so long. However, if I get mad and send it back I'll get a review up sooner.

Guitar Hero: Aerosmith Review

I finished Guitar Hero: Aerosmith this weekend. I ended it like I started, annoyed. The game only has 42 songs on it including all the unlockable ones. Maybe it was just me but they did not seem to properly progress in difficulty. Some songs in the last couple tiers were very easy, but others were almost impossible for me. It seems like though have spent a little more time on putting the songs in a better order so they progressively getting more challenging.

The songs also feel very different from the Rock Band tracks I'm use to. In Rock Band the harder songs feel like the developers want them to be challenging, but still possible. In Guitar Hero: Aerosmith the harder songs feel like the developers made them trying to make it so you will fail. They do chord combinations that just don't feel natural. They have HO/PO sections that are ridiculously long and hard to complete. I really think they want me smash my guitar in anger so I have to go buy a new one and they make a little more money.

The one good thing about the game is that the achievements are easy for a Guitar Hero game. In past games you had to get all songs with 5 starts on expert to get all the achievements. In Guitar Hero: Aerosmith the hardest cheevoz are for beating Expert and playing a song prefectly on at least Medium.

Unless you are a huge Aerosmith fan and have a lot of spare cash I'd not recommend this game. If you're really wanting to play it then rent it for a weekend. You should be able to get through all the songs in a weekend if you want to. And, since all the Aerosmith songs feel the same when you play them you'll get your fill after getting through the career mode.

I caved...

and signed up for twitter today. I checked it out and I can see using it with my friends. Feel free to follow me.

http://twitter.com/jigsawhc