R6V: Looking Good

With the wonder of the Xbox Vision web cam, you can plaster your face (and your brothers) on the special ops team in Rainbow Six Vegas, and play through the story in co-operative mode. Top dollar! Something about seeing yourself and your bro work your way through the terrorist infested building.

Flae

A Fae Illusionist with a dark heart, but a good soul.

Gears of War

Well I completed GoW co-op with my brother, on Hardcore. And blow me, I loved every single minute of it. After laying down the main man at the end, I wanted more. I've heard people saying its nothing special, but playing it through even on the single player campaign (which I did initially on Casual mode) I thought it was exciting stuff. Well put together. The action is sweet. Heightened on co-op mode. And the multiplayer mode takes frantic close combat to another level. One which promotes active teamplay, covering each others back, helping downed team players back up again. Games like Battlefield 2 and COD2/3 to some extent allow players to glory in the solo play, medics get little time to perform support duties. Your team mates are usually respawned and off to get a bigger gun(tm) before any of the subtleties of team play can kick in. GoW is down to wire and dirty. But with the help of another you can make it work. The cover mechanism can be a bit fiddly at first, but after a few levels, you get confident with it, and it does become second nature. The concept of the perfect reload, adds to the game immensley. Now even emptying a few rounds to reload and hit the sweet spot in the heat of a firefight becomes all the more important. The finishing moves, whether chainblade or kerb kick are well executed and crucial in some of the multiplayer modes. Put em down and keep em down. The Kryll light and dark concept is fantastic, fancy that, an insta-death mechanic that works to enhance the game and tension and doesn't really soak it in frustration! The beserkers, oh the beserkers...

I have to say I bought into the Halo franchise big style, and it was what tipped me over the edge into the Xbox world. I can safely say, GoW is my next Halo, and I've already bought into their world now. Bring on GoW2 and 3! This game makes you bat shit crazy! Onto Insane co-op now.

Fastcrawl

http://www.pawleyscape.com/fastcrawl/

I was impressed with this beauty, I had to buy a copy. It's great for a quick play, and although it doesn't actually allow you to specify the characters in the party, it rolls up a random bunch and a random dungeon romp, usually with a quest of killing some boss, somewhere deep in the dungeon. You can customise the length of adventure, so a short one has about 3 levels in the dungeon and takes about 20-30 minutes. You can also customise the difficulty which may affect the time your romp takes. Although its a simplification of party based fantasy combat, it really works with just the right amount of complexity to keep it interesting. It's very good for explaining party mechanics to enthusiastic children. Position affects Melee/Ranged combat, there are cold and heat resistances, additional damage, duel wielding, and even a barebones skill tree to climb, each level you go down in the dungeon. Obviously this doesn't make much of a difference in a 3 level dungeon, but it can start to examplify character skill specialisation in deeper dungeons, where your two clerics are differentiating into a spell based damager and a party healer. The loot that drops is sufficiently tweaked with pros and cons to make judgement calls on its use become a key part to winning battles. Plus theres a resource management game in that you use supplies to take each move as well as a quota of supplies to rest fully and heal and mana up. There are out of combat potions that can be used (no in-combat ones, sadly), as well as scrolls of various kinds, including resurrection which becomes important if you havent got a cleric, or haven't specced him with the resurrection skill yet. Although there is no in-combat resurrection.

I guess the fun of the game comes from having to deal with whatever party makeup you are given at the start of the game, and then customising them, and playing them out in the combat well enough to win the game. It probably won't be a viscious challenge for your average RPG'er, but I've heard the road ahead is tough if you stick it on insane mode. Future enhancements planned are having storied dungeon quests, perhaps a dungeon editor for submitted content, and the ability to generate your own characters. All of which will make this pleasant quickie crawler much more sophisticate, but won't take away its 'quickie' charm. Although there is no save game as such, if you do have to quit out of a game, the state is saved until you continue next time. Theres no library of saves to go back to, but there is an ability to continue with your current foray.

I like these abstract concoctions where quite complicated gameplay can be made accessible and addictive. More like this please..

Sabian Mortis

An evil Teir'Dal Necromancer.

Call of Duty 3

I finished COD3 single player campaign last night. And I must say I've thoroughly enjoyed it. There have been one or two bugs that give me a dry slap (sticking in scenery mainly), not to mention its hung the 360 about 5 times in the whole run through. So I was very careful to save the last checkpoint. Overall though, I'd rate it better than COD2 in terms of throwing you into a combat situation. The set pieces were sometimes a little cheesey - the unarmed combat didn't really play heavy in the game at all, apart from the scripted encounters. I liked the mortar, artillery and flak cannon stuff. The tank pieces were well done, not as exhiliarating as the COD2 desert romp, but taking a Sherman through normandy town streets and having to battle in close quarters was groovey. The guns seemed much better overall, more realistic, better feel to their handling. The rifles especially had me excited, accurate, but slow bolt loading. Smoke was essential in this campaign, or at least I thought it was. My brother claims he never uses it. But its saved my bacon a few times, whiting out MG's and tanks line of sight. The characters were much more believable than before- still a little stereotyped - but you found yourself getting quite attached to some of them. Looks great. I'd love to see it play on a HD setup. Multiplayer does the Battlefield style thing really well, although I'm not totally familiar with all the modes yet. Thumbs up from Bowesy. Now we can look forward to MOH:Airborne and Brothers in Arms 3.

Gore Bloodfeud

Warforged Blademaster.

Jellied flesh and broken bone slip and slide off the Adamantine plated thick set body. A constant flow of blood seemed to trickle across the surface making the contstruct glisten and shimmer in the twilight. Assembled and given life in the great Forge of House Cannith, this Fleshcleaver was birthed through magics thought impossible, its sole purpose to dismember fleshed opponents. Many Warforged were created as generic battle machines, kitted out with all manner of combat accessories to enable them to face other similarly equipped 'forged. However, behind all battle hardened 'forged troops were soft fleshed Masters conjuring their orders of war. Gore was assembled to strike hard at these fleshed leaders. His Adamantine plates could pierce and shred flesh even without the bladed weapons of Valenar blood steel they were adorned with. His body coloured with scarlet to ensure maximum fear in his enemy. Blood would run constantly over his thick skin. The warband Gore was assigned to, became known as the Strikeforge, a collection of fleshcleavers designed to act as strike troops in battle, dropped in behind enemy lines and afforded the purpose of stripping flesh from bone, spilling blood and cleaving the minds of the fleshed ones who control the 'forged armies. Taking out the Masters slowed the advancement of the conjured troops. Each warband would be assigned a single master, one who would remotely control their position and combat goals. Always fine tuning the strike, adjusting the kills. After the demise of Cyre towards the end of the Last War, Strikeforge found itself decommissioned.

Fleshcleavers were deemed far too dangerous to be allowed into normal circulation. Many were dismantled. Some without the tight control of a Master were found to have turned renegade, following other less controlled Masters, even following other rogue 'forged units as if they were fleshed leaders. Gore was lucky, he was traded to a small outpost requiring his strength primarily as a work unit. The Master he was assigned to, didn't care of his blood soaked past, he was only concerned about how much lumber he could chop or stone he could split in a days work. Culling trees or stone did little for the Fleshcleavers state of mind. Battle tremours would take over him, and he would decimate houses and vehicles sub conciously. The tremours grew more feirce and darker, uncontrollable, his basic instinct, to cleave flesh, had come back to haunt him. A dark day indeed came about as Gore surfaced from a tremour having slain six fleshed workers. Blood trickled past his eyes as he realised what he'd done.

Immediate deactivation was demanded. As they assembled around him to dismember his body and unhook his mind with dispelling magics. Something inside him engaged. His inner core split slighty. The tremours that took six lives had only been a taste of what power could be unleashed with a Fleshcleaver unhinged. Gore collapsed in a pool of blood. He rested. The bodies would noticed with the coming daylight. The blood would run into the water supplies and give away his position. He would require a new Master. Someone who could command the Fleshcleaver mind. Someone who could contain a killing machine that walked a fine line between dutiful service and tremour induced chaos. Gore would search out such a Master. Eternally.