Xbox 360 | Jordan Hatch's Blog

Posts Tagged ‘xbox 360’

Posted on November 2, 2008 - by Jordan H

Far Cry 2

Well, it’s been a great week off for me, and what better way to end it than to get a fantastic new game! As usual, here’s a review…

Far Cry 2 is a game set in a fictional un-named African country, with a stunning varied landscape and a storyline which can go in many different ways. It comes from Ubisoft Montreal, the same guys who brought us Assassins Creed and Rainbow Six, both great games in their own right.

The open world is truly endless, original and varied. I’ve been through savannah, jungle and a whole lot more and that’s just the beginning. The realism of the game is much more than any other. For example, if you pick up an old gun off the floor and use it a lot, it’ll get jammed. You can unjam it and continue using it. However if you keep using it, you risk it blowing up in your hands.

You can also set off forest fires, which is pretty funny. Blow up a car, use a flamethrower or throw a molotov into trees and before long you’ll have a fire burning, and spreading rapidly too! (more…)

Posted on October 25, 2008 - by Jordan H

Xbox and Rails

Last night, I met up with Josh, Joseph, Mike, Francis and Sam and we had a great time playing Halo 3 together. Francis’ lack of experience was extremely funny - he only ended up killing people on his team - and we all had some Ice Tea. Considering I haven’t played Halo compulsively - in the time since I got my Xbox I’ve mainly played GTA IV and Battlefield: Bad Company - I did quite well. Our team won a lot of times and I got to the top of the scoreboard once.

Last night, I decided to get round to learning some Ruby on Rails. It’s been something I’ve planned for ages, and since I’ve got a week off now I thought I’d see about learning it. I got InstantRails and installed it on my computer and followed a myriad of tutorials to get “Hello, World!” up on my screen. Gonna see if I can make an app by the end of the week, so far I’ve got about 5 different “Test” apps with no apparrent way to delete them. Help? (:

Posted on October 5, 2008 - by Jordan H

Burnout Bikes!

Well, I promised I’d give a review on the latest and greatest in Paradise City, and here it is (:

Burnout Paradise has been a totally awesome game from the start. I’m an avid fan, I bought it on day one and I’ve loved every bit of it. I’ve already given a review of the game a few months back, but that was before Criterion announced the Year of Paradise, where they dedicated a year to transforming Paradise City through free updates.

They released updates Bogart and Cagney a while back, and about a week or so ago they released Davis, the most recent free update for Burnout which included bikes! And they sure haven’t disappointed. (more…)

Posted on October 4, 2008 - by Jordan H

New Xbox Stuff

On the Gamerscore Blog, the Xbox team have revealed the new look Game Store as part of the New Xbox Experience. Looks pretty cool! (more…)

Posted on September 27, 2008 - by Jordan H

Television

I’ve been waiting ages to get a High-Definition Television, and yesterday the wait was worth it! I went to Tesco and eventually decided on buying an LG 32in Television (32LG3000). I got it home, set it up in my room and I was stunned by the awesomeness of HD!

The picture quality is really good. It’s not 1080p, but it has a sharp, stunning picture and a 15000:1 contrast ratio. It’s got a brilliant backlight and the screen seems huge in my room!

I’ve got my Xbox 360 and my PS3 hooked up to it now, and I’m on my second attempt of downloading the new Burnout Paradise updates for PS3. I’ll be reviewing those later!

Posted on July 25, 2008 - by Jordan H

Two Months Later

So, it’s exactly two months tomorrow since I bought my Xbox 360, and contrary to Hilly Billy’s statements, I’ve had a great time with the Xbox 360 and never looked back. So far I’ve got GTA IV (story completed, working on 100%), Halo 3 (working on that one) and Battlefield: Bad Company (someway through story, playing multiplayer loads though).

Talking to PS3 owners, they’re still having awful problems getting online in a lot of games. Notably, the other day PS3 released (and re-released) their 2.4 firmware update and 2 years of work didn’t really show. In my opinion, the in-game XMB wasn’t well thought through - people don’t want to view their photos whilst playing a game, they just want to send their messages! Still no game invites on the PS3 either.

Now - back to Xbox. Microsoft have announced some HUGE changes to the Xbox interface and I think they look pretty cool. Yeah, maybe they copied off Nintendo a bit in the avatar design, but it’s still gonna be great to play for real prizes in 1vs100 and have eight-player parties before going into games.

I did play my PS3 today though, only for Burnout Paradise since I haven’t got that for Xbox 360 yet. Criterion have just released their Cagney update and I tried out lots of new features. It did take a few hours to download though.

Now, I’m going to sit here and wait until Hilly Billy leaves a comment, which I guess won’t be long

>Jordan

Posted on July 1, 2008 - by Jordan H

Battlefield: Bad Company

This game is absolutely amazing. I’ve not put another disc in my Xbox 360 since I bought it on Friday. It’s very fun to play, and it’s got a great story too.

You play as Preston Marlowe, a soldier in the US Army. He’s put in Bad Company, the unit of the army where all the idiots are put, “so they can put all their bad eggs in one basket”. They’re used when the privates and corporals are too expensive to waste. As you can probably expect, the result is very funny.

The story follows the unit as they discover Mercenaries and their greed for gold ensues. Bad Company ends up invading a neutral country and causing major chaos as they attempt to steal the Mercenaries’ gold. Great gameplay, not extremely hard but very fun to play.

And then there’s the online multiplayer. This takes the game to a completely new level. Almost (90%) fully-destructable environments can turn strategies on their head, nothing says chaos like being in a building one second, then being fully exposed to the enemies the next after someone blows the whole wall apart in front of you! The main game mode is Gold Rush, where you are either an Attacker or a Defender. The attackers need to blow up the metal cases where the gold is stored to steal it, and the defenders have to stop them. The attackers have limited respawns, and the defenders have unlimited. Think of it as CoD4‘’s Search And Destroy mode, but on a bigger scale and more destructive!

This game is fantastic, and one of the best I’ve ever played. The destruction factor adds a whole new dimension to the gameplay, and underneath it all is an amazing game engine. It’s called Frostbite and was developed by DICE. Bad Company is the first game that utilises it.

If you’re looking to get an awesome game this summer, this is the one to buy! You’ll have hours of fun playing the single player and then double the fun playing online. I thought it was impossible, but this game beats Call of Duty in all areas!

Let me know what you think!