#xbox 360

This Tuesday morning the Xbox One was announced as the next-generation console from Microsoft during an event with much fanfare. When I say fanfare I mean literally as the announcement was held in a gigantic black tent on the grounds at the Microsoft compound in Redmond. Eager journalists, and by proxy the entire Internet, got a firsthand look at the sharp shiny console after an energetic press conference that touted a bunch of new features. Compared to the Xbox 360 the Xbox One is a huge step forward and has enough power to guide it solidly through the next generation.

Video games from movies are typically awful pieces of meta content designed to squeeze a few extra dollars out of an unsuspecting audience. But just uttering that sentence is now weird to me  as the games development industry has continually proven to be a risky business filled with exploding budgets and sales shortfalls. When it comes to movies I'm not usually this pessimistic but I've sat through enough of these horrible abominations that I'm starting to think someone owes me something entertaining for ponying up $60 every time.

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon is a sexist neon monstrosity with sensibilities set firmly in the 1980's and that's fine by me. This first person shooter acts as a standalone expansion to Far Cry 3 and takes place in the alternate "future" of 2007. You play as Sergeant Rex Power Colt a cybernetic soldier working for the US Army. Nuclear war has broken out between the Soviet Union and The United States and Rex has been shipped out to a remote island in the Pacific to investigate the existence of an advanced bio weapon that could be used end the war. Your buddy Spider, another cybernetically modified soldier, has come along to watch your back on what is going to be a deadly mission.

In order to follow the Defiance science fiction series on television or play its video game companion, a persistent multiplayer role-playing title, you have to understand a few things. Probably the most important fact is that by the time you join the story many significant events have already come to pass. The Earth we know now has completely changed. In Defiance's timeline the year 2013 marks the arrival of the Voltans and their many giant Ark ships. The ships acted as multi-species lifeboats for the aliens from the dying Voltanis star system. 5000 years ago their binary star pair started to destabilize, an event that would force the exodus of every sentient race within the solar system.

Gears of War has been the fallback epic for Xbox gamers for some time now. Admittedly when you ask someone what game most reminds them of the Microsoft console what do they say? 8 times out of 10 you'll hear "Halo" but for a good number of fans Gears of War is their goto series. There's a simple reason GoW is as popular as it is and that's its ensemble cast of action hero characters. Gears of War: Judgement takes place in the months following the end of the Pendulum Wars and Emergence Day. During the Pendulum Wars COG soldiers were actively engaged in a fight against soldiers of the UIR. The COG came out victorious after nearly 8 decades of battle but humanity was ill-prepared for the rise of the Locusts on Emergence Day.

Issac Clark is the space-traveling and necromorph-killing equivalent to Die Hard's John McClane. Issac always manages to find trouble, and even when put through trials that no normal human could endure he manages to come out alive - if a little worse for wear. Dead Space's hero has been beaten, crushed, impaled, decompressed, frozen, melted and now utterly obliterated in his quest to solve the mystery of the alien Markers. Entire worlds have disappeared and thousands upon thousands have suffered from the effects of the alien monoliths. Of those involved though none has been more troubled or done more to secure the fate of our galaxy than Issac Clark.

Halo 4 is the highly anticipated baby of 343 Industries and their first foray into a world that has been popularized as the penultimate offering from Microsoft on their gaming consoles. Taking over where Bungie left the series after almost 10 years of development is a tough task. 343 has been internally involved since the beginning of the franchise but nonetheless has big shoes to fill. Instead of merely fulfilling this goal they have succeeded in building a new and unique chapter for Master Chief and Cortana that brings emotion, story and character to previously unreached levels of perfection.

Pinball holds a special place in my geek-gland because as someone who grew up during the 80’s in suburban California I got to experience the tail-end of the arcade era. It is sad but now the mechanical and solid-state wonders that preceded the home entertainment revolution are slowly fading into obscurity. While I can still close my eyes and remember the sights and sounds of the Predator or Indiana Jones pinball tables there are few, if any, places that I can go to play these once again.

If you owned a Dreamcast then you undoubtedly know what Jet Set Radio is. Gameplay in both JSR & JSRF was unique as it had players skating around a city re-tagging graffiti with beautiful artwork and giving the authorities the slip. The game’s visuals and catchy (sometimes annoying) soundtrack earned it a place in many player's hearts as a long-time favorite. Since it debuted talk would surface every year of a remake or a sequel possibly over XBLA or another digital download service.

“Tell me now, and walk the line, and understand, what makes a good man?” The launch trailer for Sleeping Dogs has landed and it begs the question: What makes a good man? Well aside from judging what kind of man Wei Shen is, the trailer treats us to an amalgamation of all of the best stuff from the game. I’ve had a few terse hours with the title plugged into my Xbox and can say with all certitude that it is an epic cop drama that gives GTA a “run” for its money. Then when the running’s done there’s a car chase, followed by a boat fueled shootout and a night-club massacre.