Well, its Tuesday and you know what that means! This week I couldn't decide whether to review either Most Wanted or Halo Wars. So I decided to review Most Wanted now and wait next week for Halo Wars. Here's a review for one of my favorite racing games of all time, Need For Speed: Most Wanted.




The game:
Need For Speed: Most Wanted is a racing game developed by EA Black Box and published under EA and was released in November 2005 for the PS2, Xbox, Gamecube, PC, Xbox 360,PSP, and Nintendo DS. This was also one of the launch titles for the Xbox 360, making it the first Need For Speed game to be released for the 7th generation consoles.

The Story:

You arrive to the city of Rockport in your BMW M3 GTR. You go around racing a few people when you get the attention of Razor and the cop Sgt. Cross, the game’s antagonists. Razor vows to beat you in a race and take your car. Sgt. Cross vows to end all racing period in Rockport and that includes you. After a few races, you end up racing Razor. Halfway through the race your car breaks down and Mia, who’s your best friend in the game, calls you to warn you but its too late. You end up losing and Razor takes your car. Sgt. Cross finds out about the race and puts you in jail. You get out and now you have to work your way to the top of the Blacklist to take on Razor and get your car back.

The Blacklist is a list of the best 15 racers in Rockport. Throughout the whole game you have to work your way up the list and take on each racer at a time to get to Razor. In order to challenge a Blacklist racer, you have to complete a series of races and complete these things called “Milestones” also. Milestones are challenges involving the police like breaking through a certain amount of roadblocks in a pursuit or evading the police in a certain amount of time. When you complete a Milestone, you get Bounty. Bounty is something you get during police pursuits. The higher the Bounty you have, the easier it is to go up the Blacklist. Get busted during a pursuit, and you will lose all your Bounty and records you got during that pursuit. Milestones and Races will progressively get more difficult as you go up the Blacklist. 

Once you complete the Race, Milestone, and Bounty requirements to challenge a Blacklist racer, you can race them. The races are a 1v1 between you and them and the types of races depends on their preferred styles of races. They can be 2 Circuit races or 2 Sprint races… sometimes it’ll be a Drag race or Circuit race. Some of these guys are really easy but some of them are actually challenging and will require you to be on your a-game. When you beat a Blacklist member, you take their spot on the list and you can choose 2 unique performance, visual, or body parts unlocks for your car. If you don’t want those, you can also choose the mystery items. Those can be either bonus cash, get-out-of-jail free cards, or the pink-slip to the Blacklist member’s car you just beat. If you and end up with their car, you are extremely lucky. I always went for Vic’s Toyota Supra and Ming’s Lamborghini Gallardo because those car’s performance stats are ridiculous as they are already maxed-out.

I enjoyed this story because you really want to beat Razor. He’s a dick and throughout the game he’ll send you voice messages, talking all kinds of trash to you and the people that help you. Sgt. Cross as well does the same. He tries to get into your head and make you feel like you stand no chance. Other people like Mia will always send you voice messages, giving you info about the Blacklist members you’re challenging, info about the cops, info about Razor, and checking up on you to see how you’re doing.

Gameplay:
Gameplay in this game plays just like the previous Need For Speed games but has its own unique style to it, making it feel different than the rest without drifting away from the core gameplay.


- The game has 32 cars to race with. It offers the tuner cars from Need For Speed: Underground 2 and brings back the super cars from Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit 2, giving the players all sorts of car styles to choose from instead of just one style. You can even stick with the car you pick at the very beginning to the very end if you wanted to. Every single car can be customized to however you want.

- Car customization is back and when you compare it to Underground 2, the options they give you are extremely limited. They removed a lot of options from the previous game. For car body mods you can’t customize your exhaust, side-mirrors, and headlights/taillights. For car visuals they removed the option to have more than 1 vinyl on your car as well as painting individual sections of your car like the brake calipers, hood, engine, exhaust, and side mirrors. For car specialty mods they removed most of it like adding neon lights, car stereo, spinners, and door mods. Some of these weren’t necessary to have but they were cool to add on. I dunno, it was just something that bugged me about this game, how it has less customization options than the previous game.

- The police are back from the Hot Pursuit-era Need For Speed games except this time they are smarter, deadlier, aggressive, and engage you in large numbers. You can hear the police talk and how they plan to stop you. I really enjoyed this as it added a ton of realism to the game. There are 6 levels of police, or Heat levels as the game calls it. The longer the pursuit, the more Heat you’ll get on your car that you are driving.

These are the Heat levels:

Your Heat level is displayed as a Flame above your mini-map


Heat Level 1 is the default level and it is the easiest as it is just city patrols that will try to pull you over. There will only be a little amount of cop cars going after you and if you are in a fast car, you can easily get away from them.
 
Heat Level 2 is when they start to begin acting aggressive. This is the Heat level that the police will start to use roadblocks to stop you. The cars are still easy to avoid however.

Heat Level 3 is when things spice up even more. The police will start to use Pontiac GTOs for police cars in order to keep up with you. Since it’s a new car, the car is much faster, heavier, and stronger overall than Heat 1 and Heat 2’s. Roadblocks are more frequent also. The cops will also begin to use Police Rhinos(SUVs) on you. They will hit you head-on if you aren’t paying attention.

Heat Level 4 is even worse. The police will being to start using spike-strips just as much as roadblocks. The police helicopter will also make an appearance and will begin to chase you for a limited time. The Police Rhinos are stronger and they will start to be the vehicles used in roadblocks. Heat Level 4 will be difficult for a new-player.

Heat Level 5 is the most dangerous Heat level to have. The cops start using Corvettes to try to catch you at super-high speeds and are the toughest cop cars in the game and they will appear in large numbers, sometimes up to 40-50 cars. Spike-strips and roadblocks are even more frequent now. The helicopter will attempt to attack your car in open areas. Sgt. Cross will even make an appearance sometimes and gives out special orders to the police in order to stop you.

Heat Level 6 is the scariest level of police to have and you only acquire it once during the whole game and that’s in the ending. Police Rhinos engage you like normal cop cars, the police helicopter almost never goes away, and I swear you will see a roadblock or spike-strip every 10 seconds or so. Even if you only get this Heat level once, it was still almost impossible to get away from these guys.

- The way to get away from the police are Pursuit Breakers. Pursuit Breakers are scenery scattered around the world you can wreck into and the object you crash into will destroy any nearby police car for you. These are extremely helpful for you if you have a large amount of Bounty you want to keep. Once the cops lose sight of you, you enter a “Cooldown” mode. Once the Cooldown meter is full, you have successfully evaded the pursuit. You can also find a Hiding Spot to get the Cooldown meter to go faster.

- The race types in this game are what you expect in a NFS game. There’s Circuit, Sprint, Drag, and Lap Knockout. Two other game modes they added were Speedtrap and Tollbooth. Speedtrap is like Sprint but there are “speedtraps” around the track that record your speed when you drive past them. The speed adds up and the racer with the most speed recorded is the winner. Tollbooth is sorta like a Checkpoint-system race but instead of Checkpoints, you try to reach each tollbooth as fast as you can.

Extra Content:
There’s this game mode called Challenge Series and its around 70 or so random police pursuit challenges and tollbooth races. They get progressively more difficult as you do more. I never finished the Challenge Series. I got to 60 I think and that’s where I drew the line because the challenge that I had to do was extremely difficult. If you beat Challenge Series, you unlock some bonus cars for you to use.

For the single-player there’s a thing called a Rap Sheet. You can look at all of your police chase records there as well as the other Blacklist member’s records. There’s even a Rankings leaderboard for All-Time and Single Pursuit records. I got number 1 in both lists for every category.

Here’s my best pursuit records:



Graphics:

The graphics in this game were phenomenal for its time. It looks miles-ahead better than the previous game Underground 2 and looked better  than other games in its time. The car textures were so beautifully made and everything else in the game looks great. I think it’s the best looking game on the old Xbox and PS2 by far. Even though its heavily outdated by today’s standards, they did a great job at making the game look really realistic back in 2005.

Soundtrack:
The soundtrack is amazing. Need For Speed games from 2001-2005 were known for having exceptional soundtracks to listen to while gaming. The soundtrack goes well with the theme of the game. Go ahead and give them a listen if you'd like. This game introduced me to bands like Disturbed and Avenged Sevenfold when I was younger.

Now this is racing music:

They even made a OST separately for police chases and it fits the mood just perfect:

Final Verdict:
To most fans of the Need For Speed series, this was the last good NFS game. After this game, the series went downhill super-fast. After Most Wanted was when the NFS franchise started to become obsolete and not enjoyable anymore. I agree with them because in my opinion, this was the last good NFS game. I don’t know what happened to this series… I’m still shocked that the series is still going somehow.

I give Need For Speed: Most Wanted an 8.5/10. It’s a fun game with a great single-player, the police make the game more challenging, and overall its just a great driving experience. This game as well as Hot Pursuit 2 and Underground 2 are my favorite racing games of all time.

Oh hell yeah, I can't wait for this.

HOW THE HELL DOES HE DO IT??!!

I took my dog outside so he can take a shit and piss everywhere.

While I was outside there was a guy down the street, standing in front of a house. He didn't move at all.

I looked over to him a couple times but I couldn't tell if he was looking back.

What do?

Hello everybody! For today's review I decided to keep it a little modern this time around. The game I will be reviewing today is Injustice: Gods Among Us.



The game:
Injustice: Gods Among Us is a fighting game created by Netherrealm Studios and was published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment in April 2013 for the PS3, Xbox 360, PC, Wii U, and PC. The game would later get a ported over to the PS4 in November 2013. The game is based upon the fictional universe of DC comics.

The Story:

In an alternate reality, Superman gets tricked by the Joker into destroying Metropolis and killing Lois Lane and Superman’s unborn son. Superman finally snaps and kills the Joker. This makes Superman form the Regime and declare a new world order. Some of the superheroes and villains are forced to side with Superman and some, like Batman, don’t like the whole Regime idea. Batman forms the Insurgency and their plan is to stop the Regime Superman from taking over their universe and our universe. Batman, with the help of the Justice League from the “good” reality, vow to stop the evil Regime Superman from taking over both realities.

The story is separated into chapters. There are 12 chapters total and you will switch from various characters to play as such as Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, and Deathstroke. Some characters you will play more than once in different chapters, like Batman. You will play as him the most in the story. What I liked about this story was how it was basically felt like an episode/movie of the TV show, Justice League. I love that show and I recommend it to everyone. What I didn’t like about the single player was how short it was. You can literally beat the single-player in just a few hours if you wanted to. And the story is okay at best, but its something you will forget about over time. The story in this game is something you play through once and don’t go back to it.

One thing they added in the story were these little quick-time event mini-games that you will go through every once in a while. For example, when you’re playing as Green Arrow, Solomon Grundy is coming towards you and the camera switches to a first-person mode and you shoot him and the objects he throws at you with arrows. That was the best one because that was the only mini-game that didn’t have quick-time events as you actually had to be fast and aim correctly. The stupidest one was when you’re playing as the good Superman and you blast like 30 cars that Black Adam is throwing at you. He’s grabbing them off the highway, with people inside by the way, and you’re blasting through them with your Heat Vision murdering everybody inside the vehicles. You’re the good Superman… killing innocent people… just to get to Black Adam.

The game ends hinting at a sequel but I don’t know if that is going to happen anytime soon. Netherrealm is currently making Mortal Kombat X and will most likely stick with that since Mortal Kombat is their main game. If there were to be an Injustice 2, it may not come out for a while.

Gameplay:
Before you say “Oh its just a MK vs. DC/MK9 reskin” I can tell you that thankfully it is not. It has similarities but they are not the same game.

These are the heroes and villains you get to play as in the game:

Heroes
1. The Flash
2. Nightwing
3. Batman
4. Cyborg
5. Green Arrow
6. Superman
7. Raven
8. Wonder Woman
9. Aquaman
10. Hawkgirl
11. Green Lantern
12. Shazam
13. Batgirl
14. Martian Manhunter
15. Zatanna

Villains
1. The Joker
2. Harley Quinn
3. Solomon Grundy
4. Lex Luthor
5. Catwoman
6. Deathstroke
7. Ares
8. Killer Frost
9. Doomsday
10. Sinestro
11. Black Adam
12. Bane
13. Lobo
14. General Zod
15. Scorpion

Keep in mind that Batgirl, Zatanna, Martian Manhunter, Scorpion, Lobo, and General Zod are DLC characters.

You also get to see cameos of other DC characters in the backgrounds of the maps like Scarecrow, Killer Croc, The Riddler, Captain Atom, and Gorilla Grodd.




- Every character has their own unique character power that they can use during a fight to help them gain an edge over their opponent. For example, Superman gains a damage boost and a armor boost for a short time. Batman can call mechanical bats to fly by his side and send them to attack his opponent. After you use your power, you will have to wait a short time before you can use it again.

- The game has interactive maps as it has Stage Transitions. If you get your opponent next to the edge of the map and hit them with a heavy attack, you activate the Stage Transition and send them flying through all types of danger taking a huge chunk of their health away. Every character can do this. Even sweet, little Harley Quinn can send a behemoth like Doomsday through one of these Stage Transitions.

This is what a Stage Transition looks like:

- There are also interactive objects in the stages as well. If your character has super-strength, you can pick up objects like barrels/rocks/cars/etc. and throw them at your opponent. Characters that don’t have super-strength like the Joker use gadgets on these objects. The Joker can plant bombs on these objects and the shrapnel from the explosions can hit your opponent. I liked this as it keeps the game balanced whether your character has super-strength or not.

- You and your opponent have 2 health bars. Its not like Mortal Kombat how after each round your health resets back to full. You have to be more conservative in this game about your health.

- Once you get to your second health bar, you can initiate this thing called a Clash. Both characters share some words and then they charge at each other. If you start and win a Clash, you do extra damage to your opponent. If you didn’t start a Clash and win, you gain some health back. The way to win a Clash is to bet your Super Meter. The larger the amount you bet before a Clash, the better your chances are of winning it. If nobody has enough power in the Super Meter to bet in the Clash, it will end up in a tie and nothing happens.

Here's a video on how the Clash system works

- Every character has a Super Meter and Super Power. You raise your Super Meter by getting hit/ doing combos/blocking/etc. When your Super Meter is full you can pull off your character’s Super Power and have a chance to do some insane damage to your opponent if you can land it. I just wish that every character had more than just one Super Power however. It would have been so cool to see at least 3 for each.

Here is a video of every character's Super Power

- If you forget how to do a combo or special attack, you can tag them in the Moves list and they will appear on-screen for you during gameplay. Saves you the trouble from constantly pausing the game to go to the Moves list.

Graphics:
The game’s graphics are exceptionally well done. The backgrounds look beautiful and character models are pretty neat. If I have one complaint about this game, its that why are most of the female characters so ugly? I mean, you look at Wonder Woman and she has the face of a man. Raven’s face is even worse! Zatanna looks okay but not that great. Killer Frost is alright but could be better. I would say that Hawkgirl looks the best, mainly because of her body but she always has her helmet on. Catwoman in her Arkham City skin I would say is the best looking female character in the game.

I mean... just look at Raven. She's so god damn ugly. Can we trade this Raven for the Teen Titans Raven? Please?


Soundtrack:
There’s not much to say about the soundtrack. You will mainly hear only one song and that’s the main theme. There’s music that plays in the stages but you will barely hear the music with all the chaos that’s happening.

This is the main them if you want to give it a listen:

Extra Content:

This game offers its fair share of content to unlock. The way you unlock things depends on how you play or Cards you achieve when you rank up.

- You have a Title/Emblem that you can set similar to how CoD does it. If you go to the Bonus Features in the main menu, you can set it there. The way you unlock titles and emblems depends on how well you play the game. For example, if you win 10 matches with any character you unlock their logo to use for an emblem.

- You gain EXP for winning, doing combos, Super Moves, Stage Transitions, etc. and you rank up. The highest I got to was Level 55 I think. I don’t know how much Levels there are but there is an achievement to get to Level 100. The more you rank up, the more Cards you get to have to unlock stuff in the Hall of Justice.

- Speaking of the Hall of Justice, that’s where you go to unlock things like Skins, Concept Art, Music, Double XP time, and Stage Interactions. There’s also Character Bios of every single character that you can read. You can also look at their Endings when you beat Classic Ladder and look at their character models there. I just wish there were Skins from the Justice League TV show. That would have been cool.

- There is a gamemode called S.T.A.R. Labs which are basically minigames for every character to do. There’s sooo much challenges to do in that game mode. Some of them are really unique and fun, like there’s one where you get to play as Catwoman’s cat Isis and you have to jump over infrared lasers and evade security. I haven’t played all of them yet but they are fun. If you can manage to get 3 stars in all of the challenges then you are a god.

- The only way to unlock a character’s ending is to beat Classic Ladder on Normal or higher. It’s the same as Mortal Kombat’s ladder where you beat 9 fighters then take on Shao Kahn. Here it’s the same except you fight Regime Superman and he has double health and double damage. Beat him and you unlock your character’s ending. Some of the Endings are pretty lame but some are cool. I would say though that Harley Quinn’s ending was totally unexpected like wow, I can’t believe she would do that.

- Online Multiplayer is pretty cool. They brought back King of the Hill from MK9 for this game and it plays pretty much the same. There are also daily challenges that you can do to get bonus exp. Other than that the multiplayer is pretty solid and almost never lags.

Final Verdict:
This game is so much better than MK vs DC but is it better than MK9? Not really. There are still some issues with this game that the developers missed. For instance, there’s no Tag Team mode. That was one of the best features added to MK9 because you can play with a friend co-op and go up the Ladder. That is something that should have been in Injustice because you can have the Justice League vs Lex Luthor and his gang or something like that.

I give Injustice: Gods Among Us an 8/10. It’s a solid fighting game and if you are a fan of DC you will love the game.

I would have given the game a higher score if it had Tag Team.

I live about an hour and a half away from the coast. I'll go there with family every once in a while.

I love going there because of the weather.

This is a battle I've always wanted to see due to how similar they both are.

I think the Protoss Zealot would win due to his superior plasma shields, armor, and speed but I think the Elite could put up a decent fight because the Energy Sword is a deadly weapon.



Who do you think will win?

T4R

Rambo: The Video Game is a arcade rail-shooter that you can beat in 2 hours with PS2 graphics.

Ride to Hell is a game considered to be one of the worst games ever created because its just... ugh

*proceeds to get knocked out by Count Dooku*

How awesome would it be if we get a video game live-action movie(That's actually good) with all of these characters in it?

Problem temporarily solved

Its working now

So I've always heard rumors of this map being haunted so I decided to check it out.

I'm playing on the map right now and the rumors are right.

You can hear voices of men repeating the same thing in an unknown language, a woman gasping for breath, footsteps, and a couple women crying all throughout the inside of the level. This is kinda creepy and cool at the same time since I've never heard this before in this level.

I'm so excited for this game now!!

I'm so happy they brought back the Heroes and Villains for Mos Eisley. That was my favorite mode to play on Battlefront 2.