Andy Laub

Thus far, every post of mine regarding the Xbox 360 has been rather glowing, and for good reason: it deserves the credit. However, that doesn’t mean every piece of software that graces the CD tray or hard disk is worthy of the same praise; here’s a list from least to most offensive:

• F.E.A.R. is some kind of paranormal tactical first person shooter that just barely makes the list. Why? Because there is technically nothing wrong with the game and even the demo is scary (the whole point). Therein lies the problem; I have never been a fan of being terrified by my own media, which is why I tend to avoid scary movies as well. If you’ve played Half-Life, then you get a sense of the vibe, but imagine it much darker and with more blood. There is no doubt it’s a great game in and of itself, but not for me.
• Dead Rising involves zombies and is also rather scary. It inches ahead of F.E.A.R. because, for some inexplicable reason, I actually bought it and I still don’t know why. Probably because the demo, which I naively thought represented the overtone of the game, was fun and simple: kill zombies with TV’s; kill zombies with shovels; kill zombies with park benches; etc. Unfortunately they decided to go and put a story in it. And psychopaths. Great. And I haven’t gotten to the point where my character is strong enough to make it fun. And the save system is terrible.
  EDIT: I meant to mention this before, but forgot. I need to actually get myself to play the game some more to get myself leveled up, and then it will probably go a little more smoothly.
• Test Drive Unlimited is on here for wasting two hours of my life. Those familiar with the demo will realize I played it to the maximum time limit twice, which is indicative of how crack-like it is. I play and play, and all I can think is “I’m totally wasting my time on this,” a feeling reminiscent of Driv3r which (surprise) is from the same company (Atari).
• Uno: the computer freaking cheats.
• Sonic the Hedgehog, everybody’s best friend from Sega, will be arriving soon on the PS3 and Xbox 360. This doesn’t seem like bad news until you realize the last good Sonic game made for consoles was Sonic Adventure on the Dreamcast, and even that was debatable. That game was at least fun; the camera was decent and the movements were relatively predictable. It was easy enough to get through the first level or two without dying if you were familiar with 3D platformers. This new one though—and this seems to be a common issue—has been throwing a lot of people for a loop (and not in a good way). I used up my allotment of lives making it through the first section of the demo level, and then when I loaded it up again, I used them making it through the second section. After that I contemplated deleting it because let’s be honest, a Sonic game that you can’t just pick up and play is not worth playing at all.