Blog ala Vidar

As some of you might already know, I’ve become a gamer lately. I’ve never been a big fan of games (normally playing a couple of hours, and then no gaming for several months). This changed when I bought my Xbox 360. I had a PlayStation 3, but for some reason I didn’t get hooked on this. I was hooked on TrackMania for a while, but got tired of sitting in front of the PC ALL THE TIME. So, now I’m sitting in front of my TV ALL THE TIME 🙂 I thought I’d share my experiences with you, so you know which games to buy when you buy your Xbox!

First off, to play any game online (XBL) you need an Xbox Live Gold subscription. This is about 500 NOK a year (about 80$). Compared to PlayStation this is expensive, since PlayStation is free, but you’ll get a lot of extra stuff like videos, demos, beta-releases, expansion packs etc. You can also buy “Microsoft Points” which enables you to buy games on demand and other stuff. This is of course optional! You also create your Avatar, which is used in some games, to show off your cool sunglasses or similar. Add me to your friend’s list, and I’ll kick your ass in any game! 🙂 My Gamer tag is PolarSirNordnes.

Assassin’s Creed 2
Third person action/adventure game. The story is set in 2012 where you play a guy called Desmond Miles. Desmond enters a device which enables him to get memories from a guy called Ezio Auditore da Firenze, who lived in Italy around 1500. Early in the game Ezio’s father and two brothers gets hanged and your mission is to revenge these deaths. You become an “Assassin”, which is the opposite of the Knights Templar in the Da Vinci Code. You learn to assassinate people using knives, swords and many other weapons. This is a great game, although it’s single player only. It’s got great graphics and a very good story including persons like Leonardo Da Vinci.

Conclusion: Best single-player game made so far!

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
This is THE game. Nothing beats this in my lifetime. I’m 100% sure. This is a game containing three game types. Special Ops, Campaign and Multiplayer.

In Special Ops you can either play alone, with a friend on split screen or online with a friend. There are 23 different missions, going from “sneak around, make sure no one sees you” to HEAVY fire. There’s also 3 levels on each mission: Regular, Hardened and Veteran. Me and a friend are almost finished with all the missions on Veteran. Believe me, that’s REALLY hard!

Campaign mode is single player only. Here you follow Sergeant Gary “Roach” Sanderson, Private First Class Joseph Allen and Private James Ramirez through different missions. Basically USA goes to war with Russia and you (as these three persons) need to help USA win this war. I’m not going to revile much, because you just have to play it! For the record, I’ve completed this on Veteran 🙂

Multiplayer enables you to play maps, not missions like the other two. This is basically the same as all the other FPS (First Person Shooter) games out there, except a couple of things. You start off as a Private (level 1) and work your way up to Commander (level 70). At the moment I’m Brigadier General I (level 55). You can see all the ranks here. To get rank up you need to complete challenges. These vary from blowing up a car to get 100 headshots with one weapon. The only thing I don’t like about this game is all the 10 year olds playing online yelling and being assholes. Therefore I’m glad you can mute people 🙂 This is awesome playing with your friends online, although I haven’t had the chance of doing this much since I don’t know that many people playing it online.

Conclusion: If you’re over 18, you HAVE to buy this game. Best multiplayer game EVAH

Fable 2
This is a sequel to the very popular action role-playing game “Fable” developed for the original Xbox. The story begins with you (Sparrow) and your sister (Rose) being two poor kids in a poor part of a town, struggling to get food for the next day. You manage to gather 5 gold coins to buy a music box which grants you a wish. The wish is to live in Castle Fairfax. When visiting the castle, the owner (Lord Lucien) kills your sister. After this you fast forward 10(?) years, and start tracking down this Lord Lucien to make your revenge on him. Not the best graphics, but the story makes up for it. In addition to the main story, they’ve built in several short “missions” where you have to save a town from weird creatures or similar. Pretty fun role-playing game. Btw, the sequel to this (Fable 3) is supposed to come in 3rd or 4th quarter of this year, so be prepared!

Forza Motorsport 3
For all the gearheads out there, this is THE game. It’s very similar to the Gran Turismo games, but with much better graphics. I don’t know what to write about this except if you’re a gearhead, this is a MUST HAVE.

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Halo 3 ODST
Halo is a series of FPS games developed by Bungie and published by Microsoft. You play a Spartan (the cool guy in the picture) where your goal is to shoot as much hostiles as possible. If you want to know more about the history read it for yourself. I started playing the campaign mode, but found it boring and wasn’t impressed with the graphics (after playing MW2). The multiplayer stuff was very cool though! I’ve played this a bit with Aleksander (in Omega’s Oslo office), and this is really worth recommending.