Aaron Espinoza takes on the Ubisoft “Assassin’s Creed II”. Did the developers learn from the mistakes of the first Assassin’s Creed?

From Prince of Persia to Ghost Recon, Ubisoft has held a tight grip on their games. I absolutely love Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas 2 as well as Ghost Recon Advance Warfighter 2. In 2007, Ubisoft announced a new IP for the next generation of consoles titled Assassin’s Creed that played and looked very similar to their Prince of Persia franchise.

Unfortunately for Ubisoft, I found the game to be a disappointment due to it’s repetitive missions that got old after the first few times of play. Despite the repetition I still continued to play the game because of it’s intriguing storyline and how fun it was to control Altair through a religious city such as Jerusalem jumping from rooftop to rooftop. However, the game received high scores by various critics that, in my opinion, it did not deserve. Assassin’s Creed deserved an average of 7 out of 10.

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I am going to take a different route with this review because it seems that everybody and their Grandmother have reviewed this game. So this review will be short, sweet and to the point.

As you all know, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (or just Modern Warfare 2 depending on who you talk to) is the follow-up to Infinity Ward’s smash hit Call of Duty: Modern Warfare for the Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC. Modern Warfare 2 was pretty much the most anticipated game of 2009. All you have to do is look at the 24 hour sales for this game to see what I mean (something like 5 million+ sold in 24 hours).

What can I saw about this game? It is riveting; it is breathtaking at times, it is drop-dead gorgeous and easy on the eyes. Infinity Ward, love them or hate them, has pretty much made the perfect war-game.

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Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising tries to bring the gritty feel of war to the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.

The GCN staff are all trying to get over a really bad bug that seems to have infested our office. So I took this review off of Sean Foster’s hands and gave it a full test drive. Now I am the first to admit that I love first-person shooters. And it seems that most gamers are feeling that love these days due to the sales of games like Halo 3: ODST, Left 4 Dead, Battlefield: Bad Company and the Call of Duty series. I love war games. And it is funny because I am a peace-loving kind of bloke (most of the time anyways).

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Developer Nihilistic Software takes the nostalgia of 1970’s and 1980’s Italian zombie horror flicks and gives gamers one of the best old-school Arcade shooters since Smash TV.

Since the crew over at Nihilistic Software took the time to implement pretty much everything I love about classic zombie flicks from the 70’s and 80’s so I feel I need to take the time and not give you guys some half-ass review for Zombie Apocalypse. I have read a few of the early reviews and it always leaves me shaking my head in wonder as to what game these guys are playing when they sit down and bang out that review deadline. Are most gamers so blinded these days by shiny big games and 50-60 million dollar gaming budgets that they overlook gems that smaller developers make?

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The game that revolutionized first-person shooters makes a return on the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360.

Being the older 34 year old gamer that I am, one of the first “first-person shooters” that I ever played was Wolfenstein 3D on my old PC. I remember exactly how I got a copy of the game. I was living in Baltimore back in 1992 and knew a guy that would set up at the local flea market. He would sell PC games real cheap. This was before the days of Internet. He normally sold platform games like Duke Nukem and Duke Nukem II (before he was 3D) and one day he said “Hey kid, you need to check this game out. This game is in 3D!”

This dude showed me a gray game disk with the name “Wolfenstein 3D” across the label.Needless to say I was blown away by the game. Back in 1992 it looked amazing and it played amazing. It does not hurt that you can go around blowing the hell out of Nazi’s and Nazi dogs.

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Gaming in the Wild West has never been this much fun…

I happen to be one of the few out there that absolutely loved the original Call of Juarez. Sure it had it’s share of problems, but the game reminded me of a “Oblivion-type game set in the Wild West”.

I am also a fan of the old spaghetti western movies. One of my favorite movies is called “Four of the Apocalypse” from the late, great horror maestro Lucio Fulci. I also love the old Italian-made Sergio Leoni/Clint Eastwood flick, from “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly” to “For A Few Dollars More”. I still think those scrubs in Hollywood can’t touch those classics no matter how hard they try.

I also think the western genre is very scare in the videogame world. We have had some real clunkers in the past. Games like . GUN was a pretty good, and the Rockstar game Red Dead Revolver was simply amazing. I stumbled upon Call of Juarez by accident. My local game store here in Florida was having a sale and I just happened to pick up the title. I played the Xbox 360 demo and was not too impressed. But once I dove into the full game I was actually hooked.

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Review by Aaron Espinoza

It’s funny how the most basic things can sometimes be the most memorable in gaming history. I may not have been born at the time of Pac-Man’s release however, I can recall the moments I have had with the game as a young child  at the arcade with my dad. Pac-Man was the first machine I would play, and it was also the last. I may not have been an elite gamer on the machine and frankly I didn’t care. All I knew was that Pac-Man was fun regardless of skill needed to proceed to the next level.

After my local mall was shut down I never played Pac-Man up until the release of Namco Museum on the PlayStation One.  I had fun with it, and the best part about it was that I was a few years older than before and my skills as a gamer were far improved.

As the PS One died off, so did the game. I have never played Pac-Man ever since (with the exception of the Sonic Chaos, a forum that I owned that contained an arcade. But it wasn’t the same).

Just recently, I was browsing the Xbox Live Arcade looking for something to keep me hooked and I came across “Pac-Man CE.” I figured it might contain the original Pac-Man with new modes, so I bought it up for 800 Microsoft Points. (Pac-Man CE is a 50 MB Download)

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The 2009 baseball season is ready to start, so GCN kicks off the start of the season with a full review for 2K Sports franchise game “Major League Baseball 2K9″.

Ah yes, even with all of the bad hype (insert any A-Rod joke here) that is surrounding the 2009 baseball season I can’t help but be excited for opening day. Even with the bad hype that surrounded my favorite baseball team this spring; the mighty New York Yankees, I still am eager to get this season started and see if they can get back into the series.They have the players (with or without A-Rod) to make it to the show.

But besides the 160+ games that I will be keeping track of in real life I am excited about getting down to some hard hitting fun on my game consoles. And this year is no different from the last 10 or so. The only thing that has changed are the rosters and the graphics. The main reason of the game is still “fun”.

So how does this years 2K Sports product stand up against last years game? First off I will tell you that the developers pretty much seemed to have wiped the slate clean and started over from scratch. To me this is a welcome surprise. After all I thought that Major League Baseball 2K8 really took many steps back and something really needed to be done.

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