Are people really this stupid?
I decided to crank up a game of 1 vs. 100 on Xbox Live tonight. The first time since the end of the beta test earlier this year. After just two sessions, I have to ask: how stupid are these people, anyway? Here's just a few examples:
"On the Classic Xbox 360 Controller, what color is the A button?" This was the first question of the round. They start off easy and generally get more difficult as the round progresses, and they just don't get much easier than this. The answer is green, which the contestant should have known simply by looking at the controller in his hands. Either the guy was red-green colorblind or he had some funky knock-off controller where the colors were not standard, because he had to use a "help". A help is the equivalent of the "Lifeline" on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. So the guy announced to the 37,000 people playing that he was a complete imbecile. Needless to say he bombed out a couple of questions later.
Will Backbreaker break Madden?
I just ran across a blurb about this game in the latest OXM and it grabbed my interest. I'm a huge football fan, but not so much a Madden fan. Before EA Sports got the exclusive NFL License, I was a big fan of 2k Sports' ESPN NFL 2k5, which many (myself included) thought was superior to Madden 2005 (and 2006, for that matter). Once the exclusive video game development license was awarded to Madden, 2k's NFL games were history and Madden became to only game in town. As a side-effect, Madden also sucked for the next three iterations.
Left 4 Dead 2 Review
The ultimate zombie apocalypse game has actually been improved. There was actually a movement by some fans of the original game to boycot the sequel, assuming that there was not enough development time in-between. The assumption was that the developer would not have made enough changes/improvements in the original to make it worth another full-price purchase. Well, the boycotters could not have been more wrong. The game is improved in dozens of ways and it is well worth the price.
The gameplay formula is essentially the same. Some sort of infection has broken out, turning people into crazed zombies and you and three other survivers have teamed up to escape, fighting your way from safe-room to safe-room. The back-story is unknown to you, told only through the graffiti left in safe-rooms by previous survivors. Each campaign is made up of smaller chapters, starting and ending at safe-rooms as you move forward. The finale is a non-stop zombie-fest as you fight for your lives, holding off increasingly ferocious zombies, waiting for rescue to arrive. So far, it sounds the same as the first game, right? Well, that's where the similarities end.