I've played a bunch of the new games over christmas break so i thought i would post my thoughts here on the games forum.

Gears of War: pretty fun yet overated by everyone saying its the game of the year.

Lost Planet: decently fun(came out yesterday so i just rented it)

Zelda twilight princess: GAME OF THE YEAR(gamecube version). the wii has the exact same graphics but i prefer using old school controls of the gamecube vs wiimote..

Guitar Hero 2: The first one was an awesome party game and number 2 seems slightly better from what i played on the walmart demo. Im still waiting for it to be released on the 360 before i buy it.

Tony Hawk 8: Better than the last couple but pro skater 2 is still my favorite. I'm looking forward to the game called "skate" because it is suppose to be more realistic without the huge combos and many other things in tony hawk games which are completely unrealistic.

Wii Bowling: the only game on the wii worth playing.

Dead Rising: its a few months old but i just got it. Really fun but has a lot of flaws suchs as the fonts are hard to read on a normal TV. (Edit: i just switched the 360 to component wires and i can read everything fine now on my 27" curved glass TV.

say what you want about gears, i know it was way over hyped but it is the best game ive owned in years. the best co op experience ive ever really had

100% agreed. Of the tons of games I played over break that people got/had including the new Zelda, Rainbow Six: Vegas, Splinter Cell: Double Agent, and Resistance Fall of Man. It was easily the best, co-op was amazing.

i'm considering getting a 360 exclusively (at first) for GoW. the only thing i'd have to view it on though is the huge enormus 19" tv my roommate brought. so no hi-def for amd2800barton. sigh.

Hi Def LCD Monitors are where its at.

Yes, it may be the best co-op game since turtles III on the NES.

Yeah, it's GoW and Dead Rising that sold me on the X360. I'll probably be purchasing one within a month or two.

How's Rainbow Six: Vegas and the new Perfect Dark? Those too appear to be promising.

perfect dark as in PD0? its different, it has great potential but just seemed to miss the mark

rainbow six is quite fun, both co-op and campaign

unfortunately, i don't have a grand to spend on a console + lcd. i'd love to do it, but personal luxuries aren't very high on my purchasing list right now.

HD DLP Projectors are where its at, lol.. if not that, buy the VGA cable for the 360... you can use a computer monitor for HD

Anyhow, I'd go with GH2 being the best... by far. The only game EVER to hold onto my interest for a long period of time. I know for sure I'll be playing it liberally until the 3rd one comes out. (When GH2 comes out for 360, I must get it, thanks to downloadable content, including GH1 songs)

Gears of War is an incredibly fun game. Even though its the co-op that makes it, the intuitive controls and lots of other things (importance of cover, blind fire, and not to mention the chainsaw) add to it as well. I'm almost done with the Insane difficulty, then its time to get into online play.

Perfect Dark was not great, luckily I played it on someone else's 360 first.

Test Drive Unlimited is also very fun. The (kind of) massive online racing idea really came out great in that game (The scale of the game is amazing, the entire island of Oahu). I highly recommend it (although I am partial to racing games in any form).

Also, PGR3 is always a blast on xbox live.

If we're discussing new games, don't forget about the handheld arena! From my own experience:

Elite Beat Agents is basically the DS's guitar hero, in that I highly doubt anyone will make a more entertaining rythem game for the system (unless they make a sequel). Most of the songs (covers) were actually done better than their original versions too, in my opinion. Only bad part about it is that you need headphones to play it in louder locales.

Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin is quite similar to Dawn of Sorrow with a two characters at a time feature/gimmick to replace the breaking ice blocks and drawing magic seals feature/gimmick. I think it's a little easier than Dawn of Sorrow since no boss has killed me more than three times before I beat them, but I haven't beaten the game yet, so that's subject to change.

Yoshi's Island DS, well, I'm hardly into world 2 even. I'm not quite as addicted to this one as I am to the previous two, but I'll probably get to it at some point, especially if the power keeps failing. It's looking like it'll take me a lot longer to run through this one than New Super Mario Bros. did, on the order of twice as long to complete a simple runthrough, and far longer to 100% it, but I probably won't bother with that. Most complaints I hear in reviews is that it's too difficult, but otherwise people say it plays a lot like the one for the SNES.

And as for Wii Sports, it was pretty fun for a bundled game, especially since my friends that never play smash bros or perfect dark with the rest of us would actually play this one and not feel intimidated by it. Therefore, it makes a great party game. The lack of depth made it feel somewhat old after we played it almost every night for about two weeks, though. Bowling's the only one that feels remotely like the real thing. I only wish twisting my wrist gave me a power serve in real tennis...

GoW is awesome but it has some major problems:

- The lobby system sucks ass and you can't play ranked matches with friends (why don't they just use the Halo 2 system?).
- There's an insane amount of host advantage over XBL. Try using a shotgun as the host, and then as a non-host.
- It's too short. Insane mode helped with this though.
- The plot is really incomplete. If you read the Wikipedia page, most of the story isn't even mentioned in the game.
- Glitchy... I keep falling through the ground and then suddenly popping back up a few minutes later. It's pretty hilarious when it happens and you end up chainsawing your opponent from a dead end, but being called a cheater sucks. Also, there's some issues with sharing cover spots, even if there's plenty of room sometimes.

Those are my main complaints, but like I said it's definitely an awesome game and playing through on co-op was a blast. I just hope GoW2 fixes all the multiplayer issues and adds a little more depth.

I'll give my $.02 on GoW. The first time I played it was at a LAN a few of us had, and to be perfectly honest, I wasn't too impressed. We played a lot of 2v2 Execution I think, and while it looked pretty, it wasn't the most fun game I'd ever played.

However, I'm a whore for hyped games, so I bought it. I went through the magnificent (but short) single player co-op with my brother (and am about to tackle it again on Insane), and then got into online. The vast majority of games that are played are Warzone (deathmatch) and Execution (deathmatch, but you have to "execute" your kills, a.k.a. kill them up close or they can revive themselves). However, I play the redheaded stepchild game type, Assassination. In this type, there is a leader of each team, and it's the object to kill the opposing leader. Once that's done, regardless of how many others are dead, the round is over. It introduces a MUCH greater aspect of strategy into the game and is really a blast.

There are a couple of other quirks with being leader (like being the only person that can pick up, or "unlock," weapons), but it's a great game type that's really under appreciated. I recommend picking up the game if nothing else than to play this game type. Great stuff. I'm working my way up the leaderboards. I started this week at 2000/230,000, and now I'm at about 400-ish. I'm around 50 for the week.

P.S. LostBoyz, I accidentally removed you as a friend instead of someone else I meant to, and I'm not sure of the exact spelling of your gamertag. Add me again (Heinrich47).

Interesting, I should give assassination a shot. I've only played it once, and it was just to get the achievement for winning a match on each mode.

That's what I see when I encounter most people, but it makes for some good matches when 1 very skilled person can end the match at a great disadvantage with a good shot to the opposing leader. That way if your team sucks you still have a fighting chance.

I think a few of us are going to have a GoW LAN this weekend (3 HD LCD's). We'd like at least 6 there (well, at least I would) because you can only play Assassination with at least 6 people.