When I turned 14 I received a wonderful birthday present, my very first guitar. Ironically, much like the Fender Strat included with Rock Band, my shiny new black guitar (of unknown make) was also ¾ scale. That guitar would propel me into a life of music that would last for the next eleven years. During that time I learned to play seven other instruments, went on one small tour, played in dozens of shady bars and had one massive realization that I probably didn’t have what it took to be playing stadiums at any point in this lifetime. That was several years ago when I finally gave up and got a so called “real job”.

Enter Rock Band. Now I’m the Highway Star.

At this point you’ve probably read all the reviews from the big industry giants, so I won’t waste your time telling you how awesome this game is. It is, by the way. But anyway, since I’ve had the game for a few weeks now I’ll just share my experiences and let you come up with your own conclusions. Hit the jump and follow along with our ‘Band’: The Drunken Guppies.

I am a gadget whore.

There, I said it and now that it’s on the internet I can never take it back. In fact, if it wasn’t for the stern eye of my more reasonable co-op partner and loving girlfriend I’d probably have more gadgets than I already do. Still, she has her own love of XBOX 360 so it’s typically a safe haven for gadget acquisition… especially when I manage to get them for cheap or, even better, free.

Long time readers of my blog will already know of my wild fascination with the long rumored Chatpad. Its legend has been circulating the internet longer than the XBOX 360 has been in retail. In fact, the original photograph of the concept image was published on TeamXBOX.com a full five months before the XBOX itself hit store shelves. Since that time I’ve been in contact with several Microsoft employees (all of which refused to comment, as they probably should) and some of which seem to contradict each other. All that is (almost) moot now however, as the Chatpad is finally here. Hit the jump for the review.

So what happens when you happen to get a box-o-games in the mail consisting of the three biggest releases for the month? Obviously you sit your ass down in front of a screen all night and play them. That, my friends, is exactly what Maranda and I did last night. Let’s start with Shadowrun.

Shadowrun
Since only the hardcore visit this blog, I don’t think I really need to explain the long history of the Shadowrun franchise or how much the game has changed since my beloved SNES version. Of all the games we played last night, this one had the most playtime. Simply put, it is a pinnacle of shooting perfection.

As long as you have XBOX Live gold.

But I digress. When you first pick this game up, a number of other games will quickly come to mind. Counter-Strike is one of the first ones since you’ve got a buying phase at the beginning of every round. The game starts though, and then it reaches deep into the depths of fantasy-action combat; More like Halo with Magic. You can complete forget about things like precision because this game is fact, it has action, and it has some pretty serious off-the-wall magic to keep you entertained. The strategy lies more in your ability to work cohesively as a team than it does in your ability to be an expert with a few skills. Everything has a counter and everything has a drawback. And it isn’t even about having your team create a perfectly balanced group of heavies, snipers and runners. Sometimes you really should run in with eight trolls, guns blaring because that’s what your opponents least expect and dammit, it’s ‘effin fun to watch!

The question I’m asked the most is, “is it better than Halo”. Well, I’ll put it this way: “It requires (significantly) more brain power than Halo”. If that’s the sort of thing that sounds good to you then you’ll probably really dig this game.

Forza Motorsport 2
Unfortunately, I spent the least of my time with this game. I say “unfortunately”, because the few things I did were really fun. After you pick your starter region (which sets your initial available cars and respective discounts. I choose Europe, natch.) you’ll choose a car and then everything is pretty easy from there. Physical upgrades cost money, car customization (paint, decals, tints) are all free and the customization system is amazing.

Another thing I enjoyed was how the game encouraged you to turn the difficulty up. It literally steals your money if you make it too easy, and it shows you after each match. Full driving lines? -5%! AI on easy? -5%! After I saw my winnings reduced by 25% on my first race, I quickly bumped it up so I was at least finishing without penalty. The really great thing was that if I wanted to I could push up the difficulty really high and gain up to an extra 10% (maybe more, I don’t really recall).

The biggest downside to this game is the graphics. Maranda is fucking vicious when it comes to this. If it doesn’t look AAA, you have to work really hard to get her to even try it. That said, let me tell you that she will not willingly pick up a controller to play this game (besides, it would take time away from Shadowrun which she loves). It’s obvious that they decided to forgo a lot of the fancier effects for the dramatic trade-off in frame rate. The game sails along at a glorious 60 frames per second. I’m curious though, did we really push the 360 to the max on that one? Can we really not have both?

It’s good though, really good. I’m very excited to go shopping online for new cars, I can see how that will really expand the experience.

Halo 2 (PC)
First thing, before I did anything else, was I plug a wired 360 pad into my computer. Halo is meant to be played with a gamepad and it plays better for it. We’ve all done this game before on our old XBOX’s, so I’ll keep this to the basics:

• The game looks ‘better’
• In this day and age, it still doesn’t look very good
• The Live integration isn’t perfect (I couldn’t see my game history)
• Gamepad integration is flawless
• There were only 42 people playing online – and they were all playing slayer
• I hate slayer
• There doesn’t appear to be any ranking system
• I played the single player campaign up to where you start the first Arbiter sequence and then I quit because not even Vista can make the Arbiter cool.

Overall, it’s a solid port of a good game. The graphics? They are showing their age. The story? Eh. It’s good but I still hate playing the Arbiter. When push comes to shove though, the action is still tight and that’s what counts. If you have a Vista computer, have never played Halo 2 and want to know about the game before you buy Halo 3 for your XBOX 360 this fall… then buy this game if only for the sake of grabbing those achievements.

Final Note
If you ever want to get 37 messages in one night, play three unreleased games in the span of an hour. If you’ve got any questions, hit the comments and I’ll do my best to answer them.