the bomb vs. biocrap

Late Entry

Those of us well versed in the console market have our particular favorites. I'm taking this opportunity to alert all potential console players to a wad of shit. The wad of shit of mention......jade empire, one of the supposed "best" games on xbox. This is from the creator of Knights of the Old Republic. Well, guess what? This game is as potentially great and as shitty as "The Sith Lords" I guess the pubisher took their name "Bioware" to equate with "buggyware". The Sith Lords was buggy as hell.....now granted...I burned this game to disc. It was plagued with freeze up...where you have to restart at your last save, slowdown of motion even in non-combat scenarious, and the dialoge/music either or both just randomly cutting out....causing one to have to reboot the game to get sound again. Great game....an absolute curse to play. So, I started playing the latest and greatest Bioware game that was just released....Jade Empire. I played it from an original copy....because it was too big to burn to a disc. So, with a "rental" copy in the drive...I expected longer load times....but a bug free game experience. Oh my brothers....not so. This game was even more buggy than Sith Lords. Granted, great graphics, but slowdown at every turn. Wonky camera control. Piss poor fighting engine. Unexpected slowdown and speed up. And, get this, the music randomly stops as does the vocals.....often. The only way to get it back is to turn off the power and reload you last save....and then it does it again in 5 minutes or so. I reset 3-4 times in the course of an hour of gameplay due to this. The plot looked to be pretty cool.....but the bullshit involved was too much. It does't help that their last game had the same problems. This game had it even worse, and this is off an original disc. I pity the fool that paid 50 bucks for this load of crap. All the reviewers gave it like 9.5 out of 10....with no mention of the bugs involved. So, maybe I just have a crap xbox...but I don't think so. The same company has caused the same problems...where other games work just fine. I am instituting a ban on all things bioware....this is not an acceptable product for purchase. Which brings me to the point of "the bomb". I rented Time Splitters "Future Perfect" at the same time. This game is great popcorn goodness. Granted, the plot is as shallow as a puddle after a rainstorm, but there are many great aspects. The graphics aren't anything to write home about, but the animation is top notch. The controls are definetly top notch....I can't wait to play death match with my friends. The best thing about this game though is the ability to suck a person in. There are very creative situations that stray outside of the normal first person shooter. Also, it runs at a silky smooth 60 fps. It's a cross between the quintessential Goldeneye and Halo....yes, there are vehicles involved...with great physics I may add. Do check it out. As for Jade Empire.....don't believe the hype.
Forever protecting the gaming world from useless trash
-J