Capcom seems to have learned from their SDTV problems with Dead Rising. The Lost Planet demo was plagued with SDTV display issues similar to Dead Rising, but it was fixed prior to the full game’s release, and things look marvelous. Though I still feel Oblivion is the best looking thing that has graced my television, Lost Planet isn’t far behind it.

The in-game text is displayed in a prominent and legible fashion. However, when members of your team contact you, a slight fuzz appears around the edges of the font. This problem doesn’t hinder the ability to read the text, it just makes it a less attractive.

The visuals are quite stunning. The desolate planet of E.D.N. III is aesthetically pleasing and evokes a feeling that goes well with the story. One of the only faults I found was that the constant snow while on the surface of the planet made things difficult to see. However, this effect could be intentional, and not due to my SDTV.

All the alien blasting and gun power ups made me nostalgic for th days of Contra. I didn’t test drive the multi-player but could tell from the single that it’d be a blast. Lost Planet: Extreme Condition, while a bit short, is a worthy purchase in my humble opinion.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance takes the successful formula of X-Men Legends and applies it to the entire Marvel Comic’s universe. 20 plus characters are involved in the storyline which makes things interesting. While the game is quite fun, things displayed somewhat poorly. The cut scenes were brilliant, but a tad dark, with fluid animation and decent voice acting. However, once the gameplay started things went a south.

One of the first things I noticed was the aspect ratio pushed the image off the side of my screen. Everything is visible that is necessary to play, but it’s still quite annoying. Graphics were on the dark side with a slight fuzz about them. The text was fuzzy as well, but still highly readable.

Aside from those quirks, it’s still a great game. If you are a comic and/or RPG nerd you should enjoy it. SDTV owners be warned, rent it and try it before dropping 60 large on a purchase.

RATED T: Mild Language, Violence

I apologize for the neglect I’ve shown the blog and promise things will stay fresh. Instead of the lengthy reviews I’ve been attempting to do, I’m going to do shorter ones as to save time. This should allow me to be able to update with great quickness.

Anyways, according to the NPD,  the Xbox 360 outsold the Wii and PS2 combined. It had a 51% share of the market for December 2006.

And on a similar note, Gears of War has sold 3 million copies. That’s a whole lot of chainsaw guns…

-Levi

Now that I have an audience, tell me what you’d like to see from the site. I’m still tinkering with how I’d like for the reviews to be formated and what I’ll I want to incorporate. I’m doing this to help others, so now I’m asking the others for help.

Feel free to comment, or email, with anything you’d like to know or see here! Thanks for reading!

About The Game: Since its inception, the Burnout series of racing games have always forsook the realism of games like Gran Turismo for sheer, unadulterated fun. Those wishing to cause mayhem on the racetrack as opposed to setting up cars and trying to avoid crashing instantly fell in love. My Xbox 360 came packaged with one of the newer games in the series, Burnout Revenge, which is an Xbox 360 update to the older title of the same name.

How Does It Look?: Right away, on the game intro, it makes no bones about being intended for an HDTV audience. It did appear somewhat blurry on my television but not enough to take away from the overall fun factor. The text is legible, I could read everything fine, but it is slightly fuzzy around it’s edges. I played with the ‘game’ picture setting, which looked fine aside from the aforementioned blurriness, I tried manual and adjusted the sharpness but it didn’t help much.

Also, the game falls victim to what Xbox Magazine calls, “Light Bloom Overkill,” which means that they use an overly bright light source. This is quite distracting and could hamper the enjoyment of the game for SDTV owners, more so than those who have HDTV’s.

How Does It Sound: Nice explosions, good punk rock tunes, everything is well done on the sound front.

To Sum It Up: With all that said, Burnout Revenge is still an incredibly fun game that’s worth a discount purchase. It can be found at most online shops for roughly $29.99. If the aforementioned graphical woes make you nervous about dropping some cash, I’d recommend a rental first, but it’s really not that bad. The fun more than makes up for its faults.

Let’s review the argument for a second (note this is primarily from HDTV owners as opposed to Microsoft themselves), the general premise states that because the 360 is a next generation console, it’s not designed for Standard Definition TV (SDTV) therefore all those whining old technophobes should go out and buy one and get rid of the piece of old junk … what about the ‘old junk’ they only bought three years ago when it was already the next big thing (remember when Widescreen was THE thing to own?).