Real Networks 

 

video games

can you say "Best selection-Best prices?"
.......sure you can.

Best pricing on Video Games

 

Google

 

Unlimited Game Rentals Delivered - Free Trial

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Welcome to my digital realm for video games!

Hello, my name is Anthony and I built this video game site.(with a little help)

Video Game Source is a frequently updated resource for state of the art video games. Please bookmark this site as I will always have new video games to check out, try out, and of course...........buy.

I have included links on this page to some of my favorite video games. I am now building an article index so that I can share information on free video games for rock bottom deals! This index will be growing as the months go by.

I hope you enjoy your visit to my site and don't forget to enter your email where ever you can so you have even more information on the latest video games.

All the best.

 

Below are a few xbox game reviews

 

R: Racing revolution

When it comes to racing games, much of Namco's recent focus has been on its popular motorcycle racing series for the PlayStation 2, MotoGP. But the company also has a history with racing of the four-wheeled variety with the seemingly dormant Ridge Racer series. R: Racing Evolution is Namco's latest, and it's an entirely different beast that has more in common with Namco's motorcycle efforts than with the more arcade-friendly racing the Ridge Racer series is known for. Still, it's a game that tries to walk the line, so to speak, offering a driving model with simulation-like configuration options while trying to be novice-friendly with relatively easy handling and a braking assistance option. Unfortunately, as with most games that try to cater to both crowds, R: Racing Evolution fails to with most games that try to cater to both crowds, R: Racing Evolution fails to impress regardless of which side of the fence you're on.
Most games these days try to find a hook or gimmick that can help to differentiate them from the pack. Given the overcrowded state of the racing genre, these gimmicks are perhaps more important than ever. R: Racing Evolution's twist on the standard racing game is the pressure meter. When you get behind an opposing vehicle and ride in its slipstream, a meter appears and slowly fills. This is meant to show that you're applying pressure to another driver. When the meter goes all the way up, it begins blinking red, and the AI driver you're heating up will make a mistake, usually spinning out around the next turn. While it's sort of an interesting idea, R's pressure meter is a one-trick pony that doesn't really add much in the way of strategy to the game. It just means that you'll never have to wait for a real opening to pass, since you can just ride in someone's wake and wait for that driver to blow it. Since each race contains only six cars, you'll have to beat only five cars to get to the front of the pack, and staying there isn't very tough. The game's brake assist feature, which defaults to on, only serves to make the game even easier, since you can play most of the game with the accelerator pegged and let the assist feature decide how fast you should be taking any given turn. Serious race fans are advised to turn the brake assist off from the get-go, though the overall physics model for the driving itself isn't particularly noteworthy either way.

R's main mode is known as racing life. Much like the main mode in Codemasters' Pro Race Driver, racing life mode is a fixed story-driven mode that lets you play as Rena, a young Japanese woman who goes from driving ambulances to the top of the professional racing circuit. Racing life is broken up into 14 chapters, and each one is separated by a cutscene that advances the story. As you progress, Rena becomes a famous driver, and you'll witness rivalries develop and other relationships unfold as she moves up the ladder. The story does a pretty good job at keeping you interested in what would otherwise be a dull and easy set of races. Racing life takes you through most of the different options that the game has to offer, so you'll drive in multirace tournaments, one-off races, rally races, and drag races. The one requirement is that you need to win races to proceed. You'll have some control over the difficulty and car selection, but the default options and cars are usually more than enough to win.

The other modes let you select the sorts of races you want to drive in and give you the ability to choose different cars, tracks, and so on. The inclusion of rally racing and drag races is a great idea, since it helps to break up the sometimes-monotonous action of racing on the circuits included in the game, but neither portion is done particularly well. Rally racing takes place on off-road tracks and gives you a standard rally racing copilot that shouts out turns and hazards to you while you drive. Unfortunately, the voice technology used to stitch the copilot's phrases together sounds like it was ripped out of a Super Nintendo game, so the resulting delivery is incredibly stilted. Drag racing is extremely simple, as all you really need to do is let off the brake when the race starts and hit the nitro boost button when an onscreen indicator lights up. The recent Need for Speed Underground does far more interesting things with drag racing. As you complete races, you earn points that can be used to purchase more cars or races, as well as to upgrade existing cars in the categories of weight reduction and horsepower. The game contains several different car classes, including some rally vehicles, a pair of American muscle cars, and several more. The game uses licensed cars, and contains automobiles from manufactures such as Dodge, Chevy, Honda, Volkswagen, Mitsubishi, Subaru, Nissan, Toyota, Audi, Acura, Ford, Hummer, Renault, and Alfa Romeo.

Though the driving in R isn't particularly great, you have a good level of control over your vehicle, and the difference between the cars feels very real, not only in terms of speed and acceleration, but also in the handling. You won't confuse it for Gran Turismo or Project Gotham Racing, but overall the game at least does a nice job of transferring your input into onscreen action. The GameCube and Xbox versions do this even better, thanks to their squishy analog triggers that really let you apply the right amount of gas and brake in any given situation. The PS2's Dual Shock 2 also offers analog button control, but it isn't as fine as it is on the other consoles.

Graphically, R has the look of a game that started out on the PlayStation 2 and made its way to the more powerful consoles from there. It looks good across the board, but the Xbox version won't stand up terribly favorably to that system's best racers. The two-player split-screen option holds up pretty well on all systems, maintaining a fairly steady frame rate. All versions of the game display various amounts of aliasing, and the game never seems to be able to deliver a convincing sense of speed, making it seem sluggish, even when driving faster cars. The trackside detail is passable, and the car models look good, but overall R's look is nothing special.

The sound in R could have used a little more work. Since it's a story-driven game, there's a lot of voice--your pit crew leader is constantly yammering at you as you drive, and you'll hear from the other drivers as you race. The pit crew voices tend to be OK, but the comments from the other drivers tend to be repeated way too often to make any real impact. There also aren't very many different driver voices, so you'll hear the same shrill comments from different drivers. Other racing games have proved that engine and exhaust noises can be full of character and nuance. But aside from the rally cars, which backfire here and there, most of R's cars have the droning sound of a lawnmower. When stacked up six deep, the engine noises really become pretty grating.

Project gotham racing 2

Two years after Project Gotham Racing set the standard for Xbox driving games, Microsoft and odd Creations present Project Gotham Racing 2, an impressive overhaul of the original that adds more cars, features more racing venues, and offers the ability to play online against up to seven other players. These key new additions should be more than enough to convince fans of the previous game to pick up the sequel, while those new to the series will find in PGR 2 a long-lasting, fully featured racing game that's much more impressive, overall, than most of its competition. Like its predecessor, PGR 2 is a relatively arcadelike racing experience that really can't be considered a realistic simulation, despite its use of real-world cars and locations. In fact, its driving mechanics would be very straightforward were it not for the unique "kudos" system, the likes of which first PGR 2 offers a variety of modes of play that can seem pretty overwhelming at first. Fortunately, one of these is called instant action, and it does exactly what it says. Choose this option, and, after a brief loading time, you'll be on the track in some nice car, in some racing circuit, somewhere in the world. However, the main single-player mode of play in PGR 2 is the Kudos World Series, a long sequence of racing events organized by car class, of which there are more than a dozen. Though you must complete each event within each class sequentially, PGR 2, thankfully, lets you choose from one of five difficulty settings for any of the events, and they range from novice to expert. These difficulty settings influence the victory conditions for the event, the speed of any computer-controlled competitors in the event, and how many bonus kudos points you'll gain when all is said and done. So, essentially, you can pretty easily unlock all of the events (though it'll still take you a while) on the novice setting. Bear in mind, however, that you'll be scoring a minimum number of kudos as you do so, thus limiting your ability to unlock new cars. You can always go back and try any race event at a higher difficulty setting, though your kudos for that event won't add up. Instead, you'll be awarded kudos exclusively based on your best run on a given track.

The car classes featured range from the relatively modest compact sports class (featuring the MINI Cooper S and the Honda Civic Type-R), to the sport utility class (with the Mercedes ML55 AMG and its ilk), to the classics class (like the Jaguar E-Type), and all the way up to the ultimate class (featuring the Porsche Carrera GT and the incomparable Enzo Ferrari). Obviously, there's a significant difference in speed and handling when you compare cars from the lower classes versus those in the higher classes, but, overall, the game's 100-plus cars don't really handle in a completely different manner. Each is rated differently for top speed, acceleration, powersliding, and handling, and though you may choose a different paint job for your car of choice, you can't customize it (apart from changing the license plate and driver helmet) or tinker with it under the hood in any way. Right off the bat, about 30 cars are available, including a couple from each class. As you race and earn kudos, you'll earn tokens with which you can unlock additional cars at your discretion. Earning lots of kudos tokens is a gradual process, so it's fortunate that you can test-drive that new car you have your eye on prior to spending the tokens to unlock it.

In addition to offering many more cars than the first game, PGR 2 offers much more variety in its settings. Actually, the previous game boasted hundreds of tracks, but they were all set in San Francisco, London, Tokyo, or New York City. Now there's a brand-new set of venues spread across more than 10 cities, including Stockholm, Moscow, Hong Kong, Barcelona, Sydney, and Yokohama. Races can take place during the day or night and in rain or shine. The tracks themselves--though they tend to be quite narrow--vary significantly in size and shape. Some feature numerous hairpin turns, thus requiring continuous skillful cornering, while others sport long straightaways where top speed rules. One small issue is that, though you'll see a map of the track before a race, you're given no sense of its scale. In unrestricted online races, players naturally gravitate toward their faster cars, but you might feel a bit silly in that Ferrari F50--never getting anywhere near your top speed--while trying to navigate a track that happens to be a lot smaller than you expected. Of course, you could eventually memorize the 100-plus different tracks, and that's a challenge any racing fan ought to be eager to try.

appeared in Bizarre Creations' Dreamcast game Metropolis Street Racer. This system rewards you for racing with style and grants you an increased number of points the more often and the better you slide around corners and perform other such maneuvers. These rewards may be used to unlock more cars, though plenty are available from the get-go. "Plenty" seems to be a fitting word to describe PGR 2 in general. It's a game that most any car enthusiast would greatly appreciate.

On the street, there are four perspectives to choose from, including a default behind-the-car view, a closer version of that view, a first-person view from the driver's perspective, and a first-person view that's inches above the pavement. Unfortunately, (but unsurprisingly) you won't see the cockpit of any of the vehicles from the first-person perspectives, but you will get a rearview mirror, whereas the prettier third-person perspectives let you see what's coming up behind you at the touch of a button. It's hard to resist the perspectives from which you can see the beautiful car model for the vehicle you happen to be driving, but you do get a better sensation of speed from the first-person view, and the mirrors give you a competitive advantage.

As previously mentioned, the core action on the track really isn't as remarkable as all the content surrounding it. Nevertheless, there's definitely some real depth to the racing. You'll strive for surgical precision when negotiating the twists and bends of all these tracks, as the analog sensitivity of the gas, break, and handbrake buttons, as well as the steering, make it so that each time you're about to round the bend, it presents its own unique challenge. On the other hand, though, much like its predecessor, PGR 2 offers next to nothing in the way of damage modeling. You'll see your car pick up some fender benders and such if you're banging around a lot, but this superficial damage doesn't look serious, nor does it have any effect on your car's performance. Not much happens when you collide with a rail or with another car, anyhow. You just slow down. Though if you take a bad turn, you might find yourself spun around backwards, and by the time you recover, you'll have little hope of winning the race

Amped 2

Who hasn't dreamed, at one point or another, of being a professional athlete? As common as it must be for people to wish they had the talent, celebrity, and salary of pro football, basketball, and hockey players, for example, there's something particularly appealing about being the master of a freestyle solo sport. Say, for instance, snowboarding. It'd sure be nice to get paid and showered in sponsored equipment just for pulling off incredible stunts in the cool, crisp mountain air. In reality, very few are anywhere near cut out to be pro boarders. So, Amped 2, like its 2001 predecessor, lets you experience an abstract version of the rags-to-riches process of going from an enthusiast snowboarder to a seasoned pro. In addition to this unique approach, the game features more than a dozen real-life pro riders, various locations modeled after popular real-life snowboarding venues, a huge and diverse soundtrack, and online play for up to eight players at a time. Also like its predecessor, Amped 2's main area of weakness, unfortunately, is in the gameplay itself. Though there are some interesting new additions, Amped 2 remains very cumbersome and is simply not as enjoyable as other alternative sports games. Certainly, fans of the original Amped: Freestyle Snowboarding may beg to differ, but these are the same people who'll be fans of Amped 2.

 

Amped 2 is not the only snowboarding game to be released in the past several weeks, but, for better or worse, it's a very different game than the superb SSX 3. SSX 3 has no real pretensions of realism, and its over-the-top, arcadelike gameplay is easier to grasp and probably easier to master than Amped 2's system. SSX 3 is also primarily a racing game in which you compete against other riders to get to the finish line first, whereas Amped 2 is focused squarely on tricking. The Xbox version of SSX 3 also doesn't offer any online play, whereas Amped 2 does, and the online play is probably this game's most compelling feature. Ultimately, Amped 2 provides somewhat of a more true-to-life snowboarding experience than SSX 3, but that's a relative comparison. It would be highly dubious to describe Amped 2 as "realistic," on its own merits, for a number of reasons.

Though the gameplay of Amped 2 will be familiar to those who played the original game, as well as to those who've played other alternative sports games, its unique use of analog control is something that takes considerable getting used to. Fortunately, a step-by-step tutorial is available to walk you through and let you practice the basics. It must go on the record that the instructor of this tutorial is just painfully uncool. He makes condescending kindergarten-style phrases, like "Great job!" when you perform rudimentary tasks and makes hopelessly failed attempts to be hip by using such words as "sick," "tight," and the ever-popular "rip dog." It's a remote possibility that the madness coming out of this guy's mouth was intended to be funny. At any rate, he does ultimately help teach you the ropes, so he deserves a little credit.

As in Amped 1 game, the left analog stick is used for turning, accelerating, and braking, as well as for spinning and flipping in midair. Additionally, it's also now used for pulling off butters, the snowboarding equivalent of the skateboarding manual, which, just like in the Tony Hawk series, is used for linking tricks together into combos. All this is really too much functionality to dump onto just one analog stick. It's difficult to wind up for a spin since doing so causes you to turn. It's difficult to wind up for a backflip since doing so causes you to slow down. With practice, you'll learn to compensate for the sensitive control and overlapping functionality of the left analog stick. That won't change the fact that this is a rather clunky and limiting control scheme, even if it does force you to keep a steady hand.

Meanwhile, the right analog stick is used primarily for grab tricks. You get a different midair trick by pointing the right stick in one of eight directions, and these tricks may be tweaked by using the shoulder buttons. Since the A button is used for accelerating and jumping, you'll need to quickly slide your hand over from the A button to the right stick, which seems clunky, but actually is a reasonable simulation of how a real-life snowboarder must go out of his or her way to grab the board. Other than that, the B button is used for sliding on rails, and the Y button is used for lip tricks--when you balance on your board at the edge of a half-pipe or quarter-pipe. In addition to snowboards, Amped 2 features snowskates, which are like snowboards only without bindings to keep your feet in place. When riding on these, you may also execute kickflips in midair with the X button.

In addition to using butters to link together railslides, grab tricks, and such, Amped 2 also lets you earn extra points by pulling off moves with "style," as the game puts it. Rather than try to spin as hard and as fast as possible while in midair, you may gently apply the analog sticks, which causes a style meter to fill up as your trick is being executed. The idea is to alternatively reward the player for using finesse rather than grinding out the most insane trick possible, and it's a good idea. Too bad there's no real visible difference between a trick done with "style" and a plain-looking trick.

Unfortunately, the "style" system doesn't change the fact that the physics in Amped 2 leave a lot to be desired. The game's realistic aspects apply primarily in ways that make the game less enjoyable to play. Landings are still quite unforgiving, which was also an issue in the first Amped. If you land sideways or a few degrees off of parallel from the snow, you bail, obviously lose the points for your trick, and somewhat slowly get back on your feet. Even if you do manage to land upright, unless you line up your landing perfectly or almost perfectly, you'll take a hit to your trick score. Transitioning straight into a butter requires some very stringent timing, too. On the other hand, you almost magically stick to rails with the B button, and rails are pretty common, so you'll frequently aim yourself at these to keep from botching a landing. This is kind of strange, since one would expect that it must be harder to land stably on a thin rail than it would be to do so onto relatively solid footing. Also, the action in the game just feels too "floaty" overall. There's very little sense of speed or acceleration, either while on the powder or in the air. Amped 2 also has some pretty glaring issues with clipping and collision detection. On the occasions when you do miss a rail, you'll often pass clear on through it, and sometimes you'll pass through other obstacles. The back button on the controller resets you back on track, should you get stuck.

Tony Hawks underground

When it comes to Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, there are some standards that have remained constant throughout the entire series. In the game's career mode, you picked a professional skater and went from level to level, completing goals that really didn't have much to do with being a professional skater. Year after year, the career mode got bigger and bigger, piling on more and more goals and slowly tying them into the pro skater's real-life career. Sure, starting with the second game in the series, you could create your own skater, but that was more of a secondary bonus than anything else, and the focus from year to year was on a series of new moves that kept the gameplay fresh and made the next installment in the series just as addictive as the last. This year, rather than focus on replacing the levels and adding new layers of depth to the gameplay, Activision and Neversoft have tried to turn the entire series upside down, taking the focus off of the skaters who are already professionals and instead putting the spotlight on an unknown skater and his quest for fame, which takes him from the mean streets of New Jersey to the heights of skateboarding stardom. While the classic Tony Hawk gameplay is present, and still fantastic after all this time, the new story mode does not make as dramatic of a change as it probably could have.

So the career mode from the Pro Skater games has been morphed into a story mode in Underground. Since the story relies on you being an unknown, it requires you to use a created skater. The first order of business, when starting the game, is to create a skater, though you can go back and change your skater's look at any time. The options for your skater are pretty good, with a lot of different parts to resize and texture, and accessories to place, like shorts, shirts, hats, glasses, and so on. The PlayStation 2 version of the game takes the personalization one step further by letting you map a photo of your face onto your skater. Once you've created a skater, the game puts you on the streets of New Jersey as just some skater kid without a lot of money to his name. Chad Muska comes to town to skate a trial, and one of your goals is to impress Chad. He recommends that you get sponsored by your local shop, and your quest for fame and glory sets off from there. As you proceed, you'll get into wacky hijinks and travel the world, but you'll mostly learn to hate your "good buddy" Eric, who tags along for the ride, annoying voice work and all.

The story mode is where we encounter Tony Hawk's Underground's first real problem. The game has been redesigned to be all about you, as this customizable skater rising to fame. It's been redesigned to tell a story, but the story it tells isn't written particularly well. It has its ups and downs, but most of the game's goals don't tie into the story at all, and the game doesn't really make effective use of the long list of professional skaters in the game, which has expanded to include Arto Saari and Paul Rodriguez. Mike Vallely, who appeared in Tony Hawk 4 as a hidden skater, now appears on the regular roster as well. The pro skaters pop up rarely in the story, so in most cases they're merely found skating around in levels, offering very special trick slots if you can complete their challenges.

In between each of the game's 27 chapters, you'll advance the story a bit, but the story doesn't have very many interesting twists and turns, and it doesn't end in a particularly satisfying fashion, either. While the concept of following a skater from the bottom to the top is a great idea, the dialogue here could have been better, and the game's objectives should have been integrated a little tighter with that story. As it stands, the game essentially has you attempting to accomplish the typical sorts of goals that the Pro Skater series is known for--like collecting a lot of items and doing a lot of specific tricks. You'll collect scraps of sheet meter, Hawaiian leis, doughnuts, stickers, and lots of other little trinkets along the way. You'll also have to perform specific tricks in certain situations, reach specific score plateaus, and achieve other typical Tony Hawk-style goals. As you become a sponsored amateur and, eventually, a bona fide pro skater, you'll partake in judged competitions. These are two-out-of-three timed runs, and they work roughly identically to the competition levels that have been in the series since the beginning.

There are also goals that don't really require much skating. For example, you'll be asked to drive a car on numerous occasions, and you'll even hop off your board and do some light, Tomb Raider-styler platforming by climbing up onto buildings, shimmying power lines, and so on. While hopping off the board has value as a combo expanding gameplay element, the driving in the game is ill-conceived. The cars look and control pretty poorly, and the goals involving vehicles seem like filler, much like some of the minigames--like hitting baseballs with your skateboard--found in Tony Hawk 4.

 

 


Click here for the best deal on Video Games


Xbox game reviews|
Site Map | Partner Sites

Home
| Contact Webmaster for links, info, and content partnerships

Unlimited Game Rentals Delivered - Free Trial 

Arsenal Club Football UK E-shop

   
©2004 - Video Game Source - All rights reserved.
Have a game!