Ninja Gaiden II (360 demo)

I so dig Ninja Gaiden, so I was stoked when the demo for Ninja Gaiden II finally came stateside (last? WTF?).

The demo gives that sense of amazing ninja bad-assery, which is great, but ...

This may be the worst third-person camera ever. I'm hoping it's just an artifact of the demo, though.

Call of Duty 4

I spend a lot of time on Call of Duty 4 on the Xbox 360. I'd say for FPSes, CoD4 is my current favorite single and multiplayer game (yea, verily even unseating Halo 3).

There are some good missions with unexpected consequences; I'm impressed with the developer's gutsiness.

More later. Possibly.

Acme Arsenal

I tooled through the Acme Arsenal demo today on the Xbox 360, because (1) I was watching a bunch of classic Looney Toons cartoons I downloaded through Xbox Live Marketplace, and (2) It was made with my company's tech.

It's a decent little platformer, though I wish it let you invert the X and Y axis. Note to game devs doing demos: If I'm going to evaluate your game, don't give me a reason to not play your demo.

If I can't invert controls, I normally don't bother with a demo -- Reason (2) was the only thing that kept me playing.

Assassin's Creed

I've been playing Assassin's Creed since it came out this week.

I'm busy with a move and a new job in the video game industry, so I don't have time to do a review right now.

So, let me just say it's all kinds of awesome.

If you love Crackdown, think of it as a super sexy stealth Crusades-era(ish)(esque) Crackdown. Think of it as a next-gen Crusades-era(ish)(esque) Buffy (the great first game from The Collective), with a better game save system and fewer cheap deaths (oh, non-poisonous, non-bottomless deadly water, how I hated thee).

It's a great game. Great story. Solid gameplay. Fun. Fun.

Is it perfection?

No, but game ratings are broken, so I'll steal from the movie ratings and say this is a five-star game.

Now go play it before Mass Effect comes out this week.