Halo 2 (XBox)

I'm not sure how you beat 4-to-8-player Rocketball on Foundation in Halo 2.

Oddball, with a Rocketball variant (3 minues to win; no other weapons on map; toughness and speed with ball on; radar off but ball indicator on).

Crank up the surround sound, bump up the subwoofer, and laugh until someone pees.

We break for that.

Painkiller, Half-Life 2 (Xbox demos)

In the February Official Xbox Magazine, the Xbox demos portion of the list includes Painkiller and Half-Life 2.

I was seriously stoked, because I'm a big fan of what the Painkiller guys did with Painkiller on the PC (frenetic action with a fantastic, oft-missed summary of heaven/hell/purgatory legends), and Half-Life 2 is arguably one of the greatest recent PC games.

So, how were the demos?

They sucked. And blew, while we're at it.

Graphics on both were abysmal, and the Painkiller demo didn't have Y-axis invert (lesson for all demo creators: I understand locking controller configurations for a demo, but if "invert" is germane to your genre, f***ing include it!).

I'm really hoping this is just indicative of pre-release demo concessions; but I don't know that I'm motivated enough to buy the full versions, with the bad taste the previews left in my mouth.

I need to ping some Xbox buddies who have the games and see if they suck as much in the retail versions (Painkiller releases next month).

FYI, though TeamXbox and GameSpot gave high ratings to Half-Life 2 (9.5 and 8.3, respectively), I believe OXM gave it a sub-par rating for ridiculously frequent and slow load times.

Doom 3 (Xbox)

Man, Doom 3 for Xbox just rocks.

Gorgeous, freaky, amazing/creepy in surround sound, and a blast in online co-op mode.

Me and Xboxer dajoti just finished playing through the entire game co-op. All games (if it makes sense) should be online co-op.

What a rush.

Call of Duty 2 (Xbox 360)

I'm so glad the Call of Duty 2 Xbox 360 demo is in the February issue of The Official Xbox Magazine.

This game shows that no matter how tired the genre (do we need another freaking WWII shooter?), innovation and excellence are still to be had. And the demo is the same thing that's at in-store kiosks.

Call of Duty 2 is not only the best-selling Xbox 360 game (with 70%-plus of the game market share), it's one of the top-selling games of 2005 (and it came out the end of October).

The demo is disappointingly short, but gives a taste of the frenetic play, importance of listening, keeping your head down (and using those smoke grenades), and generally lets you get "as close to war as you'll ever want to be".

So, they can still make WWII games interesting and important.

I'm curious to see what The Outfit does for the genre -- kind of the "anti-Call of Duty 2".