Games for Cheap

Blah blah blah bad economy.  We all know money is tight, so here are two new ways to get the most out of your video gaming dollar.

First off  Amazon.com is giving you an extra $30 towards your next game purchase through them when you trade in $60 worth of crap you don’t want.

Second, Microsoft is releasing their Platinum Hits Triple Pack.  Three of the 360’s biggest games for a paltry $40.  Now they aren’t giving you any Halos or Gears of War with this one, but still Dead Rising, Lost Planet, and Devil May Cry 4 aren’t exactly bottom of the barrel.

Sneaky 2k Games

Without warning 2k Games has brought the acclaimed Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution to the iPhone.  2k plans to bring extra features for this port as well.  We will be seeing DLC, multiplayer, achievements, and because nothing is complete without it, Twitter functionality.   Civ Rev will actually update your Twitter account after winning or losing a game. On top of 2k bringing in all the functionality of the console versions of Civ Rev, they are also giving it out for a highly discounted price fo $10.  A cheap version of a good game?  Sounds like an easy sell to me.

Not Exactly High Noon

Call of Juarez Bound in Blood, is a prequal to the original Call of Juarez.  In this one you play as brothers Thomas and Ray.  You may remember Ray from the first game, he was the insane gun weilding preacher.  The story behind  this game is you and your brothers, oh yeah there is a third brother, William who already is a preacher and will do nothing but yell rhetoric at you.  Anyway you and your brothers are attempting to find Cursed Aztec gold in an attempt to rebuild and reclaim your destroyed homestead.   Along the way you piss off  everyone in the western United States and parts of Mexico, on top of being on the run from a crazed confederate general whom you abbandoned and refuses to give up on the war.

At the start of each mission you can choose to play as either Thomas or Ray.  If you want to actually kill your enemies you’ll do the wise thing and play as Thomas.  Thomas uses rifles and bows and arrows along with pistols. He’s also the more agile of the brothers, being able to use a lasso to reach the high ground when fighting.  Ray on the other hand can take more damage, uses shotguns, and dynomite.  He can also fire both pistols at once, unlike Thomas.  But that can be more of a hinderance because you’ll spend a lot more time reloading.  Thomas is much better with longrange kills, and the bow gives one hit kills.

In between the main storyline you can do side missions from reading wanted posters.  These bare no weight on the rest of the game, they are primarily there as ways to make money so you can upgrade your weapons.  And once the game think you’ve have enough of them you can never do them again.  They are only available twice throughout the entirety of the game.  Luckily your enemies will drop bags of money like  they’re coverd in small pox.

To give you that old west action you are clearly craving at the end of every mission there is a boss fight of sorts, you get to have the shootout.  Now you were just running and gunning and have killed 100 henchmen, but you decide for the last one you’ll make it a fair fight.  You stand apart and walk in a circle to keep your enemy in the center of the screen.  You use the analog stick, or mouse depending on your medium, to keep your hand as close to your pistol as possible without actually grabbing it.  If you go for it before the signal bell rings you character pulls his hand away and shakes his finger.  Toward the end of the game these shootout become more difficult as you enemy turns psychic and  seems to know exacly when the bell will ring.  You’ll be redoing some of these over and over again.

So while the game my not reach high noon, it does get to about 11:15.  Some of the landscapes are actually quite beautiful, the gun play is solid, the story is throw away, and the gameplay can get repetitive.  But in the end it’s a good distration and is a sight the the first one.