XBOX 360

[roymond]

So, before we sell it, what are the BEST games for XBOX 360?

My kids are 12 and 14. They LOVE sci-fi, LOTR, Dr Who, Star Wars, etc. I really don't need them to go nuts over blood and gore. If that's your thing fine, but surely there are AWESOME games that don't rely on such shit. Yet they seem difficult to find

If it's time to sell this XBOX, what should replace it?

[jb]

Well, there's a whole lot of Mass Effects to play. Not very gory, and VERY scifi.

Also, have they played Portal? OMG Portal! Seriously. And there's a Portal 2 to boot too.

I think that the Halo games aren't super gory, though they are violent. I enjoyed them all.

There's a Star Wars: The Force Unleashed game that is pretty fun for sure.

[ken]

Viva Pinata - Full of fun, full of fun!
http://www.vivapinata.com/

I also had a bit of fun playing Brütal Legend
http://www.gamestop.com/xbox-360/games/ ... gend/73463

[roymond]

Cool. Seems Portal wasn't released for Xbox360, but Portal 2 will do.

[jb]

Portal requires the "Orange Box", which is a package of games that includes Team Fortress and Half Life 2. Probably can pick it up cheap at this point. Totally worth it. And you can hear Coulton's big internet hit "Still Alive".

J

[roymond]

Portal is all in Portal: Still Alive, with additional puzzles...

[jb]

Saweeeeet!

[fluffy]

FYI, Portal and Portal 2 are vastly different games. Portal is a puzzle game with a simple premise, whereas Portal 2 is a story game that explains Portal's premise (and the puzzles are IMO way more straight-forward). They're both great but for different reasons; don't play one expecting it to be a lot like the other.

I don't have an XBox so I've never played Still Alive (which only came out for that platform) but I've heard it's basically Portal 1 but more difficult (not a bad thing).

Also somewhat OT but the PS3 version of Portal 2 has a mode where you can use the Move controller to clumsily try to solve even more difficult puzzles where the entirety of the puzzle is "how the fuck do I get the Move to do what it's supposed to do?" Not recommended. (Then again I've only found a single game with Move support that actually made good use of the Move and couldn't have been done without it. It's also the game which sold me on a 3DTV, and has so far been the only game that make that worthwhile, either.)

[JonPorobil]

FYI, Portal and Portal 2 are vastly different games. Portal is a puzzle game with a simple premise, whereas Portal 2 is a story game that explains Portal's premise (and the puzzles are IMO way more straight-forward). They're both great but for different reasons; don't play one expecting it to be a lot like the other.

I'm going to beg to differ here. Portal 2 introduced a wider scope and story justifications for a lot of the weirdness of the universe, plus some new game elements that changed how to approach puzzles, but I thought they were largely similar in play experience and spirit. And the sequel had me stuck on at least three separate occasions, whereas I had very little trouble solving the first one the first time through (except for that infernal jump-timing puzzle).

The thing about the Portal games, though? They're both on Steam, which I found to be a far superior experience (I assume you have a computer in the house that can play games). Playing Portal with an analog stick controller was a punishing experience for me the couple of times I tried it.

[fluffy]

I originally played both Portal 1 and 2 on the Playstation 3, and while some of Portal 1's puzzles were fiddly with dual-stick, Portal 2 felt like it was designed for that.

Portal 2 felt much more straightforward, simple, and obvious to me, mostly because they limited the surfaces you could place portals on and always severely telegraphed which mechanics to use. I only found a couple of the puzzles difficult and the difficulty mostly came in sequencing my actions, rather than figuring out what actions to take.

As an aside, Cave Johnson is apparently meant to be a parody of Walt Disney, which is something I didn't really understand until I went to the Disney Family Museum in San Francisco.

[JonPorobil]

As an aside, Cave Johnson is apparently meant to be a parody of Walt Disney, which is something I didn't really understand until I went to the Disney Family Museum in San Francisco.

I kind of thought he was a mashup of Walt Disney, Steve Jobs, and Howard Hughes. I loved J.K. Simmons' performance; it was hilarious and kept the story engaging.