xbox 360 game reviews

I would just like to apologies to those of you who read this blog. It has been a couple of weeks since I have posted anything on here, and a lot of it had to do with the holidays and the other part had to do with my computer getting a bunch of viruses on it and breaking down on me. I finally got my computer fixed and up and running again the other day.

The new college semester just started here on monday, so I may or may not have as much time to post on here as I like, but we will see. I am taking 12 credit hours and three of those classes are online. Well, I guess that is it for now. I will try to have a new post on here later on this week or at the begining of next week. I just got a couple of new games for the 360, so I am sure I will be writting some reveiws about those.

When my wife asked me what I wanted for Christmas I gave her a list of games that I wanted for my Xbox 360 and one of the games that was on that list was the new Prince of Persia game. I’m sure you all can just imagine the look of joy on my face when I ripped open the wrapping paper to discover the brand new Prince of Persia game hiding underneath all that paper. I was so thrilled, as I am a fan of the Prince of Persia and I liked all the other games I played, but that joy would soon turn into frustration and  disappointment.

I must warn those of you who are die hard fans of the previous Prince of Persia games, this is nothing like the others. This Prince of Persia has been completely redesigned from the graphics to the game-play. The only good thing this game has going for it in my opinion is the cell shaded graphics, they are by far the best and most beautiful cell shaded graphics I have ever seen, so good in fact it completely overshadows and tries to distract you from everything that is wrong with this game. With all that being said let’s get down to the basics of breaking down the game.

Game Play: You start off playing the game as a character named, well I don’t know his name. I’m not sure if it mentions his name later on in the game or not, because I didn’t get that far. I maybe only played this game for an hour before I shut it off, that’s how disappointed I was with this title. Well anyway, your character is apparently some type of thief or something like that who gets lost and caught in a sandstorm looking for his lost donkey. Along your journey you run into a lady named Elika who becomes your companion through out the game. As you continue on your journey, you most follow Elika to a temple that contains the tree of life, but it’s not just any tree of life it is also the tree that contains Ahriman the destructive god of darkness.

After arriving at the tree of life, you encounter Elika’s father who destroys the tree of life unleashing the god of darkness who in return turns the sky black, corrupts the land, and unleashes his evil minions upon the earth. After this cut scene is when I started to have some issues with the games plot. First off, why does Elika’s father want to destroy the tree of life when he knows what will happen? Second, why is the god of darkness being contained under the tree of life? I’m sure these plot points are  addressed later on in the game, but all the stuff I mentioned happens within like the first 5 minutes of the game and I am already lost.

After the tree has been destroyed you and Elika must continue on your quest and rid the world of the darkness by restoring the fertile grounds back to their original beauty. Ok people this is the point where I started to hate this game and this is why. Are you ready for this? You can’t die, ever! It does not matter how many times you miss a jump and fall   Elika will always rescue you, even if she is trapped somehow she will always rescue you. Another thing I noticed as I was fighting a boss is that you have no health bar, so it doesn’t matter how many times you get hit because once you get to many times by the boss, Elika will step in and rescue you and once she does that the fight starts all over again, with the bosses health bar regenerated.

I made it through 3 or 4 different boss battles only to discover that there are no other enemies there is only platforming, boss battle, platforming, and another boss battle, and the bosses don’t die either. What, how could this be? I don’t know what the developers where thinking when they made this game, but  every time I got a bosses health almost completely gone they vanished. I don’t know if I have killed the boss or if I have to fight it again later, all I know is that it is frustrating and it takes away any sense of accomplishment you would get from any other game. I mean why have any boss battles at all, if you can’t beat them? Why make the platforming challenging at all when you can never die, and every time you fall Elika rescues you? It is all very confusing yo me. Where is the sense of danger? Where is the sense of accomplishment?

After you have beaten or somewhat beaten a boss, you then have to restore the fertile ground by going over to the light source and pressing the Y button to activate the healing light, then you have to repeatedly tap the Y button to heal it. After you have healed the fertile grounds, these little orbs called light seeds show up through out the stage. You must collect enough of these orbs so Elika can unlock one of the powers located back at the temple. The one power that I unlocked was the teleporter. With the teleporter unlocked, you can travel to one of your next destinations with out having to do a bunch of platforming, at least that’s how I thought it was supposed to work. When I used the teleporter I got teleported to the ghost realm where I had to do some platforming to get to the doorway that surely would take me to where I had to go, but no it didn’t. It took me right back to the temple where Elika had a cut scene with her father. After the cut scene was over I noticed the teleporter power was now locked and I no longer had any light seeds, so apparently I just did all that so I could see a cut scene, WTF!

There is one more thing I must tell you before I talk about the graphics. Your Prince isn’t even a prince, he is a thief, but Elika is a princess. It completely baffles me as to why they called this game Prince of Persia. They should have just called this game Princess of Persia or Princess Elika and her sidekick, or something of that nature. Heck I’m not even sure if this game takes place in Persia at all.

Graphics: Like I said earlier, the graphics are excellent. They are some of the best cell shaded graphics I have ever seen. If you are into cell shaded graphics and water color paintings then you will not be disappointed, but don’t be fooled by them like most people, they will only distract you from how awful the game really is.

Multi-Player: Well when it comes to multi-player aspects there aren’t any. This is strictly a one player game. If you want multi-player your better off sticking to Call of Duty and other first person shooter.

Replay Value: For me this game has no replay value, as I will never play this game again, that’s how disappointed I was with this title. It is not Prince of Persia, and I refuse to acknowledge it as such. This game is something completely different and it does not deserve to hold the title of Prince of Persia. The original Prince of Persia was about challange, there is none here on the current title. The original was about giving the player a sense of accomplishment, there is none here on this title,  and last but not least, there was a sense of danger in the other titles, there is no sense of danger on this title, no countless number of enemies that come out of no where, no edge of your seat action sequences, there is none of that to be found on this title.

Overall: I would give this game a 2 out of 5 and that’s just because I could find no redeeming qualities about this game accept for the graphics. Is this game worth a rental? Sure it is, you could probably beat this game within a day, but do not waste $60 buying this game it is not worth it. If you want to spend $60 on  a good game buy Call of Duty World at War, Left 4 Dead, or Fall Out 3, at least those games have replay value and they are games you can enjoy by yourself and with friends.

Alright my first order of business for the day is to talk about an
article I read on ign.com the other day entitled The Crow Remake and
for those who wish to read the article  I will be putting the link on
here also, so you see for your self.

Yes, hollywood wants to remake The Crow. If you are a fan of the
original crow then you are probably wondering why. Why do they want to
completely screw up a classic movie like that? The only answer I have to
this is that Hollywood is running out of ideas and the studios behind
this idea apparently don’t have enough good writers to come up with an
original script. Here is an idea for all of you hollywood retards,  how
about keeping the original the way it is, because there is absolutely
nothing wrong with it. Just make a better follow up to the original.
The reason I say follow up is because they can’t really be called
sequels because they don’t involve the same characters.

I remember reading an article a couple of years back that said Rob
Zombie was going to write and direct the third installment in the crow
franchise, this was after A House of 1,000 Corpses had came out. After
Rob Zombie had wrote his script for the movie he turned it in to the
movie studios and they then rejected it saying that it didn’t represent
what they felt the crow franchise was about.

Several years later the third installment in the franchise, The Crow
Salvation came out to DVD. The reason it came straight to DVD is
because the production was plagued with all kinds of problems and
script rewrites, then they were having problems finding distributors
that is why it went straight to DVD and was never released in the
theaters. Now after all of the success Rob Zombie has had I bet they
are wishing they would have went with him instead.

As I was reading this article on IGN.com,  I came across the name of
the director the studios want to remake this movie, his name is Stephen
Norrington. Now don’t  feel like your the only one if you don’t know
who he is, I didn’t know either until I had read what movie he had
previously directed and that movie is The League of Extraordinary
Gentlemen. Not only did he direct that movie, it is the only movie he
has ever directed and rightfully so, because that movie was awful. Why
should this guy be allowed to remake a classic movie like The Crow.
This does not make since to me, not only does this not make sense but
what he wants to do to the movie makes even less sense.

I could go on and on about this but I am going to try and wrap it up
because I want you all to go to the IGN link I am going to put on here
so you all can read the article for your selves.  The point I am trying
to make here is that a remake of a classic movie like that is uncalled
for. That movie had  it all, it had action, romance, and drama, and it
was all perfectly put together so you didn’t get to much of one thing,
not to mention Brandon Lee did an excellent job. There is only one
other actor I can think of that could fill his shoes or prehaps be
better at it, and that actor is no longer with us and that is Heath
Ledger.

Instead of remaking a classic movie and potentially screwing it up
big time. Why not just make a better follow up?Us fans can forget about
The Crow Salvation and Wicked Prayer and we can forgive you for that,
but what we will not be able to forgive you for is destroying a classic
movie that is perfect in every-way, not to mention you would be
dishonoring the memory and legacy of Brandon Lee. He put his heart and
soul into this movie and the fact that his life was taken away while
filming it makes The Crow that much more special and memorable to all
of the fans. Would any other director or actor be willing to sacrifice
as much as Brandon Lee?

Okay people, it has come to my attention that no one is visiting my other blog on wordpress.com. I’m not exactly sure why that is? Maybe it’s just not as popular as this website, maybe it’s because no one has really heard of it. I’m not sure on the reasons why and I could sit here and speculate about the reasons all day but then nothing would get done.

I would like to try and keep this blog strictly about Xbox 360 game reviews, but I’ve learned that renting videogames now is so freaking exspensive. It cost almost $10 now to rent a freaking game. So in order for me to keep this blog going and to keep people coming to it I’m going to have to start writing about other things as well, so with that being said I’m thinking about  changing the name of my blog. I’m not sure yet what I want to name it, so if any one has any suggestions please feel free to let me know, and another thing since no one really saw the post I put up about The Crow remake on my other blog I’m going to re-post it on hear so you all can read it.

The other day I was on one of my favorite websites,  IGN.com and like any other time I clicked on the news section, then the movie section and as I am scrolling down I noticed something that damn near sent me into a state of shock and disbelief. The title of the article was The Crow Gets Remake.  WTF! At this time a number of questions and thoughts started going through my head. Now I know what you guys are thinking, this is supposed to be a blog about game reviews. Why is he talking about a movie? Your absolutely right, that is why I am going to stop now and ask that you visit my other blog that I just started where I pretty much talk about anything. If you are interested in reading about this and if you are a fan of the original crow then you should visit my blog at wordpress. com. You can find the link in my blog roll and a link to the original article on IGN can also be found in my blogroll if you want to read it.

Well that’s it for now, I guess I will see you folks on my other blog, if not then I guess I will see you back here when I put up another video game review.

OK people here is my review for Farcry 2 for the Xbox 360. First I will start off by saying that this game is totally wicked. This game as to go on the list as one of the best first person shooters, not to mention it is a sandbox game, which basically means there are no levels. It is just one big environment where you can go anywhere you want, kinda like GTA. Now your probably wondering why I think it should be on the list of best first person shooters, well just keep reading and I’ ll tell you why.

Game-Play: The game-play is awesome, this is the first first person shooter I have played that has a totally open environment where you can go anywhere you want. There are no restrictions here, you can just get in a jeep and go and do the side missions or you can follow the main plot of the game. At the beginning of the game there is a list of characters you get to choose from, each character has a different look and feel to them. From there on you play the game trying to stop an arms dealer called the jackal, who is trying to start a war between two different factions. Although there isn’t much of plot to this game, it is a fun game none the less and there are so many different aspects of this game that more than makes up for it.

One of the cool features in this game, which I have yet to see in any other games is the fire propagation system. What this does is, it allows a fire to spread once one has been set either intentionally or unintentional. If your character decides to throw a Molotov cocktail or blow up a truck or something watch out because that small blaze will spread to different areas of the map, and quickly depending on what type of environment is around.

Here are some other cool things about this game. You can shoot ammo boxes, propane tanks, fuel tanks, and fuel drums and make them explode killing any near by enemies. Along with the fire propagation feature, these are things the first game in this franchise never touched on.

If your driving your vehicle around the plains of Africa make sure to watch out for rebels, because they will chase you and shoot at you, and if they end up damaging your vehicle too much you will have to fix it. Yes that’s right you heard me, I said fix it. You actually have to repair your own vehicles in the game when they get to badly beaten up, but you can by upgrades for your vehicles so they don’t get damaged as easily and frequently.

Just like your vehicles your weapons can also get damaged, which is pretty cool because it adds more realism to the game, but then again it sucks in some parts, not because its a bad idea, it just sucks when your gun jams up or explodes in your hand during a gun battle from over usage. That’s why it is a good idea to invest in the best weapons whenever you get money, because the weapons you get from the rebel groups are old and some are even rusty and beat up looking. The more expensive weapons tend to be the most reliable.

Alright, now I will discuss the coolest thing about this game, the map editor. Can you say infinite replay value, yes I think you can. This map editor is 10 times better than the one in the previous game. You basically have infinite possibilities and the only limit to the map editor is your imagination. When you start the map editor and go in to put in objects, you will notice at the top of the screen the number 40,000. This number basically represents the amount of objects you can put into a map, with the only limit being that each item cost a different amount of points to add, with over a 1,000 different objects to choose from.

Once you spend hours making your map you can then publish that map on the Xbox live community. You can make it to where only you and your friends can enjoy it or you can make it available for the Xbox live community to download and play with there friends as well. With this tool you can make countless maps for everyone to enjoy. The one thing I loved about the map editor is the integration of the object wheel which makes it easy for anyone to find what they are looking for.

For those of you who were fans of the last far cry I most warn you, the feral abilities and supernatural aspects of the previous titles are gone. You are now just an ordinary guy fighting ordinary people. Sorry, but there is no more super speed, heightened senses, feral claws, or anything like that. So if you rent this game looking forward to being able to use the feral abilities like jack carver had in the previous games then don’t be disappointed when they are not there for you to use, and don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Now on to the graphics, all I have to say is SWEET. A definite improvement from the previous ones. I would have to say that these graphic are on par with the call of duty franchise, if not better. The way the fire acts and moves, and the way the ripples on the water move when your driving a boat or swimming are perfect. They are some of the most realistic water and fire effects I have ever seen, it would be hard for any game to top them.

Like most other sandbox games, this game tries to give the player the effect of real time by adding day, night, and weather effects, and to further give players the feel of being in Africa, they actually added some wild animals which you can see and hear now and again roaming the plains. I wish I could touch on everthing about this game but I just can’t so I am moving on from here.

Multi-Player: This to me is kind of where the game starts to fall short. Although you can make maps for you and your friends to enjoy over Xbox live, that’s about it. There is no co-op play unless you have Xbox live. If you do not have Xbox live or a system link cable, do not rent this game thinking that you and your friends can enjoy it on your Xbox alone. I know this because that is what happened to me. Let me tell you, me and my friends were kind of pissed when we found out we could only enjoy it together over Xbox live, but luckily for me, I now have Xbox live so me and my friends can now enjoy it together.

Replay Value: To me this game has a lot of replay value. There are two different factions you can play as when you start the game, so when you beat it with one you can always beat it with the other to get the two different sides of the story. If your the rambo type you could go through just blasting the crap out of people, or you could be a little bit more stealthy in certain parts of the game, or you could just drive around not giving a crap about the story and just blast the crap out of everything and everyone you see.

The map editor to me though is what makes this game more enjoyable, why you ask? Well because I like making maps and I could easily spend 2 or 4 hours making a couple of maps or just one really good one. Then you get to play the maps you created with your friends and the Xbox live community.What more could you ask for?

My overall rating of this game is a 4 out of 5. Is this a good game? Yes it is. Does it have good graphics? Yes it does, but not only are they good they are excellent. Does it have a lot of multi-player options if you only have one Xbox and don’t have Xbox live? No sorry it doesn’t and that is the only thing keeping me from giving a perfect score.

Well that’s it for now, I hope this review was helpful to everyone who read it. If not then send me some comments on what you think I could do to improve my reviews. I am open to all suggestions.

Alright first off I must apologize for not getting reviews on here as fast as I would like, but things are kind of chaotic around here.  I have to take my son to school in the morning, drop my daughter off at my mothers house so I can go to my classes at the college. Then I have to come home and work on my other sites, where I will be posting some of my poetry and other writings and I have other site where I will be blogging about news and current events and there are many other things that I am working on, but I will not bore you all to death by listing them all right now. Once I get some of those other things off the ground I will post the links on here so you all can check them out.

So again I apologize, but I have to kind of divide my  time between several projects. The good new however, is that I just recently played Farcry 2 for the 360 and I will be posting a review on here shortly.

Alright I just recently got Fable 2 for my birthday. I haven’t played the game all the way through yet,  but I am close to the end. How do you know you are close to the end,  you ask? Well it’s because my wife’s cousin played it too and he beat it in like 10 hours. WTF! Who in the hell makes an RPG that can be beating in 10 hours? I mean seriously, come on what happened to the 40 hour long epics of old? Does anyone else remember those days, or is it just me? I remember Final Fantasy 7 and Final Fantasy 8 both being like 40 + hours long on 4 disc’s along with another one of my favorites Star Ocean. I am not saying Fable 2 is a bad game. All I am saying is there should be no excuse for one of the most anticipated games of the year to be that short. With today’s technology there is no reason why game developers cannot bring back the 40+ hour epics spanning 4 discs. OK that is enough of my rambling I am here to write a review and hopefully you are here to read it, if not why else would you be here?

 Like my previous game review,  I will be basing my review on five things, game-play, graphics, multi-player, replay value, and overall appeal of the game. Well now,  let’s get started on the first order of business, game-play. Overall I would have to say that the game-play this time around is an improvement from the last go around but there are some flaws,  in my opinion. First off is that freaking annoying dog. What the crap is this? That was my first thought when I started playing it and it hasn’t changed since. I mean honestly, a dog. The developer’s have had years to make this game and improve upon the foundation they laid for the first one and they decide to give the main character a dog companion. Sure he sniffs out treasure and dig spots for you, but he dosen’t help you out much during battle and when he gets hurt you have to worry about healing him, if you decide to keep him around, if not you could just let him die.

There are a lot of things that bother me about the whole dog companion thing, so I am going to list them. 1: You can’t choose at the beginning of the game whether or not you want the dog in the first place. 2: He sucks in combat situations and is always getting hurt. 3: If you decide you want to keep him and not let him die,  you have to make sure you have healing potions for him. 4: You have to buy separate healing potions for your dog,  you cannot use your own healing potions on him. 5: If the game developers wanted to touch on this whole companion aspect why didn’t they let you choose what type of animal companion you wanted? Why can’t I have a tiger or a bear or something like that?

Well that was my list of things I didn’t like, now on to other aspects of the game-play. I really like the button scheme on this one a lot more than the last one. Each button corresponds with a different type of attack. Your magic, long range, and close combat are all on different buttons. So it is much easier for the player to choose between each attack and allows for different types of combinations to be used in a combat situation.

Another thing I don’t like,  is the fact that your character can’t jump unless you are standing on the edge of something like a cliff or standing on a rock. Come on what is this?  Why can’t you jump while standing on a level ground? I do not understand this. If  I remember correctly you could not do that on the last game either.  I guess These game developers decided that adding a dog companion is more important than having the ability to jump from level ground,  jeez what are these people thinking?

A another new addition to this game is the choice to play as either a male or female character. Like in the other game,  if you play a male character you can get married to either a woman or a man, you can have multiple wives, and children. If you decide to play a female character be careful not to get pregnant,  yes that’s right I said pregnant. If your character gets pregnant you will have to carry the child with you through out the game, although it is a cool concept, it can get kind of annoying. There are so many aspects to the game play I can not touch on them all here, but if you are a fan of the previous game then you will be glad to know that those aspects from the first one have been carried on to the second one.

Now on  to the graphics. There isn’t much to say here so I will keep short. The graphics are about the same as the last one as far as artistic style goes, but due to the processing power of the 360 they are a lot cleaner and more vibrant than the previous. It’s not a huge difference from the previous title, so if you like the graphics and artistic style of the last one then you should like this one as well.

Multi-player: Well there isn’t a whole lot to say here either except unlike the last one,  this one does have  multi-player co-op. The only problem for me anyway,  is that it is pretty much pointless to have on the game. Here is why I think this aspect is pointless. First off it is not a very long game in the first place, one person could beat this game in about 10 hours, I’m sure two people could beat in less time than that. Why make the game less enjoyable? I’m sure that if they would have left the two player aspect out of the game they could probably adding a couple more hours of game-play to the game, or done something else cool with the game. The second thing that bothers me is this, even though the second player gets experience that he can spend on his character, once you stop the game and come back to it later all that exp he spent on his character is gone and he now has to start over. What kind of crap is that? Why would you even add a two player aspect to this game if the second player gets no reward out of it?  If you are going to make a two player action RPG then make a two player action RPG not a one player RPG that teases you with the possibility of it being a two player action RPG.

OK now I’m going to talk about the replay value of the game. In my opinion there is very little replay to this game, that’s my opinion anyway, others might think differently and that’s OK. I however do not see myself playing this game again after I beat it. You can either beat this game being good or evil and that’s about it and after you beat it you can continue to play your character,  but there really isn’t much to do except kill some things and do a few side quests. The only thing that would increase the replay value of this game is download-able content from Xbox live.

Overall I would give this game a 4 out of 5. I think this game is good, but again just like the last one it is just missing the mark fore being a great game. The graphics are excellent for it’s artistic style, the game play is good and has very little glitches from what I could tell, but again there are aspects of it that I mentioned earlier that I just find annoying and out of place. The multi-player aspect falls short and is disappointing and I do not see a need for it in this game. Just like the last title in this franchise there is really nothing here that makes me want to play this game for than once. Download-able content is great and all but why not make the game more enjoyable for those that don’t have Xbox live. This game is good and certainly worth a rental, because you could beat it in one or two sittings. My suggestion is do not buy this game until there is some download-able content out there that will make the game more enjoyable. Again  I think the developers have missed the mark with this game. The fable franchise has the potential be a really great franchise, i f they would just stop with the silly ideas like adding a dog companion and two player co-op and get back to the basics.

I just recently decided to start writing game reviews as a hobby and the first game I have decided to do a review on, is the new Call of Duty game for the Xbox 360. All of my game reviews will be based on the criteria listed. Graphics, game play, replay value, multi-player options, and overall quality. Based on these criteria all games will be rated on a scale from 1 to 5.

Graphics: Let me first start by saying that I am  huge Call of Duty fan and a fan of most world war 2 games, especially the first person shooter ones, but overall I think the Call of Duty franchise beats them all.  Now lets touch on the first aspect of this game, the graphics. Just like the last Call of Duty game the graphics are absolutely amazing and have improved just a little since the last game. The detail on the characters and environments is  jaw dropping and it makes one wonder how the game designers do what they do.

Game Play: The game play hasn’t improved much since the last game either, mainly because it uses the same game engine as the previous game but why you should you fix what isn’t broken and if it works well with one then it is bound to work just as well with the other. I can’t really see much room for improvement, except for the fact that your friends and allies are still just as useless sometimes as they were in the previous games. The things that annoy me about them, is that once they starting shooting at an enemy it takes them forever to kill them. They are always walking out in your line of fire and when your guy gets surrounded by an enemy or if an enemy attacks you from out of know where they do nothing to help you, all they due is stand there.

Replay Value: This game probably has the most replay value out of any game that I have played so far. There are a number of multi-player options in the death match category with a wide variety of  multi-player maps  to choose from. Two of the newest installments to the multi-player aspect are the co-op and nazi zombie mode, however there are  down sides to both of these modes, all though they are minor ones. The first thing is if you go through the campaign mode with a buddy you can not save your progress and the only way to get zombie mode is to beat the game on single player mode. Although the co-op mode is a minor flaw, the nazi zombie mode more than makes up for it. The premise of this mode involves your character or characters (if playing on multi-player mode)held up in an abandoned bunker while it is being over run by zombies. The object of this game is to just stay alive by boarding up windows and getting better equipment that is placed through out the stage. This  by far has to be the best reward ever for beating a game.

Multi-player Options: On this game you get the multi-player death-match mode which comes with a good variety of small, medium, and large maps for you and your friends to kill each other in, not to mention you get more maps when you play online and you even to get drive vehicles in the online modes as well. Another new aspect of this game, which was not on the previous games is that you can do co-op story mode. The down side is that you cannot save your progress and you cannot unlock nazi zombie mode in two player co-op. The only way to unlock this mode is to beat the game by yourself. Nazi zombie mode is by far  one of the best modes on the game and probably is one of the best rewards ever for beating a game, plus anything with zombies just rules period.

Overall Quality: The quality of this game is absolutely superb and blows previous first person shooters out of the water. Even though this game uses the same game engine as the previous game there is nothing wrong with it because it works and is probably one of the best game engines when it comes to first person shooters. Almost everything about this game is great with the exception of few minor flaws that the designers need to work on and improve when the next installment comes around. Overall I give this game a 4 out of 5. It is a great game with a lot to offer but it is more of the same but sometimes more of the same is better than trying to reinvent something that isn’t broken.