Crackdown

Halo Reach
$59.99

Grand Theft Auto IV
$29.99
GTAIV is a very large open world game. I really like many of the story-driven missions, many of which or unique, novel experiences. The open world aspects lets you do so much. The developer litters the world with tons of side missions, collectables or challenges, and other stuff you really don't have to do, but if you are a completionist you might find yourself trying to complete a number of boring things. There is so much to do and the game seems so long to me that I quit half way through to play something else for a few months and then returned to continue. In my opinion they could have split the game into smaller pieces. But thats what has always been great about GTA, it offers so much value since there is so much to it. I have to overlook boring and optional aspects that are less fun and focus on how much is great that is far above and beyond what could have been included.

You have "friends" and girlfriends in the game that call you on your cell phone. They bug you all the time to do stuff. The problem is the stuff they want to do is pretty boring, involves stopping what you are doing and driving to pick them up, doing something boring with them, dropping them off, etc. It is fun at first, but then seem tedious. There are advantages to making them happy with you because you get bonuses, but gets pretty boring. I ended just ignoring them all together towards the end.

The other thing is it takes a long time to get from one side of the world to another. But there are taxis you can hail and jump to the destination pretty easily. It just feels like you are missing out or cheating by skipping driving through the open world to get there.

There are tons of reviews, so I don't really need to say more. It is a stellar value, a great game, has boring aspects that you can mostly skip if you can get past feeling like you are missing out if you don't do them, and I still can't knock it below a 5 star review.

Mass Effect
$19.99
As a moderately casual gamer, I had a lot of fun playing this science-fiction half RPG half shooter. There is lots to do and collect. It is fairly immersive. The key here is if you have the time. I ended up logging nearly 60 hours on this one, which took a long time playing casually over time. I did play all the side quests and exploring though.

The main story missions are a lot better than the side missions. The side missions and planets to explore are generic, uninspired, and repeat, but yet I still had fun exploring all of them. You see the same base or ship configuration over and over when exploring.

The game is pretty easy on the default setting once you level up a little bit and get upgraded weapons. I found it very difficult early on to pass the first major set of enemies I ran into at the end of the first planet I landed on, but afterwards was a near cake-walk on the shooter aspects because I kept leveling up and getting better armor, weapons, upgrades, etc. You collect loot from enemies you kill and can sell it and buy more. But there is little need to purchase because you find enough better weapons anyway and just use them. It is a little annoying to trek back to a shop keeper that likes you that you can sell for a higher price. In the end I ended up maxing out my money since I rarely spent anything in the game.

It is a little tedious to wait in elevators, watch the docking and undocking animations over and over, etc. I wish I could jump more directly onto the ship and off rather than docking, embarking/decontamination, elevator, then taking a fast transport to where you want to go.

The game adapts a bit to your choices, so there is more replay value to play again with different choices.

Saints Row (Platinum Hits)
$19.99
I love the game because i like to kill people in the game and i like the misions like staling cars fro people.