I’ve only crossed over the 100mph threshold in a real car on a handful of occasions. I’ve hit this triple digit speed on the long, empty Interstate between Los Angeles and San Francisco. There’s nothing legal about driving this fast, and that’s only one factor that adds into the equation of why high speeds are so terrifying. The ramifications of what could go wrong in a collision at that speed are insane. So when it comes to racing games that simulate speeds that more than double what I’ve actually driven, I can only assume that what is being portrayed is an accurate depiction of the speed. Need for Speed Shift 2 Unleashed must be doing something right, because to drive its top speeds I feel terrified and find myself gripping the controller as though my life depended on it.

This terror is most immediately realized with Shift 2′s new helmet-cam mode. By switching to this first person perspective, you get a shaky-cam experience that rivals exactly what real drivers see when barreling down a track. As you approach a turn your head will subtly turn to see where you’re going because in generally you’re limited to see only what the driver sees, which is mainly made up of the interior of your car. Each faster class of car makes it a more and more bearable experience, but the GT3 and GT1 super cars hold a special intensity under such a perspective.

Compound the exhilaration of high-speed racing and a shaky-cam experience with the advent of night driving and the real thrill of the race emerges. This trifecta of adrenaline are addicting in their excitement and really show where Shift 2 has taken every possible compelling element of the thrill of the race and jammed it into a graphically beautiful experience. This racing was so enthralling at times that I found myself quite literally holding my breath.

Shift 2 takes what the original racer started and polishes it to a much higher standard. With an impressive roster of cars, tracks and events to take part in, Shift 2 is an immense world to realize one’s driving dreams in. Every element of the experience has been improved from the original game, from the way cars handle to the clear progression system present in every element of the experience.

As you race you earn both experience and money to help propel your career forward. For quality driving like clean overtakes, mastering corners, blocking, and drafting, you’ll earn immediate experience boosts that add to your driver level. As you level up you have access to more and more events. Once you hit driver level 14 you’ll unlock access to the start of the real racing meat, the FIA GT3 class of cars. Only after you’ve beaten that collection of races can you jump into the main event: GT1.

Experience seems like a frustrating hill climb until you really start winning races. One you step to the top of the podium, you’ll be gaining levels at a rapid pace and unlocking almost all of what Shift 2 has to offer in a matter of hours.

Along the way you experience a plethora of car classes ranging from Japanese Retro to Muscle Cars and Drifting. With the way the game is laid out you can even skip around the types of racing events that you don’t enjoy while still successfully leveling yourself towards the GT1 challenge.

The Artificial Intelligence of the career mode’s racers straddles the lines of adaptive, innovative and downright unfair. Depending on your car setup, you’re going to experience races where two or three leaders get in front of you and they’re quite literally impossible to catch. It’s as though a reverse-magnetism propels them a set distance ahead of you. The AI also comes across as aggressive and tends to muscle you out of corners and get in your way throughout. If you start racing dirty, the AI is going to fight right back. You’ll find a track littered with tire marbles, bumpers and the scars of racing with each go-around. On particularly tight races, the AI will lurk directly behind you, just waiting for you to make a mistake. This constant hovering threat is a fantastic addition to the overall tension of the racing. If you screw up, the AI will punish you for it like a punch to the face. Even with full assistance and easy opponents, casual racers might be turned off by this intensity. In fact, driving assists will end up hindering racers who need to catch the leader of the pack as you won’t be able to push corners to the limit that is often required to catch a particularly speedy opponent.

The original Crysis never made the jump to home console and remained in the PC realm as a benchmark for graphical fidelity. After three years of development Crytek and Electronic Arts have brought us the much anticipated sequel, Crysis 2. Can this new kid on the console block compete with the likes of Halo: Reach, Modern Warfare 2 and other competitive shooters on the platform?

Crysis 2 pits the player in the role of Alcatraz a marine who was left for dead after his submarine is sabotaged in the New York Harbour. It is here that the protagonist from the first game, Prophet, introduces himself and passes his NanoSuit on to you. With the abilities of stealth, strength and a near invincible fortitude the player must wade their way through various famous New York landmarks.

The story Crysis 2 weaves is interesting but can be somewhat bland -a narrative involving alien technology, paramilitary forces and an ongoing invasion. Alien creatures known as the Seph have begun popping up on Manhattan Island and the entire area is under quarantine. Alchatrazs allegiances may lie with the US military but there is a lot more going on behind the scene. Unfortunately for Crysis 2 the plot twists are predictable and even when a different faction is giving you orders it just feels the same regardless of what side they represent. In the end the story is interesting enough to keep you playing but dont expect it to win any awards or spark philosophical debate.

Navigating Alcatraz around New York City is very fluid and is a blast. Taking cues from the Modern Warfare and Halo series Crytek has implemented a similar control scheme. You control your view and basic movements with the thumbsticks. Jumping and crouching are performed with the A button and click of the left stick respectively. As I mentioned in my first hands-on with Crysis 2 this past January using the Nanosuits powers couldnt be easier. Each power is maped to the D-Pad or shortcut buttons on the left and right bumpers. The power is at your finger tips is a common marketing phrased used in the gaming press but I feel it sums up Crysis 2s excellent controls.

There are four main powers that the nanosuit grants to Alcatraz. He has increased strength which allows him to throw obstacles and scenery such as cars across the map. He is also able to activate a maximum armor mode which increases the amount of damage that can be taken. He also has access to an invisibility mode. By far this power drains your energy meter the most but it also comes in handy during several tactical portions of the main campaign (more on this in a moment). The last power available to Alchatraz is the Nanovision, basically an advanced version of thermal vision that highlights nearby enemies.

When you not only forget you’re going to review a game, but forget you have the game, that’s not a good sign, especially if you’re that game. The game in question is Ghostbusters: Sanctum of Slime, and it really pains me to say it. I didn’t manage to get a shot at the first game, and I actually wanted to since I’ve long been a Ghostbusters fan. Well, a fan of the movies at any rate. The cartoons and merchandise don’t get any space in my ever decreasing attention span, so there’s my spook-snagging roots on the matter.

I’d like to preface the following by adding that I didn’t finish the game. What with my day off on Sunday, I actually had time to do just that, but like the recent PC version of Bulletstorm, I was uninspired to not only finish the game, but go past the point I’d reached on one of my earliest attempts. If you think a less than glowing review is coming, you’re keeping up just fine. Like I said, I love the Ghostbusters and was really looking forward to some fresh protoplasmic delights, but this one just didn’t quite fit the slimy form.

You and three other Ghostbusters are tasked with finding the source of a disturbance in the blah-blah ectoplasmic-sphere-ish thingamabob, and you’re not the real Ghostbusting crew either, you’re a crew of rookies that were brought in because the first string are tired from the increase in business due to the aforementioned disturbance. Since there’s no original cast, there’s getting to be even less real Ghostbuster interest in my heart as the story goes on, and it does go on let me just say. The story is told through a comic book style narrative that tends to be long in the tongue for my tastes, especially since it’s a lot of reading for what the gameplay actually brings as far as plot forming. Once unleashed in the single player game, you and three AI compadres enter various haunted/cursed locations to do battle with waves of floating foes. One thing is for usre, there’s no shortage of targets, even with four weapons blazing.

The gameplay is very stagnant in that you enter a room that immediately closes, then your Xbox stutters for a half a second, and then the waves of ghosts begins assailing you and your team. That goes on until the last ghost in that room is gone, and if you want, you can destroy much of the items in the rooms to look for hidden treats and collectables like the Stay Puft guy. The weapons you’ll use in your adventures are really limited with three modes on your stock stick and to make sure things don’t get tricky, you press the blue button for the blue shooting gun, the yellow for the yellow and the red button for the red or standard stick and beam. To make things even easier, the ghosts are also similarly colour coded and you use the same color gun for the ghost. Blue ghost – Blue gun, get it? So it’s easy enough to play, especially with it being a twin-stick shooter. Even my wife had no trouble picking up the challenge, although she sometimes got lost in the action just like I did, because sometimes there’s a lot going on.

The AI teammates are OK at some things, like reviving fallen players, but they don’t always use the right weapon for the right ghosts (too trickY?) and they don’t cover you and do nearly as much damage as a couple human partners. The game has online and offline co-op, which is the way to go as far as I’m concerned, but hooking up can be a drag. You can’t just invite players to a game in session and if one quits, like I had to when my dog got sick on my carpet during play, he can’t get back in. Not kool. Really. With co-op being the only reason to own this one, it’s a silly mistake.

The atmosphere is pretty good and the graphics are OK, but since this game came out at 800 MS Points, I thought it was lacking in most areas. To tell the truth, I actually got more fun, and deeper play from a few Indie twin-stick shooters like http://reviews.teamxbox.com/xbox-360/1865/Murky-Horizon/p1/. I was expecting too much with the Ghostbusters name on this one and the shine wore off very quickly with the mundane gameplay and crazy enemy talent spikes. Didn’t I mention that yet? Most of the enemies are less than fodder right up until you run into some of the bosses that are just crazy hard. Now, a really tricky, or even just over-pumped boss can be dealt with and even forgiven as long as the road to the boss is paved with fun. But when you’re on your way-too-many restart of a boss level, you lose heart because you know that the road after will be just as boring as the road in. No driving force here folks.

Overall I’d like to call for a do-over on this one. I’m willing to take this review down if they take the game back and give it some real meat both in substance and polish. Since that won’t happen, that’s the review folks. I stand ready with my Proton Beam for a worthy mission.