Here’s another review for you guys. This one brought to you by the always verbose GibGezr. I have to say that I’ve been having a lot of fun with the new Tiger Woods game, even though there’s a lot about it that I find to my disliking; in fact, Gib gave the game a slightly higher score than I would have, but hey, that’s okay. We have different reviewing styles, and I think you’ll find that, as more reviews get posted, I generally score games lower. In any case, I better get going; I wouldn’t want to miss my tee-off!

You’re probably wondering why I’m posting up an Army of Two review at this juncture. When we were first kicking around the idea of starting our own website, we decided that it’d be a good idea to try our hand at writing some reviews, to see if we had a knack for this kind of thing; Army of Two was my first review. ( Well, technically speaking, The Darkness and Overlord were my first two reviews, but those have been long gone for ages now.)

So I hope you enjoy this “old” review, and that you’ll keep coming back for more reviews of newer games. October should be a good month for games, as the bigger titles will soon begin coming out. Also, I would like to point out that I haven’t forgotten about the user reviews. Information concerning those will be going up any day now.

Just a quick note to let you guys know that the “Submit a Review” section is now up. All the information you need should be located in that section, so I’ll let you guys have a look for yourselves. If anyone has any questions, feel free to give me a shout!

There are numerous advantages when it comes to using the Internet as a publication medium, one of them being the relatively painless task of bringing modifications to previously-posted articles. If I were, for instance, publishing a monthly print magazine, the only way I could make a change to an article would be to A) wait until next month’s issue to post a correction, or B) in the case of a truly horrible mistake, perform a call-back.

Scary.

By publishing on the web, I’ve been able to perform updates to some of my posts relatively hassle-free. Noticed a spelling mistake I made? No problem! Noticed an inconsistency in one of my strips? Fixed before anyone else even notices it was there! So if I can fix things this easily, certainly there should be ways for me to improve some of my articles after the fact.

Games are also an interesting medium: they have a way, unique to themselves, to provide us with a message; of course, if you’re familiar with McLuhan, you might also agree that video games basically are their own message, but I digress.

Over time, we tend to see things differently; to feel differently about things. Sometimes it’s because of changes brought to the medium, while other times, its because of changes that take place within ourselves. Perhaps a game that released with shoddy controls gets an update, which fixes its usability, or perhaps you simply discover something new about a game you hadn’t noticed was there before. That’s why I believe some reviews are worth revisiting; I’m not insinuating that we should re-review games: it’s important for the original point of view to be known, because as in many things in life, first impressions are usually the most important; what I’m suggesting, however, is that we allow ourselves to add addenda to the bottom of our reviews; an aftermath, or an epilogue if you will, to our initial reviews; because let’s face it, most of the time, a reviewer is more concerned with his timeliness than his thoroughness, or perhaps even more indicative, is the fact that we are, after all, gamers, and quite often we re-play games, sometimes because it was one we cherished, sometimes because it was one disliked, but in the spirit of fairness, decided to give it another try. I hope these addenda will support these notions.

If you’re familiar with Final Fantasy XI, you’re probably wondering why I chose to make a storyline based on it at this juncture. It is in fact several years old, and with the arrival of newer, potentially more popular titles, I’d completely understand why you’d feel this way. The reason behind this is that Part 1 of the storyline is in fact largely true: although Len-Vesper isn’t currently playing FFXI with us, both GibGezr and I have recently started playing the game, and exactly for the same reasons indicated by our two-dimensional counterparts.

I, myself, originally played FFXI when it came out for PC, and was hooked from day one. I stopped playing about six months later because I was accepted into a Canada World Youth program, which allowed me to travel to Russia for three months – but that’s another story. When I came back from my travels, I found that most of my friends had moved on without me, so I quickly became unattached to the game. The sights and sounds of Vana’diel still fascinated me, but without my online compatriots adventuring by my side, it just wasn’t the same. I think you can ask just about anyone who plays MMOs and they’ll tell you that the greatest joys you experience while playing one of these games come from being part a good guild or adventuring in a good party.

When the Xbox 360 version came out, I didn’t even stop to give it the time of day; I was skeptical about the idea of playing an MMO on a console; it seemed to me that an MMO could only truly work on a console if it was specifically tailored for it.

But time passed, and our hunger for a console-based MMO grew. We’ve both been slowly drifting away from PC gaming for a while now; MMOs are one of the few genres that truly keep me attached to the idea of gaming on my PC, because let’s face it, wouldn’t you rather be playing a game from the comfort of your couch in from of your nice HDTV?

In the end, the significantly lowered cost of the game along with the promise of a 30-day trial period was enough to convince us to give the game a try, and I believe I can safely say that we’re both completely addicted. The graphics may be a bit dated, and playing this game has certainly made us wish there was something a bit more modern for us to sink our teeth into, but for the time being, we’re perfectly content spending our days with our new online friends, exploring the lands of Vana’diel.

If you’re interested in joining us, you can look us up on the Ramuh server. Just like in the comic, I play a Tarutaru, and Gib is a Galka, and we both use our respective names.