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Archive of "XBox360" Category
N4G Contest: 360 Slim and Halo Reach details
The contest has begun!
If you listen to the N4G Podcast, then this is old news. For everyone else, you might want to check out the details here.
See you on the forums!
Win a 360 Slim and a Copy of Halo Reach
That title is kind of to the point, huh?
Tune in to the N4G Podcast this coming Monday to learn how you can win a 360 Slim and a copy of Halo Reach on N4G!
(I won’t be guesting on the podcast this time, but I’m confident the guys can handle this weighty matter on their own ;) )
Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light Review
Lara Croft has been a disappointed woman. We’ve certainly heard it before: a re-imagining of the series, a fresh chance for Lara, a reboot of the franchise, and still others in a string of broken promises. This time around the buxom heroine must be pinching herself: Guardian of Light is a great game. Yet it’s quite possible that those left dreaming of the Lara of yesteryear will be dissatisfied. This is not Lara as she first broke ground on the PlayStation, this is a crossover series with Lara stealing scenes in an excellent dungeon crawler. Guardian of Light plays so nicely with others that once again the spotlight is on Lara as a true heroine, unburdened by franchise disappointments.
BlazBlue: Continuum Shift Makoto Comic-Con Gameplay
Hey BlazBlue fans!! Here’s some Comic-Con gameplay my N4G pal Satanas dug up showing DLC character Makoto Nanaya’s Distortion Drives and Astral Heat. The character is confirmed to be available in Japan on August 5th.
LIMBO Review
Nihilism has a game!
Not sure what it is about video games, but we like to play as little boys. From Link to ICO to this nameless little guy, the boyish avatars have met with successively darker struggles. Limbo places you in a fuzzy, black and white nightmare with little explanation and no instruction other than the compulsion to run right. Off-balance from the start, you are quickly introduced to the game’s cruelty the first time you explore just a little too much – and are rewarded with brutal execution.
Ancients of Ooga Review
Ancients of Ooga is spawned by NinjaBee, better known for their Keflings, and has some of the same quirky charm and fascination with god-like power. As the great spirit you possess different Oogani to direct their actions thereby solving puzzles, completing tasks and even the occasional sacrifice – of the same Oogani you possess.
According to the Oogani pleading for your intercession they got themselves into a bit of a pickle with some nasty folk called the Booli. After getting drunk on slugs the Booli brought them, they destroyed their own chiefs and ended up as slaves. Now, the slug munchers want your help in resurrecting those same chiefs so they can use their power for an emancipation effort.
A side scrolling puzzle platformer you use the Oogani you possess to free yet more Oogani, collect items, carry out sacrifices and pull levers to access additional areas. There is a bit of depth that allows you to hop from front to back on the levels, but it isn’t particularly well represented and can cause needless confusion from time to time.
Swapping possession between Oogani, however, is a breeze and your primary puzzle solving tool (it even allows you to float around the screen and check out areas you need to gain access to). As you collect items and complete tasks for the various Oogani they’ll believe that you’re the demon spirit they asked for and join your cause, putting more Oogani at your disposal for possession. The object is to solve all the puzzles and bring the tribes and their respective skills together. Each different type of Oogani is suited to particular tasks, like the Harvest Oogani that can survive walks through brambles hazardous to other Oogani , or the Firelings that can breathe fire and brave smoking hot surfaces.
There are some items to collect like bones, and spices so that you can eat less pleasant things. You see, all the items you pick up the Oogani are willing to put in their mouths. Many of them they’ll even swallow, and anything you pick up and chew on while you navigate the platforms can then be puked out at will – including other Oogani – miraculously unmasticated.
Using levers, gates and ladders, Ancients of Ooga is like an easy Toki Tori. Puzzles aren’t particularly puzzling, and the approach here seems to be quantity over complexity as the downloadable packs nearly a dozen hours of gameplay at $10. You can tackle levels with a friend in splitscreen co-op, but it slows the game down graphically and practically – it’s just plain hard to get around with a buddy.
Graphics are solid, but many early directives appear in flashing low-contrast text that is nigh unreadable, and at times the music is downright annoying. The points system is a bit obscured by the puzzle solving. You pick up points as you complete levels and are awarded more for things like minimizing the number of times you die as well as picking up items. Since dying and finding different ways to kill an Oogani was half the fun of the puzzle solving I abandoned high score as a personal goal.
Ancients of Ooga’s winning moments are playful and charming, but its low points will put you to sleep. The vibrant sillyness just isn’t enough to make you want to keep playing, and all too soon I was wondering not “What’s next?” but, “How much longer?” When just after you’ve had a romp blowing up some chickens you’re stuck completing a level that has you fetching potatoes, it strikes me that this game has filler. Still, you did get to chew, puke and blow up a chicken.
Pros
+ The storytelling scenes
+ Exploding chickens, eating Oogani, puking rocksCons
- Weak puzzles
- Unnecessary foreground and background
- Co-op is offline only7/10
Quick and Dirty at E3: Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light
Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light is going where no Lara Croft has gone before – downloadable. Due out mid-year on PC, XBLA and PSN, this adventure goes gameplay centric, for the win. Be advised: this isn’t your Tomb Raider. Abandoning the Lara blueprint, Guardian of Light takes the savvy archaeologist and gives her a game worthy of a fearless heroine.
Lara’s camera is stuck on isometric as you explore the platformer and its puzzles. One stick fires while the other moves, twin stick shooter style. The simple control scheme made jumping into the co-op demo on the show floor a breeze. Arsenal-wise, you’ve got Croft’s pistols as well as other heavy firepower – even spears. Getting into the game the weapon menu’s counter-intuitive screen prompts did give me pause, but after that it was smooth sailing.
Tomb Raider fans really need to be reminded: this doesn’t look like a Tomb Raider game, this doesn’t play like a Tomb Raider game. Sure you will find some of the familiar, like Lara making use of her grappling hook, but overall this is a wholly refreshing and fundamentally gameplay centric re-imagining. If you’re thinking of complaining about the relative lack of pixels devoted to Lara’s bosom, bite your tongue and give the lady another shot at being part of a good game.
Gameplay focuses on crowd control, clever platforming, puzzling and, in the case of co-op, teamwork. Lara joins forces with Totec, a really old Mayan warrior dude – that means 2000 years of old. Totec can use his shield to boost Lara up, and it’s also a handy defense against enemy fire that can protect Lara while she interacts with the environment. In the demo Lara and I were deposited near a temple and the enemies started pouring in. Rapid mow-em-down gameplay is punctuated with teamwork platforming and some theatrics, like a collapsing bridge that Lara and Totec must cross in tandem.
If, however, Co-op isn’t your thing then there is a single player campaign. Absent from the single player is the option for co-op with AI which is, frankly, a great omission. The environment-based puzzling and gameplay in Guardian of Light just isn’t suited to AI teamwork. It would either frustrate or cheapen the experience, so kudos for not shoehorning that in.
For online types, headsets would be needed to properly enjoy this co-op. Lara and Totec can revive one another, if one of you dies then you respawn next to the other player and puzzles require coordinated teamwork. With no limit on lives, the only penalty is a return to checkpoint if both players die.
Despite its dungeon-crawler appeal, there’s no loot proper – but you do receive points for kills adding a competitive element to the co-op. There are health, ammo and gems to find, but Lara’s pistols never run dry. Mini-achievements add to the fun, and in the demo rewarded feats like crossing the river without touching the water, or collecting ten red skulls. The bounty for your efforts ranges from ammo and health to artifacts, and the significance of the last hasn’t been revealed yet.
The environments are alluring, and while the temple seemed to have some extraneous paths and areas the progression was pretty linear with all detours optional. Those are the nooks that hide the rewards like artifacts, and it seems that players disinterested in those bonuses can just plow through the primary puzzles, a deft handling of the downloadable format.
Guardian of Light puts a safe distance between Lara and less admirable forays. Stamp this one as a day one purchase, Guardian of Light is a fresh start for Lara – and her fans.
Quick and Dirty at E3: Rage
Go take your favorite post-apocalyptic open world game, pick up the crafted universe of Bioshock, make some smoochy sounds and out comes a beautiful screaming baby – with guns. We’ll name it Rage! At E3 we were taken through two different sections of the game, and both supported all the bold claims of the id Software staff on hand to show off the game. The environments are beautiful, the gameplay is badass, and I most fervently want to get my Rage on.
A meteor destroys the planet, and something called The Authority has buried people in arks so that the human race can rise again. When your personal ark goes faulty you escape to the surface to rejoin the mutated insanity that remains. The first section focused on an encounter with an old, slightly off-his-rocker guy in a shack and a combat-heavy ride in a makeshift vehicle, heavily outfitted with weaponry. Your vehicle has to be upgraded and outfitted, and the employees made it clear that our breezy trip from shanty to Wellspring was only the result of some hard work and modification.
The drive, fraught with gunfire, concludes in Wellspring, a major city in the game. Wellspring’s signature underwater fresh water spring makes it an oasis in the desert-y wilderness. It’s here that we dive into the well to stop the Ghost clan from poisoning the supply and get a real taste for the arsenal.
You’ll find familiar weapons like a sidearm and an AR, but I was most pleased when the id employee playing the demo pulled out a crossbow loaded with electric bolts and electrified some enemies in puddles. I was downright giggling when he used the spider turret (a bot that takes down enemies in range, Agents of Doom, anyone?) and then a remote control car loaded with explosives. For that back-to-nature feel use your wingstick, a boomerang barbed with knives. As you progress through the game you learn how to build different items, like the turrets or a gadget that picks locks. Once learned, all you need are the requisite parts for construction and you can build it on the spot.
The wasteland is littered with mutants for you to dispense with. The Ghost clan, just one of the game’s factions, are nimble. They like to adhere to the ceiling and pull of bullet-dodging acrobatics, so it was especially gratifying to see the effects the hits you do land have on them. Nailing the guy in the chest caused him to stagger just enough to slow down his speedy assault.
For the grand finale, we were treated to the ruins of Dead City. Since Dead City is largely abandoned and apparently more deep in the apocalyptic wasteland, the mutant types were very different from those previously encountered. They looked, well, further gone. After a few mutated nasties migrated up from the sewers for an attack, a giant, enormous, gargantuan hulking baddie lumbered out into – no, over – the space. As the id guide began to unload all the firepower he had on him, the Rage logo appeared. If that conclusion isn’t testament enough to the cruel genius of id Software, just wait until you see the game.
Quick and Dirty at E3: Vanquish Preview
Some games just aren’t attention grabbers. They exist in the background, somewhere outside the blinding glow of words like “Halo” and “Motion control”. Games like Vanquish whose creator, Shinji Mikami, had something entirely other in mind while he was crafting this Western shooter through an Eastern lens.
In this imagined future, Russia and the US are superpowers duking it out over the energy of the sun. Story goes that Russia has laid waste to San Francisco with a US-built space station, originally made to harvest solar energy. You play as Sam, an agent with a cybernetic battle suit and a team of soldiers. It’s all a bit Flash Gordon era with a retro style, Russian enemy, and our hero, Sam Gideon, who was the star football player. Dreamy!
The demonstration highlights a furious battle with the Russian robotic force. There is a lot – a lot – going on onscreen, and Vanquish doesn’t flinch (the engine is a modified version of the one used in Bayonetta). As you progress across the surface taking out emplacements and enemy forces, the environment is coming to pieces around you. While the environment attacks, you can use the environment, exploding barrels around the station to take out enemies.
The controls are almost as intense as the graphics. Heavy Rain style, you’ll be pulling off finger Twister holding down both bumpers, face button while moving a stick. The control scheme is probably best suited to someone that has never played a shooter before: Square controls cover, X is evade, O is melee, Triangle for grenade, L1 is boost (a power slide), L2 aims/slow motion, R2 fires and R1 reloads.
Cover is critical, and so Vanquish makes use of a boost element to speed up gameplay and significantly shorten the time getting from cover to cover. Cover-based paired with fast-paced, it seems you’re only supposed to take shelter for mere seconds. The speed has some Gears of War style (roadie run), but this is more nimble, more satisfying.
Weapons have great variety. While Sam is only equipped to carry three firearms at a time, he gets a number of options across the game and the weapon you carry is swapped out through a sort of onscreen morphing. Basically, as you encounter weapons throughout the game, Sam learns how to create them and you can change your weapon on the fly, like during your approach to an enemy.
Weapon variety takes a back seat to Sam’s duds, however, as his super-suit allows him to perform some impressive slides and flips as well as speed up his perception. Special moves like sliding, slow-mo bullet-time, evasion and even melee require energy and using them too much causes Sam’s super suit to overheat and then it’s back to cover.
Sam is part of a squad and being a man of many talents can heal his teammates, which is advisable as they seem to be genuinely useful. Because your suit’s primary powers are related to speed, not armor, things like cover and keeping your team healthy are a huge part of gameplay.
The action is consistent with Bayonetta and MadWorld, and what I saw and played at the show made Vanquish one of the more memorable titles of the week. I hope Sam uses his perception-altering powers to launch himself nearer the forefront of gamers’ minds this winter.
Quick and Dirty Hands-On at E3: Rock Band 3
Rock Band 2 was a fun game. It found a place in my home for a week or so, and I may have even played all of the songs – but that was it for me and the sequel that had little of the magic of the first game. My bandmates and I weren’t showing up to work on Monday hoarse from singing all weekend, tapping out drum beats on our keyboards, and so it was with that same ambivalence that I went to my Rock Band 3 appointment at E3.
The nitty gritty: you can import your songs from Rock Band, Rock Band 2, Green Day, downloads and track packs. Keyboard and vocal harmonies will be limited to the disc tracks and future DLC pending any possible, but unconfirmed, future updates. Where previously there wasn’t a clear-cut way to “win” at Rock Band, this edition includes over 700 challenges and positions your band at the bottom of the musical cesspool with the task of rising to the top.
Another new feature is the ability to filter – extensively – by anything from song length to rating to genre, even attaching labels to songs you don’t want to hear during a party or creating track lists at work for when you get home. Also helping eliminate party fouls is the ability to choose a band leader. This member is in charge of things like picking tracks, which means that when a friend gets overly enthusiastic on the drums while you’re getting ready to rock the bass you won’t be bounced back through the menus. Also party-friendly is the ability to drop-in and out of a song, but since you still have to pause for this to happen it’s not quite seamless.
Those are all nice additions, and certainly improve the Rock Band experience, but none of them is revolutionary enough to really transform those feelings of music peripheral apathy. No, that is where Pro Mode comes in. Honestly, it wasn’t until after the presentation when we got to talk to the guys behind the hardware that my icy feelings were globally warmed. The instruments are there, some work in the same way, but now they are something new and entirely game-changing.
For starters a keyboard, with keys – though you can use the five colored sections for a simpler approach. In Pro Mode however, users will have to play the keys as the instrument is a MIDI controller. What that also means is that if you have a MIDI-capable keyboard you can buy an adapter and hook that up. Just like in traditional Rock Band, the easy mode is a pared down version of a song with Expert getting you to play the songs note-for-note. On keys, the difficulty increases as you use more of the peripheral/instrument, even moving across the note scale in-game. The keyboard is available on its own for $79.99 or bundled for $129.99. Pro-Mode is also compatible with drums, which always seemed brutally true to life to me, only now they incorporate cymbals.
Squire in the foreground, Mustang in red
The guitars, oh the guitars! Stay with me, because this gets really good: On the Mustang Pro guitar from MadCatz (sold separately for $149.99) every string of 17 frets is a button, with six strings over the strum bar. The notes coming at you onscreen will have a color as well as a number to tell you which string and which fret. Later on, like when you aren’t rubbish, there will be chords. It is connected directly to the console as a wireless controller, and is some sort of mutant hybrid between the Rock Band controller and the Fender Squier.
Originally I assumed the Squier (pricing still unannounced) was merely a MIDI and, therefore, lame. How wrong I was. The Squier does use a MIDI translator to connect to the console, but each fret is divided across the six strings so that the strings complete circuits, allowing the game to know the notes and chords you are playing. The game software does not require direct tuning, and a perfectly tuned guitar is not needed for success – but since the Squier can be plugged into an amp and be used as a real electric guitar, you’ll probably want to give some attention to the tuning.
Previous MIDI instruments have used pitch detection, which doesn’t track quickly enough for the purposes of playing Rock Band (which needs to be very precise). Neither the Mustang nor the Squier uses pitch detection, which theoretically means that you don’t have to be playing the right notes, just the right strings on the right frets. Thanks to Todd Baker, Director of Hardware Development at Harmonix, for this concise explanation:
Success in the game requires that you fret the correct fret and strum the correct string (as communicated thru the game interface). Because of the technology we use in the Mustang and the Squier, we detect your fret hand and your strum string independently. This allows us to give more effective real time information about your fret hand positions as you change fret positions up and down the string.
Oh, think of the children! If you don’t believe that having a game to learn an instrument will get more kids playing music, then you’re crazy.
Guitarists may find it interesting, or they might wonder why they aren’t just playing the real thing, but for someone like me (with novice musical skill at best) this is a game-changing opportunity. Now I can play, with the potential to truly rock. Think of it: the next time someone obnoxiously asks you why you don’t just play real guitar you can now retort, “I fracking am!”
Kinect Demo
Microsoft has been demoing a little thing called “Kinect” this week. I don’t want to waste your time, so here it is: underwhelming. If this is the final product, if this is what we get on ship date, then gamer types like me will be disappointed. Who won’t be disappointed? Kids.
While Kinect is less precise than the Wii controls and suffers from latency issues, it will be far easier for young kids to play than the Wii. My niece and nephews struggle to play with the WiiMote (but excel at using a mouse for PC games), and they will have a blast playing Kinect. Similarly, anyone you just wants to goof around but won’t be frustrated by the motion-result disconnect will enjoy the freedom Kinect offers.
As the game works better for certain gamer types, it also works better with certain games. Dance Central, for example, makes good use of the product by focusing on broader movements instead of specific gesture tracking, which is where Kinectimals failed. It was a truly disastrous demonstration, with our guides telling us what to do and what the little lion cub’s response should be. The low point was when they instructed one of our companions, a good sport from EA, to lie on the floor on his back, hands and feet in the air so that the cub would “play dead”. Which it did. Eventually. In the meantime I was in a room with a guy lying on the floor limbs extended wondering how long this was going to go on, and really feeling for him.
Somewhere between Dance Central and Kinectimals is Kinect Adventures. In the mini-game River Run you lean, jump and crouch to raft through an obstacle course. Originally instructed to “lean” to steer, the guides told us about midway through the course that stepping to the side is actually more effective.
Here’s a video for Kinect Adventures, River Run. There is, as you will see, a lot more jumping than I’d like…
One interesting feature not seen in the video is how Kinect handles the absence of buttons. While swipes will progress you through a menu, selecting a menu option entails hovering your extended palm over a specific space to charge a wheel. Once charged, the menu progresses with that selection.
The titles we were shown are relatively simple, and I think there’s still a lot to be seen from games and what they can do with the technology.
The Murky Matter of Good vs Evil (In RDR)
Been playing a bit of Red Dead Redemption this week, and it’s been an experience pretty much void of “main quest”. Mostly, I ride around killing animals, picking herbs and completing random encounter missions. I’m not sure what’s up with this John guy and his moral compass, but I like his style.
I’m almost accustomed to my mediocre vision detracting from the average game experience. Playing Dragon Age was brutal, I was constantly squinting at the screen, and unfortunately RDR aims to be a repeat. The font, the print, the tiny map with its tiny little icons – the West is a melting pot of eyestrain misery. I’m coping, mostly by sitting on my exercise ball smack in the middle of the room 4 feet from the television.
Best of all, I’ve kept almost all my disdain for their perceptions of equine behavior to a minimum. Having been an avid equestrian since before I hit 2 years old, I’m uniquely equipped to be downright obnoxious on the subject. However, aside from an instance where my steed plunged us headfirst into Pike’s Basin, I’m just not up for griping. The things that could bother me are definitely there – all the horses move the same, do un-horsey things, rabbit over the landscape in bizarre ways – but with the depiction of humans in games still so far from perfect why screw around with the equus nuance? They are vehicles, and Gran Turismo fans don’t fire up GTA to complain about the cars. Of course, there’s GT5 and then there’s…
That’s not to say RDR is without things to legitimately gripe about. Frustrations arise, plenty of them centered on glitches, but I’d rather focus on something slightly less negligent. I think. Simply, when I ride up to some dudes and just plain can’t tell who the bad guys are. Is there a secret handshake? A lapel pin I need to check for? Half the time I end up shooting the wrong guy(s), and then there’s that pesky bounty business. Or, I chance upon some fellows shooting each other, but as soon as I show up all five of ‘em turn on me. Just passing through, boys!
If I’m going to defect to the dark side I want to do so deliberately, I want to know when I’m evil and when I’m being naughty. Moreover, I want the morally judged actions of “good” and “evil” to not be so darn [unintentionally] murky. This isn’t a Molyneux game, people, there’s no need for faux grey area. The choice should fall between who you want to side with, the sheriff or the cattle rustler.
It’s not that I’m against games challenging notions of right and wrong, ethics and morality, it’s that in RDR there don’t seem to be any such challenges. Instead, the task lies in being able to figure out which of the angry fighting dudes has been robbed, and who is the thief, before somebody dies. Usually me.
Insomnia
Early today news broke of Insomniac’s deal with EA Partners, and their planned new IP for both PS3 and 360. Shortly thereafter, a rather specific part of the internet exploded. (more…)
Dragon Age: Origins to Close
(This post is spoiler-free)
Dragon Age: Origins: 4 complete playthroughs, including DLC. Result: Cheerful gripes over the cruelty of “traveler” Trophy/Achievement.Dragon Age: Origins: Awakening: 1.25 playthroughs. Result: ebay.
No, I wasn’t overly fond of the DLC pattern that had me plunking down cash here and there to add a few quests to my story. Not overly fond, but a tiny bit willing. Fine, it was consensual. (more…)
N4G Blur Beta Key Giveaway
Still don’t have a Blur beta key? Thanks to the folks at Bizarre Creations, we have 500 keys to give out on N4G!
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About
I’m Community Manager and Admin for the NewsBoiler Network, home to N4G, TechSpy, AnimeShinbun, FilmWatch and 11×2. I also write for network editorial site, ZTGD.
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