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360 Demo Thursdays – Lost Planet

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Lost PlanetI’m posting this late, but with good reason — this demo is FUN. I decided to download something I’ve heard a lot of good things about and ended up with the Lost Planet demo. I should have quit an hour ago but I was having too much fun to stop.

Lost Planet, by Capcom, looks very promising. Capcom is on FIRE right now! Dead Rising was fantastic and now Lost Planet is looking even better.

I actually should have said Capcom is cool. I mean real cool. Freezing, even. Lost Planet, set in the 22nd century, is one cold place. Everything is buried in snow and from what I gather, you have to maintain a certain amount of thermal energy to keep yourself alive. It seems you have a life meter and an energy meter. Defeated foes drop glowing orange energy that you collect. This energy can be converted into life as well as maintain heat. This is what I gathered from the demo — I haven’t read any previews or the like. Just going strictly off what I experienced.

The demo consists of two missions — destroy the hive of the Akrids (the bad bug-like creatures that have infested the planet) in one and take out the Pirate’s stronghold (there’s good and bad Pirates. You can guess which kind you’ll be) in the other. Both end with boss fights that are challenging but not cheap.

The game controls well, with little details I really like. While fighting a larger monster, the closer I was to it as his claw came crashing into the ground, the more it made me stumble. I couldn’t shoot or even manuever myself while I was stumbling. It’s attention to detail like this that always gets me. The animation of your character (the game is played 3rd-person) is excellent. The guys that did the animations for Just Cause could learn a thing or two here. Trudging through the snow feels just like that — plodding and tiring. The weapons in the demo are standard shooter fare – a machine gun, a shotgun, rocket launcher, the works. You can also mount armored mechs. While I’m not a huge Mech fan, this was fun and again, easily controlled.

Maybe I was a little too harsh earlier dismissing the 360’s future line-up. Lost Planet looks like it will be a great game, one that I’ll definitely be adding to my wish list!

Don’t let me down, 360

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If you were to ask me if I thought you should get an Xbox 360, I don’t think I could say “yes” and feel good about it. Right now, outside of a couple games, there’s nothing compelling on the console. In fact, if I hadn’t got mine at such a deep discount, I’d be having some serious buyer’s remorse right now.

I’m with Tom over at G-Pinions:

There are only two X360 games I am interested in for the rest of the year – Viva Pinata and Gears of War. That is disgraceful. There are twice as many NDS games (Elite Beat Agents, Castlevania, Kirby and Yoshi’s Island). There are twice as many PS3 games (Resistance, flOW, Criminal Crackdown and Blast Factor). Hell, there are even more Wii games coming out this year (Red Steel, Zelda, Excite Truck, and Trauma Center) that I actually want. MS has a year head start and some great games coming out in the future, but this first year has been a complete disgrace.

I’m not even sure I want Viva Pinata. So as it stands now, Gears of War will probably be the only game I purchase for the Xbox 360 in the forseeable future. I plan on getting Forza 2 and Halo 3, but nothing else has grabbed me. The Xbox Live Arcade and Marketplace have been a great success, but again, I’m just not pulled in that direction. I’m really hoping games like Lost Planet and Assassin’s Creed turn out to be great games and at some point I’d like to get around to playing the new Splinter Cell but right now, the 360 isn’t my console of choice.

Now that the Just Cause rental has been returned, I’m back to almost exclusively playing games on my DS. I’m still working through the campaigns on Age of Empires, finally getting some actual game time with Trauma Center and my order for Ouendan has been placed and will hopefully show up before the end of the week. That’s on top of quick gaming sessions of Meteos, Metroid Prime Pinball and occasionally checking in on my Animal Crossing Town. That’s a lot of gaming goodness from that little machine.

With the Wii right around the corner, I fear my 360 won’t see much love. I’ll eventually get a chance with Oblivion and some other games, but I’m currently in the throes of some serious Nintendo love. I hope it’ll last.

Yikes

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The concept of the “Everquest Widow” is nothing new. Sure, World of Warcraft has been more successful than Everquest, and yes, there are “WoW widows” but it’s nothing new. A couple days ago, a post on Soul Kerfuffle was making the rounds last week, about a guy and his year in World of Warcraft. He talks of addictions, obsessions, and broken families. After I read that post, I found another post telling the story of yet another gaming widow dealing with someone “addicted” to gaming. For whatever reason, this particular blog post was rather poignant to me. Even though the game isn’t EQ or WoW, it’s still the same thing.

Maybe I’m just not dedicated enough, but I can’t wrap my brain around this. I cannot think of a gaming situation where gaming is more attractive, important or tantalizing than sex, EVER.

EVER EVER EVER.

I think the question of whether you’re addicted or not boils down to this: If offered the chance to be with your wife/girlfriend/significant other and you pass on it to play your game, level up one more level, finish your raid, whatever, I have bad news for you:

You, sir (or madam), are addicted.

Just Cause [360] – First impressions

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just cause.jpgI think “Just Cause” is possibly the worse name for a video game. It tells you nothing. The game involves you, a super secret government agent, fomenting revolution and mayhem on a South American Island. It’s a Mercenaries-style game, a Cuban sandbox, if you will. What I can’t figure out is what the name refers to. Am I a loyal government agent, helping the revolucionarios and their “Just Cause” or am I a free-wheling mercenary who enjoys running over helpless old señoras on the sidewalk, “Just ‘Cause” I can. Because honestly, I can’t really find the motivation to do the former when the latter is so much funnier. There may be a revolution going on, but I’ve got civilians to harass.

So what about the game? Right now, after a couple days of playing, I’m not impressed. I’m normally not a graphics-whore, but if the gameplay isn’t fantastic, it’s the first flaw I notice. Just Cause has some serious last-generation-itis. I can’t tell if the intention was to have cartoony characters or if they’re just horrible looking models. The animations leave something to be desired as well. The main character runs through the scenery as if he played for the other team, if you know what I mean. Maybe I’m missing out because of my standard-def TV, but I’m not liking what I see so far.

A large part of the game driving around the island. There are plenty of vintage convertibles, motorcycles, and trucks of all kinds to drive around town in. Problem is, the vehicle mechanics are an absolute joke. I’ve driving dirt bikes up inclines that are physically impossible with a g of 9.8 m/s2. I’ve taken on jumps that would have absolutely destroyed the underside of a generic SUV, but I hit the ground and keep on trucking. Sure, maybe I lose a bumper or something, but it’s ridiculously inaccurate.

The targeting system can be a pain but controls over all are good. Another big part of the game are the stunts you can pull off, like attaching your grappling hook to the back of a car and paragliding through the Cuban sky. The stunts work pretty well and jumping from car to car, Jackie Chan-style, is a fun diversion. Unfortunately doesn’t make up for other flaws.

Another major sticking point I see is the NPC intereactions. For a game where I’m supposed to be able to “interact” with the environment, the villagers and other non-essential, non-player characters are completely robotic. The only meaningful interaction I’ve found is for me to punch them. Not exactly the best way to build a relationship of trust when I’m punching the nuns in town. I was in a market with a guy trying to sell me his fruit. I jumped up on his fruit stand, knocked over his crates and nothing happened. Weak.

Not everything is bad, though. Underneath all my hang-ups could be a great game. Just Cause sports a HUGE map. There seems to be a lot of side missions and other content. I imagine there is a lot of content to uncover. Hopefully urging the locals to overthrow the bad guy will actually work. I’ll give Just Cause the rental treatment, hoping for the best, but I just don’t see it impressing me that much. It’s already failed with first impressions.

360 Demo Thursdays

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Unfortunately, there won’t be a “360 Demo Thursday” this week. I downloaded the multi-player demo of Splinter Cell: Double Agent and I had a chance to try it out was last night, but Xbox Live was going through some growing pains, so I never got into a game. I was going to try again tonight but got caught up watching the NLCS and now it’s too late to start a new game. So this week’s demo Thursday has been canceled. It will return next week.

For impressions of the Splinter Cell demo, you can read Gabe’s impressions. He’s a fan of the series, you could say.

Someone forgot to tighten the levels

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Via Matt from PTB, it looks like the new Bubble Bobble game for the DS has shipped with a game-crippling error — there’s no level 30 boss. So ya, all those hundred levels you paid for? You ain’t seeing the last 70.

Opps. I’m sure Nintendo will make things all better, but this is pretty embarassing.

There’s a video of the “glitch” at Go Nintendo.

360 Demo Thursdays (Tiger Woods 07)

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I had planned on trying an older demo this week, catching up on some of the demos that came out before I bought my 360, but the Tiger Woods demo dropped earlier this week and I thought that would be more enjoyable. Even though I haven’t been kind to EA lately, I read Tycho’s praise for the demo on Monday and had to give it a try. Tycho groks, as they say, golf.

The download itself comes in just under a gig and presents a pretty sparse demo – you play as Tiger, you’re given a handful of holes and your thrown into the game not needing much else. The last Tiger Woods game I played was TW ’05 on the Xbox, which I loved, but it had too many frilly extras I didn’t care for. Luckily, the basic swing mechanics were the same, so there wasn’t much of a learning curve.

With such a basic demo, what could be gleaned? A lot. Tycho followed up his initial praise with a more substantial post yesterday and it succintly captures the truth — this looks like it is going to be a good game of golf.

EA Sports, surprisingly, is headed in the right direction here. Gone is all the hyper-drama. No more flaming drives. No more shots of your swing from thirty different angles. No more controller-shaking heart beats. Just a simple golf swing, a flying, spinning ball. It starts with the crisp sound of metal on ball and ends with the soft thud of ball landing on green. No dramatic zooms into Tiger’s squinting eyes as he wills the ball into the hole. As far as I can tell, there’s no “doing the worm” after sinking a long putt. Just the golfer, the swing and the landing. Quite beautiful in its simplicity.

I also like the changes to the putting game. It’s different from the 2005 version (not sure how it matches up to the 2006 version). Gone are guessing what “4 feet long, 19 inches left” looks like. Now you see the contours of the green and where they break. Very intuitive and much easier, in my opinion. This change alone makes me very happy.

But not all is perfect. I still don’t like that you can add spin to the ball as its flying through the air. That’s bothered me since TW2003. It just doesn’t fit for me. I also wish they put a big Swoosh watermark on the screen and get it over with. Every shot of Tiger has two or three prominent Nike swooshes on full display. We get it! Tiger and Nike are synonymous any more. We don’t need you to shove it down our throats. It sure would be nice if the game was cheaper, though, with all the eyeballs your advertising to. But that’s a different rant.

Overall, I’m very intrigued by TW07. They’ve distilled previous versions of a decent game into a game that is approaching reality. Based on the demo alone, Tiger Woods 07 may be the first 360 game I actually purchase. It was that good.

Wii 100% backwards compatible

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I was going through my monthly clean-out of my Yahoo email address I came across this tidbit from Gamespy:

From: Joseph
In a recent news article you mention that “530” gamecube games are playable on the Wii. Is this the entire cube library, or are there limitations to the backwards compatibility as with the Xbox 360?

Li C. Kuo: I did a quick search on Nintendo’s official website and found a list of every GameCube game out so far. According to the website, there are 549 titles available for the GC right now. More are still being released. That’s a bit more than 530, however, Nintendo said “more than 530” GameCube games are playable on the Wii. We then asked Nintendo about this and were told that the Wii is “100 percent backwards compatible.”

The jury is still out on how much backwards compatibility actually matters, but it’s good to know I’ll still be able to break some necks with HUNK and RE4 Mercenaries.

This may be common knowledge, but it’s the first place I can remember seeing it in “print.” So there you go, future Wii owners — all your Gamecube games will work on your Wii.

360 Demo Thursdays (Need for Speed: Carbon)

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EA is not making many good games right now. More specifically, EA Sports. NCAA 2006 had a game-stopper of an error for the PSP version. Madden had issues with fatigue and their Hall of Fame mode. At first they were ignored but eventually corrected (even if they were a bit of a pain to fix). The Xbox 360 version of FIFA 07 was horribly gimped compared to its last-generation brethren. And most recently, NBA Live has come under fire for some pretty spectacular gaffes on EA’s part (you can see my favorites in this video). Then, when things couldn’t get worse, they announced that they’d be releasing “strategy guides” and “Classic Stadiums” on Xbox Live Marketplace. For Microsoft points. As in points you paid real money for. EA isn’t doing a very good jump of winning over gamers.

So I decided to see if EA could at least get a next-gen racing game right. I played a lot of Need for Speed: Underground and I love Burnout 3, both under the EA Games umbrella. So how would Need for Speed: Carbon stack up?

What exactly is the premise behind Carbon? As far as I can tell, it’s a street racing game where you a part of a “crew.” You race with your crew against rival crews for control of neighborhoods. Based on your performance in the different races and drift competitions, you can challenge a rival in a race through the canyon (one of these being named “Carbon Canyon”). You win the race, you take control of that neighborhood. Makes sense, right? Honestly, do you need a reason to race really fast cars?

The demo is pretty straightforward. You have three cars to choose from: a tuner, a muscle car, and an exotic car. The cars are customizable, but with a different manner of customization that I don’t really like. Instead of using off-the-shelf, real life parts, you can adjust how different components of the car looks using a bunch of sliders. You can adjust the look of your rims, the bumbers, the hood, things like that. I prefer the garage where you buy actual parts and customize your car that way. I’m sure they didn’t provide all the customization tools with the demo, but the ones they did include didn’t woo me at all.

Once you pick your car and customize it to your liking, you then can compete in three events, a race with your crew, a drift competition (those familiar with the Underground series will recognize that) and finally a challenge through the canyon. The race with your crew is pretty straight-forward. You can use your crew to either race ahead and try to finish first or fall behind and block cars as you race ahead. I wasn’t sure how the mechanics of using your crew worked, so I just raced ahead and won the race. Nothing too exciting. Same for the drift race. Same old, same old.

The canyon race was actually fun. You start off trailing your opponent and you rack up points the closer you stay to him. Halfway through the race, you switch places and he’s behind you, chipping away at the points you just earned. Finish the race with points and you win. Pretty easy, right? Well, the race through the canyon is tricky. Instead of using walls and railing as your own personal gutter bumpers, keeping you on the road, if you hit them too hard, you’ll crash through, plummetting to your death. It adds an extra dimension to the race, which frustrated the heck out of me but I came to appreciate it.

I started out the demo using the “muscle” car. I’d recommend against that. It handles like a dump truck. In fact, the collisions you cause in the game are poorly modeled. I’d hit a wall and lose control, but not in the direction or with the force I was expecting. It didn’t feel like I smashed into a wall. It felt more like I was bounced off the wall with a random amount of force. I didn’t care for how the collisions felt. The controls overall felt pretty good but not great.

The demo looked great (I’ve never seen such detailed asphalt in a game) and had the usual crap soundtrack that EA is famous for. It was easy to get the hang of things but overall didn’t impress me. At least not enough to buy Need for Speed: Carbon. Certainly worth a rental, as the canyon races were fun, but not enough to warrant a purchase for me.