buttonmashing

Mashing buttons since 1984

xbox 360

Thank you sir, may I have another?

by 1 Comment

butter_paddle.jpgThat’s basically what my wallet will be saying all month long. First and foremost, we’ve got the release of the Wii. It’s up in the air whether I’ll be able to secure a Wii at launch or not, but I’ll still try my best to grab one. That is the first whack on my wallet’s behind.

Then we’ve got Gears of War and Call of Duty 3 for the 360. While it’s doubtful I’ll grab CoD 3, Gears of War is already on the shopping list. Whack!

My current console of choice gets two games I’m particularly excited about, Elite Beat Agents and Final Fantasy III for the DS. Ouch, this is getting ugly.

And finally, the coup de grace for the Gamecube, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess will be available for both the ‘Cube and the Wii.

It’s just not fair!

360 Demo Thursdays – Lost Planet

by 1 Comment

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!

Just Cause [360] – First impressions

by 4 Comments

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

by 3 Comments

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.

360 Demo Thursdays (Tiger Woods 07)

by 2 Comments

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.

360 Demo Thursdays (Need for Speed: Carbon)

by 1 Comment

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.

360 Demo Thursdays (NBA 2K7)

by 4 Comments

Here’s a new thing I’m gonna try. Each week I’ll try out a new demo from Xbox Live and give my impressions. This week’s demo is NBA 2K7 by 2K Sports. The demo is a 4-minute quarter of Miami Heat and the Dallas Mavericks. No frills, just the game.

It’s been a while since I played a basketball game, but I still love sports games and the basketball season will be ramping up soon, so I thought I’d give it a try.

The game looks good, even if the close ups don’t. Jason Williams, for example, looks like a zombie. For a game as simple as basketball, the controls are pretty confusing. Of course, I didn’t pay attention to what buttons do, so naturally the first time I got the ball, I heaved a half-court shot instead of passing the ball. Once I figured the basic controls, the game is quite enjoyable. The players are easily controlled and actually behave how they real counterparts do (i.e. Antoine Walker doesn’t play D, hangs around the three-point line). I played about five games. I didn’t see any glaring flaws right away. Nothing that would be a game stopper.

I don’t see myself playing a lot of basketball, so I doubt I’ll even rent NBA 2K7, but if you enjoy the basketball game, NBA will definitely fit the bill.

IGN gives it an 8.3
Operation Sports calls it “the greatest basketball game [they’ve] ever played”

(On a side note, the batteries just died in my 360 controller. That’s almost a full month of regular playing on alkaline batteries. Not too shabby)

Microsoft’s X06 conference

by 3 Comments

I am insanely jealous of those that are in Spain to cover the X06 conference in Barcelona. Spain in my favoritest place in the world ever and I would love to return and soak in its gloriousness.

Enough of that, let’s get to the meat of the conference. Dealing with Microsoft’s future plans, there is a lot to digest. You can read the full press release here.

What I’m excited about:

An RTS, based on the Halo Universe, built by Ensemble Studios? Yes, please! Halo will transition perfectly into an RTS — the units are balanced but different, Heroes (Master Chief, The Arbiter) are built in, an entire back story, everything. I’m nervous about an RTS on the 360, but I’m still excited.

Forza 2 cannot get here soon enough. I’m still playing Forza on my 360 any chance I get.

Peter Jackson (and Fran Walsh) working with Bungie Studios is an interesting pairing. I’ll reserve my judgement on that for now.

I’m not sure how I feel about DOOM on XBox Live Arcade. I love Doom. My first online (modem to modem, actually) gaming experience was with Doom. Some of my favorite gaming memories are playing Doom with a friend at night, hearing his chainsaw roaring in the background, stalking me. But that was twelve years ago. I’m not sure how it will translate on Live. Split-screen co-op and deathmatch could be fantastic, however.

Microsoft is definitely delivering on some quality items right now. Good for them.

Buttonmasher’s Theorem 1

by 8 Comments

Buttonmasher Theorem 1 States:

The amount of content generated by the video game blogger will be inversely proportional to the amount of good gaming said blogger is engrossed in.

Proof:

1. The Buttonmasher is a video game blogger
2. The content on his blog, buttonmashing.com has decreased recently
3. He is currently playing Dead Rising for a second time through.
4. Dead Rising is considered a lot of “good gaming”

Therefore, an increase in good gaming causes a decrease in blogging output.
Q.E.D.

Xbox 360 First Impressions

by 3 Comments

So it’s been a little over a week now since a new Xbox 360 has taken up residence in the spot formerly occupied by the original Xbox. So far — it’s been McDonald’s. I’m lovin’ it. A few initial impressions with the system:

The Hardware – I went with the premium package, so I have the harddrive and wireless controller. The hardware design is actually quite nice. I remember scoffing at the new ‘look’ when they first revealed it, but it has definitely grown on me. It’s a slick looking machine. The controller, which as you probably already know, is very similar to the S-controller of the original Xbox, with the black and white buttons being replaced with shoulder buttons. I’m not a huge fan of them, but they beat the old design. I hated the black and white buttons. I have the wireless version of the controller, and it is comparable to Nintendo’s Wavebird (the peak of controller design). I do like the option of having a rumble feature on the controller. Being able to turn the console on and off from the controller is also killer. So far my only gripe has been the heat. It gets really hot in my entertainment center and I have to make sure and leave one of the doors open for increased air circulation.

Graphics and Sound – I have a decent TV, a 27″ Sony WEGA but it’s not HD. It’s a standard definition TV (SDTV) with 4×3 aspect ratio. I currently have the Xbox 360 hooked up to the composite video connection (the Yellow RCA hook-up). I have component video inputs, but I have my DVD player hooked up to those. After testing the Xbox 360 component video to see if there’s a difference, I switched back to the composite hook-up as I didn’t see a huge improvement. I also have an older Pioneer receiver (with Dolby Pro-Logic, it’s old school) and it sounds fine.

Since I’m almost exclusively playing Dead Rising, I can attest to the complaints of the game text on a SDTV — they suck. Outside of the text, though, the game looks great. This is next generation, of course, and Dead Rising has done a good job of ushering me into it. It’s got the little details that matter. More on Dead Rising later.

Backwards Compatibility – I’m not sure where I stand with Backwards Compatibility. It’s definitely a nice feature to have, but I wonder how much I’ll actually use it. If I can get my Halo 2 fix, I should be fine. Halo 2 was the first game I tried to test the backwards compatibility, and it worked without a hitch. After updating the 360 to handle it, I jumped into the single player game and everything looked and felt fine. I jumped on Live and that’s where the problems started. I tried to download all the map packs and it crapped out trying to download the last one. I’m hoping it was just network congestion (or something) but I’ll give it another try later.

I also played Forza Motorsport, which also looks and plays just like it did on the Xbox. Backwards compatibility looks solid.

Xbox Live and Live Arcade – This is definitely where the Xbox 360 shines. The interface (which is soon to be updated) is clean and easily navigated. There are a ton of options — downloading demos, movie trailers, themes, everything. The friends system is still great, being able to chat, text message, and invite friends to games is excellent and simple. The Xbox Live Arcade is another great system. Being able to demo just about anything has become mandatory and the options for what you can get are constantly expanding. Right now I only have Hexic (which I think comes bundled with the system) and the demo version of Smash TV. The interface is slick, the downloads are fast and I can see myself spending a lot of time (and probably money) in the XBLA. I love the scoreboards as well.

Gamercard/Gamerscore – Here is where Microsoft has hit it out of the park. They know gamers are a competitive bunch and almost all of us love statistics. With that in mind, the Gamercard and Gamerscore are right up our alley in this department. Say hello to the worldwide “High Score” screen. Each game has a set number of “Achievements” worth a certain number of points. Each time an achievement is earned, your Gamerscore increases. As you can see from my Gamercard, I’m at 185 points, mostly from Dead Rising achievements:

It’s a perfect way, really, to sell games. I know there are a handful of “Achievement Whores” on the Evil Avatar forums, who will rent games for the sole purpose of getting easy Gamerpoints. I know that I’ll fall into the category at some point, where I’m playing a game I hate because it has some easy achievements

Couple this with the interface of Xbox Live on the web, and you can easily compare your achievements to your friends, brag about how you are a serious Zombie Slayer and let the trash-talking begin.

There are actually quite a few little websites and apps that are springing up around the Xbox 360 and specifically the Gamercard. I’m using My Gamercard.Net and the Xbox Live generated card here on the site. There are others, like Glop, LiveCard.net, you can get a Dashboard Widget for your Mac or Konfabulator for the PC, and of course there’s the handy WordPress Widget for your Gamercard. Customization is the way to go. We’ll be seeing tons of new looking Gamercards all the time.



i aint yer pa's Gamercard

Get your own Gamercard Sig.

There’s another site which will graph your Gamescore:

And of course, as agentgray mentioned in the comments, your Xbox 360 can have a blog. 360 Voice takes data from your Live account and tells the world how bad you are at video games. Here’s mine.

Of course there’s a downside to all this data and interactivity — people can keep tabs on you in a whole different way. I remember listening to a podcast where the guy was supposed to be reviewing a particular game, but was actually playing another all the time. His boss (or maybe the PR guy from the review title’s company) noticed that his recent activity hadn’t included the game he was supposed to be reviewing. Busted! So maybe all this cool Live data is just gonna get us all in trouble. Especially when Halo 3 launches. “No honey, I was at work. Honest!”

Conclusion: The honeymoon period is still in full effect. I have very little to complain about here. Microsoft has really put together a slick console that is firing on all cylinders. The online components, the improved look and sound, the excellent wireless controller, and of course, great games. I am extremely pleased with my new purchase and I look forward to some serious gaming in the near future.