I know we are only a year into the current next-gen, a term I loathe to begin with, but I was reading an interesting article over at the Washington Post regarding Verizon’s new open wireless standard.
Verizon Wireless’s new policy also opens the network to a host of other devices, such as video game consoles, digital cameras and home appliances equipped with special chips, a system similar to the WiMax network proposed by Sprint and the WiFi-enabled service touted by T-Mobile.
What’s cool about this is, in theory, Sony or Microsoft could integrate Verizon’s chipset into their console and build a constant always on connection. Think of it like Xbox Live, but available anytime, anywhere with no cables or setup. Out of the box you’d have millions of console gamers connecting to the same network to play games, download demos, and interact with each other. Not only that, by guaranteeing that everyone is on a network, it opens that network up to be a standard feature for developers like a hard drive or a certain type of display.
Hopefully we’ll see more Cell phone companies do this as it really opens up a lot of potential on not only gaming, but tons of other fronts.
For your everyday onlooker, Geometry Wars isn’t exactly that impressive to glance at. It’s a game though that once you begin to play, you truly understand its beauty. It comes as no surprise that many websites picked Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved as one of the Xbox 360 must have launch titles. So while Xbox 360 fans have been itching for a true sequel, it’s Wii owners who get it first with Geometry Wars: Galaxies.
The beauty of the original Geometry Wars was it’s simplicity. As a dual analog shooter (left stick moves, right stick shoots) the game was easy to pick up and play. The problem (if any) with the original was that once you got to a certain point in the game, it never changed or got more difficult. Galaxies sets to fix that with multiple level layouts, more enemy varieties, and even multiplayer. The core difference in Galaxies’ gameplay is how the multiplayer works. In the original Geometry Wars, you earned a multiplier (2x,3x,4x,etc) by killing multiple enemies in a row without dieing. In Galaxies your multiplier works by collecting Geoms. What are Geoms? Geoms are little pieces of badguys left behind after destroying them. Besides increasing your multiplier (which still reset to 0 when dieing), the Geoms serve as the in game currency to unlock levels and new abilities for your AI. That’s right, the other major additional gameplay mechanic is your little sidekick. The little guy, I call him Fred, follows you around and assists in the levels. Fred can be upgraded to perform various functions, whether that’s shoot where you are shooting, or become an auto turret and take down those pesky geometries. There’s about 10 different functions that he can serve, all which can be upgraded by killing baddies.
Galaxies is broken up into, surprise, galaxies! Each galaxy offers different planets to unlock and each planet has it’s own point total goals, enemies, and layouts. The layouts of the levels can vary between your normal square to one of many non standard shapes, both big and small. There’s lots of neat little things that happen on levels. Some levels have moving geometry which you have to work around. Others have enemies that lay down mines which you can trigger to set off chain reactions. And of course, there’s just the tried and true GW formula of shoot everything and never stop moving.
The one main problem with Galaxies is the game is a dual analog shooter without dual analog sticks. The developers made an admirable attempt to utilize the Wii controls to kind of use a point and shoot hybrid type control scheme. Unfortunately the Wii controller simply can’t provide a smoother circular motion and feels like a constant battle to aim and shoot where you want to. The Classic Controller becomes a necessity, but even then, I find the analog sticks and the hard corners of it detrimental to the fast pace of Geometry Wars.
Despite the controller flaws, the game is still Geometry Wars at heart, and that’s a good thing. The planets are very intuitive, and the unlocking nature of seeing what happens next is incredibly addictive. Add in co-op and versus play and the ability to link the game up to the DS and you’ve got a full value package at $39.99. The bottom line is this… if you are an arcade shooter fan - you need this game.
Looks like the cold weather finally decided to kick the birds from our area. I was sitting on the couch this morning and heard this sound that sounded like a construction vehicle going through my back yard…I looked out to find what had to be hundreds of thousands of birds. I only caught the tail end of it on video, and the youtube compression makes it tough to see…but you get the idea.
If you’ve been following this blog, you know my life has been a bit of a rollercoaster for the better part of 2 years now. I’ve found myself smack in the middle of the games industry writing for a popular website, participating in podcasts, and taking trips around the country. I’ve found myself responsible for generating an “appropriate” opinion of games to share with the community. I felt pressure to get the reviews right, and also felt the pressure from publishers to get them out quickly. We always had a policy at EvAv that you should at least complete the game, or put significant time into it, before writing a review.
And with a fall littered with so many good games I found myself with stacks of unopened games, and long hours at night playing games I didn’t even care for just to keep publisher relationships good. A few days ago I crashed though. I didn’t even want to pick up an Xbox controller, or look at my PSP. I took an entire day off and didn’t even touch a game. I began to put things into perspective. There was some encouraging posts on the MVP Xbox forum from some fellow MVPs who were feeling the same thing. And there was encouraging words from a member of the Xbox team. Hopefully he wont’ mind if I reprint it:
You don’t have to prove anythign to anyone. If something is stressing you out - don’t do it. If you don’t want to play Harry Potter because you hate it - don’t! Don’t waste hours, and force yourself to stress to get a review done of a game you hate - it’s not worth it!
And he was right. It wasn’t worth it. Then I noticed that Gabe from Penny-Arcade just had a similar experience with Assassin’s Creed.
I think the biggest complaint I saw was that the missions become repetitive and boring. I actually didn’t understand this complaint at all until just the other day. I had gotten an early copy of the game just like everyone else in the media but I was just playing it for fun. I’d cracked into it over the weekend and when I got into the office on Monday I started seeing these negative reviews. When I saw the low scores I was actually really upset and I wanted to talk about the game here on the site. I wanted to tell everyone that these guys were full of shit. However, since so many of the complaints were based on the ending I wanted to beat it first so I was sure I wasn’t missing anything. I attacked the game again but this time with the goal of beating it as fast as I could. I was determined to get a post up on Tuesday and I was pushing through the game as fast as I could. I went from finding every high perch in a district to only getting the ones I needed to advance the story. I stopped saving every citizen and avoided any unnecessary confrontations. The informer missions that I had really enjoyed before, I now avoided because I knew they took too long to complete. I did the bare minimum of missions to progress the story and anything that “hindered” my progress was frustrating. Monday night after skipping over another combat (something I used to really enjoy) I stopped myself. What the fuck was I doing? I wasn’t playing the game because I wanted to I was playing it because I had a deadline and I needed to beat it. I stopped immediately and decided I’d write about the game whenever I got around to beating it. I spent another day and a half with it and during that time I hunted for hidden flags and explored the cities again. I came in this morning and finally did beat it but I did it at my own pace and I enjoyed every part of it.
That sums up beautifully what was happening to me, but not just with one game, with many. The fact is, I play games to have fun. I play games because I enjoy them. If I review a game, it should be because I want to, not because I have to. Sure I’ll play a bad game, there’s rarely a game I play that I don’t find some redeeming quality in. But I’m not going to force myself through it anymore.
It was very refreshing to pick up Mario Galaxy and just play and enjoy it, knowing I wouldn’t have to review it if I didn’t want to. I even played some Scene It! with the wife, something I had reviewed already but still enjoyed. Last but not least was some online gaming with my buddy in Guitar Hero and NHL08. It was a damn good night of a gaming.
When you have an actual movie theater in your basement, you tend to consider yourself a fan of movies. So when I heard popular board game Scene It was making it’s way to the Xbox 360 I knew it was time to fire up the popper. Scene It: Lights, Camera Action is also the first Scene It to feature Hi-Def movie clips and unique games. Best of all, the game comes with four easy to use gameshow style controllers adding to the experience.
Those of you that have played the Scene It board game (or one of the 30 variations of it) should feel right at home, but the core of the game is changed a bit though. For one, the Scene It Xbox game doesn’t actually have a game board, instead to win you compete through 4 rounds of play and score points by answering questions as fast as possible. Players don’t take turns answering questions, instead both teams can answer most of the questions at the same time, with the fastest response getting the most points. There are also other challenges where players are required to buzz in and answer, with a wrong answer allowing the other team to answer in too.
I just got some treasures in for Pirates of the Burning Sea from Flying Lab Software. It appears there’s a mini game going on with a search for some real treasure! I’ve been given a map and a clue as well as a key to the chest.
It’s hard to believe the Gears of War franchise is only a year old. When the game launched last year on the Xbox 360 it immediately took the crown as the game to have. The graphics were top notch, the gameplay was solid, and the co-op experience was the best to date. A year later Microsoft and Epic have brought the game to the PC crowd, and it seems to have survived the translation.
The PC version of Gears of War supports Microsoft’s Games for Windows Live platform. Unfortunately, much like Halo 2 for Vista, it doesn’t support any cross platform play to extend the community. This is also the first title that allows for GFWL on XP machines. This was a huge complaint with the original GFWL titles as a lot of gamers didn’t want to install Vista. The game does support DX10, though I can’t really tell the difference between that and the DX9 mode visually. The real draw of the new version of Gears is the new chapters of content. Many noticed that there wasn’t exactly a smooth transition between Act IV and Act V, and these chapters help fill that void.
