Last night I played the first couple of hours of Alan Wake and the game is good fun. A little bit of Left 4 Dead mixed with a dash of Doom 3's flashlight and other bits and pieces. The game was originally intended to be the big DirectX 10 demo for Windows Vista but somehow wound up being an Xbox 360 exclusive.
The locations and environmental effects in the game look fantastic but there is one thing that stands out as freakishly bad (other than the Lincoln, Sync and Energizer product placements), the facial animation! Every time I watch a cut scene I cringe, here's why.
I've just recently finished Mass Effect 2 and Final Fantasy XIII, here's what their facial animation looks like as a comparison for the horror that follows.
Mass Effect 2
Final Fantasy XIII
Now, my friend says Uncharted 2 on the PS3 looks amazing and who am I to disagree?
Uncharted 2
(not sure if this is ingame but it looks it to me)
...and now Alan Wake *shudder* (make sure you wait to see Rose)
So as you can see... FREAKY! It reminds me of this classic
I know the word "awesome" is thrown around a lot these days, especially in the same sentence as my name (usually with a negator in between) and remember, that without me it's just "aweso".
Regardless of this drivel, the following Tekken 6 trailer is, well, awesome. Plenty of OTT explosions and action that would make Michael Bay blush. Of course it's all pre-rendered goodness, as with most Tekken cutscenes/trailers etc. but there are a few in-game shots thrown in, especially near the end. Make sure you watch out for the portly pork farmer "Bob" bringing the smackdown as Japan's stereotype of US citizens (about time!).
The new trailer is to celebrate the arcade favourite making its way on to the PS3 and Xbox 360 consoles. I just hope there's a demo coming out, that's about all I can manage with my l33t button mashing skillz.
It's always a sad day when someone we've spent a lot of time with, whether we like them or not, passes away and according to tiggerboy's blog, consoles are no different.
His fourth Xbox 360 RROD'd recently so some of it's fellow consoles and gaming peripherals attended a farewell where Master Chief read a moving eulogy to a sombre but respectful crowd.
Check out the photographic story on tiggerboy's blog which, in true soapy fashion, has a shock ending as an unexpected guest arrives as everyone else is leaving.
You might have to be a bit of a console gaming geek to understand half the references in the post.
After all the hype and excitement building up to the release of the new Xbox 360 dash (the total opposite to the lack of communication for the Facebook redesign) we have this little guy. Say hello to my new Xbox 360 Avatar.
While the new dash is fun to play with it's these Avatars which were always going to be the big thing. We all know Microsoft took the success of Nintendo's Miis and ran with it. Miis are basic. How basic? Miis are so basic they'd make a Lego man blush.
The Wii offers more options for rearranging facial features on your Mii than the 360's Avatars but the rest of your Mii is basically choosing a colour for your top (including you ball hands). The Avatars feel more like Sims and look a lot better with their detailed cloth textures and far surperior lighting. Another benefit is it's all hooked into your online presence via Xbox Live/Windows Live (take a look at my gamer tag over to the right there) so your little console guy is available in the "real" world.
Of course Microsoft plan to take this funky little idea and make money out of it with a limited selection of tops, pants, shoes and accessories available for dressing your little You up. How will they make money? By offering extra items like themed shirts/outfits for a small payment, e.g. a Guitar Hero t-shirt for 100 points. The most obvious instance of forcing this is in the ladies shoe department where a total of 8 shoes are offered. Ladies don't like shoes do they? I'm hanging out for the Prada shoe pack! I'm sure it'll only be 15,000 points... bargain!
Anyway, it's all good fun and the new themes are pretty funky too... oh, and if you're lucky to live in certain countries you get the Netflix integration where you can watch HD movies directly through your 360.
Amazing what you can get for free these days (not the movies).
If the excitement of the New Xbox Experience wasn't enough for you then wait until the awesomeness of Left 4 Dead hits your screen. Out on PC and Xbox 360 L4D is Valve's latest twist on the first person shooter game genre, this time with way more zombies, 4-player co-op play and a server-side AI "director" which determines what will happen to you in the game ensuring you get a unique experience each time through.
I played the demo last week with a mate and two AI characters as we cut a path through hordes of festering zombies. The majority of the them go down with a couple of shots from your shotgun, assault rifle or pistols but there are a few "hero" zombies which take more damage to defeat.
Today the full version of the game was released both in old style retail outlets and via Steam, Valve's digital distribution network/tool. I had a quick bash of the game this morning and even managed to luck my way into an achievement.
There are 4 of us lined up (in the real world) to play through the game in its entirety via the internet as the "survivors" and I can't wait. Friday night we hit the streets of Dodgeville to try to battle our way out of the city and hopefully safety.
News has hit the streets after the Microsoft press event at this year's Tokyo Game Show that the eagerly awaited "reboot" of the Xbox 360's dashboard (AKA "XBE") will be available for download on November 19th. No mention of it being geographically based or if it's just a big global release but I assume the Netflix integration will only apply to countries that already have it... i.e. not Australia.
I'm past the point of deciding whether or not to buy Fallout 3, my problem now is what platform to get it on.
I have a decent gaming PC (it does Crysis on Medium/High without trouble) and an Xbox 360 both of which have their own pros and cons and no matter how much I ponder the question there's never an obvious winner.
Both setups are running 5.1 audio with the Xbox 360 attached to a cheap-ass plasma and the PC using a 4:3 ratio 21" CRT monitor.
PC Pros
Finer control with the mouse for aiming and shooting in first person view. That said the game can be played using a non-realtime combat system where this pretty much becomes irrelevant.
Sorry to harp on about this game but amazingly "Yahtzee" of Zero Punctuation fame found Braid to be a mostly decent game. There's not much I can say other than watch the video review... enjoy!
You may have heard of Braid and its "ridiculous" price of a whopping 1200 points on Xbox Live Arcade (that's just under $20 AUD) in a time when most other XBLA games cost only 800 points (around $13 AUD). Well, I'm here to tell you it's well worth it.
I finished the game last night and I must say I was mightily impressed, especially considering it's an XBLA game. It looks and sounds like nothing else and the gameplay, while appearing deceptively simple, is quite a brain buster.
At the time of writing, Braid is the highest rated XBLA game ever with a metascore of 92/100. But it doesn't stop there, it's the 10th highest rated Xbox 360 game ever. That's right, a $20 game kicks the butt of huge budget extravaganzas like Mass Effect and Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfare.
The Story
Before I get into the nitty gritties I first have to mention the story in Braid. To quote Wikipedia, "Braid features Tim, a man searching for a princess. His relationship with this princess is vague at best, and the only clear part of this relationship is that Tim has made some sort of mistake which he hopes to reconcile or, if possible, erase. As one progresses through the six worlds in Braid, storyline text at the beginning of each world provides further insight into Tim's quest for his princess."
Yes, there's a princess and you play as the hero battling through the game to save her. But you're no knight in shining armour but just a guy in a suit and there's mention of locations in modern US cities and other less-than-fairy tale happenings that lead the player to believe this is Tim's glossing over of real world happenings.
The story progresses as you traverse the various worlds starting at World #2 and finishing at World #1. The final world is treated differently to the rest of the game leaving the player to just get through each area without worrying about picking up the jigsaw puzzle pieces. It also plays out in a rather ambiguous way leaving the player to decide what really happened to Tim in the real world.
The thing I like most about the story is it doesn't intrude one bit. You can just walk straight past all the story books and press the (A) button to shut the little dinosaur up at the end of each world. After playing through Halo 3 recently where cut scenes look like Hollywood movies and other characters in the game keep interrupting you while you're playing, Braid was a relief.
Gameplay and Game Mechanics
If there was one thing people who have played Braid will mention it's the ability to manipulate the flow of time. At any point during the game you hold down the (X) button and everything you've just done runs backwards. If you want to go back faster you can hit the left shoulder or trigger to speed it up. Having this mechanic in the game means you cannot die as you do in traditional platformers.
You may think this makes the game a cakewalk, well think again. Each area in each world presents you with a different and unique challenge which often requires you to use your ability to manipulate time just to make it through. Also, you find that each world obeys its own laws of time. For example the first world is a straight up platforming world where you only use the time-rewind to un-die but the second world introduces you to certain objects (they glow green) that don't obey your time manipulation. You need to use this objects to achieve your goals. Take a look at the screenshot (above/left) and guess how you might get that green glowing key over to the door. Another is a world where time stops if you stop, runs backwards if you move to the left of the screen and forward if you move to the right. Wikipedia has a complete list and short description of each of the worlds.
As you'd expect each progressive world gets more difficult than the previous but that's only if you want to solve the jigsaw puzzles. You can wander through each area of each world almost untouched to progress through the game. This is another example of letting the player choose how they wish to play... I'm looking at you console games with your checkpoints "just to make it more difficult".
So while appearing on the surface to be a regular old platformer Braid plays more like a puzzle solving game a la Portal than a red-overalled jumping and plumbing game.
The Visuals
As you can see from the screenshots and video below this game looks like a work of art. The painted backdrops are constantly changing and flowing giving you a wonderful sense of life while remaining abstract and "in" Tim's imagination. If there is one example you would look to in the argument of "can video games be art" it's Braid. I was so taken aback by the visuals that it took me a while to figure out that the opening title (seen at the top of this post) was actually part of the game where you had to run to the right of the screen.
The character design is very simple and keeps to the platformer roots of Braid where the animations only have a few frames each for different movements (if any). I enjoyed seeing the little pink rabbits go flying off the screen. The characters were redrawn (not redesigned) after the backdrop artist had done his work. Again, to quote Wikipedia, "The worlds and backgrounds were designed by David Hellman, who was responsible for the art in the critically-acclaimed webcomic A Lesson Is Learned But The Damage Is Irreversible. The character visuals were originally created by Edmund Mcmillen, but were later redrawn by Hellman "to better match the now-predominant style of the backgrounds".
Personally I can't think of another game that even looks remotely like Braid and in doing so brings a much needed break from the overbearing "gritty realism" that seems to plague the current generation of games.
The Audio
The first thing that strikes you when listening to Braid is there's no huge orchestral score, no Matrix-esque techno soundtrack, not even a layer of Corporate Rock. What you get is music to match the visuals, calming, beautifully haunting celtic-like instrumentals (I'm not talking about Enya here). Each world has different music which plays in accordance with the current passage of time. This means if you rewind time the music plays in reverse or if you're in the world where time is backwards then when you reverse time the music plays forwards. The music was all licensed from Magnatune which has a complete list of the tracks used.
As with the character design the sound effects are kept to a minimum so as not to interfere with the mood of the game. Some of the more notable sounds are the pink rabbits that sound like cats (weird!), the clapping hand sound of the man-eating plants that appear out of Mario-esque green pipes and the strange groans the balloon-head guys make when they get knocked off platforms.
The music and sparse sound effects all come together to produce a very calming game that's wonderful just to sit and listen to.
The Problems
My only real problem with the game overall is Tim's pants. Yes, his pants. His pants are white and some ladders are white so in the heat of the moment your brain registers the edge of Tim as the bottom of his jacket rather than his feet. I don't know how many times I tried jumping off ladders too soon due to this issue but thanks to the very handy (X) button rewind it was just a matter of going back a few seconds and trying again.
One thing I'd like to see added to Braid is the ability to pause the game leaving the current level visible. As it stands when you press pause you're presented with the full screen menu screen hiding what you were just looking at. The reason I would like to see this is so you can study the layout of the land without fear of being blasted by a fireball or attacked by a pink rabbit. One way around this is to hit the (X) button then the right shoulder or trigger button which sets time to play forward at x0 speed, that is, standing still.
A very minor problem is the title of the game. I was originally put off by the name "Braid", which comes from the story's Princess whipping Tim in the face with her braid as she spins around to walk away from him, but I'm not sure what I would call it otherwise.
The last problem is that now I'll be expecting every game to incorporate the time rewind feature, it certainly acts as a sedative for gamer rage.
Overall
I'm not sure if the game is poking fun at or paying homage to classic platformer games which work in similar ways but punish you for hitting buttons at the wrong millisecond. What I am sure of is it was a beautiful breath of fresh air in a stale game market where every big game is just a sequel to a game we've already played.
All this for $20 AUD. Easily 4 hours of totally original gameplay costing me a whopping $5 an hour. It took me 8-odd hours to get through Halo 3 and that game costs around $100 so that's $12.50 an hour for gameplay almost identical to the previous 2 Halo games, just a bit prettier.
So, jump onto XBLA and spend your hard earned cash on what could be the best game of the year.
Snubbing E3 Microsoft announced at their own GameFest gaming conference that, as of now, Games For Windows Live (the PC equivalent of Xbox Live) multiplayer features are now free to all.
"The move to free means that achievements, enhanced "truskill" matchmaking, cross-platform play with the Xbox 360, voice and text chat, friends lists, are all now free to Windows gamers. This change to free is for all Games for Windows LIVE titles, past and future."
Also at their love fest, Microsoft announced Direct X 11.
The company calls DirectX 11 a "big step forward for gaming, adding features onto existing DirectX 10".
Key components of DirectX 11, will include:
Full support (including all DX11 hardware features) on Windows Vista as well as future versions of Windows
Compatibility with DirectX 10 and 10.1 hardware, as well as support for new DirectX 11 hardware
New compute shader technology that lays the groundwork for the GPU to be used for more than just 3D graphics, so that developers can take advantage of the graphics card as a parallel processor
Multi-threaded resource handling that will allow games to better take advantage of multi-core machines
Support for tessellation, which blurs the line between super high quality pre-rendered scenes and scenes rendered in real-time, allowing game developers to refine models to be smoother and more attractive when seen up close
That's great and all but will we ever see games using it? There are only 3 games I can think of off the top of my head that use DX10 and the only one I played is Crysis. Meh... let's wait and see.
You've probably already heard about the fall update (that'd be spring here on the good side of the planet) to the Xbox 360 dashboard. You may have even already seen the screenshots and funky little video. Well screw you, here they are again!
For everyone else, this is what the crusty old dashboard will be replaced with in about 3 months. A more 3 dimensional and clean look with the new avatars making an appearance. Of course knowing Microsoft there'll be ads all over it when we do eventually see it.
E3 2008 has kicked off with a big bang with most of the noise coming from Redmond's corner. The news so far is that the Xbox 360's dashboard redesign has been confirmed complete with the Mii-like avatars and US users will be getting more HD content via Xbox Live Marketplace but the biggest news came from Square Enix's head honcho Yoichi Wada.
Yoichi-san stood up proudly and announced that the next Final Fantasy game in the series (XIII) will be released simultaneously on the PS3 and the Xbox 360. Yes, on the Xbox 360. This is a series that has been Playstation-exclusive for years on end with only a few bits and pieces thrown out to the Xbox owners now we're getting simultaneous releases... nice one.
I just got some spam from the Australian Xbox site telling me that I can now get (another) Xbox 360 for the low low price of $349 AUD (around $333 USD) RRP.
Obviously that'd be the arcade edition but this still means the Xbox 360 is now cheaper than the Nintendo Wii!
A quick check on the Kmart website shows that you can pick up a 360 for $299... $50 off the RRP.
I must admit I haven't played a Ninja Gaiden game before but last night I had a go of the Ninja Gaiden II demo and I'll tell you now, this game kicks ass. It looks pretty and is easy to handle (initially) but it's the sheer sense of power you feel both through Ryu's ninja actions and the high tempo, percussive music that makes it so much fun. Damn, if I had the money and it was available I'd be down at EB haggling to buy it right now!
It's gory as hell with limbs and blood going everywhere (watch as Ryu shakes the blood from his weapon after a fight) and in typical movie-style action form the bad guys often wait their turn for you to chop them to bits. Just watch out for that guy with one arm and one leg on the ground as he might just jump on your back and have a go at you.
The levels are pretty straight forward with only one path to follow and you can't "accidentally" jump off a balcony 500 meters up a building set in a weird mash of fuedal Japan and future Japan but that means you can concentrate on "flippin' 'n' sh*t" without fear of tumbling to your death.
I hope to play the full game one day soon... obviously when the kids are in bed.
Kotaku is reporting on a rumour that soon you'll be replacing your gamer card image with a Mii-like "avatar" for Xbox 360 Live accounts. You could assume this is a response to the Wii's Miis but don't forget that the PS3's "Home"
also features 3D avatars. I guess Microsoft just felt left out.
