Loading ...
I’ve forgotten how painful Xbox LIVE can be when it completely refuses to behave - a memory that was more than brought to the front again the last couple of weeks, after my Halo 3 experience sank down the drain because LIVE thought it would be really hilarious to drop me from the match when I least expected it. But to make up for all those lost days on LIVE, and to coincide with the first Xbox LIVE Arcade community awards, Microsoft had announced a couple of days back that the award-winning Aquanox-meets-Unreal Tournament Domination underwater shooter Undertow would be made available to all Gold and Silver members from Wednesday through Sunday. As announced, the game, regularly priced at 800 MS Points, is now available for free download to everyone on Xbox LIVE until Monday, 28 January, 2008 1:30 PM IST.
Now, while I appreciate the gesture, I just can’t condone the fact that this game is taking the place of a regular Xbox LIVE Arcade release every Wednesday, not to mention that the LIVE service isn’t working right even now, after a whole damn month of problems. And what’s worse is that the game, apparently an appeasement for a service that wasn’t working the way it was supposed to (10 million new subscribers notwithstanding) has a small download window on it, after which it reverts to selling for its usual 800 points. Why not run the promotion for at least a week? Wouldn’t it have been better to have users register themselves at the Xbox.com page and get 800 Points instead of having a game thrust onto them that they may already have or not really want?
And what about the Indian Xbox LIVE users who might have already bought the game? We called up Xbox Support today morning and when we got through to a rep, we dropped the bomb and asked Microsoft about what happens to people who have already paid for Undertow. After acting completely clueless about the whole thing at first, and after reintroducing us to the annoying hold music for some time, they came back and said that they would indeed credit the 800 points into our account once they verified our Download History to make sure we had bought the game before yesterday. So, if you’ve already bought the arcade game, then all you have to do is call the Xbox support lines listed here, give them your gamertags and get your 800 points to spend as you please. You lucky dogs you!
We have official confirmation! In a press release that was sent to us just now, Microsoft India says that the Xbox Originals service will indeed be available in the country on December 4, along with expectations that Xbox LIVE will cross the 10-million user mark by June 2008.
Each Xbox Original will retail for 1200 Microsoft Points (or approximately INR 590 a pop) and will range from 2GB to 7GB in size, which should take us about, oh, 2 days to download on our crappy 256k lines. (Sorry, Microsoft, that 4 - 8 hour download timeframe is for the lucky people in the rest of the world who have access to great 2Mbps lines!) And yes, we too will get the chance to download Carcassonne (or Hexic 2, we’re not sure) within a 48 hour period as we had previously reported. Also.. wait, what?! That’s not what we reported! We thought it was a 24 hour period, unless my Math is that phenomenally bad. But the press release claims we should be able to download “a free Xbox LIVE Arcade game*, within a 48 hour period starting 15 November 1:30 PM.” Oh well, this one’s better anyway.
Microsoft is on a roll these days, bringing Xbox games to the Xbox 360, organizing local gaming events and trying to make sure at least first party titles are available here on Day 0. With Xbox LIVE turning five, they’re getting even more generous. According to an official press release, Microsoft will celebrate the five year milestone and the 2-year anniversary of Xbox LIVE Arcade by giving away free downloads of Carcassonne to to all 8 million members, in addition to showing their gratitude to those that have been supporting them since 2002 with 500 Microsoft Points.
Carcassonne will be available for download via Xbox LIVE Arcade from 12:01 a.m. PST on Nov. 15 through 11:59 p.m. PST on Nov. 16. Or, if you want that in local time, between 10:31 a.m. IST on Nov. 15 and 10:20 a.m. IST on Nov. 16. And oh, it looks like our prayers have indeed been answered and the most awesome Psychonauts will indeed be available on Xbox LIVE Marketplace. What did we tell you, huh? Now to just sit back and wait for Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time to join its friends on the Xbox 360!
Hit the jump for the official press release.
Remember our little rant on Secret Agent Doritos? Well, the Doritos brand finally announced that five lucky guys have been selected from over two thousand submissions to the Unlock Xbox challenge to have their own game made for the Xbox LIVE Arcade. Announcing the five finalists:
1. Doritos Dinosaur Dash by Mike Borland of Sewickley, PA
2. Doritos Presents UDC: Ultimate Dodgeball Champions by Devan Moore of Panama City, FL
3. Monkeys from Mt. Dorito by Juanito Lagasco, III of Algonquin, IL
4. PB’s Quest for Flavor by Jeremy Mattsen of Colorado Springs, CO
5. Rythum Racing by Kenneth Parker of Warner Robins, GA
What’s more, you will be able to head over to the contest’s website soon enough and participate in promotions to net some cool goodies including Xbox 360 consoles, Xbox LIVE Gold subscriptions and more, as well as getting to play the beta versions of these games sometime in October. Now a lot of people seem to be quite pissed off already with this selection, but I think I’ll actually reserve judgment until I can actually get my hands on them games later.
We all heard about Microsoft slashing the prices of the console a bit more for Europe this week, as well as the newly announced Holiday Value Bundles, but it looks like that’s not all that’s happening in the Xbox 360 camp. Word has trickled down from Shizzle Games in Belgium that the Xbox 360 systems are undergoing a name change as well, with the Core system being renamed the Xbox 360 Arcade, the Premium system changing into the Pro and the Xbox 360 Elite being, well, the Elite. Well, it’s new, what did you expect?
But the name’s change isn’t all that is happening. What will make most people who bought the Core system a couple of days back is that the console is also bundling along a 256 MB Memory Card, as well as five Xbox LIVE Arcade games, along with an HDMI port as well. All for cheaper than you got the console for last week, which is now at the same price point as the Wii, incidentally. Feels nice, doesn’t it? We will be contacting Microsoft India for comments on if and when the newly re-branded consoles will be available here and let you know as soon as we hear from them. In the meantime, have fun counting down the few million seconds that are left for BioShock to release here.
Nu ook officieel: Microsoft verlaagt prijs Xbox 360 [Shizzle Games]
With the latest flood of new game releases and with almost everyone around disappeared to either play BioShock, watch awesome videos, kick back on their Xbox 360 or otherwise write possibly spoiler filled reviews of the “Game of the moment” *glares at certain people*, it leaves those of us without systems or 360s or PS3s to contribute to the one niche that is still left open: random rants and raves.
As seen by the ever-awesome scenes from BioShock, Crysis and even Assassin’s Creed, games nowadays are becoming more and more realistic. As with the previous generations, each set of games coming out these days pushes the visual boundaries further and further. Sooner or later, we’re going to end up seeing games that are really, really hard to distinguish from the movies we watch everyday. Of course, this usually ends up coming at cost of system resources, money and time so high, that the line that defines ‘sane’ is so far away; it looks most akin to a dot to those individuals that would dare look back (I’m looking at you, id. You and your bloody 20GB of Rage textures! You want Rage? TRY HULK RAGE! *SMASH!*).
However, since this issue has pretty much been discussed to death time and again over a million of the internet’s websites, forums and other venues for discussion, I won’t touch on it too much. Such discussions are normally peaceful and more expressions of opinion. Usually they just start out as words, but then slowly descend into a madness from which everything from Ion Cannons to Tactical Nuclear strikes are deployed to bring about devastation upon the armies of tanks, planes and infantry that struggle for control upon a massive and varied terrain of jagged programming code, drivers and the occasional wreck of an old 486s or Amiga of yore.
Okay, kidding. So it usually doesn’t end up like that. But the flame wars that usually emerge can be ferocious in nature and were it to be mapped into an RTS of sorts, I bet it’d put even Supreme Commander to shame.
To focus back on the subject (do random rants even have subjects?) the realism of today’s games is nothing short of awesome, but it does have its drawbacks. Having been spoiled by F.E.A.R., Doom 3 and other new games, it is becoming incredibly harder to revisit the old retro-days of yore.
Upon seeing the old, dated graphics that came with many a DOS game, my mind cringes; as if demanding that resolution be higher than the mere 640×480 pixels that was once considered ‘king’ of gaming in its day and age. When I finally got a chance to play Turok 1 again – a game that, for the one level I played it back when it came out I thoroughly enjoyed, I couldn’t get through even half of the same level before giving up. The graphics, the sound…my mind simply couldn’t wrap itself around how something could be so awfully painful – even as it recollected memories of all the fun it had with it at one point of time.
Then came Turok 2; although a fair bit better (especially with controls) than its predecessor, once again half-way through the game I had to stop. I just couldn’t stand the low-poly models; the horrid textures. Although I had insane fun with the game play (very, very little can actually beat using a cerebral bore, or watching as your arrows impale an enemy dino in the neck), it soon got tiring – especially with the constant annoying “Turok! Help us please!” whining from those damn brats in their damn cages! I mean, seriously, when I open the cage they should at least, you know, stop whining and make a break for it. But nooooo! Idiots have to wait for Turok to come and rescue them so they can just ‘disappear’ into nowhere. If they could disappear before, why the heck did they even have to wait for Turok in the first place?!
I have absolutely no clue how I withstood and enjoyed the game to its fullest the first time around I played it. Perhaps the fact that I was a fair bit younger and more naïve might’ve done something to the lack of criticism. Back then, to get –any- game to run well on your systems was a miracle.
But there are some games, some which despite their age seem to have that sense of style that never grows too old to enjoy. This applies both to the game play and the visuals itself. It’s a sense of style – a uniqueness that somehow newer games seem to have difficulty replicating. Doom 3 and Quake 4 are good examples of this lack of style – both games are virtually identical when it comes to graphics and game play as a whole. Although Q4 did have a few (and somewhat cool) vehicles, there really wasn’t anything that set it apart; besides perhaps the story (which rode a lot on it’s predecessor actually). Something similar could be said about FEAR. Although visually, it’s far darker and the firefights more intense with the use of slow motion, it still strikes me as ‘just another FPS’ when it comes down to it.
What gripped me about FEAR was not its dark, brooding hallways, or the scary girl ghost jumping out at me from the dark corners when I absolutely least expected it to the point where my heart skipped a beat every time I saw a little girl wearing red (oh my god did that shadow just move?) or such. What gripped me about FEAR was, rightfully, the story – which still does. However, despite this the fact that it really just looked like another shooter on the market sort of made it slightly less…unique, as it were.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m all for realism and awesome graphics – the two easily make up some of the best games around. But in the strive to better graphics, for some reason developers seem to be moving more and more away from having unique styles to those graphics.
By styles, I don’t mean completely cartoony or even cell shaded stuff. Team Fortress 2 is an excellent of how going on with style and cell shading works to make something unique. Yet, at the same time having everyone do that would just be counter-productive.
Its just that when every game that comes out looks incredibly real, where does the true difference lie? In the lighting? In the models or scenery? In the textures and artwork?
Whenever I see concept art for any games, it’s simply mind boggling just how good the artists of these various developer companies are. Then one compares the art to the actual in-game models themselves and then it ends up somewhat…underwhelming. Although no doubt that in certain cases the models come out far cooler than the art; many times the art itself just looks better. Be it colors or lighting, there is something about the way the artist made it – the style of the entire thing as it were, that appeals to viewer.
To take another example of such style – Defcon.
Its colors are simplistic, the details to a minimum. Yet it is this simplicity; this denial of any details that seems to flow with any player’s perceptions. The nuclear missiles are little but simple icons, yet it does not matter – the entire visual theme blends into that of the game play, creating in essence, a style hard to replicate by many other games.
It is by far not the only example. Many of us have heard of the addictive fl0w. I had the pleasure to play this simple, almost beautiful game’s limited version on the PC. Despite being rather short, its visuals merge well with the soft chimes and sound, and in turn merge with the game play again to make something different; unique almost.
Then there are older games, from the era where realism was not very possible. Games in this era relied on impressive artwork, visuals and impressive action to draw in the gamer. A few good examples could be like Crusader: No Regret and maybe even to a lesser extent Mortal Kombat and the street fighter series.
Yet another recent example can be Battleships Forever – a successor to the hit classic Warning Forever. Indeed, one could quote a myriad of examples of games with their own unique styles – but such wishful thinking is really futile.
The market’s prevailing attitude rests more on realism than anything else right now, dictating where the majority of publishers wish to aim their content. Although developers do move to the whims of the majority of their collective audiences, the trend is thankfully not universal. Team Fortress 2 will come out, while Starcraft 2 seems to hold some promise as well. Other good, fun games to look out for is perhaps Little Big World on the PS3 or alternatively, one could just go to the Xbox Live Arcades for a dose of nostalgia.
After creator Jeff Minter spilled his guts out on his blog about Space Giraffe, the game, along with Street Trace: NYC, is now available for download on the Xbox LIVE Arcade for a cool 400 MS Points.
The psychedelic funhouse that is Space Giraffe is an arcade game that shares a lot in common with Jeff’s previous work on Tempest 2000, even though it offers a lot more challenges (over 100 levels) and as Microsoft Game Studios release manager James Cope said, is an experience that will overwhelm the player.
“Space Giraffe is different again, it purposefully overwhelms you. It is a new type of game and it will scare people.
Learning to see, listen and feel the game a player is rewarded with a very beautiful and special experience that we haven’t experienced in videogames for a long time; the whole of Space Giraffe is more than the sum of its parts.”
Space Giraffe and Street Trace: NYC are available for download right now on the Xbox LIVE Marketplace for 400 and 800 MS Points and feature multiplayer over Xbox LIVE as well.