Bioshock Xbox 360 Demo

BioshockIt’s been a while since I’ve reviewed any video games. That would be because I haven’t had time (or the will) to spend time on the consoles.

I got curious with a game that’s been all hyped up by the gaming community. It’s been getting high review scores such as 9.0 from Gamespot (9.7 from Gamespot critics) and has been labeled the most anticipated game release rah-rah-rah. I’ve become a skeptic with these types of fan-boy hype ever since Gears of War went through the same thing. Don’t get me wrong, it was a good game, but I wouldn’t rate it higher than GRAW (it’s pretty hard for a game to beat GRAW in my books).

So anyway, the point is, we downloaded the Bioshock demo last night after some initial hesitation. Hesitation because of the hype and the fact the download was over 1 gig. It’s not a bandwidth issue, it’s a I-can’t-be-arsed-waiting-for-stuff-to-download thing. Anyway, at 11:30pm, the download finished and I decided to take it for a spin before I curled up in bed.

It was quick to impress. Set back in the 1960’s, you start of (smoking!) on a plane over the Atlantic when suddenly the plane crashes and you’re in the water. It took me a good… oh… 20 seconds to realise that the game gave you control when you’re in the water (I can be daft and slow sometimes… I blame it on age). So you swim to the only place you can, this takes you to the underwater city called, Rapture.

I’d like to point out here that I’m a wuss when it comes to survival horror type games like Resident Evil. As much as I love the games, they creep me out and Bioshock certainly comes into this category.

Once you arrive in Rapture, the first thing you see is some weird monstrous creature killing another human being in some gruesome way. I’m already icked out here. Next, the same monstrous creature then jumps onto your bubble vehicle thing that was used to bring you to Rapture and makes some noise and attempts to get to you. Again I’m icked out some more, so when Atlas, the guy on the radio, tells you to exit the bubble vehicle thing, you can imagine me… “Nooo… I don’t want to… I’m scared”. Completely and illogically scared. I haven’t even gotten into the game and I want to give up. Gah!

But I push on and it’s good that I did because the very first thing one notices with Bioshock is the sheer beauty of the graphics. The style of the graphics may not be everyone’s cup of tea, it’s a weird mix of components from the old 1960’s and somewhat futuristic underwater city. But nevertheless, it’s still a great looking game.

The weaponry I encountered so far is old 1960’s style pistols and machine guns. But then you have the plasmids… which obviously aren’t old 1960’s at all but falls into the futuristic side of the graphical stylings of Bioshock.

I haven’t seen much of the enemy AI. I fought a few Splicers and saw a Big Daddy at work protecting the creepy Little Sister. There’s something about “innocent” little girls doing creepy things that seriously gives me the ickies and there seems to be a trend going on using little girls to scare the wits out of people.

I didn’t get as far as to engage a Big Daddy, although I don’t think I want to judging my what I saw it do to a Splicer that scared a Little Sister. The Splicers are really quite aggressive, they’ll come after you once they see you. I liked using the combination of Plasmid and traditional weapon (like the wrench) to beat up the Splicers, there’s something strangely satisfying about walking up to a stunned Splicer and beating the cr*p out of them.

In the end, the demo hung on me so I never got to finish it, but so far, it’s looking good. An interesting FPS set in an interesting environment.

Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Vegas Demo Review

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: VegasYet another video game review, this time it’s Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Vegas Demo.

Firstly, W-O-W. Impressive and then some.

The graphics are really something else, very gritty and totally immersive. The effects when you get shot (and die) are very convincing. The gameplay feels very life-like too, not that I know what it’s like to be shot at, but you know what I mean. I found myself very quickly looking around every corner, hiding behind every box/crate/wall to stop dying every couple of minutes. I couldn’t do my usual gung-ho maneuvers. I also found out really quickly that knee shots do NOT kill the bad guys like it does in other shooting games.

The one confusing aspect (or maybe it’s just me) is the toggle between first and third person when you take cover (LT button) behind crates, walls, boxes and the like. It’s goes from first person perspective to third person perspective when you take cover, which is good, but when you stop taking cover it whizzes you around back to first person mode and it was pretty disorientating at first. Something I’ll have to get use to still.

I should mention that game is a cross between a first person shooter (FPS) and a squad based game. In the demo, you have two team members with you, who you can instruct what to do, but unlike the squad based games I’ve played so far, it’s mostly in first person view (except for the take cover thingy) as opposed to third person view. This make the game more immersive for me, and shooting is easier too.

Blood and gore effects are nicely done, quite realistic. When you shoot a guy and there’s a wall behind him, there’s nice blood splatter on the wall. It’s a little gruesome perhaps, but adds to the realism of this game.

I also liked how the demo asks you whether you want the “Normal” mode or “Realistic” mode. I went for the normal mode, but I’m assuming realistic mode means one shot and you’re dead.

I’ve played the demo probably half a dozen times and still haven’t got to the end. That just says:

  1. I’m just a sucky gamer (very possible)
  2. I’m too impatient (definitely part of the problem)

One more thing mention about the demo, it’s set in Las Vegas (duh) in a casino called “Dante” which is under contruction, the game layout really gives you that feeling of a construction site. You land on the roof top of the casino and make your way down, shooting almost-hordes of bad guys around, who aren’t always that easy to kill because they take cover. The AI is pretty smart too, the bad guys don’t stick their heads out practically screaming “shoot me please”, but they keep their heads down and only expose their gun and hand, usually pointed at you and usually spraying bullets in your direction.

This demo is so worth the download and it definitely makes me want to spend money on this game.

Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Vegas is to be released in Australia mid-late November.

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Tony Hawk’s Project 8 Demo Review

Tony Hawk Project 8Gotta love Xbox Live and the demo downloads. Granted, many of the playable demos are 600-800 MB in file size, which takes ages to download even on ADSL, but when you get a good game to download, the wait (and bandwidth) is definitely worthwhile.

I got the chance to play a bit of Tony Hawk’s Project 8. For those who don’t know (and how couldn’t you NOT know?!), the Tony Hawk games are all skateboard games. Sounds like something you may not be interested in? That was exactly my thought until I picked up Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, the first Tony Hawk video game, and instantly fell in love with it. It was supremely fun and very playable, even for someone who had zero interest in skateboarding, like me.

Tony Hawk’s Project 8 is the 8th (gee what a surprise) installment of the Tony Hawk series of skating games and while you may think that skating would get boring by the 8th installment, you’re sorely wrong. It’s just as fun as it was in the first game, and possibly even funner (yes I know that’s not a word). As always there’s plenty to do, plenty of skills and tricks to master and best of all, it’s an open environment, so you can do the whatever tasks you feel like doing, whenever you feel like doing them.

Not much has changed in terms of my ability to actually “skate”, I still suck just as much as I did in the first game, but this still doesn’t stop me from playing and, more importantly, enjoying the game. The graphics are awesome, what you expect from a new gen console. Music isn’t awful. Learning curve is fairly easy, especially if you’ve played a Tony Hawk game before, and the controls are basically the same.

Something I enjoyed was the hospital bills that flashes up every time you stack it. As I said, I still suck at this game and managed to accumulate a $24,000+ bill in one fall. Noice!

While skating around the little skate park you’re confined to, you can interact with some characters. Sometimes these characters give you a task to complete, and sometimes they just give you information about the full game.

The new Nail the Trick feature gives you precise control over the skater’s feet so you can flip the board and pull of a trick. The camera slows down to “bullet-time” speed and you move the left thumbstick for the left foot, or the right thumbstick for the right foot and the board flips according to how you’ve moved the feet.

There’s also a task mode where a camera man skates around and you follow him, pulling off tricks in his vicinity. The more tricks you pull off within a given time limit, the more “pro” you are. This is one part of the game where it doesn’t allow you much freedom, if you stray too far from the camera man, the game will reset you closer to him. I lost my orientation a few times because of this.

There are also spot challenges around the skate park. These are mini-challenges scattered throughout the game world that you can choose to complete whenever you feel like.

I’d like to take a closer look at the demo again before the game is released, which should be mid November for Australia, can’t wait! Sorry, couldn’t find a reliable source for the exact Oz release date.

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Rockstar’s Table Tennis Demo (Xbox 360)

Rockstar Table TennisI thought it was a little strange that Rockstar, the makers of horrendously violent yet very, very fun video games such as the Grand Theft Auto series, is releasing a family friend, sports simulation game like Table Tennis. You’d expect some other company like EA or maybe even Activision to make a table tennis video game. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with Rockstar releasing a “family friendly” video game, it’s just unexpected, but very welcome!

I have to admit, I’m the last person who thought Table Tennis could be fun on a video game console, I was a skeptic. I couldn’t grasp how they could make table tennis playable on the Xbox 360. If you’ve ever played real life table tennis, you’d know how fast the game can be. I didn’t think that any game developer could capture the fast paced yet technical nature of table tennis. And yet, since playing the demo, I’ve found it to be surprising fun and quite addictive.

The Rockstar’s Table Tennis demo I played was downloaded from the Xbox Live Marketplace. It’s one of those demos that’s a must-download for everyone. Trust me, you won’t regret it. It’s instantly playable and instantly fun.

The demo gives you the choice of one- and two- player modes, but sadly, no online gaming. The two characters available are Liu Ping (Chinese) and Mark (African American).

Rockstar’s Table Tennis reminds me much of Tony Hawk’s original Pro Skater in the sense that even though I’m not a skater, and I’m not a fan of skating, the game was instantly playable and heaps of fun from the get-go.

Graphics are good. Realistic looking people made more realistic by their movements and mannerisms. Each of the two characters you’re presented with in the demo have their own mannerisms and different strengths and playing styles.

The display of the ball spin is quite intuitive. Ball spin can be top-spin, back-spin, left-spin and right-spin and each of the spins are represented by spinning coloured blobs around the ball.

The sound design is very effective. The music wasn’t irritating. One aspect I particularly enjoyed was when a rally started getting into the double digits, exciting music would start to fade up. Other sound effects were very simple, effective and rather cute. Option selection sound effects were just a ping pong ball bouncing on a paddle or on the table. The crowd cheers also added to the game with applause in the appropriate moments and random people yelling out support for the players.

The full version of the game will have 11 characters, 19 venues and various gameplay modes to choose from.

Official Rockstar Table Tennis Website

Where to get it

Saints Row Demo (Xbox 360)

I’ve got a backlog of stuff to write about video games, that must be why I’ve been lazy and not posted any of them. I know it’s one of the downfalls of blogging, when you’ve got so much to say and just can’t be arsed saying it, then the list of things to talk about just grows and grows and before you know it, you’ve got this huge backlog and the thought about going through it makes you want to roll over and fall back asleep.

Saints Row CoverI wanted to share some thoughts on a couple of the games I’ve played and loved recently, most notably, Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter and Oblivion, both on Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console, but that will be another day. For today, I wanted to quickly report on my short experience with Saints Row.

I played the demo of Saints Row on the Xbox 360, which was downloaded through Xbox Live Marketplace. I have to say, one thing Microsoft got right is Xbox Live and the marketplace for demos and game videos. I couldn’t care less about the movie preview videos, if I wanted to watch previews I’d just wait until some TV ad blasts it in my face, I’d rather not waste bandwidth downloading the preview. And theme packs and gamer pictures aren’t much use to me either. Call me cheap, I can’t bring myself to pay for gamer pictures or theme packs when there’s nothing wrong with the ones I already have. I know, I know, it’s only a couple of dollars, but still…

Anyway, back onto what we’re suppose to be talking about, Saints Row. It’s not released in Australia yet, it should be here at the end of August 2006 (31 August 2006 to be exact). I honestly can’t wait. Saints Row is much like Grand Theft Auto, another game that I absolutely loved, in terms of game play and in some respects, the theme of the game. In particular, it’s quite similar to the first part of GTA: San Andreas, where you, a gang member, run around trying to take over neighbourhoods by killing rival gangs.

In Saints Row, you run around as a newly recruited Saints Row gang member doing a similar thing in GTA: San Andreas. You kill rival gang members and take over their neighbourhood. That’s about as much as I saw from the demo. It’s an open world, meaning you can pretty much run around to any part of the “world” and do pretty much anything you please. There are missions of course. One mission I undertook was to recruit “hos” for a pimp and another was to take over a neighbourhood by killing a particular person. Every time you complete a mission, you get money and your reputation meter grows a little.

A pretty cool aspect I thought was the ability to customise your dude. You can select from a Caucasian, Asian, Hispanic or African American man and then tweak the face until you get a dude you’re happy looking at. This is a little reminiscent of Oblivion, but much easier, and therefore less, to customise. I was a little disappointed you couldn’t choose the gender, would’ve loved to run around as a chick.

The look of Saints Row is very next generation. It looks much better than GTA, but then again, you’d expect that from the Xbox 360. There’s a longer draw distance, but unfortunately, there’s still some pop ups. Most notably, there were pop up trees. Other than that, the graphics were less cartoon like than GTA and the environments are well done to give you that real life street quality. What I particularly liked was the seamless transitions between indoors and outdoors. There’s no opening of doors then waiting for the indoors environment to be loaded.

The violence in Saints Row is pretty extreme. The beginning cut scene was very graphic. Much more than any movie I’ve seen, it even made me cringe a bit, which is pretty hard to do. Put it this way, if I had kids, I wouldn’t let my 16 year old play it. If I could help it, I wouldn’t let mt 18 year old play it! The language is also pretty extreme for video games, it seemed like every second sentence in the cut scenes had the word “mother-f*ckers” in it.

The learning curve for Saints Row is pretty low. If you’ve played GTA before, you’ll find many of the buttons do the same actions. The one thing I haven’t found yet is the handbrake, which is useful to make sharp turns to get away from the cops when they’re chasing you. I must be blind or something, because I swear I simply couldn’t figure out the handbrake.

Hmmm.. that’s quite a bit of an entry for a quick report on Saints Row. If you can manage the ~1 GB demo download, and you don’t mind a lot of violence and bad language in your video games, then I would definitely recommend checking out Saints Row.

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Where to get it

Addition to the video game family

As we all know, the next generation consoles are well on their way. Microsoft’s Xbox 360 was released in Australia on March 23rd, 2006, about 4 months after the Amercian, Europe and Japan release. Sony’s Playstation 3 is also on its way with a projected release date of the second half of 2006, some sources have cited September 2006, others have said November 2006, but nothing has been confirmed as yet.

Xbox 360 PackWe managed to hold off purchasing a Xbox 360 for all of one week before curiosity about the new console got the better of us. In the end, we forked out about $1000 (AUD of course) on a Premium Pack, an extra controller, an extra headset, a Play and Charge kit and the following games:

  • Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter
  • Kameo
  • Perfect Dark Zero

I also bought a one year, Gold membership subscription to Xbox Live and it’s possibly the best $79.95 I’ve ever spent. I was never much of an online game player, but G.R.A.W. together with Live has definitely changed my mind.

Many countless sleepless nights have been lost to that game in multiplayer Live mode. It’s very addictive and very fun to shoot characters controlled by another human being, instead of the game’s A.I.. The headsets add another dimension to the Live play. It’s a thousand times more fun being able to communicate with other players around the world using the headset. It makes teamplay in Co-op missions and Team Elimination much more meaningful.

As for Kameo, it’s a very sweet and cute game but pales in comparison to G.R.A.W. The graphics are cute, the characters are cute. It’s just a cute game. I would almost call it a chick game. There’s nothing wrong with chick games, I’m a chick myself, and I did enjoy Kameo, I think I just prefer more grown up games.

I can’t even comment much on PDZ because the damn game freezes up at the same spot every time. We’ve exchanged the game and still no luck. We’ve exchanged the console and still nothing! We’ve played the same 5 minutes about a dozen times and we’ve pretty much given up on it. From the short 5 minutes we’ve been able to play, the game is very hectic. Lots of stuff going on and it’s very loud, almost relentless.

All in all, I can’t believe I’m saying it, but Microsoft and done a fantastic job with the Xbox 360. Now I can’t wait for the Playstation 3 to show what they can do!

God of War Director Rumor

I found this little tid bit from David Jaffe’s blog about the director of the upcoming God of War movie. It’s not a major thing, but it rules out a certain director.

Question from a visitor:

i read a rumor just now that said that paul verhoeven is going to direct the god of war movie. bogus, but man, that would be tight.

David Jaffe responds:

I would LOVE PV to make it..but I am pretty sure it won’t happen based on what I know about the project.

Paul Verhoeven has directed famous movies such as:

  • Starship Troopers
  • Showgirls
  • Basic Instinct
  • Total Recall
  • RoboCop

Resident Evil 4

Finally! At long last! Resident Evil 4 has come to the Playstation 2. Ok, this isn’t such new news since it’s released in Australia since November 4th, 2005, but nevertheless, it’s still worth a mention because it’s an absolutely fabulous game! (more…)

God of War Movie

Kratos from God of WarYet another video game is being turned into a Hollywood production, this time it’s the Playstation 2 exclusive game, God of War.

God of War is an action adventure video game geared towards to adult market. It’s definitely not for kids as the amount of violence, blood and gore, nudity and strong language was even almost (!) too much for me. God of War is set in ancient, mythological Greece where you play as the ex-Spartan warrior, Kratos, on his revenge driven journey to take down the God of War himself, Ares.

Variety magazine has reported that Universal Studios have picked up the rights to turn God of War into a movie. Charles Roven and Alex Gartner of Mosaic Media Group will be producing the God of War movie, other than that, not much details are known. The writer for the script, director and casting choices has not been selected.

Roven told Variety,

We’ve been enthralled by this project since our first time playing the game in March and realized its narrative had great potential for large-screen production.

Who will be Kratos?

Kratos is the much-loved anti-hero of God of War and the question of casting a suitable actor for this role is in the forefront on my mind.

Some actors that come to mind:

  • Vin Diesel
  • The Rock (a.k.a. Dwayne Douglas Johnson)
  • Jason Statham

Many will no doubt think of Vin Diesel first, I know I’m not excluded from this group, but I think The Rock or Jason Statham may make a better cast. Although I like Vin Diesel, he can some times come off looking dopey, and Kratos should never look dopey!

David Jaffe’s Involvement

David Jaffe, the game director of God of War, will also be involved in the movie, not as the writer, but probably more in the role of advisor or consultant.

Am I involved? I am. I am not writing the script or anything but I am involved in making sure the movie is true enough to the game that fans of the game will be happy

David Jaffe also mentions in his blog that he knows who the scriptwriter will be, although he couldn’t and wouldn’t divulge this information.

I’ve seen the name of the writer they are going after…I can’t spill the beans but he’s done some damn fine shit! Hope he signs on…I meet with him next week!

Serious, I can’t talk about details but I think it will be darn good. The writer who is on board is AMAZING!

As for his views on who should be cast as Kratos, he’s more interested as who will be the director, though he does mention that Vin Diesel or The Rock are obvious choices for the role.

David Jaffe’s Blog Post on the God of War Movie

The Matrix Lives

Remember The Matrix movie trilogy by the Wachowski brothers? Well, it looks like the end of the third movie, The Matrix: Revolutions, was not the end of the franchise.

Screenshot of The Matrix: Path of NewIn addition to The Matrix movies, there was also a series nine animated Matrix short stories called, Animatrix. The Wachowski brothers had an interested in Japanese anime and had the nine Animatrix stories done in nine different anime styles.

The second movie in the trilogy, The Matrix: Reloaded, saw the release of The Matrix video game, Enter The Matrix. The game itself wasn’t the greatest ever made, but the story gave an alternate, behind-the-movie-scene view of what was going on from the Niobe’s and Ghost’s point of view during the Reloaded movie.

The last Matrix movie was released in 2003 and many had heard that the Matrix story was going to end there. Not so. Two years after what we all thought was the end of the Matrix, the Wachowski brothers have come up with a new video game, The Matrix: Path of Neo.

In The Matrix: Path of Neo, gamers now play as the hero himself. The story is nothing original, you’ll follow the story of the entire Matrix trilogy as you run around as Neo in the Matrix world, with Matrix physics, and try to save Zion. Players will most likely come across all the familiar and famous scenes in the Matrix, such as the train battle with Mr Smith from the first movie.

The Matrix: Path of Neo will be coming out on November 11, 2005 and will be available on Playstation, Playstation 2, Xbox and PC.

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