Tag Archives: Xbox 360

Tanks o’ Death

I tried out the demo for the new XBLA game Death Tank after reading some Saturn fanboys gush about it on NeoGAF and I’m happy to say that I liked it a lot. I played a bit against the computer and even hopped online and played some match making games. The demo is very representative of what you get in the full game save, of course, for the additional weapons and upgrades that are unlocked.

The game itself is an “artillery” style game very similar to Gunbound, the Worms series, and the PC shareware classic Scorched Earth with one major difference – it is real time instead of turn based. This can change things quite a bit as you might imagine. Not only do you need to be quick in aiming your shots but also deciding who to target, what weapons to use, when to move, etc. comes into play like never before. Turns do, err, sort of exist though, in that reloading takes time, so it might not be quite as chaotic as it sounds.

“Ahh, warfare! What deserts were made for.”

I’ve read (and heard) a lot of criticism of the game, however.

One complaint was about how the Targeting Computer upgrade, which basically lets you see exactly where you’re aiming, is sort of the be-all end-all weapon. I definitely disagree – since it’s real time you can see exactly when and where your opponents using it are aiming and use it to their disadvantage by moving out of the way, preferably using your Jump Jets or Fuel to move quicker, or by activating your shield just before the moment of impact. It can be annoying but it really isn’t as big of a deal as people make it out to be.

One thing that I can’t totally disagree with though is the whole arms race factor: The better you do the more money you get to buy more weapons and upgrades while if you don’t get any kills you might not get any cash. This can sometimes lead to a situation where consistent winners ensure more and more victories through superior fire power where consistent losers simply feel cheated because they’re stuck with the basic artillery shell ammunition and none of the cool upgrades for almost the entire match. Pretty much all of these games work this way though – it’s part of the genre practically, but having been on both sides of that fence in other games I’d say that it is indeed a flaw.

“Sometimes haphazardly flinging nukes around is a lot easier than taking a more precise, measured approach. Global Diplomacy 101?”

The biggest one is probably the price though. The gameplay is pretty limited – you play the same randomly generated (I believe?) maps over and over again in more or less the same scenarios though they do occasionally mix it up with some theme rounds where you get free weapons and upgrades, or are locked to specific ones. Still, the game comes in at a 15 dollar price tag which seems pretty steep even with the game’s seemingly decent production values. As I’m sure most Worms players would agree these types of games make excellent party games though so if you’ve got the friends (locally or on Xbox Live) then it might indeed be worth it.

It should be noted that the original Sega Saturn version of the game (Death Tank Zwei) is included as a not-so-publicized (why?!) unlockable which does add a bit more value to the package.

As for me, well, I had pretty much decided not to drop the 15 bucks when I won a copy of it for free thanks to a drawing over at Evil Avatar. Woot!

Last weekend I had my parents over for dinner and ended up playing it with my dad who picked it up relatively quickly and seemed to be having fun with it which cemented the idea of it being a great pick up and party game. I intend to force it upon more visitors in the future to help test the theory and, more importantly, introduce some new people to the awesomeness of these kinds of games.

Screenshots lifted from somewhere else since I can’t easily take HD console screenshots.

Zombie Overlord

I somehow hadn’t mentioned this yet but the next game I decided to tackle in my Xbox 360 backlog was Overlord. Overlord came out near the launch of the 360 and had caught my eye early. The whole “evil” angle that sort of parodies other fantasy worlds seemed pretty humorous and, of course, the whole concept of ordering minions around seemed pretty awesome.

The minions are indeed cool. As a Games Workshop fan they remind me a lot of Snotlings or Nurglings. I love “sweeping” my giant horde of minions over to an enemy to have them envelop it entirely, hitting it from every direction, hanging on to its back, etc. It’s actually kind of brutal now that I think about it. You also can’t overlook the whole pillaging angle of it – when you sweep your minions over of an area with containers they all smash and grab items, bringing anything you’d want back to you, while equipping any armor and weapons they can use while gleefully shouting “for me!” Very cool.

One thing I didn’t expect was some of the more RPGish aspects – the ability to customize your character a tiny bit, along with your tower. There are some other interesting things you can do in your tower as well. I feel like if all of these things were fleshed out a lot more in the recently announced Overlord II it could make the game appeal more to other audiences.

“Decidedly less awesome than I look.”

The setting is pretty enjoyable with it’s whole fantasy world flipped on its head kind of thing though the story itself isn’t anything too amazing thus far. You play the generic fantasy bad guy (who looks an awful like Sauron) trying to rebuild his evil empire all while subjugating the locals and smashing all of those pesky “heroes” that roam the land. An odd thing about it is up to the point I’ve played I haven’t really been put into many situations where I’m doing inherently evil deeds – most of the quests in the storyline are actually somewhat good, or at least neutral, and the heroes and other enemies you kill are usually portrayed as being corrupt or not having been so good in the first place. I’m especially amused by the portrayel of the evil Halflings in the first area – what’s not to love about the idea of roaming packs of Hobbits going around raiding villages, taking slaves, and generally being anti-social shits when they’re not busy at their massive feasts and smoking their pipeweed?

I suppose the main idea is that you can be sort of a benevolent dictator – ruling the land with a population that for the most part actually appreciates you on some level. If you’re so inclined you can however purposely be a bit of a dick, doing overtly evil things on the side, eventually resulting in a more vicious, fear based reign. For instance, early on in the game I found some stolen food that some villagers asked me to return to them. I could have returned it to them but instead I decided to keep it all for myself. Of course another thing the local peasants don’t seem to like is when you casually slaughter them. *whistles* Another time while hanging out with some Elfy types I decided to burn down their “sacred grove” just for the hell of it. *shrug*

I almost never play the “evil” side in games that give you such choices but this time I figured “what the hell!” This is a game built around playing a bad guy so I might as well go all out instead of trying to be a goody two shoes like I usually am.

More on Overlord when I finally beat it.

“Get back outside!”

I’ve played a lot more Left 4 Dead since we first picked it up a couple of weeks ago. Playing it co-op with friends totally reminds me of how much I love playing games cooperatively period. I love all of the cool, unique stories we always end up with after a L4D session. Making memories and such.

The second time I played it I was joined by only NetworkShadow and we ended up making it all of the way to the end of the first act. Of course I was viciously knocked off of the side of the building by the last tank which was a pretty crappy way to die. At least when no one is there to notice and point and laugh. Then I got to watch NetworkShadow frantically try to survive the rest of the onslaught by himself which was actually pretty damn entertaining. I thought he was going to make it, honestly. For the record, I was bitterly rooting against him… 😉

“Standing victoriously over a tank.”

The next time we played all four of us got together. We got to the end of the second act and, hilariously, when the ship finally showed up to rescue us I immediately ran my ass off towards the dock, missing almost the entire last zombie push but accidentally leaving all my teammates to be slaughtered. Hobotix ended up making it to the boat, barely, but Radium and NetworkShadow ended up biting the dust… Oops!

Another time with all four of us we made it to the end of act 3 but NetworkShadow died before we made it onto the plane. It was quite an epic battle with all of us almost dieing multiple times. So fun!

“Up close and personal.”

I’ve said it before (on the podcast, in particular) but Left 4 Dead is one of those games that dieing and/or doing bad in is actually fun. Maybe simply because it’s a shared experience but perhaps also because the game sort of pits you as the loan survivors struggling against the odds to make it out of alive so it’s not entirely unexpected when you don’t. Either way I’m not complaining…

Overlord screenshot lifted from somewhere else since I can’t easily take HD console screenshots.

Drum Damage

I was planning on having the Untitled Games Podcast crew over to my place to record and to potentially play some Rock Band a few weekends back. I struggle to justify exactly why but I hadn’t really played Rock Band in quite sometime so I pulled out my drums to practice a bit so I didn’t embarrass myself too badly in front of everybody.

“Odd depression?”

That’s when I noticed there was an odd depression in my yellow drum head and also a much less pronounced one on the blue drum. The yellow one also felt strange when I pressed in the center, almost like a button. It was as if somehow the rubber layer over the drum head had thinned out so now I was pressing directly on the censor. My friend mentioned to me that they had noticed some time before that it looked weird too. Odd. Still, I set them up and played six or so songs and they worked just fine. Hmph, weird!

The next night we recorded a two man down episode 3 and, afterwards, engaged in some Rock Band shenanigans. I was thrilled to discover that my yellow pad was now completely and utterly fucked – it’d only register 1 in 10 or so notes! Doh. Luckily we were using Rock Band 2’s “no fail mode” so it didn’t totally ruin the night.

The next day one of my compatriots called to tell me they had ventured to Circuit City during it’s going out of business sale and seen several sets of Xbox 360 Rock Band 2 wireless drums for 40% off. I had kind of been looking for a good excuse to upgrade to the Rock Band 2 drums – the removal of the cable wasn’t a big deal but I thought the add-on cymbals looks neat and the quieter, more bouncy pads sounded like a good upgrade.

“Cracks on the underside of the head after dismantling.”

After disassembling my old drums I discovered that the problem was that my two center pads were massively, massively cracked. I figured I could possibly fix it myself but nothing short of some sort of epoxy (which I didn’t have) would keep it from rebreaking the next time I smacked it a little bit too hard and I’m still not even sure the broken head was the only problem. I decided to simply opt for the new drums and headed off to Circuit City.

“Yup, it’s broke…”

When I arrived they only had 3 boxes of the wireless drums left and all of them seemed to have been curiously taped shut as if they were returns. I decided to take the gamble and grab one of them anyway. When I got home and unboxed it I was pleased to see that everything was in order – it didn’t appear that anything was missing or had otherwise been tampered with after all. Once I got the drums setup, however, they absolutely refused to connect to my 360. I absolutely can’t stand buying something and having it dead on arrival and thanks to the terms of Circuit City’s liquidation I couldn’t return the drums, not even for an exchange. Doh!

After browsing various forums and trying every suggestion under the sun it appeared that my only option was to RMA the drums.

I went through EA’s RMA process which I found to be way more painful than it should have been. The website didn’t work right in anything besides Internet Explorer (…and who the hell uses that? 😉 ) and even then it was poorly worded and not very easy to use. I actually found myself calling EA (and of course their number wasn’t easy to find) to make sure they had my correct RMA information because the process and it’s corresponding confirmation e-mail were so damn unclear.

Once all that was done with I had to get them a copy of my receipt with a date of purchase to prove that the unit was still under manufacturer’s warranty. On the bright side, once I was able to do that I received a UPS tracking number in about 20 minutes.

“New drums: Success! (5 stars, 99%, 344 note streak on expert.)”

A few days later and UPS showed up with my new drums. Other than trying to figure out how to put my old ones back in the damn box I had zero trouble with the new replacement drums. They connected right away as my previous ones should have and they performed well during another Untitled Games Podcast rocking out session, this time after the recording of TUGP episode 5.

All in all, while I was extremely disappointed about the original “dead on arrival” drums the RMA process was easy enough, very quick, and I’m satisfied. Now I just need to scrounge up some money for those cymbals and, of course, even more songs to play! 😀