Tag Archives: Xbox Live Arcade

Helicopter Hunting and Universe Saving

I finished up Battlefield: Bad Company last week. When I said the game felt easy I wasn’t being entirely accurate – while it is, no doubt, easy to overcome just about anything thanks to the overly generous healing and respawning systems the difficulty definitely ramps up as the game goes on and it can be extremely frustrating respawning and quickly dying over and over again. There were a few sections towards the end of the game where I really felt like I was being put through a meat grinder.

The last boss fight involved taking down a helicopter. I had seen multiple people claim that this fight was an easy opportunity to get the achievement for shooting a helicopter with a laser designator – those people are now my enemies. πŸ˜‰

Blah. One of the only online shots of Bad Company I could find and there's an unprecedented lack of exploding going on in it.
“Blah. One of the only online shots of Bad Company I could find and there’s an unprecedented lack of exploding going on in it.”

To explain the situation a little better, the laser designator requires you to hold a view on a target for a certain amount of time in order to lock the target. Once this is done you receive a satellite view of a missile dropping towards your target which you can then clumsily guide to where you want it. It works well enough for taking down, say, a tank that hasn’t spotted you yet. Taking down a helicopter that is constantly moving and launching barrages of rockets at you? Not so much. πŸ™‚

I must have tried hitting this damn helicopter for thirty minutes or more, constantly switching between the designator and my trusty healing syringe to recover from near rocket hits, before finally getting the timing perfect enough that I could nail the chopper in one of the brief moments that it was hovering in place. Once this was done I threw down the designator and picked up a nearby rocket launcher so I could finish the job the way the game intended. Unfortunately this actually proved more difficult than I had originally imagined and I quickly used up all my ammo without taking it down. I was highly annoyed as I went back to the designator to attempt to score another one of these impossible shots to finished the deed. Luckily during the process I discovered an ammo box and was able to refill the rocket launcher and finally take down the chopper. Argh.

The ending, while setting up the potential for a sequel, was pretty enjoyable. The last shot of The Legionnaire looks freakily similar to Niko Belic. Well, Niko did say he did some bad stuff during the war, right? πŸ™‚

I hopped into multiplayer briefly just to check it out since it has such a great reputation. The action was somehow even more chaotic than the single player game with an ever-present deadly crossfire of missiles, shells, and small arms. The environments followed suit thanks to the almost nonstop sound of booming explosions and errie visuals of the smoke plume filled sky and the rubble strewn ground. I only played about four matches and they were all of the Bad Company standard “Gold Rush” attack and defense variety. The teamwork was possibly slightly less together than what you might see in a PC Battlefield game yet I was surprised to see little if any fighting over vehicle spawns or other smacktard behavior. It seemed fun – very chaotic, but fun.

All in all Bad Company seems like a solid product – far from perfect but very solid. It was good enough to make me bump the upcoming Battlefield 1943 downloadable game up to being a definite purchase when it comes out later this year.

Wake Island in the Frostbite engine? Sign me up!
“Wake Island in the Frostbite engine? Sign me up!”

Next up in my back log will be the infamous Ninja Gaiden 2. We’ve talked about this game and other related games quite a bit on the Untitled Games Podcast which has been making me really want to dive into it. At the same time I’m a little bit wary of its legendary difficulty. While beating the original Xbox Ninja Gaiden was one of my more satisfying achivements in recent gaming history I still sometimes wake in cold sweats with visions of infiltrating the imperial city looping through my brain. Seriously, I literally completely put that game down 4 or 5 times but I loved it so much up until the different points where I got stuck that I kept coming back (sometimes months later) until I eventually made a concentrated effort to beat it. I feel kind of like I’m about to go to an amusement park and I’m really looking forward to it yet at the same time I know that the rides will scare the shit of of me.

Moving on, I also finally managed to beat Marvel: Ultimate Alliance cooperatively. It wasn’t bad although, honestly, the whole time I was wondering why they haven’t released a current generation version of the Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance games and wishing I was playing that instead. That being said the ending was actually surprisingly rewarding.

Jeez, not another union mandated super hero coffee break. At least Dr. Doom gets things done!
“Jeez, not another union mandated super hero coffee break. At least Dr. Doom gets things done!”

Each mission has an optional quest. Often times these felt like normal parts of the mission and we didn’t have any difficulty casually completing them along the way though there were a few that definitely felt a bit more optional or are were harder to complete. Many of these missions felt just barely related to the mission objective enough to remove any question of their purpose though I suppose this experience could be unique to people like myself who have played way too many RPGs, particularly of the MMO variety, in which completely banal side quests are dolled out constantly with little or no consequence. Regardless I didn’t suspect that there were actually major consequences for completing or failing each of these side missions, detailed at the end.

There was one instance in which we failed a mission and didn’t think we’d be able to beat it without a ton of effort. There didn’t seem to be any consequence to failing it though so we warily let it slide. We found out at the end of the game that this ultimately resulted in the West Coast being wiped off the map. Oops! Sorry, fellas!

Additionally an answer to a subplot that you might have forgotten about by the end is revealed and there are some hilarious voice overs during the credits. That’s the least I can say about the ending.

My favorite thing about the game though has got to be how humorously absurd it is as it constantly attempts to bluntly explain the origins and powers of different Marvel Universe characters and how their stories relate to each other. Now, I’m not a huge fan but I grew up around comic books and am definitely more familiar with the characters and storylines than the average Joe yet I somehow never realized how goddamn dumb most of these back stories were, especially when connected, until I played Ultimate Alliance. Good times! πŸ˜›

Oh, and how can I forget? I’ve also been playing the XBLA version of Peggle. Yeah, it’s pretty rad…

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.
“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?
“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.

Pac’d Weekend! Ok, I suck at puns.

This weekend gave me the biggest span of game out worthy free time I’ve had in quite a while and to be honest I didn’t quite know what to do with it all. I started out on Friday night by packing in a few hours of Grand Theft Auto 4. On Saturday morning I spent a couple of hours working on my latest round of Armed Assault scripting changes then I decided to mix it up a bit and play a couple of Xbox 360 demos – I ended up grabbing the Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness demo as well as the Civilization: Revolution demo. While those (slowly) downloaded I played a ton of Pac-man: Championship Edition. On Sunday I got the urge to install Titan Quest Gold and ended up sinking a couple of hours into that. I wrapped up my evening by putting another dozen Pac-man: CE games in and grabbing two new achievements in the process.

I take a few different issues with GTA4 which I’ll expand on in a future post but overall it is great. I feel like I’m progressing very slowly through the story, however, and don’t feel like I accomplish much in a single sit-down with it which considering my fairly casual gaming schedule is a bit of a bummer.

The Penny Arcade game left me with mixed opinions. I’ve been a Penny Arcade fan for a long, long time, and still read it regularly. Their forums are also some of my favorite gaming forums to hang out at. Suffice it to say I enjoyed the hell out of both the humor and the artwork in the game. While it definitely feels like it has highly polished and well presented the game mechanics themselves left a bit to be desired. I have a feeling they’d work better with a mouse than a controller but I think I’ll settle for the 360 version so that I can grab some of the achievements therein. Yep, that means I’m planning on buying it although probably not until I have an entire day free in which I can attempt to beat the whole game in one or two long sittings. Maybe a slightly more in depth review when that happens.

Civ:Rev threw me for a loop. I’d dabbled with the first two Civ games in the DOS days but I’ve never been a big Civ guy which is odd since I do generally prefer turn based strategy to real time strategy and I’ve played a heap of RTSes. I’m not sure why I’ve never really explored the genre much but I’m thinking about picking up Galactic Civilizations II if that helps. πŸ™‚ Anyway, it didn’t gel well with me but I had to end my game a wee bit early and, even if I didn’t, I was almost at the end of the demo anyway. Despite this almost as soon as I ended it I was pining to play it again. I suppose that is that legendary Civ addictiveness kicking in!

Yeah, I took a picture of the side of a fucking mountain. Go me!
“Yeah, I took a picture of the side of a fucking mountain. Go me!”

I bought Titan Quest Gold a while back after hearing about it and seeing screenshots of it here and there for a long time. I’m a big Diablo series fan and have, in the past, put forth some considerable effort into finding and trying some of the other Diablo clones out there. With that Titan Quest is definitely the best Diablo 2 clone I’ve tried so far! Nice 3D graphics, good artwork, mostly smooth gameplay, a decent interface, and a great setting. I can’t wait to put more time into this and considering how long it apparently takes to beat I just hope I don’t get burnt out before its over with.

Pac-man: Championship Edition is awesome. I don’t have much to say about it other than that it amazes me how well Pac-man‘s gameplay has aged. It is still fun and the intense feelings I did when avoiding some really pissed off ghosts with no more lives, barely missing them, and pulling off some generally ballsy trickery is rarely duplicated in modern games anymore. If you’re even somewhat of a fan I urge you to get Pac-man: CE a try. I’m currently working on trying to “beat” the “Challenge 1” mode. I’ve developed a strategy which I’m pretty sure will take me there but it is taking a bit of time to work the kinks out of. Still, I managed to grab the King and 200,000 point achievements attempting it. Damn, this is another game that is stupidly addicting – I wish I could play it RIGHT NOW!

Note: I don’t have any good system for taking screenshots of console games yet. I’ll probably just end up snapping some crude pictures of my TV with a digital camera. Lame.