Tag Archives: Xbox 360

And I Can’t Deny.

Tonight there's gonna be a jailbreak... somewhere in this town!
“Tonight there’s gonna be a jailbreak… somewhere in this town!”

I beat Grand Theft Auto 4: The Lost and Damned last weekend. I don’t have a lot to say about the ending – it wasn’t disappointing but it wasn’t as good as I felt like it could have been. Still, great game and, again, worth the 20 bucks if you’re a GTA fan. Oh, and I loved the ending credits which showed these slow motion, panoramic, birds eye views of scenes from both GTA 4 and TLAD and how some of them tied Niko and Johnny together. Very enjoyable.

The next game I’ve picked to play out of my Xbox 360 backlog is Battlefield: Bad Company. I’m a big fan of the series starting all the way back with the original Battlefield 1942 on PC but I’ve never really got into any of the attempts to bring the series to the console. I played a healthy amount of the demo of the Xbox Battlefield 2: Modern Combat and watched some friends play the Xbox 360 version when it first came out but these console version just never seemed to be as appealing to me as the PC versions. Bad Company, built from the ground up as a console game with actual effort being put into the single player mode, seemed like it could be a good opportunity to break the mold and indeed reviews of the game were pretty favorable.

The game greets you with an awesome little lounge tune on the menu screen that feels humorously out of place for a war game (obviously intentionally) and brings in some nice cinematic cut scenes as you kick off the campaign. A great first impression. Once I got into the game, however, I was immediately sapped by the odd field of view the game gives you – it seems super narrow and therefore feels unusually zoomed in compared to most first person games. This wasn’t a problem, per say, it just took a little getting used to.

Once I played around in the game a bit I was quite impressed by this new “Frostbite” engine that DICE put together. The graphics look pretty good with some interesting lighting and shadow effects. The maps are fairly large and the draw distance seems quite respectable. I didn’t really notice any crazy pop in or other issues like that either – in fact the only real immersion breaking thing I ran into was the disappearance of destroyed vehicles after a couple of minutes – it seems rather odd for destroyed vehicles and dead bodies to vanish when so much effort has been put on making the environment destructible. You can knock the side off of the building and it’s gone for good, yet the wreckage of the giant heavy tank next to it vanishes into thin air? Eh, that’s a little knit pick I suppose.

Yeah, it's kind of a fixer-upper.
“Yeah, it’s kind of a fixer-upper.”

Speaking of the environmental destruction though… Wow! It’s great. Trees, signs, fences, etc. all (finally!) fall down when your tank goes barreling into them. Some shots even seem to leave craters in the ground. The experience of walking through a forest only to have a group of trees suddenly fall all around you from a surprise cannon blast is totally unique to say the least. The world doesn’t necessarily feel too delicate though – your dune buggy won’t be knocking walls off of buildings and you’re not going to spray your assault rifle into a forest and watch dozens of trees come cascading down.

As far as buildings go I was pretty skeptical at first given that you can’t blow up everything. Indeed, only certain walls will blow out – you can’t completely knock a building down to it’s foundation or anything that drastic but it is an still extremely effective. With tanks firing cannon rounds, helicopter firing rockets, and soldiers lobbing RPGs and grenades all over the place in a lot of these fire fights it is great to actually see some tangible destruction as a result.

There was at least one occasion where a couple of enemy soldiers were holed up in a barracks and the door was on the other side of the building from where I was standing. I decided rather than go around the barracks and risk getting shot at from the windows just to lob a M203 round at the side of the wall and walk straight in. There have also been a few occasions where the illusion of safety presented to me by taking cover behind a wall in typical video game fashion suddenly went out the window as the wall I was hiding behind crumbled down and I was left completely exposed. On the other end of the spectrum during one firefight I was dashing between buildings evading enemy fire when an enemy chucked a grenade at me. It didn’t injure me notably but it did destroy the wall to a building behind me suddenly revealing another enemy who, apparently finding his morning shave to be much less of a priority, started firing on me from my other side. Neat.

Beyond the destructible environment the engine seems to have quite a lot of nice effects that help the action feel more alive. On that front the sound in this game is also great. While I wouldn’t suggest that the sounds themselves are particularly realistic they’re very satisfying. Thumbs up to the responsible parties at DICE.

Guns feel pretty good though I do wish the damage was a little higher. I just hate having to pump half a magazine into a dude to kill him. Vehicles, so far, feel decent enough though the controls took a bit of getting used to. I’ve still yet to climb into a chopper at this point though. The controls for on foot are pretty good though – you can swap between weapons with the right shoulder button and between other gear with the left. The right trigger fires while the left zooms to your iron sights. The other gear I mentioned can be anything from C4, RPGs, and laser designators to your trusty healing syringe. Melee (a knife) has it’s own button but seems to deploy a little too slowly for my tastes, especially after playing Halo 3 recently.

I've got my eyes on you, tree!
“I’ve got my eyes on you, tree!”

The healing syringe system is pretty different – you can switch to this item and heal yourself completely with the press of a button as often as you like. While there is a recharge timer to keep you from spamming your heal it is pretty short. It kind of reminds me of a manual take on the whole Halo shield recharge system that so many games have barrowed over the years. As silly and unrealistic as it is I think I actually like it. Speaking of health, when you do actually die you don’t really incur much of a penalty. You’re basically revived a short distance from where you died, with your squad, with everything you did just before dying persisting. Between those two features you can feel pretty invincible at times even during some of the more difficult sections that have you healing and respawning constantly.

Your squad mates have it easy too. They never really die, they don’t need to be healed, and they’ll even rubber band to your position when need be. In fact as soon as you hop in a vehicle, no matter where they are on the map, they’re in it with you. Pretty unrealistic but it works well enough. On the other hand it does give you the impression that your character is the focus of the game despite the story telling you otherwise – that is, your character is the new guy in your squad and you’re certainly not the leader, yet your squad mates follow you around and never seem to object to any decisions you make. To be honest this stood out as feeling a little odd to me from the very beginning – your squad leader pretty much only actually leads in cut scenes. Ah well, at least these AI squad members are actually capable of killing enemies from time to time.

One last thing to mention is the humor. I honestly thought there would be a lot more of it. Sure, there are a few funny lines here and there but what little comedy is there often fails to impress me and I’m certainly not one of those people who is exceedingly snobby when it comes to humor. Probably the opposite, even.

I’m about half way through the game and looking forward to wrapping it up relatively quickly. I haven’t even stepped foot into multiplayer which is a significant portion of the game, if not the focus. It seems to have a lot of great features and, given the rest of the game, could be great. If I started playing it when it was first released and/or had friends playing it on a regular basis I could definitely seem myself dumping a considerable amount of time into it but most likely won’t even try it during this playthrough.

Ugh, now I’ve got the song “Bad Company” stuck in my head now and I’ve had “Jailbreak” stuck in my head on and off for weeks now thanks to TLAD.

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

Girls and Zombies

I had been looking for something new to play co-op with my girlfriend and it doesn’t seem like there are many good, local co-op games for the Xbox 360 that aren’t some sort of totally uber manly shooter games. Sure, I’ve got Rainbow 6: Vegas 1 and 2, along with both GRAWs, Halo 3, and Gears of Wars but she just doesn’t seem to be feeling those. To be honest I haven’t tried to get her to play them yet because I know they’re not her taste thematically never mind that she hasn’t really played many FPS or TPS games.

She’s actually usually a very quick study when it comes to games and tends to be a bit better than me at most of them. Perhaps that’s another good reason not to introduce her to one of my favorite genres – it’d really hurt my ego to get smashed by my noob girlfriend at a tactical FPS. 😛 Then again, it’s fun to daydream about us going online and working as a deadly duo. It could open up a whole new world of possibilities! She could finally play something other than World of Warcraft or The Sims 2 on her PC and I could have a permanent partner in crime. Probably just a pipe dream though…

Come on, you know you wanted a screenshot of a bag vendor!
“Come on, you know you wanted a screenshot of a bag vendor!”

We’d dabbled with a lot of different games in the past but the only ones that had ever really hooked up were World of Warcraft, Rock Band 1 and 2, and Carcassonne. The latter two we still play on a fairly regular basis. We could probably still be playing WoW if I didn’t start playing it with her well after having a main to max level and multiple alts scattered around at various level ranges. In other words I feel like I had exhausted most of the pre-expansion content and, in general, was pretty burnt out on WoW. We both felt a brief resurgence in interest after The Burning Crusade came out and ended up rolling some new Draenei characters which I was enjoying quite a bit at first but, again, burnout hit me.

I’ve been seriously considering going back, especially since Blizzard has bumped up lower end experience gain a few different times since we last played. The most frustrating thing is that I’m absolutely sure we could play and enjoy other MMOs together, ones I’d be slow to become exhausted of – hell, it would have been cool to have her along the ride with the rest of my guild in Warhammer Online. The main problem there is that her PC is somewhat outdated and she can’t really afford to stay in the hardware race at the moment. Maybe in a few more years!

I ended up dusting off my copy of Marvel Ultimate Alliance. I actually got it for free, bundled with my Xbox 360 alongside Forza 2. Neither of them are games I was particularly interested in but both are pretty well respected and reviewed and nothing I necessarily object to owning either. We had played Ultimate Alliance a little bit when I first got my 360 but tired of it quickly and, for no particular reason, never picked it back up. Our save was literally a year old!

Mission accomplished: We've looted Valhalla's entire supply of beer.
“Mission accomplished: We’ve looted Valhalla’s entire supply of beer.”

I quickly remembered why the game didn’t grab me. The graphics are decent, the game is pretty polished, generally, but it just doesn’t do anything for me. My top two complaints are probably that I find the combat to be far too button mashy and chaotic and the RPGish elements (character advancement and customization, for example) to be less than intuitive. I actually remembered having similar complaints when we rented a copy of one of the Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance games years ago. Regardless, for the time being it is getting the job done without my having to step foot or cloven hoof back into Azeroth.

Speaking of co-op games I had mentioned in a previous entry that I was annoyed about trying to grab the Xbox 360 Left 4 Dead demo as I thought it was something my girlfriend and I could potentially play split screen. It would have actually probably been a great introduction FPS game for her – pure co-op, fairly simple, and in a theme she could probably better appreciate. I also mentioned that a lot of friends had been trying to talk me into buying the PC version but I figured time zones would be a major issue so I resisted temptation. Well, that has changed.

Da plaaaane!
“Da plaaaane!”

Some of the guys from The Untitled Games Podcast and I grabbed the game during a 50% off Steam sale on it. We definitely don’t have the time zone issue as we’re all local and as an added bonus it gives us something common to talk about on the show. We haven’t played together much yet but so far it’s definitely worth 25 bucks! Now I’m wondering if a second copy might not be worth it as it would surely run on her old gaming rig. Maybe I should rent the 360 version for us?

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

General Warhammeriness

So already having withdrawals from Warhammer Online I’m totally engrossed in Warhammeriness of all sorts lately.

The mighty Baneblade heavy battle tank.
“The mighty Baneblade heavy battle tank.”

I dusted off my copy of Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War and the first two expansions, installed them and ended up playing some entertaining skirmish matches against the computer just to try to get it out of my system. Sure, Warhammer 40k isn’t exactly Warhammer Fantasy but I’ll take what I can get. I’e got to say that this is, by the way, probably my favorite real time strategy game of all time.

My brother and I both bought the newly released real time strategy game Warhammer: Battle March for the Xbox 360 with the intent on having our massive armies slaughter each other repeatedly over Xbox Live. Of course, we’ll have to figure out how to play the fucking thing first. Holy bad documentation, Batman! Seriously, if you’re going to design a control scheme that requires 3 hands you should at least give us a decent manual, nevermind all the details that are never even brushed over in the manual or in-game tutorials. Still, I anticipate much fun with this.

I thought these guys only lived in forums and under bridges?
“I thought these guys only lived in forums and under bridges?”

And finally a surprise early preview weekend in Warhammer Online for us previous preview weekend players before open beta started up. I don’t have much to say about it. I played my White Lion a bit to check and see if pet pathing and control was indeed fixed and yes, it appeared to be, and spent the rest of the time screwing around with a Dwarf Engineer.

It’s funny though. Here I was playing a Public Quest and thinking about some of the complaints I’d read about “leeching” and “kill stealing” in them when it seemed to me that really, the spirit of the Public Quest system is cooperation amongst allies in a bigger conflict. Leave it to a bunch of min-maxing MMO idiots to turn “work together to do this task” into “OMFG I need to get the most kills and get the lootz get outta my way!!!111” Just as I was pondering this I had my first, actual unplesant Public Quest encounter. Ok, it wasn’t really that bad, but still amusing:

We were in a stage of the Public Quest that required you to get several of a particular kind of item. Clicking the item took some time and brought up a progress bar. This progress bar could be interrupted by attacks. Rounding this amazingly intricate but oh so common MMORPG puzzle out there was a monster or two guarding each of these items. If you haven’t already figured this situation out then you’re probably one of the few gamers still around lucky enough not to be scared by hundreds of hours of MMO addiction. Anyway, the solution is of course to kill the monsters and then get the item.

Bringing the hammer down.
“Bringing the hammer down”

As I was trying to do this myself I kept seeing another dwarven player run in an loot the item as soon as someone else had aggro’d the mob guarding it. The first time I didn’t take much note as the whole scene was pretty chaotic and he could have easily been confused. The second time he did it, however, it was pretty blatant and extremely obvious that the guy fighting the monster, standing right next to the item, was attempting to get it himself. Next he pulls the same shit on me as I run up to an item and try to grab it before the monster attacks me. Just as I’m interrupted (gee, that was a good plan!) he runs up and starts trying to loot it. Of course, the monster is on me so I have no choice but to fight it off as this grubby bastard dwarf loots my item… Argh! Feeling a little vindictive I make an immediate beeline for him as he is put in an almost identical situation as I just was, only he’s getting beaten down by two mobs whilst repeatedly trying to pick up the item. I run over to him and blatantly pick up the item from right under his fat, dwarven belly and run off. Ha! Of course the idiot has the nerve of immediately typing “pffft… steal!” in public chat. I ignore him.

I almost don’t want to play with the Warhammer Online beta knowing that none of my progress will be making it into retail when it launches in a week but trying lots of difference races and classes seems to be a fun diversion in the meantime.