Gaming Weekend: Don’t Cut Me Off, That’s Rude Edition
I sat down with the latest Official XBox Magazine demo disc this weekend as well as playing through some other 360 games a bit. Most of the weekend was monopolized by Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy which I completed all the story modes for and am now working my way back through in Free Play mode (both for the forthcoming review and for completion’s sake), although I did continue my quest to get every Achievement in Dead Rising to… mixed success.
All the details after the hop.
Demo-mite!
Lots of demos to cover this weekend. No need to waste time:
- Armored Core 4: It’s a fairly fast-paced mech sim which could be cool. The tutorial missions in this game are boring, almost as boring as those in Splinter Cell: Double Agent (with all the white? gah.) but at least they’re mercifully quick. The controls on AC4 are pretty intuitive although they don’t do a great job of explaining the utility of three different styles of boost. Once you get into the actual demo missions the game doesn’t really get a whole lot more compelling. The menu system is kind of clunky and once you finally launch a stage you end up just sort of flying around and laying waste to other giant robots. I feel like I’m kind of missing something key about this game, a hook or a special feature that sets it apart from the other giant humanoid robot games like Mechwarrior but after twenty minutes I still haven’t found it. A few very strong reviews might change my mind about this game as I could see it being fun if it had something novel to offer but based on the demo alone, I’d probably pass.
- Project Sylpheed: I know they really hated it over on Achievement Junkie’s podcast, but I dug this demo a lot. I thought the six tutorial missions were fun and lengthy and showcased the excellent if complex control scheme quite well. I got a bit frustrated in the mission trying to figure out who my targets needed to be and it turns out the real bad guys aren’t nearly as easy to kill as the ones in the tutorials, but I thought the game had a great visual style and looks like it may even have something of a story going on in the single-player campaign as well? AJ’s comparison to Robotech was pretty apt although I’ve already played that game on the PS2 (a real sequel with those same awesome cel-shaded graphics would be sweet, especially on next gen hardware) so I tried to look at this as something separate. One way or the other though I plan to play this game when it comes out. I don’t know that I’ll outright pay full price for it, but a nice long rental may be in order. Maybe it’s just me (I actually like Star Trek Legacy, too, so perhaps space shooters are just a weak spot).
- Monster Madness: Ugh. It’s like Smash TV in 3D only horrible. The controls are awkward, the graphics are dark and messy with too much going on and not enough clear indication of which objects are useful and which are pointless. Plus there is limited ammo which in a game like this is stupid because when you run out it becomes a truly awful brawler for the six seconds you can stay alive. I do like the game’s visual style and character design but not much else about it is redeemable. I have no interest in the full version, even as a rental.
- Gyruss: The XBLA version of the old circular shooter looks nice I guess but the gameplay is still Gyruss which I’ve never been a big fan of, preferring Galaxa or Tempest. If you like Gyruss and want an Achievement-enabled copy with a nice graphical touch-up for your Live Arcade collection, it could be a good buy but everyone else will probably be able to safely skip this one.
- 3D Ultra Minigolf: I hope this game just ran poorly off the OXM disc and isn’t this bad from a memory device because for a casual putt-putt game with simplistic (read: not very fun) controls and boring graphics, it had some painfully long load times. After waiting several minutes for a single ugly course to load I got treated to a dull, three-stroke round and then a new load screen kicked in that lasted even longer and whose resulting course was no better looking. That’s around the time I decided I needed to move on to the next game.
- Pinball FX: As a huge pinball fan, I’ve almost universally been disappointed with video pinball. It’s just not the same. But in this case the physics and the table were pretty awesome and I played for way longer than I should have: Well past the point where the max demo score had been achieved. I don’t know that I’d go out and buy it primarily because I still have a sort of knee-jerk reaction to video pinball but also I don’t understand why they can’t get real pinball tables like Terminator 2, Star Trek the Next Generation or The Addams Family. The fake one in Pinball FX is decent, but by gum, I want the classics.
- Boom Boom Rocket: I was pleasantly surprised with this fun little rhythm game that has you exploding fireworks in time with the techno/classical soundtrack. I tried several variations on the demo game and while I still don’t quite understand how to do one of the necessary moves on the hardest difficulty but the music is nice and the visuals are pretty cool considering they basically show a skyline and then some fireworks effects. I don’t know that I’d pay 800 points for it (speaking of, the latest CAGcast has an interesting bit where Wombat makes an astute observation that XBLA has very strangely managed to make $10 seem expensive).
Other Games
Besides demo-city I also spent some time with a new game I picked up, Lego Star Wars II. I found it uber-cheap at Fry’s and since I had it on my Goozex list anyway I couldn’t resist. The game is extremely charming and one of the few Star Wars games that follows the movies and actually does a good job of it. There is plenty of slapstick humor that I guess is there for the kids but I laughed out loud at it several times during the play through the story mode. The graphics are obviously heavily stylized and cartoony but they work really well in the context.
Unfortunately the game isn’t perfect: The camera is pretty competent but it doesn’t have a lot of manual adjustment capabilities so on the occasion where it gets out of whack there isn’t much you can do to rectify the situation besides suffer through. Also it is annoyingly possible—due to the way the game respawns you after you die—to get stuck in an endless death loop due to an errant jump. Since you have unlimited lives but you are penalized some of the game’s currency each time you kick the bucket, basically you just end up sitting there dying over and over watching your cash drain away until you give up and start the level over again.
But I enjoyed it and I’m surprisingly interested in fully completing the game to 100% which means going back through the levels and searching for hidden goodies that aren’t available in the first run-through of the story mode and collecting more money with witch to unlock other stuff. Between that and Dead Rising I wonder if I’ve somehow become a completionist? I never used to be.
Speaking of Dead Rising I did some more to try and get the last dozen or so Achievements I need to get all 1,000 points. Part of that included step one in the Indoorsman/Outdoorsman boredom festival. I did the Outdoorsman one first since I couldn’t see any way around it besides just standing there someplace safe for the 24 hours required: I chose the rooftop between the vents to the security room and the warehouse. Put it this way: It takes about an hour and a half for 24 game hours to elapse and with only a handful of things to do and maybe ten or so zombies that respawn inside the elevator, it was a long hour and a half. I read some of my book, checked my email, made a snack, pretty much anything except for really playing. I gotta say, I think that defeats the spirit of the Achievement but I can’t really imagine it would have been much more exciting if I had done it out in the courtyard and I would have had to contend with all the zombies there anyway. I guess I could have just sat there and killed a bunch of them, but I’m already level 50 so PP mean nothing to me and I have all the zombie-killing achievements anyway so there’s not much point to that.
The indoor one will be better because I can hopefully do it in Infinity mode which means I’ll be working on at least two at once.
I also got the Clothes Horse Achievement for trying on all the mall’s costumes. Is it just me or did the developers make Frank’s little celebratory dance when he tries on any kind of women’s clothing a little too enthusiastic? It’s very disturbing and you have to watch it a dozen times at least in order to try on everything. I do like the animation when he tries on kid’s clothes, though. It’s so corny and bizarre it never ceases to make me laugh.