Originally Published: October 4, 2010, on ClassicGameRoom.com
I and CGR Undertow present a review I did of the Xbox Live Arcade title, Alien Breed 2: Assault.
Tag Archive: xbox live
Originally Published: October 1, 2010, on ClassicGameRoom.com and NationalLampoon.com
As a part of CGR Undertow, I review Dance! It’s Your Stage for Xbox Live Arcade from DTP.
Originally Published: July 26, 2010, on ESPNNewYork.com, PlayerAffinity.com, Original-Gamer.com, Lundberg.me, Examiner.com, and Newsday.com
My bad play on words aside, it is easily one of the most anticipated video games of not just the year, but possibly all-time. It is a prequel that takes a more in-depth look at the start of what has become one of the greatest video game canons to have ever been conceived. And with this being Bungie’s last official foray into this space-age realm they’ve created for us, they wanted to make sure they went out with a bang.
Of course, I am talking about Halo Reach. We are about seven weeks still from this being available far and wide, but I had a chance a couple of weeks ago to sit down with our old friend, Brian Jarrard, the Community Director for Bungie, to talk about what they’ve done specifically to make this the biggest and baddest Halo yet.
And so with no further delay, I am going to help start your mouth watering a little early for this sweet piece of gaming goodness by imploring you to check out my Halo Reach preview with Brian Jarrard, the Community Director for Bungie, below!
Videos by Jared Bodden and Lee Elias
-Ray Carsillo
Originally Published: July 22, 2010, on ESPNNewYork.com, Lundberg.me, PlayerAffinity.com, Newsday.com, and Examiner.com
Microsoft officially kicked off their Summer of Arcade 2010 last night with the release of Limbo, but considering my next review subject was just released last week, I don’t see why it couldn’t be part of this awesome event highlighting original XBL titles. Of course, I am talking about Spike Games’ Deadliest Warrior: The Game available now.
Based on Spike’s TV show of the same name, Deadliest Warrior: The Game takes seven combatants from the first season and the Roman Centurion from the second and pits them against each other in one of the most fun and brutal fighters to have come along in some time. With only eight fighters and five arenas to do battle in, this game works perfectly as a XBL title; available for 1000 Microsoft points (roughly $8).
The gameplay is near flawless as you can hack and slash your way through a difficult arcade mode to unlock new weapons and costumes for your favorite warriors or try your hand at proving that you are the deadliest in online versus and tournament modes. And trying to unlock new weapons can be surprisingly addictive due to each weapon having various attributes in terms of damage they can deal and the speed with which they can be wielded at so that it is unlikely you’ll have two exact fighters even if they are selected from the same class.
A unique aspect to Deadliest Warrior: The Game is the chance of a one-hit kill due to the realism the game focuses on (a spear through the face is an instant kill and for good reason). The realism that the game incorporates makes many fights faster than most fighting games, but this also makes you less likely to go in swords-a-swingin’ and make you think some before you actually attack. Include a simple, straightforward combat system that features high, mid, low, projectile, and signature attacks each assigned to their own button and Deadliest Warrior: The Game is the best kind of fighter, one that is easy to pick up but difficult to master.
The graphics are also very impressive. From limbs being hacked off and blood gushing around the arenas to the facial expressions of the warriors themselves, Deadliest Warrior: The Game is very pretty. There are a couple of minor glitches, but extra effects like dead bodies twitching at the end of each round more than make up for it.
There are some flaws to the game though. The game lags on occasion and the audio is very bland as a whole. It would have been nice if the game could have been livened up a bit with commentary from the hosts of the show, Geoff Desmoulin, Max Geiger, and Dr. Armand Dorian, or the show’s narrator Drew Skye. With only some generic music, roars of pain from the combatants, and the anticipated SFX of metal on metal leaves you wanting a little more from the audio side of things.
The plot is also non-existent really compared to your standard fighting game. It’s hard to critique it though since it’s the same premise as the show, to find out “who is deadliest?” In that aspect it has more of a simulation feel because the player really decides the storylines. What would happen if a knight took on an Apache? Or how about a samurai against a ninja?
Something that makes this game one of the best XBL titles out there though is the replay value. Aside from your standard online versus modes, there are promises of increasing the fighter roster as the show goes on and more medieval fighters are revealed. You could have a roster of 30 fighters before the show is done. If that happens, I would hope that the developers also include some new arenas.
The only other thing that fans of the show may be wondering is why all the fighters are of the medieval variety. Well, it wouldn’t be very fair to have Al Capone tear a Viking apart with his tommy gun now would it? Maybe they’ll come out with a sequel for modern warriors. I call dibs on the IRA!
Although flawed, Deadliest Warrior: The Game is a fun, unique fighter that is a bargain considering it is only going to cost you $8. Nevermind Limbo, Deadliest Warrior: The Game is the way you’re going to want to kick off your Summer of Arcade.
Ratings are based on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the best.
Graphics: 9.0: A couple of minor glitches crop up here and there, but twitching dead bodies and blood spurting by the bucketful more than makes up for it.
Audio: 5.0: Generic music, expected SFX, and no commentary take away from the overall experience unfortunately.
Gameplay: 9.5: Unique fighter aspects like one-hit kills and the ease with which you can pick this game up make it a great overall fighting experience. Lag does crop up on occasion though and that’s the only thing that keeps this from being perfect.
Plot/Plot Development: N/A: After giving it some thought, I list Deadliest Warrior: The Game more as a simulation and therefore plot is a non-factor.
Replay Value: 7.5: You have your standard online versus and tournament modes, but the promise of more fighters for download as the show continues will make you come back to this more often than typical fighters.
Overall (not an average): 8.0: A few minor flaws can’t overshadow the legitimately solid experience that Deadliest Warrior: The Game delivers and I know I can’t wait for the first batch of new fighters to be released.
Deadliest Warrior: The Game is available now on Xbox Live.
-Ray Carsillo
Originally Published: June 11, 2010, on Examiner.com, ESPNNewYork.com, Lundberg.me, Original-Gamer.com, and PlayerAffinity.com
It is one of the most successful franchises in video game history. Tomb Raider has seen the gaming community’s beloved Lara Croft travel from mountain tops and dilapidated temples to the very Underworld itself. Now though, Lara will take on something completely unknown to her, having her game released completely via download.
That’s right. For those of you who are unaware, the next Tomb Raider game, Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, is a completely downloadable title that will be available at the end of this summer on Xbox Live and PlayStation Network.
I had a chance to sit down with Crystal Dynamics Brand Director Karl Stewart to talk about their latest entry in the Tomb Raider series and how difficult it was to balance making a viable downloadable game while still keeping true to the series’ roots.
Originally Published: December 2, 2009, on Lundberg.me and Examiner.com
With Assassin’s Creed II living up to the tremendous hype it had leading up to its release with awesome gameplay and an engrossing plot, and with a solid 800,000 units sold in its first week for Xbox 360, it is no surprise that Ubisoft has officially announced two new DLC packs for the first quarter of 2010 for Assassin’s Creed II.
The first new DLC is titled “Battle of Forli” and will hit the marketplace sometime in January 2010. No details of the plot have been released, but if it is taking place in the Romagna/Forli region, and if you paid attention to the Animus’ promptings for history lessons about the people and buildings in the area, then you could probably draw the conclusion that you are going to be doing a few favors for the lovely Catalina.
The second new DLC is titled “Bonfire of the Vanities” and is supposed to hit the marketplace in February 2010. There have been absolutely no confirmed details released about either of these DLC’s in terms of plot and how they tie into the main story of Assassin’s Creed II, but Ubisoft has confirmed that each DLC should be about 1 GB in size. This means that each one is going to be about the size of GTA IV’s The Lost and the Damned if you are looking for a point of reference.
Ubisoft has also said that they will reveal more before the New Year at least about “Battle of Forli”. There has been no word on achievements, price, or exact release dates up to this point, but with the few details we have, I think it is enough to get excited about considering how great Assassin’s Creed II was.
An addendum: Published 12/5/09: After finally completely beating the game, I make the prediction that the two DLC packs are the “two sequences” that are skipped over in the regular game for the sake of time due to the Templars closing in on your Animus 2.0’s position.
Originally Published: August 18, 2009, on 1050ESPN.com (now ESPNNewYork.com) and Examiner.com
I want to continue our exploration of games being featured on Xbox Live’s Summer of Arcade and in doing so we look at an exclusive downloadable game.
Shadow Complex is a product from Chair Entertainment and Epic Games (the same team that produced Gears of War) and the best way to describe the gameplay is a mix between Bionic Commando and Metroid.
A 2.5D side-scrolling shooter, Shadow Complex is the story of how a couple of hikers in the woods stumble upon an anarchist plot to overthrow the U.S. government, starting with San Francisco. The hero of our story, Jason, must rescue his girlfriend from the clutches of this unknown organization after she is captured during their hike and, in the process, defend truth, justice, and the American way by taking down the entirety of the underground complex.
The story progresses extremely quickly, but this is understandable considering downloadable games are typically far shorter than disc-based games for the sake of hard drive space and download times. Unfortunately, it seems to only skim the top of a much larger plot and keeps you in the dark even after the game ends (maybe that’s why they call it Shadow Complex?). Of course, the end credits do reveal that the game is a compliment to an actual novel and that the game is set in the universe of Orson Scott Card’s Empire series. Nice to see Epic Games encouraging us to read more by making us go out and get a book to figure out the larger plot to their game. A maximum of 10 hours worth of gameplay if you go through the training mode and set it to the highest difficulty, if you just blow through the story mode and gather a decent amount of collectibles, you can get complete it all in 4-5 hours.
The gameplay is smooth for the most part, but the 2.5D aspect with enemies coming out of corridors that you yourself cannot enter makes it difficult to know who or what you’re aiming at most of the time. A variety of special weapons and upgrades, including a prototype suit of armor with a grappling hook and speed boost, make dispatching the enemies in new and creative ways a constant thrill, though. There are also several methods to solve each problem. If you can’t find the jump boost, you can make a bridge out of the foam shot. If you lack the grappling hook, you might be able to run up a curved wall with the speed boost. This non-linear play is a nice change considering how linear side-scollers traditionally are and this harks back to Bionic Commando and Metroid.
It is a pretty game for a side-scroller and the cut scenes are just as good as if it was a regular disc-loading game. Unfortunately, it doesn’t sound nearly as good as it looks. A lack of overall music is a disappointment and the few times it comes in it actually shocks you out of the illusion of the game because it is so rare. Add in cheesy, over-the-top voice acting and you might as well just wear earmuffs while playing.
A few minor details bothered me in Shadow Complex, most notably the aiming dynamics, but in terms of story, action, and item collection it deserves to be in the same class as Bionic Commando and Metroid, two of the all-time great side-scrollers. If you’re looking for a cheap game to kill a few hours with some quality old-school gameplay, Shadow Complex is a great pick up as Xbox wraps up it’s summer arcade push.
Ratings are based on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the best.
Graphics: 8.0: Considering it is a downloadable game, the graphics are really good. During the game itself, the graphics are flawless and very pretty. I only take a couple of points off because the cut scenes, which Epic usually makes so beautiful, weren’t as smooth as I suspected in a few instances.
Audio: 4.0: The little bit of music the game offers jolts you out of the experience instead of enhancing it and the cheesy voice acting makes the listening experience a very poor one. Good use of SFX for the guns and explosions keeps this score out of the basement.
Plot/Plot Development: 7.0: Certain parts of the plot were a little too convenient and others were sloppy and left you guessing at plot points. The fact that you might need to read a novel to understand all the loose strands of plot keeps this from being a classic story. I would prefer a stand-alone tale over a compliment to another story.
Gameplay: 9.0: Solid action, combined with flawless, glitchless play that allows you several methods to solve problems in the game makes this a truly enjoyable experience. Four levels of difficulty and a pretty thorough training mode could provide up to 10 hours of gameplay, which is great for a downloadable game. The only downside to the game was trying to aim at enemies in the background where your character could not go.
Replay Value: 8.0: With four difficulty levels and hundreds of collectibles, there is plenty to bring you back to Shadow Complex as you try to find every nuance to the massive underground bunker.
Overall (not an average): 8.0: A good game made great considering it is downloadable software. I would love to see a fleshed out, more polished version of Shadow Complex with even more levels and collectibles and a less vague story. Until then, this is not an elite level game (its close), just a great value for your buck.
Shadow Complex is available for download exclusively on Xbox Live on Wednesday, August 19th, 2009, for 1200 Microsoft points ($15 American dollars).
-Ray Carsillo
Originally Published: August 14, 2009, on Examiner.com and 1050ESPN.com (now ESPNNewYork.com)
Some of my fondest memories from my childhood are my dad and me or with a few friends heading down to the local arcade. Some of my earliest video game memories were formed here and we even had my 6th birthday at the Electric Circuit (that was the name of the arcade). I would feed endless quarters into classic games like X-Men, Spider-Man, The Simpsons, Tekken, and House of the Dead. As we got older though, places like Electric Circuit started to disappear as games evolved and became oriented more towards the home living room, making places like arcades unnecessary. Once my friends and I got our driver’s licenses, we would have to drive farther and farther to try to find decent arcade hangouts until it got to the point that it just wasn’t worth searching anymore. So, in many places, like the local video store being forced out by services like On Demand and Netflix, the arcade is almost extinct and only lives on in many of our memories.
With similar dreams of childhoods lost, Microsoft saw the perfect opportunity to conjure up some nostalgia when they created the Xbox Live Arcade, where you can download, for a small fee, an endless array of games that have been digitally converted. Every console has a system like this in place, but I focus on Xbox’s Arcade because, in what is becoming an annual summer push for old-school games, two of my old arcade favorites have been re-released.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time and Marvel vs. Capcom 2 were actually sequels to already smash-hit arcade games, but brought brand new wonders to their respective franchises. Turtles in Time incorporated new characters from the, at that time, recently released film TMNT 2: Secret of the Ooze. MvC2 nearly doubled the roster of fighters from the first game and added a third member to their revolutionary roulette system that allowed you to switch between active and benched fighters in the middle of combat effortlessly.
After downloading both these games for small fees (Turtles in Time cost 800 Microsoft points, roughly $10 dollars, and Marvel vs. Capcom 2 was 1200 Microsoft points, roughly $15 dollars) Amazingly, not only do the games maintain their original greatness, but the tweaks and additions given by Microsoft make these classics well worth the download.
In honor of the Turtles’ 25th anniversary, Turtles in Time: Re-Shelled Edition has completely revamped and upgraded graphics and the gameplay now includes a full 360 degree attack arc. The difficulty has been amped up a little as well with four different levels and the classic survival mode has been included from when the game was originally ported to the SNES almost 20 years ago. The game also includes up to four player co-op like the original and you can find extra players over Xbox Live if you don’t have enough controllers (or friends willing to play an 18-year old game with you in the middle of the night). Add in that the voice actors from the current TMNT cartoon have voiced-over what was originally text during the few cinemas from the game and Turtles in Time: Re-Shelled Edition will make you feel like a kid again while still appreciating just how far gaming technology has come.
The only downside to the experience was that the game is only a port of the original arcade game and the extra level that was in the SNES version that allowed the inclusion of Bebop and Rocksteady was not included in this version. Also, none of the classic Turtles music was included and this saddened me a little as a hardcore fan. Still, for only $10, this download was well worth it.
Marvel vs. Capcom 2 doesn’t have any major upgrades in the visual department and the gameplay is largely the same as the arcade version. The only real upgrades were the addition of a training mode to really refine your 100-hit combos and the ability to play opponents over Xbox Live with your stats tracked on Marvel vs. Capcom 2′s official website. Unfortunately, there are a lot of glitches with the game at this time, but I’m sure Capcom’s tech-heads are hard at work trying to smooth these out to ensure everyone gets their classic arcade button-mashing fix in.
Hopefully, these two arcade classics making their way to home consoles will open the floodgates for more classic games like The Avengers, Virtua Cop, Time Crisis, or Fatal Fury to make their ways back into our hearts and minds. At the very least, these games give us a chance to reminisce and appreciate just how far gaming has come over the past couple of decades and remind us that true classics can stand the test of time (even if sometimes they need a little extra work for that to happen).
Both Turtles in Time: Re-Shelled Edition and Marvel vs. Capcom 2 are available now on Xbox Live.
-Ray Carsillo
RayCarsilloWrites.com 