New Mass Effect Screenshots

Once I have Crackdown in my hot little hands and the itchy anticipation morphs into hopeless addiction, my next target of lust is Mass Effect. Developed by infamous Canadian RPG developer, Bioware, this sci-fi role-playing epic will advance the genre in so many profound ways, to call it "next gen" does it very little service.

Games Radar is a relatively new gaming mega site. Produced by Future Publishing, the minds behind OXM and PC Gamer, the site has a great sense of style and humour, if a tad light in the updates and content department. I mention them now because they have some juicy screenshots of Mass Effect, including an image of Saren Arterius, your protagonist's main nemesis in the game. The collection of screenies is nothing mind-blowing. Nevertheless, it does nothing to keep me from salivating at my monitor.

Mass Effect Screenshots at Games Radar

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Crackdown Verticality

Douglass C. Perry from IGN recently published a superbly written article on the vertical dimension to the free-roaming gameplay of Crackdown. Much of his insights appear to be based on his play experiences on an advance copy of the full game, due for release on February 20th, 2007. The demo that was released last week is expansive enough to capture a similar experience.

No other sandbox game has integrated vertical exploration into its environments as well as Crackdown has. Period. This element alone has really set this game apart and in my mind, tags Real Time Worlds as one of the new development studios to watch for.

What do you think? While playing the demo, did you prefer driving and stay grounded on terra firma? Or did you take to the dizzying heights of the many balconies and towers of Pacific City, hunting down those addictive Agility Orbs?

Read the IGN article

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Give me Recognition. Give me Rewards.

Heero sent me a shocker this morning, in the form of a link to IGN's fantastical, speculative story about Microsoft's plans to provide their loyal Xbox gamers with material rewards for unlocking special achievements.

I hope you held on to you trousers and socks. Could it be, the promised land? Rewards for achievements? Skills for kills (figuratively)?

The article was quick to point out that nothing has been ironed out yet, with information only pointing to the Xbox team's intention to team up with sponsors in working out a FREE rewards program for gamers to register with.

Poll any 360 gamer and more likely than not they will tell you that unlocking achievements is a reward unto itself. But for Microsoft to take this next logical step and provide material incentive for us gamers to do something that we compulsively do anyway... well, let's just say I didn't need my usual cup of joe to jolt me out of my early morning torpor at the office today. This news, speculative as it is, is just fantastic. My mind began racing as to what sort of prizes they had in mind and what ungodly feats of joystick mastery would be required to unlock these special achievements? Surely, they would be rather difficult or time-intensive achievements, if only to limit the drain on supply and maintain a desirable level of cachet for these rewards.

I personally would like to see them go big. Complete a shooter on the highest difficulty, without dieing, and be rewarded with a free year of Live Gold. Rack up a staggering kill count in deathmatch in a set amount of time and win a generous credit to purchase new accessories. The possibilities are endless and this rewards program can only benefit all parties involved: the players, the community, the sponsors and of course, Microsoft.

I haven't spent any time with the online services from Sony and Nintendo. With news like this, you have to wonder what they have up their respective sleeves to catch up with XBL. If and when this rewards program kicks in, I can see Live becoming this unstoppable juggernaut. Ninty and Sony would either continue their arduous game of catch-up or strike out in a completely novel direction. What that would be is anyone's guess.

For now, I'm very happy with the rewards program rumour. It just makes so much sense, you know, that is feels as good as done. It is indeed a good time to be a 360 fanboy.

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What It Is: An Introduction

It's been two short weeks since the birth of the blog. Introductions are a foregone conclusion at this point, but I've never been one to avoid talking about myself. No, I welcome it.

In a nutshell, Play With My Box exists because I love gaming and I am very fond of my new Xbox 360. There was a time, only a few weeks prior, when I was so engrossed with my co-op sessions with Gears of War and Rainbow Six: Vegas, I could have easily written pages of extremely dry reportage on... well, my own game playing. And lo, for my first few entries that is exactly what I did. For that first week of this blog's existence, I sincerely believed that I could sustain it purely by writing about the games I was playing.

If there's one truth to this crazy world, it's this: Playing Rainbow Six Terrorist Hunt beats reading about someone else playing Terrorist Hunt ANY DAY.

What a difference a couple weeks makes. Now that my love affair with the aforementioned games has subsided and they've lost their addictive pull, I have a much more realistic perspective on PWMB. Get real, nobody wants to read about my game marathons. Granted, it's questionable anyone would feel compelled to read anything I have to say about Xbox 360 or the gaming industry. There's a lot of good stuff already out there. Every gamer with a passing familiarity with English and access to a spell check has already flocked to the net to his/her views on the world of gaming. A few of them have done a damn fine job of it so far. You need only look to such blogosphere standbys like Kotaku, Destructoid, Joystiq and more specifically, Xbox 360 Fanboy to realize that yes, the electronic gaming is a topic very well-served by the blogging community.

So where does Play With My Box fit in? Glad you asked, because I'm still figuring that out. This blog is very much a one-man show, with the occasional contributions from Heero yuy sr whenever he can drag himself away from his own gaming and womanizing. You won't find dozens of headline-catching updates here. Nor will you find a review of a hot new release the same day it hits retail. There are bigger and better equipped sites to handle that herculean task. No, what you will find here is one man's insight into gaming -- specifically, Xbox 360 gaming. This is a fan site, pure and simple. If I only manage to spread my enthusiasm about this great console and entertain a few readers while in the process, then I will have accomplished my mission ten fold.

Hope you all stick around to enjoy the ride.

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Lost in Translation - Lost Planet Review

Heero has kindly decided to contribute to PWMB once in while and recently submitted his review of Capcom's latest release, Lost Planet. Here's what he had to say:

Like many people I was quite eager to get my copy of Lost Planet home, crack it open and start blowing away some alien bugs. But little did I know, I would have to go through a moderately long intro to what the game is all about. They don’t tell you too much in the beginning, they expect you to play through the 11 missions and find out what the story is about, who your character is, and what the point is to this molten goo you have to pick up after blowing up the environment or laying waste to the alien bugs. (The goo is actually what keeps you alive in the game; think of it as health packs)

Rather then writing a massive essay about the game, here are the pros and cons of the game with handy bullet points.

Pros:

• Graphics are amazing, rendered the snow pretty nicely
• Controlling mechs, that has to be fun to some people, big mechs with massive weapons that can be changed by finding new ones laying around the world.
• Interface, it’s pretty clean, not a lot of stuff on your screen to clutter it up
• Radar comes in handy
• Can bypass all enemies and rush straight to the end boss
• Almost everything can be destroyed, and give off energy to keep you alive
• Cool explosions


Cons:

• Control need to get use to, not quite a standardized system like most third person/first person shooters
• Easily get lost in a world covered in snow, no real landmarks to locate, other then small waypoints that need to be activated.
• Character moves at a slow pace
• Can be easily knocked off of a ledge, or during grappling.
• Can’t grapple and jump at the same time.
• Game pace is slow, what seems to be 10 minutes of game play feels like an hour

So really Lost Planet isn’t a bad game, just too many issues with the game to make it a decent one honestly. They have some good ideas in the game, ones that might benefit in other games, but all in all Lost Planet is a game you would either love or hate.

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Crackdown Demo: Sandbox Epic or Buildering Sim?

On the 23rd day of January, Microsoft and Real Time Worlds gave us Crackdown co-op demo, and it was good.

The final game, due for release on February 20th, has been the focus of much scrutiny lately. It has been hailed as the next great sandbox adventure by some and decried as nothing more than a limp GTA rip-off. That Microsoft wisely (or foolishly) decided to pack in access keys to the upcoming Halo 3 beta in selected copies of Crackdown has only fueled the debate even more. Is this game the real deal or is a disaster so big not that even a Halo 3 beta key can save it?

Well, we still have another month before that question can be answered definitively. For now, we only have a very short, but very sweet demo to whet our appetites with and to serve as a lightpost into the game's potential success. My own impressions of Crackdown pre-demo took on a trajectory of initial apathy, to sudden intense curiosity, to child-like giddyness and culiminating in salivating anticipation. I was among the first Xbox Livers to grab the 1.24GB demo yesterday morning and was itching through my workday, eager to get home that evening to spend some quality time with the demo.

What follows of course, is a quick recap of my experience with the Crackdown trial game, based on roughly 90 minutes of gaming solo and with my Live parter-in-crime, Heero yuy sr. The bias against this game before the demo released has been very surprising. I hope to bring a pretty objective review to the table and illuminate what is so great about thsi game as well as highlight some potential trouble spots in the overall design.

So to get things kicked off with a bang, I shall say this: the Crackdown demo rocked my ass. David Jones, the game's creator and also a co-creator of the original GTA franchise, clearly wanted to take the sandbox genre to the next level of evolution. You take on the role of a nameless Agent who is tasked with the job of fighting organized crime in the futuristic (and generically named) Pacific City.

From the moment, I started moving my Agent around the agency headquarters, I knew that Jones and the team at Real Time Worlds had nailed one of my biggest gripes with Grand Theft Auto, which was the feel of controlling your avatar. GTA player-characater always felt sluggish and clumsy and it was almost a necessity to acquire a vehicle ASAP. The inverse is true with Crackdown. While the vehicular control is responsive, the experience seems more focused on you as the Agent and moving around on foot. This isn't too surprising, given that one of the great joys of the demo was levelling the many abilities of my Agent. This RPG-lite feature is similar to the one used in GTA: San Andreas, only done much better. The "skills for kills" game play is further enhanced by an amazingly addictive mini-game hunt for hidden orbs, which provide you a bundle of ability points without having to kill anyone. The trick is actually finding these orbs, all 500 of them, which are scattered about the immense city-world, usually high up on rooftops.

Which brings us to the crowning touch of player control in Crackdown: the jumping. The feel of jumping is near-perfect, from the animation of your cycling arms and legs, to the dramatic crouched landings, complete with rumble shock and visible impact marks on the pavement. The feel has been compared to the Spiderman and Hulk last-gen console games. When I had ramped up my Agility to Level 4 (a feat that will take MUCH longer in the full game), I truly did feel like some kind of Hulk-fied super cop, dodging hailstorms of gunfire by clambering nimbly up a wall or taking wild leaps across rooftops to get to a hidden skill orb or a heavily defended boss character. The hunt for those highly coveted orbs quickly became an obsession in itself. Even as my abilities enabled me to reach previously inaccessible areas of the map, I would always find a new building to conquer and it would pose a greater challenge than the last. Never in a sandbox game have I pondered at the base of a structure and wondered aloud, "So how the heck am I going to get up there?". This facet of the game's design is like a breath of fresh air and made me wonder if I was playing a GTA clone or some other-worldly free climbing and parkour simulation.

Besides the superb feeling of control, I feel there is so little space remaining to harp on the many other positives I experienced while playing the demo. The graphics are excellent, combining offbeat art direction, vibrant colours, gorgeous explosions and some impressive technical wizardry to produce one of the most unique and visually stunning games in recent memory. This game is no Gears of War, but it still looks amazing and one of a kind. You will be amazed when you reach a suitable vantage point an take in the draw distances. I did not notice any pop-ins at all and the vista you see out in the distance IS reachable, not just an artificial backdrop to mark the outer boundaries of the game world.

I'm also very encouraged by the open-ended design of Crackdown. This is looking to be the purest of the pure sandbox experiences. EVery, and I mean, every mission appears to be optional. While your Agent is routinely fed updates and objectives depending on your location in the world, you are free to pursue whatever goals you desire. This is a far cry from what we are do accustomed to in games like Grand Theft Auto. Sure, GTA offered you a lot of freedom to explore but the progression through the game felt like a linear string of mini-games and side quests. All of this served to mask the linear, unforgiving nature of the core storyline. If you wanted to progress through the main storyline of GTA, there were a set number of key missions you needed to complete, no ifs ands or buts. Not so in Crackdown. The entire world is open to you from the beginning and your progress through the world is only hampered by the power of your Agent.

Which brings me to some of the more negative features of the Crackdown demo. The truly open-ended design of Crackdown, while liberating some players, may put off many more. GTA has been so influential in setting the bar for these type of games that it may be hard for players to adapt. Truth be told, the range of activities in Crackdown seems to be more limited. You cannot buy property, foster a gang, take over gang territory, pimp hoes, sell drugs, fly planes or do any number of nefarious things that you did in the course of your average GTA game. The fun of Crackdown is exploration and to a point, creating your own fun. There is nothing there to handhold you through a storyline, mainly because a storyline does not exist. On the same side of the coin, the 2-player co-op experience may not be compelling as I might have hoped. Co-op seems to shine through when there is a common and focused goal to work towards (see Gears of War). The flow of play in Crackdown is definitely not focused, so it will be interesting to see how people adjust to all the "low pressure" urgency of the game.

That is a small gripe with Crackdown. For all it's style and polish, it lacks any real character or plot. Your Agent has no name or discernible personality. The character of your foes, gleaned through amusing video briefings, are also starkly generic and lifeless. And you can forget about cinematic cutscenes.

The lack of personality and storyline may ultimately affect the lasting appeal of Crackdown. Any new intellectual property needs a mythology to drive it into the future and capture the imagination of its fans. Based only on the demo, I would say Crackdown is guarranteed above-average success upon release. Whether or not it becomes a lasting blockbuster hit is still very much up in the air. In the end, the players most likely to get the most out of the demo and the full game are those same players most acutely aware of the short-comings of other sandbox titles like GTA and Saints Row

All I know for now is that I must get my ass down to the nearest EB Games to pre-order the Crack. The demo is also going to get some more serious play-testing for the rest of this week.

p.s. - Any game that features a Hybrid track among their selectable radio stations deserves a gold star in my book, no questions asked.

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Crack of Dawn

I suppose it doesn't bode well for new blog when half the entries posted have been about one game. Does it matter that the game happens to be Crackdown, one of my most anticipated titles of '07? Truth be told, my knowledge of this game, along with Gears of War, played a large role in locking down my decision to buy a 360 in the first place. I've been enamoured with anti-social "sandbox" games since the early sprite-based incarnations of Grand Theft Auto. Back when I was enrolled in my easy-as-pie Multimedia Studies program, I even wrote a treatment for a sandbox-styled game for my Interaction Design class (don't worry, it's not nearly as Digipen-cool as it sounds). It was a pretty sweet concept. My gameplay document wasn't terribly fleshed out, but the potential was there. Think game journalism a la Dead Rising, mixed with GTA and Bad Day L.A. sans gang-banging, mass murder and ho-slapping.

But I digress. So there I was, suckered into playing another late weeknight session of Rainbow Six: Vegas. I had finally passed that maddening sequence in the slipway dam; you know, the one involving Jung strutting his computer hacking skills in the shed while half the world's terrorist population descends upon you. I must have played that section 20 times. It took my first attempt to realize Jung gets flanked by 2 sneaky enemies in a garage and the next 19 tries to get a lucky break and not: a) catch an errant grenade, b) not have Michael die on me too early, c) not have Jung catch an errant grenade or bullet or d) all of the frickin' above.

So I finally passed that bloody sequence. I was too relieved and exhausted to celebrate when I saw the magical "Saving Progress" notification on my screen. Thankfully, for the next twenty minutes it was a smooth succession of checkpoint completions, not dieing again until later in the scientist-rescue portion of the mission.

I figured it was time to stop. I had enjoyed a couple beers with a friend earlier and the buzz was still lingering, making me rather sleepy. I checked the clock and saw that it was already 1:35am. Wait a minute, doesn't the Crackdown demo drop at 2:00am? Indeed.

By 2:05, I had the demo streaming down the pipes and crawled into bed, happily thinking about the game and secure in the knowledge it would be waiting for me when I awoke. Waking up today was a bit like waking up on Christmas morning. Bleary-eyed but excited, I fired up the Box and there it was, my precious, my Crackdown demo. It was a hefty file, weighing in at 1.24GB. I was surprised it finished downloading overnight. The Marketplace servers will probably get slammed later this afternoon when all the kiddies get home from school. Meanwhile I'll be sitting pretty enjoying the game. Chawesome...

I played the demo for all of 5 minutes. I already like the feel of controlling your Agent and the graphics, while terribly cartoonish, are very striking and unique. I'm not sure I liked the feel of the driving. I hopped into a squad car and was turned off by the camera control and sluggish turning. Here's hoping that was only characteristic of the particular vehicle I was driving. Another sticking point of course was the total lack of story and cinematics. Yes, watching an introductory gameplay montage is cool but would it have killed Real Time Worlds to add that final bit of polish to their game? Hopefully they did for the final product.

Heero and I have already made a Crackdown appointment for tonight. There's word from Kotaku that the demo has a 30-minute time limit once your Agent reaches Level 2 in any skill. That seriously sucks, but for a open-ended sandbox game like this, it was probably the most sensible option method of implementing a "cut off" point.

Full first impressions of the demo to come.

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Rejoice! Crackdown Demo Available Tomorrow

When the Crackdown demo was delayed last week, I was sad. Little did I know how quickly it took for Microsoft to certify the demo and get it ready for mass consumption. It will be available for download on Tuesday, January 23rd at 2AM PST.

I'm presently deciding whether to stay up late Monday night to start the download or just fire up my box in the morning before I go to work. Either way, I've already booked a co-op session with Heero on Tuesday evening. I have high hopes for the final game; here's hoping the demo captures the spirit of the finished product, as well as being a blast to play in its own right.

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Your Gamerscore and You - Part Uno

My gamerscore is sitting pretty at 1200 points roughly one month after buying my Xbox 360. The whole idea of achievements and points seemed rather trivial even during that week I was weighing the pros and cons of grabbing a 360. It was a superficial premise, to rewarding players for doing something they would do anyway, which is to play their games. I perhaps thought that there would be material motivation for raising your gamerscore: special offers, discounts on new games, free downloads in the Marketplace or something tangible for gaining achievements.

I quickly realized there was no system in place to "cash in" points from you gamerscore. Aww poo, then what good is it? As a gamer I could understand the inherent joy of racking up a lot of points and comparing yourself alongside other hardcore gamers. Even that mode of enjoyment, however, is deeply flawed. There is theoretically no limit to your gamerscore. It does not reflect with much accuracy your overall skill or dedication as a 360 gamer, as it is an amalgamation of all the games you have ever played and how much progress you have actually made in each game.

So I concluded, rather prematurely, that the whole notion of achievements and points was a gimmick. It still wasn't a potent enough reason to not buy a 360. Once I had plugged in my new game console at home, it was only the games that I cared for. Live was still but a glimmer in my gamer's eye. It sounded like a slick online matchmaking system, but nothing more. I knew I would get around to it eventually, but I was in no rush.

How things change. Four and a half weeks later I cannot even imagine using my 360 without Live and I always have my eye trained on my gamerscore. It crawls higher, ever so slowly, but I'm watching it. My eyes brightern every time I hear that telltale "BLIP" during gameplay and the "Achievement Unlocked" icon flashes onto my screen. The questions begin rolling in: I wonder which achievement that was? How was is it worth? How many more do I need to unlock to get them all?

For all their superficiality, the achievements system taps into a very pure desire of all gamers, if not all people and does it with remarkable simplicity. In my next post, I'll also get into how it ties into a more practical side of the overall Xbox Live experience.

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Crack Gone Gold

Don't you love some good news on a Friday? Microsoft announced today that Crackdown has gone gold. This means the game is done and is ready to go into production.

In their press release, Microsoft cited the larger number of pre-orders for Crackdown, in part because the game will kick about 12 different kinds of ass, but mostly because of the Halo 3 beta keys included in marked copies of Crackdown. Since I am a Canadian resident, I am pretty much SOL for getting a Halo 3 key and will have to settle with playing the latest sandbox masterpiece as consolation prize.

Yeah, life is tough.

Crackdown is still scheduled to hit store shelves on February 20th. The delayed demo is expected to drop sometime before the end of January.

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Help Xbox Help You

Andre Vrignaud (Gamertag: Ozymandias) from the Xbox team has published an official call for feedback regarding all things Xbox Live. The online service has undergone tremendous changes since its inception shortly after the release of Xbox 1. According to Vrignaud, the future path of Live points towards an increased emphasis on digital distribution and media integration (Zune, TV, IPTV, mobile, etc.). He called upon the Xbox fan community to submit their suggestions and ideas to further enhance Live and continue to make it the greatest online gaming platform.

He stressed the desire for grand, long-term ideas:

"What do you want to see? Think big here - ideally, think about what you want to see over a five-year period, and how your ideas evolve over that time. What's the crawl step for your idea? The walk? The run?"

I've been using XBL for all of two weeks but still felt compelled to offer up some improvements. In hindsight my suggestions were hardly grand or visionary but it looks like I wasn't alone in taking this rare opportunity to sound off on anything Xbox, whether it be the games, hardware, accessories or Live. As they say, the devil is in the details, and XBL has only reached the it's currently impressive state after a few years of evolution.

Here's what I threw into the fray:

• Ability to group friends in friends list. Be able to send one message to a group of friends.
• Conference chats with friends
• Streamlined access to shared music files from Dashboard. Maybe a "Recent Playlist" hot list.
• Simplified keyboard GUI for writing messages on XBL. I resort to using "internet speak" anyway, so why not allow users to switch to an internet speak-friendly keyboard? Sort of like T9 predictive texting in cell phones.
• Dedicated servers for popular (or all) online games
• Support for more video formats other than .wmv
• Allow for downloading of podcasts and video podcasts
• More power conservation/auto shut-off settings. Six hours is too long.
• Reduce XBL subscription fee (hey, worth a try!)

Not the loftiest wish list, I know. I'm definitely in the honeymoon stage with XBL so it was still strenuous to come up with all that. I'll probably dedicate a gushing post to it in the near future but for now I'll just say that I am amazed it works as well as it does. Given more time to familiarize myself with Live, I think I could come up with a dozen more ideas that go beyond piddly things like auto shut-off settings. I mean, who needs to let their Xbox idle for 6 hours? (there's probably some grist for another topic)

Every corporation out there plays lip service to having top-notch customer service and caring about customer feedback. If the Xbox team and Microsoft actually make good on the best, most feasible customer ideas, it will go a long way to not only taking Live to the next level, but also establishing Xbox as the game console that listens to The People.

Head on over to Ozymandias' blog and leave a comment with your own brilliant ideas for Xbox Live!

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Terrorists on the Run Second Night in a Row

I've been meaning to properly introduce Play With My Box to the gaming blogosphere but Rainbow Six has been dominating my every waking moment. Therefore I cannot bring myself to even write about anything else, not until I report on my latest T-Hunt outing with Heero.

Long story short: we owned, as they say in gaming parlance. We completed an unprecedented 5 maps last night, beginning with our first love, the Calypso Casino. With the help of fellow R6ers, I and Gratzy, we finally dominated the casino on High Density setting. I had the honour of being the last man standing, facing down a disorganized band of terrorists in the vault and methodically putting them all to rest. Did I get an easy break? Oh, more than I few times. The Normal enemy AI seems to falter when they separate from the pack and you face them head on. I noticed that they take an eternity to draw a bead on you and in rare instances will even get stuck on a wall or be distracted by something other than you.

Border Town became the tough nut to crack that evening, as we were repeatedly ambushed and out-flanked on our first several attempts. Fragpocket promptly dropped out, leaving a 3-man team to grind through the streets of Mexico. Victory finally came on Gratzy's final game and once again, I was charged with eliminating the final wave of terrorists all by myself.

Heero and I bid goodnight to Gratzy and continued on to beat Casino Vault, Dam and Dantes. Heero pulled off a repeat of the previous night's performance as he played Rambo, using his strategically located base camp to defend against the unrelenting wave of attackers. I originally stood guard behind the crates while Heero pranced around the level, baiting terrorists into following him into our deathtrap. All was going well until I became too preoccupied with peering through my rifle scope and blown to smithereens by a well-timed grenade. From then on it was ALL Heero and he did not disappoint, switching effortlessly between his pistol, shotty and a modest helping of C4. My goodness, it was glorious to watch him detonate the C4 and send five unlucky attackers cartwheeling into the air.

All in all, it was a great night of T-Hunt. Heero and I both ranked up and earned our coveted Tour of Duty achievement. Our next challenge will be to finish all maps on Realistic difficulty, where the AI is much more aggressive. I also expect that they will spawn in the most inopportune places and make much better use of explosives.

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Crackdown Delayed

It's arguable whether I would even be able to pry myself away from Rainbow Six: Vegas to play any new games right now. I would make an exception, however, for the upcoming Microsoft-published sandbox epic, Crackdown. Heck, I'd drop everything right now if it meant spending 10 minutes with the demo, which was to be released tomorrow.

Sadly, Microsoft announced that it was still in the process of certifying the Crackdown demo, which would delay its release by a couple weeks. In any other circumstance, I would probably be feeling quite disappointed. Thankfully, I've been knee-deep in my R6 addiction since buying it last Friday so I now I don't need to feel torn between hunting down terrorists Calypso or leaping from rooftop to rooftop in a gigantic, future city whilst hurling criminal scum off said rooftops. I'll be conflict free, at least until the end of the month.

I've been diligently singing the praises of Crackdown to Heero in the hopes of getting him interested and it has definitely paid off. Once the demo drops I can imagine myself taking a short, short break from R6. I rarely get much satisfaction from demos. Nevertheless, the Crackdown demo sounds like it will be fairly beefy, allowing limited co-op functionality and an accelerated version of the final game's skill leveling system.

Come February 20th, all bets are off. I expect to have at least completed the R6 campaign on Normal by then and dipping heavily into PvP matches, but Crackdown WILL become my new main squeeze. I can't wait.

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Terrorist Hunt Still a Challenge

It was another sleepless night of Rainbow Six: Vegas (R6) with Heero as we hammered away at Terrorist Hunt. Out of our dozens of matches, we emerged victorious twice. The first win came after several unsuccessful runs of Kill House. I grew tired of getting picked off by stragglers catching us unaware from behind so I suggested that we camp out near the initial spawn point and lure the baddies to us. On previous attempts that first wave of enemies always went so smoothly: I'd park myself at the corner of the first building, covering the alleyway and fast rope while Heero would circulate between shotgunning guys rushinig down the stairs or through the opposite alley. Things would quickly fall apart as we ventured further into the map, however, as we'd get to some magical moment when we'd engage a mob of terrorists in an area accessible by multiple entry points. A lone enemy would find his way through a route we'd already taken, get around us and shoot us both in the back.

I figured we could expand on our winning formula and turn the tables on the overwhelming odds stacked against us. Our camping tactic worked beautifully. It didn't take long for piles of bodies to gather around my assigned alley. The soler remaining terrorist, not taking notice of the blood-splattered death trap, valiantly rushed my fortified position only to be cut down with manic glee by my rifle-scoped MP9.

Our second victory didn't require much of my input, as I was gunned down early in the game attempting to foolishly escape a frag grenade by running TOWARDS the sender, out into the open Dantes courtyard FILLED WITH ENEMY SOLDIERS. Heero, against all odds, went on to eliminate the remaining 20+ terrorists single-handedly. Times like this I wish Ubisoft Montreal had coded in a replay feature into online play, not unlike the replays you get now in very modern car racing game. Heero's heated firefight in one of Dantes' tight construction zones is the stuff of highlight reels. Taken out of the match so early, I had decided to phone my father and hardly registered the intensity of the game during my conversation. I honestly did not expect Heero to survive beyond the 5-minute duration of my phone call. Yet there he was, frantically loading shells into his M870, dodging 'nades and stubbornly refusing to die.

I sat there, mesmerized, and started to offer up some play-by-play advice/commentary, which was promptly greeted with a breathless, "Shut up, man... I'm freaking out here!". Ah Heero, you lost your cool but you pulled through anyway. The last terrorist didn't put up much of a fight, sort of stumbling around in the smoke, taking cover just outside Heero's makeshift bunker then hobbling away in the opposite direction. His ass was promptly perforated with a load of buckshot.

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