Shocking Sunday Demo: Bioshock

Downloading popular demos of a certain size on Xbox Live can be a taxing ordeal. Transfer speeds slow to a crawl and in my experiences, weird things start happening to my 360. My downloads may get stuck at a certain percentage or I'll inexplicably lose my connection to Live and be forced to reboot my console three, four, five or even six times.

Thankfully, every so often a demo will come around that will be of such quality that it's worth suffering through all the technical hijinks. We had one last week in the form of Stranglehold. Yesterday, the Xbox faithful were treated to the grand release of Bioshock!

Electrify the jump for my demo impressions...

The Bioshock demo, quite simply, impressed the hell out of me. Not since Gears of War has a game's presentation been so polished and appropriately "next-gen". The guys at Irrational Games have done wonders with the Unreal technology and created a spooky, organic and gorgeous world for players to explore. The visuals are not only incredibly polished but are helped along with some of the best art direction I have ever seen on the Xbox. See, the game is set in 1960, in the city of Rapture, an underwater utopia that has gone to shit. The art deco style influence is huge in the environments. Bioshock even shares the campy cartoon iconography used in the Fallout games.

The sound design is also a treat for the ears. There seems to be layers upon layers of ambient noises. Specific sound effects for weapons, voices and water are crisp and rich. All the aural qualities come together so well, it made me forget that I was playing the demo with a standard def TV armed with internal stereo speakers.

With such outstanding production values, the mood of the game really hits home. Playing the demo feels very much like walking through a bad dream you just can't wake up from. Although not billed as a horror game, Bioshock is very dark and deals with some mature themes. Granted, this is one nightmare where can lay the beats on your foes with a combination of gunplay and genetic (read: magical) powers, called plasmids.

More than a pretty face, the gameplay in Bioshock is quite impressive. The button layout is elegant and the controls are responsive. There is a certain weight and inertia to your character's movement, so the scale is tipped towards a slower, more realistic pace. The nod to realism, however, pretty much ends there. At its heart, this is a game about action and exploration. Health kits and life-restoring snacks abound, along with handy resurrection shrines known as Vita Chambers. Meet an untimely demise and you will find yourself respawned at the nearest chamber so you can continue your quest. Interestingly, this does not work quite like a checkpoint. Any progress you have made prior to your death will be maintained after you regenerate. With this method, the developers clearly want to encourage people to finish the game and not punish players too harshly for failure. At the same time, I can see how it can make the game too easy. Every battle, regardless of difficulty, just becomes a battle of attrition when you can just come back after every death and chip away at the enemies.

The demo takes you through the opening sequence of the full game and it lasts for quite some time (I played through it in about 30 minutes). You're on a plane flying over the ocean when it crashes. Surfacing from the wreckage, you're surrounded by flaming water and the tail of the airplane slowly sinking below the water. Finding a beacon in the darkness, you swim towards it to find stairs leading up to an imposing steel door. This of course, is the entranceway to Rapture. From here you're treated to a fairly hands-off sequence of opening doors and slow elevator rides. Once again, the game is unbelievably beautiful to look at and I was immediately swept up in the atmosphere.

You're soon contacted via radio by a helpful survivor located elsewhere in the city. This man guides you along the first few sections of Rapture before tasking you with the mission of finding his wife and child. There is a fair bit of combat along the way. First, the wrench is introduced for you to engage in some melee. Then you are given a plasmid, electro shock, to use in conjunction with the wrench. Pretty soon, the game hands you a revolver, the fireball plasmid and finally the tommy gun. The enemy AI is very aggressive but I wasn't able to see how sophisticated it was. Much has been made of the AI intelligence in that enemies will react to you actions in a convincing manner. Say you set someone on fire, they will go running for water to douse the flames. This is all well and good, but it doesn't seem all that revolutionary and you seem to encounter enemies in these set scenarios where it all could just as easily be scripted behaviour.

Aside from fighting, the demo also gives you a chance to hack gun turrets and security cameras. This involves playing an odd mini-game involving connecting pipe pieces to reroute the "flow" of the circuit. It's an OK concept. After a couple botched attempts I finally figured out how the game works. I hate to say it, but Irrational could have copped one of the myriad hacking mini-games from Splinter Cell: Double Agent, and that would have worked better.

In the end, the hacking mini-game does little to detract from the wholly awesome experience of the demo. After watching so many videos and trailers for Bioshock I was ready to see for myself what the fuss was all about. Based on my half-hour with the demo, I can safely state that this is the real deal. It's a toss up now between buying this game or Stranglehold. Most likely, I will need to get both and my wallet will cry itself to sleep.

Read The Full Story...

Left 4 Dead & Quake Wars Videos

Sometimes I just feel the urge to review something or share my impressions about an upcoming game. Not because I have actually played a game or received special insider access. I simply get tweaked by a new trailer or gameplay video in such a way that my preconceived notions may have been turned around.

Last week I came across two such videos via the fabulous GameTrailers.com site. Here we have two relatively high-profile shooter releases, Id's Enemy Territory: Quake Wars and Turtle Rock Studios' Left 4 Dead. Both games were featured prominently at the recent QuakeCon, Id's celebration of all things Quake. Attendees were treated not only to brand new trailers, they were also able to get hands-on time with the team-based zombie shooter, Left 4 Dead.

Hit the jump for more details...

I devoured all of the videos taken of the Left 4 Dead demo at QuakeCon as well as the latest vids for Quake Wars. Up till now, I've been a lot more excited about the former than the latter, but after viewing the videos, my opinions have traded place for both games.

First up, Left 4 Dead. The video captured at the convention is not the clearest, but it's obvious that the game is shaping up visually and from a gameplay standpoint. While not amazing, the graphics are up to current standards and features dozens upon dozens of uniquely modeled zombies along with the usual explosions and atmospheric lighting. As a huge fan of zombies, this game is still looking to be the closest approximation of experiencing an interactive zombie movie. After watching the first few videos, however, I still couldn't help but feel a little underwhelmed by the gameplay.

The Turtle Rock developers have stressed on the official Left 4 Dead website that teamwork is an essential aspect of the game. Unfortunately, these videos didn't really showcase much necessity for teamwork aside from sticking together and healing teammates when they were knocked down to the ground by the rampaging, undead hordes. Maybe the people playing the game in the videos were not the greatest players. I most certainly witnessed some questionable tactics as players would wander off on their own or run headlong into a roomful of zombies, gun blazing. Still, when it looked like everyone on the team was trying to work together, my general sense of each level was just total chaos. The zombie hordes are spawned randomly and they are endless and they all run extremely fast. The player characters also move very quickly, which sort of put me off. I always imagined the speed of the players to be slower, in order to foster more team tactics and heighten the menace of the faster-moving zombies. As it appears in the video, everyone moves fast and that causes the game to look more like a twitch-based deathmatch shooter. It's what I like to call the FPS Shuffle... and it just doesn't seem to jive with what the game is trying to accomplish.

I am still looking forward to the game's release in early 2008. Here's hoping my concerns turn out to trial and the developers make Left 4 Dead the high benchmark of all horror team shooters.

I got quite a different set of impressions from Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. Here's a game that I really cared very little for up until I watched these new videos on GameTrailers. To me, the Quake franchise had grown stale. Quake 4 was a massive disappointment for me and Id appeared to be running dry on new ideas, especially in their attempt to blend the Quake universe with massive team-based multiplayer combat seen in other successful franchises like the Battlefield series. Wow, so now you can pick soldier classes and pilot vehicles! Hardly innovative stuff here.

Well, these new videos opened my eyes a bit more to the potential this game has. While the graphics are still solid (albeit unimaginative), the refinements it is bringing to the standard objective-based team battles are something I am very curious about. Imagine spawning into the battle as an engineer class soldier and receiving a series of objectives for you to complete. Completing these missions not only helps your team in the overall battle, it also nets you an impressive point score at the end of the round. No longer will you jump into a game, a battle raging all around you, and have no sense of where to go or what to do. There's no need to hunt for the frontlines or figure out what objectives need to be secured. The game gives you the necessary direction and have the choice of pursuing these mission or striking off on your own.

I absolutely LOVE this idea, as it now makes playing support classes very rewarding. Everyone has a role on the battlefield and the game will reward players who fulfill their specific combat roles whether you're a heavy gunner holding down the frontlines or a medic keeping your team alive.

Read The Full Story...

Tis the Season for... Delays

The Xbox gaming world has been shocked and awed lately by a number of high-profile game delays. The first shot was fired by Ubisoft when they announced that Splinter Cell: Conviction would be pushed back to Q1 of next year. That actually made a lot of sense as the game had previously been scheduled to release just a week apart from Ubisoft's own Assassin's Creed. The two games practically share identical game technology and play styles and it made little sense for Ubi to cannabilize profits between two of their big-name IPs. (Personally, as much of a Splinter Cell fan I am, Conviction would be have crushed by Creed and the avalanche of other A-list titles in November).

The biggest disappointment so far has been the delay of Grand Theft Auto 4 until Q2 of 2008. The official word is that Rockstar needs those extra months to polish off the gameplay elements and I grudgingly accept this excuse. The absence of GTA4 this year leaves a gaping void in October and has my bank account breathing a little easier. No doubt the cavalcade of competing products are also letting out a collective sigh of relief now that the 800-pound gorilla has stepped aside to allow them that much more space to shine in the retail spotlight.

There were more delays announced, like the one for Blacksite: Area 51 to November and Unreal Tournament 3 to early next year. These came and went more as blips on my radar as opposed to massive disappointments. Curiously, Blacksite's delay means that it dodges the Halo 3 bullet in September. But November? I'm sorry Midway: if I only have $70 to spend that month, it is going towards a purchase of Mass Effect.

I get this sneaking suspicion that we haven't seen the last of the delay announcements. This fall and winter is still looking to be the most exciting and crowded month in terms of fantastic game releases. All we need are 2 or 3 more delays into 2008 and the ensuing 2007 games onslaught should be no problem to handle at all.

Please Bioware, just finish Mass Effect on time!

Read The Full Story...

Stranglehold Demo is Generous in Dishing out the Sweetness

Another day, another demo. But oh, what a demo it was! Actually, I've been giving the shaft to demos recently and have quite a few titles backlogged. Stuntman, Eternal Sonata and Blue Dragon are just some of the notable demos I've failed to play in the last several weeks. I'd normally blame it on a case of gamer fatigue, yet I've been playing plenty of Arcade titles and my soul still burns for that Elite rank in Rainbow Six: Vegas.

No, I've just been biding my time to play a demo to a game that I'm actually looking forward to. To that end, I dedicated over two hours to downloading the 1.2GB demo for John Woo presents Stranglehold (or simply Stranglehold as I'll refer to it from hereon in). Sluggish as the download was, the wait paid off in dividends with a very exciting and generous demo sampling.

Tequila Bomb the jump for my demo impressions...

The setup in the Stranglehold demo is simple. You step into the role of Detective Tequila as portrayed by iconic John Woo leading man, Chow Yun-Fat. There are some dirty crooks up to no good and you're sent in by your captain to investigate a kidnapped police officer. The demo takes place in a series of cramped Chinatown streets and alleyways. Once arriving on the scene, Tequila is immediately set upon by wave after wave of armed thugs.

In a bizarre mish-mash of synergy, homage and irony, Stranglehold plays a lot like the Max Payne series of PC games, which in turn were highly influenced by the classic Hong Kong gun epics directed by John Woo, who again serves as the primary source of inspiration for Stranglehold. The resulting gameplay is at once fresh and slightly derivative. This new game differs from Max Payne in the many progressive refinements made to the control scheme and I think these changes really enhance the fun and heighten the cinematic feel that the developers were clearly aiming for.

Our old friend Bullet Time is back, this time renamed to Tequila Time and can be triggered manually with the right shoulder button or when performing any number of context-sensitive stunts. Your interaction with the environment is probably the most noticeable enhancement you'll notice over previous 3rd-person action titles. Aside from his slick dives, Tequila automatically slides over low objects like counter tops and crates, so you always get a sense of continuous motion. Certain objects in your environment may flash as you approach. This is a cue for you to pull on the left trigger, which will activate Tequila into an elaborate stunt move, ranging from sliding down stairway railings or taking a ride on a wheeled cart.

All dives and stunts send the game into Tequila Time (slow-motion) so long as enemies are in the vicinity. This is a handy feature, as you're often surrounded by baddies and you need all the aiming assist you can get. Killing enemies as you perform stunts also rewards you with stars, which help to boost up your Tequila Bomb meter. Filling up your meter unlocks a variety of special moves, such as self-healing and precision aiming, plus two other moves I was not able to unlock in the course of the demo.

If all this isn't enough to keep you busy, you also have the option of taking cover and shooting around corners. But this is no Rainbow Six. Stranglehold is definitely not about being subtle, so you'll more likely find yourself diving through fruit stands, pistols blazing, than hunkering down behind every corner and taking carefully aimed potshots at your foes.

I had a lot of fun with the demo and was surprised at how long it lasted. It feels like an entire chapter ripped straight out of the final version. If I had to gripe about something it's that the game still suffers from the usual pitfalls associated with 3rd-person shooters. The guns, even the shotgun, feel dinky. There's a certain visceral sensation found in FPSs that can never quite be duplicated in the 3rd-person view. Stranglehold makes up for this with copious amounts of destructible objects and environmental damage. Taking cover behind a concrete pillar and watching it get shredded through by gunfire is a genuine rush. The precision aiming feature (another borrowed, but refined idea from Max Payne) is also a real kick to use as you watch in slow-motion as your bullet finds its target. Once shot, your victim reacts with chilling realism, clutching whatever part was hit and accompanied by some very convincing sound effects.

There's also the matter of aiming controls. Even when jacked up to maximum sensitivity, getting Tequila to swing around on the X-axis is a little slower than it needs to be and makes for some annoying situation when you're trying to fire at someone on your tail.

Even with these expected annoyances, the Stranglehold puts on a thrilling, pyrotechnic show and has enticed me into putting the game back onto my "probably buy" list next to Bioshock. Prior to exiting, you're treated to a lengthy gameplay montage that seemingly showcases every setpiece battle sequence in the final game, as well as some juicy footage of multiplayer deathmatch play. There are no multiplayer options in the demo but here's hoping they get another demo out specifically for that type of play before the final version hits store shelves later this month.

Read The Full Story...

Xbox Live Arcade on Life Support

Xbox Live Arcade is in a slump at the moment. Since the release of Carcassone in late June, it's been a parade of mundane retro revivals and a distinctly appalling reimagining of a classic PC franchise. In case you don't know what I mean, Wing Commander Arena was release last week as proof that you could take a tried-and-true formula (piloting and blasting space ships) and throw it straight into the toilet.

This atrocity was paired, in typical XBLA fashion with a weak retro release, Super Contra. These two-fer releases on XBLA aren't a bad idea at all if they can put out quality product instead of the same uninspired shovelware.

As for this week's games, I really wanted to like Marathon: Durandal. I'm aware of all the rose-tinted love for the original game released on the Mac way back in the DOOM era. Playing the trial, I got the sense that it does stand toe-to-toe with -- and in some way even exceeds -- the classic id Software shooter. The game features dual-wielding weapons (a first in shooters) and full camera look along X and Y axis, features that were done much later in games like Rise of the Triad and Quake.

Unfortunately, playing the trial for Marathon made me realize just how poorly FPSs age. More so than in other genres, shooters rely on compelling, high quality graphics to up the immersion factor. The cutout, faux 3D graphics of Marathon didn't draw me in at all. Sadly, the game really just serves more as a history lesson, providing a perspective on just how far graphics technology as come as well as giving us a peek at Bungie's earlier projects before the grand behemoth that has become the Halo series.

I have yet to try out the Spyglass Board Games trial, but all accounts point towards it being pretty lame. I am hoping the quality of Arcade game picks up over the next few weeks. Unless they are given the proper attention due to them, I could care less if no more retro titles ever see the light of day on XBLA. Give us some innovative games developed by independents. Give us more addictive puzzle games. Give us more addictive board game translations.

Please, just make some of these games worth their value in overpriced Microsoft Points!

Read The Full Story...