A Night at the Arcade: Mad Tracks

I find myself once again brimming with articles to write and doing my regular XBLA feature has never seemed like such a chore. It hasn't helped that this week's Arcade release is Mad Tracks.

Massage the jump link for my impressions of this arcade diversion...

Mad Tracks is a cute kiddy racer based on toy cars, not unlike the Matchbox and Hot Wheels kind that you remember from your hazy, half-forgotten childhood. Fittingly, the control mechanics and car physics are very basic and developer Load Inc. has implemented various game modes and features that elevate the game beyond a simple race to a finish line.

I wasn't incredibly impressed with what I saw in the trial version of Mad Tracks and I think that has more to do with the bare-bones trial itself than the spirit behind the game. There wasn't enough in the trial to really hook me into paying 800 MS points. It's fun to drive these toy cars around the inclusion of weapons harkens back to the venerable Mario Kart games on the SNES and N64. Unfortunately, there was only 1 type of weapon available on the 1 available racetrack in the trial version. This is the homing missile, a kick-ass weapon to have in this kind of racer, until you've raced a lap and realize every weapon pick-up is a homing missile. Perhaps this was an idiosyncrasy specific to the trial or that particular racetrack.

Ah, but the pre-exit sales pitch does promise "12 funky pick ups and power ups" in the full version of the game. That's great, Load Inc.. Might I suggest you make a few more of those available in your trial product in order to, you know, entice me into buying the game? The all-homing-missile racetrack became empty and tiresome after the 2nd lap. To be fair, the game does have bright, attractive graphics going for it and a great sense of fun. Oh, and what humour. If you read their sales blurb closely, you'll even learn that another benefit to buying the game is the "satisfaction of getting a genuine cool game".

I kid you not. Fire up the trial and see for yourself. As for determining whether Mad Tracks is that genuine cool game that I've been waiting for all my life, the jury is still out because the trial doesn't compel me to give a damn.

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Blacksite: Area 51 Demo Impressions

This demo made a visitation to the Marketplace pretty much out of nowhere. I was hunkering down in front of the Box yesterday for a session of Rainbow Six when my friend IM'd me to download the Crackdown updates and Blacksite: Area 51 demo. Demo what? Oh snap.

Blacksite is the next-gen installment in a line of alien shooter games developed by Midway. The series began as a light gun arcade box, which I have some fond memories of playing as a university student back in the late '90s. In the early '00s, the game transformed into an under-appreciated PC and console FPS. The franchise has done well enough to warrant the latest incarnation of Blacksite, which is still a ways off from release (September 2007) but if the demo is anything to go by, should be yet another hot game to watch for.

Full demo review after the jump.


The Blacksite demo is a relatively short download at 580 or so megabytes. Unfortunately, that also makes for a very short demo experience. Do not expect a lavish, meaty sales pitch like in the recent C&C 3 demo. You are introduced to the most rudimentary aspects of the game play (not to say the game play has a lot of depth anyway) and taken through two brief skirmishes against some bad-ass looking aliens. Expect the usual climax teaser where shit suddenly hits the fan (in this case, a gigantic alien bug-thing) and the game fades out to the "Coming Soon, Buy It!" closing credits.

The preview videos of Blacksite had me daydreaming about the possibility of meshing the run-and-gun mayhem of your typical sci-fi shooter with the more tactical undertones of a game like Rainbow Six: Vegas. Make no mistake, Blacksite's game play is grounded in a more realistic approach in comparison to previous entries in the series. You play the leader of a 3-man squad, staffed by the usual muscle-bound marines. There are no special powers to speak of, only your fast reflexes and steady aim to rely on.

The tactical options for commanding your troops seemed a bit limited in the demo. Aside from assigning waypoints and ordering them to breach a door (wonderful breaching effects, btw), my AI teammates were very autonomous but competent as well. The final game promises a wider range of commands that can be issued, such as planting C4 charges but I have a feeling these actions will be reserved for pre-designated hot spots. I also don't imagine it being necessary to execute room clearing tactics in the final game. The alien menace will just pop up and we shoot them. The demo blurbs also tout a dynamic AI system that will take into account your team morale. Again, the demo was too brisk and cursory to get a feel if that had any effect on the game play. I did notice that my squad would tell me to hurry up if I milled around an area for too long, but that was the extent of it.

Aside from those minor points, the demo was remarkably solid. The control over my character and the feel of combat feels very good. Midway's Core technology, integrated with the ubiquitous Unreal 3 and Havok physics engines provide more than enough horsepower to render all the thrilling action. There's a great atmosphere to the game: in the dark of night, pouring rain and near-deserted American towns in the middle of nowhere. The alien enemies themselves are nicely designed and remind me of CGI rejects from Men in Black, only with a much nastier edge. Near the demo's conclusion, my squad was set upon by a pack of these squid-like spider creatures that looked like came straight out of a movie. Their animations and sound effects just came together perfectly and it was a great sign of even more impressive surprises to come in the final version of Blacksite.

Sadly, the demo was over all too soon but Midway's mission was accomplished: I was left with wanting more. As promising as it looks, I really hope Midway pushes to get this thing released prior to September. There are just so many heavy-hitters coming out for the 360 this fall and winter, a rather "generic" title like Blacksite is really going to have a rough go of it.

Personally, I will be keeping this one top of mind come autumn. It could my affinity for sci-fi shooters or more likely, my obsession with full co-op play, which the final game is slated to support.

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ANatA: Catan Trial on Trial

Woke up bright and early this morning and what did I do? Did I have a healthy breakfast? No. Did I get dressed for a productive day? Nope. Did I anxiously check Xbox Live Marketplace to see if the working demo of Catan was available for consumption? Oh yeah, baby.

As I was saying in yesterday's post, I've never been big on Settlers of Catan or board games in general for that matter. Gone are the days when I would come home from school, friends in tow, and sit around the fireplace for rousing game of Talisman. Board games are slower placed, require interested friends and don't have HDR lighting and sweet volumetric smoke effects. So given this set-up, it should come as no surprise when I say I had a lot of fun with the trial version of Catan.

My juicy game-playing details are, as always, found after the jump!


This is a good game. Sure, sure... I'm playing a board game on my Xbox so I'm only paying lip service to board games, but hear me out. The trial has not only given me a hankering to purchase the full game, it has made me much more receptive to playing it "bricks n'mortars" style with actual people sharing the same physical location with me, holding up physical cards to our fat, physical faces. This game is one of those instant classics: easy to learn, with impressive depth of play to master and just enough old-fashioned, dice-rolling luck thrown in to keep players on their toes.

If you haven't tried it already, I do recommend you give the trial version a spin. The tutorial mode is extremely helpful and the overall translation of the board game is quite elegant, with brightly attractive graphics and a no-brainer control layout. You do get a couple added touches that you wouldn't get sitting around a table with friends, namely one-touch access to useful match statistics. Knowing the type and amount of resources currently in play is a not a luxury included in the board game, however since all players have access to it, there is no real game imbalance there.

If I could level one gripe at the Catan trial, it's that they cap your progress in a match at 7 Victory Points, which is a total bummer. I was laying down those roads and settlements like nobody's business! Perhaps I will purchase the full game. I find it very soothing and refreshingly bereft of murder and decapitations. Even so, would I have the mind space and time in my Xbox life to dedicate to this slower paced affair? Fellow blogger, Jigsaw, made a salient point about the game's length. With any single match lasting at least 30 minutes (usually longer), would I be playing this a lot or only when there's a serious 360 release drought? Hey, that drought is sorta like right now!

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Command and Conquer My Box

Uh-oh, I think we have a problem here. I just finished the 2-mission demo of Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars (C&C3) and it's pretty damn fun. This is coming from a guy who swore off RTS games after Warcraft 3. This is the same guy who cannot memorize a simple build order to save his life or execute any strategy beyond rushing every available unit to his death on the other side of the map. But this demo surprised me with its gorgeous looks and impressive controls, causing me to reconsider my prejudice against real-time base building/tank rushing games. More after the jump...

I'll admit that the presentation of C&C3 really won me over. The production values are sky-high. EA did not skimp on the visuals budget, from the intricate detail of individual units, the dazzling weapon effects and destructible environments to the glorious FMV cutscenes featuring your favourite B-list and has-been/never-been Hollywood stars. My only complain with the handful of cut scenes in the demo is that Grace Park looks like she has a mono-brow in some scenes. And no, Billy Dee Williams was nowhere to be found but I'm sure he will be deliciously cheesy in the final game.

I was also very impressed with the control scheme in the demo. C&C3 is my first exposure to RTS's on the consoles and I'm almost sold on the platform's ability to excel in this genre of gaming. The panning controls are lightning quick, almost on the verge of being too touchy, but I can see why they chose to ramp up the sensitivity of the left thumbstick. The camera zoom and rotation are equally fluid. Selecting and targeting units is awkward, made a little easier with the cursor's "snapping to" effect, but still a far cry from using a mouse. While selecting all units or a single unit is easy enough, it's still incredibly difficult to "click & drag" select with any degree of accuracy. Given the extremely fast pace of this game, every second counts.

That brings me to the command bar, which is at once convenient and cumbersome to use. The right trigger, combined with the D-pad, opens up a centralized menu that allows you to build structures, set groups, use powers and create production cues. It's handy enough, until you start getting half a dozen notifications at one time and are stumbling through the various menus on the command bar to find what you're looking for. From what I could tell, the bumper buttons serve no function, which is a complete waste, as I can think of many uses for them. How about a way to cycle through the most recent build notifications or alerts? How about a way to bind a shortcut that allows you to build more of those stupid silos with a single press of a button? Managing saved groups of units is also a pain and could be streamlined further.

I could go on. The controls can stand for some refinement but I'm amazed at how intuitive it is right now. I can see myself being able to execute a general strategy in broad strokes. As for micromanaging groups of units, well... it would take me a lot of practice before the control scheme becomes second nature.

The demo itself is pretty beefy, featuring an excellent tutorial, two sample missions and a couple FMV cut scenes to round things out. Play over Live is available but I haven't tried it out yet. The first mission is extremely hand-holdy. I was actually taking too long to destroy the enemy base and the game mercifully opened access to the Ion Cannon. Selecting it in the command bar produces a gigantic crosshair which I centered over the enemy HQ and fired. It obliterated everything. Hmmm, perhaps this is a late-game weapon, you think?

Overall, I'm impressed by the demo. Reviews for the PC version of C&C3 indicate that the single-player campaigns will collectively take a couple dozen hours to complete, which is a breath of fresh air in this era of ridiculously short single-player games. This game wasn't on my radar before, but now I'm afraid I have yet another AAA title to keep my eyes on.

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GRAW 2 Demo Impressions: Short But Sweet

I was waiting on Heero the other night so we could join forces in tackling R6: Vegas' Calypso Casino in co-op story mode. That is one tough nut to crack with a 2-man crew! (I miss those single-player save points) So I had some time to kill before we fired up the game, so I thought what better use of my Xbox time than to test drive the GRAW 2 demo?

Whatever you may have heard about this demo is true. I played through this thing and it feels like it was cribbed from the tutorial segment from the full game. I couldn't have played it for more than 15 minutes before it very abruptly ended. They used a typical cliffhanger gimmick, right in the thick of battle. I won't lie; it left me wanting more... in more ways than you might think.

Allow me to explain: this is the same damn game as GRAW 1. I say this with much certainty, even based on my experience off a 15-minute demo-slash-tutorial. If you haven't yet figured it out from the teaser videos and screenshots, the Ghost Recon brand hasn't gone through a giant leap forward, play or technology-wise. You are still Scott Mitchell and you are still a badass elite light infantry unit with amazing technology at his fingertips. The setting from all appearances is familiar; it is again another Latin American dustbowl. Against this backdrop you are again blowing away all manner of tangos belonging to yet another terrorist or rebel militia faction. It all smacks of incremental upgrades and quick cash-in -- a GRAW 1.5 if you will.

And I still wanted to play more. Fancy that.

Two features really stood out while the whining critic in me was actively dismissing the demo. The first were the production values -- they were as impressive as ever. Everything looked crisper, from the environmental effects and Mitchell's new combat fatigues, to the gut-wrenchingly luscious explosions. Extra care had been lavished on the soundtrack. Whereas in the original GRAW it was a rather sporadic presence, the GRAW 2 demo featured a rousing score full of urgency and foreboding.

The second standout were the controls. Mitchell felt at once more solid and more sure-footed as I maneuvered him around. Every action, from attaching and unattaching from cover, to firing your weapon, has been considerably "tightened up". Sticking to cover, which sometimes felt unreliable in GRAW 1, felt very definitive and responsive in the demo.

There was also some icing on the cake, in the form of slightly smarter teammates, a "mule" mobile ammo supply vehicle and the enhanced UAV 3 Cypher. The UAV is a controllable airborne drone that you can send ahead to scan for hidden tangos before planning your approach. The demo allowed much more control this time around, allowing me to hold down the right bumper to get a full-screen view of what the UAV was seeing. Even better, I could use the thumb sticks to maneuver the drone with even more precision and get a more detailed view of the battlefield at the same time.

So this demo, by virtue of continuing to deliver its gorgeous presentation and hard-hitting action, has me very interested in playing the final, full game. I wouldn't call it a must-buy at this point, simply because the demo showed little else but the flash and bang, with no multiplayer samplings and really no real innovation beyond the core gamplay established by GRAW 1. I checked into Xbox 360 Fanboy today and was disheartened by their Game Trailers multiplayer video

That's right kids: a lengthy video extolling the awesomeness that will be the GRAW 2 multiplayer modes and not one single mention of a cover system. Chances are very good history will repeat itself. GRAW 2 may very well have full-featured gameplay in single-player and lose the cover system in multi. Why that is, well that is beyond me. At least the graphical quality looks to be intact. The GRAW 1 multi, with it's stripped down graphics and twitch-gameplay bias was a novelty act for me: worth a few plays but nothing to keep me around.

Somebody out there please educate me. Rainbow Six: Vegas and Gears of War have proven that you can have uniform play mechanics work for both single and multiplayer experiences. What would be Red Storm Entertainment's excuse for nixing the cover system in GRAW for the second time in a row?

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GRAW 2 Demo

For the uninitiated, that's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2. The supposedly ultra-brief demo of the sequel to last year's Tom Clancy tactical shooter hit the Marketplace yesterday morning. I set up the active download for the demo last night just before diving back into the original GRAW solo campaign.

Just an aside: I'm having trouble with GRAW. It's not that the game has a steep ramp up in difficulty as you progress through the missions, it's that the difficulty grading is so wildly inconsistent. I'm currently stuck in the Shantytown stage where I'm trying to escort a VIP out of a parking garage that's under heavy assault. The early part of that mission was a cakewalk, the difficulty barely elevated above tutorial-level. Escaping the garage, however, has been incredibly frustrating: my teammates are elite bullet catchers and nothing more and I'm provided almost no cover as I try to make a break for it outside.

Earlier missions had their share of tough spots too, mainly due to the fact I wasn't immediately aware of the controls I had over heavy armour support or I simply wasn't accustomed to the control scheme. As soon as I started getting the hang of things, BAM, they throw Mission 5 (Mayday! Mayday!) in your face. That's the night mission that sees you assaulting a castle from a chopper turret before infiltrating the castle alone. The mission was long and grueling, with spread out checkpoints and only a single area to re-arm and recover health. This damn mission nearly put me off GRAW entirely; I must have played it an upwards of 20 times before I finally licked it.

Frustrated again by Shantytown, I was tempted to fire up the GRAW2 demo but my eyes were jacked and done for the night. I'm fairly skeptical about the final game as it appears to be a quick cash-in sequel: same engine, mildly improved graphics and mildly improved play mechanics. Early demo reviews harp on the fact that other than being way too short (5-10 minutes total), it's more of the same, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. At the best of times, the GRAW gameplay is absolutely riveting.

I'll be back soon for demo impressions.

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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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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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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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