A Night at the Arcade: Aegis Wing

I think we can all agree that yesterday was a magical day of gaming goodness. The Halo 3 multiplayer beta was eventually made available to all registered testers, even for us lowly Crackdown owners. In addition, XBLA got the smackdown with two simultaneous releases. To top it all off, I succumbed to my insatiable curiosity (and a tempting $20 price tag) and picked up the original Xbox version of Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent.

Phew! Can you say "hectic"? But this post will not be my lukewarm review of The Beta nor will it be my impassioned tirade about publishing wildly dissimilar games under the same name and earmarking the crappier version for the 360. No, this little post is all about that free little gem, Aegis Wing.

My review to please your eyes after the jump...

So you've probably heard about the rags-to-riches story about the plucky trio of interns who approached the enigmatic and mighty J Allard about their dream of making... a 2-D side scroller?? Well, yes, Aegis Wing is the fruit of this inspirational project and although there may not be many riches involved (it's a free download), you can be certain these interns should not be worrying about wearing rags with this game as their portfolio piece.

The game play and presentation of Aegis Wing will be instantly familiar to anyone who has lived through the 8- and 16-bit era of video gaming. You pilot an agile aircraft through many hostile, techno-centric levels, blasting all manner of techno-organic creatures until the pulse-pounding denouement with a much larger, techno-organic Boss critter. There is a very masculine undercurrent to the early levels of the game, as I find myself pursued by red and blue oval pods with squiggly, sperm-like tails wiggly away. Some enemies try to collide with you, which results in an instant death. Many more simply spray you with unending waves of orange pellets that, on contact, deplete your force shields.

It's all very simplistic and retro. Fans of classics like Gradius and my personal favourite, Lifeforce, will be hit with fond memories, as well as finding the need to quickly dust off their twitch reflexes. I played through several levels by myself on Normal difficulty and found it to be a bit of a snooze. Even on Insane, the enemy bullets are quite easy to avoid and the repetitive avant-garde techno soundtrack does get drummed into your noggin sooner than you might like it to.

My second pass through doing co-op was a better experience. In an interesting wrinkle to the old formula, players can combine their ships together by getting close and pressing the "X" button. Whoever initiates the attachment becomes a multi-directional turret, while the attachee assumes navigational duties and retains their pee shooter primary weapon. As more players combine together, the slower the super ship gets, but in contrast, the larger your firepower. I never got a chance to form up 4 players together to try this, but I hear it's pretty sweet. This dynamic does place more emphasis on teamwork, as players consider when to combine or separate, as well as how to share and distribute power ups. In my co-op session last night, everyone was too damn independent to become just a turret on someone else's boat. To our credit, we still worked well together and played nice with the power up grabbing.

After all is said and done, I have to question myself as I am apt to do: Why is there a review for this game? It's free and the hard drive footprint is less than 50MB. What possible reason do you have for not trying it out for yourself?

Oh right. You're too busy playing Halo 3. (wink wink)

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Manhunt: Old Controversy is New Again

Someone is about to get pwned

When you have close friends who are also gamers, they tend to feed your addiction in a variety of ways. They may introduce you to games you might never have considered, join you in rousing deathmatch or co-op or, as in my case, recognize you inner sicko and buy you Manhunt for Xbox.

Thanks, man: you are the best friend a neurotic, shut-in gamer could ever ask for.

I spent a day pondering whether to even mention this game on the blog. It's old, it's "last-gen" and the controversial nature of the content is a moot point, as I like steer clear of mixing politics and morality with games. But last Saturday, after a marathon co-op session of Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, I popped in the Manhunt disc expecting nothing more than a one-trick pony. Gore, violence and Rockstar-style stealth gameplay... whatever. Been there and done that. Being that as it may, this "been there, done that" experience had me glued to the screen these past few nights.

My ever insightful, long-winded analysis after the jump...

So yes, this is that "other stealth game" I hinted at in my last post. Before I pitch in my obligatory opinions regarding the violence in Manhunt, I just wanted to talk about the game itself. It's a great stealth game. The stealth label is probably a little too narrow since it incorporates elements of movie thrillers and survival horror games, too. Far from being a standard gaming experience, it's probably one of the most unique titles released in the last few years, on any platform.

The pacing is excellent and the difficulty, while high, ramps up gradually and in tune with my own skills. The interface is a wonder of simplicity and ease of use. And the atmosphere... oh the atmosphere. This game is intense, thanks to top-shelf audio production and the dark, barren art direction.

Ok, ok... we still have this elephant in the room that I've refused to address up until now. I'm going to skip the explanation of what this game is about; I assume everyone reading this has an inkling. You play a murderous convict. You are placed in a deadly realty TV-styled snuff film against your will. There are other murderous individuals standing in your way. Go murder them. The game is Violent and Bloody and Brutal, none of which is dampened by the grainy, last-gen graphics. In fact, the grainy videotape effect only enhances the snuff film verité of the proceedings. There simply is no side-stepping the mature nature of Manhunt: it is unflinching in its portrayal of murder and violence. Go look up "Manhunt video game" on YouTube if you have any doubts about this claim.

And that, my friends, is really all that needs to be said. The game is rated M by the ESRB, which prevents its sale to anyone under 17 years of age. The graphic nature of the game is no more reprehensible than what I'd find in a typical R-rated slasher flick, which underage children are supposed to be barred from experiencing as well. (Interesting side note: the creepy "Director" character in the game is voiced, superbly, by veteran actor Brian Cox. Cox played Dr. Hannibal Lektor in a 1986 prequel of sorts to The Silence of the Lambs called, Manhunter. Coinky-dink?)

I stumbled upon a well-written, albeit misguided, review of the game while searching Google. As eloquent as he is, the author has fallen into the sensationalist trap as so many other folks in the media. He doesn't even imply that he thinks Manhunt is a murder simulator, he just flat out states it. His most egregious overstatement, however, is claiming that the game is easy.

Um, I don't know how he plays, but I find Manhunt very challenging. I also find that it scares the shit out of me, in a good way. It's impossible to play this game in a reclined, laid back position. I'm always pitched forward in my seat, eyes wide and muscles tensed. When it's on, it's on. I am in the game. And that's a lot more than can be said for flashier stealth titles like Double Agent (you know I had to stick in that final jab there).

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A Night at the Arcade: Worms HD

This is one fun game, made even better with multiplayer support locally and over Live. It's also got a deceptively steep learning curve thanks in no small part to the control scheme. Maybe I've been playing too many shooters on my Xbox, but moving the fire weapon command from the right trigger to the A button took some getting used to. Having the X button bound to the jump command was also tricky. Paired with the somewhat delicate jumping mechanism in Worms and I experienced many a frustrating game during the last week.

How many times have I blown my worm into oblivion because I fired a bazooka rocket instead of jumping or over-zealously tapped the X button and back flipped off the edge of a cliff? Truthfully, not that often, but enough to get me started with the cussing at the TV.

Once I got my X's and A's straight, it's been more of that learning curve as I struggle with aiming those grenade tosses and bazooka attacks. Right now I'd be lucky to hit the broadside of a barn if I'm beyond medium range and lack a straight line of sight. So much for the cute graphics and voice SFX; this game is hard to master, or even attain a modicum of competency in. I'm just trying to hone my chops in Quick Match and the Challenge campaign so I can enjoy a game over Live one of these days.

Well, I can't say the variety in this game has kept me glued to it for very long. I can understand the gripes people have been having about how Team 17 could have taken advantage of the new 150mb Live Arcade size limit. There aren't many game modes, maps, backgrounds and sound effects to keep things lively and interesting. Worms HD is a fantastic party game. Getting a sheep bomb from a friend stings less than getting pwned by the "Beginner" worm opponents.

But I protest too much. It's a fun enough diversion and I've been dividing my time between it and Soul Calibur 2. There's nothing quite like a one-on-one fighting game to reawaken the button mashing reflexes finger dexterity.

Plus Ivy is one sexy bitch.

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Crackdown: Cracked

I didn't intend to finish Crackdown this weekend but I did. Offing Wang was too alluring a temptation for me, even after 2 full (and late) nights of happy orb-hunted, punctuated by the occasional gang boss assassination.

If you have yet to kill Wang, let me give you a little heads-up on what to expect. Don't worry, this isn't a spoiler: Wang's a friggin' push-over. I suppose I let myself believe unreliable accounts of message forum dwellers and a few reviewers who hinted at Wang's awesome powers. Hell, even the Agency Director got my hopes up. Dark arts you say? Oooo, maybe he can teleport or fly or shoot laser beams out of his eyes! The dearth of solid information made me think Wang would provide a different, substantial challenge compared to his underlings or the criminals of the Volk and Los Muertos. Alas, as I rocketed, grenaded and roundhouse-kicked his flaming carcass off the ledge of the zen garden pagoda, I realized an epic battle this was not.

Was it still satisfying? I would answer an unqualified "yes". As a final gesture of triumph, I hurled Wang's corpse off the top of the Shai-Gen Tower. My co-op partner was already halfway over to the Final Crime waypoint and I giddily asked him to see if he could spot my Wang shot-put from halfway across the island. "Have a taste of your skyscraper, Wang!" was my main motivation for tossing him in the first place.

Getting to Wang was the difficult part and that applied to almost all of the other gang generals. It's their entourage that gave me the most headaches, combined with the enclosed areas these bosses would hole themselves into.

Now I'm left to pick up the pieces of left by the obliterated gang factions. Nothing left to do now except hunt down the remaining 50 Agility Orbs and 150 Hidden Orbs, complete more Achievements and max out my Agent skills. Oh well, that's at least another 5-6 hours of play right there on top of the 2o or so hours I spent up to this point. That's value.

A proper review for this game seems like a foregone conclusion right now. Crackdown has been out for 2 weeks and there really isn't a lot to be said for it that hasn't been said already. Allow me to sum things up with a handful of quoteables, if I may...

Crackdown is one big mess of a game. It's also a sandbox masterpiece and is the sandbox game to beat from this point forward. Games like GTA 4 are going to bring things down to earth - no more rooftop races, homing missiles and superhuman strength - and boy, is it going to take some getting used to! And when I say the game's a mess, I mean to say it's buggy, quirky and has it's fair share of maddening design flaws. I mean, kudos to the first 360 game that brought me so perilously close to stomping my $60 controller into the ground so many different times. And yet, I love the game and wouldn't rate it anything less than an 8.5 out of 10.

If Gears of War was the last, best reason of 2006 to buy an Xbox 360, Crackdown is your best reason in 2007 to finally become a believer. It's a virtual "fond gaming memories" generator and it stands as the purest execution of real sandbox experience in any action game.

Hyberbole and adulation aside, Crackdown is simply shitloads of fun. If you reeeaaally have to have your arm twisted, then come for the Halo 3 beta, but stay for the Crack.

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Crackdown Review Round-Up

Enough advance reviews of Crackdown have rolled in by now for Metacritic to publish their summary of review scores. This works great for me, as I can finally cut down on the Crackdown posts and move on with my life. ;)

The sole new Xbox 360 release has posted up some impressive numbers, garnering a 90 or 91 from many reviewers and a surprising 70 from OXM.

Now I love scores and ratings as much as the next guy but I can't stress enough the importance of actually reading what the critics have to say. Many reviewers for the major sites and magazines are excellent writers and can articulate their thoughts about a game to the finest detail. Sometimes, they are just fun to read. The 1UP review in particular, while a bit hyberbolic, was written with some unadulterated fanboy zest -- like he couldn't wait to hammer out a review so he could return to playing the game -- that you can't help but get some entertainment out of it.

Naturally the forums have been buzzing this week as each new review hits the Interweb. Crack-fans are sulking a bit at some of the less stellar reviews while err... Anti-Cracks are nodding their heads, with some suggesting that the critics weren't harsh enough on what they believe to be a shallow, repetitive sandbox platformer. This is, of course, all a little bit silly. I say again: just read the reviews.

Even a "low" score of 7.8 from Gamespot is backed up by a very positive review. Jeff Gerstmann's complaints pretty much echo those of other reviewers, even the ones that have given Crackdown top marks. In the end, it's just a number, peeps. It's just a number.

Pre-order stands, big surprise. I would have needed to see some dismal, basement-busting scores to have even considered cancelling my precious pre-order at EB.

Check out the review scores for Crackdown

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Mad Crackdown Linkage Today

The anticipation is mounting.

8 more days until Crackdown drops down upon our Boxes. The Team Xbox forums are a'buzzin' today about the new IGN review, which scored the game a respectable 8.0. The actual review itself is quite detailed but would have you believe that the score would come out lower to reflect some of their complaints:

- Game can be finished in about 6 hours (on Easy difficulty)
- Low replay value
- Poor sound production and music
- Lack of story and side missions

The folks at Planet Xbox 360 recorded a special roundtable discussion on Crackdown for this week's podcast. The general consensus pretty much mirrors the sentiments expressed in the IGN review. Jump on that action here.

Edit: I just got back from le gym and lo, another Crackdown review! This one is from the fellers at Team Xbox. Check it

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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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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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