Tag Archives: Xbox 360

Best of 2013, Games, GOTY, PC games, PlayStation, Xbox

Best of 2013 #6: BioShock Infinite

26/12/2013 Olly Leave a comment

I take it as an indication of the quality of 2013’s games that BioShock Infinite, a game that seemed a shoo-in for copious awards come this point in the year, now looks likely to be frequently overlooked. I’m kind of the same now that the lustre has worn off and the rough edges – prosaic shooting, an occasionally annoying AI companion, bullet sponge enemies, that boss – have become evident.

But the original BioShock did very little… original, gameplay-wise. That achieved its plaudits through its setting and story, and while Infinite’s Columbia doesn’t grab me as firmly as the glorious Rapture and its rug pulls can’t touch BioShock’s, I played through the whole thing in two sittings because it kept me enthralled, keen to see what it would do next. The pre-release hype hinted at parallel universes and time travel, but it still surprised me in how quickly and to what extent it ran with those themes.

Just imagine the praise that would be heaped on its shenanigans had it been a Christopher Nolan film, say. Gaming as a mature storytelling medium? Never in doubt.

Games, Nintendo, PlayStation, Xbox

E3 2013 Conference Review

11/06/2013 Olly Leave a comment

Because you can’t have an E3 conference review without Nintendo, I’m putting today’s Nintendo Direct up against Sony and Microsoft’s conferences. I don’t see it as a disadvantage since a load of games shorn (mostly) of awkward executive banter can only be a good thing.

Without further ado, in the order in which they were shown…

Microsoft

The Xbox One had the most to prove after the disastrous reveal and preemptive clarification of the awful DRM policies, and while this showing won’t make that shadow go away, Microsoft did allay some fears. Not all, but some. Presentationally, Microsoft needs someone with charisma, who you could imagine successfully selling a used car; J Allard and Peter Moore are sorely missed when you’re forced to watch the automatons up there now.

But apart from that, Microsoft’s comfortably topped the other two for games, which is the important thing at these shows. New games from Swery and the Panzer Dragoon chap bring credibility; Insomniac is a nice coup, albeit not up there with Bungie in my book; Quantum Break, which looks like a serious Ghost Trick, intrigues; and, of course, there’s a new Halo, which gets bonus points for referencing Journey; Battlefield 4 looks like matching its superb predecessor; Metal Gear Solid V looked amazing, albeit multiplatform. Those are just the ones that tickled me; there were plenty more.

It’s just sad that Microsoft had to end on a sour note by saddling the hardware with a £429 price tag. That’s £4 more than I balked at paying for a PS3 back in 2007 – and I won’t be paying it for an Xbox One either. So once it has the DRM patched out, a substantially smaller second model released, and gets a couple of price drops, I’m right on board.

B-

Sony

Sony’s a weird one, as it was the conference that left me with the most positive impression, but one that doesn’t last when you really look at what was shown. Its success was down to the messaging, the flawless capitalisation on Microsoft’s missteps. Does the fact that it’s maintained the status quo by not setting out to control what we can do with our games really deserve to be the factor that ‘wins’ E3? I think it shows how low our expectations have become if it does.

(I must say, however, that I haven’t seen a crowd reaction in a press conference like the one to the announcement of no used game DRM. I hope Microsoft was watching.)

Final Fantasy XV and Kingdom Hearts III are nice, but Square Enix has forfeited the presumption of quality. We need a couple of releases of PS1/PS2 Squaresoft calibre before I’ll be buying its games regardless of reviews. And as I said, Bungie is a coup and Destiny looks great.

But where was Naughty Dog? Where were all those other great first-party studios? Where was The Last Guardian? Where was anything for the Vita? See what I mean about some notable omissions? I felt like I saw more games at the PS4 reveal back in February, and I pretty much did see as many Vita games.

A solid showing, then, but mainly on the PR front. Thankfully for Sony, that message was good enough to secure my day one preorder.

C+

Nintendo

In shunning the E3 dog and pony show – an approach that has served the company well at the Tokyo Game Show for years now – Nintendo may have set out to lower expections, and I can see why. Mario Kart, Mario, Pokémon, Smash Bros, Donkey Kong Country, The Wind Waker. Notice a pattern? As much as I love Nintendo’s characters, the line-up is depressingly conservative, lacking even the creativity of the GameCube days, where Nintendo published interesting takes on new or forgotten franchises rather than wearing out ideas within a couple of years of their debut.

Nintendo is seemingly a shadow of its former self. Wii U is a sales disaster, third-party support is non-existent, and unlike equivocal successes like the N64 where Nintendo could be counted on to provide classics to make the purchase worthwhile, that’s not happening here. I can see why Nintendo didn’t want to shine the spotlight on this line-up, because it’s worryingly thin.

I’m excited about Bayonetta 2, though, so that’s something.

Best of 2012, Games, GOTY, PC games, Xbox

Best of 2012 #1: The Witcher 2

31/12/2012 Olly Leave a comment

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Cheating? Nah. Although The Witcher 2 debuted in 2011, this year marked its first console appearance in its Enhanced Edition form. The 360 wasn’t the definitive way to experience it, but this side of a mortgage to pay for the PC to run it in its full glory it was still mightily impressive.

Even in its cut-down form, this game blew me away. I’ve been a fan of the books since the first one was translated into English and missed the first game after the console release was canned, and it surpassed my wildest expectations for both its depth and the faithfulness of the adaptation. I also wrote about how impressed I was at its ability to satisfy the whole role-playing side of a role-playing game by not railroading the player, and I stand by that. Most games are content to be embarrassingly cack-handed in their depictions of morality, and this somehow managed to feel nuanced while portraying an established character.

It’s doing things that BioWare struggled to do in Mass Effect with colossal budgets and the support of EA behind it. And all from a little Polish studio working with a licence that was little-known in the anglophone world before the first game set tongues waggling. With this and the underrated Metro series, Eastern Europe is seemingly becoming a hotbed of technically stunning, ambitious and innovative literary adaptations, and long may it continue.

A gaming PC is one of my planned purchases for the first half of 2013, and seeing The Witcher 2 in all its glory – GPUs are only now able to run it with ubersampling on at a stable frame rate, and it’s a sight to behold – with areas that aren’t divided to fit into 256MB of RAM will be one of the first things I do. I so rarely go back to games I’ve finished that those intentions should absolutely be taken as a comment on this game’s quality. Watch Cyberpunk 2077 like a hawk, because I’m expecting great things.

Best of 2012, Games, GOTY, Xbox

Best of 2012 #2: Halo 4

30/12/2012 Olly Leave a comment

Halo 4 There’s no way Halo 4 should have been as brilliant as it is. Reopening a series that closed quite nicely, farmed out to a brand new studio for the fifth instalment in seven years. Just goes to show that throwing immense amounts of money at a project and setting technical geniuses on performing miracles with ageing hardware can do big things for what could have ended up being a fairly safe sequel.

I was frankly blown away by how good this game was. Putting aside how ridiculous it looks, it was an outstanding debut for 343 Industries, clearly showing where every penny of those huge production values went. Credit, too, for the story, which I, as a huge fan of the series’ wider fiction – I’ve read ten novels so far – found fascinating. Jen Taylor made it thanks to some touching moments as Cortana, managing to add pathos to a tale about the relationship between a super soldier and a computer. Quite an achievement.

And the multiplayer is arguably the best the series has seen since Halo 2. I just with the BTB players would pick something other than Ragnarok.

Honestly, Halo 5 is probably the number one reason why I’ll be buying the next Xbox. 343 undoubtedly built this engine with the upcoming generation in mind, and if this is a hint at what we have to look forward to, I can’t wait.

Best of 2012, Games, GOTY, PC games, PlayStation, Xbox

Best of 2012 #4: XCOM: Enemy Unknown

28/12/2012 Olly Leave a comment

XCOM: Enemy Unknown Hard to believe that a year ago we didn’t even know this game existed. On this day in 2011 the only XCOM revival on the agenda was the FPS version, which I think looks fairly interesting but has become a whipping boy for this generation’s ill-advised attempts to reboot cult PC classics for the Call of Duty generation.

This was pure fan service, though. Seriously, if you’d asked hardcore XCOM fans – is there any other kind? – what they’d like from a modern take on the franchise, I can’t imagine the result being far from what Firaxis delivered.

Praise must be lavished for how it achieved this while making a game that’s still enjoyable and eminently accessible for newbies like me. I dabbled with the original UFO when I first got Boxer installed – that app deserves some kind of award for making DOSBox usable to humans – and found it absolutely impenetrable and, while I have no doubt that there’s a superb game in there, I suspect it’s something you had to be there in 1994 to really appreciate.

By designing it to modern standards, introducing mechanics gradually so that the player’s skills grow with experience, this Enemy Unknown is accessible without massively dumbing down the core strategy or toning down the unforgiving difficulty. It should go down as an example to both gamers and developers – to the former as proof that the buzzword ‘accessibility’ isn’t necessarily the kiss of death for challenging gameplay that it admittedly often is, and to the latter as a blueprint for how to do it.

It didn’t do COD numbers, but it looks as if 2K had realistic expectations and is happy with the commercial performance. That bodes well.

Best of 2012, Games, GOTY, Xbox

Best of 2012 #5: Trials Evolution

27/12/2012 Olly Leave a comment

Trials Evolution This hasn’t been a banner year for Xbox Live Arcade, and indeed by many accounts it’s been PSN that’s had the most interesting releases. Trust a sequel to one of Live Arcade’s brightest gems to keep up appearances on Microsoft’s platform, and it’s an example of how a sequel should be done.

How so? Well, it’s the original, only better in every way. There wasn’t a huge amount of variety the first time around, whereas this one took in warehouses, countryside, towns, and the now-compulsory levels based on other indie darlings. Despite simple appearances, it’s technically very impressive too.

That Gigatrack stage took me an embarrassing 22 minutes the first time through, incidentally. It became a priority to post a more respectable time, but it’s quite a time commitment even when you do well.

Trials is endearing mainly because of its purity. It’s basically one trigger and a stick, but the way it harnesses its physics and makes use of the full range of motion on the analogue inputs – I’d argue that I haven’t been as aware of the fine-grained control to this extent since Super Mario 64 – makes it both accessible and frighteningly deep. One of the masterstrokes is how it shows the progress of friends overlayed on your game, which, unless you socialise with the savants who post ridiculous times on YouTube constantly drives you forward. This is an approach to high scores that I first noticed in the superlative Geometry Wars 2 and still hope for it to become the standard.

It was a shame how thin on the ground great XBLA games seemed this year; I hope the relative dearth of innovation is a mark of development switching to new platforms rather than, as part of me suspects, a sign that the interesting indie developers have moved to other platforms in the last couple of years. But if this does prove to be a last hurrah for the service, it’s a fine way to go out.