I was watching some video clips on my Xbox 360 when I noticed some startling facts about the upcoming Halo games. For a start off, there will be no new multilayer game on Halo ODST. In stead you will essentially have a cut down version of Halo 3 on a separate disk – the multilayer aspect only with a couple of extra maps.
What about Halo Reach I hear you ask. In Halo ODST there will be a menu option that wil be inactive until the game comes out – basically Microsoft (The people that own Bungie) want you to buy ODST first.
These aren’t the only signs that the Halo franchise is becoming greedy. I tried to play a game of team slayer on Halo 3 with a friend the other day only to find out that he couldn’t join without purchasing some new maps. All of the ranked matches except Lone Wolves were locked out for him. That is pathetic.
You have probably heard about Microsoft’s latest feature that was announced at this years E3 Expo, but if you haven’t then your in for a surprise. Apparently soon we are all going to be using our Xbox’s without any controllers, frantically making crazy body gestures that interact with the game play. Sound familiar? Yes it’s clear to say that Microsoft is following a similar route to Nintendo and is trying to make an experience that will appeal to the whole family.
You can hardly blame them. Nintendo showed that with clever hardware and a lot of expensive advertising you can get whole family to buy into games consoles. People that once scoffed as such activities are right now jumping about on Wii boards and punching invisible opponents. A friend of mine that works in a game store told me of a lady in her 80’s that brought back a Wii fit game claiming it didn’t work, she was surprised to hear that you needed to buy a game system with it! This whole thing reminds me of computer giant Apple. In the late 90’s I thought I was “different” owning a mac. Hardly anyone knew what it was or had even seen one let alone uses OS7! Now everyone has an iMac, iPod and iPhone. Apple is the latest cultural icon that people just have to buy into. The only way to be different now is to not own one!
It will be interesting to see how Project Natal will develop, I just hope it’s not just a Pr stunt and that it will become a reality.
I love Fight Night Round 3 and I play it often. It’s a great game that you can pick up for next to nothing. It’s one of those games that you invest a lot of physical and emotional energy into and get a great feeling when things are going your way. You also feel the pain when you are losing!
I downloaded the demo of FNR4 hoping for great things, but sadly I feel disappointed. The game seems too fast, less controlled and more of a button masher. It could be that you only get to try out one of two lightweight fighters. Maybe the heavyweights are better, all I know is it just didn’t feel quite as good. I’ll keep you updated.
Well I received my game on the 20th as promised by Sendit.com. I excitedly opened the case and put it into my xbox. I spent the next 5 hours playing on the various game modes, trying out all my old moves. What can I say about this version of Street Fighter? It’s great! Probably one of the best versions I have played. Graphically of course it is the most pleasing to look at. The characters have a slightly stranger style than I was expecting. They all look very muscular, but some of them just seem a bit odd to me. An example of this is Chun Li. Maybe it’s just me.
The gameplay is solid and similar to EX Plus Alpha from what I remember of it. I’m not too keen on the new characters that have been introduced. There’s a big fat man called Rufus who looks like a morbidly obese version of Bruce Lee. He’s quite funny, but I didn’t find him very playable, truth be told.
With Capcom’s failure to sort out the leaderboard bugs on the Xbox Live version of this game, I was keen to see how they handled the ranking system here. I was not disappointed. Statistics are recorded faithfully, although there are a few thinks that I think they have missed. Firstly, its impossible (as far as I can see) to work out if an opponent you are about to play is at your level or not. There are custom titles that you earn as you progress up the ranks that are intended to give some indication of skill, but all to often you start to play a self proclaimed beginner only to find out it was all a ruse and they are a Street Fighter mater of the higher order. Within 20 seconds you have lost your rank and are vaguely aware of your own shouting at the television screen. I guess its a good game that gets you so involved, it means the game is doing its job and affecting you. Still, it’s rather annoying. Secondly, scores between friends aren’t saved after you leave the session. This is a shame because it’s good to be able to compare your win percentage with people you play often. Other games like Dead or Alive 4 have this.
The online play is great fun. I have only had a few games that are laggy. You really get into the game and I would say it’s much more fun than arcade mode, which is also fun in it’s own way. One criticism of the the online play is the fact that lobbies can only contain 2 people. Even the XBLA version of Street Fighter which I have talked so much about in the past has mutiple players as well as an online tournament match. Still, I guess maybe this reduces the overall lag in the game which is a good thing.
All in all this is a great game. If you enjoy games such as Dead or Alive 4, Soul Calibre 4 and Virtual fighter 5 then you will not be disappointed with this. If you have never played any of the aforementioned games, but are a street Fighter fan and own an Xbox then you would be silly not to pick up a copy.
Already reordered my copy, can’t wait, just a few more days now. But I tell you one thing, I bet those guys at Capcom don’t fix the annoying glitches on the XBLA HDR version before then. It’s been over 3 weeks since they announced the patch, and still nothing has been released. I understand they may be busy building the new game, but maybe a good idea for future games is is to finish one before starting another one! Ok, I’m probably being naive here, but Jesus the leaderboard bug annoys the hell out of me! It makes the game incomplete, so give me a bloody refund you Zangief loving knob jockeys!
Gears of War has a great little feature whereby you can upload your screenshots taken from within the game. They get uploaded to the gears website, and you can login and download them. A lot of the quality seems to be lost when you have them on your PC, possibly due to compression, or maybe just most PCs run at a higher resolution than TVs. Anyway, does anyone have a killer screenshot they would like to share?
Man this is frustrating. The best thing about Street fighter 2 was always kicking the arse out of someone, and measuring yourself against your peers. Well it seems there’s a massive bug with the leaderboard system on the XBLA version of this game. In the last couple of weeks I’ve been playing a lot of ranked matched and I haven’t moved at all in the ranking system. The guy above me has a much worst record than I do (1 loss and 0 wins compared to my 64 wins and 52 losses) so this is pretty annoying. Aparently a guy who only played one game and lost it is better than me, even though I win the majority of games I play.
Mildly frustrating admitedly, but it does take away the point of having a leaderboard. When will they fix it? My guess is never as the bug is not well known. When I tell my friends about it they tell me I just havent played enough games, even though I try and explain the deatils.
This happened to me and I did loads of Google searching trying to find a solution. In the end, the answer was just silly. My sister lives in France, and I’m over here in the UK so when I heard that she got an Xbox 360 I was very happy as I rarely get a chance to speak to her. Xbox Live seems like a great free way to talk. The only problem was that I could talk to everyone else except her. I did loads of router configuring and port forwarding stuff in an attempt to get this sorted, but nothing seemed to work. Many conversations were done using a mutual XBL friend who would act as a relay. Obviously this wasn’t ideal.
One evening, one such friend asked my sister to check her settings to see if she had accidentally muted me. She said that she had already checked that. We asked her to check again, just to make sure. Guess what? Yes, that’s right, she had indeed muted me. So for the last 3 months I have been pulling my hair out trying to find a solution only to find out that it was a simple case of human error. I find the whole thing quite funny now. I would say to anyone suffering with this problem to make sure both parties check their mute settings, and also make sure that they have not given each other negative feedback.
There are some amazing games that often get overlooked by many people. Perhaps, many are playing too much poker online or are so engulfed with RPG games that they forget that there are other quality games out there. Looking at my friends list, I often notice that when a new game is released the majority of people rush out to buy it impulsively. What they forget is that there are a load of classics that are far superior. Here is my list in no particular order.
Dead or Alive 4.
My Score: 9.4
Comments: Great fighter with an amazing online system. One day I will get a An rank and keep it! I used to sit up until the earlier hours of the morning playing this classic Xbox 360 game.
Halo 3
My Score: 9.2
Comments: Well the odds are that you have this game already, but if you don’t then you should be asking yourself why it’s so popular. Ok, it’s a bit old now compared to say Gears of War 2, but it set the benchmark for online FPS games. Halo 3 is still popular so getting a copy for £15 is tricky, but not impossible.
Fight Night Round 3
My Score: 8.9
Comments: You can pick this game up for £10 in many shops. Its a great boxing game with fab graphics. You really feel like you are there in the ring.
Pro Evo Soccer 6 (AKA Winning Eleven in the US)
My Score 8.5
Comments: ok, now this is old, I know, and you could say the later version of the game are better. Me personally I love playing Fifa 09 right now, so why recommend this game? Because you can buy it for £5! it’s a great way of finding out if you like soccer games.
Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix (XBLA)
My Score 9.0
Comments: I love this game. I loved the original. It’s street fighter, online, what more needs to be said? I guess I could mention it costs 1200 points to buy which isn’t bad considering you can download it straight to your hard drive.
