Tag Archive for 'xbox'

Review: Castle Crashers

Published on September 2, 2008 in Games. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

I had been spending the past few weeks playing a bit of Call of Duty 4 online, trying to figure out what game I’d be hitting up next. While lazily browsing a few gaming blogs last Wednesday, I came across some news which restructured my entire weekend. It had turned out that on the 27th, a little game known as “Castle Crashers” was released by The Behemoth. I heard about this game a year or so back, and was very excited at the prospect of a fresh beat-em-up to come to the picture, especially with the same art style of their first game, Alien Hominid. With the release being so far away, I must have tried to forget about it a bit to quash my anticipation.

Needless to say, I rushed to download the game, and convince some of my friends to do likewise. When I was younger and arcades were still common, beat-em-ups (Fists of Rage, Final Fight) were incredibly common. One franchised beat-em-up, The Simpson’s arcade game had received the majority of my spending money. With The Behemoth behind this project, and the promise of four player online co-op, I was nothing less than giddy.

Overview

From Wikipedia

The game is a side-scrolling beat-em-up in which up to 4 players can play, online or locally. Playing as one of the available knights or an unlockable character, players must defeat enemies to progress using attacks and magic. As enemies are defeated, the characters level up, giving access to new combos and abilities, and players can improve attributes such as attack, magic, defense and agility.

Overall Reaction

Great art, great music, a creative story progression, a pretty good combo system, and a ton of replayability make this game well worth its purchase. I have personally beaten the game probably about six times or more, either by myself or with friends. Despite the large amount of playtime, I have failed to truly get bored of the game. After you’ve beaten the game, you can revisit levels to find 60+ hidden or acquirable weapons. To aid you in your quests, you can currently collect up to 26 “pets” whom either alter your character’s stats, or they preform actions of their own (attack the enemies, find/point out hidden items, or bring you food). After your character’s leveled up and can fly through the regular game without a sweat, you could try your hand at Insane Mode, where your enemies are much harder to put down. And either before or after you’ve collected all the weapons and pets, you can unlock up to 23 characters by beating the game with different characters, or unlocking characters by beating the single player arenas.

What makes this game truly shine however, is the multiplayer co-op. When you add the ability to throw friends in the mix (both online or locally), one play through to the next is a different, yet enjoyable experience. Surprisingly, even playing online co-op is just as responsive as playing locally. If anything, I can count the momentary slowdowns I’ve experienced on one hand.

Lastly, some of the community members at the GameFaq and NeoGAF forums have impressed me with the determination to find every unlockable item within the game. From pets, to weapons, to characters, it’s been a 24-hour manhunt for almost a week now, trying to figure out what sequence it takes to unlock some characters and weapons that have surfaced in some testing/press images that were released. The Behemoth is obviously having a good time with the community of hunters, as they gave no outright explanations to begging fans at the past PAX 2008, only to leave the mobs of unlockable-hungry (myself included) players searching in the dark for the few holy grails left in the game. It would seem that the game has quite a bit of room for some DLC to come into play to potentially unlock these characters, I would hope that The Behemoth plays to the stingy and reveals free means to obtaining the unlockables.

What I’d Change

Abracadab…
Magic in this game seems to be very one-dimensional. While it does seem to have some sort of effect against the type of enemy you’re fighting, there doesn’t seem to be some sort of teaming-up aspect between the skills when playing co-op. Other than the attacks themselves, it feels like magic could be easily  expanded on as an improvement to the game. I remember in The Simpson’s beat-em-up, players could combine to form one unit, with one player attacking and the other controlling movement. You could combine something like fire and ice, the ice magic would freeze the opponents feet while the fire burned his head, or make fire more potent when someone was poisoned. Either way, I wish there was more depth to the differences and cooperation of magic that would make choosing a varied amount of characters important to gameplay, rather than just feeling like the majority of magic was merely a sprite switch.

No Sea Legs
Sadly, the entire “water” bit of the game, where you fight ninjas aboard a ship lasts only for only two waves of enemies. With a few long desert levels following, why was so much cut (or not added) to the ship level? That level had my  favorite music throughout the entire game, and it ended sooner than it started. You could have characters jumping from ship to ship, fighting off  waves of ninjas, avoiding cannon balls, and the like. It’s not like we’re worried about repetition here, the entire game is comprised of beating up several enemies, moving on, and beating up several more enemies. Lastly, I agree that ninjas are awesome, but why didn’t we get pirates too? I’d love to play through the game hobbling on a peg-leg and slashing my enemies with a hook or sword.

One road diverged in a yellow wood..
To get all the known characters at this point, one would have to play the game through twelve times. While I may find myself doing that eventually, the game could offer some sense of multiple passages that offer different means to reach the boss at the end of the level, either a way requires more magic, or stamina, or just provides a different experience to the player, it could ease up on the monotony of wanting the play through the game several times, without the ability of being able to do a play through with your  eyes closed.

QA Issues
While my issues with QA as of late will be saved for a post on its own, it seems that some of the bigger known bugs in the game may have been able to be caught with either better managed QA, or simply a larger team, or more time in testing before release. There are multiple instances of glitches and bugs in the game that others have found. One that my friend and I found while playing (that hasn’t been posted on YouTube yet), is when you are in the desert, and go inside to where you can see one pet (I think it’s ScratchPaw) hiding behind a screened window. If you walk up the stairs on the left side, and jump quite a bit, you end up glitching into the ceiling and are walking outside of the building. We were able to fall down into where ScratchPaw was (before we found a bomb would have gotten us back there), and then we found ourselves stuck in the level, not being able to progress to the next room. On top of these in game glitches, it seems the game has had a myriad of online play and saving issues when 3-4 players get together to play online. Coupled with matchmaking problems over Xbox Live, we can only hope that any next iteration is throughly stress tested before it’s next release. Thankfully, for the current players of CC, we should be seeing an update/fix to our online/saving woes soon.

End Scene
I’ve almost memorized the names of all the people involved and thanked in this game. Can we please skip the ending scene after we’ve seen it five times already?

Episodic Content/DLC
While this isn’t something I would necessarily change in the game, I would go and say that a few things could be added that would continue to keep me coming back for more. I think this game could easily continue bringing in money if more levels were added, and new content/abilities were tossed in the mix to keep things fresh. I wouldn’t mind paying for things to add to gameplay, but I don’t know how excited I would be if The Behemoth simply just threw new weapons and characters up for purchase. I’m not too fond of the Bad Company approach, and I hope it doesn’t become a habit.

If you own an Xbox 360, you need to pickup this game.

I’ll be spending the next few posts going over some more XBLA/PSN downloadable games.

Review: Halo 3

Published on May 30, 2008 in Games. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Halo 3The past week and change I’ve been glued to my TV with the new 360, enjoying myself both on and offline. I have been able to beat Halo 3 on Legendary with Kevin and a few of his friends over Live. After doing that, I went through the levels again to collect all the Gold and Silver skulls. I think I need a slight break from the game before I go back and get the rest of the achievements, but I’ve been playing quite a bit on Xbox Live to get a feel for the online multiplayer (and to get back into some online FPS gameplay). After a little bit of thought, I’m going to try to standardize these reviews as I go.

Overview

Halo 3 is the third in its incredibly popular series by Bungie which arguably laid the foundation for bringing the FPS to the console. You assume the role as Master Chief, as what would seem the last surviving “Spartan”. You play through a short story in which you need to fight the “Covenant” as you progress through the game, attempting to silence the Minister of Truth (a crazed prophet looking to end humanity as we know it). As the game progresses, you find a new enemy, the “Flood”, a zombie-like species in which a single spore could destroy an entire species through its infection.

From Wikipedia:

Halo 3′s story centers on the interstellar war between 26th century humanity, led by the United Nations Space Command, and a collection of alien races known as the Covenant. The player assumes the role of the Master Chief, a cybernetically enhanced supersoldier, as he wages war in defense of humanity, assisted by human Marines as well as allied alien Elites led by the Arbiter

Overall Reaction (Possible Spoilers Below)

I cannot find much reason to go against the grain of the millions of players of this game, and badmouth it too much. Halo 3 is an incredibly fun game to play, as it is one of the few games available on the 360 that allow for you engage yourself with friends in any content the game provides, such as the campaign, multiplayer, and even the “Forge” where maps can be created and played. Halo itself has a comfortable control scheme, a great vehicle system, great multiplayer, and sits atop Microsoft’s flagship online service. With some decent content updates (a free map pack and one you can buy) the game itself stood out for months as the top played game, only to take a comfortable second seat to Call of Duty 4 since the first few weeks of January 2007.

The “Halo Experience”, being able to include friends both in your living room and miles away is one of my favorite parts of the game. If you don’t feel like taking on some online foes, you can just beat through the campaign on the level of your choice with your friends, which provides a really nice change in pace at times. I’m looking forward to playing more games that take this initiative of bringing in friends in a cooperative experience over outright competition. (I just bought Gears of War and am looking forward to Castle Crashers and giddily anticipating LittleBigPlanet) This sort of co-op experience just adds a nice sheen to the game, and keeps things like campaign even fresh. Normally I will play through a game once and never play it again, if only to show a friend a really cool area of the game. For the many problems I’ve had with Halo 3′s campaign, I’ve played through the last level over five times, and the entire campaign almost twice at this point, and it wouldn’t bother me to pick it up again if a friend asked.

Campaign

Halo 3′s campaign was a large disappointment for me. Before I continue, I should point out that this was the first game I’ve played in the entire series, and time and time again I felt that Bungie was punishing me for committing such a vile act. Up until recently, I did not own an Xbox, and when my college roommates were playing, we would always be in multiplayer beating the crap out of each other. I didn’t know any of the backstory, the setting, the time (other than the not-so-distant future), the characters, or any of the drive behind the characters.

From the people who I have talked to, they have told me that the campaign was pleasing, if not a good addition to the series. As a newcomer, the story seems to be lacking in both depth and complexity, and doesn’t allow you time to really understand why you’re doing what you’re doing, other than humanity is at stake, and you need to kill a ton of baddies along the way.

I took the time to watch the cutscenes throughout the entire game, sometimes even going back to watch them a few times to see if I missed some dialogue. Sure, I could have gone and looked up the entire story and character profiles online on the Halopedia, but games in it of themselves should be self-contained, and for a far-fetching game like the Halo series, Bungie should have taken the time to bring up to speed players on the story that has gotten the protagonist up to this point, to ease in newcomers, and refresh the minds of veterans to the series. Off the top of my head, there are a few questions that I still have about the whole story, such as: Why did Master Chief go to kill Arbiter in the first cutscene, Why is Arbiter allied with him, when they’re fighting against the Covenant (supposedly the race that the Elites belong to?), Where the hell do the two of them come from to find themselves in the woods in the first level? Why did Master Chief “jump” or do to get there? Who is the Minister of Truth and where did he come from, wasn’t he part of the Covenant too? Where the hell do these Halo rings come from, and who built them? I understand they’re weapons, but there’s no description on why they were created, who “owns” them, etc.

There’s more questions I have, but the majority of these problems really stem from having no explanations and no story attached to the game. It took me awhile to realize that Cortana’s overlay was actually a “good” character who was in trouble, and the attempt at using these overlays between Cortana and the Flood to give more a story background without having to throw in a cutscene was somewhat gimmicky and didn’t help the game that much, and originally just confused me.

While I found it entertaining, the endless barrage of simply beating down enemies, be they Flood or Covenant got a tad bit repetitive at times. It seemed that the only difference in the gameplay when you weren’t mowing down the same enemies with a different arsenal, you were clicking a button, or meleeing a weak point in a ship to bring down the entire thing seemed somewhat lacking for me. To it’s own credit though, I just finished playing SOTC, and any sort of boss battle is going to be disappointing for the next few months anyway.

Despite this, I find being able to play through the campaign with your friends can add a depth to playing the game that I haven’t been able to find in many recent games. The same level can be different, every time you play it with the way you and your friends approach playing it. I’m sure there will eventually be some sort of monotony to it at a given point, but I’ve yet to reach that state of boredom when approaching the campaign, and have enjoyed it every time, even with the slight pitfalls.

Online/Multiplayer Experience

The multiplayer experience in Halo 3 has always been a blast for me, as my roommates were the ones that introduced me to this game back in sophomore year when Halo 2 was very popular. Still in my PC FPS “dark age”, it took me some time to warm up to the whole idea of playing with a controller, but the whole experience of multiplayer in the living room really grew to me. Even now, being able to play Team Deathmatch with friends both in live and at my house is one of my favorite features, and currently is my game of choice to play on Xbox Live because of the availability to team up with friends and play. Especially in the same room – this is probably the biggest downfall of Call of Duty 4 that I will bitch and moan about.

Weaknesses (What I’d Change)

Backstory and Depth/Complexity. The game itself didn’t lend to newbies to the series, and tended to leave me in the dust as to understand what was going on. Since the just finishing 1984 again, one quote that Winston writes in his dairy comes to mind: “I understand the HOW, but I do not understand the WHY”. This could have been fixed by a voiceover, a Star Wars-ish textual introduction, or even a quick cutscene.

Repetition. I mowed down baddies for six to eight hours. Granted, thats what I would expect from the series, but I don’t think it would be past the developers to add a bit more of an addition to the game, to make it a bit more engaging to the users. Taking down the shield by simply pressing a button after clearing a room of enemies does not seem very rewarding. Why not a puzzle that I need to solve, maybe one that changes with the amount of players in the game – and requires more interaction and teamwork in order to accomplish as the game goes on? I’m not saying to turn the thing into an Action RPG/FPS, or create mind-numbing fetchquests to increase gameplay hours, but a little more innovation and ingenuity in progressing throughout the story could make the experience that much more rewarding to the user.

Lack of Physics Use. While it’s not a prescribed way to beat the Scarabs, I had a fun time either landing a Hornet right on top and destroying the behemoth, but even more I enjoyed driving a Warthog or Mongoose off of a ramp or a cliff to board it as well. Only on the final level do we see some intense driving with jumps for no other reason to create suspense and allow for some really cool in-game explosions and whatnot, but I think that there could have been a definite increase on how the game’s physics were used to add to the entire gameplay, and even the competition aspect of it. Hopefully they pick up where they left off and add some more for Halo 4.

More Innovative Weapons. Other than the incredibly awesome Energy Sword, Gravity Hammer, and maybe the Needler, the rest of the arsenal of the weapons in Halo 3 are pretty much iterations of Machine and SMGs. The “cooldown” idea for the covenant guns are interesting, but are pretty much the same with varying ranges of effect. What happened to some of Unreal’s awesome gun ideas they had? I loved the idea of the Shock Rifle, the Bio Gun, the Teleporter, among some. Adding too many of these guns would outright change the style of the gameplay Halo has, but I think a little artistic freedom can be taken since the game is put a few hundred years into the future.

Grenades (Online). The incendiary grenades don’t find themselves into the game much at all, let alone their lack of availability online, and now we’ve got two types of sticky grenades. You can only have so many grenades, but this could be improved and added a bit more in online play to switch things up. (The equipment was a good move in this direction, I really enjoy the changes those add to gameplay both online and in campaign)

Maps and Voting (Online). While someone made a good point that by reducing the control they player has on the gametype and maps, Bungie can ensure that there is somewhat of an even distribution of maps and gametypes being played for all players, but I think more control should be given to the players when looking for games. I think the playlists that separate could be divided up even further, allowing a more specific look into what is being offered, and I think voting should allow players to vote on both a level and a gametype. Or gametypes should be their own playlist. I know I would happily play a few hours straight on a shotty-snipers/team snipers binge from time to time, and I’m sure others would as well. Give more control to your players for what they want to play, and just let people know how active those are when looking through the playlists. While Bungie has the statistics on the gameplay already, it makes it more overt to see what gamers are preferring in your game.

Experience/Rankings (Online). I haven’t looked this up online, but that’s my point – I shouldn’t have to. I’ll be playing with some friends or random people I’ve partied up with, and over the course of winning a few games, a teammate will gain 1 – 3 levels, where I may stay at the same level, or only be promoted once. While the game gives you some idea when you’ll get your next promotion as in “title”, it doesn’t give you any sort of insight as to what it takes you to move to the next numerical ranking you’re assigned in “Ranked” play.

In closing, if you own an Xbox 360 and enjoy the FPS genre, Halo is a must-own for your console. Next week I’ll hopefully have gotten through COD4, although playing through Veteran the first time through is proving to be a bit difficult. :)

Cheap (or Free) Xbox 360 Wireless Adapter

Published on May 16, 2008 in Hacks. 1 Comment Tags: , .

Having just bought my Xbox 360 for doing some XNA development (and a little Halo3/COD4 on the side…), I wanted to get it online as soon as possible. However, with my current setup and the setup I’ll be having in my apartment in July, I can’t really promise myself that I’m going to have the ability to lay down some cat5 to keep the thing online. In fact, I’d prefer that I didn’t have to.

So with a bit of research, I was able to find out how to stick it to Microsoft, and avoid using their overpriced $100 wireless adapter for the Xbox 360.

It’s pretty simple, all you need is an extra wireless router or wireless access point lying around. If you don’t have one lying around, you can get a cheap Linksys WRT54G at Newegg for $40. In my case, I had a spare Netgear WG602(v3) that no one was using.

Be sure to reset the router to factory settings so that you can access it through the default web setup with the given username/password combination associated with the router. Once you’ve done this, upgrading your router’s firmware might be the only thing you need to do. Grab the most recent firmware from the manufacturer’s website and upload the firmware while connected to the router (don’t do it over wireless – the risk of bricking the router is much higher).

Once this is done, look through your settings for a AP Client or Wireless Client option in the router’s settings. Hook the router up with all the proper information so it could connect to the wireless just as it was a new computer going on the network. (Note: You’ll need to add the router to the ‘allow’ list if you’re doing MAC Address filtering – I wasted about 30 minutes until I figured why my router wasn’t connecting.) Once you’ve done that, I would suggest giving the router/AP a static IP on the network, in case you ever need to access the web control panel in the future.

After this is setup, simply unplug the router from your computer, and set it aside your Xbox 360, plugging the Xbox into one of the main LAN ports on the router. After it boots up, your Xbox should connect to Live without any issues. :)

If you weren’t lucky enough to have a router that supports the Client mode out of its firmware, consider installing DDWRT or OpenWRT – two open source solutions to turning your router into a powerful router with much more features than a standard consumer router could offer. You can find a tutorial on how to do Client Mode with DDWRT and OpenWRT.

Or you could shell out the $100.