Video Games: January 2006 Archives

Oh my god, this is the greatest video game song ever made. If you remember the movie "Arthur" and the hit Christopher Cross song "Arthur's Theme", well, this fellow Archie has improved on it. Instead of the lyric "If you get caught between the moon and New York City" you get "If you get caught between me and my Xbox 360". The song really summarizes the first two months of the insane 360 launch. Another great line is: "I killed Peter Moore and took his new Xbox 360." Download it now, droogies, it just topped Pac Man Fever. I feel like getting drunk and playing Geometry Wars. Nuff said.

Archie's Theme: The 360 Song.
XBox 360 Crooner (from XBox360Fanboy.com).

Technorati : XBox 360
Del.icio.us : XBox 360
Ice Rocket : XBox 360

The XBox 360 finally arrived at my house last night. Last week I wrote about the 360 tracker at Ben's Bargains that tells you which sites have it in stock. As soon as I started using that, I found the 360 online. I ordered the mega-bundle from Wal-Mart, which contains the premium XBox package, six games, and various accessories. The price totaled over $900 with tax and shipping. It's outrageous, but I read on a message board that you can return the games and accessories that you don't want to any Wal-Mart store. This is true--I've already returned a number of items from the bundle. You don't get the shipping cost back, but paying an extra $25 doesn't seem so bad compared to people paying $100-$500 more on EBay.

I almost believe in karma, or maybe that everything in life has to be balanced. On the day the XBox came, a few minor things broke in my bathroom. Then I made the mistake of upgrading my Windows XP Pro computer to Windows Media Center. Various things went wrong with that and I spent a lot of time trying to repair it. As a result, I played only a couple of hours of 360 games.

Quick impressions: Project Gotham Racing 3 is fabulous in every way. Perfect Dark Zero has a terrific opening screen, like a James Bond movie, but the game itself is a big letdown. Geometry Wars Retro Evolved is like crack cocaine and Lays potato chips, you can't play just one round. My mission is to crack 100,000 points, the closest I came was 93,000.

I gotta tell you, when that box arrived, I felt like Link uncovering a magic ring in Zelda. Or Dr. Don Blake finding the cane that he would tap on the floor. Or Dolph Lundgren as He-Man, raising the sword: I Have The Power! Isn't it pathetically geeky? Maybe I can calm down now and stop whining about not having the latest toy. Nuff said.

Technorati : XBox 360
Del.icio.us : XBox 360
Ice Rocket : XBox 360

The comedy group Tripod sings this hilarious song about the conflicts that gamers face when confronted with sex. If you ever told your girlfriend\wife that you would come to bed after one more level, this bud's for you.

Press the Play button. Thanks to Google Video.

MTV's Stephen Totilo has crowned Geometry Wars as the Killer App of the XBox 360. In the vacuum of a Halo title, he might be right. CliffyB says "It's like an interactive version of those acid-trip musical visualization devices." A few weeks ago I posted a comment to Dean Takahashi on Mercury News, asking why anyone would want XBox Live Arcade games in the face of Project Gotham Racing 3 and Perfect Dark Zero. But it's obvious that games like Geometry Wars can be highly addictive for the consumer and highly profitable for the publisher. I thought the first Geometry Wars in Project Gotham Racing 2 was pretty cool, especially the fact that the leaderboards were integrated with XBox Live. Exposing that to everyone in the 360 world seems to have been a gold mine for Microsoft. Now everyone wants a piece of the XBox Live Arcade direct download pie. SiN, the new FPS game, may give gamers the basic game engine for free and make them pay for episodic downloads. I feel like we are back to the days of shareware games. Nuff said.

Technorati : Geometry Wars, XBox 360, XBox Live Arcade
Del.icio.us : Geometry Wars, XBox 360, XBox Live Arcade
Ice Rocket : Geometry Wars, XBox 360, XBox Live Arcade

I still don't have a 360. Nooch's post over on the Mercury News gaming blog reminded me that I am still 360 deficient and sparked my lust to find one. Today I saw some briefly online at Walmart, but they were bundled with a bunch of games and it would have cost close to $900. Too expensive! I want the premium system ($400) and maybe three games ($150-$180). Around $600 with tax included, that's my target.

I keep forgetting these links to the XBox 360 trackers, so I am listing them here for all of us:

Ben's Bargains XBox 360 Tracker.
XBox 360 Live Inventory Locator.

Sean Alexander wrote a how-to article at his site, Addicted to Digital Media. You can use a tool called "URLy Warning" to give you an alert when a site like Ben's Bargains is updated:

How To Score an XBox 360 online.

He got a good deal at Circuit City and recommends getting up early to check inventories. Yow! Nuff said.

Technorati : XBox 360
Del.icio.us : XBox 360
Ice Rocket : XBox 360

Old Grandma Hardcore got an XBox 360 after visiting MTV. She's filming some video reviews and got a 360 in order to review the lastest and greatest. Tim tells this great story of losing $20 buying an XBox Live points card. Apparently those XBox Live Arcade games are like crack cocaine. I've heard on various podcasts that people can't stop playing Geometry Wars 2--to that extent that they are neglecting Project Gotham Racing 3 and Perfect Dark Zero! The return of the leaderboards. Everyone wants to be on top. Nuff said.

We can spend all day doing something games-related. Xbox at home, PSP on the train, G4 TV, magazines, newspaper articles, and books. Podcasts grew exponentially in 2005, and there's a lot of video game feeds that you can subscribe to. Here's what I listen to at work. (Yeah, somehow I really do programming when listening to them. Blocks out the real world. My version of talk radio.)

Dean & Nooch from the Mercury News. Dean Takahashi and Mike Antonucci are the Ebert and Roper of the video game world. Dean wrote a very good book called "Opening the XBox", but Nooch tries not to let it all go to his head. My only complaint is that the podcasts don't always come out every week.

Gamespot's The Hot Spot. Rich Gallup gathers a round table of Gamespotters for a weekly discussion of video games. It's consistently entertaining and very funny, mixed with news and off the cuff opinions on the latest games. Weekly podcasts.

1UP Podcast. This is usually hosted by Jane Pinckard, who has the sexiest voice I've ever heard on a podcast. It has some weird mood music in between segments; I feel like I should be doing Pilates while listening to it. But she drags in 1UPs editorial staff (who write for Official Playstation Magazine, Electronic Gaming Monthly, etc.) for reviews and news.

IGN Podcasts. IGN's editors and staff get together and discuss the latest topics. If you like IGN's video reviews, you will like this too.

Dreamstation Podcast. This is one of the first homegrown podcasts I ever listened to, a bunch of knuckleheads who get together each week to discuss news and the latest games. When I sit in meetings that are going on way too long, I think of Dreamstation's "Next Topic" voice. This show is a laugh riot. Weekly podcasts.

Frag Dolls Podcast. You think the Frag Dolls are gonna miss out on the podcast revolution? No way! This is very well produced. On a recent episode, Jinx interviewed the Prince of Persia developers.

That's six podcasts that I regularly listen to. (For a feed receiver, I use Juice.) If you know of any great game podcasts, give me some feedback. Nuff said.

I was wrong. UT 2007 is not a PS3 launch title after all. Too bad! I think it would make the PS3 irresistable. Will Killzone 2 be a launch title? And will it really look like that pre-fabricated demo? Nuff said.

Technorati : Playstation, Unreal Tournament
Del.icio.us : Playstation, Unreal Tournament
Ice Rocket : Playstation, Unreal Tournament

A lot of you guys are smarter than me: you advance-ordered the Xbox 360 and you're probably playing Perfect Dark Zero or Call of Duty 2 in glorious 720p. I'm killing time by finishing off Far Cry Instincts and Timesplitters: Future Perfect. Far Cry Instincts is really an impressive game, showing off some of the best graphics I've ever seen on the Xbox. According to Peter Hartlaub at the SF Chronicle, the game is better than anything on the 360. I took advantage of a recent Gamefly promotion to buy Timesplitters: Future Perfect. While not anywhere near Far Cry or Halo 2 ratings, TFP is an enjoyable shooter. The graphics are pretty colorful and the weapons are very imaginative. My favorite weapon is the Ghost Gun; wielding it provides this spooky effect in your peripheral vision. The single player game seems short. I was able to complete it in two days. It's sort of like those cereal samplers where you can get Fruit Loops, Corn Flakes, and Raisin Bran in little boxes. You play one character, Cortez (who looks and talks like Vin Diesel) as he hops through various time periods to stop the Timesplitters from wrecking all of reality. There's a chapter where you help Harry Tipper, a funny American-hippie version of James Bond, defeat a Dr. Evil-like menace from launching a nuke. In another era, you help Jo-Beth Casey (wearing fishnet stockings and a shirt labeled SLUT) defeat all the ghosts in a haunted mansion. My favorite era involves a Terminator-like Rise of the Machines, where you re-program a robot called RD-110 to be your helper. The game is mostly run and gun, with a few puzzles thrown in, which stumped me long enough that I had to run to IGN and Gamespot like a little whiny baby.

Timesplitters: Future Perfect has a ton of unlockables. After finishing the single player Story game on Normal, I've unlocked less than 20%! There's also single player Arcade, League, and Challenges to keep you busy. This is where you square off against bots in Deathmatches, Capture the Bag, Assualt missions, etc. I have to applaud Free Radical (the makes of the Timesplitters franchise) for providing such an enormous replay value in these other modes. I can play these bots in Deathmatches forever. The maps are quite good. I love this one Virtual Reality map that looks like it's straight out of Tron. You can adjust bot difficulty or arrange your own team of bots, which are characters from the Story mode. I think all FPS designers should include bots. You might ask why, when Halo 2 gives you lots of players on Xbox Live? Sometimes you just need to learn a map or practice. I hate how Halo 2 Rumble Pit forces me to play levels or games I don't like. I also hate how Halo 2 players are getting too damn good. Usually the top player gets 25 kills and I'm lucky to get 10. TFP also has a mapmaker, where you can build your own levels. I went on Xbox live and downloaded a few of the top ranked maps. Some people are recreating Halo or UT levels. I also played a really bizarre game on a custom map where the only weapon was mines and the players were either monkeys, cats, or little girls.

Best reason to keep your Xbox in 2006: BLACK from Criterion\EA Games. Single player only, but it looks fabulous from the previews. Smoke effects, you can blow up damn near everything, and the A.I. seems smarter than the average bear.

Best reason to buy the Playstation 3 when it launches: Unreal Tournament 2007. I read this news release that says UT 2007 when be available at launch time. That would really make buying the PS3 a slam dunk if it was exclusive to Sony. UT is my favorite shooter of all time, but the console versions have sucked up till now.

Other Xbox shooters I haven't played yet: DOOM Resurrection of Evil and Half Life 2. I don't play anything on the PC anymore, so I can't wait to play HL2--the reviews are outstanding. Painkiller: Hell Wars comes out in Jan-Feb, which also looks to release stress. Shit, why buy a 360 when there's all this much shooting left to do on the current generation? Have a Happy 2006! Nuff said.

Technorati : Far Cry Instincts, Timesplitters, Xbox
Del.icio.us : Far Cry Instincts, Timesplitters, Xbox
Ice Rocket : Far Cry Instincts, Timesplitters, Xbox