xbox 360 quick hits, Part 1

A couple of weekends ago I spent the afternoon with fellow über-gamers Tony and Chris, where we gathered for some quality time with Chris' new XBox 360. I've since had the time to record some of the following impressions. Unrelated: Chris is an excellent cook.

After setting up our XBox Live player profiles (a strange necessity), we were ready to get playing. Gripping the iPod white controller in both hands, I recognized a refined design. Elminating the annoying Black and White buttons that would often be pressed by mistake, the 360's controller is also lightweight, easy to handle and best of all - completely wireless. Once we inserted the disc for Dead or Alive 4 we had to log in to XBox Live. And then to confirm what player profiles we wanted to use. And where we wanted to save the game data for each player. It was a bizarre amount of menu options and screens considering we were playing on a console. This is all for XBox Live's new Gamerscore system that basically records data from every one of your play sessions, but that's another issue entirely. What happened to just turning it on and playing? Is this what we can expect from consoles adopting online features? Being simple to set-up is one of the advantages consoles have had over PCs until this point. After selecting our characters for the game it was finally time to play.

Dead or Alive 4

We had to get Dead or Alive 4 out of the way because it was the easiest target for mockery; after all, a fighting game with this many busty females doing high kicks in short skirts is essentially pornography. I direct you to the bio for Leifang, from the official site:

It starts with a 6 year old memory, always accompanied by battle cries that sound like they come from a strange bird. The gleaming blade rushes towards her as she feels it may be too late. Then, in an instant, the young man with the embroidered dragon leaps on the scene. He massacres the hoodlums with a single blow, accompanied by a piercing yell. Since then she has committed herself to reaching the highest plateau of ability, all so that she may exist in the same world as that young man. She must defeat him!

We are swimming in deep waters here, for sure. Too bad more time was spent animating breasts than developing a plotline, but who ever expected one of those from a fighting game? After I spent a few rounds kicking everyone's asses, it seemed that I was the fighting game veteran of us three. I then tried story mode to unlock some of the other characters. The game is ridiculously hard, and clearly rewards those that are more interested in perfecting the art of fighting than contemplating how the laws of physics defy Christie's leather jacket so that it covers her chest in every fight. The character animations and environments are amazingly detailed, and along with Project Gotham 3 is definitely a showcase for the 360's hardware. But that's about it.

Project Gotham Racing 3

For the most part, I suck at racing games unless they have the word "Mario" or "Zero" in the title. The realistic physics modelling of the cars makes it tough to get used to, but is probably a boon for car enthusiasts. Even though the application of real-world physics is less intense than say, Gran Turismo 4, Project Gotham 3 still manages to convey a pretty realistic driving experience. Every car handled differently, and it's definitely another game that rewards skill. I got bored of it pretty quickly though - I think Tony and I started doing head-on collisions after a while. It was definitely time for Full Auto.

Full Auto

After playing Auto Assault I was anxious to see someone do Car Wars right. Unfortunately, Pseudo Interactive attached guns to cars and put them on a racetrack. Except it's not as fun as Rock 'N' Roll Racing. This is actually the only game out of the ones we played that prompted some deeper thinking, so I suppose that could be considered a good thing. You can read the rest in Part 2.

Kameo

Rare caught a lot of flak for this title, and I'm not sure why. It's not particularly offensive; in fact, I found it refreshing in its presentation. The bright colors and the cartoon-like character models gave it a storybook quality. I'm not sure why I was so impressed by that, but it could be the trend towards darker, (im)mature themed games that made Kameo really stand out. It didn't seem very deep, but I think I still would have had fun with it given the chance to spend more than 15 minutes playing.

Amped 3

Did somebody fart? A semi-serious sports title has been turned into a cartoon. Uninteresting, and probably even unnecessary.

Back to the Gamerscore. Based on point values associated with "Achievements" reached within each game on the XBox 360, it updates a player's Gamerscore on XBox Live accordingly. It introduces a kind of arcade-styled competiton factor between players, but is anyone other than the hardcore willing to bother with this? Games like Project Gotham 3 and Dead or Alive 4 have their own set of unlockable rewards such as new cars and different playable characters, which adds incentive to contributing to the system. Though this is another trend that I'm growing increasingly uneasy about: the use of unlockable content to artificially extend a game's life. These tactics are aimed squarely at gamers with an excess of time to complete the requirements. I can't help but feel cheated when I'm stuck with a bunch of crappy cars in a racing game and forced to earn better ones through extended play. Shouldn't the fun be instantaneous? The Gamerscore as an over-arching concept seems interesting, but I can't help but sense that it imposes the requirement for an internet connection to play any game on a console, approaching the time when the patching of console games is commonplace.