Chris Massey

Test Drive Unlimited

October 5, 2006

Reviews / Xbox 360 / by Chris Massey Make a comment! / Tweet it!

I’m a big racing gamer, but even I can admit that there are too many racers out there that play almost identically to one another. So when I got [i]Test Drive Unlimited[/i], I was halfway expecting another game along the lines of [i]Project Gotham Racing 3[/i]. However, I ended up actually being pleasantly surprised at some new ideas that make [i]Unlimited[/i] stand out from other games in the Test Drive series and other racers in general. Unfortunately, while some inventive new ideas make [i]Test Drive Unlimited[/i] stand out from the crowd, some of the standard racing elements aren’t presented as well as in other games which keeps the game from reaching its prime. If you’re a racing fan who values online integration in your racers, though, then you will be far from disappointed.

On the surface, [i]Unlimited[/i] doesn’t seem very much different from many of the other racing titles saturating the market. The game does attempt to incorporate a story into the game play, although it’s pretty much just a thing to explain why you’ve come to Hawaii to drive around in super cars. After choosing from a group of different characters (whom you’ll be able to alter in appearance later on), you board a plane heading for the island of Oahu, dreaming of super cars and gasoline. Once you get there, you’re taken through a tutorial where you first buy a place to live and then a brand new car to tour Oahu with. Outside of all this, there doesn’t seem to be an inherit goal to be had, other than making sacks of money by winning races. It isn’t that uncommon for a racer to lack any sort of story, but sometimes you might wonder just what you’re doing driving supermodels around the city to earn a coupon so you can buy clothes.

The thing that sets the game apart from the likes of [i]Project Gotham Racing[/i] or [i]Gran Turismo[/i] is that as soon as you’re done with the tutorial, you’re thrust out into the open road with hundreds of other players driving around the island online. In what the game calls M.O.O.R. (Massively Open Online Racing), you drive around in a persistent online world with other players, allowing you to interact with other drivers. Of course for bandwidth reasons, not every single player shows up for you, but instead the game finds the closest eight players to your location and calculates which ones show up based on the class of your car. Even with its limitations, though, this addition creates a very realistic interpretation of a car community and is definitely the biggest selling point of [i]Test Drive Unlimited[/i].

With the M.O.O.R function, multiplayer is a big drawing point for [i]Unlimited[/i]. Aside from interacting with other players on the road, you’re also able to play designated online races against other people, join clubs that race against other clubs, try player created challenges, and even create challenges yourself. [i]Unlimited[/i] is truly a very community friendly game. You’re even able to challenge other players to individual street races by flashing your brights at them. The fact is that if you’re looking for a racing game that incorporates online multiplayer and establishes a community between other players, [i]Unlimited[/i] is probably your best bet on the Xbox 360.

For all the praise that [i]Unlimited[/i]’s online functions get, however, it is obvious that the game’s single-player attributes were put on the far back burner. The game just isn’t very compelling playing offline, because not only do you have no interaction with any other people, but the A.I. is pretty terrible when you play races offline. Computer racers are very prone to running off the road, even if there isn’t a very sharp turn ahead (or a turn at all for that matter). Generally, you might have a tough time with one of the racers while all the others run off the road or get left behind. It also doesn’t help that the game doesn’t seem to compensate for any tuning modifications you make to your car, so if you’ve added on the best tuning kit, you’ll probably leave every single one of the computers eating your long-settled dust. Needless to say, you’re missing out on a lot if you don’t have Xbox Live Gold.

Another thing to note about [i]Test Drive Unlimited[/i] is the huge island of Oahu you’re able to explore. You could easily say that [i]Unlimited[/i] is like the [i]Oblivion[/i] of racing games. Oahu is made up of hundreds of miles of road to explore, and driving twenty miles to some location actually feels like driving twenty miles. According to the talk, the island is actually modeled right down from the actual island of Oahu, although many recognizable landmarks have been taken out for some reason. Still, it’s a pretty big achievement and increases the relaxing feel of driving through the Hawaiian countryside. Another thing to note is that even with other players inhabiting the world, traffic and police cars still exist and add to the challenge of racing other players.

Unfortunately, [i]Unlimited[/i] isn’t without its problems. It’s worth mentioning again that there isn’t really any kind of goal to work towards, aside from gaining up ranks to unlock tougher, more lucrative races. The game pretty much incorporates its Xbox Live achievements straight into the game as goals to work towards, so if you’re not that big on collecting achievement points, [i]Unlimited[/i] might seem like a bit of a time-waster. The controls of the cars can also be a little hard to get used to, and although I’ve had little trouble adapting, I’ve heard of some people putting the game down because they couldn’t stop peeling out.

Another criticism I have with the game is that the customization features seem very weak. You’re given the options to tune up your car (usually with three different tuning packages), but it would have been nice if they had gone more in-depth with the tuning mechanics and allowed you to buy individual elements for your cars rather than the incredibly expensive packages. It would have also been nice to see some exterior customization such as body kits or spoilers. I’m far from one of those people that usually require car customization in racing games, but with the heavy online community aspects of [i]Unlimited[/i], it seems like a missed opportunity that the developers neglected this area.

The graphics in the game are just about as great as those seen in PGR3. Cars are beautifully smooth and shiny, and the wilderness of the island of Oahu looks great. The same can’t be said for the character models, which look very rough compared to the beautiful appearance of everything else. Like PGR3, the interior of the cars have also been constructed right down from their real-life counterparts, and with the ability to look around inside your car, they look terrific. The same goes for the engine revs and shifting sounds given off by the cars, which have been recorded right out of the actual cars. My only complaint in the sound department is aimed at the characters once again, who just sound ridiculously awkward when speaking to you.

[i]Test Drive Unlimited[/i] may not hit all of the racing notes correctly, but its innovative ideas compensate for the oversights. People without Xbox Live Gold will probably want to pass on the game since they are missing out on a huge part of [i]Unlimited[/i]’s appeal, and there may be some that are disappointed by the lack of any sort of real objectives. However, those looking for some of the best online integration in an Xbox 360 title would do well to look to [i]Test Drive Unlimited[/i]. It also doesn’t hurt that the game carries a fairly friendly $40.00 price tag.

Robotron 2084

October 5, 2006

Reviews / Xbox 360 / by Chris Massey Make a comment! / Tweet it!

Xbox Live Arcade is a gold mine for classic arcade games straight out of the 1980s. Unfortunately, not every game that was a hit back in the 80s may translate as that big of a hit in today’s video game community, and [i]Robotron 2084[/i] fits that bill. Sure, the game is probably one of the most faithful ports of a classic arcade game to hit XBLA, and it doesn’t exactly put a big hole in your credit card at 400 points either. However, with [i]Smash TV[/i] out on the Marketplace and the difficulty of the game itself, [i]Robotron 2084[/i] doesn’t seem to be a very worthy investment.

The premise of the game is that you control the last hope of mankind, progressing through waves of robotic enemies. In the old heyday of the arcade, Robotron was well known for its usage of two joysticks with one moving the character and the other shooting, something that’s been translated into the XBLA version. If you’ve played [i]Smash TV[/i], then the game play is remarkably similar, most likely because the game took a page from Robotron’s control scheme. Progressing to the next wave requires you to kill every robot (at least the ones that can be killed) on screen, and new enemies will be introduced as you go along. Of course, the best way to get a scoreboard-worthy high score is to save the humans scattered throughout the waves, who also happen to be susceptible to a robot-induced death.

Probably the thing that hurts Robotron the most is the sheer difficulty of the game play. Death is a constant theme when playing the game, and it’s almost impossible not to be overwhelmed by the large number of robots on screen, let alone dodge all the projectiles and save the humans all at once. Luckily, the game rewards you with extra lives at almost every chance it can get, but even with a large number of extra lives, it’s still very difficult to last into very many waves. Now, rating a game so low based on the difficulty may not seem fair, but I enjoyed Geometry Wars with its high difficulty level. In the end, the constant death and fast-pace of Robotron had me re-starting almost too quickly to really enjoy much of what the game had to offer. Then there are the Xbox Live achievements, one of which includes getting to wave 100. I’ve seen only two people who have actually done this by the way.

Visually, Robotron looks pretty decent. As with most classic titles in the Arcade, the game has received a makeover, although it doesn’t seem to be a whole lot better than the original graphical layout, which you can also switch to by the way. Multiplayer is present in the game, although it seems very half-baked. One player will control the movements of the hero while the other player fires at robots. Given the fact that it’s already hard enough getting through the game on your own, putting two people in charge of different functions without much coordination seems like a disaster waiting to happen. There is versus mode, though, which pits two players against each other and killing robots until the other one dies, which seems much better than the cooperative mode.

[i]Robotron 2084[/i] is a serviceable recreation of the classic arcade title, but its difficulty will definitely turn off some people. Fans of the original will surely find a faithful dose of nostalgia, and in that respect, the game is top-notch. However, I can’t imagine the game finding a very big fan base with the masses on Xbox Live Arcade, especially with [i]Smash TV[/i] available. Again, the game is only 400 points and isn’t terribly expensive, but that was also 400 points I could have spent on a game that had more lasting appeal. At least the game doesn’t take quarters anymore because boy would you need them.

Dead Rising

September 19, 2006

Reviews / Xbox 360 / by Chris Massey Make a comment! / Tweet it!

What if you took the popularity of the [i]Resident Evil[/i] series, took a page from classic zombie horror flicks, added in some free-roaming game play, and crammed it all inside of a good old American mega mall? You’d probably end up with something a lot like [i]Dead Rising[/i], Capcom’s latest non-[i]Resident Evil[/i] zombie trip. Forgoing the deep, serious plot presented by their flagship zombie killer, Capcom opted out for more of a free-range zombie-slaughter adventure, allowing people to take out their aggression on the undead en masse. It seems to have paid off too, as [i]Dead Rising[/i] may possibly be one of the most unique and enjoyable games released on the Xbox 360.

[i]Dead Rising[/i] pays specific homage to a number of classic horror flicks, the most obvious being George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978). You play as Frank West, an unusually buff photojournalist at large, who has decided to investigate why the National Guard has roped off the rural town of Willamette, Colorado. The reason, as Frank soon finds out, is because the town has turned into a zombie-infested freak show. Frank decides to take his chances and get the whole story in a nearby mega mall and tells his chartered pilot to pick him up in three days. Until then, you’re charged with surviving the undead and getting the scoop to end all scoops, as well as finding out just what’s gone wrong in Willamette.

There are probably two things that set [i]Dead Rising[/i] apart from any previous zombie-themed game. The first is the sheer number of zombies on screen at a time. If you ever saw the first video for the game at E3 2005, you were probably amazed at the closing shot showing Frank atop a truck overlooking a literal sea of zombies. While it isn’t exactly as huge as that video looked, the final product isn’t very far off. Each section of the huge mall is packed with hundreds of zombies to beat down on, complete with a kill counter to monitor the carnage. To get an idea of just how many zombies there are, one of the Xbox Live achievements is to kill 53,594 zombies in one game. One game. Needless to say, getting this many rotting corpses on screen without the frame rate bogging down to Hell is quite an accomplishment.

Of course, you’ll need something to kill all those zombies with, leading to the game’s second feature: the ability to use anything and everything as a weapon. The game forces you to get creative with anything you can find and has well over 200 items to utilize, including: lawnmowers, shotguns, baseball bats, gardening shears, water guns, bass guitars, compact discs, chainsaws, umbrellas, machetes, katanas, and cars; basically if you can imagine what you would find in a typical mall, you can wail away at the undead with it. It’s all very fun and really gives you a feeling that you’re doing everything in your power to survive being turned into zombie chow. Granted, some of these items don’t exactly work very well (given the fact that you wouldn’t really use CDs to attack people in real life), but I think it’s a pretty novel idea to include even useless items in the roster.

There is one main game mode at the beginning of [i]Dead Rising[/i], although as you progress through the game, you’ll unlock two others modes. 72 Hour Mode is the main attraction here and has Frank trying to survive for three days until the helicopter comes to pick him up. Time passes by in real time in [i]Dead Rising[/i] (albeit at a much more accelerated pace), during which you’re given case files to complete which help to uncover the mystery behind the zombie outbreak and are required to be completed in order to get the A

WarPath

August 31, 2006

Reviews / Xbox / by Chris Massey Make a comment! / Tweet it!

Given the massive appeal of the [i]Unreal Tournament[/i] series, it’s no surprise that game developers often try to emulate the success into one of their games. This is where [i]Warpath[/i] for the Xbox comes in, and ultimately, where it fails. Sure, [i]Warpath[/i] does have a similar build to [i]Unreal Tournament[/i], and almost everything you see in the game is reminiscent of the series it is inspired by. That is its biggest flaw, that it simply doesn’t have much to offer that hasn’t been done already. What hurts the game more is that games like [i]Unreal Championship[/i], released years ago but have ultimately the same premise, have long been in the bargain bin. The budget pricing of [i]Warpath[/i] may interest some people, and it doesn’t do anything wrong, but it just doesn’t do anything different or interesting.

The premise behind [i]Warpath[/i] seems about as predictable as the game itself. Three races are at war with one another, fighting over the system of Kaladi, a virtual utopia filled with resources waiting for the taking. These three races are known as the Ohm, the House of Kovos, and The Human Coalition. For the most part, that’s all the background that you get, and while there are some A

Battlefield 2: Modern Combat

August 10, 2006

Reviews / Xbox 360 / by Chris Massey Make a comment! / Tweet it!

With a console as powerful and impressive as the Xbox 360, it probably seems a bit strange that a couple of the bigger releases on the system over the past few months have been half-year old games from the last generation. [i]Battlefield 2: Modern Combat[/i] has managed to see new life after being ported to the 360, and in the process, has gotten some additional content. The game looks beautiful in HD, and the newly added maps are also a welcome addition. However, if you’ve played [i]Modern Combat[/i] on the original Xbox or Playstation 2, is it worth experiencing again on the Xbox 360? Depending on who you are, [i]Battlefield 2: Modern Combat[/i] may just be worth another look on the Xbox 360.

For those who didn’t go through [i]Modern Combat[/i] on the last generation of systems, the game essentially takes the [i]Battlefield[/i] franchise made famous on the PC and gives it life on consoles. Unlike the PC version of [i]Battlefield 2[/i], though, [i]Modern Combat[/i] tries to work in a single player campaign in addition to online multiplayer. That was how the Xbox and Playstation versions worked, and the Xbox 360 version shows a near identical formula. In fact, there are few differences between the two; those differences being three new maps in multiplayer (including new vehicles and character models), much improved graphics, and enhanced support for the new Xbox Live. That’s about it, but you might want to look twice before dismissing, depending on who you are.

[i]Modern Combat[/i]’s story revolves around a crisis in the country of Kazakhstan in the distant future fought between the People’s Republic of China and the United States, backed by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). While the single player campaign only allows you to take control of two sides, multiplayer mode also adds the Middle Eastern Coalition (MEC) and the European Union into the fray. You progress through the campaign by cycling through the two armies, playing a few missions as the U.S. forces and then switching to Chinese forces and then back again.

The single player mode of [i]Modern Combat[/i] is pretty run-of-the-mill. Possibly one of the only real stand out traits about single player is the ability to hot-swap to any other character on a map, which is kind of neat and allows you to not only traverse across maps in an instant but also play many different weapon layouts without having to re-spawn. However, after that, things fall a little flat. The campaign is fairly challenging, but sort of in the sense that you may have to lose several times in order to learn the given path to take. It doesn’t really help that the enemy AI just spawns in pre-determined locations and once you’ve played through a couple of times, you’ll anticipate where they’re supposed to show up. Your teammate’s AI isn’t exactly the best either, and more often than not, you may lose a mission solely because they used up all of the other bodies you could have hot-swapped to, or you may be the sole survivor of a mission (they literally run straight into the open for all enemy weapons to see).

Of course, any [i]Battlefield[/i] veteran can tell you that single player is far from what the series is about. Just like every other game in the series, the multiplayer is the center of attention here, and works just like it did in [i]Battlefield 2[/i] for the PC. The basic goal in multiplayer is for two teams to fight against each other in either conquest mode or CTF mode, although I think it’s a given that conquest mode (which consists of capturing a series of flags to use as spawn points) is usually the real attraction of the [i]Battlefield[/i] series. Each player gets to choose from a weapon kit, consisting of assault weapons, special operations gear, engineer kits, and more. To add to the mayhem, vehicles like tanks and helicopters are available, but sorry PC veterans: no jets.

Probably the reason that there are no jets in [i]Modern Combat[/i] is because the maps are generally much smaller than what was seen in [i]Battlefield 2[/i]. If you’re used to the big, open and spacious maps seen in [i]Modern Combat[/i]’s PC cousin, then these multiplayer maps will probably disappoint somewhat, although they are perfectly sized for the player limits of Xbox Live (up to 24 players). Most maps are designed fairly well, although some tend to lean the balance more towards one side. A

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