I have to admit, I enjoyed Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball on the original Xbox. Not many people will admit to this, mostly because the game was little more than fan service with a worse-than-average volleyball simulator and a scant number of mini-games involving the attractive ladies of Tomonobu Itagaki and Team Ninja’s successful Dead or Alive 3D fighter franchise. The A
Roger Helgeson
On today’s edition of I Roll Twenties, we have decided to propose a little alternate history and imagine the life and times of a popular Japanese RPG protagonist in an American RPG setting. For instance, what if the infamous vault dweller of popular ARPG Fallout were really Tidus of Final Fantasy X fame? What if Tidus’ Zanarkand never actually existed, and instead, this spiky haired hero had woken up in Vault 13, ready to take on the world to save his fellow vault dwellers from dehydration. The first problem Tidus would encounter is attire. Though his exploits on Spira garnered him a lot of crazy looks from the local populace, in Fallout, his fellow vault dwellers would undoubtedly frown on Tidus’ choice of loud, almost absurd clothing. While citizens of neither Spira nor post-apocalyptic Los Angeles seem to change their outfits from day to day, the standard vault dweller costume – a head-to-toe blue jumpsuit – would certainly have set Tidus apart from the crowd. How did he obtain this clothing, anyhow? Perhaps Tidus moonlit as a seamstress within the vault, but it seemed that everyone from the Overseer on down wore nothing but those same blue overalls. Similarly, Tidus’ hairstyle, a semi-spiky A
Rarely does a title do everything right, especially in role-playing games which are often criticized to a degree beyond many other genres; RPG aficionados tend to be sticklers more so than fans of other types of games, and I am no different. Contact is not a flawless title, granted, but it comes so strikingly close to delivering a perfect and unique role-playing experience that the few flaws fall well to the wayside, and the end result is a must-have RPG. Contact is an isometric RPG for the Nintendo DS which features full stylus control, and full button control for that matter. In fact, the game is designed so that players can easily use either system freely and can switch back and forth without even going to a menu. Admittedly, tapping things with the stylus can occasionally frustrate, and the game easily allows players to switch to using the A button, such as when the on-screen character is visibly blocking a creature that you may want to click on.
Contact’s narrative is genuinely unique, if for no other reason than it incorporates you, the player, as a central character in the game, in addition to the in-game character being controlled. At the beginning of the game, you witness a distressing Star Wars-style dogfight between two UFOs in space, and are summarily contacted via your DS by the visible loser of said battle. This individual is an 8-bit-looking professor with a pseudo Tamagotchi dog named Moichi (who, incidentally, wants to become a cat). This professor asks for your help, as you are the only one who can directly communicate with him using your handheld. To do this, you aid Terry, the on-screen character who somehow gets wrapped up in the professor’s affairs as part of a A
With Test Drive Unlimited finally being released for the Xbox 360, the sandbox just got bigger. A massively open online racing title, or MOOR, A
Saints Row is the story of three surly gangs who are vying for control of the city of Stilwater, as well as a a fourth up and coming gang hosted by a man named Julius enters the already crowded picture with a plan to clean up the city by any means necessary. As the game begins, Julius saves your life and for the rest of the game, you are inextricably tied to the 3rd Row Saints and their efforts to “clean up The Row.”
The demo for THQ and Volition’s seemingly GTA-inspired Saints Row that debuted initially over Xbox Live was underwhelming, and largely disappointing. It hinted at a clichA
