“EA Partners Is A Murderers’ Row - Who’s NOT On This List?” at MTV Multiplayer
This is a good bit of investigative reporting from Stephen Totilo. With last Thursday’s announcements by Electronic Arts of deals with Grasshopper Manufacture and Epic Games, they now have at least half a dozen major partners, and that’s not counting the smaller companies they have outright purchased over the last couple years.
Latest Feature: Impulse Buyer
Can Stardock break into the marketplace, and will it help reduce piracy?
COLUMNS
Hey guys, I’m back from a long hiatus, which involved me trying to get Live working again and doing some other actual work. Big thanks to chamberlain who wrote the last article, and will now be alternating posts with me. To celebrate my return, Microsoft has decided to release two quality games this week: Schizoid and Golf: Tee it Up!
I was first interested in Schizoid when I saw the screenshots. It looked very much like Geometry Wars, one of my (and ideally everyone’s) favorite games on the service. Vibrant colors, action on a 2D plane, and tons of stuff going on at the same time. How could it be anything but a GW clone? Well I had never watched any videos of the game so I was a bit surprised by Schizoid’s actual gameplay. The game involves two ships, one blue and the other orange. Blue and orange enemies appear on screen (more are added in later levels) and each ship can only destroy its respective color while being vulnerable to the opposite. There’s nothing unique about this, it’s a gameplay situation we’ve seen since the earliest days of gaming. In fact, the game is so simple that it’s entirely controlled by the left analog stick. The game embraces this with the humorous quip of “It’s not your imagination. The other buttons do nothing,” in one of the loading screens. I find the simplicity to be fitting, however, since the Arcade should be where quick / fun / simple games thrive. Of course simple should not mean incredibly derivative; an original like Schizoid must do something, well, original. Fortunately, Schizoid does not disappoint. The game’s mechanic of two separate ships is just begging for co-op play, which is no doubt what the designers intended. The game’s tagline of “The most co-op game ever” is rather fitting as it works beautifully. Both online and offline co-op are available, and both are a blast to play, especially with someone you know. It is essential that you communicate with your teammate if you want to survive deep into the game. If you don’t have any friends or something, there is also a single player mode where the computer controls the other ship. This isn’t quite as fun but can still be moderately entertaining. There’s also a mode where you control both ships, one with the left analog and the other with the right. That is actually some of the most confusing shit ever and will make your brain leap out of your cranium just to get away from it all. I’d say if you have a friend who games with you for a good amount of time, it easily justifies a purchase.
Golf: Tee it Up! is a game developed by Housemarque, of Super Stardust HD fame on the PlayStation Network. But as you can infer from the names, the two games are nothing alike. Unfortunately, they’re not even of the same quality either. This is not a knock against Tee it Up! but rather a compliment to SSDHD, which is one of the best downloadable games of the generation. Tee it Up! is actually the second golf game to hit the service. However, unlike 3D Ultra Minigolf Adventures, a game which I’ve never played but which obviously focuses on miniature golf, Tee it Up! tries to deliver the actual golfing experience albeit in a very arcade-y fashion, akin to Hot Shots Golf. But this comparison is quite deadly since Tee It Up! falls apart when standing next to HSG.
I personally don’t think it’s fair to compare a $10 downloadable title to a $60 retail title, and think that Tee it Up! should be judged on its own merits. That is not to say that Housemarque isn’t at fault for trying to copy the gameplay and art-style of Hot Shots Golf instead of doing something more original. In the end, what’s left is a good but not great golf game that offers a unique experience in relation to the Xbox Live Arcade. The true disappointment is that the game is just not up to par (oh snap) with Housemarque’s previous outing.
Well, that’s all I can say about this week’s releases but I’m still not done. Next week is E3 folks, and while the majority of the hype is surrounding all the potential retail titles yet to be fully revealed, there is also some buzz being generated about the Arcade. Now next week’s Arcade games have already been announced. Coffeetime Crosswords and Shred Nebula (apparently some Asteroids-esque game) are the games and there’s also a free expansion (YAY!) for Buku Sudoku (…yay), along with a price cut for Puzzle Quest (800 points down from 1200), one of the best games on the service. Microsoft, however, has announced surprise immediate XBLA releases during E3 for the past two years with Golden Axe and Sonic 2 coming last year and Doom the year before. This, along with the leaks of a) Duke Nukem 3D hitting the service (with some sort of rewind feature to boot and b) the Geometry Wars 2 achievement list, definitely tell us that something is in store for E3. I personally think (and hope) it will be the long anticipated Castle Crashers that will get the immediate release. Only way we’ll find out is by waiting.
I have become amazed at what XBLA has done in the past few weeks. It started with Geometry Wars 2, a game Jim Canapa described perfectly in the previous column (he should know, since his high scores are far better than mine). Bionic Commando, another great game I will go into detail about later, was the most recent addition. But in the middle was Braid, the first game to ever cause an internal conflict for me.
Morrowind really helped pull itself head and shoulders above the crowd by developing a realistically complicated world in such an unfamiliar setting that its players can’t help but explore every nook and cranny, finding new reasons to love it every time they play.
“Gaming’s 20 Greatest Challenges” at Edge
Colin Campbell doing what he does best. I can’t imagine coming up with this list, not to mention writing as smartly and concisely about them all. The one problem here is that he doesn’t always offer a solution to these problems, but it’s still important either way.
“THE ACTION BUTTON DOT NET MANIFESTO: A LIST OF THE TWENTY-FIVE BEST GAMES OF ALL-TIME” at Action Button
They’ve been teasing it for months, but finally here it is. Twenty-five full reviews. It’s a lot, so they’re releasing them three at a time twice a week. The three up now are all good examples of why Tim Rogers is important to the topic of this column.