Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved -- All in One.

After downloading the Full Auto demo I looked around for something else to check out on the Xbox Live Marketplace. In the Xbox Live Arcade section there was a free demo for Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved. I decided to check it out. The game is nothing more than an update to Asteroids, my all-time favorite game. You control a ship that can rotate as well as move around the playfield. The left analog stick controls movement, the right analog stick controls your firing independently from ship movement. In other words, holding left on the left analog stick makes the ship move left while firing wherever the right analog stick is pointing. The left or right trigger fires a screen clearing bomb. You start with three ships and three bombs. The playfield scrolls a little to the left and right, and a little bit up and down. It's slightly larger than the early arcade locked screens. There are two things that really make this update work. The point or challenge system they've employed and the graphics. The point system works based off a chain system. Staying alive earns you more points. Dying resets everything. Kill enough enemies and you earn a X2 point multiplier. Keep going and you'll chain that into X3, X4, and so on up to X10. You earn an upgrade to your ship's firepower every 10,000 points. You'll earn an extra man at every 75,000 points and an extra bomb at every 100,000 points. The graphics here are hard to describe. They're entirely simplistic. It's the sheer number of things going on that's the key to their impressiveness. The playfield consists of a star field with a couple layers of parallax scrolling. Over this there is a graph that dances like that of a sound equalizer light display. Imagine the graph as a surface of water, then drop a pebble into it. That's how the graph is reacting to your ship's movement and fire, especially at higher firepower levels. Over this you have the enemies. Geometric shapes, just like your ship. Almost vector graphics level in design, but not true vector graphics. Everything is colored vibrantly in soft neon colors. It starts out with a few ships appearing here and there, but pretty soon there are up to a hundred of the various types of enemy ships coming at you. It quickly becomes madness. There are circles that when hit become like black holes in that they'll suck in the enemy ships that get too close. They'll keep sucking in the enemy ships until they reach critical mass and then they'll explode shooting broken enemy ship parts at you in an amazing flood of particles on screen at once. They're only like black holes in name as they're actually very colorful. Imagine colored fireworks on a pinwheel. Hundreds of colored sparks shooting out of the four rockets on the pinwheel as they spin around and around. That's just what's going on while the enemies are being pulled in. Imagine four of those on screen at once with enemies swarming around and your ship firing all over like mad and the graph dancing to it all over a parallax scrolling star field in the background all to pounding techno music. Literally thousands of particles moving around on screen at once. It's freaking brilliant. I bought the full version. I'm giving Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved a 9.0.

Xbox Live Marketplace -- Full Auto demo.

Again the future is now with the Xbox 360 and its awesome full press Xbox Live philosophy. For years and years developers have been talking about delivering content straight to the consumer. They've been inching towards that Jetson's like future image. Microsoft has actually made the first real steps in getting there. The Xbox Live Marketplace is where you can go to download a variety of different content from the likes of movie and game trailers, music, classic and new games, and game demos. Full Auto is the second Xbox 360 title being published by SEGA. I was interested in it, but entirely on the fence about it. I wasn't exactly sure what it was trying to be. Yesterday SEGA made the demo available on the Xbox Live Marketplace. Three weeks before the game is set to ship, I'm able to download it for free and try out a single course with one of two cars. Before going to bed I turn on the X360 and prepare to let it download (646 MB) overnight. The demo is seemingly rather large. To my surprise, the entire download took just thirty minutes. What's impressive to me is actually bridging the gap between future promises and practical reality. Oh yeah, and the demo served its purpose. It proved fun and makes me want to see more. Game sold. I'm impressed boys and girls.

Killer 7 - Final Opinion.

I have completed Killer 7 and I have a headache from attempting to make heads or tails of the story. It's very hard to describe correctly. I feel I get it, but not so much follow it.  I get what they were after and the gist of the plot.  It's also hard to describe in any detail without spoiling the events of the game. The story has numerous levels. On the surface it's a conspiracy story in which the events will likely leave you scratching your head asking what the fuck is going on. Beyond that is a tale of symbolic political history. There is also story on the level of gods. And finally there is the story within the mind. And it's all technically one story. There is a lot buried in there for you to pull out. The game doesn't help you. It's essentially like Oliver Stone's JFK in that it throws everything including the kitchen sink at the wall and leaves it up to you to decide what sticks. It doesn't help that the events in the game are very symbolistic. This only helps to further blur and confuse issues. And the actual events are downright insane. Which again only helps to further confuse issues. Through it all though the game retains a fascinating overall vibe in spite of the confusion employed as device by the storytelling. It's this overall vibe that's the core of Killer 7's experience for me. It's what I enjoyed about it. The game approaches avant-garde levels of artistic expression in video games as far as storytelling goes. Killer 7 is probably too much to take for the standard Joe Gamer. Killer 7 is a tough case to argue because of it being on that artistic level. What makes a painting click or not click with someone is too much the intangible. With most games I can point to specifics as to why I'd differ in opinion. Killer 7's on a pure in the eye of the beholder level I believe. Not to say pure art has been achieved or anything, as I don't think it's close to that. It's just a valid experience for me. Take what you can from it. Your mileage may vary. I'm giving it an 8.0.

Killer 7 - Straight to the Point.

Digital adventure games of the past relied on exploration for a large part of the filler for their games. You would spend a lot of time wandering around and this would provide a sizable section of the gameplay. Killer 7 attempts to eliminate that aspect entirely. So much so, that you can never leave the rails. To actually move your character, you hold down the A button to run forward. You have no direct control over where the character will go along that rail. The character follows the rail wherever it might lead. Along the rail you'll come to a junction. Here is how you control where you're going in the overall scheme of things. A junction is an intersection of a few rails so to speak. As you're holding down A to move forward you'll arrive at a junction and be presented with a couple of choices.  Say for example you're heading north along a hallway and you come to a choice of going down the west hallway or the east hallway. You'll move the analog stick and press and hold the A button to make your choice and continue on your selected path. You can press the B button to turn around at any time. Adventure games originally used to leave you to your own devices to figure out what was and wasn't useable in the games. You'd have to point to everything and try to interact with it in some way. A massive amount of trial and error. They evolved to the point of using hot spots. Items in the games would somehow differentiate themselves from the backgrounds to let you know that you could and should interact with them. They would flash, or glow, or highlight in some way. Killer 7's system essentially goes all the way. Since you're not leaving the rails at any time in the game, it doesn't ever stray so you don't need to wonder if you're missing something. There isn't any searching. The rails will let you know you're supposed to interact. You could be walking down a hallway and a junction pops up giving you the choice of going further down the hall or checking on this vase. They've removed trial and error for the most part. You still need to figure out where to use what. This gives the puzzle level an easier feel. It's not a total cakewalk, but the puzzles will likely never stop you from reaching the ending. With the puzzle element being so light they had to put the focus elsewhere. They've put it in two places. The story and the combat. You hold down the right trigger to pull up your weapon. You use the left analog stick to aim a reticule around the screen. You can't move while shooting. You have to lower your weapons to run closer or away from the enemies in the game. Pressing the A button fires the weapons. The enemies in the game are invisible until you scan them. You'll hear a demented laugh to let you know one is around. That's when you stop moving, press and hold R trigger to pull up the weapons, press the L trigger to scan and reveal the enemy location. Scanning the enemies will also reveal their weak points. Hitting an enemy in its weak point will kill it in one shot causing a larger spray of blood. The blood spray is important because that's how you heal and level up the abilities of the characters. Killer 7 allows for you to control the six personas of assassin Harman Smith. Each one with its own weapons and special abilities. You can just fire away at an enemy until it drops, but you'll collect less blood that way. With careful aim, you can shoot off their heads and limbs to cause greater blood spray. The one shot kills give you the most spray, and they can be chained together resulting in a higher blood spray multiplier. You collect two types of blood. Thick blood and thin blood. Thin blood is collected in vials that you can use to heal your characters if they become damaged.  Thick blood is stored in vials to be used to purchase power ups for each character. You can power up their defense, attack power, speed, accuracy, and their critical attacks. Each of the characters has a couple of special moves. Usually one for combat, and one out of it. The ones out of combat are for puzzle solving and getting by obstacles. One character can get by certain barriers while another can become invisible while another can pick any lock. You get the idea.  In combat you can use their special abilities which normally mean a special attack and often cost vials of thick blood to use. With the persona of Dan Smith for example, you can press the Y button to load up a vial of thick blood. Loading up three vials turns his bullets into demon shells which can be used to take down a certain type of enemy that can't be otherwise killed. Kaede Smith uses a sniper scope on her gun and pressing Y zooms in the scope. It doesn't cost any vials of blood to use.  The combat can be intense. It's normally very fast and in bursts. It keeps you on your toes. The nature of the enemy types make you have to keep adapting. The controls work perfectly. You won't have any issues of control related death. They're simple to learn and they're very tight and responsive. The streamlined nature of the gameplay works well in my opinion. I'm not missing the wandering. This allows the game to keep a good pace. I'll cover the other aspect they've focused on in the next entry, the story.

Killer 7 - Initial Impression.

I'm heading over to the Gamecube for the next game, Killer 7. The game is being sold as a traditional adventure  being reworked for modern times. The genre has been called digital comic in Japan. They're the style of game where you'd choose a command to move down a hallway or turn east. You'd select a command to look at, or take, or use an item. Combat would normally come in the form of having to use a particular item at a certain time to get by whatever obstacle was in your way. You'd use the fire wand on the ice dragon for example. This is the type of game Capcom has set out to reinvent with modern visuals and gameplay. From my initial playing of the game I can see that they've created a gorgeous looking game. The art style is fantastic. It uses a sparse and very arty cel-shaded art style that helps to create a whacked out acid noir sort of vibe. It's the only way I can describe it. The control is surprisingly intuitive in the initial playing. This is saying a lot for a game that has removed your freedom of exploration in favor of an entirely on rails movement system. I will need to see more of the puzzles to know if they're of the typical Capcom variety. The game sort of goes out of its way right from the start to let you know the game is aimed at adult audiences.  The early going features various curses and a character expresses the concept of being sexually aroused by the act of murder. The game also goes out of its way to let you know that it's going to be one strange ride. We're talking David Lynch and beyond levels here. It's too early to tell if there is actual substance here or if they're being weird just for the sake of being weird. My initial playing has left me greatly intrigued. We'll see how it goes...

Fable - Final Opinion.

There is no possible way for me to finish Fable. I can't stand the game at all. It's one of the worst games I've ever played. Every last thing about it is broken. The combat fails. It's full of cheap bullshit hits and the collision detection is atrocious. The character moves with all the agility of a sedated oaf. The user interface is beyond poorly designed and is so far removed from being intuitive as to be actively working against you. It's no fun to be surfing through a needlessly complex menu chain to find the item you need to use. There are annoying technical issues like all of the NPCs talking over each other as you wander through the villages. It's great fun listening to three of them talk at once. The game reeks of a PC developer trying his hand at console game design and missing the point entirely. Fable was created by Peter Molyneux. He's one of the more renowned PC developers. He created Populous all those years ago which managed to play fine on the Genesis. He hasn't made a game since that's suitable for the consoles. Mr. Molyneux needs to stick to making PC games where this level of crap is tolerated. I personally feel he has no business making console games.

Fable -- Initial Impressions.

I'm finally getting around to playing Fable. It was a game I was interested in when it released in September of 2004 for the Xbox.  I didn't get around to it for a few reasons. I was busy playing other games at the time. It was essentially the kickoff for that holiday season and the must play games flooded out for the next few months. Couple that with some criticisms by key people in comparison to the overwhelming hype the game had been getting and it fell by the wayside.  I forgot about it. I noticed it on store shelves for $19 by summer 2005 and snatched up. I attempted to play it but its strange save system wasn't going to work well with my Xbox's sketchy Thompson drive. I would be risking losing large chunks of effort put into the game. So it remained shelved. Enter the Xbox 360 and its backwards compatibility list. Fable made the list and now I can finally play through the game and test out how well the Xbox 360's backwards compatibility functions. I've spent a few hours messing around and have played through my childhood and teenage years into adulthood where the game proper starts. Your childhood and teenage years offer up the initial setting and act as nothing more than an elaborate training section to familiarize yourself with how the game plays. Fable was sold as an action RPG that will change the direction of the genre forevermore. A game where your every little choice mattered. Where you would have an unprecedented level of freedom. I don't know about any of that at this point. I do know that the game is a mixed bag visually. The game is pretty by Xbox standards. The art style however is weird to me. I don't exactly know why. It's decidedly western in approach. Maybe it will become clear what's off about it to me as I play through the game. The game also relies heavily on British voice actors. That can go either way and it's too early to tell which way it's going to actually go. I haven't gotten a true taste of the combat engine at this point because the time spent thus far has essentially just been on learning the how of it all and not so much the practice of it. What has been presented of the story teases at a potentially dark and mean tale. Hopefully that turns out to be true. We'll see how it goes.

Kameo: Elements of Power -- Final Opinion.

I have completed the story mode of Kameo: Elements of Power. I have one final elemental fruit to find so I can earn the "complete" achievement. I also have to try for the "A rank" achievements in each of the action stages of the game. In earning the A ranks you'll also unlock a wealth of bonus material ranging from alternate character skins to movies on development to new music among other things. The game itself was well worth it and leaves me entirely satisfied with the future potential of the Xbox 360. The graphics are entirely impressive. What is impressive is the number of things on screen, not only just the number of enemies, but the level of particle effects and the like. In the Enchanted Kingdom area of the game it's like effect on effect over effect on display. A couple of the effects go a little too far, but then again they're not going for realism so it's not actually out of place. The music is all high quality orchestration. Not only in composition, but in sound quality. The gameplay is great fun with rock solid control. It's a combination of beat 'em up combat with adventure gameplay. In the adventure elements you search the world for elemental fruit, you interact with the different villagers, and you deal with their issues in small side quests. You're free to go and back and deal with this aspect of the game as you'd like. The rest of the game is in action stages where there aren't any quests to deal with. You're just dealing with the enemies and the obstacles of the level. The how to both the enemies and the obstacles is very puzzle orientated in the same vein of games like Super Metroid and Castlevania. The game features an overworld of sorts called The Badlands. In this section you'll take part in the full on war that is raging between the trolls and everyone else in the world. These sections come off as free for all combat stages.  The game as a whole works wonderfully and the end result is a game that has fun and varied gameplay wrapped up in a next generation effects showcase with amazing audio and perfect control. I'm giving Kameo: Elements of Power an 8.5.

Kameo -- A Horse of a Different Color.

Defining Kameo: Elements of Power isn't very easy. I mean it's clearly in the action genre. But defining it further is where it starts to get tough. Kameo is really a mixture of a little of this and that from a bunch of different genres. You get some action and some adventure, but the game isn't really either of them as a whole. You can't really call it a platformer with Kameo herself the only character having jump and her not using it for anything but to jump up small ledges. There aren't any tricky jumps in that way. You can't call it an adventure with all of the beat 'em up combat. You can't call it a beat 'em up with all the adventure elements in place. In the game you play as Kameo. She has the ability to morph into different elemental warriors. Ten of them in fact.  These warriors grant her new and different powers. She has to use these powers to save the day. You control Kameo with the left analog stick. The right stick controls the camera. The left and right triggers are for actions of your elemental warriors. The A button is for context sensitive actions, confirming menu selections, and morphing back into Kameo from her elemental warrior form. The B, X, and Y buttons are for selecting which warrior to morph into. You can assign a warrior to one of those buttons. Holding down one of the buttons with the left analog stick centered will bring up the elemental wheel.  You just move the left analog stick to the character portrait and release to assign it. It's a quick and easy and most importantly effective system. Rare is famous for great gameplay and storytelling, as well as graphics, sound, and their own humor. They're also a little known for going overboard on item collection. In Donkey Kong 64 for example they put hundreds of colored bananas in each level for the player to collect for each character. They've toned that down considerably for Kameo. You still have a little collection aspect going on though. You can collect hidden runes, elixir of life, elemental fruit, and crystal eyes. Runes act as money and can be collected from enemies or hidden throughout the various areas in things you can smash such as vases and chests and chairs. There are twelve of the elixir of life in the game. The elixir of life will extend your lifebar. There are one-hundred elemental fruit to be acquired. Elemental fruit are used to power up your elemental warriors. There are four crystal eyes. They're trinkets you can equip. You can only equip one at a time and each one has a trade off sort of thing going on. For example if you equip one that ups your life replenishment, it will in turn slow your spirit replenishment. Or if you equip one that raises your defense, it will also lower your attack. The elemental warriors themselves all have various uses. They're used in combat and puzzle solving. If for example Kameo morphs into Pummel Weed, a plant thing with a penchant for boxing, she'll have moves and attacks only that character can perform. The left trigger will be one move, the right trigger will be another move, and left & right trigger together will be a third move. All of the elemental warriors get three base moves.  Some of them get many more. All of the basic moves can be upgraded in the menu with the elemental fruit. Learning a new move can cost anywhere from one to three fruit each. For example, if you press left trigger + right trigger Pummel Weed will go down into the ground and only his spinning flower top will be visible above ground. He can move around and with the push of a button leap out of the ground with a vicious uppercut attack.  But if you upgrade the move set for Pummel Weed, you can add thorns to him so that when he's spinning around underground in that form, the top acts as a buzz saw essentially. Powering him up further adds a tornado effect. That underground move serves as more than just an attack though. In the adventure or action puzzle elements of the game, that moves allows Kameo to get by certain obstacles. For example, if you come across a gate blocking your path, but you notice a space between it and the ground, chances are good you'll be able to go under it using that Pummel Weed move.  If we do the math, and there are three moves for ten elemental warriors then that means we're working with thirty potential means to fight enemies or solve a puzzle. The scope of the game keeps it closer to the level of Castlevania's adventure levels compared with say the excesses of the genre found in Metroid Prime 2. The controls for the game are tight and responsive. The camera behaves itself for the most part. It will throw a little tantrum every once in a while.  It's the traditional 3D camera. Maybe this is the generation they'll actually perfect it. Eh, who am I kidding?

Kameo: Elements of Power -- Initial Impression.

Out with the old, in with the new. Since I was playing Taito Legends and its old arcade titles as the last disc of 2005, it's fitting the first game of 2006 should be from the Xbox 360. Why Kameo: Elements of power? Well, the system doesn't have a mascot title and all system launches should. Kameo is that old style action game updated for the now current next generation consoles. At least I think it is. Actually I'm not entirely sure what Kameo is yet based on the first few hours I've spent messing around with it. I'm not sure of what it's trying to be as far as gameplay goes. I am sure of a couple things though. The game is just pretty. There were a couple next generation now type moments for me. First of all the game opens with what would like good FMV and as you're watching the camera swoop along heading toward a castle under siege from an army of trolls and dragons there is a moment where you realize that it's not FMV at all but the actual realtime game engine. A similar moment is to be had when you're at the start of the second area and the camera pulls back from your character on horseback and pans down a hillside you're facing revealing literally thousands of trolls.  As the camera sweeps along you grasp that they're all real active enemies that you're about to charge into. Before you can even get to "holy shit" you're off crashing through a sea of trolls and there isn't any sign of slowdown, or graphic tearing, or limited draw distance, or anything associated with pushing the hardware at all. It's these little things that are going to represent the next generation of consoles in my opinion. It's not going to be any radical departure in game design. It's just going to be in the living and breathing details. Other things I noticed is just how pretty the game is. It's gorgeous. Of course my console experience tells me that in two or three years, the game will look hideous as all first and second wave titles do for any system as you get into third and fourth waves of the system's life span. The music is Rare's usual great work, but this time seems just to have such an amazing in game sound quality. I'm interested to see just what Kameo turns out to be gameplay wise, but my initial foray into the future tells me said future looks bright.