This weekend I was streaming some music off of my Zune Pass when the Xbox 360 locked up. I rebooted and everything was fine.
Sunday night, while playing Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts, the game froze. Having been a PC gamer long before I got back into console gaming, I knew what a GPU over heat crash looks like – and this was it. Still, all green lights, and a reboot cleared everything. Interestingly neither the Xbox nor the power supply was warm, let alone hot.
Last night, death was here to claim my console. 15 minutes into a game and it froze. Then it froze at the dashboard. Then it froze at the boot screen. Then it lit up 3 of the 4 ring lights, flashing red. That’s it, game over man, game over.
While I wait for my box to ship off the body, I thought I’d share with owners of living 360 consoles some of 2008’s “great games you may have missed.” These are games I had the most fun in this year, but aren’t your blockbuster sequel titles. (For the record, I played those mega titles, and consider these games better).
Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts in short is the type of game Lego should be making. Gameplay is pretty straight forward, you have worlds which have levels and those levels have challenges. Complete the challenges to earn “jiggies” which unlock items and higher levels. You can proceed through the worlds in any order, and skip any challenges that become frustrating. The dialog in the game is well written and pretty funny.
What make Nuts and Bolts great is you can build your own vehicles to use in the challenges (this is where the Lego thing comes it). The vehicle creation is simple yet amazingly diverse in options. Cars, boats, planes, rockets, and combinations there of are all possible. No need to stay conventional either, you can slap a spring on a chair (and yes, there is a challenge where that is a great idea).
I have easily spent more time building vehicles than completing levels, and I’ve completed almost all levels in the game. A great feature included is the ability to pull up the “top 10” Xbox live scores and watch a replay of how they completed the challenge and see their custom vehicle used. A few times I have been completely stuck on a challenge and watching someone else’s replay gave me a new strategy. My 8 year old daughter has no trouble playing this game and building vehicles as well, so this is a great game to encourage creative thinking to solve a problem. (Warning if you are even slightly OCD you will need to have a friend or spouse around to force you to stop playing this game).
Dead Space is a first person shooter, and doesn’t try to be much else. That’s okay, because it is an awesome first person shooter – possibly the thinking man’s first person shooter.
You play an engineer sent out to check on another spaceship that has gone dark. I guess no one has seen a horror movie before, because the ship’s problems are not faulty electronics, but an infestation of aliens killing every one in sight. In fact, if you’ve seen any of the Alien movies you know the setup already.
The thinking part comes in when you are shooting down an alien. First, ammo seems to be few and far between so every round counts. Second, where you shoot the alien is very important. Hit his body, and it may not slow him down much. Take off a leg, and the alien will drag itself to you with it’s arms. Sometimes a bad shot will make things worse too, like ripping open an alien full of parasites – going from having one alien to stop to now having 10.
Dead Space is also well paced; it’s not a constant action game. Instead it embraces an Alfred Hitchcock style of suspense, including parts of the game where nothing happens. Just like a good horror movie, Dead Space get’s you on the edge of your seat before scaring the crap out of you. This is a game that is as much fun to watch as it is to play.
Burnout Paradise is an open world racing game. You drive around in Paradise City, which has both dense downtown areas and wide open farm country, and stop at a light to start a race. There are three basic races to compete in: a race against other drivers, a race to see how many stunts you can pull off in a set time, and a race to see how many other drivers you can run off the road. That last one, causing wrecks, highlights one of the best features in Burnout Paradise – wrecks are spectacular.
When you crash in Burnout Paradise, the game drop into a movie slow motion sequence to show you all the detail of the carnage. There is event a side game where you score points based on how big (how many other cars) a wreck you cause. Now, just in case you have some reservations about these accidents, there are no people in Paradise City (not even drivers) and the wrecks are more “arcade” like than life-like.
The game itself is a great buy, but what is really amazing is the Xbox Live free content available. There are more cars to download, more races, and even motorcycles (though, keeping with the “arcade” feel, there are no slow motion wrecks for bikes). In 2009 there will be even more downloadable content (though it won’t be free) including the ability to drive the General Lee, KITT from Knight Rider, Ecto-1 from Ghostbusters, and the Delorean from Back to the Future. Okay, these won’t be exact replicas but “inspired by” versions, see for yourself though – they hit the mark.
Along with new theme cars, 2009 will see more multiplayer options (multiplayer is already a great experience – just hit up on the D-Pad and you’re in a multiplayer game), toy cars, a few new performance cars, and access to a new island in Paradise City. These are just great reasons to jump back into a game I’ve really enjoyed, and with Burnout Paradise selling now in the $20-$30 range there is really no reason not to pick up this game. (FYI even without all this new downloadable content I would still be recommending this game)
I hope you have fun with these titles, it will be 4-6 weeks before I’ll be able to play anything.
Posted By Mike On Saturday, January 10, 2009
Filed under games xbox |
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