Xbox Living

We’re about to bid 2008 farewell, so it’s natural to take a look back at what’s happened in the past year.  In the Xbox 360 world, the year was heavily weighted towards the last few months, with only a few notable titles showing up before the summer.

This is my personal top-5 list of Xbox 360 games.  It is by no means objective; I’m not going to create one based on reviews or sales numbers.  Naturally, I’m sure many will disagree with my placements, but these are the games that I’ve had the most fun with this year.

5. Mirror’s Edge

I wrote a review of Mirror’s Edge on this blog, and my biggest complaint was that it was too short.  Mirror’s Edge brings a new take on the first-person video game, actually cutting the violence down to a minimum.  The game brings bright visuals and an upbeat soundtrack to a world dominated by the likes of Gears of War and Fallout.  This alone is as refreshing as the new gameplay.  Because of its apparent insignificance and brievity, I wasn’t sure if Mirror’s Edge should be in my top five… but I just had to count it in.  It’s just plain delightful.

4. Gears of War 2

Gears of War 2 brought the blockbuster series from Epic and Microsoft back in a big way.  Gears 2 had huge sales numbers and quickly climbed the charts.

I have to say, I don’t care for Gears multiplayer.  I’ve played a number of rounds in both titles, and it’s sometimes fun, but it’s not my style.  I had much more fun with the campaign, which was a huge improvement over the storyline in the first Gears of War.  I’m not likely to play online much beyond the story, but the campaign is enough to earn Gears of War 2 my #4 spot.

3. Fable II

The first Fable suffered from a huge amount of hype and failed to deliver on its promises.  Fable II, however, delivers a more polished RPG.  I enjoyed just about every moment of this game and I’m hoping for more in the upcoming DLC.  With an epic storyline, free exploration and side quests, and with a healthy dose of comedy, Fable II comes in at #3.

2. Fallout 3

I’ve not yet played Fallout 3 in its entirety yet — it’s a long game and a busy year-end has kept me from it.  But from what I’ve played, I’m certain it deserves its spot.  I’m a fan of Bethesda, especially their The Elder Scrolls series.  Fallout 3 takes their western RPG style and revitalizes the Fallout universe.  The game can please the Oblivion and Gears of War fans alike.

1. Battlefield: Bad Company

Battlefield: Bad Company is my favourite game right now.  It’s not nearly as popular as it should be, in my opinion.  As much as I enjoy the ever-popular multiplayer in Call of Duty and Halo games (and respect the popularity of Gears), Battlefield is the series that keeps me coming back for more.

Back in May, I was a bit hesitant about Bad Company at first.  The game lacked Battlefield’s defining Conquest game mode, and brought in some changes that I wasn’t too sure about.  Despite this, I loved it when it came out, and since then EA’s DICE studio has made good on it promises of Conquest and new maps.  The campaign is fun, too, but Battlefield is all about multiplayer.  I continue to play Battlefield regularly (I played it today!), and probably will until they release another one.  BF:BC gets my #1, if only because it’s brought me countless hours of entertainment throughout 2008 — way more than any other game.

Notable mentions include Left 4 Dead, CoD: World at War and Guitar Hero: World Tour.  The Last Remnant may make my list shortly, since I’m a big Square Enix fan, but I haven’t had a chance to play it yet!

I’ve seen a few of these 2008 Top Games lists already, and Grand Theft Auto IV has been at the top of a lot of them.  I enjoyed playing with GTA IV for a little while, but I wasn’t impressed.  Feel free to argue me on this, but I got bored of it pretty quickly.

So that’s my list!  To kick off the new year, I’ll have a list of games to watch for in 2009, but first, let’s hear your top games of 2008!

A little while ago, I told you to keep an eye out for the parkour-inspired title Mirror’s Edge.  DICE, the EA studio behind Battlefield: Bad Company, put out this little gem earlier this month.

Mirror’s Edge takes place in a near-future city where the government is in total control of all communication and freedom is at a low.  You play the game as Faith, a runner who’s job is to move information through alleyways and across rooftops. The police have left runners alone, up until now. Things are changing, and Faith is getting pulled into the mix.

The game is mostly about running, jumping and swinging your way across the rooftops of the city.  There are colour-coded objects all over the place which can be used to leap or hang off of as you navigate your way through the city.  It’s like parkour, but at speeds and heights usually reserved for superheroes.  The game is entirely in first-person and lacks any heads-up display (HUD) aside from a small reticle to prevent players from getting motion sickness.

There’s a small shooter element, as well, but it’s mostly about avoiding the police rather than gunning them down.  You’ll earn an extra achievement if you can go through the game without shooting anyone.

The game is much more linear than I was expecting.  The levels are laid out as set courses, with only minor variations in the routes. The game does a decent job of fooling you in this regard, as you’re moving fast enough that you don’t really notice the restraints.  But it’s definitely noticable that you’re being herded along.  This was a bit disappointing.  Although I can certainly see the point of this, I was hoping for a little more free-roaming of the rooftops, like we experienced with Crackdown in 2007.

If you’re starting to get bummed out this holiday season from the depressing settings of Fallout 3, Gears of War 2 and Left 4 Dead, it might be a good idea to take a run through Mirror’s Edge.  Although its dystopian city isn’t exactly a land of merriment and glee, it’s quite a bit brighter than the war-torn, post-apocalyptic worlds in the other big titles this year.  The bright, sterile environments certainly provide a bit of eye candy while you play.  The game’s soundtrack also fits the mood.

If you’re one to throw your controller at your screen in a fit of rage, however, you might want to pass on Mirror’s Edge.  Most of the game is fairly easy, but there are a few areas where I started to get frustrated.  Some long jumps are a challenge, and repeating them over and over until you succeed can be a pain.  It can also be annoying to get past a difficult jump

Mirror’s Edge is a pretty quick playthorough.  The nine levels of the campaign fly by as you run through them.  The replay value comes in when you complete the courses again, either searching for hidden items that you missed, or completing the game’s time trials.  If you’re a fan of time trials, you may enjoy the game enough to buy it — but if you’re like me and you lose interest after completing each level once, this one’s better left rented.

In short, Mirror’s Edge is a nice change of pace, both in terms of the gameplay’s style and the bright atmosphere of the setting.  It loses points for being a little too linear, and altogether brief.  I really enjoyed this game, but I was done with it after a couple of days.  I could see some playing it over and over, but myself, I would need new levels.

If you choose to buy it, it’s available from Amazon:

79%

I’ve been spending the last little while playing Fable II, and not keeping up with my blogging.  This is a very immersive game, so I thought it’s about time I put together my review of it.  I’m not quite done with the game yet, but I’ve spent enough time in it to write a complete review, I think.  Once I finish the story I’ll add any comments if I think the review needs revision.  So, here’s Fable II — an action-RPG that’s loads of fun, but not without its flaws.

First, the most enjoyable part about Fable II: interacting with the AI.  The characters in Fable are actually pretty impressive.  Although they may become predictable after hours of play, the game is very dynamic in the way you interact with people in town.  To communicate with them, you have a wide range of expressions at your disposal. These actions give you some control over how people feel about you.  Everyone has different views about you, whether they love or hate you, whether they find you scary or funny, and whether they find you attractive or ugly.  The impact of each of these three scales is different, and they’re independant from each other.  This makes the game more dynamic as you interact with the townsfolk.

You can get married, have children and/or hook up with anonymous strangers.  You can have a seperate spouse and family in each town, if you so desire.  You can purchase shops and houses, charge rent and collect profits.  You can become a corrupt landlord by raising rent fees, or give everyone a break by cutting them down.  The choices here effect how everyone feels about you.

You can customize your character in terms of appearance: hari styles, clothing, beards and makeup can all be chosen.  Unlike the first Fable, you can choose to be male or female.  Of course, your character changes as time goes on and you make choices.  Purity will maintain your youthful look, while evil acts will lend you a much more sinister appearance.  But even the pure may find themselves changing in appearance as they become more infused with will (magic).  Eating and drinking will also cause you to fatten up.

The game promises freedom, without an obvious line to follow.  This is misleading.  While you’re not forced to do exactly what they want at all times, the storyline is very linear.  (You can tell, because the game draws a line on the ground showing you where to go.)  Fable II is often compared to The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, but Oblivion has far more freedom.  Unlike Oblivion, Fable II’s world map is divided into distinct zones, more like an MMO than Oblivion’s large open environment.   Many places are blocked off early in the game, so you don’t have the ability to explore all of the towns and fields until much later in the game.

Fable II doesn’t present much difficulty.  It’s very easy to level up and learn new abilities.  You can even level up without fighting at all, by purchasing potions that give experience points, although that’s a little inefficient.  Defeat has little consequence either, as being knocked out only causes you to lose any experience orbs that are lying on the ground (think Kingdom Hearts style), and you’re revived instantly.

The load times are a little annoying, especially if you’re in a hurry, but the game has such rich environments that I’m willing to forgive it.  It’s worth the wait, we’ll say.

The magic system is a bit awkward.  You have tiers of spells, and as you charge your magic (or will, as they say) you release it at a stage of your choosing.  You can assign spells to each stage so that different spells are used depending on how long you charge for, but you can’t have more than one spell on each stage at a time.  There’s no MP/mana level to watch for, but the spell casting isn’t always quick.  In cases where your weapon is drawn, there can be a delay to put your weapon away and cast a spell.  Attacks won’t interrupt a spell, but you can take quite a bit of damage while you try and charge up a higher-level one.

Finally, co-op is nice but leaves something to be desired.  The co-op is a little like the LEGO Star Wars games — you can join your Xbox Live friends’ game and help out, but you’re very restricted in it.  It’s not the type of game you want to play entirely in co-op mode, because one guy’s going to have all the fun.

I’m a big RPG fan but the average gamer should have a good time with Fable II.  Although there’s certainly some room for improvement, the immersive and addictive gameplay will give you hours of entertainment.  If you can get over, or ignore, the game’s few bugs and difficulties, there’s plenty of fun in exploring its more charming facets.

Hopefully I can wrap this up and move on to Fallout 3, lest the Call of Duty: World at War beta distract me!  So much to play, so little time.

Score: 86%

If you had told the developers who started work on Too Human that their game would be released for the Xbox 360, they may have said, “…the what?”

That’s because it was sometime in 1998 and the original Xbox hadn’t even been announced yet.  Too Human was originally planned for the Sony PlayStation.  Since then, the game has been on a roller coaster ride as its developer, Silicon Knights, tried to get it released.  In 2000, Nintendo partnered with Silicon Knights and the project was moved to the GameCube.  Silicon Knights’ attention shifted to other games, though, and it wasn’t until 2005 that Too Human resurfaced with hope of release.  The game was now being developed again.  In fact, Microsoft had comissioned Silicon Knights to create a trilogy of the games.

So with hype dating back to 1999’s E3 convention, expectations for Too Human were obviously high.  The promise of an action-adventure game with RPG elements, with a cyberpunk story based on Norse mythology?  Sounds very cool… in that geeky sort of way.

And indeed, Too Human is fun, but not quite as I was expecting.  It’s mindless, hack-and-slash fun.

The gameplay essentially consists of jumping or sliding from enemy to enemy, slashing them to bits.  You do so by rotating right analog stick around to move your character from enemy to enemy.  You may be fighting anywhere from 10 to 40 or more enemies at a time.  You have a few other moves at your disposal, allowing you deliver damage around you, release a machine to damage or disable enemies, power up your attacks or release some automated weapons to fly around and attack things.

The controls are clumsy, at best.  It’s difficult to precisely control where you want Baldur to go, which enemy to attack and, with larger enemies, where to attack them. The boss fights seem futile and senseless, as an enemy charges at you and delivers a flurry of attacks.  Ranged attacks are hopelessly weak and evading attacks is a challenge.

The cameras were equally frustrating.  As you progress through a level, the camera angle changes as you turn corners or cross bridges.  While this gives a cinematic feel to the game, it can be a bit frustrating when you’re trying to look in a specific direction.

Playing Too Human, I constantly got the feeling that I was missing something — that I didn’t understand how to play it.  Frequent deaths and no obvious strategy left me feeling like I was either really bad at the game, or the game was really bad for me.

Fortunately, dying has little consequence.  Aside from depreciating your armour, which can easily be replaced, all dying only costs you about 20-30 seconds.  The biggest motivation to stay alive is to avoid the death cutscene, in which a Valkyrie descends, picks up your body, and carries you off to Valhalla (which seems odd, since you don’t end up there.)  There’s an achievement for dying 100 times, which I did earn before completing my first playthrough.

The game is relatively brief.  It only consists of four levels, though each may take 2-3 hours to complete, and there is some running around involved in between levels.  You are encouraged to play multiple times, since there are various classes available to play, and achievements that can be earned by leveling each up and completing the game at least twice.

As for RPG elements, what Too Human brings to the table is the sort of classes and character customization elements that RPGs have.  You collect, buy, sell, craft and wear weapons and armour, you level up your character as you play, assigning skill points to abilities as you go.  But really, these are the more tedious aspects of RPGs.  I was expecting, given the subject matter and the game’s claimed RPG feel, a deeper, more immersive storyline.  (I suppose I was expecting something more like Bioshock.)

Instead, the game borrows names and general characters from those Germanic stories, but puts them in a simplified setting.  The game follows the story of Baldur, one of the Aesir, or gods.  These gods are essentially cybernetically-enhanced humans, walking along ordinary, mortal humans in their quest to protect them and restore the Earth to its original, natural beauty.  The game’s main antagonist is to be Loki, although his role as an actual enemy is limited.  Silicon Knights appears to be saving him for one of the game’s sequels.  The mythology is obviously changed, as the Scandinavian people did not envision their gods as cybernatically enhanced.  The game’s name refers to Baldur, whose enhancements are less involved than those of the other gods, making him “too human”.

Too Human uses the Unreal Engine 3, so it has graphics about on par with many familiar games.  The game is visually appealing, aside from the looks of some corpses and a few gloomy locales.  There’s not much to say about the graphics: they’re nice, but not exceptional.

I can’t help but to feel like Too Human could have been a lot better.  I’m a little hard on the game here, but since the game was envisioned 10 years ago, I feel like it should have been a little more polished.  (I also expected more from a Canadian studio.) But I did complete it, and I enjoyed it.  I will probably also play the next game in the planned trilogy — hopefully they’ll have improved the combat system and the story will get a little deeper.

Score: 71%

This list is out-dated, and is only for the 2008 holiday season. To see a more current and complete list, see our full Xbox 360 Release Schedule.

There are so many games coming up between now and the holidays, it’s a little tough to keep track. I thought I’d compile a quick release calendar to show the schedule for the rest of the year. This isn’t 100% complete, but it includes all the major games.

Game	North America	Europe	Preorder (Amazon)
October
FIFA 09	October 14	October 3
Saints Row 2	October 14	October 17
Far Cry 2	October 21	October 24
Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon	October 21	November 14
Spider-man: Web of Shadows	October 21
Guitar Hero World Tour	October 26	November 7
Fable II	Ocboter 21	October 24
Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3	October 28
Fallout 3	October 28	October 31
November
Tom Clancy’s EndWar	November 4	November 7
Quantum of Solace	November 4	October 31
Gears of War 2	November 7
WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2009	November 9	November 7
Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe	November 10	TBA
Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts	November 11	November 14
Call of Duty: World at War	November 11	November 14
Mirror’s Edge	November 11	November 14
Pro Evolution Soccer 2009	November 12	October 17
Tomb Raider: Underworld	November 18	November 21
Need for Speed: Undercover	November 18	November 21
Sonic Unleashed	November 18	November (TBA)
Left 4 Dead	November 19	November 21
The Last Remnant	November 20
The Lord of the Rings: Conquest	November 24
December
Prince of Persia	December 2	December 4

It’s a busy holiday release schedule, to be sure. Let me know if you think I’ve left out anything worth mentioning.

Fallout 3 and Mirror’s Edge are the ones I’m most interested in, although I’ll probably play Call of Duty: World at War, Gears of War 2 and some others as well.  Which games are you looking forward to this Fall/Winter?

UPDATE: I’ll now be maintaining an Xbox 360 Release Calendar, so that new page for updates on Xbox 360 release dates and releases beyond 2008.

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’ll know I’m a huge fan of the Battlefield games.  Battlefield 2: Modern Combat was one of the first games I got for my Xbox 360, and I’ve spent countless hours on it.

So when Battlefield: Bad Company came around, I was very interested.  My first look at the game had me concerned, though — more focus on single player and more close-combat situations made me fear that EA DICE was making another Call of Duty type game.  Those are fun, but they’re not Battlefield.

When I got to try out the multiplayer beta, and later the demo, my concerns were eased — somewhat.  The classic Battlefield elements where there: large maps (for a console, at least), vehicles, weapon kits, mortar strikes, mines, etc.  Strategy continues to be very important, rather than just running around shooting everything that moves.  Teamwork has always been essential to Battlefield and Bad Company makes it work.

But the multiplayer only has one game mode: Gold Rush.  Essentially, one team must defend some crates of gold, and the other team must destroy them.  (Why they destroy them rather than stealing them, I’m not sure, but that’s the game.)  Fun, for sure — but what about conquest?  Conquest is the main game mode in most Battlefield titles since the beginning and it’s noticably absent from Bad Company.

But not for (too) long.  Due to heavy demand ever since the beta, EA has promised that they will be delivering conquest mode in an upcoming update.  I’m not too sure when we can expect the update, but it’s coming.

Bad Company pays a lot more attention to the single player campaign.  The campaign is comparable to those in the Call of Duty series and other big-name FPS titles, but makes use of the large areas and different weapons/equipment that are the signature of the Battlefield series.  Story, clever dialogue and some pretty good voice acting certainly make it more enjoyable.

But Battlefield is still about the multiplayer.  One of the most noticable additions, especially for those who played BF2: Modern Combat on the Xbox 360, is the system of squads.  Unlike most games in which a exists as a single whole, BF2 teams are divided into squads of 3-4 people.  It’s your squad who you communicate with over voice, meaning that you have to work in smaller groups to work effectively as a team.  You also have the option to spawn with your squad when they’re out in the battlefield.  If nobody is alive in your squad, you’re stuck spawning back at your base.

The squad system changes the gameplay dynamics.  The ability to spawn with your squad cuts down on travel time — since big maps mean either lots of walking or reliance on vehicles to get around quickly.  It also gives you the opportunity to spring into action and help out a squad member in trouble.  On the other side, you can (and will) find yourself spawning in the path of bullets, with little or no opportunity to find safety.

The squad system also limits communication.  While it’s usually better to work in small groups and avoid too much chatter in your ear, you also have no way to communicate with other members of your team if needed.  I tend to play the Support class more than others, and I often find myself wishing I could tell an injured teammate to slow down for a medkit or to warn someone about an incoming mortar strike.  (I’ve killed too many team members when they ran into my mortar strikes — had I been able to say “wait, don’t run in there”, I might have better reputation levels.

Despite a few flaws, BF:BC is an incredibly fun — and highly addictive — game to play.  If you’re a fan of FPS titles, try out Battlefield: Bad Company.
[Get it from Amazon.com, Amazon.ca or Amazon.co.uk.]

Score: 91%