XBox 360 Rally

Today brings to a close one of the greatest cock tease demo of them all, the Halo 3 Beta. Now with my cousin out of town, I was able to nab his 360 and hook up my hard drive to get some more game time in (see: Red Ring of Death). Though I didn’t get to play the full time the beta was available, I actually feel I got to play enough of it, didn’t touch custom games, but I was already getting sick of playing the same levels over and over, good levels mind you, just annoying after a while.

Well, since I still had this working 360 over this weekend, I did manage to nab the new demo’s available. I can’t lie, I am very impressed so far. Check the rest of this entry for my thoughts on the new stuff.

As I thought, Overlord was a reincarnation of Pikmin, with a whole new look and feel, add to that a touch of twisted humor. It is great, and a “must buy” the day it comes out. I cannot recommend getting this demo enough, as well as making sure you all understand, it will have multiplayer too! From day one I have been shouting from the highest mountains how kick ass this game is, still, I love how other sites have been heaping much praise on it now that the demo is out (see: YouNEWB, Destructoid, Xbox360Fanboy, Kotaku, and even hitting Ars Technica).

Next up, Shadowrun. I know JW didn’t seem to have much fun with it (see his entry here), I can see where he might not be pleased with it. Since I had no previous experience with the SNES version, I came into it with a clean slate, my only real qualm with it, which I noticed pretty quickly, was how bad the graphics were. I don’t know, I expected this game which was going to be cross platform of PC/360 to look a tad nicer (ie, just a step up from Far Cry Instincts graphics, which is just a step up from Turok on N64). However, this didn’t stop me from enjoying a couple of things that I didn’t expect I would enjoy so much, the teleporting and gliding features. After doing the training (okay, just the first part of training, I got antsy and jumped into multiplayer), I was sold right away on renting this game. Buying, I don’t know about that, I do already have enough FPS in my life, however, maybe after checking out the different classes of characters, other abilities, weapons, and maps, I could possibly think about buying this game, but for now, its a definite rent at the least. (JW, give it another chance!)

Tenchu Z. The inspiration for the image I used for this entry. Well, I feel pity for this game. With working an 11 hour shift yesterday, and another nice weekend day of work today, I haven’t really had the time to fully check this game out. I killed a guy, fell into something that made my character smelly, then jumped in the water to get the smell off. After the smell didn’t get off, I got pissed and I quickly went back to the main menu to enjoy the Halo 3 Beta again I will try this demo again sometime this week.

Honorable mention: Pac-Man Championship Edition. Played it for a minute, already liked it more than the original, or at the least, give it much credit for taking the cool original and classic game, and make it a game that puts itself on par with other non-classic XBLA games, such as Geometry Wars. If I had extra points right now, I would highly consider getting this title.
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Xbox Live Marketplace, Xbox 360, Halo 3 Beta, Overlord, Shadowrun, Tenchu Z, Smell O Meter, Pac-Man, Pac-Man Championship Edition, Demos