XBox 360 Rally

As if they were inspired by the end of that Red Wings-Ducks game 6 when that dirty bird Niedermayer threw an elbow at my boy Datsyuk during that post-buzzer brawl, EA Sports has announced that the upcoming NHL 10 will feature new first-person fighting physics engine so you too can experience taking some punches from the biggest, baddest guys on skates.

I just have to wonder if the fights will last long enough to pull your opponents jersey over his head…

Fighting is an essential component for anyone trying to truly replicate the heart and soul of hockey. Not only the fight itself, but that which leads up to the fight, and EA is definitely trying to bring it to the newest addition to the NHL franchise. Late checks, sneaky hooks, shoves to the back…everything we love about hockey and NHL 10 will have it, coming September 2009.

EA has added some new physics to NHL 10, including a board physics engine that will allow players to play the boards a bit more. You can trap the puck against the boards, shielding it from your opponent, and then kick-pass it out to one of your players. There are more additions to the franchise.

From the EA press release:

NHL 10 features more than 200 gameplay refinements that replicate the skill and finesse of hockey and deliver the most responsive and authentic action ever for the series. Players can one-time loose pucks, score from their knees, knock pucks out of the air and lift a leg to fake a shot on goal. A new 360° precision passing mechanic delivers control over the speed and direction of passes so players can bank passes off the boards or play the puck into space for teammates to skate on to it. Plus, all-new interactive crowds bring the emotion of playoff hockey to life with towel-waving fans, glass bangers and crowds that react to the action on the ice.

Furthermore, NHL 10 is going for realism in the chase for the Stanley Cup. I’m not sure exactly what that means in the sense of the game, but as I am sitting here writing this between periods of the Wings-Ducks game 7, I can tell you it’s harrowing. Go Wings!

NHL, NHL 10, EA, EA sports, sports, video game, Xbox 360, screenshots, Electronic Arts, new features, hockey

So I was watching the telly last night, when this ad comes on. I didn’t really take notice for a few seconds, until after the cage is broken. I thought to myself, cool. But then, I suspiciously thought to myself, “I bet it’s an ad for the Army.” I may have been wrong twice.

As the ad reveals at the end, it’s a 60-spot for the new X-Men Origins: Wolverine game. If the game looks half as good as this ad, I am very excited to play this. Even if it were an ad for the Army, I’d still be excited to play this.

But then I go to the website, and I see that there is a video about making this “tv campaign.” It is a film crew, wire work and real people. Is this how they made the game? I don’t think so. Which leads me to ask, if they were filming this ad with live actors, then shall I assume that no, the game is not going to look this good?

That is a damn shame. Still, I have to admit Wolverine the game looks pretty good. Even for a film-to-video-game transfer.

I am not really into X-Men. Don’t get me wrong, I liked the movies enough, and I read a comic or two, but the whole mutant thing just never really captured my imagination. I have yet to see the third X-Men film, and I am rather ambivalent towards …Wolverine, the latest film in the franchise. However, as the writer for this site, I am trying to keep an open mind as it pertains to the game.

I am not usually big into games based on movies, and vice versa, but if the ad says anything about the game’s plot, that being an escape leading to ultimate revenge, then I guess I might try to sit down and play it. The ad has me excited for this game being all POV, but if you look at the screenshots below, I don’t think it will be POV-style. Too bad. That would have been killer…to see the fear in the face of your enemy as you slice through their soft fleshy body. Mmm, fleshy.

Ok, I take it all back. The ad makes this game look good. I just wish the game itself did that.

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Ah, I remember the summer of 2006…during a move, my clumsy boyfriend dropped the original Xbox and replaced it with the sleek, pretty Xbox 360. And the first XBOX 360 game that I purchase for the new toy was the highly-anticipated Dead Rising.

Unapologetically a zombie-lover, I was so excited to start smashing zombies and instead I got this boring game where I got points for taking pictures and every time I died I had to start all over again in some basement janitorial services office. I may have spent about four hour total playing the damn game, and perhaps that just wasn’t long enough for me to become infected with Dead Rising fever. I never did, and the stupid game sits on my shelf, waiting for me to even bother trying to to get into it in the future.

So far, no progress in that department. I guess maybe now I am just waiting for Dead Rising 2…

Gotta love that trailer.

Some screenshots from Dead Rising 2 are making the rounds on the web, and as this site is no exception to first-look-fever, let’s take a first look.

This is what the backside of a duo of chainsaws on a stick looks like…

Batter up…

I felt the same way when I was in Vegas…

I’m curious as to whether DR2 will be as boringly-maze-like as the first, or if it can be a little more FPS-style. I think I would prefer the latter, but then again, as I have yet to get through the original DR, I probably shouldn’t offer an opinion. Maybe I’ll wait until I’m stuck in the house, with my two-week supply of rice and pasta, water and jelly bellies to wait out the Swine Flu, er, I mean the H1N1, and then as the world falls apart around me, then it will be the perfect time to expose the conspiracy in that Colorado mall.

Dead Rising, Dead Rising 2, Xbox, Xbox 360, video games, screenshots

How excited I was today, upon opening the mailbox, to see the new Game Informer. And on the cover, BioShock 2.

To save you the trouble of either procuring the magazine or reading the lengthy first look article, I will try my best to summarize what changes we can expect in the highly-anticipated sequel to the somewhat anti-climatic (imo) BioShock.

If you read my review of Bioshock, you may have taken away from that a sense of my disappointment with Bioshock. It’s true, I may have been a bit harsh in comparing it to an actual Ayn Rand novel, and by that I mean to say the game was interminable and repetitious. But for three-quarters of the game I was really digging it. And yes, I had some gripes about some aspects of the game playing experience that I am happy to read are being addressed in the sequel.

First, the character you are is no longer Jack, but a Big Daddy — the first Big Daddy. As a Big Daddy, you now get to wield the power of that gentle giant/marauding monster, including that awesome big drill and the rivet gun.

The game’s designers tell GI that there will be more options for different styles of game play, by choosing certain plasmids and upgrades. I remember playing through BioShock 1, and frankly, by the end, I had way more ADAM and money than I knew what to do with. I blew through all the available plasmids and tonics well before the end, so the benefits of rehabilitating all those little girls were wasted after a while. That, and I found the best results with a trusty shotgun rather than the Cyclone Trap.

BioShock 2 also gives you a new relationship with the aforementioned Little Sisters. As a Big Daddy, these ADAM-wielding sweetie pies trust you and look to you for protection. You are a better Big Daddy with your Little Sister. You can now adopt them, after killing their original Big Daddy. The Little Sister then travels through Rapture with you, and she can harvest ADAM from “angels”. And when she does her work, you have to protect her from all those ADAM-hungry Splicers.

A welcome change in my eyes is the new ability to have both your “weapon” and your “plasmid” locked and loaded. Before you could only have one or the other on hand, which made some battles rather clumsy as you shot an electric bolt before putting you left hand down, raising your right while loading your gun or whatever weapon you needed. Oh, and your Big Daddy gets a flashlight on his helmet. Thank you!

Of course, like all FPS games, you have to have some “boss” fights. And I am not using the word boss as they did in the 80’s, but rather the trend in video games that includes chapters concluding with a battle against a bigger, badder baddie. I never found BioShock’s boss fights difficult, and I think the developers are addressing that, in the form of a major boss character, the Big Sister.

Big Sis (seen on the cover) is the present day (10 years after BioShock’s timeframe) guardian of the ruins of Rapture. Rapture kind of found its own equilibrium in the decade following the Little Sisters’ escape, and it’s all thanks to a Little Sister who decided to return and buff up, complete with a shiny new suit. You start screwing up her equilibrium, and she is going to get pissed off. And when she gets pissed off, she’s coming for you.

There is also going to be a multi-player option added to the game. Oh, and GI had also included the cover art as a promotional poster for BioShock 2. The game is expected to release this fall.

BioShock 2, video game, Game Informer, Rapture, Big Daddy, Little Sister, Ayn Rand

I don’t think it would be much of a stretch for anyone out there to believe that I am a fan of Battlestar Galactica (so say we all). And watching last night’s episode on SciFi HD, I finally watched the trailer for Halo Wars on a big HD screen, and let’s just say…like Wayland Smithers when a new Malibu Stacy comes out…I want it, I want it, I want it, I want it.

Especially after my recent disappointment with a strategy game involving other civilizations…

This ad placement is no surprise, and a good example of putting your ad dollars to work for you. Kind of. I mean, I’m willing to go out on a limb and say that a good percentage of BSG viewers are already hip to the Halo Wars fact. So one could say that those ad dollars are going to waste, and they could instead be targeting people that may not already be aware of and wanting Halo Wars. But then, you could make the case that by putting the ad on during a show that creates such fanaticism is a smart move, taking enthusiasm for one product and trying to connect it with another product that also involves planetary colonization. Either way, copies of Halo Wars will sell and sell well.

Afterall, it is not uncommon for BSG fans to share their love of both BSG and HALO in creative ways. This is from metacafe, and one of their members took Halo footage and added the BSG music. Cute.

Battlestar Halo 3 (edited Trailer) - A funny movie is a click away

Halo Wars, ad, ads, trailers, Battlestar Galactica, SciFi HD, Sci Fi Channel, BSG, video games

When I was 17, I started playing a game called Civilization. The first time I saw the sun rise after an all-nighter, I knew I was hooked. I have met others afflicted with this addiction to strategy games, both turn-based and real-time.

That said, I have yet to try out a turn-based strategy or a Real Time Strategy game out on a next-gen console like the Xbox 360. The problem with RTS games is that for the most part these types of games are war games, like Empire Earth or any number of WWII games. Why are so many RTS games war and military conquest games? I don’t know, they just are, probably because most gamers are dorks that got beat up a lot in high school and they grew up dreaming of some grand scheme of taking over the world to compensate for those feelings of masculine insecurity or maybe they are control freaks like me. Either way, the games are fun, if not tedious after a while. I just wish that would be enough to get me to kick my habit…

So, now that we have established that a lot of RTS/TBS games are war games, you will notice that war games involves many troops and equipment. With a PC RTS game, your keyboard and mouse are your weapons. You’ve got hot keys and menus, and your hand-eye coordination with the mouse is much easier to control precisely than a thumbstick on a console’s controller. And those are just a few reasons that RTS games have had such a slow influx into console games. Console games are mostly better at controlling one character, not whole armies of them…Mostly.

However, with the upcoming release of Halo Wars next week, I am intrigued enough to start exploring games on my Xbox 360 previously best served on a PC. In addition to the hugely popular Halo franchise’s foray into RTS gaming, Stormrise is coming out next month. Oh, yeah, and speaking of the Civ series, Civilization: Revolution for the Xbox 360 just came out a few months ago. There’s the Commander and Conquer series to check out, and well, there are a lot of these RTS games as of late.

My findings on this topic will be revisited in the future. Halo Wars is at the top of my Gamefly Q, and Civ: Rev is at #3.

Xbox 360, RTS, Civilization, Halo Wars, gaming, video games, PC, turned-based strategy, TBS, Stormrise, Civilization: Revolution, Civ

Yeah, that title only makes sense if you sing it to the tune of “Escape (The Pina Colada Song)“. And what’s the deal with that song anyway? A married couple each discover that the other wants to cheat because they are bored. It seems like such an upbeat song, but I just hope those two don’t have kids.

Whew, where was I? Oh, yeah, if you are a fan of flight combat games, you may want to get your ol’ 360 fired up around 5am EST/2am PST tonight/this morning (Feb. 11). The demo for Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. is being released for Xbox Live Gold members. Those goldies, they get everything first…

Personally, I’m not into flight simulator games, but checking out a demo is always fun. And who knows, I might just like it enough to play the real thing when it comes out on March 6th. I doubt it, because there are like a million other games I’m sure I’d rather play, but you never know.

The demo is Xbox 360 exclusive…for one day. The HAWX demo is available on PSN February 12th.

The demo includes two missions. One’s a training mission, appropriately enough. The second involves shooting planes down over Rio de Janeiro. You can even play co-op for 4 people, if you happen to have three friends.

The full game will include 17 missions, and if you are not great at flight sims, you may be in luck. Supposedly, Tom Clancy’s HAWX has training-wheels for those that are not thumb-joystick-capable. Some guy who wrote a pre-review of HAWX last summer mentioned that the game is more combat-centric, rather than flight simulator-oriented, which could be good or bad depending on how you like your flying airplane games.

And to leave you on a “ah, precious” note today…

Tom Clancy’s HAWX, HAWX, Tom Clancy, Xbox, Xbox360, 360, video game, demo, Xbox Live, exclusive, flight simulator, air combat, planes, Rio de Janeiro, co-op, hello kitty

No, unfortunately, I do not have first-hand info on this, as I am just a little Xbox writer and get no respect or love from any of the game houses so that I might be lucky enough to get my hands on something as cool as a preview run of GTAIV. But Gamspot did…

Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned is going to be an Xbox 360 exclusive expansion pack for what some people are saying is the best game of 2008, um, Grand Theft Auto IV. GTAIV’s creator, Rockstar Games, says it’s a new game rather than simply an expansion pack. An exec for Rockstar says the game contains up to 20 hours of playtime. And we all love playtime, right?

The skinny

GTAIV: The Lost and Damned is coming February 17 and only to the Xbox 360. It’s still placed in Liberty City, but instead of GTAIV protag Niko being the star of the show, you get to play biker Johnny Klebitz and you are in a motorcycle gang. Neat. The storyline runs parallel to Nico’s, and Niko will appear as a supporting character from time to time.

Obviously, you must already own the Grand Theft Auto IV disk in order to be able to download the new “chapter” in Liberty City.

To check out Gamespot’s preview of Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned, you can either go to their site or just click here.

Rumor has it that Rockstar will be releasing another chapter for the Xbox 360 later this year, but mum’s the word so far.

Grand Theft Auto IV, Grand Theft Auto, Liberty City, The Lost and Damned, Niko, Johnny Klebitz, Gamespot, Rockstar Games, Rockstar, video games