When I saw on Wednesday there was a FPS demo out I immediately downloaded it because I was looking for something new to play. After playing the Hour of Victory demo yesterday I just hope the demo is a very early build of the game because it sucked. Before I get to the suckyness there were a few things I liked. First, they give you three characters to play with; each of which has their own unique strengths. Second, one of these characters gets to drive a tank. Tanks are always a plus! OK, that is about it on the good parts now to the bad.

The reason I think this could be an early build is because the graphics are terrible. If this had been a game for the original Xbox the graphics would still have been iffy. Even my wife made a comment about how bad the game looked when she saw me playing it. The other reason is because the controls feel very clunky. Not sure how else to describe them. When I would move or shoot I felt like I was a robot moving. When I was trying to snipe I would zoom in and then it would turn so slowly that I could not keep the enemies anywhere near my sites, but when I was not zoomed in I could turn 10 times faster. I found it easier to just use the sniper without zooming.

I could probably stop right there since graphics and controls are two main gameplay elements, but there was a third area I found annoying. They give you three characters to play with a strong machine gun carrying guy, a sniper, and a cover ops guy. Each of these guys has a special thing they can do. The cover ops can pick door locks and cut fences. The sniper can throw a grappling hook and climb buildings. I never did figure out what the other guy could do. However, instead of letting me pick any door’s lock or climb any building they only let you perform those actions in pre-specified spots. I only found one place to actually climb and snipe from and when I got up to the top there were no enemies anywhere that within my view to shoot at. With the covert ops guy I never did find any doors that I could pick the lock on. I did find some fences to cut through, but after I did there was never any real benefit from doing so. It felt very much like these additional attributes were added on and then they went back through and added a few spots where you could use the on the map to try and trick you into playing through the game with each character.

Unless this game gets a major overhaul I’d stay away from it. There are plenty of other WWII First Person Shooters out there that are a lot better than this.

I got the July edition of Official Xbox Magazine yesterday. I got a chance to check out the demo disc today and I’m really starting to get annoyed with OXM. There are only two game demos on the disc and they are Monster Madness and Armored Core 4.

The Monster Madness demo has been out on the Marketplace for a month and a half and it still sucks. The Armored Core 4 demo has also been out for a while now. It was pretty fun the first time around, but not enough that I’d play the demo again.There are a couple decent videos on the disc about Eternal Sonata and My Beautiful Katamari. If you are intersted in either game the the videos were pretty good.

The disc also has demos for four Xbox Live Arcade games: 3D Ultra Mini Gold Adventures, Boom Boom Rocket, Gyruss, and Pinball FX. Again, I suspect there are here for those who do not have broadband access and can;t get on Xbox Live to try them, but since I’ve already tried them I did not care to play the trial versions again.

The only decent thing about the July Demo Disc was that it had an unlockable gamer pics from Kamatari. If you are into that game then you can now have a gamer picture that reflects that.

We’re in the third month of grading Xbox Live Arcade and so far we’ve seen it climb from a C in March to an A in April. Today we’ll take a look and see it it could keep up the score for May. The three areas of scoring are in game release frequency, pricing, and original content.

Game Releases
There were 8 games released in 5 Wednesdays in May. Not to bad. The games released were Catan, Centipede/Millipede, Double Dragon, Soltrio Solitaire, Aegis Wing, Xevious, Rush’n Attack, and Mad Tracks. Additionally, Centipede/Millipede was actually two games in one download. Of course they are virtually identical to each other, but still technically 2 games. So, I’m going with an 8 out of 5 in this category for May.

Pricing
The pricing was pretty standard with month with remakes and retro titles selling for $5 and original titles selling for $10. That is except for Aegis Wing which was released for free. I’m not sure how Microsoft let a free game slip through then they could have easily charged for it, but I’m not going to complain because I like free stuff especially when it is a quality product. Out off all the games released this month only two were any good. Catan and Aegis Wing were excellent. I know that Double Dragon fans are pretty happy with getting it for $5, and a lot of folks seem to like Mad Tracks for some unknown reason. I’m not sure why thought when with the add on packs it will cost over $18. So, that is 4 games decently priced. On the other hand $10 for solitaire? What?! This strange grouping of poorly priced and free games evens out to get a score of 4 out of 8.

Retro Games
Four of the eight games released in May are retro titles that were brought over to the Xbox Live Arcade. Additionally, solitaire is available about 1000 other places as well. However, since I’m still so excited about Catan and Aegis Wing I’ll let is slide and give this category a 4 out or 8 as well.

Overall
So that brings the overall score to a 16 out of 21. Back to the C range. Apparently someone thought their good April goodness would carry over through May, but they thought wrong. Xbox Live Arcade Team, please, look back at April and take notes on what went right. Then, repeat it. Cut down the retro titles and help get more original content for us.

Well, someone on the development team for Mad Tracks is a big fan of Mario Kart because they are very similar. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have the nice balance of weapons that Mario Kart has. I had heard good things about Mad Tracks before it was released on a couple podcasts I listen to so I had thought about buying the game without trying the trial first. I’m glad I did not because that would have been a waste of $10.

The game comes with 15 single player events and a pretty decent multiplayer offering. If the actual racing was fun it might be worth the cost since it looks pretty good graphically. But, the racing is pain. Instead of having the normal racing style where you pull the right trigger to go and left to brake they have added a power spring. As you hold down the accelerator the spring slowly drains. When it reaches the bottom you’re basically out of power and have to release the accelerator to get it back. Ideally you would release the gas during jumps and going down hill to get your power level back up, but in my experience there are not enough places to get your power back. I was regularly running out of juice at the bottom of big uphill climbs. At first I thought it was just that I was not use to the system so I replayed a couple races to try and get the hang of it and I still was having the same issue. Maybe someone can explain to me how this is suppose to work and I’ll give it another try, but as it is right now I don’t plan to try the game again let alone purchase it.

Additionally, there are 9 offensive attacks and 3 defensive (assuming you count an oil slick as defensive). This is great if you are always racing from behind because it is a lot easier to attack than it is to defend. On the other hand once you get the lead it is very hard to keep it. I’d suspect that most racers prefer to race from the lead (seriously, who doesn’t?) so this makes it very frustrating.

For those of you who do buy Mad Tracks keep in mind that they are planning on releasing 2 packs of DLC that will each add another 15 events for the cost or $4.37 each. That brings the total cost for the game up to $18.74. If they had charged $5 for the game then I could see charging an additional $3 or $4 for the add on packs, but at this price it is just ridiculously expensive for an Xbox Live Arcade game. Since they announced that these DLC packs were coming before the game was released it feels like they intentionally withheld parts of the game so they can sell them as add on packs to make more money. That is just annoying.

If you’re into kart style racers and you can get use to the strange acceleration system Mad Tracks is probably just what you’re looking for. For the rest of us save your money and hope for a better game next week.

Even though games based on movies generally suck I decided to give the Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End Demo a try last night. To start off with the level is longer than I expected in a demo. It was a pretty respectable length. I think I played it somewhere around 15 or 20 minutes. The graphics are better than what I expected for a movie based game. The characters actually look like the actors from the game for the most part. Captain Jack actually looks like Johnny Depp.

Beyond those two points everything else was pretty lousy. I’m not sure if they got the actual actors to play their voices , but I’m guessing not because the voice acting was terrible. At points the voices sound great, but at others it sounds really bad. The controls for the game were pretty lame. Basically the A button is your sword attack, the X button punches, and the Y button grapples. Beyond these attacking controls you can pickup and throw items with the RB. However, everything seems a little flaky. The Y button also doubles as the dodge button when you are being attacked, but if you are not facing the person who is about to take a swing at you then you grapple the closes person instead and get hit in the back. They make is easy to see when someone is about to attack by putting a ring under their feet that glows, but I found it easier to just run away than to try and actually dodge their attacks. The other control thing I found annoying is that when someone gets close enough to attack you move slower because it goes to “melee mode”, but other than moving slower nothing else changes in melee mode. I don’t see the need to move slower when you’re trying to fight.

Since they can’t just have you run through the level and kill everything they also add some “puzzle” elements. These come off really lame. In one spot you have to shoot three shields off the wall to expose a switch to open a door. In another spot you have to move an exploding barrel to the front of the door and then blow it up. All of these little “puzzles” seem like they were added on just to make the game take longer to play. After getting through most of the demo you come to the final boss which puts you in duel mode. I found dual mode to be even easier than the rest of the fighting. Basically, you have to watch your opponent and do what they do until you fill a power meter and then you can attack. After about two attacks they are dead. I was surprised how fast and easy the boss battle was. The final complaint that I have is that even for a tutorial level they still interrupt the game way to much for my tastes. Ever time they want you to do something specific they pause the game and tell you how to do it even if you just did the same thing in the previous room. Overall the game is what I expected, a crappy game that was throw together to make money off of the Pirates of the Caribbean title.

I know I just posted about a flash based tower defense games, but that was before I found Onslaught. Onslaught is another tower defense game, but with a great twist. Once you level up your towers they can work together to form combo attacks. There are 13 different combinations you can form using 3 to 5 different towers. Additionally, beyond the 3 main tower types there are also 3 modifier towers and 3 exchange towers. These towers don’t attack, but instead effect the range, damage, and firing frequency of the other towers. With 8 different maps to choose from there are plenty of strategies to test out with all of the tower combinations and map layouts. So far my high score is 149,979,280 which seems like a lot until you see the high score charts. Some of the guys on there have over 400,000,000. I do like that there is an overall high score chart as well as high scores for each map. Unlike a lot of tower defense games I’ve tried this one has decent graphics, for a flash game, and a nice set of keyboard shortcuts. Overall this is a great Tower Defense game.

There is also Onslaught 2 that is still in the process of being created, but it looks like it has a lot of potential because it adds a 4th type of tower and more combo attacks. It has a lot of potential and I look forward to seeing it completed.

Flash Element TD
I don’t know quite what it is about tower defense games, but they are a lot of fun. I took a look at a couple of them so far, but Flash Element TD is quickly becoming one of my favorites. With 7 different tower types and a nice range of upgrades the game is pretty fun. One of the aspects that I really like about it is that if any of the attacking enemies make it through the level instead of just loosing a life you also loose the value they were worth in gold, but then they come back through again so you get the chance to get your gold back. So far I’ve made it up to level 38 but not with enough gold left to make it into the top 200 scoreboard. The best I’ve done is to finish with 16,639 putting me in 201th place with 50 lives left. So far my strategy has been to get Fire Towers and upgrade them, but I’m going to need to work out a better strategy I think.

Flash Circle TD
Flash Circle TD is a little different that other tower defense games I’ve played. Instead of loosing a life when an enemy is not killed the enemies just keep circling the tower. Every 20 seconds another wave of enemies joins the attack. If it gets to the point that there are over 100 enemies circling your tower then you loose. I like the twist this puts on the strategy. You do get gold bonuses for killing all the enemies before the next wave comes, but after a dozen levels it gets hard to kill them all in time. So far my high score is only 1928. I don’t really have a strategy yet. I tried using a few arrow towers and a damage tower, but I could not keep up with the onslaught after about level 25.

If you’re into tower defense games give these a try and let me know how you do. If you have a better strategy for one of these games post a comment and give me some pointers.

For those of you not familiar with Folding@Home it is a distributed computing project that simulations protein folding. The results of the simulations are then sent back to Standford and used to help find cures for diseases. From an average user’s point of view you just run a small application on your computer that will run simulations when you are not using the system for anything else. The program is very small and easy to install. Once installed it will run in the background and whenever it sees that the computer is not active it will start processing its calculations. Sounds pretty boring, right? Well, it would be if it were not for the fact that they keep track of how much each computer contributes to the overall project and then allow users to form teams. These teams are then ranked by how many calculations they do.

How does this relate to gaming?
Shortly after the Playstation 3 was released one of the updates added the option to perform Folding@Home calculations on it. So, when you’re not playing games on your $600 toy you can use it to fight disease. If you’d like more info about Folding@Home on your PS3 you can find it here. If you decide to help fight disease, if nothing else than for the karma points, feel free to join the AGE team. We are team number 58110. Currently, we are ranked 3389 of 67224 and we’re still moving up. If you have a computer that you leave on most of the time Folding@Home is a great way to help your fellow man.

I’m not sure why I thought I should try the demo for DiRT. After trying the Forza 2 demo I was very quickly reminded of how badly I suck at racing games. I gave the DiRT demo a try anyway and found that I’m better at it than I am at Forza 2. I can at least make it around the track…on the easiest setting at least. I tried all three of the available cars and found that I stink with all of them. The game itself looks great, but I was a little disappointed with how little my car would get dammaged when I run it into a wall. Yes, there was some damage to both the car and the many obstacles I hit, but with all the times I hit stuff going full speed my car should have wrecked long before I got through the two laps. Maybe it was because I suck at racing games, but to me it felt like the cars were really light. I’d try to slide around a corner and end up spinning 270 degrees; even if I just tap the hand brake. Oh well, at least I don’t have to try and make time for racing games in my busy schedule.

Most weeks when new Xbox Live Arcade games are released you’ll find a mini review here, on my blog, about them within a day or two. This week I’m not going to be reviewing either Xevious or Rush’n Attack because I could not make myself play either one of them long enough to be able to put together a proper review.

I was not anticipating liking Rush’n Attack because it is not a game type I generally enjoy. I gave it a try anyway, but after playing through the demo twice I just could not make myself spend any more time with it. Anyone who is a fan of the game probably will like that they took the time to enhance the graphics, but other than the game still plays as lousy as it ever did.

When I saw a vertical shooter was coming to the Xbox Live Arcade I was pretty excited because I’m a big fan of vertical shooters. I’ve probably played Xevious before, but I don’t recall a specific time if I have. For me Xevious is one of the worst vertical shooters I’ve ever played. You move so slowly that unless you know the attack pattern of the enemy ships it is almost impossible to kill them all. Also, one thing I’ve never liked in a vertical shooter is when you can’t take out all of the enemies with your primary weapon. In Xevious you can’t shoot any of the ground based enemies with your primary gun. Instead you have to position the targeting reticle over them and drop bombs on then. This would not be too bad except that you have to have it lines up almost perfect to get the kill.

After playing through the demo twice of each of these twice I delete them from my Xbox 360 because they are so lame. Unless one of these games was one of your favorite childhood games don’t even bother with the demos because they stink.