Consolation Prize

Since the “Summer of Arcade” extravaganza came to a close I’ve not really been paying that much attention to the latest Xbox Live Arcade releases. But it’s about time that changed, so I downloaded both Shadow Assault Tenchu and War World yesterday in the hope of finding a lost gem. Did I find a diamond in the rough? Or were they both just plain old lumps of coal? Well today I present my impressions of Shadow Assault Tenchu, to be followed shortly by War World.

Shadow Assault Tenchu is a puzzle action hybrid viewed from a top down perspective. Upon selecting a character - of which only the one: Rikimaru, is available in the trial game - the player is tasked with negotiating a series of levels and completing a simple objective per level such as “defeat all enemies” or “kill the Samurai general”.

However, instead of having equipped weapons at the ready with which to deal out death and destruction you are required to pick up “one shot items” that lie dotted around the map, laying them as traps in strategic positions to eliminate the opposition. Luckily choosing the best place for a trap is a fairly simple affair as the enemy path finding is purposefully rudimentary and it shouldn’t take too long before a set pattern can be identified. To make it even easier to sneak up on your foes the enemy line-of-sight is heavily restricted and is actually shown as a number of surrounding yellow squares giving you a clear indication of how close you can get without detection.

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I finally tried out the Mercenaries 2: World in Flames demo that has been sitting in my proverbial “games to play pile” for over a couple of weeks now. It didn’t give me the sudden urge to rush down to the local game emporium and hand over some hard earned green, but neither did I feel it deserves to be shot down in flames.

The problem with the demo is that it drops you in straight in at the deep end and gives you no time to acclimatise to the controls or the game itself. Given the mercenary Mattias Nilsson, your mission should you choose to accept it, is to install a listening post deep within a heavily defended enemy compound. Starting atop a rocky outcrop as the mission begins it’s only a matter of seconds before you’re under fire and harassed by lots of unhappy Venezuelans leaving little time to scope out the enemy encampment and formulate a plan of attack. Somehow I don’t think Mercenaries 2: World in Flames deals in too much subtlety.

I have to admit that initially Mercenaries 2 proved to be frustrating. The direct approach into the compound didn’t go according to plan, and playing tag with some explosive shells from a light tank patrolling the compound didn’t help Mattias’ complexion. However, after discovering you can hi-jack vehicles - with a press of “Y” followed by a short button pressing quick time like event – I found that I could trundle quite happily into the compound “disguised” as one of the faction’s members allowing me to get closer to the designated objective. This subterfuge only lasts for as long as you’re not rumbled by the enemy, or get out of the vehicle, and is indicated by the use of a gauge which gradually decreases when loitering near enemy troops.

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I noticed that while searching for the Mercenaries 2 demo on Xbox Live Marketplace last week that a demo for Fracture had been released. Now, I must confess that the idea of this landscape deformation game certainly had me intrigued, so it went straight to the top of the download queue… However, after playing through the tutorial and demo level I have to say that I’m not completely sold on the game just yet.

It all started off very promising with the tutorial; starting aboard an airborne assault craft flying over what looks like was once San Francisco Bay and past the Golden Gate Bridge while the commanding officer explains the fundamentals of your HUD, before finally getting dropped into the incursion point at the beginning of the training level. After my initial disappointment at realising there are design restrictions to the landscape deformation (there were bound to be!), which in reality meant I could only raise or lower the landscape by about 10 foot wherever some “dirt” was present, the tutorial actually turned out to be a pretty good introduction to the controls and the various weapon types and abilities on offer.

The main selling point of Fracture is of course going to be the novelty factor involved from being able to manipulate the landscape using the “Entrencher”; implemented via pressing either the left or right controller bumper buttons which in turn fires off a pulse that will lower or raise the landscape respectively. It’s an integral part of the level design and throughout the demo you’re invited, nay required, to use this ability in order to reach inaccessible higher platforms, jump over or tunnel under obstacles, and even to provide tactical cover. It all works reasonably well, even with the noticeable limitations.

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You generally know within the first few minutes of playing a game whether or not you like it, or even if you’re willing to persevere with it for a little bit longer just in case you missed that hidden gem of game-play that suddenly adds cohesion to the entire experience – but I’m afraid no such epiphany happened while playing through the trial game of RocketBowl.

The idea behind RocketBowl is quite appealing; take the familiarity of bowling, place it all in an open area with multiple “lanes”, an undulating landscape replete with obstacles, and add in the ability to give your ball a boost or fire it off in either a left or right direction by igniting a rocket. It sounds quite interesting in theory, but in practice, I’m sorry to say, we’re left with a fairly dull game.

Given 10 frames on the course you have three attempts to knock down all the pins of each frame in sequence to accumulate the highest score. It’s not essential to aim at the set of pins directly ahead, and in-fact you are free to launch in any direction - which is actively encouraged given that there are lots of points bonuses and power-ups dotted around the course. The only real requirement is that you hit some pins somewhere if you want to keep those extra points and avoid the shot being called a “miss”. It doesn’t feel however, like you can do a great deal to control the rocket ball. You’re only able to nominally apply some swerve and fire off the occasional rocket, thus, it feels like you’re more of a spectator than an active participant.

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In between playing Castle Crashers, which seems to have been dominating my gaming habits recently, I took some time out from creature bashing to try out the latest race game offering: Pure from Blackrock Studios.

Instead of road or track racing - which seems to be the more dominant racing variant on the Xbox 360 with titles like Forza Motorsport 2, GRiD, and PGR4 - Pure instead spins its wheels off-road featuring Quad bikes, unfeasibly huge jumps, and the ability for the rider to perform a variety of crazy tricks.

The demo features a tutorial level and three laps of the “Mount Garda” course. The tutorial is quite rudimentary and is basically just an oval, but it does provide the basis for an introduction to the controls and on how to perform tricks. However the actual race course itself is a far more interesting affair with branching routes, varying terrain, and a total number of 16 competitors all vying for position.

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The summer season of Xbox Live Arcade which delivered exceptional high quality releases in Geometry Wars 2, Galaga Legions, Braid, and of course Castle Crashers has unfortunately come to an end and it seems like we’re once more back into the familiar “hit-and-miss” territory that’s so representative of the service.

Shred Nebula is a top down space shooter, similar in some respects to Asteroids, in which you control a single ship that rotates on a central axis, can fire and thrust in the direction you’re facing and whereby the ship’s inertia has a significant effect on movement and controls. However, unlike the simple joys of Asteroids this is a far more complex beast to handle.

Taking command of the prototype ship: the RIP Rocket, your task is to explore the nearby solar systems trying to locate the lost Algron Exploration Fleet which failed to return from an expansive exploratory charting mission 12 years hence. Along the way you will encounter both hazards and hostile aliens all of which are detrimental to the integrity of your ship.

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I’ve not had much of a chance to catch up on my backlog of games this week; I did however manage to dedicate some time to the glorious Castle Crashers developed by The Behemoth. Whereas I couldn’t quite get along with Alien Hominid HD, this title is an altogether different prospect and immediately appeals to my sadistic “beat-the-crap-out-of-everything-that-moves” nature.

To succinctly sum up the game, Castle Crashers is a side scrolling beat-em-up for up-to four players (locally or over Xbox Live) and instantly reminded me of one of my old arcade favourites Golden Axe.

Initially playing as one of four knights (Green, Orange, Blue, Red) the game starts as you’re partying hard in the castle hall only to be rudely interrupted when a fatally wounded guard is thrown through the door disrupting the party. Investigating the commotion you discover that the castle has been raided, the king threatened, some sort of magical gem stolen, and four princesses carried off by the contemptible invaders. So it’s up-to you to rescue the fair maidens and put those miscreants to the sword!

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Rebooting a franchise is not an easy task to undertake but the same development team that brought us the excellent Pac-Man Championship Edition have managed yet again to apply the same skill and panache to an arcade classic reinvigorating Galaga with Galaga Legions.

Galaga (1981) is a top down shooter and sequel to Galaxian (1979), which in turn was born out of the success of Space Invaders (1978) and took the formula one step further and instead of the processional left-right pacing of the invaders introduced waves of alien ships that left the formation and dive bombed the player in desperate kamikaze like manoeuvres. Galaga Legions retains the feel of Galaga yet builds upon the core game-play successfully fusing it with some new game mechanics that hauls the franchise into 2008, and thus makes this a much more interesting prospect for the modern gamer than if was just a rehash of the old classic with enhanced graphics.

The game-play in itself retains the simple single screen “kill everything” nature of the original and basically requires the player to destroy wave-upon-wave of enemies in order to survive as long as possible and notch up the highest score. Each wave of aliens becomes progressively more complex but the game affords the player some foresight of enemy attacks as fading blue lines trace flight paths across the screen and entry points are momentarily highlighted with orange glowing squares.

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