XboxSold.com BLOG

This isn’t a dream, but i can’t believe I’m writing this: Gran Turismo 5 is coming out this month, hitting shelves on November 24 in North America.

In a press release sent out today, Polyphony Digital president Kazunori Yamauchi says the title posed “challenges and complexities,” turning it into their version of the Apollo Space Program.

“With the technological leap onto PlayStation 3, our objective with Gran Turismo 5 was to create another great revolution which would not only satisfy our own high expectations, but would meet or even exceed the anticipation of the fans,” he says. “Satisfying the loyal Gran Turismo followers is at the heart of all of our efforts, which is why it was such a difficult decision to delay the release of the game, and one which we did not take lightly.”

Now go and find that dirty pre-order receipt that fell between your couch cushions… it’s almost racing time!

Yesterday, we reviewed the PC version of Call of Duty: Black Ops, awarding it a 6/10 thanks to a completely broken online experience that proved detrimental to the most important half of any Call of Duty product. In fact, it was only the superbly high quality of the single-player that gave this game as high a score as it got.

Naturally, some people were upset. Despite the fact that the game ought to be consistent on all platforms, some people were angry that we reviewed the game “wrong” by not playing it on the Xbox 360. So, with that in mind, we have re-reviewed the game for consoles. A 360 copy arrived this morning and I dove right into the multiplayer.

Read on for our full re-review!

Score: 11/10!

Let’s get this out of the way first: no game will ever be GoldenEye 007 for the Nintendo 64. The unique combination of advancements in technology, controls, gaming and culture are not going to collide like that ever again. It was a revolution in gaming and those come along very, very rarely, and usually not in the form of a licensed videogame.

This fact won’t keep companies from trying to cash in on the name, however. EA already did it when they had the Bond license with their relentlessly middle-of-the-road GoldenEye: Rogue Agent and now Activision is taking its shot with the Wii version of GoldenEye 007. Calling it a Wii version is a complete misnomer, however, as this is an entirely different game with very little actual connection to the original GoldenEye 007 other than key plot scenarios.

Taking that fact into account and the previously discussed fact that no game will ever be the N64 version of the game, let’s let GoldenEye 007 on the Wii stand or fall on its own accord as we dig through it below.

GoldenEye 007 (Wii)
Developer: Eurocom, n-Space
Publisher: Activision
Released: November 2, 2010
MSRP: $49.99 (standard), $69.99 (Classic Edition)

I’m not lying when I say that this game has almost nothing to do with the original. The plot, actors, levels, guns, gadgets, objectives, graphics, controls and multiplayer are all either different or seriously reworked. The game is simply influenced by its namesake and the similarities pretty much end there. It should be noted, however, that these influences are actually pretty cool. You’ll be playing through levels that feel familiar, but are entirely new. It’s a strange feeling to play through a room that you know, but have never played, and the team behind the game should be proud that they managed to squeeze some of the essence of the original game out without directly copying it in any way. 

We’ll start with the basic fundamentals that have changed. If you’ve ever heard someone say that the new Bond is copying Bourne (an argument we can have at a later date) then you’ll understand when I say GoldenEye is copying Call of Duty. The updated gameplay plays almost exactly like every other modern first-person shooter is doing these days. Obviously the Wii’s pointer controls add a bit of a change for the player (unless you opt to use the Classic Controller or a GameCube controller), but for all intents and purposes this feels a lot like Call of Duty with emphasis being put on cover tactics and aiming down your sites to take more accurate shots instead of simply “shooting from the hip.”

This is far from a complaint at all. If you’re going to ape something, ape the best, and the game actually apes quite well. Controls are tight and responsive and easily adjusted for however you want to play. I did buckle and pick up the golden Classic Controller, and I have to say it’s nice, but in the end I played through most of the game using the Wii Remote and Nunchuck combo. This was the first time I had actually switched between standard and motion controls in a single game, and it’s just hard to relinquish the ease of pointing and shooting (and the fun of motion controlled melees) for thumbsticks.

It’s not all copying and pasting, though. GoldenEye stands on its own feet pretty well. There’s a pretty robust collection of case sensitive take downs you can preform when you’re close enough to an enemy and stealth plays a much larger role in the game than most FPS. Actually, I should say that if you want stealth to play a much larger role in the game then it can. If you want to go blazing through each level with a machine gun, that can work too. The game does a great job of setting up levels that can work either way. There were plenty of points where I was torn between sneaking up and taking out some guys with a few quick and well placed shots or blowing up the truck said guys were standing next to, and thus alerting every enemy in the area. There’s actually some great level design going on in parts of the game, especially when you’re indoors in closed quarters. There’s an amazing sequence in which you bust into a large open room and some slower background music starts playing loudly while everything slows down just a bit. Exploding pieces of furniture and decorations are placed liberally about the room too so that when you shoot their remains burst into the air and float down dramatically. It’s a really cool effect that makes you feel like you’re playing through one of those slow motion action sequences with meaningful music over it that are so trendy in films now. It’s little cinematic touches like that that make GoldenEye stand out form the crowd and give it a true Bond feeling for some of the game.

Sadly, as it progresses things start to become a bit more generic in design. It’s still fun to play, but you feel like you’ve done a lot of the stuff before in plenty of other games. In some games this isn’t a problem at all, but when you’re playing as James Bond it better feel like you’re doing something special, not just running around as another FPS character with a gun. In this same vein it doesn’t help that it sounds like Daniel Craig mailed this one in from the Arctic. There’s about as much feeling in his voice acting as there is in early Resident Evil games. OK, maybe not that bad, but you get the point. It also doesn’t help that the story of GoldenEye has been roughly handled in order to update it to modern times. (Spoilers) Instead of Alec Trevelyan, agent 006, getting revenge on England as his excuse to steal lots of money he is getting revenge on the bankers for the financial crash. It makes little to no sense and plot wise the game pretty much falls apart before it begins. It doesn’t help that Sean Bean, who played Trevelyan in the film, is nowhere to be seen, and his replacement is lackluster at best.

The crap story doesn’t take away from the game being entirely enjoyable as a game though, and there is plenty of replay value in the single player. The game comes with four different difficulties, all of which you can play from the get go. Much like the original GoldenEye every level has sub-objectives aside from the main goal and the higher difficulty you choose the more side objectives you have. It makes playing through on harder challenges quite fun because you’re not simply playing against harder enemies, but also achieving new things. The game also has a classic mode, which puts the player into the 007 difficulty (hard), but instead of giving you the now FPS-standard magical, regenerating health it gives you the classic GoldenEye life bars and hides armor in the levels. It’s old school, challenging and a very welcome addition to those getting tired of simply hiding behind things until you heal up.

Unfortunately the developers made an odd decision when it came to game progression. If you beat a level on a certain difficulty, but do not complete all the secondary objectives than you cannot go on to the next level on that difficulty and must play the next level on the next difficulty down. I understand the logic behind this, but it forces a player who may want the bigger challenge from the AI to go back and replay a level simply because they may have missed out completing one of the optional objectives. Not that the levels are a pain to play back through, but if you’re trying to beat a game (or review it in a timely manner) it can get aggravating when you’ve technically already beaten a level, but can’t progress on the difficulty you want to.

You won’t be blown away graphically by this game, but it certainly doesn’t look bad. There’s never a moment where I threw my hands up in disgust in how lazy the developers must have been like I have with other games. It’s very clear that time and attention went into much of this game, and it shows because it actually looks and feels good. Amazing that when a developer puts effort into a Wii game it can come out looking, playing and sounding really great. Who would have thought?

But I’ve rambled on too much about the single player when the real thing everyone remembers about GoldenEye 007 on the N64 is having fun with your friends in the multiplayer. It’s obvious why the advertising campaign behind this new GoldenEye heavily pushed the fact that there was splitscreen multipalyer as that’s what everyone loves. It’s also devilishly smart because this is a Wii exclusive and there is no way in hell its online gameplay is going to match up with anything on the Xbox 360 or the PlayStation 3. Thus the smart thing to do is focus on the splitscreen multiplayer and deliver the online as a secondary bonus in the game, which is exactly what they did here. It worked too, the splitscreen multiplayer is plenty of fun to play with some well designed levels that realize that only four people are playing on them so the don’t get too sprawling or convoluted (a trap many games fall into when you play them in splitscreen).

I’m sorry to say that while returning to some splitscreen gaming was a blast because I got to hang out with my friends GoldenEye 007 doesn’t really capture the magic that the original had. Of course, as I stated before, nothing ever will. The new game does its best in an attempt to do so, however. There are modes on top of modes that hearken back to a day when characters having big heads was something to gush over. Thankfully it’s been so long since those days, and such modes are now routinely ignored, that it is once again time to gush over such things. You won’t be playing through any of the classic GoldenEye maps that you still have memorized like the back of your hand (as far as I saw), but you’ll definitely be playing through some solid maps in classic GoldenEye style. The best part is that you’ll get to once again see your friends’ faces. You’ll be surprised what puberty has done to some of them.

As far as that bonus online multiplayer feature goes, it’s one of the best I’ve seen on the Wii (waits for not-saying-much snickers to die down). Once again the game takes a cue from Call of Duty and other modern FPSs and offers a slew of features like optimizable loadouts, a point system for upgrading your character, and a plethora of weaponry and gadget combinations. An added bonus is a Bond villains mode, in which all the players are all randomly selected classic Bond villains (oddjobs hat throw is pimp). The mode is relatively pointless, but just dumb fun to play in.

The graphics, and more notably the sound, do take a hit when you jump into the online arena, but that’s pretty par for the course with many games. You give a little, you get up to 8 people playing online. Playing online also means you give up a lot of the fun modifiers that you can get with splitscreen. It seems a bit odd until you realize the simple fact that splitscreen play was actually the focus over online play, and yet the game still has some of the best online play on the Wii and could stand proud with online on other systems. Sadly, game specific friend codes do exist, and there is no Wii Speak support. Both of these facts make gaming with friends online a bit annoying, but far from impossible, and I can’t stress to you how cathartic it was not to have some moron shouting how gay I was every time he shot me.

I may have harped on a few flaws with the game, but overall GoldenEye is a very solid game and well worth the money if you enjoy videogames. If you’re a Bond freak then the golden Classic Controller makes for a nice collector’s item, but it’s hard to justify the purchase beyond that since the Wii Remote and Nunchuck were my preferred area of control. Either way you play, you’re probably going to have a good time, and even if it isn’t the most Bondian of Bond’s videogame adventures it is indeed a good game and one that you won’t regret playing. The new GoldenEye 007 could never be as truly great as its predecessor for a variety of reasons, but it does a superb job of following in its footsteps.

Score: 8.5 — Great (8s are impressive efforts with a few noticeable problems holding them back. Won’t astound everyone, but is worth your time and cash.)

Allow me to momentarily pretend that I believe in God, so I can get on my knees and pray that this is real. A new rumor has surfaced which suggests that a sequel to the deliciously vulgar House of the Dead: Overkill is in development, despite slow sales of the original. Please let this be a thing!

So far, that is all that’s been said. No word on a platform, release date, or anything else. Hopefully, with the PS3 now sporting Move, this game can come to more platforms than just the Wii, and potentially up its potential audience. 

Despite mixed reviews, I absolutely adored the first Overkill. It was crude, stupid, obnoxious and sometimes purely offensive, and that’s what made it so beautiful. Rare is the game that I’m uncomfortable to play in front of the child that lives in my house, but this is one of those games. I would strangle that same child for a sequel. 

Rumour: House of the Dead: Overkill Sequel on the Way [NintendoLife]

I don’t know what it is about Activision-published games, but they seem to have a habit of being terrible on PC. Call of Duty: Black Ops is the latest PC port to utterly fail, with a number of frustrating problems reported across the Web, not least from pretty much everyone I personally know who’s played it. I have since dubbed the game Call of Duty: Lag Drops and I am clever for doing so.

The biggest issue is lag and skipping, which I can testify to. The multiplayer, at the time of writing, is borderline unplayable, with severe lag and moments where the entire action will freeze for several seconds. I am yet to enter a game where there isn’t lag, and the in-game chat isn’t complaining about it. 

Zombie Mode, meanwhile, has matchmaking problems, and there are those who have complained that even the single-player mode is providing major performance issues for them. Treyarch apparently knows about it, but there’s no word on any fixes as of right now.

Unfortunately for Treyarch, the PC version has been the only version available to Destructoid for review, and while the game’s fantastic single player campaign has earned a lot of favor, Black Ops’ gameplay hinges on its multiplayer, which is currently the opposite of enjoyable. I know I’d absolutely hate to not be able to beam about the many great things this game does, but the inexcusably shoddy PC port is looming over everything at the moment and Treyarch’s got less than a day before our review goes live.

Nice timing there, Ubisoft. To go alongside this week’s release of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World on DVD and Blu-ray, the beat-’em-up game counterpart is getting some fresh add-on content.

For $2, you’re getting Knives Chau as a playbable character, the Battle Royale and Dodge Ball modes, plus there’s a separate — and totally free — patch that introduces drop-in co-op and fixes bugs. It’s weird how we have reached the point where two-dollar digital content seems strangely cheap.

On that note, the Xbox LIVE Arcade version of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game is on sale for five bucks right now if you happen to have an Xbox LIVE gold membership.

Call of Duty: Black Ops launched in North America just a few hours ago and already the first game-ravaging exploit has been discovered. Users have already found a way to scam infinity Care Packages in the game’s multiplayer mode, thus keeping themselves stocked forever.

Activision’s Dan Amrich has been asking players to submit bugs to Activision once discovered, as the evil publisher attempts to be proactive in fighting the inevitable Call of Duty glitch onslaught. Well, here’s the first biggie, and it surely won’t be the last. 

Call of Duty and cheating seem to go hand in hand, demonstrating that all’s fair in love and war. Of course, every game has glitches, and a title as obsessively played as Call of Duty soon gets exploited by the obsessive and the unscrupulous.

We’re currently playing Black Ops for our review, which will go live ASAP!

Last week I was invited to Eidos’ Montreal HQ to get a better look at Deus Ex: Human Revolution. If you haven’t seen much of it yet, know that this game is easy to appreciate. I remember the first time I saw it: I was at a pre-E3 judges event early this year, where Square Enix and Eidos showed off some of the art. They followed a presentation about the art with a lovely trailer. Everyone at the event was talking about how great it looked that evening. It’s impressive looks stuck with me. One of the key things I gathered from the presentation and trailer is that the developers have spent a lot of time on the details. 

Now that I’ve had the chance to get a better look at the game, I see the same trend throughout. It’s all in the details, they say, and Eidos knows that. The details in this game go way beyond visuals, extending into the sound, story and game play. My feeling is that Deus Ex: Human Revolution has to be one of the most thought-out, overly detailed games ever made. The end result is a game that’s very impressive, from every angle. It seems like they haven’t missed a thing.

Detailed Story

While I’m just bringing you an overview of the story for Deus Ex: Human Revolution, know that they’ve left no stone unturned. There’s actually a franchise “bible” for Deus Ex, and when writer Mary DeMarle took the reigns, they went and even added more to their own bible. 

The year is 2027, only 17 years in our future and 25 years before original Deus Ex takes place. This is not necessarily a prequel but a new story in that universe. It is a time of great innovation; the world is making advances in energy, technology and global warming, and there has been a great burst of scientific discoveries.

One of the biggest changes is the introduction of augmentations. Think of these as mechanical bodily upgrades. There are many different types of augmentations available now. Neural augmentations can make you smarter. Others can help you overcome physical limitations. These upgrades should change life for the better, but they’re also causing problems. 

This is also a time of chaos and conspiracy. The rich are still rich, and the poor are still poor. Some are trying to maintain control over society through augmentation control. Augmentation offers chance to improve your life if you can afford it. As they come at a high price, this divides society, creating a new middle class. A new social divide is starting to brew, and with it people trying to control both sides.  Sarif Industries are competting for the lucrative market, pushing people to advance. Humanitarian organizations are on the other side, not wanting the changes to the human body to be allowed.

In the middle of the chaos you find Adam Jensen, a private security specialist. He has a bit of a checkered past that the story will eventually reveal. Right now he has to protect the research and the people that make these augmentations, as Sarif Industries’ protection guy.  The industry’s underhanded tactics make company and its people vulnerable, so Jensen is tasked with protecting researchers on the eve of historical hearings that address the control of these new developments.

During these hese hearings Sarif Industries gets attacked by augmented black op mecernaries. They attack and kill researchers and nearly destroy the company. Jensen almost dies in attack, but is captured and forced to become augmented himself. It is not clear on who did this or why. You work to uncover the truth as Jensen. As you play you become involved in conspiracy; you’re taken deeper into it and eventually discover that someone is manipulating society and this technology behind the scenes. Your actions will force them to adjust their plans. The future of human evolution is at stake and you decide what shape the future will take.

The game’s slogan sets the scene: “It’s not the end of the world… but you can see it form here.”

Detailed Art

It only takes a quick glance at Deus Ex: Human Revolution to see that they’ve put a lot of work into the visuals. The game is stunning from what I’ve seen so far, and what’s scary that it isn’t even finished yet. I was able to get the full rundown of what Eidos has put into the look of Human Revolution, and I have a bit of it to share here.

Early on the team decided that they’d value illustration over simulation. They say that they’re not trying to be photorealistic. Think Assassin’s Creed over Crysis. The team says that they prefer a more a glorified version of reality. Not that they’re biting off Ubisoft — it’s just that they’re into the same philosophy.

Another key aspect of the look is design distinction. The thinking is that if you have something that looks different,  it has more chance to be recognized. Bioshock and Team Fortress were used as example. Remember how you didn’t know anything about Bioshock at first, but you know you want to be part of it? That was all about the game’s distinctive look.  In a presentation I was shown something that really made their philosophy hit home: A screen was filled with about 25 or so screenshots from games like Killzone 2, Furok, Frontlines: Fuel of War, Huxley, Unreal 3, Gears of War, Dark Sector, and GRAW. Seeing them all blur together, with similar colors and settings, really made Deus Ex: Human Revolution stand out. 

What they called the Cyber Renaissance was the driving force for visuals. The theme of transhumanism in the game fell back to Leonardo da Vinci’s famous body workings sketches. In the real Renascence era we started understanding the human body. We started to understand how the human body worked, and that was the first big step into who we are today, through modern medicine. The idea in this game is that transhumanism is next big step: mastering body and blending in technology. This is the new leap to be next part of evolution.

We saw concept art for this cyber renaissance. One featured a limb clinic, which is where you go to beef up character. It featured old wood walls, an operating table, big glass windows, old chairs and so on. It was mixed in with technological advances like big screens and holographic looking displays. We also saw Jensen’s apartent in Detroit. It was a mix of near-future settings with renaissance elements like an old chandelier.  Future Detroit itself mixes old structures and new tech devices, attached in a blend. In concept art we saw Scandinavian architecture, a building inspired by a popular Tokyo store, and more, mixed in with signs and lights and everything futuristic. One of the most intriguing scenes was one of a double decked city inspired by a mockumentary on Hong Kong. There was two layers to this island city — over and under. 

For the fashion in the game, they looked at current day fashion designers, some of which were already designing stuff inspired by the Renaissance. The fashion was slightly influenced by the period’s poofy shoulders and ornate collars, though they didn’t exaggerate this influence.

The color scheme of black and gold is important to Human Revolution, even in how the game is messaged. The colors show both sides of the experience: black represents the end of the world, while gold represents Icarus, transhumanism, and the idea of going into the sun, or ascending. It also represents hope in dark times. Another key aspect of the game’s look is fog and smoke. The cyberpunk setting creates tension and atmosphere. Either smoke or fog is found almost everywhere in the game, and it can represent the mystery of who is behind conspiracy.

Even the details are detailed. The design team worked to make sure that the mechanical design is believable. You can see it in all the details and props: washer machines, phones, displays and more. On an unconscious level these things talk to you to a certain degree. They also put a lot of details into weapons, which were not designed after real world weapons, but maybe inspired by them. The team was trying for their mechanical design to make sense. They all looked real, but also like they’d be fun to play with.  

Finally, we saw an example of the many brand logos in the game. Overall over 100 brands created for game, all working to give the world the sense of being more crafted and believable.

Detailed Gameplay

The open-ended approach is stunning in scope. Eidos says that they wanted players to feel creative in the way they solve their challenges. To achieve this, all maps are multi-path and have multiple solutions. There are no linear levels and there are always several options. Multiple paths, multiple solutions and multiple play styles combine with the ability to make important choices to direct the game in one direction or another to make a game that seems so unbelievably vast that it boggles the mind.  We’ll touch on how the gameplay can vary by player in a later preview. 

According to scientists who did scientific things using science, Killzone 3 possesses less input lag than its predecessor. This sort of lag was a major issues for some gamers in Killzone 2, so they’ll be pleased to know that their bullets will shoot slightly faster now.

The lag was put through its paces by the chaps at Digital Foundry, who used a special controller to gauge the time it took between pressing R1 and firing a weapon. The time was 116ms, which is 33ms shorter than Killzone 2. That probably doesn’t make a difference to normal people, but the kind of freaks who lost their shit over the last game’s input speeds will likely cream their jeans.

According to the testers, the “weight and heft” of Killzone 2 has been sacrificed for an “overall increase in terms of the quality of the gameplay experience.” Part of my enjoyment specifically came from that feeling of weight, but heaven forfend we try to make any other type of FPS that doesn’t feel exactly like Halo, right?

I can’t wait for all games to become an identical mass of grey sludge. 

Killzone 3 pad lag measured [Eurogamer]