In a nutshell, why play Smash TV when you can play this? This is the first thing that came to mind when I played this. Smash TV is a classic and all, but I can’t help but think how many people would rather jump into an old game that they know, when for an extra 400 pts they can play the newer improved version. Assault Heroes is not a game you play for the storyline, you play it because you are blowing up all and sundry because uhh.. who cares, it’s fun and it has great co-op play.
The game is mostly played in vehicle mode and has 3 weapons. Flamethrower, Missiles, Machine Gun. Each is upgradable twice and each has a specific use. You can also get a homing missile upgrade, but you won’t be running around as a walking cannon of death i.e. R-Type japanese shooter style. Rather you’ll be switching between weapons as each are defined for a specific purpose. Personally I find this sort of gameplay more interesting. Flamethrower is for infantry and swarming weak targets, the machine gun is a general purpose rapid fire weapon, weak but ideal for long range and light vehicle targets and the missiles are for armored targets. The only weak spot in the game, if you can call it that is that the missiles are supposed to be slow but they aren’t *that* slow and you can get through 90% of the game only using this weapon even though it’s not as safe or efficient as switching out.
This game also believes in the big boss fights which Smash TV lacks and you can see an example above. One thing I haven’t mentioned yet is that when your vehicle gets blown up, you’re not dead yet. You get to run around as a human and can still throw grenades and nukes. Your basic firepower has reduced damage and range and you can die in one hit unlike being in vehicle. However there are shots that reduce you to no health instantly in vehicle form too so the result is, being a human vs a vehicle is actually not that much of an advantage and you can get out of the vehicle at any time and to pick up a powerup or fight. It’s your choice. There are also bonus levels that literally drop you into a Smash TV style dungeon and you’ll be fighting it out with only one death allowed before you get portalled out. These areas act more as bonus levels than a core part of the game experience but nonetheless it’s nice to see homage paid to it’s inspiration.
Overall this is a great game which the demo makes seem more boring than it actually is. It may feel a little slow paced initially because you can never outpace the rate the screen automatically scrolls but as time goes on, you’ll not care. Things get more than hectic enough where you’ll wish it was slower. The game is a bit on the easy side but there are enough levels to make the experience feel meaty, yet not overwhelming where you won’t want to play it again. It’s the perfect game to come back to again and again and master all the levels (including the bonus ones) thanks to the level select on the menu (which I wish more games had). This is probably the second game you should show a traditional “core gamer” after Small Arms.
Well this is Lost Planet’s first DLC and it’s a little expensive for what you get. You get two new maps and the novelty about them is that they are not covered in snow and get to show off the graphics engine a little more than the core game themes allow, especially the map with the broken bridges and islands. However if you’re saying WTF 400 pts only for 2 maps? you’d be right. I definitely feel 4 would have been better value, maybe even 6. The gameplay isn’t fundamentally different enough on either of these maps that you’d be missing out if you didn’t buy this pack. Radar Station is probably the biggest laugh as you spawn on these tiny ledges with rocket launchers and sometimes you can have an enemy spawn on the ledge next to you so it becomes a race to blow each other up first. I like how each of Lost Planet’s maps have a different feel and almost different gametype associated with each one but ultimately this one’s for hardcore fans only. If you play Lost Planet casually or spend more time in Gears or R6 then it’s worth skipping this one.
This one’s pretty hit or miss. Some people love it and some people hate it and arguably you get far more benefit from this if you own a MS Wireless Racing Wheel since that’s what it was designed around. The reaction on the forums is pretty mixed, some people swear it is far more realistic even on a pad but in my experience they basically killed the turn rate, decreased friction and gravity even more. If you originally had issues wtih the game physics then this mode makes it worse, not better. The price is only 160 pts so it’s not too expensive to try. The bottom line is, if you dislike the game’s physics – skip it. If you like the game’s physics, already drive around with no driving aids on even in Class A’s and are looking for a bigger challenge pick this up.
This is the second pack in the Racer’s Guild series and like the first one is more than passable. In fact moreso. Most people will buy this to get the Ferrari F40 (I would have preferred the Testa Rossa ) and they will feel cheated because the F40 is untunable which is a crime. There’s nothing else really notable, yet another RUF and this time an unremarkable one. All the rest of the cars are similarly unremarkable, there is a 71 Corvette Stingray convertible if you are a classic collector but you can skip this one. The Merc Benz CLK GTR is probably the best in this pack, it’s not got the best stats but it is highly driftable in hardcore mode. More of a novelty car than anything though.
Well I’d say the biggest reason to get this one is for the Mclaren F1 GT if you’re a Mclaren fan. However the Mclaren’s are only the best cars stock. They don’t tune up nearly as well as the cliched Saleen S7’s and the Enzo. The Alfa Brera and the Edonis are also not anywhere near best of breed in Class A so your mileage may vary depending on how much of a supercar collector you are. There is a Viper SRT-10 coupe in here for Viper fans but the best car in here is the RUF RT-12 which is the new best of class B. Personally I only intended to own one RUF and for my class B collection I went with the more exotic Ford GT’s, Jaguar XJ220’s and Lambos. This pack comes down to a matter of taste.
This pack is definitely worth the points. The Lambo Countach is the fastest class D car in a straight line with average handling, the Noble M400 is the best handling car in the game (this will make Tantalus a lot easier in the endgame), the Corvette C6 is the best braking class C car and possibly in the game, and the RUF RGT is the best overall class D car (if you have this one, class D challenges becomes a joke). With several best of breed cars in this pack, it’s easy to justify the purchase. All the cars mentioned are a small edge over the existing cars the game shipped with, they do not provide an overwhelming edge but an advantage nonetheless that is a bargain for the price.
For 100 pts this is a little disappointing. It’s a one mission scenario about the same length as any free one i.e. survival and that’s the problem. The concept revolves around building your space station to the whims of the Olympus gods, only theres quite a few of them and they don’t exactly know what they want. It’s a similar premise to Love Story only not as developed. This one should have been developed into a full campaign as you barely see any interaction with the gods other than the beginning and at the end and it feels just like any 20-40 minute mission in the regular campaign. It’s only 100 pts, but that will subtract from say 400 pts you could have spent on a brand new game. Give this one a miss unless you are a die hard Kaloki fan or if you have 100 pts sitting around and have nothing better to spend it on.
Welcome to our first DLC review! Love Story is a great addition to an already great game and is frankly a bargain at 200pts. It’s got almost as much play value as one of the original campaigns and extremely deep multiple branching paths and multiple endings. The gist of Love Story is basically, you have all kinds of girls after you as you go about your space station building. They all want you to do different things to make them happy, but making one girl happy may make another one become jealous and hate you. In other words, business as usual for most guys. It’s the perfect length for replay value too as you try and get all the different endings and storylines for each of the girls. They could have easily sold this one for 300 pts and I’m hoping to see more downloadable campaigns like this in the future.
Essentially this is the XBox answer to Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros and it’s not half bad. If you only own an XBox and no Nintendo system whatsoever and like playing Smash Bros, this is your game. Small Arms is Smash Bros with guns, except a little less polished. I could describe the game but there’s a youtube video that does it better.
This is a very cool game that any FPS “Hardcore gamer” should check out. However it isn’t without it’s flaws, right from the beginning you get a pretty cool critter (the art quality is up there with Conker) running along with a big gun and jumping with matrix esque camera moves (without the bullet time) and you think “Wow, this could be something special” and it almost is. *Almost*.
Problems – The single player is very unpolished and looks like it was thrown in as an afterthought. Its essentially one match after another with more opponents being thrown in afterwards. Some trash talking story mode stuff between characters could have made this a little more special. The level design also leaves something to be desired, there are some levels that play extremely well and others like the train level that are just frustrating with characters ending up off screen unable to recover. The AI is also really.. random. It’s hard to put one’s finger on it, but it’s just not any fun to fight against. Basically for me, I have a strong bias towards single player and story based games, if the game grabs me in single player i.e. Outpost Kaloki, you can pretty much guarantee I’ll buy it. This is the only thing that stopped me from actually splashing out 800 pts. The characters are also pretty random, there is no consitent universe for them to all exist in, it’s just a random grab bag and you won’t really care for them outside of their looks.
However this game more than makes up for the rest in multiplayer (up to 4 players on the one local machine too is a plus). This is where the game shines. It is just as good as Smash Bros, you might think that everyone having guns would make things pretty stupid but the ranged combat is balanced out by weapons depleting quickly and the game being more focused on constantly replenishing your weapons or ammo and keeps everyone moving. The game works a lot better with human flaws to contend with vs AI i.e. the AI is very perfect in that it never falls down the holes for example. The problem with multiplayer is that essentially the four characters you get in the demo are more than enough, and the extra characters are never really fleshed out enough for you to want more than the demo characters, their uniqueness wears off once you start running around picking up other weapons anyway.
Bottom line is that this is a really fun game that you can do with only having just the demo. That’s also it’s greatest weakness in that there’s no reason to actually buy for anything other than online play, and a game like Smash Bros works best when everyone’s in the same room at the same time. It’s so close to being a classic that I can’t help maybe it was the 50 meg limit that did them in, or they just ran out of time. With a bit more polish this could have been a must buy as the production value is definitely there. However, if I ever get a free 800 pts anywhere, this one’s first on my list to unlock.
This is probably the coolest game you can download on XBL Arcade. It’s a management sim / tycoon game lite for the console only with compelling addictive gameplay, several story modes to keep you going (each with their own unique mechanics) and no spreadsheets for you to stare at. The main gist of the game is that you manage an space outpost that you expand by building additional features i.e. chem labs, burger joints, power generators etc. Simplified Sim City in a nut shell.
Outpost Kaloki X is one of those games like Civilisation where you’ll jump on just to “play for a bit”, even for a 10-15 minute scenario, screw it up, do “one more turn” and before you know it hours have gone by. A lot of sim games in the past will set you up with arbitary challenges such as “reach coal age by 1935″ or “build 10 crystal meth labs and then crush them all with police bulldozers”. They are usually detached from the main game and there’s never any compelling reason to actually do them unless you are supremely confident in your micromanagement ability or are just bored. It’s also the reason why those games are often only fun in sandbox mode with all the money cheats on. Not so with Outpost Kaloki, each scenario is tied into the story giving you a compelling reason to keep going i.e. “we need this outpost to be a money printing machine” while in the next scenario it’s “okay we spent your money, now we need you to build an outpost that can entertain the troops we just bought”. Each scenario has you working with a different type of base with a different end of the tech tree or focus. It avoids the most common mistake of a lot of management sim games and even RTS in that you are almost never repeating exactly what you did in previous scenarios and keeps you wanting to see what you’ll get next. Player progression is paced perfectly here.
Ninjabee have also created, in my opinion the finest example of how you do downloadable content. There are a bunch of free scenarios that extend your play after you’ve beaten the story modes or if you just feel like playing a stand alone challenge but there are also additional downloadable story mode campaigns and standalone missions that come at a measly premium price (200 or 100 premium pts) that offer whole new art and mechanics that you haven’t seen before (currently there is a love story, as well as one invoving the gods). If they wish they can literally extend the game “episodically” and continue to make money with microtransactions with content that won’t feel like you’re being nickle and dimed for things that should have came free, but literally “more game” to play. It’s definitely cheaper than developing a new game from scratch at least.
Oh before I forget, it’s also the finest example I’ve seen of how to do a trial on XBLArcade. It’s starting to become a trend for games that let you play further into the game but just disabling the save function to encourage you to buy it if you like it. Outpost Kaloki is naturally addictive and has enough depth (even for a sim-lite) game that a “quick play” turned into over an hour by the time I was at mission 4 of the adventure story, and I knew I was hooked and had to pony up. It’s a trend I like and encourages developers to create games they think will stand up to long term play and gameplay that they are confident in but it also has it’s drawbacks. The drawback for this type of trial is that if your game is naturally shallow then you will expose it for what it is in the demo, and a gamer will get too much out of the demo and it won’t be sufficient enough for them to buy. There are games that fail at this miserably. You’d have to weigh the risk and your knowledge of your own game and assess whether you have enough gameplay or additional elements that will convert someone trialing your game to a purchase.
Currently Outpost Kaloki X is a steal at roughly $10 (800 pts), there is just as much single player gameplay for your money as many full priced titles, and when you’re done there’s downloadable content to spend your leftover points on. At $10 it’s also half the price of the PC version that doesn’t have the option for additional content (including the combat mechanics you get in “war story”), it’s a steal by comparison. Stop reading this and go check this out NOW.
) and they will feel cheated because the F40 is untunable which is a crime. There’s nothing else really notable, yet another RUF and this time an unremarkable one. All the rest of the cars are similarly unremarkable, there is a 71 Corvette Stingray convertible if you are a classic collector but you can skip this one. The Merc Benz CLK GTR is probably the best in this pack, it’s not got the best stats but it is highly driftable in hardcore mode. More of a novelty car than anything though.
