Tag Archives: Xbox
An Addendum
A while back I wrote a review for Ghostbusters, the video game. I was playing a PC copy on my system and was really disappointed by how badly coded everything was. If you don’t remember my review of it, I invite you to read it again before moving on with this entry.
All done? OK.
Since writing that entry, I’ve had the chance to play the game again, only this time on an Xbox 360. I’m very impressed with the game overall now, and would like to revisit some of the points I made earlier.
- Gameplay is still awesome. Those swarming insect-like objects are still a problem in the first level, but your system won’t crash under the strain of rendering all of them at once. Don’t get me wrong, there are a LOT of them, and you will still probably die a few times. This way, however, it’s your fault and not your system’s. You will eventually learn how to beat them and get on with the game. After that level, you are granted your first upgrade to the proton back (the boson dart) which will render these pests a non-issue. Even though you only end up with four main weapons (each with a secondary mode), and are essentially doing the same thing over and over again, the gameplay really doesn’t ever get old. Thanks to the varied locations, story, dialog, and enemies, things manage to stay fresh till the end of the game!
- Story is probably this game’s real strong point. The story is well written and thought out. Characters are exactly as you’d expect them to be in an actual movie, and the cut-scenes are downright hilarious. Speaking of cut-scenes . . .
- Graphics are still gorgeous on the Xbox 360. Since I don’t have an HDTV, the Xbox renders everything in 720, then downscales the whole shebang to 480 for the TV. This gets around the issue I was having before when the FMV would pop up, then a prescripted action would happen, then another FMV; since the system was no longer trying to jump from 1200 resolution to 720, back to 1200 all the time, things really smoothed out. Thanks to the multiple cores found in most modern consoles, physics and graphics were able to play along side each other nicely.
- Design and Development are still a mixed bag. Overall, the design of the game is awesome. Buildings, vehicles, ghosts, and characters all look incredible . . . but only if you’re on the Xbox. The PS3 version has 30% less textures than the Xbox, and we already know how the PC one fairs. Technically speaking, the PS3 is more powerful than the Xbox 360. The only real reason why the PS3 version should perform the same task, minus 30% of the workload, at a slower pace is that it simply wasn’t designed for it. This points straight back to my earlier assessment that the game’s code is only half baked; one version of the game is missing multi-player, one version of the game can’t run at full speed, one is missing nearly half its textures! The most glaring omission from the packaging is that it reports it only needs a 3.7 system in Windows, but it turns out the PC version of the game requires “at least two video cards” to even play correctly!
The game is still enormously fun. It’s done so well you’d swear it’s the Ghostbusters 3 we’ve all been hoping for. In an interview with Dan Aykroyd, he actually revealed that the video game should actually be considered cannon for the series! However, the fun is short lived; once the game is over, there really isn’t much of a reason to go and play it all over again! The multiplayer is flat and uninteresting and the structure of the game is so tied into the story that playing your favorite part again would be like putting a movie in only to watch 10 minutes of it over and over.
In the end, I’d say the game is definitely worth renting or getting for cheap. You will have fun playing it, laughing at the lines, and you’ll be sad when it’s over. And then you’ll sell it.
I feel so . . . LIED to!
I am now playing Halo 2.
This sounds like I’m horribly behind the times, but in fact I’m only a year behind. I’ve played through all of Halo 2 on the Xbox, mastered the multiplayer, pwnd n00bs and l33ts alike, and have enjoyed the game like crazy. However, at some point, long ago, I stopped playing on Xbox Live and canceled my account. Then the world moved past me.
Suddenly we’re on Xbox 360 and Live has been totally retooled. You can now opt to NOT play against foul mouthed 9-year-olds (you can even mute specific people), and giving negative feedback about someone actually does something to them!
Not having the funds for a 360, I kept the multiplayer experience for video game parties at friend’s houses. And I was happy with that (my thoughts on anonymous multiplayer changed drastically when I realized I seemed to be the only person who wasn’t practicing Halo like I had nothing else to do in life).
Fast forward to my birthday; Schmidty and Squishy game me a copy of Lego Indiana Jones and Star Trek Legacy for Windows (more on that in another post). I booted them up, and realized I MUST have a better way to control them than the keyboard and mouse, so it was off to the store to get an Xbox360 controller (the USB one is easily recognized and used in Windows Vista).
Suddenly, I was in a new world of gaming! The new “Games For Windows” approach that Microsoft has put together is brilliant! All the games work as they are intended and match their console counterparts exactly! I can play all the greatest Xbox360 games on my PC, and all I have to do is wait a month or so for them to be released. Add to that, the fact that some Games For Windows are Live enabled (and Live is free for GFW players)!
Play multiplayer games with your friends, or play against new opponents online using our exclusive TrueSkill™ matchmaking system – with other Windows® players or with or against XBOX 360 players.
Excitedly, I looked it up . . . YUP; Halo 2 for Vista is right there on the list!
* Includes 23 Multiplayer Maps
* Plus Bonus Map Editor
* Plus Exclusive Content
* Games for Windows – LIVE enabled
So, I got it home, signed up for Live (had to create a new account, whole other gripe about that), and got Schmidty online to frag.
Only I couldn’t. I couldn’t even receive his invites.
After much internet searching, I came to the ONLY source of information concerning the problem over at Joystiq.com. It seems that Bungie, in all their wisdom, decided that Windows users wouldn’t WANT to play against Xbox 360 users and created a new gaming network for Windows only gamers. On top of that, Windows users probably don’t want their achievements shown on their gamertag at Bungie.net
From Bungie.net: Correct only xbox stats are shown.
From: Zuke [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Thursday, August 07, 2008 10:53 AM
To: Bnet Bugs
Subject: No love for Windows?I play Halo 2 for Vista on Live. Though I can see my gamertag on Bungie.net, it doesn’t pull any info from the “Live” games I’ve played. Is this by design?
At least Microsoft got it partially right by allowing achievements to be shown on xbox.com (for all the frakking good they do).
I’d like to say the PC Multiplayer is at least okay for now, except it seems the only people who are playing it are missing a hand and half their brain; though I’m always the one with horrid latency, making it look like people are teleporting all over the place, I am consistently killing EVERYONE.
Of course, being geeks, Schmidty and I are already at work on using a third party service as a workaround, but that is entirely beside the point. They specifically state that Live enabled games will work across platforms. Even after they updated their site, it still only says “on specific games”; no game site will say if it’s one of them.
PC Multiplayer using a remote game server is a 15 year old practice! Where is the next-gen in that? We were promised cross-platform playability!!
