Split-Screen :: The Game-Geek’s Daily Read

by Ravi Sinha
There are a lot of things going on with Sony, however, the company has never gotten its act together as far as advertising goes. “Wow the customer enough so he’ll buy your products” - how Sony haplessly wrestles with this tenet like the Titans against Zeus in Greek mythology is simply uncanny. But while the viral campaigns and unintentionally frightening babies of the first world market failed due to terrible conception, our home-grown PS3 Indian ad unintentionally admits to one of the console’s main defects.

Read the rest of this entry »

by Ravi Sinha

The New Xbox Experience (NXE) is not like your usual firmware update for the Xbox 360. In a radical departure from past upgrades, NXE has undergone a transformation akin to Linux suddenly morphing into a Windows platform. It’s brighter, sleeker, more varied and intuitive, and easily accessible. Implicitly, it’s nothing more than a visual upgrade of the 360’s dashboard. But I regress - while the original dashboard took getting used to, hopping into the NXE took less than a minute and mastering it, less than five. Briskly defined icons and crisper explanations really do make a difference. The interchangeable themes (which you can preview beforehand) add an aesthetic appeal that previous pastel changes couldn’t.

Inevitably, the question arises: Is it worth the trouble? After all, MS has explicitly stated in it’s recent beta participation that upgrading is a one-way street. Once installed, you can never revert to the old dashboard. Okay, you can hit the Navigation button (the big X-icon, the one next to the Start button) and enable an on-screen dashboard button, but the firmware stays. NXE allows for a more seamless exploration of your games library; all cumulative data like images and trailers for a specific game can be viewed in one place. On top of that, your profile is now represented by a customizable avatar that details what games you’ve recently played, demos, movies downloaded and so on.

The new 3D avatars further expand to your Friends list. Every one has their own personalized avatar; if an avatar is awake, your friend is online and when asleep, he’s offline. Duh. You can also invite your friend’s avatars to party in one place, which doesn’t really do anything, but still, it looks nice. The usual private and video chats are still available, as is the ability to compare gamer scores.

Fans expecting more will probably feel short-changed. Microsoft has recently stated that half of the intended NXE features were cut and it shows, with only two major ones present.

The first is the ability to load and play games off your hard drive, which results in shorter load times. However, to prevent piracy, you still require the disc inside the tray while playing a game off your hard drive. So, don’t count on preserving any game discs through this method. In light of reports that Dead Rising ran slower off the HDD than the disc, we inquired with MS, if other games faced the same problem. There’s no official list but Stranglehold, Viva Pinata and Gears of War reportedly worked just fine.

The second change is a little better, if incredibly cheap. You can erase any game in which zero points were scored from your gamer profile. We’re not sure if reports of embarrassment are that high, but it’s still a nice option.

NXE features support for 1440×900 and 1680×1050, 16:10 resolutions over VGA and HDMI (when using DVI). Sadly, you’ll need about 128 MB of free memory to install the update. MS, in response, is currently offering a free 512 MB card and 20 GB HDDs with discounts for Arcade and Core users here, so you won’t want for space.

The debate on whether NXE is really all that useful is a tenuous one, but if anything, it makes the 360 experience much easier to get into for new users and no first time user should be without. Experienced users may find it hard to go back to the original dashboard after extended use of NXE. And let’s face it - an interface that let’s you find what you want at a much faster pace is always more preferred.

A source close to Eurogamer.net has stated that Canadian developer Blue Castle is currently developing Dead Rising 2 for Capcom.

“Everyone’s really excited; the team has obviously seen the rumours and it’s been hard to keep quiet, but they can’t wait to show off the game…It’s getting around - there is something amazing being built here at Blue Castle behind locked doors.”

The rub? Neither Capcom nor Blue Castle has confirmed the game’s existence. There are no further details, not even a leaked screenshot or an intended platform to go by, aside from the source’s credibility (and anonymity).

That Capcom would choose a low-level developer like Blue Castle (developed The BIGS; currently working on MLB Front Office Manager for 2K Sports) to develop a Dead Rising sequel also seems odd. We’ll keep you posted as the story develops - and no, we don’t subscribe to the source’s tone of the truth being revealed soon.

by G. Sathe

Gears of War 2, which releases today, November 7, has been criticised for being a half update, but the game is actually far more than that, and a true continuation to the original, even though it doesn’t change the game much. It takes and refines almost everything from the original game, and improves upon it through small, yet significant changes.

A simple tautology is this - if you like Gears of War, you will like Gears of War. Or rather, if you like either Gears of War, you will like the other too. But there’s been enough tacked on to the game to make it a must have for people with the original game.

One such thing is the Horde mode. I’ll get to this in a bit, but it might well be the best thing to happen to Gears of War and Xbox 360 owners as well, in a while.

Other innovations include simple tweaks, like knocking over tables to make cover in open rooms, and far more importantly, being able to crawl to safety when you’re shot down, so that a teammate can revive you without being torn to little pieces himself.

When Gears of War was released, almost exactly two years ago, it made the Xbox 360 a viable proposition. It was the best looking game around at that time - and it is still better looking than many new releases. More importantly, the game took inspiration from a number of sources, but put it all together in a way that worked, such as its cover system, referenced to in the sequel as “the Golden rule”.

Gears has not changed too much, thankfully. The over the top masculinity, not just of the characters, but of every asset in the game, the fantastic enemies and the weapons remain. Gore, chainsaws to the face and screaming Berserkers made for a great game, provided you were looking for action, and didn’t care that the characters were weak and one dimensional, that the game forced you to play in a very limited way, or die trying, that the story was a pointless cliche, that nothing made any sense at all, or that Dom was begging to be shot in the gut. And left to bleed. To death.

Gears 2 is as sophomoric as the original, and while there are definitely attempts to build a universe and inject a story into the game, it falls flat. Perhaps as the characterisation becomes more real, but not real enough, it falls into the uncanny valley, forcing us to focus on the flaws -but that is no excuse. There are some dramatic moments in the game, and some really enjoyable gameplay, shifts; though God save us from the vehicle segments! However, hugely hyped moments like shooting down the giant Brumak (don’t ask. If you don’t know, you wouldn’t believe it!) are anti-climatic, but not game breakers.

The best thing about the game now though, is Horde.

A cross between single player and multiplayer, there is no story intruding on the truly excellent gameplay, with upto five players fighting against wave after wave of the Locust, starting with Wretches and Drones and quickly scaling up in difficulty. As long as one member of your team survives, the game will keep going, spawning new rounds of enemies (and bringing back the team) until your entire squad is killed by the computer controlled enemies.

Not having a storyline means that people can enter the world without having to deal with elements that don’t appeal to them, such as the love story which read like my thirteen year old sister wrote it. The pace is punishing and the game is fun, and much more satisfying to play with a friend than co-op is.

In short then, Gears of War 2 is an essential buy if you’re an Xbox 360 owner, who likes his blood, gore and gunplay.

If you’re looking for something with a little more strategy, go play Dead Space. But if you’re looking for heart pounding action, you’ll do just fine. Gears 2 might not be much better than the original Gears, but it’s a lot bigger, and as much fun.

Random trawls across the internet often manage to throw up things we weren’t expecting. And while reading Our Delhi Struggle, the story of two expats coming to terms with living in India, this nugget turned up.  We’ve reproduced the picture on the blog without asking, and in case the people it belongs to see it then I really hope you don’t mind - we’ll take it down if you say so. It’s not exactly a very fair representation of the gaming scene in India but it’s still a nice image, which we thought ought to be shared.