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July 13, 2009

E309: Shadow Complex impressions

In a nutshell:
It’s Metroid-vania in a secret underground base/cave system.

What I played:
About five minutes of an already-started, time-limited demo. I wandered the cave system and made my initial infiltration into the base. I didn’t shoot at anything.

Like:
Map: The game uses a grid-based map system both as a HUD element and as the actual navigational guide on the base’s computers. This allows you to quickly connect what you’ve seen in the game world to your immediate goals and location.

Sticky: Your character is a natural spelunker, and you always feel confident he’ll make a jump or at least grab on to a hand-hold. Because of the heavy platforming elements, this gives you a lot of confidence to maintain forward momentum.

Carl @ 8:56 pm
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June 6, 2009

Xbox Live 1 vs. 100 beta impressions

1 vs. 100 (XBLA)

This could be a problem.  I’m a trivia fiend, and I could easily see myself becoming addicted to this game.  Similarly to Grid, you can earn points simply by participating.  Even if you’re a complete dolt, you’ll still be making positive progress.

There are one of three groups you could wind up in: The One, who is the active contestant; The Mob, who wins prizes if The One gets stumped; and The Crowd, who consists of everyone else participating.  The Mob starts off as a group of 100 players.  As individual members fail to properly answer a question, The One climbs their way up the prize ladder.  The One has a few “lifelines” which include polling the highest scorer, accepting the majority answer of The Mob, or accepting the majority answer of The Crowd.

What frustrates me is what I think I can attribute to lag or being physically too far from a server.  When answers are presented, less points are awarded as time clicks down until the player finally buzzes in.  Even when I know it’s the final choice and mash the button well before it’s revealed, I can’t ever score higher than 190 (out of a possible 200).  Those milliseconds absolutely do matter.

Players are given the ability to cheer, jeer, or dance by tapping the Y button and scrolling through various actions.  Behind you is also interactive lighting, which I call the “hype meter.”  It rises as you perform an action, but for a while I couldn’t figure out how to enter the last bar.  Or how one of the other players was dancing.  It turns out you’ve really got to mash on the button quickly, however once the dancing is initiated, you can slow down again.

Favorite thing: Xbox Live Primetime brings with it the ability to schedule pop-up reminders for events.  It’s fully integrated with the Xbox Dashboard, just like download and friend notifications.

Least favorite thing: The outcome of this question:  (Note: the answers are labeled to match the Xbox controller’s buttons in order from left to right.)  “What is the 24th letter of the alphabet? X. A A. X B. B”  Of course I hit the X button intending for the answer “X.”  About 1/3 of the mob also made the same mistake.  Stupid trickery!

Carl @ 10:41 pm
Filed under: Games — Tags: , , , , , , , ,