Disappointing Xbox 360 Titles

(Every day I get a few thoughts, and then I wonder whether or not to type them on this blog, and then I get tired and end up not posting anything. But here’s something I just thought of a few seconds ago)

I’m not really sure what I want to say in this post… but let’s start with Ninety Nine Nights. I downloaded the demo – game looks freaking amazing. Graphics are good, frame rate is great, gameplay, while repetitive, is fun in short periods. I already told myself that I’ll get the game, even if it is a Dynasty Warriors clone, but after playing the demo, I was pretty much convinced to get it. In the demo you get to play as one character, one level, and only single player – I figured full game you’d get more characters, more levels, and two-player mode.

WRONG. There is NO multiplayer in Ninety-Nine Nights, which… pretty much takes out the fun factor. Then I read all these reviews about how the story sucks and everything, and it’s all repetitive… so wow, that was disappointing. The lack of multiplayer is severely bad, so I’m skipping out on N3. Maybe once it drops to $31.99, I’ll pick it up. It looks amazing, but I hear it’s crap.

And then there’s Bomberman: Act Zero. First of all, it looks ridiculous. A few minutes ago I was reading some debates about the new look, but I have to side with those that say it looks horrible. And then I read the most horrible news: B:AZ has no local multiplayer. That’s right. It’s a party game, except without the party. It has online multiplayer, whoppeee… but no local. So there’s no “getting all your friends together in the same room to party it out” – it’s all online. How crappy is that?

So, that’s my rant. Haven’t bought any Xbox 360 titles recently… although there are three titles I know of, that I’m looking forward to in 2007: Lost Planet, Mass Effect, and Halo 3. Mass Effect’s like an RPG adventure game… hmm, I wonder if I’ll play it though, heh. Maybe I should complete KOTOR and Oblivion first…

Zelda-0043: Project Notes

I don't want to interrupt the flow of the other blog, so I'll post here. So far, a couple people have played the game, and I got a few comments, but nothing really constructive, good, or bad, or whatever. And then nothing really suggestive either.

I'm currently working on trying to get Saving/Loading to work - if it works, I'll probably find out tomorrow. If it doesn't, then that really sucks, and continuing on the game could be pretty hard. Like, who wants to play a game for 40 minutes and then die and then have to start all over? There are lots of reasons why I shouldn't continue to make this game if I can't load and save. The first is that reason, the second is that, if I want to prevent death after 40 minutes, then I can't make hard levels or enemies. So, I really need saving to work.

Anyway, something else came to mind so I'm posting about it here. I started making this game to be like a zelda-clone, since the start - you have hearts, typically less than 10, and when enemies hit you they deal 1 damage to you. Enemies have a different kind of life meter, so... it's easier to... well, read on first.

Anyway, after a while I added something - Quests - similar to those in World of Warcraft. You get rewards for quest, like more life or weapon upgrades. So this is the thing - I want to keep it zelda like, with the hearts and stuff, but I also want the game to have... a pretty customizable feature in it, like in World of Warcraft, or, even Ninety Nine Nights. Things like armor upgrades, different weapon upgrades, other things like that.

Additionally, to make it more... interesting, maybe experience. My guy doesn't gain levels, and he doesn't gain experience. Similarly, armor upgrades don't work - we can't give you a piece of armor that says "Damage -5%", because an enemy does 1 damage, and you can't prevent 5%, until it does 20 damage, and... that's not going to happen anytime soon, and 5% damage wouldn't help at that point.

I was thinking your guy could just have critical-hit kind of stats. For example, your sword does Something + random(X) damage, where X is some upgrade you can get. Or you can have some critical-miss stat, where if an enemy touches you, you random(x), and if that result is less than 100, you get hit. If you get some upgrade that gives armor+5, then x = 100+5 = 105, so then you have a 5/105 chance of not taking damage.

So you go through the game, maybe get experience, and then you have a higher critical hit chance, or your weapon does more damage, or you can sometimes avoid getting hit. It's hard to do the other stuff, like prevent 5%, or gain experience for gaining levels... can't add 25 hit points to your character... maybe another heart? Just for fighting a lot of enemies? That could be interesting..

Well, let me know if you think of anything. Cool cool. Let's hope saving works.

Saint’s Row

Man oh man. So I downloaded this gigabyte demo to my xbox 360, for a game called Saint’s Row.

So there’s Grand Theft Auto, or GTA, and there was GTA 1 and GTA 2, and they were fun, and okay. It wasn’t really that controversial, it was just a videogame, played from top down perspective. Then it came to the PS2 in a 3D, 3rd person form, and then it became controversial because it was so violent.

So then you expect Rockstar Games to make sequels of GTA, because it works, and it’s a great selling franchise. So they’re still controversial, but you’d expect Rockstar games to continue making games like this because they sell well.

But when another company tries to do it… well, it’s sorta odd. Like, the company pretty much knows it’ll be controversial, so why are they making the game? To outsell GTA? Well, maybe… so that’s where Saint’s Row comes in.

Remember that scene in Inside Man, with the boy playing the videogame, which, I think, exaggerates what happens in Grand Theft Auto? Let’s just say, it’s not really an exaggeration anymore. Well, it is, but not so much.

The game starts out with a cutscene – there’s this gang that’s paintspraying over another gang’s logo on the wall, so the logo’s gang comes and shoots up this gang, and this gang shoots back, and then another gang drives by and shoots these guys down, and my guy is about to get killed when “Saint’s Row” shows up and kills the guy that’s about to kill me.

Saint’s Row sounds like the good guys, but I think it’s just another gang. So the story starts out as you, joining the Saint’s Row gang. You have missions to kill other gangs, and you can buy weapons, hijack cars, do all that other stuff.

What makes it different than GTA? Well, GTA was one thing, but I think this takes it to the next level. There’s a lot of slang, and a lot of swearing, like, a lot. Also, I decided to give the game some chance before I turned it off, so I did a bonus mission. What was the mission?

I had to go recruit some ho’s, by getting rid of (killing) their abusive pimps. After shooting the pimps, I would press a button to recruit some ho’s into my car, and then drive them back to the brothel.

… yeah, that was weird. So that was my Saint’s Row experience. Safe to say, I’m not buying the game. I think I just wanted to write this down. I’m not one to say that videogames make kids violent and kill people, or that GTA causes all that, but this one sure goes over the edge.