Striclty speaking this isn’t about Live Aracade but I thought I’d do a post about the latest happenings on Live anyway as there’s a lot of activity at the moment.

Americans have Netflix - So what it’s rubbish…

Ok so those of you in the US of A can now get access to Netflix streamed movies via Live. A lot was made of this when the news was first released a few months ago but it turns out to be pretty poor in the end. It seems that the quality of the resolutions is low, very low. Apparently it barely touches standard defintion levels, also it uses the same resolution as it does on your PC, this may seem ok on your 17 or 20 inch monitor but stretched out on a 30 inch+ HDTV it looks simply dreadful. Oh and whilst we are mentioning PCs you should also know that you need to have your PC hooked up to your 360 console for Netflix to work.

Free maps available for Bad Company – Mortar fire on the golf course.

I loved Bad Company when it first came out, the destructable environments were a hoot, but recently I tired of it and found myself going back to COD4. These new maps, especially ‘Par for the Course’ look fun though and should keep me happy until Gears 2 and COD5 are out

Banjo-Kazooie:Nuts & Bolts Demo Available Now

The 1 GB demo just popped up on Live. Once my super slow connection finishes downloading End War I’m going to grab this too. Also look out for a review of the original Banjo Kazooie later next month.

Yes ok I know I shortened the title but sorry the full name is ridiculously long….anyway on with the review. Back in May Penny Arcade was ported over to XBLA and was an instant hit. If you don’t know about Penny Arcade it was originally from a website that made fun of video games, it had a wacky story with some great combat and ridiculous dialogue. After the first one was released the developers promised a saga of episodes and thankfully they haven’t made us wait too long for this latest installment.

Players returning from the first episode get to keep all their stats in part two, if you are new to the series you can still create a new character but you may miss out on some of the jokes from EP 1. Episode 2 is like all great sequels, it takes the best parts of the first game and builds on them, the turn based combat system is well balanced and  will get you hooked  and the weird humor will keep you laughing throughout.  There are two characters to choose from and each has 3 moves including a special attack. The special attacks are performed via mini games and are pretty fun but can get repetitive. You get experience points for your character but sadly there are no skills or perks to unlock, I’m guessing the developers wanted to keep things simple as it’s just an arcade game but I would have liked at least some skills to build on.

Some people may be turned off by this game if they aren’t RPG fans or think that they need to have followed the web comic to enjoy the game. This couldn’t be any further from the truth, anyone can pick this game up and enjoy it and downloadable RPGs on Live Arcade are pretty rare. Ok the price isn’t cheap pout it’s a polished product and if you are prepared to pay 800 points for a basic port of some early 80’s game then you should be prepared to pay 1200 for a quality game like this. 

Age of Booty is a simple and fun game to play that can be a bit boring played alone but shines in online play. The gameplay is basic and easy to grasp, it’s a point and click RTS , you control a pirate galleon seeking treasure across a battlefield that’s made up of hexagonal tiles on which you must capture towns and gather resources. The resources available are wood, gold and rum all of which can be used for different purposes. You use the wood and gold for making purchases and building towns whilst the rum is for keeping your crew happy. The game has been simplified by making firing and attacking automated, as soon as you move into an enemy occupied area the computer will take over. I suppose the idea here was to keep you concentrating on the strategy side but I didn’t like having battles taken over by the AI. Town’s are captured using the same method and once it is taken your flag is planted next to it, you can then use whatever resources you have to upgrade the town’s defenses and stop other pirates from taking it.

The AI of the enemies leaves a lot to be desired but I wasn’t really expecting much from it. The multiplayer mode is when it really livens up though. You can have up to 4 players on one console playing via split screen which is always a blast and online supports up to 8. There’s also a hefty collection of 30 maps plus a map editor to create your own swashbuckling adventures that there’s a lot of life in this game. Overall Age of Booty is a fantastic Arcade game that has plenty to offer.

2001 board game coming to Live Arcade in 2009

Twilight Creations recently revealed that the classic board game Zombies!!! will be coming to XBLA sometime in early 2009. Zombies!!! was first released in 2001 as a tiled based board game and was an instant success selling over 300,000 copies to date. It’s easy to play and can be enjoyed by a variety of ages. Big Rooster, who are also working on War Wing for XBLA, will be handling the development.

Portal was originally part of The Orange Box game pack bundle from Valve and it was quite an interesting addition. Taking a FPS game engine and making it into a twisting and mind bending puzzle game with some real laugh out loud moments. When I first played it I found it a bit dull and didn’t come back to it until long after I’d finished all the Half Life episodes, but on my second play of it I became engrossed and began to appreciate what Valve had done. I must admit I was pretty poor at the game and the last level took me an age but upon completion I had a feeling of satisfaction but also yearning to be tested further.

 If you don’t know much about Portal then here’s a quick brief: you are a test subject (or human lab rat) in an Aperture Science research facility. Here a new teleportation device is being tested that can fire space bending ‘portals’ onto solid objects, you can then use these portals to move around the level. You are released from your sell by an automated machine and are then put through a series of tests using the teleportation device. Some of the tests can have fatal endings, but it’s all done with a humorous twist. To be it seemed like one of the Cube movies crossed with Monty Python.

 So a year later the original Portal is back but this time for returning players it has been extended by an extra 14 levels and also another 12 achievements, it also comes with a hefty price tag of 1200 points. Seeing as I loved the first one though I am prepared to look past the price, if you never played it then I strongly recommend that you get it as it’s probably one of the most original and intuitive games available for XBLA . For those of you who didn’t think much of it in the Orange Box bundle then I’d give this new version a miss.

I seriously hope so! Recently in an interview Marvel vice president of interactive media Justin Lambros intimated that he would like to see classic Marvel fighting games hit game download services suc as Xbox Live Arcade. When he was asked aboout it coming to XBLA, Lambros said, “Yeah, those are among my all time favorites. I’m a huge 2D fighting fan… the Marvel Vs. Capcom stuff has a definite close place in my heart, so we definitely wanna see that stuff live on.” Right now that’s all the info we have, I hope this is true as I am a huge Marvel fan and all the Xmen/Marvel/Streetfighter mashup games were probably some of the best 2D fighting games I’ve ever played.

Will keep you all posted!

It seems weird playing a game that back in the 1990’s was deemed ‘inappropriate’ for children and was demonized in the press for it’s violence and nudity as compared to your Manhunts and GTAS of today it is pretty tame. Duke Nukem 3D was originally released on the PC back in 1996, this was one of the first wave of FPS games after Doom and Castle Wolfenstein.

Duke back then was a character straight from an 80’ action movie, with all the corny catchphrases. One of the main reasons that the game was criticized was the sexism, it seems ridiculous now and out of place but I still can’t help laughing at it. The game play is still great though, ok the AI is limited with enemies zig zagging towards you but for a Live Arcade games its fantastic.  As with many other retro games you play on a smaller screen with a Duke Nukem wallpaper in the background, this helps keep the graphics pixel sharp like the original, I’d love to be able to have it in full screen but I don’t think the programmers had 32 inch Samsung HDTVs in mind back in 1996  The controls have been fixed to work on the Xbox 360 controller keeping the gameplay tight and responsive. Since moving from PC to 360 two years ago I have found the 360 controller to be perfect for FPS games and would find it hard going back to mouse and keyboard.

There is also an online co-op mode, for some reason there is no split screen so no couch co-op I am afraid though you can play the entire campaign with up to 8 players which is quite unique seeing as many of today’s games seem to not take full advantage of co-op. There is also a whopping collection of 39 (yes 39!) multiplayer maps to frag your pals on.

Duke Nukem 3D is one of the best Arcade titles to come out in a while and with the co-op and multiplayer it has great replay ability making good value of your MS points.

Megman was always one of those games that made me want to smash my controller and never play games again it was that damn hard. One of the first systems I ever had was a SNES (or Famicom in the US) so the first Megaman game I ever played was Megaman X, this version was much more advanced than the earlier versions on the NES and so I found it a little strange to go back and play this very basic version from the 80′s. Megaman 9 is about as basic as it can get, right from the intro screen you can see that no extras have been added to the graphics or sound, this was quite nostalgic and at first I enjoyed it but once the game started the blocky graphics really made me long for the SNES version. Die hard fans of the series will no doubt love this though as I am sure they will love the gameplay and difficulty settings which are just as hard as the originals. Each level gets tougher and tougher and there is a pretty steep learning curve. All of the levels will also have their own twist making you restart many times too, there are fall through tiles on Concrete Man along with other traps. I really missed the ability to grab onto the sides of walls and slide down them like in the ‘X’ series and also being able to power up my arm gun.

There are 8 levels in the game and experienced gamers should be able to breeze through it in a couple of hours but the replay value is going to come from redoing levels in set times along with the achievements. Capcom have also promised some DLC in the near future.

Overall Megaman 9 isn’t a bad arcade title, I just think for a game this dated it should either have something else added to it or be a lot less than 800 MS points.