Castle Crashes is a new little beat-em-up for the Xbox 360. And I would totally get it. There are only two real problems. The first is that I now have a 360 backlog. I want to finish Braid. I want to get… er, farther in Space Giraffe. I haven’t even seen 5% of what there is in Dead Rising. I also purchased Bionic Commando: Rearmed, because people over at Caltrops seemed to be having fun with it.

A backlog! On a system I just bought. This is in addition to the non-gaming backlog around there, which involves getting a vacuum cleaner that works more than three times (seriously, it’s easier to fucking kill Dracula than it is to buy a reliable vacuum cleaner in this country) addressing the fact that my cat has turned every wooden surface into his own personal scratching post (if we did kill Dracula at home, this cat would be disintegrating the stake in like two minutes) and finding a permanent solution to the orb spider-brimming hedges in the front lawn (orb spiders attract bats, which, well, you can see where I am going with this).

I don’t think that there is a chance that the Castle Crashers devs are reading this, but if they do encounter this post, I’d just like to say that the game is adorable, is a very amusing button masher in a world it never knew, and — from the demo – it definitely seems to be worth fifteen bucks. No question.  

There’s been some discussion about the higher prices for Xbox Live Arcade games, and honestly, since I purchase the “points” in $25 blocks, as long as the games aren’t costing more than that, I don’t care. If they get to be like $30, then I — the gamer! — have to step up and buy fifty bucks worth of Xbox Points, and I’d like to start a family someday. That ain’t going to happen if I find myself having long conversations about “Xbox Points,” for Christ’s sake. So, anyway, when I get sick of one of the other 360 games I have, Castle Crashers is next, and that’s the highest praise I can give a demo. (There are also some problems with on-line play, so this gives me and them some time to work on our issues.)

The other thing I had for this post, which isn’t specific to CC (which lets you play a long time in demo mode) was regarding just how little time you get in the demo for Robotron 2084. Maybe it’s just because the game is ridiculously addicting, but it stops after the second level, which even a hoof-handed sped like me can get through. I can’t keep going back to the demo because I am going to drop five bucks on the game “just to have it” on the 360. Yet, the 360 gamepad’s analog controllers are frigging primed for Robotron. I must have ten systems that will play Robotron. If they had let you play a couple more levels into it, I’d remember how terrible I am at the game and this feeling would deflate, but they are far too clever for that. So, good, although evil, work with that demo, too.

Nobody was more psyched to get Dead Rising, at least in September 2008, than me. It’s been out for a while now, and I’ve heard amazing things about it. I knew that it would be a long time before I bought an Xbox 360 (the “red ring of death” problem was like coating the console in poison, as far as I was concerned) so I tried to intentionally avoid knowing anything about the game other than:

1. It is a zombie game
2. People generally seem to like it

That being said, I can not believe how multiple-personalitied (schizophrenia isn’t really the right word) this game is. It seems to have been designed by two separate groups of people at Capcom, with absolutely no communication between them. Let’s start with the negatives, although I’ll try not to harp on the problems with the game’s text: it’s waaa-aaay too small and “optimized” for High Definition Television. I do not have HDTV. I am not getting one to play 360 games. I hooked the 360 up in my office, and had Dayna’s 80s-era TV available. I had to switch it out with a more modern flat screen just to play this game. The text is a little clearer. But with how amazing in every respect Resident Evil 4 was (the 16th best game I have ever played)  — also a Capcom game — some of the decisions made with Dead Rising, like this one, are perplexing. I’d expect this crap out of Acclaim.

But that isn’t all. The game defaults to not inverting the y-axis. I like it inverted and I don’t care if it isn’t inverted by default, I am happy to change it. But Dead Rising won’t save my change until I actually save the game… and that opens Pandora’s box, filled in this particular instance with my issues about game saving.

The save system in Dead Rising is broken. Having discussed this with a few people, I sort of see what the designers were going for, but my conclusion is still that it is a problem. Initially, the game gives you a couch to save on and a restroom that you can save in. A bunch of other restrooms are scattered throughout the mall… and you need a key to access them. I mean, come the fuck on! I consider a game that “hides” the ability to save to be unfinished and broken.

The designers attempt to skirt around it by saving your “state” even if you die and restart. While playing, you’ll get experience points. You can then upgrade your skills and — I assume — get better attacks. If you die, you can “Save Status and Exit.” That means that you start the game over, but you keep all your experience points. That’s unique, as far as I have found, in games. You’re going to die because you won’t be able to save once you really get into the mall. And it’s really important for the game designers to give you plenty of stuff to do, if you’re going to be starting over constantly. I have not spent enough time in the game to decide if I like this or not. It’s going to come down to how much content I can experience without feeling forced to do the same thing over and over again. I know it takes about four minutes, after restarting, to skip the cut-scenes and get back to the free-form part. Your character’s walking speed is fairly slow, and if Capcom really wanted to have a game mechanic that demands restarting, they need to let you press a single button to get back to the freeform, sandbox-style fun. They failed at this.

That being said, there are some amazing features in this game. There are seemingly hundreds of weapons, with each one having neat properties. If you get a hockey stick, you can use it to smash zombies, sure. But will also see your character throw down pucks and hit them into zombies, knocking them over. You can get a skateboard, and then frigging 720 Degrees (the arcade game) is essentially included as a mini-game. Nightsticks, knives, mall sit-down benches, cash registered… it’s hilarious. And the last bit I saw before writing these initial thoughts was a scene where a group of hoodlums find a guy with his girlfriend and kill him just for the hell of it, leaving the girl surrounded by zombies and it is now YOUR job to get her out. Video games have such amazing potential to cast their audience into a role brimming with emotion, and potentially it’s always going to be more powerful than movies, books and TV because it’s *you* doing it interactively, but the medium is so horrible juvenile, with games being developed by children, managed by children, tested by children and designed by children. Every once in a while, the thousand monkeys making these things get something right, and I had an absolutely amazing and terrifying experience trying to get the girl to safety. It was the first escort mission I’ve enjoyed since playing the arcade game Crossbow about 20 years ago.

So, with everything Dead Rising gets wrong, I am going to stick with it and see what there is to experience. I can easily see not finishing this game because repetition really irritates me (isn’t this a cheap way to “re-use” content, like with Halo and Hexen?) but in the meantime it seems to be a fairly fun ride.

I begrudgingly purchased Tiger ’09, still smarting from the horrid experience that was Tiger ’08, but hoping against hope that at least some of the “this one is much better than the last one” reviews weren’t just corporate buttsucking.

With about six hours of playtime under the rapidly-expanding waistline, then, I will now present to you my preliminary review of Tiger ’09, played on an Xbox 360.

Here are the things that are better than last years!

- The little bubble that shows you how you’re actually moving the joystick in “real swing” mode or whatever it’s called.

- The graphics are a little better.

- The player stats, although suspicious, are “dynamic”, in that your abilities (distance/short game/putting, etc.) go up and down based on your performance, rather than however it worked before, which I forget, but which I think was a lot more static — you’d build your stats in the training section, and those’d be your stats.

- You can’t tell whether you miss or make a putt based on the camera angle it immediately switches to. I can’t tell you how annoying this was. In ’08, if it went to the “behind the golfer” view, you knew you’d missed, and if it went to “behind the cup” view, you knew you’d made it. Now at least there’s a little tension as the ball rolls to the cup.

- I like the new Tiger Challenge mode. In ’08, you’d have to complete a specific set of tasks to get to a “boss” match. Now you can pick and choose among a bunch of tasks, each of which has a point value, so as long as you collect enough points, you get to the boss, regardless of how you collect those points.

- Thusfar it has yet to alter history.

- Seems some of the courses have been replaced with other ones, and a couple of the new ones seem pretty money.

Here are the things that are worse than last year!

- Gary McCord and David Feherty have been replaced by the deadly dull Sam Torrance and the racist lesbian Kelly Tilghman. However, since the announcers are completely useless anyway (see below), you’re almost relieved that the good names of McCord and Feherty need suffer no more indignities in the name of this godforsaken franchise.

- The Hank Haney training system, where the personality-less Haney suggests training exercises to give you a temporary skill boost, seems completely pointless at best, and totally boring at worst. Or the other way around. Anyway, the training exercises are so painfully dull that the minor temporary boost you’d get in skill is never, ever worth it, and it becomes just another screen to skip.

- Seems even slower than last year, which was already very slow, in terms of loading times.

Here are the things that are just as bad as last year

- The announcers still appear to have no idea what is going on on the course. Moreover, when they are spouting their nonsense which has no apparent relationship to what’s going on on the screen, their grammar now appears to be suffering on top of it.

- Opponent golfers still suffer unbelievable lapses in concentration, and will intentionally line up directly at a tree, fire a ball at it and hit it square, as if they thought the goal of the game was to kill as many woodpeckers as possible within a certain time limit.

- You, yourself, appear to have no idea what is going on either. You will wildly celebrate one-inch putts, and flail around disgustedly when your 280-yard 3 wood misses the green by a foot. You also complain about par a lot.

These three, listed above, continue to amaze me. With all of the advanced technology and multi-zillion dollars that go into these things, for some reason they STILL can’t figure out how to interpret what is going on. I don’t see how it’s that hard. if (distance to pin < previous_distance * .04) celebrate(); if (putt_goes_in and putt_length > 8 feet) fist_pump();. This is NOT DIFFICULT LOGIC TO IMPLEMENT. if (shot_is_really_close_to_green and shot_length_was_over_200_yards) do_not_whine_and_penalize_your_short_game_stats_for_fucks_sake();

I just don’t see why they can’t, or won’t, fix this.

- Still way, WAY too easy. On hard, I’m already breaking 60, and have won every tournament I’ve entered, by a decent margin.

… So, that’s it, at least for now. As a “hardcore golf simulation” (as which some article or another laughably referred to the Tiger EA franchise) it still sucks moose tits. It is still a bad golf game. But it is a better bad golf game than last years, which was horrendous and inexcusable.

So, you know. I guess it’s fine. And ultimately, it’s as good as we’re gonna get.

=(

I have an article I have been meaning to write for months now, about the game Castle Crisis. It is an arcade-perfect translation of Warlords for the Atari 800. If you had a 2600 (and any taste!) you probably played Warlords for the 2600, as it was quite common. The paddle controllers are in perfect form for the game, and it remains an excellent party game.

I picked up Warlords for the 360 (install size: ~35MB, cost: 400 points or $5) and after a long ummmmmmm I come right back to the problem I have trying to do spinner games without a spinner: you need a spinner!

So I don’t know. Is it even worth debating this one? hygraed, in the BBS, told me that there IS a spinner controller for the Xbox, and if I am going to keep doing this thing (get games that require a spinner – next up, Discs of Tron) then maybe it would be a good second controller for my system.

Let’s debate it anyway. Warlords for the 360 comes in two styles: classic and evolved. Amazingly, like real-life evolution, the latter is worse for all the human tinkering. Graphically — and please keep in mind I am on a 19″ screen until I finish my next text game — it’s a cramped mess, with some kind of weird mechanized robotroid post-modern thing going on. (Put it this way: the presentation sort of reminds me of what Sentinel Returns did on the PC years ago.) Because we’re all used to the crisp and clear graphics of regular Warlords, anything else that gums up the works is not necessary. In the (physical) arcade version of Warlords, it pretty much takes one hit to destroy one block. Not so with the evolved 360 version! No idea why!

So, Warlords is an amazing game that suffers from control issues on the 360 with the standard controller. My opinion of this game is INCOMPLETE until such time as I find a spinner, or some humans to play against on-line.