MOB RULE: MY NIGHT WITH THE XBOX 360 PREMIERE OF 1 VS. 100
Tonight, I snuck across the border. As the hour reached vodka-rocks-o’clock, I went under cover of a hotmail.ca and freshly created Canadian Xbox Live account (meet the mild-mannered, balding middle-aged ‘powerpi11‘) to spend a quiet night in seeing what Microsoft and Endemol had in store for their Xbox 360 massively multiplayer real-prize game show initiative, ‘Primetime’.
First announced at last year’s E3 and currently only ‘airing’ in Canada, tonight was the beta premiere of its version of NBC game show 1 vs. 100.
Here’s the premise, for those that haven’t seen the TV version (as I hadn’t!): a titular ‘one’ is chosen from the viewing audience (players have a higher chance of getting chosen, apparently, by doing well at the game playing along at home) to go up against a ‘mob’ of 100 other players — though I’m less clear on how this is doled out, as there seemed to have been at least 10,000 players connected, and I always seemed to be in the mob (sharded, presumably?).
Then begins the trivia questions: topics in the opening night ranged from who first reached a million followers on Twitter (A: you know this) to what members of an audience were doing to make Morrissey abruptly shut down a recent performance (A: eating meat).
If a player answers correctly, they move on to the next round, and any mob member that chooses incorrectly is taken out of the prize running, but still continues to play. And here’s the crux: the more mob members taken out, the higher the one’s prize winnings rise on a tiered structure — 160, 300, 600, 800, 1200, 2000, 3000+ Microsoft Points, which begins to quickly add up to an un-sniff-worthy amount of Xbox Live Arcade money for a free, online game (that above range roughly equates to between $3-50+).
After a certain number of rounds, the player’s asked each time — in true fomulaic gambler’s dilemma game-show tradition — if they want to take the Points they’ve earned so far, or continue on. If a player continues and loses, that amount of Points is distributed to the mob members remaining. On average, that amounted to somewhere between 80-160 points ($1.50-3 per player). At left above — the ‘one’ deciding whether to take their 3000/$50 of Points, or try to eliminate even more of the 23 remaining mob.
So what did I learn from my hour and 15 minutes of play, before being ingloriously booted from the proceedings for not actually having an Xbox Live Gold account (was that about to be my chance to be the one?):
* Just that slightest amount of interaction instantly turned an activity I’d rarely consider taking part in passively to one that legitimately and repeatedly made my heart fractionally tighten. Suddenly, the thrill of game/reality TV that inexplicably seems to captivate howevermany millions of viewers cut through me like a hot knife.
Even with absolutely nothing at stake (no prizes are being awarded during the beta), I played for 80 minutes, non-stop, dead simply in some semi-sad anticipation that I might be the next ‘one.’
With ‘commercial breaks’ lasting some 20-30 seconds — never nearly enough for kitchen or bathroom runs — that is a captive audience, and that is a Tivo-era marketer’s dream come true (ads shown in the beta: manga.com, UFC [above], and, natch, Microsoft/MSN).
* I am unstoppably quick on the answer-button draw (sorry, rza145), and even when you’ve been disqualified from the prize running, the sub-competition of playing against your small group of four other local or Xbox Live users for point (not cashable Point) prowess is stimulating enough to keep the controller in hand.
* Like any true corn-fed American, I know next to nothing about Canada. Not even, embarrassingly enough, when pressed, what ‘Nova Scotia’ means (I’m sorry), or that Vancouver’s nickname is ‘Hollywood North’ (why?), or what a Tim Hortons ‘timbit’ is (also: what is a Tim Horton). But, if nothing else, what this showed was the lengths Microsoft is willing to go to to custom tailor its questions.
* At least 5 people out of 100 in Canada think that either Marilyn Manson or Marilyn Monroe died recently (A: Marilyn Chambers).
* At least 1 person out of 100 in Canada thinks you can get a temporary tummy tuck or a nipple ring in a box of Cracker Jack (A: tattoo).
* I would very much like to live in a world where network TV shows broadcast billboard ads for indie games like Metanet’s N+ (the Toronto developer presumably chosen here representin’ the Great White North?).
Will I play again? Are you joking: come May 12th, I’ll be donning that ‘powerpi11’ skin an hour ahead of time, just to see if I can again make it through the digital RCMP’s mindful watch (whose uniforms, I now and forevermore will remember after tonight, also go by the nickname ‘Red Serge.’)
1 vs. 100 [xbox.com]
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THE SINCLAIR SOLUTION: BIOSHOCK 2’S FIRST MULTIPLAYER DETAILS
In its ongoing drip-feed of BioShock 2 details, 2K has let loose the first details of the game’s multiplayer campaign. For such a deliberately single-starring narrative experience as the original game was, multiplayer might have seemed an odd choice, but developer
2K says the multiplayer segment of the game will work in parallel with the single player experience that will be set “during the fall of Rapture,” prior to ‘Jack’s arrival in the first game, with users taking the role of test subjects for the then-experimental bio-enhancing Plasmids.
There, players will explore pre-wreckage environments seen in the first game like Kashmir Restaurant and Mercury Suites, and, taking a page from Call of Duty 4‘s multiplayer playbook, they’ll earn experience points that will grant access to better weapons, Plasmids and Tonics to be recombined to fit your style of play.
BioShock 2 is due for release in October for PS3, Xbox 360, and PC.
There’s something in the sea [2K]
Previously:
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TRIPLE ROCK: X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE, OR BULLET FROM A LOGAN
Every step that Wolverine takes toward you is the coiling of spring. His is a menacing swagger, but until the schnick, a sort of calm cloaks the danger. For his foes, his approach is that moment after you’ve leapt from the cliff top, before you’ve dashed your head on the rocks below; the holding of your breath in the second before the world explodes. Wolverine twitches a beat then boom, the spring is sprung and nobody is left standing.
This sense of tension and release is ably communicated by current videogame blockbuster X-men Origins: Wolverine. Its developer, Raven, has relished the chance to illustrate, in unflinching detail, the more gruesome results of the mutant’s cloudy disposition.
This Wolverine brings with him a typhoon of bloodletting, which starts with a 500-foot fall from a helicopter onto a cushioning jungle rebel, and ends fifteen hours and close to 2000 kills later. This is a Wolverine who pulls the head clean from the sunken neck of an ancient stony monster; who punches through a windshield, in one motion hauling and eviscerating the blanching driver from his seat. This is a Wolverine who repairs his own bullet wounds like Master Chief recharges his shields.
But for all his schnickity bombast, Wolverine is a character that lacks the crucial tool in any action game hero’s arsenal: a gun. Videogaming’s critics mistakenly suppose that the medium’s obsession with guns is through choice and not necessity, that it’s the boyhood fixation of an adolescent industry infatuated with tits and cars and bullets. But that’s only a half-truth. Shooting has been our lot ever since Space War fired its first missile across the PDP-1’s highlighter pen green solar system. If shooting stuff were gaming’s primary theme merely because of immaturity, surely we would have grown out of it, forty-seven years on? (more…)
See more posts about: Offworld Originals, Triple Rock, Xbox 360
RIGG’D UP: BRüTAL LEGEND’S LATEST FEELGOOD TRAILER
I think we can all agree there is no part of this that won’t strike a happy chord with just about everyone.
Brütal Legend [EA/Double Fine, via benisadork]
Previously:
- Brütal news is now: EA to publish Brütal Legend – Offworld
- GDC: Host Master, Tim Schafer's finest point & click in a decade …
- Double Fine Open the Psycho-pedia – Offworld
- Listen: Double Fine's Psychonauts soundtracks go 'e' – Offworld
- Tim Schafer releases original Grim Fandango design docs. – Offworld
See more posts about: Brütal Legend, Double Fine, Offworld Originals, Xbox 360
SOMETHING FOR THE WEEKEND: THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK: ESCAPE FROM BUTCHER BAY
Today sees the release of Raven Software’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Watching a promotional interview with some of the Raven staff, one developer suggested that Wolverine might be “the movie game that finally, does not suck“.
Finally? What a tired argument. While there has been a swathe of lazy, rushed licensed tie-ins, there are still many precedents for the “decent movie game” – and somewhere near the top of that list should be Starbreeze’s The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay; a game, coincidentally, that’s forming the bulk of my gaming line-up this weekend.
Released for the original Xbox in 2004, it was long a source of annoyance to me that Riddick never made it onto the 360’s backwards compatibility list. The reason for its absence was, we were told, because there was a 360 remake impending. It’s taken a while, but the recently released Assault On Dark Athena combines an all-new single-player game with that hi-def Butcher Bay remake.
Rather than wrap a first-person stealth game around the confines of a movie plot, Starbreeze set out on the right foot by building a new installment of Riddick’s adventures, acting as a prequel to Pitch Black, and existing as a canon entry to the universe. The result was a game that managed to deliver a compelling narrative, but one that was ideally suited for a 12-hour videogame, rather than a two-hour movie: the tale of Riddick’s initial escape from prison, told as a first-person stealth game that erupts into bursts of frenetic violence.
Forget solidity of world: Starbreeze’s games are all about solidity of characterisation. From the measured, terse voice acting from Vin Diesel, to the omninpresent shadow on the floor – those distinctive, thickset shoulders, hunched and ready to strike – the game is all about delivering on a sensation of being a character. That solidity of characterisation extends to the supporting cast, too. Many games have hired spectacular voice casts, but the Riddick games managed to get great performances out of their actors, too.
It’s in the first-person combat that the full realisation of Vin Diesel’s character really emerges. First-person melee combat has always been a challenge for game developers, and so many attempts have ended up in complex interfaces or floaty, impact-less punching. Riddick’s melee is still one of the best examples, trumping even the Condemned games’ mannequin-beating and tramp-battering. It has a real heft to it, and despite the swiftness of the blows there’s a slow, inevitable rhythm to every fight.
Riddick’s hands aren’t just terrifying weapons for his foes; they’re deeply unsettling for the player as well. I’m always taken aback by the brutality contained in them. The ferocious counterattacks that end fights in a second are always a notch more than I’m expecting; as I watch the arms that extend from my viewpoint force a guard’s gun into his mouth, or drop an elbow into an inmate’s face, you’re constantly reminded that you’re not just any pair of disembodied hands, or another generic space marine; you really are Riddick. It achieves what every licensed game sets out to: placing you, the player, front-and-centre in an already-defined universe. It is, in every sense of the words, a genuine role-playing experience.
So that’s my weekend sorted: a return to Butcher Bay, along with a trip back to Azeroth, a digression into the wonderful Windosill (recently covered on Offworld) and perhaps a jaunt through a Left 4 Dead campaign. If a bit of first-person brawling isn’t up your street this weekend, perhaps you’ll be checking out this week’s big re-release – the Live Arcade port of stompy-mecha-beat-em-up Virtual On: Oratorio Tangram. Or, maybe, you’ll be doing something totally different.
What does this weekend have in store for you, Offworlders?
See more posts about: Offworld Originals, Xbox 360
COME HUNGRY, NEVER LEAVE: PREMIERE VIDEO OF CAPCOM’S DEAD RISING 2
With the veil now lifting on the games revealed at Capcom’s blowout ‘Captivate 09’ event last week comes the first full trailer of their previously mentioned Dead Rising sequel, every bit as tongue-in-cheek parodic as it is horrifying (very much in the vein of Romero’s legacy).
The trailer doesn’t get into much of the underlying gameplay other than returning to the panoply of usable objects that will aid in staving off the undead hordes, but with some of the most creative chainsaw work I’ve seen in ages, I suppose that’s not to its detriment.
Dead Rising home [Capcom]
See more posts about: Offworld Originals, Xbox 360
SOMETHING FOR THE WEEKEND: OUTRUN ONLINE ARCADE
I don’t know about the weather where you are, but where I am, spring really has taken hold, and in the past week or two given me the most tantalizing glimpse of summer just around the corner; it’s been shirt-sleeve weather all week. How apt, then, that the recent release of OutRun Online Arcade coincided almost perfectly with the start of a hot spell.
OutRun is summer gaming personified: taught, arcade racing, with a blazing blue sky, an open road, a girl at your side, and heady salsa rhythms blaring from the stereo. Although OutRun saw release in 1986, it’s really 2003’s OutRun 2 that my heart belongs to, with its rolling roads, spectacular scenery, and thumping Richard Jacques re-workings of the classic OutRun score. Sumo Digital’s OutRun Online Arcade is an HD reworking of OutRun 2 SP, the arcade follow-up to OutRun 2. Sumo were responsible for both the original Xbox OutRun 2 port, as well as the majestic OutRun 2006 Coast 2 Coast – spectacular on a powerful PC, and still one of the few games to let you share saves between a PS2 and PSP.
OutRun‘s gameplay has barely been altered in 23 years: you race your Ferrari through a forking map of stages, dodging traffic and other racers, left turns taking you to easier stages, right turns to more challenging. The end of each stage extends your time; if you’re good, you’ll make it to one of the five goals. And that’s it: it’s a pure Arcade racer, better as time-attack than competitive. What the 2003 sequel – and subsequent iterations – add to this a fabulous drift model.
When it comes to drifting, OutRun is not quite Ridge Racer: drifting is not always the best solution to every corner, but it is a spectacular one, and one that your female passenger always seems to enjoy. The careful balancing of drift with conventional cornering, sliding the car from lock to lock through hairpins, and slipstreaming through traffic to make ever-tighter deadlines is a real challenge, and there’s a lot of pleasure to be gained from shaving second after second off your times.
A few notes for first-time OutRunners; the trial version is a bit crippled, as it doesn’t extend time after checkpoints, meaning it’s quite hard to envisage what full-on time attack looks like. By default, the game is set to VERY EASY and has over-sensitive handling – you can fix this in the options menu, and you should find Normal difficulty offers a fair bit of a challenge. And, whilst it’s a remarkably impressive game squeezed into Live Arcade’s 350mb cap, a lot of the sound has been heavily compressed – which is, sadly, most noticeable on the marvellous soundtrack. It should sound a little better than that, honest.
But: give it a chance and it will slowly win your heart. The stage design never ceases to charm; the first time you speed past its waterfall or Easter-Island-inspired statues at 300kmh, you can’t help but grin. There’s no time to stop and take pictures, because there’s racing to be done; you’ll just have to come past this spot again. Whenever it’s grey and wet outside, you’ll know it’s always a Mediterranean summmer in OutRun land, and five stages should do as a cure for any Seasonal Affective Disorder.
OutRun Online Arcade is polished, joyous, arcade fun, and the perfect game to get you in the mood for a spring weekend in the sun. That’s what I’ll be doing with some of my weekend (along with the ever present levelling in Feralas); what are you going to be up to, Offworlders?
[OutRun Online Arcade is available on PSN and Xbox Live Arcade, right now]
See more posts about: Offworld Originals, Xbox 360
BRICK THIS CITY: DEVASTATING NEW DETAILS ABOUT LEGO ROCK BAND
Apparently imagining instrument brick destruction was thinking entirely too small: Microsoft’s new entry for the just-announced TT/Harmonix crossover Lego Rock Band implies that the game has its sights set on even more wanton rock wreckage, detailing:
LEGO-themed rock challenges: Play killer riffs to destroy a giant robot, summon a storm, and demolish a skyscraper using the power of rock!
Which really, again, ’nuff said.
Lego Rock Band Xbox 360 home [Microsoft, via GoNintendo]
See more posts about: Offworld Originals, Xbox 360
WAR OVER GOOGLE MAPS: SQUAREENIX’S XBLA SHOOTER 0 DAY ATTACK ON EARTH
SquareEnix’s other game of the Microsoft preview — the wonderfully titled 0 day Attack on Earth — is also another Xbox Live Arcade dual-stick shooter.
This time, though it looks somewhere in between fantastic long-running Sandlot series Earth Defense Force and underdog PlayStation Network favorite The Last Guy, with relentless alien invaders being shot down over Paris, New York, and Tokyo on what would appear to be playfields procured from Google Earth.
0 day Attack on Earth 1st Trailer [YouTube]
See more posts about: Offworld Originals, Xbox 360
FUTURE BOXES: SQUAREENIX DEBUTS XBOX LIVE ARCADE SHOOTER PROJECT: CUBE
Microsoft recently held a press conference in Japan to show the growing local support for its Xbox 360 and Xbox Live Arcade service, and, surprisingly, it was Square Enix who came away with the most interesting developments of the show, and — even more surprisingly — they had nothing to do with Final Fantasy or RPGs in general.
Most notably: a new Live Arcade game project tentatively titled Project: Cube, a multiplayer dual-stick arena shooter that doesn’t give away much by just watching: for the life of me I can’t understand why the laser shots fired sometimes hang limply in the air (on the floor?).
Also, surely I can’t be alone in seeing some heavy similarities between the new game and Sean Cooper’s hit Boxhead Flash game series, down to the name itself?
Project: Cube debut video [YouTube]
See more posts about: Offworld Originals, Xbox 360
