Force Unleashed soon on Xbox Live

Posted by John as Shmups

LucasArts’ Secret Apprentice-led Star Wars action adventure hits new sales milestone of 7 million. The Infinities storyline concludes on PSN now, Xbox Live February 23 for $10.

LucasArts kicked off the Infinities storyline for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed in August 2009 with the release of Tatooine Mission Pack. The Tatooine Mission Pack is a downloadable add-on that continued the storyline of Darth Vader’s Secret Apprentice. However, to conclude that storyline, players had to buy Star Wars: The Force Unleashed – ultimate Sith Edition, included the accompanying Hoth Mission Pack, along with the original game and other DLC.

For those gamers who didn’t take the plunge to pick up the Ultimate Sith Edition, LucasArts is now offering the Hoth Mission Pack as a separate download through Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network. The PS3 edition of the add-on is now available for $9.99, and the XBL version will follow on February 23 for MSP800.

Click here to buy Star Wars: The Force Unleashed for Xbox 360 ($ 36.99).

The Infinite storyline

It starts following one of the numerous endings to the original, when the player kills Vader and becomes Emperor Palpatine’s assistant and a Sith Lord. The galactic dictator then dispatches players to Tatooine, where they try to track down and kill the Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi.

The Hoth Mission pack continues this journey and sees the Secret Apprentice traveling to the titualar icy planet to do battle with Luke Skywalker and wipe the last traces of the Rebellion from the galaxy. Players will also find themselves visiting locations made famous in Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back.

The original Star Wars: The Force Unleashed launched in September 2008 to low ratings and bad reviews. However, the game’s critical reception did not impact its commercial success. LucasArts said today that the game has now sold more than 7 million units worldwide. In December, the publisher announced The Force Unleashed II for release on unspecified platforms in 2010.

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A review on Assassin’s Creed II: Battle of Forli

Posted by John as 2d Shooter

A review on Assassin’s Creed II: Battle of Forli

Created by: Ubisoft Montreal
Type: Historic Action Adventure
Date of release: January 28, 2010
ESRB: Mature

The disappointing and super schemed add on doesn’t improve as a follow up to Assassin’s Creed I. Assassin’s Creed II takes away the thrill of its predecessor mainly due to its poorly paced and messy plot and game play.

Superior points:

The beautiful Caterina Sforza finally gets her due.

Some great new dialogue and voice acting

Weak points:

The “special” memory is pointless

Destroys the main game’s narrative pace

Several annoying contrivances

It is not difficult to notice the two missing sequences directly preceding the finale of Assassin’s Creed II. The Battle of Forli is the first of two planned add-ons. It is meant to fill in the obvious break. The historic action adventure game is not that bad for a price of $ 4.00 or 320 Microsoft points. However, the added missions in part 2 of the game don’t embody the spirit and essence of the original game and seem tossed to earnest fans starving for new content. The shooter starts with the charming and deceptive Caterina Sforza whose earlier appearance was very short-lived. The overall delivery of Assassin’s Creed II feels hastily done and thrown together making it a forgettable chapter in an otherwise unforgettable game.

Read the review and Assassin’s Creed II spoilers below:

For those of you who just started to play the game, you should know that you won’t be able to access the new content not until you reach the end of the game. The new chapter happens after a dominant revelation that completed sequence 11. There shows the too clear chronological gap here, but that emotional leap of faith was a very suitable end to the definitive chapter and supplied a delicate transition to the game’s great finale. The new content packed with narrative pace along with the opening scene showing essential artifact as a major spoiler that makes the game’s ending less spectacular. You might not mind this gives away if you have already finished the game. In this case, you will enjoy the romantic tension between Caterina and Ezio, who find Forli under attack by a couple of brothers who are into more than merely the joy of combat. I find the dialogue about a missing toe and finger, well the whole limb for that matter, between Ezio and black-robed monk particularly funny.

The weakness of the game is the early climax of the plot resulting to the rest of the game to be plain rather than a blast.

The initial third of the add-on focuses on the battle scenes that pit you, along with Caterina and Niccolo Machiavelli, versus a big number of sword-swinging foes. The big scale combats are fun but are not quite as challenging as expected. The simple feat of positioning yourself behind a busy attacker and to fatally stab him at the back with a single thrust is not particularly challenging. One thing about the visual chaos is that gets rid of the joy of counter kills, crowding up the screen and keeping you from witnessing Ezio’s sleek murder moves. The rest of the memories comprise ACII missions such as rescues, chases and more battles. The missions don’t proudly show off the sleekness of the main game.

“Special memory”

An addition to the game is the “special memory”, which is nothing more than an out-of-context flight on the flying machine. You will find no mission or goal associated to your flight. I don’t find the machine to hold a key importance to the game. It is another contrivance in a game that obviously doesn’t need more. You might want to forget your hopes to pad your game score since The Battle of Forli doesn’t offer any new achievement.

If you were at least hoping to pad your gamer score, you’ll want to note that The Battle of Forli doesn’t offer any new achievements. This feature does not come to be unsurprising as no new locations are available to explore or weapons to display.

As a conclusion, Assassin’s Creed II is a great game for its fans. The various bits and parts fit together into one cohesive whole. It intends to fill a narrative gap, but ironically The Battle of Forli is out of place. The interesting character of the tough Caterina, and the awkward reference to her reproductive ability, is fun to play. On the other hand, the game play is a medley of standard missions sewn together without careful-thought cohesion. The Battle of Forli II offers another way to go back to an excellent game but unsuccessfully gain a spot for the must-have Xbox live arcade game.

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Meet the New Indie Shooter: Creed Arena

Posted by John as Shmups

The start of 2010 unveils new shooters that you should definitely check out. For starters, let’s see what Creed Arena has in store for all players out there.

Safari Studios released their Xbox Indie Arcade named Creed Arena. The game is filled with 16 arenas and unique game feature that involve winning over the fight crowds.

Play your way in arena battles set in gladiatorial fashion. You have various ways to play the game either solo, split-screen co-op, online multiplayer and even split-screen online multiplayer. Multiplayer feature is not always available for Xbox Indie titles.

Try out the demo and try out the Live Multiplayer game mode if you’re impressed enough to buy the game.

Snag this baby for 400 Microsoft point.

Read the full press release below.

Sydney, Australia – January 03, 2010 – Indie developer Safari Studios has just released Creed Arena onto XBOX Live Indie Games, a dazzling new shooter with some unique game mechanics.

In just 3 days of sales, Creed Arena has already surpassed many other games on the channel. XBOX shooter fans from around the world are hailing Creed Arena as the best indie shooter around.

Fetatures include:

• 16 unique arenas, each with a different challenge

• Solo Championship – become the most popular gladiator in the tournament

• Splitscreen Co-op – play through the game with a friend

• Online Multiplayer – try to get to the top of the global popularity chart

• Splitscreen Online Multiplayer – 2 people can play online together

About Creed Arena

Fight other gladiators infront of thousands of spectators. Become the most popular fighter in the tournament. Win enough fans to unleash your “crowd rage”, an intense rampage that makes you bigger, faster and more powerful. Unique weapons, 16 arenas, and intense action in solo, co-op and online muliplayer.

About Safari Studios

Safari Studios is a two man indie development team based in Sydney, Australia. Matthew and Laurence Rietdijk have been developing XBOX games for 2 years now, and one a top 20 position in Microsoft’s most recent Dream Build Play competition.

Technorati Tags: 2d Shooter, creed arena, indie shooter, Safari Studios, Shmups, video game, xbox live arcade

Get to know what Defense Grid: The Awakening is all about!

Posted by John as Shmups

Defense Grid: The Awakening is a unique spin on tower defense game play that will attract players of all skill levels.

Defense Grid is like a shooter where you never have to pull a trigger. It is more than a flash game in a lovelier packaging. It is one of the best-designed tower-defense games you can play. A whole line of upgradeable towers are available for you to choose from, complete with unique strengths and weaknesses suitable for different types of aliens trying to steal your power cores and escape with them. The shooter is just as well balanced as it is well polished in look.

Play this tower defense video game developed by Hidden Path Entertainment for Windows and Xbox Live arcade on the Xbox 360. Most tower defense games have been made as flash games with less stellar 2d graphics. Some of these really look good having a sort of interesting artistic look, but none of them have really featured a 3d engine on a same level with Xbox 360. Defense Grid: The Awakening from Hidden Path Entertainment is a graphically slick take on the genre that looks completely at home on the Xbox 360.

Game play
Begin each round with a certain amount of money/resources. You need to buy towers to protect your reservoir of energy from being grabbed by the marching aliens and taken back out the exit. Of course, this is possible with the money available at the start of the game. The strategy in the game starts with the location of your towers as well as the kind of towers and when to buy new towers or upgrade the old ones. As the game progresses and the enemies get tougher, you unlock more tower types and the ability to upgrade them. Depending on the tower type, upgrades will buy you more range, better rate of fire or the capacity to deal out more damage. You can simply pick all three. Keep in mind to carefully balance your resources, so that you can improve your “defense grid” in accordance with the increasingly difficult horde.

It is fairly easy to navigate through the game. You will encounter more aliens that have to be defeated with a certain kind of tower. The maps become increasingly complex as well, starting out with simple routes to your energy cores with plots to place turrets next to them along the way. The larger, more sprawling maps are where the placement of your towers will define the route taken by the enemies.

What makes this game an above average strategy-game is its sleek graphics along with excellent tower and alien designs plus unique challenges for the player thus exponentially increasing the amount of “replayibility”. You can play the basic story mode that takes many levels before you are using all the towers. Another mode is the story challenge that is essentially similar to the basic story mode but poses tougher enemies for you to have fun with. Other modes put a limit on the number or type of towers as well.

Defense Grid: The Awakening has nice, little touches too. Use the bumpers to move fast forward the flow of the onslaught so you don’t get bored waiting for foes to creep along. You can zoom in extra close to view the cool artistic design of the aliens. It would have been better if it could have a camera rotation feature. Watch out for that special weapon attack shown later in the game for that last-ditch desperation move when the boss is about to walk away with your energy core.

For all Xbox fans out there, Defense Grid: The Awakening is worth every cent. The shooter game is the pinnacle of design for tower-defense games not just because of its fancy Gamebryo-powered 3d graphics. The game is simply challenging and complex without altering the same rules that tower-defense games in general follow. Defense Grid: The Awakening is a great, classic game design with added depth and polish to it.

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Raiden Fighters Aces package soon

Posted by John as 2d Shooter

Get your hands on a three in one disc shooter for only $ 19.99 on August 18th.   Let’s welcome Raiden fighters Aces, a top-down shooter of Raiden franchise with a history through the 1990s. The franchise starts spanning multiple releases that included three Raiden Fighters games towards the turn of millennium. Raiden Fighters Aces may not be the greatest top-down shooters in history yet it is good compilation of old school gaming.

While most top-down shooters wind their way to Xbox 360 as an Xbox Live Arcade, Raiden Fighters Aces reaches its fans on disc and store shelves. Raiden Fighters Aces on disc has few advantages over its XBLA equivalent, especially the full set of 1,000 Achievement points and a sturdy set of options for tweaking the game play.

Raiden franchise reliably reborn all three Raiden Fighters games for play on Xbox 360. Among the additions on this new package are online leader boards and a replay save option. Its technical limitation, however, is the classic visuals and sound can be improved.

The three games in one package contain little difference. Each of the three has a good selection of ships that carries their own stats and special weapons. It’s a good deal of dodging bullet among all the chaos that greets you during the start of the game.

Power-ups can be grabbed to increase your firing power or to add slave ships a la Galaga. This game is tailored like the rest of all top-down shooters. It dwells more on memorizing enemy patterns than any other skill set. The game can be brief to play but poses a big challenge of beating enemies without continuing to get all of the Achievements.

Each game can be played co-operatively and only offline with another player. I find it rather annoying that this two-player game can get rather hectic after adding a second bullet-spewing ship onto the screen. Come to think of it, any missing multiplayer features of any Xbox Live multiplayer features fails to live up to my expectations.

You may find the whole concept of the Xbox Live integration a bit unusual. It’s true that there are leader boards; however, you have to select the Xbox Live tab on the main menu to play a game where your scores will be registered. You’ll then find a more restrictive option set to keep everyone on the same playing field. .Even if you play under the default settings on the normal “Game Play” tab you’ll find that your scores aren’t uploaded to the leader boards.

Another oddity to the Xbox 360 integration is the saved videos option. You can only save a video shared online while playing an Xbox Live game. You can save videos in other modes but can only be viewed locally.

Despite these minor setbacks, Raiden Fighters Aces manages to offer an impressive set of options and features. It comes fully equipped with plenty of sliders and filters exist to get the visuals just right to what you need. It includes fully customizable controls and the ability to rotate the screen thus you are able to maximize your widescreen television.

Take a trip down memory lane when you get your copy of this top down shooter. Raiden Fighters Aces has the budget price and good assortment of options leave little to be desired. Be mindful of its limitation though. It lacks the feature of online multi-player. It is a three in one game bundle of arcade games which the actual content is still rather slim. If you’re looking for an impressive visual showcase, you should go look somewhere else.

Technorati Tags: 2d shooters, new game release, raiden fighters aces, xbox live arcade