icrosoft’s X05 festivities have concluded and we’ve returned from Amsterdam with many answers – and plenty of new questions. Is Perfect Dark Zero the next Halo? How are the playable third party games? Will the Xbox 360 dominate this holiday season? We recap the best and the worst of what Microsoft and the third parties had to offer from Microsoft’s X05 event in Amsterdam.
This is how we roll!
As we boarded water taxis to head off to the venue where the X05 press conference and event would take place, I tingled with goosebumps. I already have my Xbox 360 and a number of games and accessories on pre-order, and while I am covering this event for the website, I’m also selfishly covering this event for my own wallet and my gamer wellbeing. Perfect Dark Zero was one of the big showings of X05, and we finally got some hands-on time with some major third party games from Activision, Ubisoft, Electronic Arts, Sega, 2K Games, THQ, Namco, and others. This show gave a good indication of how the launch line-up for the Xbox 360 is shaping up, as well as how much plasma and used games I’ll need to sell to cover my personal Xbox 360 launch.
Within a few hours of strolling the game floor, I came to a quick realization. As Microsoft representatives like J Allard and Peter Moore repeatedly touted that this launch was the greatest launch in video game history, to me it’s looking to be in the same magnitude as most of the others – if not less than some. Just as I said in my Tokyo Game Show recap, the first party titles look good, and the third party titles look just slightly better than Xbox, except in a few sparse cases. As we’ve stated on this site many times, it’s more than obvious that third parties lagged far behind Microsoft Games Studios in getting development tools.
Perfect Dark Zero: The Xbox 360 Launch Savior?
But let’s get to the big guns first. Microsoft is pimping Perfect Dark Zero as the big game of the Xbox 360 launch, and what I played of the game was good, but not Halo 2 AAA quality good. For a game that’s been in development for over six years I would expect a lot more – especially from a developer with such heritage as Rare. Many gamers name Perfect Dark as one of their favorite FPSs of old, and for what it was at that time, it was a decent effort. In my honest opinion it wasn’t as good as GoldenEye, and was mostly hindered by a horrible framerate issue.
Perfect Dark Zero is the prequel to Perfect Dark, and will give Joanna Dark’s backstory prior to her current agent status. Two different Hong Kong areas were playable including a rooftops area and a subway/retrieval portion, and gave players a good idea of what to expect single player and cooperatively from the title when it’s released on the launch day of Xbox 360.
Upon start up of the game (much like the N64 version) there will initially be three different difficulty settings – agent, secret agent, and perfect agent. One final difficulty setting will unlock – dark agent – which we were told would be ridiculously one-shot-and-you’re-toast tough. I decided to stick with secret agent from the outset, and that seemed to be an average, if not too easy of a difficulty level.
Joanna isn't the only thing that looks hot on Xbox 360
From our play test, Joanna seems to pack the numerous gadgets from the original Perfect Dark that would make James Bond proud. While we weren’t privy to a lot of them in these early levels, one interesting trinket was a device that blows up walls. When you come to a wall that has a defined crack in it, you can place this charge on it to blow it up. Rotating a number of pieces on the device to solve a quick trail puzzle sets the charge, so it’s not just a simple place-and-walk-away setup. In the level we played there weren’t approaching enemies, but we were told that in later levels to expect to have enemies crawling up while you’re trying to set the charge. As you’re playing through Perfect Dark Zero cooperatively, your partner can provide cover as you’re preparing the device which should provide for some interesting and heated banter between you and your buddy.
Co-op is where Perfect Dark Zero will shine, and this can be played via Xbox Live as well as split screen. You’ll play as either Joanna Dark or a new character, Cassandra, and stroll through levels together as well as take branching paths. As we well know with Halo, cooperative play can really make a game fun, and from the looks of it, Perfect Dark Zero kept this in mind. Personally, this is what I’m most looking forward to.
Fortunately, the game seemed to be running at a stable framerate, and seems to be hitting around 25-30 fps at the moment. Control scheme-wise it seemed to yank what we love about Halo’s control scheme, and add a roll button. Unfortunately, Rare seems to feel that Joanna doesn’t need to jump for some reason. Huh? Yeah, Rare pulled the jump button out in favor of a roll button. How this will play out in the final version should be interesting to say the least, and you won’t have players bunny hopping all over the place in multiplayer. But taking out the ability to jump just seems silly. One new change that Rare did control-wise was map the zoom function to the left analog stick. The more or less you press on the left trigger will zoom your scope in and out. It takes a while to get used to but it’s a brilliant addition.
Another addition to the series is the ability for your character to be able to cover. When close to a corner you can duck around the side of a wall and shoot at your enemies. The camera pulls out of first person view and switches to third person allowing you to see where your enemies are. In theory it seems to work like it would in Gears Of War, but when I tried it Joanna seemed to come out a bit too far leaving her vulnerable to enemy fire.
Recently it was stated that Rare would be pulling back the number of multiplayer matches from 50 players to 32, we learned that later on Rare would have a downloadable content patch that would bring the number back to 50 players. This won’t be available from launch, but if Rare can pull this off, it will be an impressive feat.
Perfect Dark Zero still has its number of problems. The rag doll physics seem completely dull, and enemies more or less slouch over when they are shot. Also, in our round table discussion with Rare, they stated that the AI was intelligent and would react to when an enemy nearby was shot. This rang false when I sat on the rooftop of a building and picked off four enemies that were shooting at one of my teammates. These enemies were a few feet from each other and I went down the line picking each of them off with headshots, and neither of the remaining enemies seemed to flinch as their mates hit the floor.
Fortunately, there’s still some time for the team to keep polishing the game. Perfect Dark Zero right now seems good, but as I said not AAA Halo 2 good that Microsoft is saying it is. Hopefully in the next remaining weeks the company can pull it together and fix the flaws that make it just an above average first person shooter.
Next Generation Electronic Arts: One Shining Gem
Electronic Arts had five titles playable for the system that will be available at launch as well, but only two of them stood out – Madden NFL 06 and FIFA Soccer 06: Road To The 2006 World Cup. Madden was the highlight, and out of all the ports of current generation games coming to Xbox 360, Tiburon is actually trying to do different things with the Xbox 360 version instead of making a generic direct port.
The Xbox 360 version doesn’t have everything that the current console version has, as Tiburon is building Madden NFL 06 from the ground up for Xbox 360. Making it to the Xbox 360 version of Madden is the 30-year-franchise, precision passing, QB Vision, truck stick, playmakers, Xbox Live online play, and pro-bowl. Not included are any of the mini-games, the mini-camp mode, create-a-player, create-a-team, create-a-play, stadiums, and the Super Star mode.
The version on the floor was still rather early and had some jerky animations and presentation issues, but the game looked commendable. However, even though EA and Tiburon boasted that the final version of the game would look better than the commercial that ran during the NFL Draft, visually it doesn’t quite stack up. Player models and facial details looked solid, and from the sweat beading up on the players arms, to the cloth on the jerseys, next generation football is shaping up nicely. But at the end of the day, the game looks less spectacular than we were lead to believe.
While not what was promised, Madden on 360 still looks sharp
Tiburon is taking John Madden and Al Michaels out of the play-by-play role, and instead using more of an on-the-field approach. A radio-style broadcast replaces the commentary, and you’ll hear much more trash talk from the field. Replays will come from camera work moving from the field to the scoreboard to catch the last play. When a player is injured, the camera will pan to the injured player and a diagram of the exact injury will be displayed showing how your player was damaged.
Gameplay-wise, the overall feel of playing feels the same. However, Tiburon has tweaked the play calling, and while you can choose plays as you would normally, you have the option to pick from either running or passing plays, and their derivatives. While I would consider myself a veteran of the series, this actually made my play calling quicker.
Is It A Hoppin' Third Party?
Other third party standouts were Sega’s Condemned: Criminal Origins, Activision’s Call of Duty 2, Capcom’s Dead Rising, and 2K’s NBA 2K6 and Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Third party games like Tiger Woods PGA Tour 06, GUN, Peter Jackson’s King Kong, and Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland looked just a bit better than their Xbox counterparts. King Kong already looks brilliant on Xbox, and Tony Hawk runs in 720p, so the true need for an upgrade doesn’t seem that overwhelming. Some of the games like THQ’s Saint’s Row, 2K’s Top Spin 2, and Ubisoft’s Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter were a little too early to even be shown to the press.
Unfortunately, we don’t have a definitive day one launch list outside of the first party Microsoft games like Kameo: Elements of Power, Perfect Dark Zero, Project Gotham Racing 3, as well as the five Electronic Arts titles, and Tecmo’s Dead Or Alive 4. Microsoft told us we should have an official launch list in the next week or so. But what does that leave for the beginning of 2006? Shane Kim stated that N3: Ninety-Nine Nights would be heading stateside, so hopefully that will be hitting sometime in the beginning of 2006. As far as third party, there are a lot of games slipping from day one launch into later in the launch window. Microsoft’s definition of launch window is seemingly from November 22 until sometime in February and March because our sources say that titles like Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Saint’s Row, The Outfit, and Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter will not be seeing the light of day on the Xbox 360 until 2006.
PGR 3 - Cool as ice
Do I Cash Out My Pre-Order? Hell No!
So as a consumer am I disappointed about the overall launch of the Xbox 360? Not in the least bit. First off I have to say that I would be there on day one for the media capabilities and backwards compatibility alone. I love the fact that I’ll be able to play music on my home theater from my PC, which was a feature that I used to have when I had a Tivo unit with the home media option. Backwards compatibility will be nice for some of the final third party Xbox titles that don’t have Xbox 360 versions, but there’s one big problem that Microsoft hasn’t officially addressed. You will not be able to transfer save files from your Xbox to your Xbox 360. Well, at least, Microsoft has no solution for that at this time. That would have made the backwards compatibility issue complete. At least in Sony’s case with the PS2 you can use the same memory card, but with the Xbox to Xbox 360 the memory cards aren’t compatible, and files from games like Knights of the Old Republic can’t fit on a standard Xbox memory card. Why Microsoft doesn’t have some sort of way to dump memory files over via Ethernet or crossover cable is beyond me completely.
Outside of media capabilities, games like Dead Or Alive 4, Kameo: Elements of Power, and Project Gotham Racing 3 have sold me already. Madden NFL 06 will also be on my launch list, but that’s because I’m a huge football fan. Outside of that, any third party games that are also releasing on current generation consoles I’ll most likely get on 360 because they’ll be in high resolution and also have widescreen support. I’d have Call of Duty 2 and Quake 4 on my launch list, but I’d rather play those on my PC.
Kameo: Elements of The New Hotness
At the end of the day, X05 was a great chance to see how the Xbox 360 titles were faring, but it wasn’t as solid as I was hoping. There’s going to be a number of great titles at launch, but not the big stand out Halo title that the company could use to really hype the debut of the system. There’s still some time for polishing, but that time is short especially if companies are trying to hit day one launch. Those expecting some major leap in graphics and gameplay from last generation to this generation will have to wait a bit. The only game that really looks like a next generation title to me at this point is Kameo: Elements of Power. While that may sound disheartening, looking back at past launches for systems it always takes time for developers to get their feet wet with new hardware – regardless if they are first, second, or third party developers. But when you have games like Gears of War, Too Human, Crackdown, and the next Castle Wolfenstein coming down the pipe for the Xbox 360, the future is looking bright for Microsoft’s second console.
We’ll have much more on these titles in the coming weeks up to the pending launch of Xbox 360.