The 360 thread!

teamonkey · Post by **teamonkey** » Mon Jul 03, 2006 9:36 pm 0

Dave wrote:Imagine this. Two small children trapped in a room, scared as fuck. Youâ€™re standing behind a glass barrier, watching, unable to do a thing. Suddenly, the children start freaking out, and a ghostly daemon engulfs one of them, merging their bodies into one semi-translucent spirit. The body is discarded in an explosion of blood. The spirit looks meanly at the other child, who is shivering in terror, runs up, grabs her, and impales her through a steel pole sticking out from the side of the room as she screams her last desperate breaths.

Oh yeah. The Prey demo on 360 is awesome.

Something special, isn't it? Clearly inspired by System Shock 2, which is a Very Good Thing. There's a lot of other good things lifted from other FPS games too (it's definitely got a Half Life vibe), and the way it handles player death is inspired. There's more than a passing similarity to Quake 4, but like I said elsewhere, the Prey demo isn't shit.

Dave · Post by **Dave** » Mon Jul 03, 2006 10:34 pm 0

Flabio wrote:I am finding the twin sticks method of control for FPSes about the same as mouse and keyboard now, which scares me slightly

That's just the console-added auto-aim doing it's job for you. It's very nice and all, but don't get tricked. Nothing beats a laser mouse.

In reality, true gamers can go from one control method to the other, and still master it.

teamonkey wrote:(it's definitely got a Half Life vibe)

That's exactly what comes to mind when playing it.

Quake 4 felt different to me. It's more of a fast paced shoot-em-up where this has some nice story element to it (rather than "let's rip off Aliens again" - not a bad thing, but not original

). Q4 is probably the fastest console FPS I've ever seen. Wouldn't you agree?

teamonkey · Post by **teamonkey** » Mon Jul 03, 2006 10:52 pm 0

Dave wrote:Q4 is probably the fastest console FPS I've ever seen. Wouldn't you agree?

Mmmm. Black, perhaps.

But then I thought that Q4 was dreadful. Really, truly dire, unimaginitive, clunky, had poor production values, was badly balanced and had some shocking framerate issues on the 360 to boot. I was expecting similar of Prey but was very surprised indeed.

Dave · Post by **Dave** » Mon Jul 03, 2006 10:55 pm 0

Prey does chug at times though. Q4 probably was more noticeable as it's going at 60FPS, and suddenly 15FPS, plus page-tearing issues. I'll have to pop the demo in again to see though. Q4 was next on the list after Ghost Recon gets beat. Not anymore.

skweek · Post by **skweek** » Mon Jul 03, 2006 11:08 pm 0

Prey is ace, I really like the old school "look interactive things!" bits and the "look we can make new things! you're upside down now, how cool is that?" bits.

Also it's very plot driven, which is why the "you can't die" works so well, but I'm slightly put off by the cheesy generic sci-finess of the demo. I'm guessing it gets a lot better later though as it's only the demo, but who knows.

It just feels so fresh in a really retro way, reminds me a lot of when I first started playing FPS games.

Mr Meow · Post by **Mr Meow** » Tue Jul 04, 2006 12:36 am 0

Rod_S wrote:
Mr Meow wrote:I found hitman on the 360 way to easy even on the higher settings. I zip through in 2 days. for 69 bucks its waste of money. but I rented it. I still had fun and cost me only 7.99

.
Did you play it as a run-n-gun and not bother with the Silent Assassin ratings? I've spent two days on individual levels alone, just scoping the situation out and planning my hit with style, and when I've got my method down I go back and refine it to absolute precision. You've gotta play it as a hard, cold, invisible killing machine who cares about the aesthetics of his craft, not as Rambo. If you played it that way and cleared it on the hardest levels in a weekend, say hello to the new Games Animal everyone.

Take the Opera level for instance, did you clear that level without firing a single bullet and escape without anyone seeing you?

I played it decently me old chap

. I killed and try to get as minimal casualty as possaible. You see by my gametag score ( meow23 ) its not too sad. I only got a chance to complete the vinyard I got Silent Assassin on my second played through straight off.....

But I had to take the game back....But its was a lot of fun.

Take a peek....I think it shows what I got on most levels.

I love The way in Prey the room twist and loops and fucks with ya mind too......

.

Al · Post by Al » Tue Jul 04, 2006 1:34 am 0

Flabio wrote:I am finding the twin sticks method of control for FPSes about the same as mouse and keyboard now, which scares me slightly

One of us, one of us...

I enjoyed the Prey demo but found the that the wall/celing walking and portal stuff just stepped over the line into the realm of gimmickiness. Mixed with the already slightly gimmicky spirit world shit and the Doom-esque feel, I felt like I'd had my fill even before the demo ended. Plus it felt like I was being constantly ushered along the way without any scope for exploration which seems to be the vogue with first person shooters these days. Still might pick it up if a review manages to convince me that it's got more tricks up it's sleeve.

It does have few great witty moments - loved the "this is fucked up....no wait - THIS is fucked up!" bit. And Don't Fear The Reaper - genius

PVB · Post by **PVB** » Tue Jul 04, 2006 7:49 am 0

Can we try to stay on topic in this thread please?

General wondering about which FPS control system is best and such should be posted somewhere else.

Stone · Post by **Stone** » Tue Jul 04, 2006 11:43 am 0

Rod_S wrote:Nice. We'll have to start a thread and compare methods, I'll be interested to see how some of you sick puppies have been disposing of innocents who've "accidently" fallen to their deaths from balconies...

I've started a new thread for sneaky methods discussion

Stone

PVB · Post by **PVB** » Tue Jul 04, 2006 10:56 pm 0

Al wrote: It does have few great witty moments - loved the "this is fucked up....no wait - THIS is fucked up!" bit. And Don't Fear The Reaper - genius

I loved the bit where:

Spoiler wrote:You see someone switch off the 'death machine', then later you see a control panel, think to yourself "I wonder what that does?" So you push the button and find out.

Sir_LANs-a-lot · Post by **Sir_LANs-a-lot** » Tue Jul 11, 2006 12:17 am 0

Trailer: 'The Simpsons' Movie

Now on marketplace in BOTH 480p and 720p. This content is available in all Xbox Live regions except France.

Very short. The 720p version is only 14.5Mb

Meh, only to be downloaded if you're extremely bored.

Yes, it's the trailer they're playing in cinemas.

Oh - The 720p trailer played back very jerkily here...

Tsk...

WiredWorm · Post by **WiredWorm** » Tue Jul 11, 2006 8:17 am 0

I was annoyed to find that the Dead Rising trailer which is being advertised as 'new' is actually the self same E3 trailer which was available a month or so ago.

I hate it when they recycle content.......

Sir_LANs-a-lot · Post by **Sir_LANs-a-lot** » Tue Jul 11, 2006 8:21 am 0

WiredWorm wrote:I was annoyed to find that the Dead Rising trailer which is being advertised as 'new' is actually the self same E3 trailer which was available a month or so ago.

I hate it when they recycle content.......

The only thing "new" on Dead Rising is some of the gamer pics.

Never mind, it'll be out soon...

Like Frogger... and Pacman...and SF2... and Time Pilot... and...

Flabio · Post by **Flabio** » Tue Jul 11, 2006 8:25 am 0

They had to reissue some of the videos from E3 because the recent dash update stopped them from working.

MattV · Post by **MattV** » Tue Jul 11, 2006 10:29 am 0

There's a big Xbox Live Arcade party tonight (tuesday) in San Francisco, they're supposed to be making some announcements. Maybe it'll be about Jeff's game or maybe it'll just be launch dates for Pacman and Galaga?