Gaming Market Trends

As most people know and do these days when u find something good on the market you go ahead and flog it for all its worth

In the gaming market the latest trend to be flogged or rather the latest trend that is in the process of being flogged is strategy games genre. In the past strategy games were reserved solely for the PC market and rightly so as well.

Theme of the month

So I thought after searching through the many themes available on Xbox live that it is such a huge task to find a decent looking free theme. So why not provide the community with a little help by providing a Best Free theme of the month. If you dont agree with me please post a comment or send me a mail as I always welcome suggestions.

Games Galore

In a turn of events that totally surprised me i bought a total of 11 games in the past week. This is split into the following categories , 4 XBLA Games and 7 normal games. While i never buy this many games at one time , this time i had to make a exception because i was really falling behind with Xbox gaming recently.Also the 7 normal Xbox games I bought were not for me but for my brother who I have been trying to get a bit more involved in gaming.

Ok so time for a quick run through the XBLA games that I have played so far and what I have enjoyed or not enjoyed. As soon as i get a chance to play the normal xbox games I will hit the blog with another post.

XBLA Games

Braid

This game really caught me off guard ,what MS usually does is when a new or heavy hitting game comes out its basically advertised all over the dashboard. While this is a nice way to advertise it usually annoys me because the games are usually not that good. When I saw that ad for braid I definitely did not want to download it.

After googling a bit more info for the game I decided to at least get the demo and see how it looks. This is where the game surprised me for the second time at +-140mb for a demo I was a hoping that the game might at least be above average. After finally downloading the game and playing the demo all I can say is wow.

Each level is beautifully painted and every puzzle is unique , while this is a bold claim after the purchasing the game i can definitely say that this is true. On top of that if you enjoy a platform puzzler then you will really enjoy these puzzles as they require a bit of thought on the players side. A very innovative thing i saw in the game was the use of paintings, these paintings are created by the player after picking up pieces of the painting through the stage. Once completed or even partially completed the player can actually use the paintings canvas and painting it self as part of the environment.

The picture above is an exapmle of how the story is told , in between each level the player find these books which explains abit more of the story as you progress. Sharp eyed players will notice that this is not the only way the story is told , the other means is through the paintings that the player collects and build.

It also pretty obvious that the roots of this game stem from the original mario games. While the creators have tried to not make it too obvious the little mario ‘gems’ found around the world complement the game to make it perfect and add a little humor to the game as well.

The image below taken from the official site describes perfectly some of the mechanics used in the game.

Also if by now you still have not bought the game , make sure that you go and get it , its worth every MS point .

Geometory Wars 2

This is the second game that i bought and without a doubt one of the better games available on the XBLA.

Based on the original Geometry Wars with a whole lot of extra oomph added to give it that extra kick needed to make it survive in this competitive market.

The number of features and improvements added to the game are tremendous and it really show. For starters the game is now fully HD compliant , so when playing it at higher resolutions the graphics are not distorted at all. Quite a few new enemy ships have been added and the original enemy ship designs have been redone to complete the new look to the game.

By far the biggest change to the game is the addition of the new game modes. With 5 new modes + co-op play (versuses or co-op) there is a ton of fun to be had with this game.

Modes Include :

• Deadline : Get as much score as possible before the timer runs out.
• King : Stay in the circle to shoot the enemies and gain points.
• Pacifism : No weapons kill enemies using the new bonus bars.
  
• Waves : Waves of increasing number of ships attack survive as long as possible.
• Sequences : Enemies spawn in the same sequence’s , see how many sequences you can survive.

If you are looking for a great co-op game this is definitely it , just keep in mind this is a game for the persistent and challengers. If you give up easily you will really not enjoy this game as the difficulty at times can be quite steep. But if i could convince my siblings who hated the first geometry wars with a passion to play this version then i don’t think many people will have a problem getting hooked to this game.

If ever you are online and want to hit a game of GW2 send me a message and we can get some gaming on.

~stalkerh

Inter competition

The debate rages on daily if not hourly somewhere in this world and I’m pretty sure at this very second you will start the very same debate. What is the best gaming platform ?

While the short answer is that it comes down to personal choice, Microsoft has stepped up to the challenge and provided the means to put this to an end. They recently announced that Games For Windows Live would be free to all PC users and that they would be able to challenge gamers on the 360. While this is not a new feature, the cost that was attached to owning a Games for windows Live Gold account has been dropped.

Coupled with this, they have now announced that gamers on the XBOX360 with silver accounts (the ones that can’t play multiplayer but can do everything else) can play certain games that have been released on the games for windows live platform. This means that there’s no reason for all XBOX and PC gamers to not step up to the challenge and beat the living daylights out of each other.

While it must be stressed that this was announced as a time limited offer (so make the most of it), I am very sure that we will be seeing this kind of service from Microsoft in the next few months leading up to the release of their new dashboard for the 360.

As always Iam up for the challenge. If you have a games for windows live account or a live account, my gamer tag is humanstalker. Send me an invite and we can game some time.

Blow My Mind …. then let it drip away

Microsoft has just blown my mind with regards to the amount of features they have added to the XBOX360 over the past year or so. But all those features are small in comparison to the features announced in the E3 press conference.

Sucker For Punishment

Perseverance is a quality not present in many gamers and it just goes to show the ones that do persevere are just suckers for punishment.

Take for example the XBOX360 achievement points. While many people complain that this is just an ego tool that gamers use for boasting, it should rather be used to measure a person’s perseverance.

Recently Ninja Gaiden 2 was released for the XBOX360 and the achievement list really pushes the game to the max. At a total of 60 achievements, it’s not the easiest set of achievements by far. Nor is it the longest. The difficult part to achieving all these achievements is that you have to complete the game using a single weapon only, multiple times and on all difficulties.

Based on the number of weapons and difficulty settings, the shortest number of times to complete the game is 10 times at least (3 x Difficulty + 7 x Weapons ). Any gamer that can play a game that many times deserves my respect. But on the higher difficulties I would even give up out of sheer frustration as this game is know for its brutal difficulty.

Using the achievements in this way, game designers allow a game to be played to its max. It also allows a gamer to appreciate all the small details that they might have missed on the first rush through the game. But is it fair to the average gamer these days to punish them in this way by making the game so difficult, that the only way they will finish it or try to get all the achievements is more of a punishment than victory. Granted that once you have finished all of those impossible tasks other games will end up feeling too easy to the gamer.

I guess this is how hardcore gamers are born. But if the only thing game designers are trying to do is breed hardcore gamers, I think we need to change this trend since most people these days are playing games for shorter periods over a longer period of time e.g. I play a games for an hour every 2 days over a 2 month period instead of 6 hours straight in one day.

Another game that they try to punish the gamer to get all the achievements is Half Life – Orange Box Episode 2. The single most difficult achievement is carrying the garden gnome from the start of the game till the end of the game and launching him in a rocket. While this is one of the coolest achievements I have ever seen, it’s as hard as nails.

Now back to finishing COD 4 on veteran. Keep the punishment coming.

~Jameel