The demo is finally out, if you hadn’t noticed already.  Now to set the stage, I was a Crackdown whore.  The original Crackdown was the first real game I bought after buying my Xbox 360, and let me tell you, I played the hell out of it.  For months solid I spent my time taking down gangs, collecting orbs (499 out of 500, still pisses me off that I could never find that last one), and generally creating havoc.  Imagine my excitement when Crackdown 2 was announced at last year’s E3.  I have sat in a state of anticipation for the release of this sequel, even though it wasn’t completely made by the original team, as Realtime Worlds has been putting their focus on APB instead.  However, I will say that Ruffian Games has done a great job from what I’ve seen so far from the trailers and the 30 minute demo.

Ruffian gives a decent amount of gameplay in the demo and I found myself having enough time to get several gameplay elements in with this amount of time, though of course I wanted more.  While driving around I found myself in a sea of “zombies” on the road which I plowed through readily with my car.  Taking down gang members seemed easy at first, but when they swarm you there is certainly a need for a bit more tactics.  Aiming felt accurate once you locked on, though sometimes the lock was on an object or enemy you didn’t want.  I seem to recall running into this with the first game as well, as third person cameras can sometimes be a challenge in combat.  One game element I liked so far was the control point, in which you tell the game you are going to take over an area and you have to clear it so the chopper with backup can arrive.  I did a couple of these and they were fun.  The game mentioned I did 2 out of 27, so there is certainly more to do in the larger world.  Agility orbs were just as much fun to get, and once you get up high there is always that “just one more” in your line of sight.  The MOVING agility orb was indeed an interesting challenge and intriguing to figure out the strategy of.  Explosions and particle effects are all that you could ever want, and there is certainly lots of exploding.

Overall it is looking promising.  I expect I’ll play the demo a few more times before the release of the real game on July 6th.  This is certainly a game I’m buying off the bat instead of waiting for a used copy off of Goozex.  Here’s looking at spending another 3 months on this wonderful sandbox world…

- Ben Mazhary-Clark

So it’s coming.  It wants you to be all social and stuff.  It is the Fall Xbox 360 update for 2009.

This update has had the usual fanfare.  The MajorNelson twitters, updates to his site, Kotaku reviews, podcast mentions, what have you.  I signed up for the Xbox Dashboard Update Preview Program a week or two ago, figured I would give it a shot since I made the cut one other time as well.  I made the cut, but was never notified, even though I know all my contact details are correct in Microsoft Connect (their beta testing portal).  I only discovered that I was in because I turned on my Xbox on Friday and suddenly I had a system update….ok then.

The update itself didn’t take painfully long, I’d say 5 or so minutes.  Upon reboot of the Xbox I noticed nothing different.  Upon searching other context blades, menus, whatever you call them, I discovered under Community two new ones for Facebook and Twitter.  There was also a new blade for Zune Marketplace, which had the Last.fm module in it.  I’ll take them in turn below.

Last.fm – For some reason I thought these would all be part of the update, however I discovered it did require a small download, similar to the Netflix add-on that was released earlier this year.  After downloading the application, I launched it, using my last.fm account credentials for an account that already existed.  It immediately brought up all the stations and artists I usually listen to on the last.fm website.  Seamless.  Navigating was swift and it started streaming almost at once.  This is all over a 15/5Mbps connection mind you.  If you are on old old DSL your mileage may vary.  Overall I was very impressed with the add-on, and it performed well beyond my expectations.  One niggle though, you cannot do anything else on the Xbox while it is running, which I’ll address again below.  Sure you can bring up the center button menu and do stuff in those blades, but you can’t say…go browse something else.

Twitter – Again, download a little app, run it, enter in your account info, and it just works.  I was able to tweet, browse over other people’s stuff, view their details.  What I wish it had (that I’m submitting to MS Connect as a feature request): The ability to tweet from the messaging blade on the center button menu.  Other than that, it worked great, just remember you can only do Twitter and nothing else.  Organization and style were almost identical to the Twitter site.

Facebook – Download the app, run, account info (repetitive much, where’s my Single Sign On?).  Worked good enough, things were sorted in the Xbox Dashboard context menu style.  It dishes out the basic info, and you can write on people’s walls, update your status and such, but overall I didn’t see the attraction.   Given that I already have Facebook available on multiple computers and my phone, there are plenty of other opportunities to get this experience.  It is functional and fast though.

Overall, the update looks good.  I found all the apps to be easy to use, technically sound and speedy, their usefulness in everyday life still to be determined.  At the point of this writing, the beta preview program is closed and as far as I’m aware will remain so until release.  Look for this update coming to an Xbox near you in the very near future.

- Ben Mazhary-Clark

UPDATE (on the update?) 11/13/2009:  Latest reports put the dashboard update as mentioned above will be released to your hot little xboxen on November 17th.

Well I signed up for this back in April, and then of course promptly forgot about it.  What did I forget about?  The all new Quake Live Beta program.  Given that it had been so long since I signed up, I thought at first that the mail I got from iD Software on January 21st of this year was just spam.  However, after reading it I realized that after too many months, they were finally selecting people for open public beta testing.

Quake Live, for those who aren’t familiar, is essentialy what appears to be a modified Quake 3 embedded into a web browser.  I’m sure the NDA I didn’t fully read mentions that I shouldn’t go into too much detail at this point, but I will give a couple points.

It seemed to work in both browsers I tried it in.  Setup was maybe 15 minutes and then I was playing.  Graphics seemed to be pretty good, a far cry from the flash based browser games I’m sure we are all used to.  The training missing flowed well, as did the online matches.  I also discovered that I’m not better at this version of Quake than I was at Quake 3.  Guess the twitchy factor for FPS’s starts to wane after you get to a certain age.

Overall, it’s looking good, and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys a fast paced, zero storyline FPS.  I’m curious to see how they work free online browser based gaming into a business model.  Ads in games?  It worked for Burnout Paradise, I’d imagine it will work here as well.

Coming to a browser near you around July 31st.

- Ben Mazhary-Clark