GameEnthus Look Back: revisiting games from yesteryear, to find the diamonds in the rough.

NOTE: This is a work in progress, the audio will get better.

Part 1 (part 2 & 3 are beyond the break)

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-by BigRob

I suck at Role Playing Games.  I like leveling, stats, and story as much as the next guy but games like Fallout 3 and Borderlands don’t really appeal to me.  Crimson Alliance takes a more simplistic approach to the genre.  It is actually an arcade styled action-rpg.  It has weapons, hacking and slashing, and it even has multiplayer co-op (couch and online) complete with leaderboards.  But, let me start at the beginning…

Boom! ...Killstreak!

Crimson Alliance, from Certain Affinity, is a hack and slash style dungeon crawler that pits your crew against a slew of creatures of the underworld who have taken over the city of Byzan.  Your crew consists of a Wizard, a Mercenary and an Assassin.  You can take on the world alone or with friends to traverse the lands and defeat the evil chick that took over…. disclaimer: as a “Level 2 Review”, I have not finished the game and am kinda fuzzy on the exact game details.

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I was at a Target this past weekend and I happened to see what IMHO is the worst D-pad I’ve ever seen.

For months I have been unable to download any video content from the Xbox Live Marketplace that requires media usage rights. I have only rented one movie( a year ago) from XBLM and have purchased no TV content so it hadn’t bothered me all that much. But lately I have felt like because it’s there, that it should work. I am able to use Microsoft Points on video content however the download never starts, instead I am met with an error that says that the media usage rights could not be downloaded(acquired whatever). I have been calling MS’s farmed-out tech suppor for 3 weeks trying to get this resolved. Hearing words like “escalating” and “priority” make you feel like something is actually being done. It isn’t. Almost every call to them from different phones in different locations result in them putting me on hold and hanging up on me. Perhaps they see the detail of my issue after pulling up my every changing reference number and they just hang up on me. Poor customer service. I am really getting upset. Especially because I attempted to rent a movie a step which I hadn’t tried before. I would get the error from the free content like a Voltron episode or something. MS deducted the proper number of points and once again I was met with the usual error. Now I have to either fight for them to fix my issue, thus enabling me to watch the film or get my points refunded to me.  Both of which require me to be on the phone with lackluster support who will most likely hang the phone up on me before I get my issue resolved. Needless to say I am not pleased.

Having heard so much recently about the Bionic Commando remake, 1942, Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo and Splatterhouse(to a slightly lesser extent) Capcom just hits us in the head with a new retro Mega Man game. Mega Man 9 is not flashy, probably lack online play  and appears to be 8 bit and for whatever reason I am very excited to play it.

Largribb

I messed around with the Spore Creature Creator trial today. I have been ignoring this game since I first heard about it. Now I find myself very intruiged and actually anticating it’s release. The video above of course shows only my quick and dirty attempt to create a creature but there are worlds(pun intended) of depth with this game. There is something very appealing about spending a couple minutes on a creature and seeing them animate and move in full 3D. If you have not done so, go to Spore.com and get the trial, it’s free and offers quite a bit fun. The demo (misnomer) is $10 and offers the full creature creation toolset. I will most likely stick to the trial but anything is possible.

Being a big fan of Hulk Ultimate Destruction(HUD) I was very excited to hear that the developer of The Incredible Hulk(TIH) was going to be make TIH a spiritual successor to HUD. However good intentions are no match for the movie game curse. The game was obviously rushed and is lacking many of the elements that made HUD so great. I am a big fan of the Hulk character, controlling a ridiculously powerful avatar in a fully destructible environment is a lot of fun. That being said I like this game. But the glitches, like jumping in water and being moved around at random coupled with the game’s freezing issue makes it quite difficult to recommend. Renting or borrowing is the best bet.

Very Unnecessary

Super Brooklyn meets the Mushroom Kingdom