Craig's Xdoos (Xbox) 360 space

A little while back I decided I needed my own space to blog about development, gaming, life and everything that goes along with it. Up until now I've been maintaining two blogs, a primary development one and a gaming one. So here it is, my new blog Craig.NET, make sure you add it to your feed reader and update your blogroll.

Oh and if anyone knows a graphic designer that knows how to make magic with WordPress, let me know.

Cross posted from http://xboxbloggers.net/CraigN/.

Firstly let me explain a bit about the beta for those not in the know. The easiest way for anyone to get access to the public beta is to buy a copy of Crackdown - an awesome game in its own right. Bungie, the makers of Halo 3, released a public beta of the game onto Xbox LIVE on Wednesday but due to some technical difficulties it was only made available to Crackdown owners early on Thursday morning. Having a 4mbps ADSL line is what counts when it comes to downloading 911.18 MB of beta content as I managed to get it down in under 45 minutes. I must say after playing it for a few hours it is totally worth the 1 GB knock on my monthly internet cap.

Quite a few people have been commenting on one of the local forums about the gameplay videos that have been published on the Internet and what they believe are sub-standard graphics. I wouldn't rate the graphics as highly as something like the ever popular Gears of War but I believe they are impressive as it is. Remember this is a beta and generally that means that there is a lot of spit 'n polish remaining to finish of the game.

From a game play perspective the game is fast and smooth running. I didn't experience a single bit of network lag and that is quite unusual considering I was testing it on a shaped ADSL account against predominantly British and American players. One of the regular Namibian players even managed to play a team match with me over a satellite connection with a average latency of over 900 milliseconds. I don't know what Bungie have done with the network code but they have definitely pulled off some sort of magic behind the scenes.

There are bound to be quite a few bugs cropping up in the game and I suppose this is the main reason why Bungie decided to make it a public beta; to iron out as many issues before the game goes gold. I did stumble upon one or two bugs but they were mainly visual defects and one where the game pauses, takes you to the scoreboard and then resumes a short while thereafter.

Overall I recommend this beta to anyone with a copy of Crackdown and some time to get in and play. If you are a Halo or Halo 2 fan then there is no question, go download the beta as you only have until the 10th of June 2007 at 09h59 to get some practice in before the full game rocks world on the 26th of September 2007.

This last week saw the South African release of Tetris Evolution developed by Mass Media and published as an Xbox 360 exclusive by THQ. I've always been a fan of the puzzle game tetris and was eager to see how the game developer Mass Media has managed to take the classic 1984 game by Alexey Pajitnov into the next generation. You might recall that Alexey Pajitnov was the developer behind the Xbox 360 bundled launch arcade title Hexic HD.

My initial impression of the game is that its targetted at someone who has played tetris before. The single player game starts off without any training, guidance or tips. So you'll find yourself stacking up tetrominoes with loads of empty spaces in between as the controls are just not intuitive; expect to refer to the game manual once or twice to try figure it all out. I say try because the manual leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to explaining the games concepts and how the controls actually work. Sure there are the simple concepts like rotating the tetromino left and right using the A and B buttons and moving it left and right using the left stick. But then you bump the left stick up to hard drop (make it fall to the bottom instantly) and down to make it soft drop (make it go downward faster). Then you get the more esoteric hold piece function which is activated by LT, RT, LB and RB. Basically it holds the current tetromino in holding area and issues you with the next tetromino. Quite useful if you want to save a key tetromino for later.

If the game started off explaining the concepts and controls once off it would be a great improvement. I found myself searching through the manual for descriptions of T-Spin and was disappointed not to find it. Thats where you have to be thankful for the limitless resource called the Internet. I would suggest that they update the title to include a bit more guidance for the new user which explains what some of these new concepts.

The game features online play through Xbox LIVE. I couldn't find any casual games to join but managed to find a ranked match. I found it extremely sluggish which I can only assume is a result of the 300ms international latency. It had the effect on making the controls slow to respond while my opponents didn't seem to be affected at all. So I don't recommend this for South African gamers across Xbox LIVE unless its a game between South Africans only. Unfortunately I couldn't find a fellow South African to test the local performance with.

The game features many customisations but I found the music to be highly irritating as it is linked to the background picture that you choose and doesn't change at all. Thank goodness the Xbox 360 has a media player and you can shuffle your own tracks. I think the developers could take a leaf out of EA's book when it comes to good tunes.

One great addition to the classic tetris game is the ghost mode where the final resting place of the tetromino is visualised as the piece falls.

Overall I think this game would be better suited as an Xbox Live Arcade title as it would be more accessible to play casually. However the advantage of being sold through retail channels for under R300 is that it is accessible to the majority of South African Xbox 360 gamers that are not on Xbox LIVE yet.