Eachweek, X3F tips gamers to the tricks of the trade of Achievement hording in Points>Life. Every week a new achievement is unlocked to help you continue your unhealthy obsession with the Xbox 360 meta-game.
This week for Points>Life we're taking a look at four achievements in Project Gotham Racing 4. Each achievement is a puzzle that needs to be solved, and we've gone ahead and solved them for you. Looking for a fun street racing title and need a few extra points in your pocket? Take a stab at PGR4!
In order to successfully complete these achievements you'll need to make sure your settings are all correct. So, jump inside for all the details.
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Twenty years ago a gaming icon was born. A ninja. Originally unknown to the world, gamers everywhere now know him as Ryu Hayabusa--star of today's hottest new release Ninja Gaiden II.
As the warrior Ryu steps into the shadows never to return again, we look back at his origins and humble beginnings. From the arcade, a brief stint at Sega, his wonder years at Nintendo and the new generation of HD-limb separating on the Xbox 360. This is his legacy, his legend, his history of violence.
Coming soon from developer Load Inc. and publisher Southpeak is Things on Wheels, an RC racer for the Xbox Live Arcade that invokes memories of the classic, ReVolt. Hot off the heels of developing and releasing Mad Tracks for the Arcade, Load Inc. has been hard at work on their latest vision of fast-and-fun arcade racing.
In an exclusive interview with business developer Denis Bourdain of Load Inc., we discuss the inspiration and process of creating a new racer for the XBLA, the recent delisting controversy and the problem with retail in international markets.
Jump inside and fasten your seatbelt for the exclusive interview with Load Inc.'s Denis Bourdain.
After a solid year for the Xbox 360 in 2007 many thought the system could never showcase the same amount of quality exclusives in a single year.
In the 2008 Microsoft Game Studios Yearbook, we've compiled a list of this year's graduating class with a detailed account of each title's current status and the stories surrounding them.
From heartbreaking cancellations, surprise feature announcements and expected sequels, the 2008 MGS Yearbook is filled with fun facts and information on your soon-to-be favorite titles. Also included in the yearbook are special joke awards given to each title that releases in 2008 that poke fun at the details most commonly argued about in the comments.
From Ninja Gaiden II to Alan Wake, the 2008 Microsoft Game Studios Yearbook will have something for everyone.
Too Human is a strange beast. The futuristic Norse dungeon crawler is planned to have a massive story with trilogy spanning themes and complexities. In listening to Dennis Dyack talk at the event, he seemed genuinely enthusiastic as he discussed his favorite pop culture sci-fi and fantasy sagas (he's a big Battlestar Galactica fan).
While the game's potential quality without the vaunted four-player co-op is debatable, the underlying mechanics really aren't. Too Human's ability to feed the player with loot while keeping them engaged and responding to the battle conditions and leveling up is well-tuned and feels similar to the Dreamcast's Phantasy Star Online games.
The first Viva Piñata was a somewhat divisive game. The visual look turned off many initial players, but those who stayed found an engaging and deep sim. Unfortunately, those two things were usually at odds with one another and given that it was a new IP it perhaps wasn't best to turn away the player base that was most likely to get into the deeper side of the game. So for Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise, Rare is looking to somehow split the bar, raising it for the hardcore and lowering it for those who are in fact pulled in by the game's look.
Like many sequels, VP2 isn't much different in its basic mechanics and most of its changes consist of refinements and streamlining that allows for the gameplay to pass much faster and in many new ways. Things like co-op, the camera support, and the UI refinement all make the rest of the game's additions that much easier to use.
Hit the Pinata after the break. Get it? We're a scream.
Alright fanboys, time to get the difficult news out of the way first. Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts is not much like its predecessors at all. The main gameplay focus is still on platforming, only it's now platforming with vehicles too. Like most platformers, the specific objectives you have to complete are slightly varied, but are mostly different takes on collecting items.
To do so, you'll have a massive tool kit at your fingertips. The vehicles seen in the gallery can all be broken down into various pieces, and a large portion of the gameplay stems from mixing and matching vehicle parts to suit the task at hand. Or y'know, to just suit messing around with infinitely customizable vehicles in a physics playground. That playground can be taken online as well, and the game's multiplayer is very physics-focused and custom-content heavy.
While the visual look of the game has been well known for some time now, the details of the long winded Penny Arcade: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness have been a bit sketchy. Admittedly, we are Penny Arcade fans, but we were skeptical of the game, mostly because we didn't know of what it consisted. Turns out the game is a meld of Japanese RPG and old-school adventure.
The exploration, battle setup, and nested menus are straight out of traditional RPGs, but the cutscenes (if they can be called such) consist of a partly animated Penny Arcade comic. Albeit a Penny Arcade comic set in (*checks press release*) the deranged 1920's universe of New Arcadia. While the RPG elements have been updated for the times and are designed not be be slow, there isn't much here to hold you if you don't enjoy the Penny Arcade style of writing and humor. If you like the writing and are looking for something a little deeper and more involved, but just as funny and wrapped in a good RPG, give this a shot.
At an event in which the majority of the games were continuing franchises, Ninja Gaiden 2 didn't appear at first glance to be the game which had changed the most from its predecessors. From afar and to an untrained eye, the game appears to be exactly the same as the first, but the closer you get (right up to and including sitting down and playing the game) the more you notice, and the more you see how crazy over the top that Tomonobu Itagaki and Team Ninja have gone with their latest game.
Upon picking up the controller the first thing we noticed was just how much faster the entire experience was. The increased responsiveness, the increased enemy speed, the replacement of the roll with the dash and many other little things all work together to make NG2 a much more fast paced, relentless game than the original.
Much, much, more after the break, and be sure to read the rest of our impressions from Microsoft's Spring Showcase as they go live over the course of the day.
Eachweek, X3F tips gamers to the tricks of the trade of Achievement hording in Points>Life. Every week a new achievement is unlocked to help you continue your unhealthy obsession with the Xbox 360 meta-game.
This week in Points>Life we tackle The Orange Box. While we could have copped out and threw out one of the easy achievements we tip you off on getting a hand-full of points in this fantastic compilation. Grab points in both Half-Life 2 and Team Fortress 2 by following our guide above!
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Eachweek, X3F tips gamers to the tricks of the trade of Achievement hording in Points>Life. Every week a new achievement is unlocked to help you continue your unhealthy obsession with the Xbox 360 meta-game.
This week marks our first venture into the XBLA points business with a tip that covers the recently released Ikaruga. Well, maybe tip is the wrong word. This week we're showing you the pattern to memorize that will help you get an A grade on the first level of the shoot-em-up.
This one isn't easy to get, but watch the tutorial and you should be chaining enemies in no time.
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Ah, another sweet, sweet episode of XBLA in Brief. This week we take a look at the latest puzzle offering TiQal. That's not too surprising. After all, we do it for every new XBLA release. What is surprising: TiQal is actually a pretty decent puzzle game. Check out the video and see for yourself.
Gallery: TiQal (XBLA)
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It's not often that we here at X3F get a chance to review a high profile title like Halo 3 before it hits store shelves, and it's an opportunity I'm not taking lightly. I've spent the last 48 hours (give or take a few hours for the requisite food and sleep) embedded deep within Halo 3, doing my best to categorize the experience as I went along. In this endeavor I have more or less failed. That's not to say I didn't enjoy what I played, because I absolutely did. It's just that with as many features as there are in Halo 3, there's so much stuff to test that 48 hours really isn't enough time to glean enough information and condense it into a review. Still, review it we must. Read on for a (hopefully) defining glimpse into Microsoft's great green hope.
Update: Entry into this giveaway is now closed. Stay tuned to X3F, because we'll be announcing the winner soon!
It's the one Fanswag giveaway you've all been waiting for, the behemoth, the massive, the grand champion of all X3F giveaways. In celebration of the the release of Halo 3 we're using our WCA winnings and offering up the ultimate Halo 3 gaming setup. That's right, X3F is giving away a 50" Panasonic 1080p television, Bose 3-2-1 GSX surround sound system and an Xbox 360 Elite gaming console to one lucky X3F reader! Just so you know, this gaming haul is valued in the thousands of dollars. Oh yeah.
So, we're sure you want to know how to enter (and hopefully win) the ultimate Halo 3 gaming setup. Well, it's just as painless and easy as all our other Fanswag giveaways.
Post a comment praising X3F and its uber cool bloggers. True, we'll be selecting the winner randomly, but we love reading good things about ourselves. And since this prize is much more massive than our previous bits of swag, you can leave one comment per day from today through September 28th, 5:00PM ET. Be sure to only comment once per day, because multiple comments in one day will be disqualified.
On Monday, October 1st, we'll choose one winner at random and notify them via email. Once everything is verified, we'll post the winner allowing them to brag and make everyone else jealous that they didn't win the ultimate Halo 3 setup. And yes, bragging is encouraged.
As with all Fanswags, this giveaway is only open to U.S. residents who are ages 18 or older.
As you can see we're leaving the giveaway open for a much longer period than our previous giveaways and allowing an entry per day each day the contest is open. So, be sure to enter every day between now and September 28th (weekends count too!) in order to maximize your chances of winning. This is the big one guys, the biggest X3F Fanswag giveaway to date. Only one winner will walk away with a new 50" HDTV, sweet surround sound setup and new Elite console, but that one lucky fanboy could be you. Celebrate Halo 3's launch with us ... we wish you the best of luck.
As you might expect, there are lots of official rules. You'll want to read them by clicking here.
And so it begins, the epic battle for video game skateboarding dominance. For the last several years, if you wanted to play a skateboarding title, you had but one choice: Tony Hawk. Now, EA enters the ring with its take on realistic skateboarding, aptly titled skate -- the game should finally be hitting shelves today. It just so happens that there is a demo out for Tony Hawk's Proving Ground as well. Now that you've got a chance, we suggest you give them both a go (you can always try out the skate demo if you're skittish about purchasing). The skateboard war has begun, and round one needs a winner.
Still, skateboarding isn't for everyone (we can barely even stand up on one of the things), so we have to ask, as usual, what will you be playing this weekend?
