Japan Gaming Guide

Here’s our round up of some more of the demos we’ve seen on Xbox live recently.

Skate

Very, very promising. The control system is really well thought out and has a very intuitive feel to it. Plays a lot more realisticly than Tony Hawk, but is it more fun? That’s a tough question. The real test of this control system will be how good it feels after a few weeks of practice; will it be possible to hone and refine your technique, or will you have seen it all after a few hours? It’s definitely a demo you should try out though, to judge for yourself. This is looking like it will be a very good game, whether or not it turns out better than Hawk.

Ratatouille

The latest CGI movie to game translation is here. They’ve gone for a kind of platform game with stealth elements approach. It’s nice that they’ve tried to do something different, but sad that they’ve failed to make it into a decent game. This is full of rough edges, poor signposting, dodgy collision detection, graphics that wouldn’t look out of place on a PS2 and a dreadful camera that gets stuck all the time – particularly bad as you need to keep an eye on where enemies are so you can avoid them. It’s another rush job movie license people, avoid avoid avoid.

Beautiful Katamari

Oh we really want to get this game. The demo is enjoyable, and over too quickly. It’s always a good sign when you’re disappointed that a demo is over and that’s very much the case here. You know what the score is: roll around the levels picking up objects as you go, getting bigger and bigger and picking up bigger stuff until you’re the size of a planet. It’s a fantastic idea and from the demo it looks like things are shaping up well.

Blue Dragon

This is a game that a lot of people wanted to like, including us, but this is very underwhelming. It feels very generic and by numbers, and given the amount of time investment this kind of game requires, doesn’t look like it offers enough to warrant putting hours of your life into. Give us Trusty Bell anyday..

Blazing Angels 2

People around the many tubes of the internet seem pretty negative about this at the moment, but we thought the demo was ok. Flying around shooting targets was fun in the solo player, although it did get a bit repetitive. The multiplayer was quite good, making use of capture points which you can acquire by flying around them in circles. Having said that it’s not going to win any converts to the genre, people who just want one air combat game in their collection could try hunting for Xbox Crimson Skies, or pray it gets a sequel.

Pirates of the Caribbean

Horrible. We love the Pirates of the Caribbean movies as much as the next guy, but this game is a pretty poor reflection of them. Lovely graphics, decent animation, gameplay like a pig in a bag. The generic mediocrity is one thing, but what seems really strange is the combat. After a couple of hits the bad guys basically turn around and let you chop them in the back to kill them. It just looks ridiculous, particularly when there is a non-stop stream of bad guys doing the exact same thing. Watch the movie again, or get hold of Monkey Island from somewhere.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.