Trials HD is a very popular downloadable title for the Xbox 360.  The series actually goes back to the year 2000.  I remember back then it was playable on website using Flash and Java technologies.  The Trials series is based on an actual motorcycle sport called motorcycle trials.  This sport involves riding your motorbike over large, and difficult obstacles.  This 2009 version for the Xbox 360 is a great version of the game, and upgrades the graphics significantly from the old Flash based games.

The controls for Trials HD are simple in theory.  Left trigger is the brake, right trigger is the gas, and you move the analog stick left or right to shift your rider’s weight.  You don’t actually get to steer your bike in this game.  Your goal in this game is to ride your motorbike through an obstacle course in the shortest amount of time.  The courses are made up of jumps ranging from a bunny hop all the way up to Evel Knievel style jumps.  How you position your rider’s weight on the bike will determine how far, and at what angle your jump is, and of course it’s important to balance your rider for the landing.  Sometimes you won’t get a ramp, and you’ll have to use a combination of acceleration, and shifting your rider’s weight in order to smoothly make your way onto a beam, a small box, stack of pallets, and even more difficult objects.  Often times the courses end up being a puzzle to solve.  These can get pretty frustrating, but the course has checkpoints after each difficult section, and the game allows you to continue over and over until you get it.  When you want to restart from a checkpoint, there are no load times at all.  This can make the game pretty addicting when you’re trying to get past a course, or beat one of your friend’s best times.

Besides the time trials part of the game, there are also these miscellaneous Olympic style events such as how far you can leap off of your bike, or towing a trailer bull of explosives.  There is also a track editor, but it’s mostly for those who have the patience to make a track.  Disappointingly you can only share your created tracks with those on your friend’s list.  Since none of my friends made tracks, this mode ended up being useless to me.  They should have really made tracks accessible to all on Xbox Live.  There is no multiplayer, but this it’s actually a neat game to have on at a party.  Whenever someone is playing, and is having trouble beating a level, there is no shortage of people who want to take over, and try to help you out.

Trials HD is a whole lot of fun, but it’s not perfect.  I personally find that the controls are way too touchy.  Sometimes even a modest amount of throttle will send your bike into an unrecoverable wheelie.  Other times trying to shift the weight of your rider will make your bike topple over, or have it end up on it’s back wheel once again.  The touchy controls are mostly noticeable on the really tough levels.  I preferred the easier levels as I found that they were faster, and more exciting with a lot of jumps.  Later levels are slower as you methodically try to make your bike climb over objects.  The game plays very smoothly, although the graphics are a bit dark.  The music in this game is repetitive, but that’s not a big deal as you can turn it off.  This game is only $10 on the Xbox Live Marketplace, and for that price the game is a must have.

 

One of my favourite driving games of all time has to be Daytona USA.  It was released in the arcades in 1994, and it was around that time that games started using 3D polygons.  The first games using 3D weren’t all that detailed, but they were still very cool.  The graphics in Daytona USA really stood out to me, because of it’s use of textures on it’s polygons.  It was later released for the Sega Saturn, and PC.  The PC version is the version I had, and it was a fun game.  I remember I used to play the road courses a lot, so I had them memorized.  I would take that knowledge to the two player arcade version where I could win races against whoever was sitting next to me.  The Sega Dreamcast version had some control issues, but was absolutely awesome.  I no longer have the Dreamcast or PC versions, so when I was ecstatic when I first heard that Sega was releasing it for the Xbox Live Arcade.

Daytona USA for the Xbox 360 is mostly a straight up port from the arcade version.  This means you only get three tracks, and one car.  That’s a little disappointing, since I was hoping for the extra tracks that the PC and Dreamcast versions had.    This does have it’s own extras however.  Besides the usual arcade mode in which you have to reach the next checkpoint before time runs out, you also have a challenge mode in which you have to do objectives such as passing three cars in a certain length of time.  There is also a survival mode in which you’re scored on far you can drive.  The trick though is that you”re given rapidly wearing tires, and a very small time limit.  You can earn extra time in this mode by drifting, going through a turn without braking, and accelerating without steering.  There is also a time trial mode.  In all of these modes you can change the default arcade race distance to twice the length or 10 times the length.  In the longer races you’ll have to pit when your tires wear out.  Finally there is a karaoke mode in which you plug a microphone into your Xbox, and try to sing along to the game’s soundtrack.  And no I’m not making that last one up.

The graphics in this game are cartoony like the arcade version, but they are upgraded to high definition.  They look really really sharp, and colourful.  The draw distance appears to be infinite, and the game runs silky smooth.  The reason there is a karaoke mode in this game is because of the cheesy lyrics in the game’s soundtrack.  This music will mostly be appreciated by long time Daytona USA fans.  There is also a remixed soundtrack that you can access through the options.  Out of all of the home versions of Daytona USA that I’ve played, this one has the best car handling, so there isn’t as much of a learning curve as there is on the other versions.  Overall Daytona USA on the Xbox 360 is awesome.  While I don’t think I like it as much as the Dreamcast version, the sharp graphics, and different game play modes set it apart from that version.  I would recommend that all arcade racing fans get this game, but I’ve noticed that it’s no longer on Xbox Live Marketplace.  Apparently Sega didn’t renew their Daytona license.  If Sega, or somebody else ever picks up the Daytona license and decides to release it again, then I’ll recommend getting it.  In the meantime, go check out the Dreamcast version, and if you ever see the arcade version, then immediately stop what you’re doing, and go play it.

 

    

 

I understand that WWE 2k14 is available for release, so what makes WWE ’13 relevant?  The answer is simple.  Price.  As of this writing, WWE 2k14 still retails for $60, while you can find WWE ’13 for around half the price, or a lot cheaper than that if you buy it used.  The developer of WWE ’13 Yukes have a lot of experience developing wrestling games, as they have been developing WWE wrestling games since the year 2000 on the original PlayStation, and other wrestling games in Japan since 1995.  Each release of the WWE series of games has an updated roster, and often new modes, and just all around polishing up of the game.

I remember the episode of WWE Raw where the original cover for this game featured John Laurinaitis, and he said that this game was going to be “bigger than Pac-Man!”

WWE 13 includes the modes that you would expect in a WWE game.  Among the modes are two season modes called “Attitude Era”, and “Universe.”  Attitude Era lets you recreate WWE matches from 1997-2000 or so.  You’re given a list of objectives for your match, and completing them unlocks new wrestlers and arenas.  For example, in one match I was controlling the New Age Outlaws, and not only did I have to win then match, but I had to hit one of the Road Warriors with the title belt while the referee was distracted.  This mode can be a lot of fun, but some objectives can be a little tricky as sometimes you have to rely on the AI to do their part.  The Universe mode plays more like a traditional season mode, and is highly customizable.  You can set the rosters, participate in matches, or simulate matches.  Random stories can occur by themselves such as feuds, or the formation of tag teams.  You can also change the participants in a match, or interfere in other matches.  This mode is a lot of fun, and I’ll never be able to explain it all here.  Other customizable features include creating a wrestler, creating an arena, creating a move, or even creating a story.  I only wish I had more time in life to play these modes, as the amount of customization is amazing.  Luckily you can download user creations online on Xbox Live, although it should be pointed out that you need an Xbox Live Gold account to download this, even if you don’t plan to wrestle online.

The actual wrestling can be very complicated, but very rewarding once you get used to the controls.  I can’t think of very much wrong with the wrestling part.  Before the match starts, you can choose the relative length of the match.  Your choices are quick, normal, or epic.  Obviously if you want a quick, TV-style match, you would choose “quick.”  If you wanted a PPV quality match, you would choose epic.  The matches flow very well, and feel real.  I like that you can target specific body parts on your opponent, so  you can set them up for your finishing hold, or maneuver.

Everything looks really nice too, with hardly any of the clipping glitches of past wrestling games.  Some wrestlers do look closer to their real life counterparts than other wrestlers, and I hope that this gets fixed in future games.  The sounds are pretty good, although the volume levels are out of whack at times, such as the entrance music blaring over the announcer.  Louder crowd chants would be nice too.  Commentary isn’t great, but it’s getting better.  Using the actual commentary for some of the “Attitude Era” matches was a great idea, as it adds to the realism.  Overall this is a fantastic game.  If you absolutely need the most up to date rosters, then get WWE ’14.  If you want to save a few bucks, then get this game.  If you do get this game, I’ll recommend the PlayStation 3 version, because the online modes are free.

I love spaceship shooters, and I love Japanese weirdness.  Otomedius Excellent is a shoot-em-up released exclusively for the Xbox 360 by Konami in 2011.  As far as Japanese weirdness goes, the opening video is an untranslated J-Pop song, the characters are all buxom girls, and the special edition version of the game comes with a pillow case.  Still though, there has to be a good game underneath it all, and I’m afraid that Otomedius Excellent could have been much better.

Since I opted for the $10 bargain bin version of the game, the pillowcase was not included.

This is a horizontally side scrolling spaceship shooter where you control one of the buxom girls on a quest to um… defeat the enemy I suppose.  The manual gives a vague description of the story, and even the story mode in the game didn’t give much of a story as it was mostly just trash talking between you, and the boss characters.  The game play is not nearly as crazy as something like Deathsmiles, or GigaWing, but there is still plenty to shoot at.  The main problem I have with the game is how pathetically weak all of the weapons are.  You start off with a ship capable of only having two shots at a time on screen, which is the same fire power as the Galaga ship from 1981.  Naturally you can pick up powerups, but you need to pick up a lot of them to have a chance at most enemies.  One thing that is neat is that you can choose which weapon powers you want before you start the game.  The bad thing about this is that you don’t have access to all of the weapons when you first start the game.  Like an RPG, your character gains experience points each time you play.  If you keep playing over and over, you will eventually get access to stronger weapons.  Some people may like this RPG aspect of the game, but I hate it.  I think that shoot-em-ups should be based on skill rather than powering up your character.  The same goes for online first person shooters like Call of Duty.  At least in games like Gran Turismo, your little Ford Fiesta races against similarly slow cars.  In Otomedius Excellent your starting ship needs a billion shots to take out stronger enemies.  The bosses can be especially frustrating, and you won’t even get the satisfaction of defeating them if you take too long, as they will leave the screen if you don’t defeat them within a certain time.  The bosses are all a bit too similar to each other as well.  I played this game enough to get my character more powered up, and the game became a bit more fun, but my success had to do with better weapons rather than my skill improving.

The graphics look pretty good, but there were a couple of levels where the enemy shots got lost in the backgrounds.  The soundtrack has a few catchy tunes, and overall it doesn’t offend.  There is a lot of chatter going on when you are playing the game, and it’s all in Japanese, and it helps to add to the mayhem.  There is a three player co-op mode which probably makes the game more fun, but I wasn’t able to try it out.  If you like shoot-em-ups, and if you like to play a game over and over to power up your characters, then you will love this game.  For me though, I like to play these arcade type games to see how well *I* can do, and not have to rely on levelling up my characters.  This is the only thing that brings down an otherwise fun game.

Shoot-em-ups are one of my favourite genres of video games, but they don’t make as many as they used to.  When I saw Deathsmiles in the bargain bin for $10, I immediately picked it up.  Shoot-em-ups don’t get the publicity that other games get, so I was surprised to find out that this was released in the arcades in 2007, and on the Xbox 360 in 2010.  Also the Japanese developer Cave have released quite a few games like this on the Xbox 360.  I’m going to have to track down some of the others, because Deathsmiles is awesome.

Trick your Call of Duty loving friends into playing “Deathsmiles”, and see their faces when they realize it’s a crazy shoot-em-up with Japanese anime girls.

Deathsmiles is a side-scrolling shooter in which you play as one of four girls who have been somehow get transported to another dimension to a city called Gilverado which has the appearance of of an early 20th century European city.  The girls are given a place to live by a man, and in return they use their magical powers to defend the King.  The land is also overrun by monsters, and it is the girls job to defeat these monsters.  You press a button to shoot left, and another to shoot right.  You can choose to use a more powerful shot, or a weaker shot, with the difference being the more powerful shot slows down your speed.  You also have your usual “smart-bomb” type of weapon which destroy everything on screen.  Deathsmiles fits into the “bullet hell” sub-genre of shooter, because the screen has an insane amount of enemies, bullets, and explosions happening almost all of the time.  The enemy designs are very bizarre at times, such as a giant cow who’s head takes up almost the entire screen, or Victorian-era dancers.  If you like that unique Japanese weirdness in your games, then you’ll find a lot of it here.

The Xbox 360 version of Deathsmiles has been given a graphical upgrade compared to the arcade original, and it is one of the best looking shoot-em-ups that I have ever played.  I know it was given a graphical upgrade, because the original arcade version of Deathsmiles is also included on the same disc.  The constant sounds of explosions in this game is like music to my ears.  The actual music is pretty good too.  Deathsmiles is one of my favourite games on the Xbox 360, and if you like shoot-em-ups, then it might end up being one of your favourites too.

I realize that Forza Motorsport 5 was just released for the Xbox One, but buying a new system to play a sequel with much less content than than it’s predecessor just didn’t appeal to me, so here’s Forza Motorsport 4 back from 2011.  The Forza Motorsports games try to be driving simulators.  Unlike a lot of earlier driving games, in a simulation like this you’ll have to drive more like you are driving a real car.  That means you’ll have to slow down for corners, go easy on the throttle and brakes, and be prepared for consequences if you hit anything.  You can tweak different aspects of the gameplay to make the cars handle easier, brake easier, or take less damage.  That makes the game more accessible, and more fun for a lot more people.  I changed all of this to make the game play more realistic, and raced mostly with the Xbox 360 Wireless Racing Wheel.  The feedback and rumble of the wheel along with the great looking in-car view turn this game into a cheap, and fun driving simulator.  It also controls nicely with the standard Xbox 360 controller too.

The last time I ever spent $80 on a game, but it was well worth it.

Being the fourth game in the Forza series, the developers have really refined the gameplay, graphics, sounds and features.  You can race in a single race, time trial, or multiplayer split screen.  More games should include a split-screen mode.  I love getting together with friends, ordering out some food, and playing multiplayer games together.  When you aren’t with friends though, you can play the career mode in which you start off with a small amount of money, buy a small car, win races, and spend the prize money to buy faster cars, and so on.  There are a lot of races in career mode.  The game’s stats screen says I’ve driven 4500km in 37 hours, won 333 races, have 144 cars in my garage, and yet I’ve completed only 19.7% of the game.  At this rate I should reach 100% by the year 2022.  There are a decent amount of tracks to race on, and the Top Gear track is an excellent addition for any Top Gear fan, but it still could have used a few more tracks to make the game less repetitive.  The repetitiveness is balanced a bit by the huge selection of cars to drive.  The selection isn’t just limited to exotic race cars either.  You can find slow cars, fast cars, old cars, and even trucks and SUV’s.  The selection is great too for those of us living in North America, since it includes more American cars, and less obscure Japanese ones.

Besides racing, you may spend a lot of time customizing your cars.  There are a lot of options to install upgraded parts, paint your cars, change wheels, and add some aftermarket accessories.  You can also take photographs of your cars in a very detailed photo editor.  There is also a mode called Autovista where you can view the car inside and out, and listen to commentary from Jeremy Clarkson from Top Gear.  There aren’t a whole lot of cars in this mode, just a couple of dozen, but it’s a nice addition nonetheless.  The Special Edition verion of this game that you see in the picture, comes with a nice steel case, a hard cover picture book featuring all the cars in the Autovista mode, and some codes for additional cars via DLC.

The graphics for the cars in this game are great, but the tracks look a little boring.  I don’t think that is the fault of the developers, since most of the tracks are based on real life tracks, and they look just as boring in real life.  The sound effects for engines, and tire squeals are great.  I can’t say how accurate the engine sounds are for each car, but at least they all sound different from each other.

The Forza Motorsport series was the first serious competitor to Sony’s Gran Turismo series in the console driving simulator competition, so of course most people will compare this game to the Gran Turismo series, and debate as to which one is better.  I say that you can’t go wrong with any of the games in either series as they are both excellent.  Just pick the game that has more of your favourite cars, and try to get a steering wheel if you want the complete experience.

Raiden Fighters Aces for the Xbox 360 is a compilation of three shoot-em-ups released in the arcades between 1996 to 1998.  The games are Raiden Fighters, Raiden Fighters 2, and Raiden Fighters Jet.  The games are two dimensional shoot-em-ups, and they are very similar to each other in gameplay, and graphical style.

I don’t know why, but Raiden Fighters Aces just sounds weird when I say it.

After selecting your aircraft, you set off to destroy other aircraft, tanks, or anything else that you think is a threat.  In other words, everything.  These games all play about as straight forward as can be for a shoot-em-up.  One button shoots, and another drops a smart bomb which destroys everything on screen.  You can collect power ups after defeating enemies in order to increase your shot power.  The action isn’t quite as insane as some of today’s shoot-em-ups, but there is no shortage of action.  It may hit that “just right” amount of action for some people.

Most good shoot-em-ups have something that sets them apart from the pack, and in this case it’s the huge number of aircraft you get to chose from.  There are over 30 different aircraft to chose from spread over the three games.  Each one moves at a different speed, and each one has different weapons.  This increases the replayability, as you’ll want to try them all to see which is your favourite.  There are many options to chose from before you start your game.  You can change the game’s difficulty, change the order in which you play through the stages, play only the boss battles, or play with a time limit.  You can also choose to have unlimited continues, or pretend that you’re poor, and limit yourself to just a few credits.  The games also keep track of your highest scores, and thankfully don’t even have to log into Xbox Live to view them.  Hooray!

Even with the dreadful Xbox 360 controller’s digital pad, this game controls very well.  Maybe that is because my controller has been broken in, or maybe because games like this get my adrenaline going and force me to press on the digital pad harder than normal.  Who knows really.  There are lots of nice sounding explosions that you’ll hear constantly, and the music is very fast techno music that suits the game well, and gets your heart pumping.  About the only flaw in this game is the low resolution graphics, and narrow screen width.  I know these are ports of mid to late 90’s arcade games, but sometimes the graphics make it a bit tough to see enemies or bullets.  It surely doesn’t ruin the game however, and if you like shoot-em-ups then you’re going to get three great ones in this compilation.