May Edition of OXM

[Rogue Bounty Hunter]

Disc: Doom 3, Pariah, Psychonauts, Darkwatch, and a hidden demo. Also demostration of Black Hawk Down, plus more video showcases and stuff.

Mag:

Cover story- Half-Life 2 on Xbox
SW: Battlefront 2
Full Spectrum Warrior 2.0
Tomb Raider

Reviews-
Psychonauts 9.5 (received 8.75 from GI as well)
NARC 3.1
MX vs ATV Unleashed 7.6
Constantine 6.3
Cold Fear 8.1
Lego Star Wars 7.0
Toop Gear RPM Tuning 2.2
Drive to Survive 4.8
Close Combat: First to Fight 2.8

[Darwin]

Close Combat: First to Fight 2.8

I am going to seriously have to contest this score. A score of 2.8/10 means that the games has serious flaws and problems with the gameplay. Like something is broken and virtually unplayable. Or, that the game is very boring or very simple.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The game has some small problems here and there, but overall deserves an average or better score.

1) The single player is pretty darn solid. The team AI needs some improvements, but is about the same quality as what we saw in the Rainbow Six games. Most of the time they can handle themselves in a firefight. They save you butt many times, and they don't shoot you. Sometimes they get in the way, but you can learn to issue commands so they don't do that,

2) The online portion is very well done and smooth. I experienced no connection or lag problems, only some choppy voice problems here and there. The online game really promotes teamwork. It has a lot of different options to really customize to your liking.

I just don't see how this could possibly get a score of 2.8.

[ThaMaskedGamer]

Musta been some idiot who reviewed this, I mean what kind cred does he now have?

The game has no real technical flaws that no other game has. The game is smooth online and offline. The AI is better than all the Clancy shooter games aside from Splinter Cell.

There were a lot of things I didn't realize about the game until playing it further online. I didn't know the assistant gunner does not have a scope on his M-16. I was really shocked when I played this position online for the first time, and i'm like where is my scope.

Also other things like in single player, if you call in a mortar strike that nukes civilians in the process, your teams morale drops wayyyyyyyyyyy down into the 20's.


*****SPOILER*******
There is only one mission that I think is damn near flawed. And maybe that is what got OXM riled up, they probably couldn't finish the game. It is the mission where you have to escort the journalist. I don't know if you are there yet Meth. So close your eyes if not, this is a spoiler.

You can not control the two journalist. And you are on the top floor of a building, after rescuing them, you have to get them out of the building safely by taking the fire escapes outside the building. Problem is in the adjacent buildings on three sides, oppositions is all over the place. I mean snipers, shooters, rpg guys, even a freakin BMP on the ground. Did I say you can not control the journalist. They follow behind your team, and if one of them gets popped, the mission ends.

Needless to say. It was a nightmare mission. Though in the end. I actually enjoyed it, after about 10 times, I finally realized what I had to do. And, it is essentially one of those learning processes in a game where you say damn, how stupid was I?

But, these kinds of missions appear in damn near every game. For what ever reason, the developer says let me put in something crazy hard. It was like that in Halo2, it was like that in SC:CT, if you guys haven't faced a certain guy yet in SC:CT, you will see.

But this game, Close Combat, is a damn good game. It is short on frill, but is the most technical military game out there and online it is great. I don't even want to play GhostRecon2 anymore, seriously.

[Glockstar]

Well you guys wouldn't like what GameInformer had to say about it either. The scores they gave were better (6 an 6.25) but the comments they made weren't.

If I recall, both mags slammed the AI... and said that the game had a quite a few technical issues.

But more than anything, I got the impression that all of the reviewers involved here just couldn't get Ghost Recon/Rainbow Six/Full Spectrum Warrior out of their head, so I think their scores are what they are for comparisons sake more than anything else.

However, it should be noted that these two mags barely said a word about the online portion of the game - so their reviews should probably be taken with a whole lot of extra salt.

IGN (8.0) and GameSpot (7.5) seemed to liked it okay tho'.

-

Anybody figure out what the "hidden demo" is yet? Or what it takes to uncover it?
Don't look at me. You know how I am with these things. :p

[Rogue Bounty Hunter]

Anybody figure out what the "hidden demo" is yet? Or what it takes to uncover it?
Don't look at me. You know how I am with these things. :p

I'm not sure what the demo is yet. I found last month's by tapping either a button or direction on the d-pad. You will know if it's one of the buttons when the controller starts to rumble slightly. You have to repeat until you get the correct sequence of buttons and directions to unlock the demo. Sometimes you may have to hold the L or R trigger when pressing a button.

This time, I think I will wait until someone at OXM forums or TeamXbox forums unlock the demo, and go from there. I got frustrated wasting 10 minutes unlocking a crappy Tron demo in the last issue.

Speaking of demos, the Doom 3 demo was pretty fun. id nailed the atmosphere of the game, and Vicarious Visions (?) did a good job with the controls of the Xbox version. With this type of game, Co-Op would definitely be fun, but it's too bad that it's online-only. I would have recommended this game to a couple of friends who aren't interested in online play.

Pariah was also pretty fun, though the demo is on the easy mode. Graphics were good, but I wasn't able to drive a vehicle like I saw in a trailer a while back.

[Cuddly Knife]

EGG!!!!!! I got the issue, but it was a complimentary one because they hadn't recieved my check in the mail yet, so it didn't have a demo!! I was planning on using the demo to see which game I was going to get, Doom 3 or Jade Empire, but since there was no demo I picked Jade. Oh well, I'll go to Wal-Mart tomorrow and steal me a copy. Then I'll tell all what the easter egg is, if you don't already know.

So, how can they be making Half-Life 2 on the XBOX when the XBOX 2 comes out at years end?

[Rogue Bounty Hunter]

So, how can they be making Half-Life 2 on the XBOX when the XBOX 2 comes out at years end?

I'm sure the devs were already hard at work porting HL2 to Xbox even before HL2 came out for PC last year. Since the game's supposed to come out this summer, it just makes more sense to do it for the current box, IMO.

[Cuddly Knife]

For anyone who is still interested, the hidden demo was Constantine. BLARG!! Quite possibly the worst shooter Ive played this gen, but then again I'm sure there are worse.It's one of those games that couldv'e been good if it had a good gameplay engine.

[Rogue Bounty Hunter]

For anyone who is still interested, the hidden demo was Constantine. BLARG!! Quite possibly the worst shooter Ive played this gen, but then again I'm sure there are worse.It's one of those games that couldv'e been good if it had a good gameplay engine.

After playing the Pariah and Doom 3 demos, I completely forgot about the hidden demo. Why do they keep doing this, especially when the hidden demo seems to be crap. Just look at the past few: SpongeBob, Tron 2.0, and now Constantine. I guess they are getting paid to put those on the demos, and need to find some way for gamers to try them out at least once.

There's quite a few games I've thought about that could have been good if they had a good game engine, especially if it's an existing game engine (Unreal engine, Buffy game engine, etc). There would be less crap on the store shelves and bargin bins if devs would use an existing game engine, especially the struggling devs in search of a hit.