More like lames on demand.....

With last weeks Xbox 360 Dashboard update came the new ‘Games on Demand’ service.  Working the same way as Xbox Originals, it allows you to download full Xbox 360 retail games to your hard drive, cutting out that meddlesome step of leaving your house to visit the shops.

But please, I beg of you, don’t download anything.

With this being a brand new service, Microsoft are still testing the water with the pricing structure, and to put it bluntly, it is currently a complete rip off.  The games are priced with actual money rather than Microsoft Points and so far all cost £19.99.  When you compare this with the cost of new and used copies of games in stores and online, Games on Demand doesn’t come out looking too good.  Here are a few examples.

I’ve just listed a few of the best selling games here, but I could find every game on Games on Demand cheaper elsewhere, in most cases for brand new copies.  Somehow I don’t think the convenience of being able to buy a game instantly from the comfort of your own home is worth the £10 extra most seem to cost.  Don’t forget too that each game will take up between five and seven gigabytes of your hard drive, so if you have anything other than the biggest hard drives available you will soon find yourself struggling for space.  Having to delete and re-download the few megabyte games on Wii’s Virtual Console is inconvenient enough, without having to do the same with several gigabyte retail games.

And lets not forget trading in your games too.  As much as the games industry hates it, most of us take advantage of being able to trade in games to get money off new ones – something that is impossible with digital downloads.  When you add this to the saving you are already making, there really isn’t much incentive to download games at all.

Which is why I’m urging you to not download anything for the time being.  The simple fact is, if people aren’t using the service, Microsoft will have no choice but to lower the prices.  Once downloads cost around the same (or ideally cheaper) than discs do in shops or online, Games on Demand will be a far more attractive way of buying games.

Grand Slam Tennis may just be the most important game released on Wii since the system first shipped with Wii Sports.  Not for the game itself, however, but for the little white plastic block you get in the box with it.  Rather than save it for a game of their own, Nintendo have decided to give EA the honour of having the first game to support Wii Motion Plus, the Wii Remote add-on that improves its motion sensing abilities.  But does it work?

The future

Well, my initial impressions were not the best.  I was missing shots, they weren’t going in the directions I wanted them to and many were flying wildly off court.  While at first I feared the motion sensing was failing me, it became apparent after an hour or two that the game has a very steep learning curve.  At first I found I slipped naturally back into the way you play Wii Sports tennis – swing early (for right handed forehand shots) and the ball will go to the left of the court, swing later and it heads to the right.  This is, in fact, they way Grand Slam Tennis is played if you don’t have Motion Plus and it works just fine.  Once you get used to what Motion Plus wants from you though, you will find a much more natural, intuitive, accurate and altogether rewarding control scheme.  Shots have far less to do with timing and more to do with the actual movement you make.  To push a shot to the right, you have to push your hand out in front of you to the right, rather than the cross-body swings you use for all shots in Wii Sports, which will now always push the ball to the left.  It takes a while, but once it clicks you can place shots exactly where you want them on court.

The control is still far from the holy grail of one to one movement though.  While you can move your racquet around with near one to one tracking before shots, when you actually swing you will find you have to a second or so before the ball actually reaches you, then the swing animation will play out at the right time.  But despite this, MotionPlus, in this game at least, makes a world of difference to the experience.  The motion will sometimes fail you, especially if you don’t get into the habit of holding you hand still in front of you in between shots to allow the MotionPlus to recalibrate itself if needs be, but these moments are few and far between.

But this isn’t a hardware review, so what of the game itself?  Well, your first impressions will no doubt be shaped by the art style.  Rather than go for realism, EA have given the game a quite cartooney look, with almost caricature like player models.  While I like the visuals, they are unlikely to be to everyone’s taste and will probably put some people off and, in truth, they don’t really do the game beneath them justice.  Far from the arcade experience they suggest, the gameplay has a feeling of authenticity to it I haven’t found in any tennis game before.  I’m generally a pretty calm person, but so immersive is the experience, I found myself punching the air and shouting at the umpire like a true McEnroe in no time.  Speaking of the angry American, John McEnroe appears in the game along with ten other ‘former legends’, on top on the twelve current players that feature.  They can all be controlled in quick play and the various mini-games, but Grand Slam mode, the main career mode, sees you create a character from scratch to take through the ranks.

The old take on the new

In your career you will visit the American Open, Australian Open, French Open and Wimbledon, playing a number of matches and challenges at each.  As well as the tournament itself, mini games and matches against past champions allow you to earn their skills and upgrade your player.  All in all it’s a pretty robust mode with plenty of reasons to keep playing beyond simply winning the tournaments.  On top of this is a fantastic online mode that works almost flawlessly with no slowdown or dropped frames.

My only real complaint with the game is the AI control of your player when you are playing without the nunchuck.  I preferred to play this way as it gives you far more freedom to swing, but it does mean character movement is given over to the AI, which doesn’t always get it right.  It’s generally fine at standing in the right part pf the court, but sometimes positions itself for a backhand shot when you were expecting a forehand and vice versa.  This is by no means a regular occurrence, however and is something you will get used to working with.

Grand Slam Tennis is a great representation of the sport, but more so it is a showcase for how MotionPlus can make a big difference to a game.  One you get used to the controls this is one of the best feeling uses of motion control so for.  The extra £10 to get MotionPlus packed in with the game is worth every penny, as it is clearly the future of Wii games.  If you enjoyed tennis in Wii sports, you will love this.

8/10

First though, some of the rest of the conference.  The show opened with the intro video to The Beatles Rock Band, followed by a live demo of the game.  While the gameplay seems to work much the same as the existing Rock Band games, there is now support for three microphones, with the vocal track splitting up for three part harmonies.  They were also using wireless microphones.  The drum kit looks to be a huge improvement on the existing kit too, with raised cymbals and a bass drum head.  The game will ship with 45 tracks, but full albums will be available for download in the future, starting with Abbey Road shortly after the game’s release.  The only negative of the whole thing was the appearance of Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr.  The whole thing hadn’t really been thought through and they just bumbled about on stage for a couple of minutes then left.  It was like watching a couple of embarrassingly inebriated grandparents at a family gathering.

Grandad, get down from the stage!

There were a number of new game announcements, the biggest being Metal Gear Rising.  Hideo Kojima was there to reveal that his next game will be exclusive to 360.  Take that Sony.  I was still more surprised by Left 4 Dead 2 though.  The trailer showed four new characters, new super-zombies and a selection of melee weapons.  Zombies + chainsaws = game of the year.  Forza 3 was also there, with a lot of emphasis on the custom tuning and paint jobs that can be shared online.  There is also an editor for making hi-def videos to upload via Xbox Live and a rewind feature that sounds like it has been lifted straight from Grid.

None of these people are as cool as Bill

After showing off some Halo ODST gameplay footage (surprise surprise, it’s just more Halo 3), Bungie said they had a secret project to reveal.  A ripple of excitement went around the room.  They showed a trailer for another Halo game called Halo Reach.  Everyone yawned.

Two games that have been in the limbo for the last couple of years that are both now looking certain to be released are Alan Wake and Splinter Cell Conviction.  While protagonist Alan Wake is a bestselling author, the voice over during the into video and during gameplay was painfully blunt and to the point, no poetry to it at all.  It almost seems like they’ve decided to make a game about an author, but not bothered hiring a professional to write it.  The gameplay reminded me of Resident Evil 4 and 5 with its third person, over the shoulder shooting style, but unlike Resident Evil the camera is dynamic and swings around cinematically to show enemies attacking from different directions.  All in all it looked impressive, but will it be worth the wait?  Time will tell.

Alan Wake. Like Orwell, if Orwell couldn't write for shit.

The big finish to Microsoft’s E3 press conference was the unveiling of ‘Project Natal’ (pronounced ‘natarl’, it’s nothing to do pregnancy), a camera that detects full body movement in three dimensions.  The technology itself was at E3 last year, but at that point it was third party technology trying to impress the big players in the industry.  Now though, it’s at the forefront of Microsoft’s push to gain a foothold in the casual market they have watched Nintendo enjoy so much over the last few years.  The speech from Don Mattrick (Senior Vice President of Microsoft Interactive Entertainment Business) and Steven Spielberg (yes, him) spoke of breaking down the barriers between the games industry and the sixty percent of households without consoles, but reading between the lines, they want into that casual market.

...but can you push my buttons?

At first I was, naturally, rather sceptical about the whole thing.  They began with a video featuring a cast reminiscent of any recent Nintendo advert, sofa and all, which showed their ‘vision’ of what the technology could achieve.  As would be expected, it all looked a little too far beyond the realms of possibility and a little too much like the computers in Minority Report.  Then there were the mini-games that looked like a mish-mash of EyeToy, Wii Sports and Wii Fit, and the totally uninspiring Xbox dashboard demonstration that simply replaced button presses with hand gestures.  All in all, it was looking like a bit of a stale end to the show.

Then Peter Molyneux walked on stage and introduced us to Milo.  I still can’t decide if that little boy amazes me or terrifies me.  The demo showed a woman talking to him via the camera and microphone of Natal.  He not only recognised her and greeted her by name, he held an amazingly realistic conversation with her, even recognising her facial expressions and reacting accordingly.  When he threw a pair of goggles to her, she reached out to catch them, something Molyneux said everyone who has tried the demo instinctively did, such is the immersion and believability of the experience.  The camera then panned down to the surface of a pond where the woman played with the surface of the water by moving her hand in front of the screen, while her reflection looked back at her.  Finally, she drew a picture on a piece of paper and held it up to the camera, which Milo reached up and ‘grabbed’, taking a scan of it into his virtual world.

Milo won the staring contest every time

Now, as with anything Peter Molyneux says, the whole thing should be taken with a pinch of salt.  But he did say that Milo was at E3 (I’m already talking about him like he’s a real person) and that a select number of invited guests would be able to try it out first hand.

All in all, I was very impressed with the Microsoft Press Conference.  While a lot of the games shown were not 360 exclusive, they helped cement the consoles boast of having the best library of the current generation.  Microsoft even managed to announce a new way of attracting the casual market without them looking like they are simply copying Nintendo.  Before I can use Project Natal for myself I’m going to remain sceptical though.  The lack of buttons can only limit games designed for it and I think Sony have done a potentially far better job of replicating the Wii remote.  That’s for another blog though.

Well, it may surprise you to find out that the iPhone (and iPod Touch of course) is a more powerful gaming system than the DS.  It’s not even that far behind the PSP.  The suitability of touch controls for a lot of games may still be up for debate, but in terms of what is physically happening on the screen, the iPhone can hold its own against Nintendo and Sony’s systems.

Assassin's Creed on DS

Assassin's Creed on iPhone

Another major factor in its success is cost.  Assassin’s Creed launched on DS for £29.99.  the same game is now available on the App Store for a mere £5.99.  This doesn’t leave developers out of pocket though.  Apple only take 30% of the cost of each download, and with no distributors or retailers to go through, the developer pockets the rest.  Couple this with the fact that an iPhone game can be made for next to nothing by one or two people, compared to a few thousand dollars for a DS game or anything between 5 and 50 million dollars for a home console game, and the iPhone becomes an attractive platform for developers.

The most famous example of the money making potential of the iPhone is Steve Demeter’s puzzle game Trism.  Made in his spare time and priced at 5 dollars, the game made $250,000 in its first two months of release.  Demeter has since quit his bank job to set up his own company and develop more games, with enough left over to employ a number of salaried staff.

Trism developer Steve Demeter. Who ever said money can't make you happy?

But with all of this going for it, why has it taken the iPhone so long to catch up with the DS in terms of the quality of games?  Well, from day one it has been missing one vital element that almost every console before it has been blessed with:  in-house development.  Imagine if you will, that Wii was released without Nintendo making any games for it.  No Wii Sports, no Zelda: Twilight Princess, no Excite Truck.  These three games alone demonstrated the basic functionality of the Wiimote, on which more or less every game since has been built.  Without them, third party developers would have been left to figure out things for themselves and it would have been a long time before games reached the quality of Nintendo’s own launch titles.

This is exactly what happened with the iPhone.

With nobody to show them the way, developers all tried different ways of using the hardware until the best of a bad bunch could rise to the top and give everyone some direction.  Now developers know what does and doesn’t work, we are starting to see what the iPhone can really do as a games platform.  But should Nintendo be worried?  The short answer is yes, but only time will tell just how much of an impact the iPhone can have on the games industry.

A couple of days ago over at sidepodcast, we were discussing the upcoming announcement on the new F1 game.  While speculating what systems it would be released on, I made the following statement – “honestly, at the moment I will be surprised if there is a Wii version”.

Today, Codemasters have proven me completely wrong.  Far from the release date announcement I was hoping for, they are now delaying the 360 and PS3 versions of the game until 2010, with Wii and PSP games later this year.  My initial reaction was one of massive disappointment.  It’s been two years since the last F1 game (even longer since we had a decent one) and I’ve been looking forward to the next game ever since Codemasters were given the license.

The more I think about it though, the more today’s announcement makes sense.  You only have to look at what the Executive Producer has said on the official Codemasters forums to see how ambitious they are being with the next-gen version of the game.  They are considering everything from evolving track surfaces to track vibrations effecting visibility to crowd noise and track atmosphere.  If they get it right, the game is going to be amazingly faithful to the sport, which, with F1, is no mean feat.

An early wireframe image from the 360/PS3 game

But what of the Wii game I was convinced wouldn’t exist?  Well I was correct on one count when I said that if the was a Wii version, it would likely be made by an outside developer.  The reigns have been handed to Sumo Digital, the Sheffield based studio behind PSP games Race Driver 2006 and TOCA Race Driver 3, and 360 titles Virtua Tennis 3 and, erm, SEGA Superstars Tennis…  Don’t let their recent development history put you off them though.  The fact that SEGA trusted them with a game featuring characters form all their main franchises has to say a lot about the studio.  Also, Codemasters have worked with Sumo before, so they must have faith in their work to give such a big licence to them. 

A few screen shots have been released and they look rough to say the least.  Even bearing in mind that they are shots from a work in progress, I’m still not expecting much from the visuals.  Importantly though, they are working to have the game locked at 60 frames per second, which is hugely important for a racing game, not to mention a pretty decent achievement on Wii.  There was also a trailer released today, but in the new style that is sweeping the world of video games, they called it a teaser trailer and put no gameplay footage in it.

All in all, I’m feeling pretty optimistic.  Yes, I would prefer to have the full game this year, but the delay says to me that Codemasters are taking this project seriously and don’t want to rush it out to make a quick buck.  As for the Wii version, I’m glad we will have something to play this season, but I’m reserving judgment on it for now.  Sumo Digital are unproven when it comes to console racing games, plus I fear it will be toned down for the casual Wii audience a little too much.  Any F1 has to be better than no F1 though, right?

I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to use this for, but it will most likely be a bit of everything.  I’ve already got a blog on IGN.com for games related stuff so I’ll probably duplicate that here, along with bits and bobs of other….. stuff.

I’m going to make more of an effort than my previous attempts at a blog to make regular contributions, so keep your eyes peeled for the aforementioned ‘stuff’.  Farewell for now.