Less than a month after announcing a price drop for the Xbox 360 Arcade console to Rs 14,676, we’ve got word from retailers and distributors that Microsoft has once again slashed the price of the console in India. The Arcade console will now be available for Rs 12,990. However, this price drop applies to the old Xbox 360 Arcade console, so this new price may not necessarily apply to the new 4 GB Arcade console that was recently announced internationally.
Platformers have seen a resurgence of late. Be it the wildly successful Super Mario Galaxy games on the Wii, the ubiquitous Ratchet and Clank series on the PS3, or the seemingly endless supply of indie titles on the Xbox 360 and PC, it appears that creating games that have people jumping around is a fairly lucrative business. And then you have Limbo, which turns the whole genre on its head and makes it its bitch. About time too, and here’s why.
Kane & Lynch: Dead Men was a game full of imperfections. In fact, I’m being too kind by even calling it that. A lot of it was quite poor; the shooting mechanics, the hit detection, the animations, the overall graphics. Most people who picked it up probably didn’t play it all the way through, and you really can’t fault them for it, because it was an unpolished game that never should have made it to shelves in the state it did. But many who did play it look back at it fondly. It had a simple story, but it worked for the kind of game it was. Same goes for Kane and Lynch, the game’s main characters; poles apart, but equally despicable and yet likeable at the same time. And despite little co-operation from the gameplay department, the balls-to-the-wall action was undeniably fun.
“Well, it’s free”. That’s what keeps running through my head. See, Alien Swarm is a hard game to review or criticize, not because it’s anymore subjective than your average video game, but just because it’s free. Anything negative you have to say about the game is immediately countered by those two magical words. It’s too short? It’s free. Too hard? It’s free. Too focused on the multiplayer aspect? It’s free. You can see where I am going with this. So for the sake of the review, I will pretend that this is one of the many, many games that show up on XBLA/PSN for the usual price of 1200 MS Points or whatever.
In Deathspank, you’ll be spending most of the time dispensing “justice” and being “heroic”, because those are the favourite words of the titular protagonist. Justice, you will find, is all about balance. It does not discriminate, be it merciless orques, undead skeletons, dragons that swallow felt salesmen, sabertoothed donkeys, smelly orphans, or unicorns.
Earlier this month, we brought you an interview with PlayStation India boss Atindriya Bose. Today, IVG caught up with Jaspreet Bindra, Country Manager of Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices division, which also includes the Xbox 360 business, to tell us about Microsoft’s plans for the rest of 2010. Read on to find out about the new Xbox 360 “shorty”, Kinect, Xbox LIVE, Xbox 360 Classics, post-warranty support, and why he thinks 2010 is the biggest year for Xbox.
There’s something to be said about a fighting game that has no HUD to speak of – no health bars and no ultra meters going ballistic – but can still accurately indicate exactly how well or how badly you’re doing in a fight purely through gameplay. UFC Undisputed does that brilliantly, and that’s one of the reasons why last year’s game was a surprising success. The one criticism levelled at the game though was that it was extremely technical. In the game’s defence, mixed martial arts (MMA) itself is technical. But very much against today’s gaming trends, it just wasn’t accessible enough. This year, UFC Undisputed 2010 aims to change that.
So what’s wrong with Crackdown 2? Surprisingly, despite the score tacked on at the bottom there, not a whole lot. As a standalone game, it’s pretty great. As a sequel though, not so much. The first Crackdown was one of those games that split people into two groups. There were those that saw the flaws and found the game to be repetitive, short and lacking content. And then there were those who realised that it was more than the sum of its parts. Crackdown 2 should have been an opportunity to fix what was flawed and improve what was already great. It does both of those things. But not on a large enough scale to count as a good sequel.
If Call of Duty: Modern Warfare met BioShock at a bar, took it home for a night of torrid passion and forgot to use protection, Singularity would be the result nine months later. In case you didn’t get that rather obvious analogy, it means that Singularity is a clichéd yet enjoyable shooter that borrows heavily from games like BioShock and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, among others. It’s not the most original tool in the shed, but it is a rather enjoyable one (that’s what she said).
A finer translation of a film genre to a video game the world has not seen. This is not merely in reference to Westerns, but all film genres. Red Dead Redemption is a game that is destined to go down in history as a classic in every sense of the word and would stand tall and proud next to revered Western flicks like McKenna’s Gold, Django, For A Few Dollars More and The Magnificent Seven.
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