Thursday, July 17, 2008

Here's YOUR FREAKING DEMO, now shut UP! TOO Human's demo and related stuff.

   I didn't go to E3 this year.  Which I am not alone in, neither did lots of big companies.  But I did stay home and work and download stuff from XBOX LIVE MARKETPLACE.  Including to my absolute delight the TOO HUMAN demo.  Now if you have not done this yet; stop reading this and go start downloading.  It's a 1.09 GB download so unless you have a 3 MB connection or better like I do, then it's going to take you a while.  So just go do that now....

    Done?  Good...  Now, I was pleased to also see a couple of wonderful little videos about TOO HUMAN as well.  Which took significantly less time to download.  So I watched these before the demo was done downloading.  So they certainly occupied my time and I was interested in them, even if it felt slightly academic.

     Come to find out however, that these videos were actually training films for the demo.  The films were about the Champion class and about leveling skills.  So when presented with these in the demo, I was well aware of what to do, and what to expect.  How fortuitous...

    So what was the demo like?  Was it a mind blowing experience?  Did this change the way I thought about games?  Well, sort of....

    The cool thing about Too Human is that it is really framed like a movie.  With a real story arc and a nice way of telling that story.  It felt very much like an action movie.  Maybe, Aliens or Starship Troopers.

     But more than that.  The combat was interesting and fun.  I really got the impression that I could bang on those guys all day and night and never get bored of it.

   Also there was gear in the demo.  Lots of gear.  Some I could use right away, some I had to wait to level 6 to play.  Level 6 is the built in level cap for the demo.

    But all of this really wouldn't have made me psyched about the game.  Considering the Champion Class was the only one you could play in the demo, or so I thought.  Just want to say that although the Champion Class is fun, it is by no means the best class in the game.

    I happened to head over to the Too Human website.   There was a little cheat that allowed the player to play ANY of the 5 classes available in the final game.  Apparently you just have to unplug your ethernet cable, turn off your XBOX 360, then turn it back on and change to the date to one that is in 2009.  Then the rest of the classes will be unlocked until you plug the cable back in again.

    Awesome right?  Well, it is.  Playing as the Defender or the Berserker completely changes the way you play the game and certainly teaches you about combat in ways that the Champion cannot.

  I've played through the demo around 6 times now.  It is very fun just to play through for the different experiences and the sheer joy of combat.

   Too Human will definitely be a must play game this year.  I think it may even be the Bioshock for this year.

   But why was my title so dreary?  Well, it's because Microsoft doesn't seem too interested in Too Human.  Not when they have their XBOX LIVE EXPERIENCE AND GEARS OF WAR 2!  Well, that's all fine and dandy, I'm sure Gears of War 2 will sell lots of games.  In NOVEMBER!  And the XBOX LIVE EXPERIENCE doesn't come out til LATE FALL?  Whatever that means,  is that code of December or November?

   Too Human comes out August 19th!  Less than a MONTH FROM THIS WEEK!  This game should have been the headliner!  It looks AWESOME, it has some incredible cut scenes and it plays amazingly.

   Where are all the developer interviews, the behind the scenes footage, and the viral ad campaign?  I know what your saying.... Wasn't that all about 2 months ago?  Exactly, they had all this crazy stuff come out before anyone could even get their hands on it.  It is like Microsoft said to the fans:

   "Here is your FREAKING DEMO, now SHUT UP!"

   As Microsoft, circles deeper and deeper into the incredibly crappy world of casual games it is good to see that there are still some descent hardcore titles coming out.  Even if at the core they just want to be fat and happy like Nintendo.

    Back to TOO HUMAN though; I suppose I shouldn't be surprised when Microsoft ignores this title, given the four star treatment they gave Bioshock.  I think all told Bioshock had two or three trailers and a demo before it launched and everyone gave it GAME OF THE YEAR that year.  Perhaps it's just Microsoft's commitment to their own particular product that keeps them from.... Wait, Microsoft it producing Too Human... Oh well... Who knows why they are ignoring it.

   This game is an incredible time sink and people will be playing this game when Gears of War 3 comes out.  Silicon Knights has all ready promised LOTS of DLC.  Which even taken with a grain of salt translates into at least a few more things coming out.  An arena style fighting mode where you have to survive wave after wave of steadily harder enemies would be nice.  Just a suggestion, no charge...

   Finally I have one question for Microsoft, who in BLOODY HELL likes Kung Fu Panda SO FREAKING MUCH?  I have never seen so much content come out for a kids game SEQUEL in my life.  The Furious Five is so far the best promoted game of E3.  What is up with that????

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Sony's Online Rental and Purchase service. Wow was this a MISTAKE!

   Upon hearing that Sony had decided to make an online service available allowing people to download movies and television shows for both purchase and rental and then those movies could be shared on your PSP as well.  I was thrilled.

    Well, I was unfortunately unable to view this service when it was SUPPOSED to be launched last night.  Rather I booted it up today to take a look.

    Upon my first entrance into the service I was hit with one of the most poorly planned interfaces I've ever seen.  I'm sorry XBOX LIVE MARKETPLACE for all the bad things I've EVER said about your organization.

   I entered New Releases thinking that since this service hasn't even been active for 24 hours that I would get all the available movies.  However this was not the case, it was simply a random grouping of movies based, I guess, on when they were posted to the site.

    I then entered the view all movies area.  Which simply gave me a bunch of letters and a couple of numbers.  I supposed this is better than showing all the movies available but then they should have a heading saying, Movies by Alpha Order or something.  Not View ALL MOVIES.

    OK, now let's get into the inexcusable part of this service.  The rental part is pretty standard except that some movies that are made by Sony and available in BLU-RAY are not available in HD like: Resident Evil 1, 2, or 3; for instance.  They are $2.99 for Standard Definition and $5.99 for High Definition.  Now this would be fine except that the movies to purchase are $9.99-$14.99 for STANDARD DEFINITION ONLY!

    So you can buy a BLU RAY FOR $30 or a DVD for $6-15.  But they want you to get a digital version with no box or media for $10-16?  Excuse me?

    Why?  These downloads come with nothing!  No director commentary, no deleted scenes, nothing.  And I'm sorry but I don't own a PSP so I can't avail myself of the sharing service.  Nor would I want to.  Watching a movie on that little screen is pointless.

     There is absolutely no point to have this service except for the rentals.  Which with Netflix having Blu-Ray and if you have PS3 you have a BLU-Ray player; it's pointless to not spend the same amount as 2 movie rentals on the PSN service and get a month of rentals from Netflix.

    Sony should have allowed people to download the HD versions of their movies for between $15-$20 and made a fortune.  Rather than STILL TRYING TO PUSH BLU-RAY and making no money at all.

  Oh and by the way Sony, Microsoft has been showing SD and HD movies on their Rental service for about  a year now, so keep trying to upgrade and maybe one day you'll at least reach the same level as Microsoft.  Oh but wait, you can watch Netflix instant downloads for free this fall as long as you have a Netflix account.  Oh, well I guess Sony has some MORE catching up to do.  It must be hard to be Sony.  The PS2 era seems SO LONG ago, doesn't it....