Xbox Live working again?

Most people can agree that Xbox Live wasn’t what it should for the last few weeks. That is, down and/or crappy networking where people and gaming sessions would get randomly booted. I noticed that yesterday I couldn’t play a whole map without serious lagging and then a session ended message. The host then tried to make another game, but with the same issues.

This brings it up till now, around noon where Xbox Live service seemed to be shut down for everyone. I wasn’t able to login until right just now. Does this mean that we can play without network interruptions while they fix the problem? Maybe…

Have a Happy New Year!

Hey, it’s almost 2008! Woohoo! 2007 has been a great year, loads of new games, many of them were stars of the gaming universe. It’s been great having you guys, and we will see you next year.

Our gift to year during these last few days of the year, we are giving out 4 2-day Xbox Live Gold codes. In other words, this is our last prize post on GameSpotting! You know the drill. Tell us your favorite game of 2007, and if you are one of the first four, you will have the fabulous prize.

All codes have been given out! But feel free to post your favorite game anyways.

Super Mario Galaxy Review

One game I got recently was Super Mario Galaxy, a spiritual successor to Super Mario 64. While Nintendo doesn’t actively say that it is a spiritual successor, it sure does feel like one. While it did release in November, I was unable to review it due to mass amounts of work. So I will review it now.

The game starts out with the usual story of Mario getting a letter from…you guessed it, Princess Bowser Peach. And, of course, Mario has to go meet the Princess at the castle. Upon entering Toad Town, Bowser attacks everything. Same old, same old there. Much later, Bowser finally kidnaps Peach and Mario goes flying. Then comes the basic training that you go through (however, I thought it was apart of some messed up storyline). And afterwards, you come in contact with this big flying castle ship with this Wizard lady who looks almost exactly like Peach.

So now you are on this ship, which needs power from these Power Stars, to light up a section called an Observatory. Each Observatory is made up of several Galaxies, many contain at least 3 regular stars (and the occasional bonus star). Once the whole ship is lit, you will fly to the center of the Galaxy to save Princess Peach.

Most of the controls are spectacular, I really like how the game utilizes motion, shaking the WiiMote makes you do spins. It also allows you to use the Mote at the same time to pick up these StarBits, which was a bit awkward at first but got easier to control over time. The levels and graphics are outstanding, and really really take advantage of the Wii’s power (and limitations). The music and sounds are well done. The levels are fun and not easy to get lost in (something that happened to me a lot in Super Mario 64).

However, I am disappointed with the camera and its controls. The camera is really annoying in Galaxy. Especially when you are underneath a platform (yes, you can walk underneath most things), or walk on a spherical surface. The camera moves to a really awkward angle and the controls respond to those odd angles. So moving forward may make you go right or left or diagonal. That’s really annoying. Especially since it’s never consistent, so you can’t guess where what the control stick is going to take you. Sometimes you can and sometimes you can’t control the camera. Just something I found annoying. In less then two hours I was about 3/4th’s through the game. This is with most bonuses (missing two of them) and almost all stars collected from all the available galaxies (I am currently at the Bedroom Observatory). I haven’t finished the game, but I will be soon.

And now to the ratings:

Sound: 9.7 – The music and sound was great in Super Mario Galaxy, but sometimes I very very rarely noticed it was there.

Graphics: 10 – While they aren’t the most realistic anyone has ever seen, you have to give credit due to the fact it’s on the Wii. The graphics in this game are awesome. Very nicely done.

Difficulty: 8.4 – Few levels are very difficult, if you know what you are doing, you can blaze through a whole Observatory in about 20 minutes with one or no lives lost.

Story: 9.2 – While it’s still the same old, same old, Super Mario Galaxy contains lots of new story elements to keep things interesting.

Controls: 7.8 – The camera controls really hurt this section. I hate the fact that the camera will turn awkwardly and change how Mario reacts controls at random. Can we keep it consistent, please?

Overall Score: 9.7 - Overall, Super Mario Galaxy is a pretty solid game. It’s fun and enjoyable at the same time.

Why I am not excited about Burnout Paradise

People that know me know that I love Burnout. It’s a great series, but with Critieron Games’s newest addition, I am left with the worry that the Burnout series will “go to hell”. And let me explain why.
My biggest problem is that they practically removed Traffic Checking (same way traffic can be hit to shoot the cars into other things. It was added in Burnout Revenge). You can check traffic, but it’s extremely difficult to do so at high speeds. Most of the time you will just crash. It brings players back to the old Burnout 2 gameplay of “watch out for everything” and personally, I don’t like it.

Secondly, where did DJ Atomica come from? Since when has he been in Burnout? What happen to that female person? EA assumes that since Burnout is popular they should put popular items from other EA franchises into it. NO! BAD EA! BAD! DJ Atomica shouldn’t be in Burnout. Put him back in SSX where he belongs. Another note on this, he is a horrible DJ in Burnout Paradise. He was so much better in SSX3. He never plays any music unless you are in an event. Nice job. Plus he tries to give “helpful” advice. But it seems so forced. I loved in SSX3 where his radio station actually sounded natural.

When I first played the demo a few days ago, I noticed a sad thing. You explore a huge map to get to other events. This is a tactic used in most games to compensate for not having much content. Like Transformers. Any game that suggests “free roaming” you can pretty much expect to have absolutely no content whatsoever. However, I did like the drive-thru idea in Paradise.

EA decided to put this blue tinting on the top of the screen. I find it the most annoying thing ever that probably originated from NBA Street V3 (most likely due to the exact same coloring) or some NFS title (I stopped playing any new NFS title due to the crappiness of the series).

If you have played the demo you might also notice how bad the camera is. The camera is much too slow and decides to rotate around your car as you back up. If the camera was faster in doing this I would be just fine. It’s not. Please please please fix the camera before you go gold EA (I think it’s too late now).

Another problem, cars and such don’t collide with objects on the street. So if I knock down a traffic light, the cars who were stopped will go right through the pole as if it’s not there. If you attempt to do the same, you will collide with the pole. Considering EA is trying to be somewhat realistic with its new car noises and starting the car and crap like that, it seems kinda silly if AI cars can go right through objects.

EA, please delay this game and fix the above issues. Please don’t ruin the Burnout series like you did with NFS. Thanks.

Tetris is dangerous

Raymond D. Souza, a Canadian column writer, called video games “the crack cocaine of the electronic world” in one of his columns recently. He said that in his second year at Queen’s University, Tetris contributed to his “worst performance in 12 years of post-secondary education.”

Souza says that after deleting Tetris from his hard drive, he has not touched another video game. He also blames video games for taking time, health, and thought away from kids, and that they celebrate graphic violence, multifarious delinquency, and borderline pornography.

While the graphic violence and multifarious delinquency are, for the most part, true, I don’t think I’ll be seeing my Grand Theft Auto-playing nephew shooting up his kindergarten class any time soon. Nor do I find fitting colored blocks into slots as any sort of reason for poor performance in school, especially for someone as seemingly intelligent as Mr. Souza. But that’s just my opinion.

Crashing the Coop

The mic stand at the Spike TV Video Game Awards had some unexpected visitors this year. During the acceptance for the Game of the Year award, some men dressed as red chickens ran on to the stage and declared that Gamecock, their company, was for the children, and would rise someday. They then gave the spotlight back to Greg Goby, while they danced behind him and Ken Levine. Because of the disruption, Levine didn’t get to thank anyone.  

But today, Mike Wilson, co-founder of Gamecock, apologized for his team’s actions:

“I’d personally like to sincerely apologize to the BioShock team and Ken Levine in particular for GameCock infringing on their spotlight at this weekend’s VGA Awards show,” he said. “The award acceptance they interrupted was the LAST one we would’ve wanted to interrupt , (“most addictive game fueled by mountain dew” would have been a wonderful choice) as we have the utmost respect and love for Bioshock and all who were involved in it, and it totally sucks that Ken Levine didn’t get to speak after making such a fantastic game.”

Pokemon Snap included in this week’s virtual console updates

Nintendo put up one of my old favorite N64 games, Pokemon Snap. It was my favorite for about a week, until I snapped everything. I even had the guide to the game, which I didn’t really need, but somehow had anyway.

Nintendo has reportedly changed the game so you can share your Pokemon Snap pictures with other people and save the pictures to the Wii Message Board. That in itself is a really cool new feature.

Nintendo has also updated the Wii Shop Channel so you can now send other people games off of the Shop Channel. It’s supposed to be a way to help you buy gifts this holiday season (I kid you not, that’s basically what it said). I rather get a Wii Points Card for someone. I can see how in the future this could be a good feature, but it’s really cheesy to advertise this feature is great for the holiday season (thanks for being politically correct Nintendo).

Anyways, besides Pokemon Snap,  Ghosts’n Goblins (I am pretty sure this was released before), and the not at all popular BASEBALL STARS 2 are also available on the Wii Virtual Console.

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Xbox Dashboard update released

Last night, Microsoft released their Winter Dashboard Update. Overall, I am impressed with most of the updates. I like some of the new features like more media format support. That’s always nice.

But the new dashboard also presents me with a bunch of things I don’t like as well. The first thing is that the whole dashboard has been completely changed. Many menu items are missing. Like demos. They are now under Games Library. Once you click there you see the general ads, where you see Microsoft’s attempt to show you the featured games (normally shows demos, and sometimes gamer pictures [gamer pictures don't equal games]) in hopes you will download them. Not bad, until you click the My Games item. You then see the worst display in your life that is worse then the PS3 navigation. IT LOOKS SO UGLY! And doesn’t work at all. They should have left it be. But noooooooo.

The Xbox Live blade merges the messaging and friends items together. It now shows an item called Inside Xbox, somewhat cool feature that shows you the latest news with Xbox. It’s like a blog. And it features lots of corny videos with really bad quality. Mostly, it’s Major Nelson advertising Microsoft products. Okay, so it lacks in content for now.

The new Marketplace blade looked promising, but it’s navigation and odd way of showing content really really hurts (it’s just like the My Games). Why they had to change it this much doesn’t make much sense.

I am going to have a really hard time with the new update, and I don’t think I will be getting used to it any time soon.

New Virtual Console games

Sorry for the general lateness of this post, I’ve been busy.

To skip forward here are this week’s latest titles: ZANAC, Eternal Champions? and The Dynastic Hero. All with crappy names. Yeah, Enternal Champions? is a real title. Why it has that questionmark, I have no idea. I bet it’s japanese translated.

Here are the descriptions:

ZANAC (NES, 1 player, rated E for Everyone – Mild Fantasy Violence, 500 Wii Points): ZANAC is a vertically scrolling shoot-’em-up game that was released in November 1986. Take control of the state-of-the-art fighter, ZANAC, with the objective of destroying the bases of the mechanized enemy forces. Use your full array of regular weapons as well as eight special weapons to clear the 12 intense areas of the game. Be careful, though, as the game changes the degree of difficulty in real time based on how well you play. This ensures that it feels like you’re experiencing a new game every time you play.

Eternal Champions? (Sega Genesis, 1-2 players, rated T for Teen – Animated Blood, Animated Violence, 800 Wii Points): This 2-D fighting game introduces a cast of different characters that met untimely deaths in their lives on Earth. Now they have been given a chance to compete against each other, with the winner taking on the Eternal Champion, the ultimate fighter in the universe. The reward for defeating the Eternal Champion is a return to Earth for the opportunity to avenge death and restore balance to the universe. Choose from nine unique characters with a variety of fighting styles, and bring your best moves to defeat all comers in your quest to topple the Eternal Champion.

The Dynastic Hero (TurboGrafx16 CD-ROM, 1 player, rated E for Everyone – Comic Mischief, 800 Wii Points): The Dynastic Hero is an action RPG featuring a cast of insect characters. The story begins with the invasion of their peaceful homeland of Tarron by the evil Drilkor Empire. Rushing to the insects’ aid is Dyna, the prince of Beetras. Take control of Dyna as he battles through action-filled stages. Equip weapons and items to vanquish the relentless foes, and acquire special items that enable you to brave the journey across the perilous desert or open sea. But it’s not just all action. Correctly answer multiple-choice quizzes, and play the ocarina to find the right melody to open doors. Plus, there are countless traps and other puzzles packed into this fun game to keep you entertained and ensure you continue coming back for more.

Vii vould like to play

Ah, famiclones. Funstations, Tristar 64s… And now, Viis. Not only is it Dracula’s new favorite console, but it also comes with built-in games like “Happy Tennis” and “Fever Move”, in which your character seems to be some sort of big-headed catlike thing. The Vii comes in white, pink, and light blue, and will be sold for ¥1280 ($170).

An ad for the Vii.

New Contributing Editor: Dddawn

Recently, there were a few posts by the author, Dddawn. To clear up things, Dddawn is our new contributing editor to gamespotting.net. We welcome her to the GameSpotting! site and hope she will stay for awhile. Be on the look out for more posts by her in the future.