Editer
1961
Hydrothunder is pretty decent if you like old school arcade racers.
I enjoyed the demo for Hydro Thunder quite a bit. But $15 is too much for a game like that. It’s no Braid or Limbo. Still, after the dreamcast version, it really is awesome to have a game like this with such non-existent load times and better graphics. Load times on the DC were atrocious in comparison.
I’m sure they’re going to put a pack of the original maps later as DLC for too damn much money, but I feel like I’ve actually gotten my $15 from the game. It is a little on the expensive side, and a little shallow, but Hydro Thunder manages a unique spot in the arcade racers by taking it off the road and going so over the top.
The novelty can wear a little thin, but it really does hold up extremely well once you get out of the novice boats.
slantz
1965
Gamerscoreblog still exists? That’s weird, beacuse they laid off the entire team at once as part of the quasi-infamous “Microsoft 1400” layoffs.
The other thing that’s kind of scaring me away from Hydro Thunder right now is that I’m actually running low on Microsoft Points. I usually buy them on big sales, and there haven’t been any big sales lately. Amazon’s price of $16.54 for $20 worth of points is decent, so I bought one of those. But that’s not a good enough price to really splurge on points right now.
I’m down to 2800 points. I haven’t been this low in years! I feel like I’m almost running on empty.
How does this compare content wise to full retail arcade racers like the Motor Storms, Split Second, Blur, etc? I think the original Mortor Storm had the same number of tracks as Hydro Thunder does and that was a full $60 title wasn’t it? It seems to me that compared to other arcade racers $15 actually seems more like the right price for this sort of game.
Delta
1968
Is there any news as to when Hydrophobia is going to be released? I’ve been watching it for a while.
Yeah, that’s a good point. I’d say Motor Storm is not worth much more than a rental. It’s got 3 good tracks, but I really hate the rest of them. And the tracks I don’t like are just not fun to race on. If I saw it on sale at $10, I’d buy it, but not at $15. Blur was pretty good at first, good rental, but then as you get farther into the game, I felt it really deteriorated as a single player game. I would not buy that game if it was on sale at $15. Maybe $10.
Split Second I don’t know about. If Tom is right on in saying it’s the best thing to happen to racing games since Burnout, then perhaps it is worth a lot. Hydro Thunder, from my exposure to the demo, doesn’t strike me as particularly special. I didn’t really get an adrenaline rush out of the race or anything like that. But someone upthread mentioned how faster boats make a difference, so maybe later in the game it does get better as it gets faster and more exciting. (For example, I wouldn’t admit that Midnight Club: LA was worth $60 until I got to the late game cars and found out why the game had been training me to know the streets of LA so well: so I could drive a Lamborghini through the streets at over 100 mph and be able to dodge through traffic. At that moment the game became magical. So sometimes the best thing about a racing game doesn’t manifest until later in the game, so perhaps that’s the case here).
As someone who has grown up around arcades, I’ve been loving Hydro Thunder Hurricane.
The unique controls, great boost mechanics, and crazy tracks with huge jumps are all very well represented here. Great deal for 15 bucks.
I bought Hydro Thunder in the holiday sale, and it was pretty good. But I wish they’d done more with realistic wave physics and such. There is some of that in there, but only enough to make me want more of that.
Has anyone tried the Raskulls demo? Pretty funny stuff. It’s like a combination of Sonic the Hedgehog’s speed combined with a racing game/Smash Bros style gameplay, sort of.
The other XBLA game (I think it’s called Illomo, or something similar) that just came out today is really beautiful, with lots of plushy squares that you walk on, floating in a surreal painting-like space. It’s a gorgeous game, and I like the puzzle-type gameplay. My only beef with the demo is that the tutorial levels in the demo are all trivially easy. If anyone here has bought the full game, I’d love to hear more about the difficulty curve. I suspect I’ll still get the game (once my MS point cards get here from walmart in a couple of weeks) even if it’s an easy difficulty curve, but only play it with my niece and nephew. It looks like a fantastic game to play with them.
I haven’t tried the demo, but I stopped shy of buying the game because the reviews were pretty solidly in “meh” territory.
The other XBLA game (I think it’s called Illomo, or something similar) that just came out today is really beautiful, with lots of plushy squares that you walk on, floating in a surreal painting-like space. It’s a gorgeous game, and I like the puzzle-type gameplay. My only beef with the demo is that the tutorial levels in the demo are all trivially easy. If anyone here has bought the full game, I’d love to hear more about the difficulty curve. I suspect I’ll still get the game (once my MS point cards get here from walmart in a couple of weeks) even if it’s an easy difficulty curve, but only play it with my niece and nephew. It looks like a fantastic game to play with them.
Even the second level has already done some pretty devilish things, so as far as I can tell it’s going to ramp up at a good pace.
There’s more than one level of difficulty in ilomilo, which I like:
- Finish the level.
- Finish the level and get the collectibles.
- Finish the level with the fewest number of total steps.
Don’t trouble yourself; it’s not.
Has anyone played the Zeit-squared demo? I love the concept of the shooter where you rewind time and your old self and new self have to work together. But the control scheme is just too crazy for me to wrap my head around it. (Down is up, and up is down).
Apparently it’s a bug that they will fix soon in a patch. They invert the controls if your preference in first person shooters by default is inverted. I guess they really hate people who play with inverted control schemes in first person shooters and wanted to get back at them.
Well mission accomplished Zeit2 developers. Now I won’t be buying your game. Well done.
Had exactly the same reaction. Why would it take my Y-axis inversion preferences in a 2D game? I didn’t even finish the demo.
By contrast, I really enjoyed my time through the Microbot demo. I noticed that on my friends list, only tomchick owns this game. What do you think of it so far Tom?
It’s basically Fantastic Voyage: The game. You’re injected into someone’s body to get rid of an infection. What I really like is that it’s not just an excuse to have a setting for a twin-stick shooter. The way the blood flows in certain areas and red blood cells get in the way all it makes it feel like a lot more than just a simple excuse for a setting. It’s also a game where you upgrade your ship along the way with parts salvaged along the way from data fragments that the enemy bots have.
With the amount of upgrades available in the game, it sure makes it feel like this is going to be one long epic journey through the human body. I wish more games were at the old standard $5 price point. It was much easier to make impulse purchases at that price point. But at $10, I hesitate, and I want to hear more from reviewers or other gamers.
So a week shy of the Summer of Arcade 2011, we’ll see both Boulder Dash XL and Ms Splosion Man. What the heck do they have in store for us in the Summer of Arcade that a game with a pedigree like Splosion Man wouldn’t make it to the Summer of Arcade? I’m excited.
A god game, a sequel to a strategy game I never played, Fruit Ninja Connecticut, Bastion, and UFO Limbo.
The worst part? If the four that aren’t specifically Connecticut games are actually interesting, I’ll probably end up getting that useless game that I can’t even play because they’re giving Crimson Alliance away for free if you get everything.
I’m excited about Eric Chahi’s From Dust (discussed here: http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?t=59893 and here http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?t=65122 ). The previews make it look beautiful and intriguing. we’ll see how it plays. But I have no doubt it will be worth the XBLA admission price.
The other games are less likely to be my cup of tea.
Wendelius
Ah cool. I didn’t know the lineup had already been announced. I just looked it up:
July 20: Bastion (1200)
July 27: From Dust (1200)
August 3: Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet (1200)
August 10: Fruit Ninja Kinect (800)
August 17: Toy Soldiers: Cold War (1200)
And if you buy them all, you get Crimson Alliance in September, which is some kind of Co-op action game apparently?
