Even Worse Than Your Local Arcade Part 1

Xbox Live Arcade is a strange quasi-realm, populated by a small band of delicious A star games being hunted down by the armies of mediocrity. Or something.

There are lots of bad games and frankly a few good ones. Which makes one wonder, while Serious Sam is a fun game – if you’re going to remake a nine-year old game… gain, why not some other, older gems? So. Here are my finely tuned suggestions.

If you read them all, there will be cake.

Magic Carpet 2

A 4 way fight over the rare and precious Mana Worm. Hilarity ensues.

Whenever you mention Magic Carpet, people sneer at the thought of yet another 3D action game with no substance. What these people don’t understand is that Magic Carpet is the predecessor of games like Sacrifice or Brutal Legend. It’s more of an RTS than anything, and a finely tuned one at that.

If you haven’t tried it, if you’ve dismissed it out of hand, don’t. Give it a try. Get a few levels in. You may be pleasantly surprised.

Why put it on XBLA? Because I want to play the bitching multiplayer without first having to find even one person who owns the game and without having to fiddle with IPX.

Hell, putting this up would be free money. Shame EA owns it, really.

Dark Forces

Wow. That Stormtrooper is FUCKED.

Why the hell not? If you can put Doom and Wolfenstein 3D up, why not a frankly far superior 2.5D shooter?

Destroyed Rebel Bases, Sewers, Hidden Imperial weapons development bases, dusty Mines, Detention Centers, Ice Stations, Nar Shaddaa, Jabba the Hutt’s ship, The GODDAMN IMPERIAL CITY, Fuel stations and Imperial Battleships – Kyle Katarn kicks the shit out of all of them. And Boba Fett. And he steals the Death Star plans in the first fucking level. This was BEFORE he was a Jedi. There’s a reason why the internet tells Kyle Katarn facts.

Besides, it’s the only game where you can walk around using a mining tool on Stormtroopers. And punch Kell Dragons to death. Kyle Katarn is hardcore.

So yeah, put it on XBLA. So I can take down a Rebel Base destroying super droid with a Bryar pistol. (I’m not kidding, really.)

D/Generation

Unlike Mario, those pipes don't need stupid fucking plant enemies inside them to kill you.

To quote wikipedia:

“A French company called Genoq has developed a series of new genetically engineered bioweapons, which have run out of control and taken over Genoq’s Singapore lab. The main character is a courier delivering a package to one of Genoq’s top researchers, Jean-Paul Derrida, and who is happily oblivious of the carnage until the lab’s doors lock behind him. His customer is ten floors away, all of them crawling with bioweapons.”

Aside from the horrifying bioweapons (some of them disguise themselves as people needing help!) there’s also an assortment of security defenses that are out of control. Apparently in the future, all intruders must be killed, not arrested.

I think D/Generation was the first isometric game I ever played, and it was certainly one of the most difficult. But it was a good difficult. And there was something about the art style of the game I’m still very attached to.

Anyway, it’s an isometric puzzle game where you shoot monsters. Sounds like a perfect fit for XBLA to me.

Abe’s Oddysee + Exoddus

If there's more than one, you'd better run!

I’d love Flashback and Another World as well, but I’d settle for Abe.

I don’t think I really need to recap much about this 2D platform puzzle adventure. They are still some of my favourite games ever, and frankly the more who play them the better.

I’ve actually heard these get accused of being derivative, which makes no sense to me. If Abe’s Oddysee isn’t original, then what the fuck is?

Besides, they’ve been released on Steam, Good Old Games and practically everywhere fucking else, so why not XBLA?

There will be more soon. No cake until then. In the meantime, what games would you like to see on the Xbox Arcade? Let me know.

A Typical Household Conversation

Mark: Why do you keep unplugging my controller while I’m charging it?

Father: It’s in the way, and you’re adding to the electric bill.

Mark: But I need to charge this. I’m charging it.

Father: Shut up, I’m watching sport.

ALSO, edited links slightly.

It’s Not Valve’s Fault If Your Hardware Sucks

The PS3. Powerful. Technically the most powerful console currently on the market. But Valve don’t like making games on it, apparently. The PS3 version of the Orange Box was handed off to EA and is apparently sloppy, with slow framerates and hang-up issues.

Why do I bring this up? I HATE Sony, after all.

Because Left 4 Dead is not going to be on the PS3. (at the time of writing, I wouldn’t be surprised if things changed in the future.) And various unscrupulous Sony fanboys have taken it upon themselves to blame Valve (One of the most consistently brilliant developers around today) for lack of skills or Microsoft love, instead of Sony (well known for making overly complicated and difficult to code gaming platforms, then lying about how good they are).

Let’s get this straight.

Valve are primarily a PC developer. Not just because it’s what they’re good at, but also because it’s where, frankly, most of their games belong, merely due to their style – thinking man’s shooters. A controller is never going to be as good at aiming as a mouse. The majority of Console owners are dribbling cretins. With most consoles it isn’t going to work.

It works with the 360 because it’s essentially a PC in a box, and therefore extremely easy to port PC games to. And while I don’t want to generalise gamers (Which surely the very term ‘gamer’ does), many Xbox 360 owners are people who can’t afford to keep up with constantly changing computer permutations. Which is perfectly reasonable. People who bought Orange Box for the 360 knew they were compromising for an inferior version and accepted that.

It doesn’t work with the PS3 because it’s completely different to a PC! No PC uses a 7 core processor (Well, 6. One is used by the OS). No PC uses Sixaxis. To seal the deal, Sony can’t use Direct3D, a Microsoft product! The Source engine which the Orange Box and Left 4 Dead utilize is based upon it! Instead Sony are forced to rely on OpenGL, which developers haven’t really used since when? 1998? To make the Source engine and it’s games work with the PS3 they have to be entirely recoded! And you ask why L4D isn’t getting a release? At least not now? It probably will eventually guys, but it’s going to take time.

Many criticize Valve nevertheless, pointing out developers who DO manage multiformat releases, such as Capcom. Yet I remember when you were complaining that these ports were rubbish and unplayable. The PS3 is difficult to develop for, because Sony decided to be needlessly different in an attempt to be fancy. Blu-Ray – a disc format that contains massive amounts of data but is so slow that games need to be installed or have information copied onto empty sectors to speed loading times. The Cell processor – powerful, but complex, and incredibly difficult to program. All of this bottlenecked by the low 256mb main memory. Sony shot themselves in the foot with their own hardware! And yet you have the Gall to say Gabe Newell is lazy or Valve can’t make good games anyway, when they don’t fancy trying to make a PS3 version? When they probably will, later? Go fuck yourself.

Why do you want it, anyway? FPS games don’t work brilliantly on controllers, but they’re especially bad on the Sixaxis/Dualshock. If you wanted to play an FPS you should have bought a PC. Failing that, a 360. And no, the red rings rarely happen these days, so shut your mouth.

I’d rather have a console that might break down so I’ll have to get it repaired than a console people don’t want to develop for.

I’m well aware details of my post may be wrong. Feel free to point them out, I don’t expect to be perfect. But I’m sure with even large corrections my point will still be valid.

Internets r SERIEEUS BIZZNEZZ!