Busy Gamer News

Next week marks the end of "chartered territory" for Xbox Live Arcade - that is, games that have been given official Wednesday release dates. Wonder what's next? The pipeline is rumored to be filled with remixed classics, recent hits and a few new originals:

• Alien Hominid
  
• Assault Heroes
  
• Castle Crashers
  
• Contra
  
• Cyberball
  
• Defender
  
• Dig Dug
  
• Diner Dash
  
• Heavy Weapon
  
• HoopWorld
  
• Lumines Live!
  
• Mad Tracks
  
• Mega Force
  
• Mini Golf
  
• Ms. Pac-Man
  
• Mutant Storm Empire
  
• Novadrome
  
• Paperboy
  
• Pinball FX
  
• Rally-X
  
• RoboBlitz
  
• Root Beer Tapper
  
• Scramble
  
• Small Arms
  
• Sonic the Hedgehog: High Speed
  
• Super Contra
  
• Texas Hold 'Em
  
• Time Pilot
  
• Totem Ball
  
• Track & Field
  
• Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3

Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45 started its life as an Unreal Tournament 2004 mod (after its creators abandoned the Soldier of Fortune and Medal of Honor variants on the Quake III engine), but now the realistic WWII shooter is available on Valve's Steam. And there's a free play weekend starting today for those new to the game. It's a good opportunity to try the new booster pack that adds smoke grenades, tank reload tweaks, a new map and other improvements...

Clearly, Microsoft has determined that Windows is its strongest brand (well, apart from, um, Microsoft), and now it's decided to inflict it everywhere it can. First, MSN was quietly bumped from its popular Instant Messaging client. Then, just this week, MSN was stripped from its blog site, Spaces. Now we've learned that Ziff Davis has killed Computer Gaming World and will replace it with a officially sanctioned magazine called Games For Windows (Microsoft's brand category for PC games). Where will it end? If I take a digital picture of my family and upload it to my XP machine, does Microsoft take ownership of their souls? Can I license them back on weekends? Just writing this blog entry in Windows Notepad is no doubt a risky-- Um, no one. Sorry Bill. Please, no, there's no need to invoke Steve. I didn't mean, don't, no really, oh my-- no, no, nooooooooooo...

One Microsoft brand that does still hold some value for gamers is Xbox Live Marketplace, and it's been well stocked lately with:

• Two new Red vs. Blue episodes (free)
  
• Xbox Live Arcade: Cloning Clyde and Street Fighter: Hyper Fighting ($10 each)
  
• Demos for Saints Row, Dead or Alive 4 and Rockstar Table Tennis (free)
  
• Aragorn�s Journey map pack for Lord of the Rings, The Battle for Middle-earth II featuring three over-priced maps ($8.75)
  
• Trailers for Dead Rising, Saints Row, Madden NFL 07, NCAA Football 07, Medal of Honor Airborne, GTR, Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter and The Lord of the Rings, The Battle for Middle-earth II (free)
  
• NCAA Football '07 college picture packs ($0.75 each) and themes ($1.88 each)
  
• Street Fighter II picture packs ($1.25 each) and a theme ($1.88)
  
• Even more Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter themes ($1.88 each)
  
• Movie trailers for Apocalypto and Ultimate Avengers 2 (free)
  
• A music video from Audioslave (free)

Another noteworthy addition to Xbox Live Marketplace: the Dead Rising demo. Of course, it clocks in at 1GB, so clear some space off that packed hard drive and get downloading. Oh, and before you get too excited, you can only play for 15 minutes before it cuts you off...

Not many people play classic sports titles for more than a year or so after they launch, so there probably won't be massive protests in the streets over EA's move to force those hangers-on to upgrade to newer versions - well, except for maybe Need for Speed Underground 2, which is a totally different style game from the more recent Need for Speed: Most Wanted.

These games had online play retired on Aug. 1:

• FIFA Soccer 2005 (PC, PS2, Xbox)
  
• EA Sports Fight Night Round 2 (PS2, Xbox)
  
• NCAA March Madness 2005 (PS2, Xbox)
  
• NBA Live 2005 (PC, PS2, Xbox)
  
• NBA Street V3 (PS2, Xbox)
  
• NCAA Football 2005 (PS2)
  
• Need for Speed Underground 2 (PC, Xbox)
  
• NHL 2005 (PC, PS2, Xbox)
  
• Total Club Manager 06 (PS2)
  
• Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2005 (PC, PS2)
  
• UEFA Champions League 2004-2005 (PC, PS2, Xbox)

• Madden NFL 2005 (PC, PS2, Xbox)
  
• NFL Street 2: Unleashed (PS2, Xbox)

The PC demo for Lego Star Wars II is now available for download. Set in the original trilogy (aka "the good ones"), the game features more expansive levels, free roaming vehicles, scads of secret stuff to find and co-op play. Oh, and Han shoots first. The game is due Sept. 12 with versions for pretty much every platform you can think of...

In a little over a week, Sierra will release F.E.A.R. Combat, a free multiplayer version of its popular survival horror shooter. Did you get that?! A free multiplayer first-person shooter game - built on one of the better gaming engines of this generation with 10 gameplay modes and 19 maps - will be available on Thursday, August 17. Mark you calendar and bookmark joinfear.com now...

The director for the movie adaptation of Halo has been named, and it's no one you've ever heard of. That is, unless you're an aficionado of robot-themed shoe and car commercials, obscure South African short films or 3D animation effects on TV series like Smallville, Dark Angel and Stargate SG-1. Neill Blomkamp will make his feature debut, working for executive producer Peter Jackson (who at one point was rumored to be in the director's seat himself). Mary Parent, who helped bring Joss Whedon's Serenity to life, is listed as a producer, Marty O'Donnell will supply the score, and newcomer D.B. Weiss is rumored to be working on a new story to replace Alex Garland's rejected script...

The Dead Rising demo offers a strong attract mode, but the full game has a few gotchas that busy grown-ups might not find amusing. First, there's the glitch that some players report only happens if you skip the opening cinematic and have a hard drive attached. This is, in fact, a problem because you'll probably be seeing the opening scene over and over again since there are, in fact, no true save points. Sure, you can save your profile and stats in the security office or public rest rooms, but this is only truly helpful if you quit and restore there. (And even this isn't all that convenient if your toddler awakes prematurely from a nap and you're nowhere near a save icon.) Lose your life, and you'll start the full game over - albeit with your stats intact so you can restart with improved skills and a better chance to make it a little further in the game. Finally, despite the sandbox feel of the demo - that promise of an expansive, seamless mall to crawl - there are a lot of load screens and cut scenes that interfere with mindless zombie bashing and uninterrupted exploration. That said, the game is fun and does boast 50 achievements to unlock, some of which are relatively easy. Just be sure you have the time to commit to it - otherwise, stick to the free demo for 15 minute bursts of unadulterated zombie melee...

UPDATE: I missed this the first time: When you die, you're actually given a choice of restarting with your stats intact, or reverting to your last saved game sans any progress you made. (Chalk it up to parental exhaustion, and a badly worded popup menu!) So the game just got a little better. The other gotchas still apply, particularly if you have little ones about.

You know you have it bad when the editor of your "official" magazine endorses the competition. Official PlayStation Magazine editor Dana Jongewaard blogged about why her hard-earned dollars will go toward an Xbox 360 this holiday instead of a PlayStation 3. "I can't justify it. $600 might be worth it if there were several huge titles on the near horizon. But for the first year at least, there are very few big titles that are PS3 exclusive," she writes. "The other big reason for people to shell out $600, BluRay, is frankly something I don't care about. I really don't care how high-res the picture is. My bottom line is that as long as it has color and is free from static, I'm good to go." Strong words from a strong lady. It's pretty harsh when your livelihood depends on something and you still come out publicly for the opposing team. Or maybe Dana's just hoping to collect unemployment...

Microsoft has its eye on creating a homebrew revolution it hopes will do for games what YouTube.com did for videos. The new XNA Game Studio Express for Windows XP SP2 is a game development kit based on Visual C# Express 2005 that will permit hobbyist developers to quickly get started building games. The beta will be released Aug. 30 and will be entirely free for Windows but requires a $99 annual Creators Club subscription if you want to release your games on the Xbox 360. Here's the catch: If you simply want to play these homebrew games on your 360, you'll need to pay for a subscription too, then download the source code and content assets, recompile the game on your PC and then deploy it to your console. OK, so not exactly plug and play, though it's an easy leap to imagine the cream of the crop will get an official release on Xbox Live Arcade. It's certainly a 180-degree turn from Sony, which keeps trying to close off these kinds of apps on the PSP...

There's been a flood of noteworthy PC demos - most recently American McGee's Bad Day L.A., which previews the third-person action title months before you probably won't buy it for PC or Xbox. A better use of your time and bandwidth might be the sci-fi strategy of Maelstrom or the RPG action of Dark Messiah of Might & Magic. Finally, if getting on a real plane these days seems like too much of a hassle, enjoy your favorite beverage while piloting three mission over the island paradise of St. Maarten in Flight Simulator X...

There was no love this week on Xbox Live Arcade Wednesday, unless you count a few $1.25 picture packs for Cloning Clyde. But the weekly releases start up again on Aug. 23 with the much-delayed Texas Hold 'Em. You may recall that this was going to be free, then a rumor surfaced that it would cost you. Turns out both are correct: Next Wednesday, you can download the full game free - but only for the first 48 hours. Then it'll be re-released as a $10 title. What's next? On Aug. 30 we'll see Time Pilot for $5 and then Sept. 6 it's Scramble for the same price. Lumines Live is rumored to arrive after that, but it's unconfirmed. In other news, we've heard that the Xbox 360 Camera peripheral - due this fall - will ship with a gesture-based game called TotemBall. Similar to the EyeToy games on the PS2, you'll swing your arms in front of the camera to play...

F.E.A.R. Combat is now available and it's free. All you need is to get your key and download the game at joinfear.com. You will need to supply a birth date - you've got one of those, right? And a valid e-mail address and a plausible street address. In related news, a PlayStation 3 version of F.E.A.R. has been confirmed, and - stealing a page from Microsoft's early console playbook - it will boast exclusive single-player content to differentiate it from the Xbox 360 version...

Microsoft has previously let slip the top selling games on Xbox Live Arcade (Geometry Wars, Uno), but for the first time it's revealed the most played. The top 10 Arcade games last week (not counting demo versions) were:

1. Pac-Man
   
2. Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting
   
3. Uno
   
4. Geometry Wars Evolved
   
5. Galaga
   
6. Frogger
   
7. Cloning Clyde
   
8. Marble Blast Ultra
   
9. Bankshot Billiards 2
   
10. Zuma

Regulars to this site know I work for Big Fish Games, but I have tried Atlantis Sky Patrol and can say it's a great improvement on the puzzle shooter genre pioneered by Puzz Loop, Zuma and Luxor. And you can download the 60-minute demo a day early - on Wednesday - if you're willing to pony up an e-mail address. I wasn't directly involved with this game, though I did have a hand in releasing an online version of its predecessor called Nautilus, which you can play entirely for free now...

Don't forget to download Texas Hold 'Em today or tomorrow while it's free, or you'll have to pay $10 for it. Other recent Xbox Live Marketplace additions include:

• Chromehounds premium parts ($1.25 each) - so now you need to pay to play online
  
• Eight costume unlocks for Dead Rising (free)
  
• Part 4 of the Red vs Blue series Out of Mind
  
• Tons of Madden NFL 07 content including videos (free), themes ($1.88 each) and picture packs ($0.75 each)
  
• More NCAA Football 07 picture packs ($2.50 each)
  
• Bomberman Act: Zero theme ($1.88), picture packs ($1.63 and $3.25) and video (free)
  
• Trailers for Chromehounds, Just Cause and Lego Star Wars II
  
• Step Up movie trailer (free)

Buoyed by its success on Xbox Live Arcade, PopCap is moving off its casual gamer base to attract more core gamers - evidenced by its new deal with Valve to release 17 titles plus compilations over the Steam digital distribution network (best known for its first-person shooters). Due Aug. 30, the list will no doubt include cross-over hits Bejeweled 2, Feeding Frenzy and Zuma, each with the customary trial period for casual games. PopCap has about 30 titles, so expect all of the popular ones - except, perhaps, their recently axed online multiplayer games - to make the cut...

If you can't make it to the Penny Arcade Expo near Seattle this weekend (that's where I'll be, wearing my Big Fish Games cap!), take a trip to Xbox Live Marketplace and download two hot new 360 demos. Test Drive Unlimited lets you roam around a limited section of the game's Hawaiian sandbox setting, running into other online players (literally!) and sampling single-player and multiplayer races for up to an hour at a time. Just Cause is a similarly open-ended game set on an island, but with violent Viva La Revolution-style action in a South American locale. Both games already have their rabid fans and avid detractors, so it's probably best if you fire 'em up and draw your own conclusions...

Penny Arcade Expo has been billed by some as a replacement for the fan service side of E3, and the fan service was there in full glory this weekend - though announcements and previews of upcoming games were scarce and Sony was nowhere to be found. In fact, the biggest news was that the Penny Arcade crew will be working with Hothead Games on an episodic adventure called Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness (methinks Jerry Holkins had something to do with the title!). No release date, but it will be offered for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and even next-gen consoles. Mike Krahulik wowed the crowds by drawing and inking next Wednesday's strip on how IGN might receive the news of the duo entering the game development arena. Casual games had several mentions in panel discussions, but only Klei Entertainment's Eets made an official appearance in the exhibition hall with a show special price of $10 (and half of that going to the Child's Play charity). Next year's show will be at a much larger venue: the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle. So the E3 comparison may be even stronger then...

Microsoft released some more backward compatible games for the Xbox 360, though still no sign of Psychonauts or Jet Set Radio Future. Or an official method to transfer our old saved games before our original Xbox hard drives inevitably fail. For now, content yourself with the ability to start a new game of:

• Aggressive Inline
  
• Aquaman: Battle of Atlantis
  
• All Star Baseball 2003
  
• All Star Baseball 2005
  
• Burnout 3: Takedown
  
• Catwoman
  
• Counter-Strike
  
• Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth
  
• Dead to Rights
  
• ESPN Major League Baseball
  
• Fatal Frame 2
  
• Freaky Flyers
  
• Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows
  
• Ghost Recon: Island Thunder
  
• IndyCar Series 2005
  
• The Legend of Spyro: A Beginning
  
• Lego Star Wars II
  
• Links 2004
  
• Maximum Chase
  
• MTX: Mototrax
  
• Namco Museum
  
• MX vs. ATV Unleashed
  
• Outlaw Tennis
  
• Over the Hedge
  
• Richard Burns Rally
  
• Rogue Trooper
  
• Serious Sam
  
• Shincho Mahjong
  
• Sid Meier's Pirates
  
• Smashing Drive
  
• Spy Hunter: Nowhere to Run
  
• The Suffering
  
• TAZ Wanted
  
• True Crime: Streets of LA
  
• Trigger Man
  
• Torino Winter Olympics 2006
  
• Vietcong
  
• Wrath Unleashed
  
• X-Men II: Wolverine's Revenge

For those who didn't learn from last year's Madden fiasco that EA football games for the PSP are dodgy at best, there's good news. EA is replacing faulty copies of NCAA Football 07 due to a glitch that can cause a wrong call in the game. Simply mail in the UMD disc to get a new one in about 10 days, plus a $15 discount and free shipping on your next purchase from EA's online store. Yeah, like you're going to fall for that one again...

Microsoft has released its free XNA Game Studio Express beta for download, as promised. But first you will need to uninstall the .NET Framework 2.0, plus any prerelease SQL Server or Visual Studio you have lying around your hard drive. Then get the free Visual C# Express and register it. Now you're ready for XNA. The good news is that it includes a free game to pick apart and learn game physics from: Spacewar, both in classic and updated forms. It even works with an Xbox 360 wired controller plugged into your PC, if you have one handy. You can also create RSS-enabled screensavers and other fun projects. And who knows, maybe your creation will someday be released on Xbox Live Arcade...