The puzzle genre just works on Xbox Live Arcade, whatever the game, longevity is guaranteed. This is the case with upcoming puzzler Space Ark, a hybrid of games like Breakout, Bubble Bobble and Peggle it could become a huge seller when released later in the year. We went hands on with an early demo build to see if this could dethrone the aforementioned puzzle greats.

Space Ark’s closest relative would be the classic arcade game Breakout, with you moving a trampoline across the bottom of the screen to bounce a cheerful animal in order to collect glowing spheres; the usual fare. Each stage takes place on a spherical world, which means that the ‘board’ ahead of you becomes cylindrical as the levels increase in difficulty. This means that you can often only see a small section of the screen at once, a slight change from the basic nature of Breakout. With the ‘ball’ being a living creature in Space Ark, you can also move while in mid-air, vital if you are to get those tricky spheres at the top of each screen.

This is much more tactical than Breakout though, combos playing an important role as you must collect orbs of the same colour in a row in order to keep your combo high. If you collect another colour, you may not reach the combo quota for that stage, even if you ‘complete’ it. This makes Space Ark that bit tougher, and in turn much more enjoyable than most puzzlers, thinking where your bouncing animal will land and where you direct him in flight is vital when attempting to 100% stages.

In terms of modes on offer in Space Ark, we were only able to play the opening part of Mission Mode, though the full game is set to feature both Time Attack and Survival Modes. Mission Mode is the meat of the game though, and with 5 planets, each of which hosting multiple pods-stages are played through each of these-there looks to be plenty of content.We played through the first planet, which featured 4 pods of stages, although it is unknown if this ratio will continue as you progress through the game.

The game looks great right now too, the light-hearted style of the animals adding a playful nature. The game is slick too, and stands up against other relevant puzzlers on the Xbox Live Marketplace right now. Cutesy sounds and cute characters make this an enjoyable way to experience such solid puzzle gameplay.

However the game develops across the stages that follow, things are looking promising for Space Ark. As a puzzler, it’s not overly complicated but features just enough challenge to make longevity inevitable. Look for a full review when the game comes to XBLA in the near future.

The Halo: Reach Beta has been hotly anticipated since it was first announced. News that all people who purchased Halo 3: ODST would be given access to the beta managed to boost the game’s already staggeringly impressive sales. Let’s face it – at this point, if you know anything about games, you know Reach is gonna sell like gangbusters. The Halo brand name is worth billions in sales alone. And the Reach beta shows that this trust in the developers is not misplaced.

If you’ve been hearing a lot about how the controls have changed and been worried that your leet skillz won’t transfer to the newest addition to the Halo series, you may rest assured that that’s not the case. If you played any of the prior games, you’ll not that the whole setup feels intimately familiar. Your joysticks still move and point, respectfully, and your left and right triggers still shoot and toss grenades. The only notable changes in control are this: The right bumper now uses the melee attack, and the left bumper uses your equipment. That left bumper is important.

Reach’s addition to the gameplay is the equipment system. Currently, you can choose from one of four special equipment modules: Stalker, Scout, Guard, and Airborne.

The Stalker module allows you to become invisible – exactly like active camo. The slower you move while using it, the longer it lasts. One nifty change to the active camo is that you can see more enemies on your radar while using it, but sound is severely dampened – which is logical, as the camo would have to dampen YOUR sound, as well. It’s one of the little touches that shows real thought behind he design.

The Scout module allows you to sprint for a short period of time, roughly doubling your forward movement speed. Turning will take longer, though, and coming out of the sprint takes a second. This is very handy for moving through areas under a lot of fire, or beating a hasty retreat when your shields are low.

The Guard mod allows you to cloak yourself in energy, rendering yourself invulnerable for a short time. While invulnerable, however, your Spartan will be unable to move or shoot, and recovering from this state takes a couple moments, so it’s strictly a last-ditch effort. But it can buy you the few seconds you need for reinforcements to arrive to hold the line.

And finally, the much-discussed Airborne mod. This is the jetpack we’ve all been looking forward to. For many people, footage of the jetpack rendered Halo: Reach an instant purchase (guilty). Holding the left bumper will allow your Spartan to achieve lift and fly for a short time. Turning left and right is very sluggish, but aiming works just fine, so cooking off a few rounds is fun and easy. Great for getting to a higher vantage point, drawing attention (and thusly fire) away from crucial points, and giving you an elevated position to throw out some lead rain on the opposing team.

All of the powers have a gauge on your HUD that decreases as you use them. Speaking of HUDs, you’ll note that the Reach’s has been toned down a great deal, to reduce visual clutter. And a cursory glance tells you that the health bar has returned, so mind you keep near a medpack when you can.

It seems some of the background options have been tweaked a bit, too, as Spartans seem a bit sturdier than they used to be, absorbing more fire before dying. This helps to balance out the fact that everyone gets a superpower very nicely.

Brace yourselves for some good times.

In addition, Reach seems to have taken some inspiration from the Modern Warfare series, as you now gain experience points outside of matches, and earn the ability to buy new armour upgrades for your spartan.

In the beta, you have a limited amount of maps and modes available. The most notable new mode is Stockpile, which requires you to collect and guard several flags before the timer counts down. When the timer hits zero, the flags get collected and added to your score, and new flags get set on the map to replace the collected ones. It’s a delicate balancing game, trying and raid your enemy’s base to get their flag and leaving enough men to guard your own, so this mode seems to have come together really well. The fact that performing a melee attack with a flag is an insta-kill makes people a bit less hesitant to run with them, too.

The maps are varied, ranging from military base in the middle of the jungle to the tightly packed corridors of what appears to be a large office building. The latter is Sword Base, and it’s so often voted for that you’re going to be spending 80% of your time here. Yet for a map called “Sword Base”, there are very few swords.

There’s several new weapons, including the Needle rifle, which shoots exploding needles at medium to long range with excellent accuracy, and the Plasma Launcher, which works alot like a guided rocket launcher, except instead of rockets, you have gobs of gooey, exploding plasma. Tender.

Reach has taken some small steps forward by way of graphics. The framerate looks a bit smoother, and makes more use of motion blur when turning, which lends to a more realistic feel when moving around. Aside from that, everything looks about as it did in Halo 3. The sound remains almost entirely unchanged – in fact, many sound-effects seem to have been reused.

Now, this is a beta, which means that all of this is subject to change before the release. But if Bungie keeps on the current path, they’ve got another guaranteed hit on their hands.

Starcraft was a very successful game.

Set in the 26th century, the game revolves around three species fighting for dominance in a distant part of the Milky Way galaxy. Released in 1998 for the PC (1999 for Mac) Blizzard’s game set all kinds of sales records and is widely known in jest as “the national sport of South Korea.”

Why it’s taken twelve years, an expansion pack (Brood War) and a console version (2000, Nintendo 64, yes really) and a cancelled Playstation 2 Gamecube Xbox Xbox 360 expansion game (Starcraft: Ghost) to get around to a true sequel is anyone’s guess.

Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty is finally in beta and we’ve been testing it pretty thoroughly since the initial invites went out, lest we miss something. We’ve played against the AI, we’ve played against other players (most of whom are oddly quiet) and done it in every combination of races and maps imaginable. Read the impressions after the break.

Blizzard’s experience with World of Warcraft and its expansions have taught them how to handle a larger player base than the previous Battle.net system could handle and it shows.

Matching making is quick and easy and setting up a game takes almost no time at all. It’s no wonder Blizzard has decided that the Battle.net system will be its standard for all online multiplayer and some distribution in the future. Think of it as Blizzard’s version of Steam.

So let’s get this part out of the way first – The most disappointing thing about Starcraft II as a whole is that the whole thing is actually three different games. First is Wings of Liberty (the current beta) that will have you playing as the exiled humans known as Terrans.

Part two (B?) will be Heart of the Swarm, where you’ll play the Zerg, chitinous alien beings, as inspired by Warhammer 40,000′s Tyranids (of the table top variety, though more readers will know them from their appearance in Relic’s Dawn of War series).

Part three (C?) will finally let the story [maybe] conclude with Legacy of the Void, where the psionically advanced alien Protoss will finally get a shake of the storyline stick.

That simple fact is maddening to people who actually liked the story in the first place. Blizzard’s release record isn’t exactly awe inspiring. The “it’s done when it’s done” mentality lets them release great games, but it also makes it seem like most of their staff has spent YEARS doing nothing but World of Warcraft patches.

Why World of Warcraft patches? Because they clearly weren’t working on Starcraft II.

Honesty is necessary here – the beta does not inspire confidence in the innovation occurring at Blizzard. Real-Time Strategy has come a LONG way since 1998 and other than a graphical upgrade, Blizzard could still be developing in a time when George Michael was getting arrested in bathrooms.

It’s the same game as before, just with a fresh coat of paint.

Some might say that’s a good thing. It’s not. To take twelve years to bring a game to release and not change the way its played? It’s just disappointing.

You still have to have dozens of gatherer units collecting minerals and vespene gas in order to do anything at all with troops. The basic commands for units are almost unchanged. Hold, patrol, attack, stop. Where’s burn? Pursue? Why can’t my units think for themselves on occasion?

Most annoying, I still have to build supply depots in order to USE my resources. Yep, exact same game. This is not how real war works.

After the tweaking of resources in Relic’s Dawn of War series (strategic points and power generation, no gathering) and the total up-ending of the idea in their sequel – going back to the tired-but-true system is just maddening.

The races all feel unique, by and large. The Terrans aren’t exactly quick and their larger units are devastating. The Terran Thor, apparently voiced by the Governor of California is particularly cool.

The Zerg have cheap expendable units and focus strongly on combat instead of ranged attacked. Their little units are a far better use of time and resources than their larger units.

The Protoss are interesting in that even their most basic unit (the Zealot) is a heavy hitter by the other races’ standards. Their air units are by far the most efficient with their time, but take lots of time to build.

This predictability and lack of innovation isn’t the worst thing in the world – with familiarity comes a certain degree of fun. Blizzard hasn’t done much to correct abusive strategies or balance of the first game. The races all play exactly the same as they did the first go around.

Like the first game, Protoss are the most fun to destroy things with, the carrier-rush is great fun when you’ve maxed out the fighters on each (oh and if you bring a mothership along, they’re all cloaked too!) but so is sending three or four Thor units into the enemy base as a Terran.

There’s a hefty helping of new units for all of the races but some have been removed (Blizzard says that many are still available in the single-player campaign, which is good because Firebats are AWESOME) with no explanation. There’s also some weird things like two Dark Templars forming a normal Archon, not a Dark Archon like in the Brood War expansion.

Then again, it’s a beta test and these things can change, but how much really will from this point? Going by current beta test trends (and Blizzard’s in particular) very little. This is fine-tuning in the extreme and likely has more to do with testing the Battle.net servers than the game itself.

All-in-all the beta for Starcraft II shows some promise, it’s fun and will undoubtedly be a success, but the longevity of the game outside of hardcore circles is shaky. It simply doesn’t offer enough variety, changes or new concepts to a very old, very tired genre.

Few players actually remember the original Warcraft and to many, Blizzard is nothing but the company they pay to enter Asteroth on an alarmingly frequent basis.

With the resources of Activision and mountains of cash behind them, I expect better and more than what we’ve got on our computers now.

Here’s hoping parts Heart of the Swam and Legacy of the Void change things up a bit, because right now Starcraft II is nothing but fan service pure and simple.

Now if we can just convince Gameloft to be a little more active in supporting established games that would be great.  (Like Freeplay mode in Settlers, or DLC.)   I guess that is how my love/hate relationship with Gameloft is going to work!  At this point though, I love that they seem to really be pushing the iPhone as a platform, and I cannot wait to give this new one a try!

If you’ve been reading the blog or listening to my podcasts over the last few years you would have me gush on the newest puzzle game I’m playing. From Tetris to Bejeweled to Peggle, I’ve played them all and am always eager to play the new kid on the block. When I heard that Chillingo was going to be publishing a new coin matching puzzle game I just had to have a look. Thankfully, I recently had the chance to sit down with a near finished version of Cash Cow and have to say, I liked what I saw.

Cash Cow takes the match three puzzle genre and flips it on it’s ear. Instead of the standard gems you’ll be working with a grid of pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters. The goal of each level is to “cash out” a certain dollar amount by matching up to ten coins to equal a dollar. You can also join say five pennies to turn them into a nickel, clearing space on the board and creating a special glowing coin. The glowing coins are where things get interesting as the more of those you match at once, the greater the powerup that is unleashed.

The games’ two main modes are Arcade and Relaxed, the difference being that Arcade is timed and gets increasingly harder each level. After each round you can use the money you made to buy some virtual items to tidy up Buck’s farm. You see, you are helping Buck the cow repay his mortgage. Bankin the pig will foreclose in 25 days if you do not make enough cash to pay him back by buying all the items he stole from your farm. Yeah, I know.. it’s a thin story, but it’s thankfully not essential for the gameplay and really only shown before level one and again when you beat the game. The game is over in 25 levels which is a little on the short side for me. New hazards and powerups are added as the game progresses, and you can replay the game from the first level keeping your farm and earned cash in the process.

If you are just looking for a quick burst of fun you can jump into the games three quick play modes. Endless is just that, Practice is a quick mode where the goal is to cash out $100, and Puzzle has you trying to get your four coins to the bucket to cash them out. The puzzle mode popped in as a between level break in the main games and I didn’t particularly enjoy them. Thankfully in the main mode you can just send your coins careening to their doom, missing the bucket without anything bad happening. I played the Puzzle mode a few times and all of the levels are recycled from the main game, not to my taste and I doubt I would play them again.

All in all Cash Cow is a decent puzzler. It’s fresh enough to interest even a die hard puzzle game fan as myself, and easy enough for newbies to jump into. I loved what I played so far and am eager to jump back into it when the full version hits. Look for our full review when Cash Cow hits the app store sometime soon.

I’ve been playing Street Fighter since Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike came out back on the original Xbox.  Ever since that spending-spree in Gamestop, I was addicted to fighting games.  Since then, however, I’ve never found a fighting game that really delivered.  Well, let me tell you… Street Fighter IV really delivers in fireballs and kicks to the face.

To start off, the graphics are amazing and top-notch.  Just looking at screenshots had me drooling before purchasing the game, but when things looked way better in motion.  For example, during the super and ultra attacks little things like facial expressions really add to the experience. The first time I noticed a fearful look appear on my fighter’s face when my opponent activated his ultra attack, my jaw literally dropped.

The backgrounds have also been updated and also look stunning.  As you fight, you’ll notice that the backgrounds are acting along with you.  For instance, in the distillery arena, as you’re throwing each other around, you notice the barrels of beer bouncing around intime to the action on the screen.  This type of detail really shows that Capcom put their hearts into this game.

The gameplay is very solid as well.  Of course you have your usual low, medium, and strong punches and kicks. All of these can easily be mapped across your controller (or fight stick, if you shelled out the cash for one) to your liking.  Most moves can be pulled off easily, but others will require some practice with charging and those odd z-motions with the thumbstick.

While Street Fighter IV has so far been a great game, I’ve noted a few problems with it.

1. Unlocking characters.  Why, oh why, do you have to unlock characters for online play? I would rather have access to all characters, at least for online play.  To make things worse, you have to unlock them in the silliest way possible, which I will get to in my next point…
2. Seth.  I hate him, and he probably hates me too.  I don’t know if it’s just me, but Seth is just insanely hard to beat.  And you have to beat him to unlock characters, anyway, which makes it even worse.  He teleports around like it’s nothing, grabs you while you’re doing moves, and is just generally evil.
3. Oh, the menu music sucks… Please, Capcom, change it!

Other than those three problems, the game is solid. I don’t see myself trading in this title any time soon.

On the hardware end of things, the Xbox 360 has seen more than its share of troubles, whether it’s the red ring of death, a lack of integrated wi-fi, or even a standard hard drive. But when it comes to software, Microsoft clearly gets it.

A few years ago, the PSN was an unproven (albeit free) competitor, and we already knew that Nintendo wasn’t really going to invest in online gaming. So there are gamers out there who picked the 360 as their console of choice because of the comprehensive Xbox LIVE service.

This is why.

We have finally gotten a chance to test-drive the “New Xbox Experience” dashboard update coming to Xbox 360 owners  November 14, so hit the read link to see our thoughts thus far on the new interface.

Avatars

There isn’t a whole lot to say about avatars right now. Basically, they are like Miis with more detail and more options (namely clothing). Their primary function is to hang out on your friends list, and they are currently usable in a few games like Uno and Hardwood Hearts on XBLA. You can also pose your avatar, select the background color, and take a photograph for use as your gamer picture. It seems like Microsoft is aiming to create a more personal online community on LIVE with this feature, and as simple as it is, we like it. In the future, you should be able to use Avatars in Xbox LIVE Primetime, which are event-based games like 1 vs. 100 that occur at a specific time that all LIVE subscribers can join in on.

Netflix

This might be an overlooked feature by many, but we found it to be the best part of the “New Xbox Experience.” I didn’t have Netflix before the update, but decided to sign up for a free trial to test it out, and it won me over instantly. I do have on-demand services from my cable company and a Blockbuster across the street; I don’t want to wait for DVDs to come in the mail, and I don’t care about streaming to my 19-inch monitor when I have an HDTV in the next room. I’m sure a ton of Xbox 360 owners feel that way, and they are going to be floored this coming Wednesday. It took about five minutes to setup my account, and within seconds of adding it to my Watch Instantly queue from the computer (or any internet device), I was watching The Orphanage in HD. Aside from highly recommending that movie, I can say that the Netflix streaming is a perfect solution for people who don’t already have a standalone player (and who does?). If you already own a 360, an unlimited one-movie-a-time plan is all you need, which only costs $8.99 per month after the free trial. You get the instant gratification of on-demand, with a larger selection than your local Blockbuster or cable company can hope to provide. Even then, a single rental is generally in the $4-6 range. If you rent at least one movie per month, it is totally worth it.

Friends List

The new friends list is where Themes 2.0 come into play (of which you get four free). Each of your friends is represented by their avatar, and each will stand in front of a number of different environments depending on your active theme. For example, the Night theme will have your friends hanging out in front of bars, graffiti-tagged skate ramps, cop cars, and more. Offline friends will be asleep toward the end of the list, and online friends will be near the front, awake, and have a billboard showing what they are doing/playing on Xbox LIVE. It’s fun, but if your friends list is long, it is much easier to use the guide button than to scroll through all the avatars

Guide Button

Hitting the guide button now calls up a miniature version of the old blades system that occupies a small rectangle in the middle of the screen instead of the sides. The condensed menu system is a lot more responsive than the laggy blades, presumable because they require less screen real estate. It’s all better-organized too, with common functions out front and easier to find.

Hard Drive Installs

There is already a plethora of data available on this subject, so our own analysis would be redundant.

Parties

The ability to hold a private chat with anyone on Xbox LIVE, regardless of what each person is doing, is probably the most underrated feature on the service. Just look at what Nintendo is trying with Wii Speak, and it is easy to appreciate the versatile VOIP that LIVE already has. NXE ups the ante considerably in this area, with up to eight people now able to join a “party,” which is a group private chat that can move from game to game together.

Community Games

The Community Games channel is a new service that delivers downloadable games separate from XBLA. Anyone who pays the $100 per year XNA Creators Club fee can put their own game on LIVE after a short peer review process. There is not much to go on at the moment, but that will hopefully change on November 19. What is available isn’t that great, with Weapon of Choice being the most recommendable title. At least the games are cheap, averaging about 400 points each.

Organization/Ease of Use

Everything looks better and is easier to find. The only gripe we have is the lack of a text search. A game will always have its related downloads next to it, but typing is always going to be simpler than navigating pictures.

Conclusion

When we first saw the blades interface, it was a major leap forward in what a console is capable beyond games. The “New Xbox Experience” feels like another significant step forward, giving gamers something to be thankful for come Turkey Day. Then again, we do pay a subscription fee unlike the other consoles, so maybe we deserve it.

The first James Bond game was released a quarter century ago.  James Bond 007 was a 1983 side-scroller developed and published by Parker Bros for Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Commodore 64, and ColecoVision.

We’ve come a long way since then.  Bond’s next-generation debut, Quantum of Solace for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, is mere weeks away.

Movie tie-ins like A View to a Kill, Goldfinger, The Living Daylights, Live and Let Die, License to Kill, James Bond: The Stealth Affair, James Bond Jr. and James Bond: The Duel populated consoles and PCs from 1985-1993.

The popularity of stepping into Bond’s virtual shoes exploded 1997, when Rare broke new ground with its memorable Goldeneye 007 for the Nintendo 64.  Goldeneye 007 has received strong reviews, averaging to an astonishing 95.176% as calculated by gamerankings.com (an aggregate site averaging the review scores from multiple outlets), and has sold more than 8 million copies worldwide according to a 2002 press release by Rare.  When the credits rolled after an epic battle with Alec “006″ Trevelyan high above the ground in a satellite cradle, Rare promised that “James Bond Will Return”.

He did, in Tomorrow Never Dies, a game met relatively unenthusiastically in contrast to the successes of Goldeneye.  But when James Bond returned yet again, Electronic Arts had swept in for the kill.  In Bond’s final Nintendo 64 appearance, the World is Not Enough debuted in 1999 with a new logo on the box.

Following this competent first crack at the franchise by EA, a slew of non-movie based games were conceived, starting with the poorly received 007 Racing for PlayStation in 2000. The series was revitalized on the then-new PlayStation 2, GameCube and Xbox platforms in 2001 with Agent Under Fire.  Then came Nightfire, Everything or Nothing, Goldeneye: Rogue Agent and EA’s finale, From Russia With Love featuring Sean Connery in 2005.

Turning a New Leaf

England’s global representative is not really the Queen, but rather explosively dangerous and dangerously womanizing super-spy James Bond.

Electronic Arts was supposed to develop bond games until 2010, but MGM studios (the people behind the Bond films) terminated the contract when EA abandoned movie tie-ins of Die Another Day and Casino Royale.  Activision scooped up the world famous 007 digits in 2007 and assigned developer Treyarch (Call of Duty 3, Call of Duty World at War) a 007 tie-in to Quantum of Solace.  That game is scheduled for release simultaneously with the film on November 14, 2008.

Different Face, Different Bond

You’ll be in the post-Brosnan era for the first time in a Bond experience.  You’ll play the Bond portrayed by fair-haired bad boy Daniel Craig: cunning, lethal, and smart.  Q-branch was polite enough to bring the gadgets in years past, but in Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace, Bond is left in the field with the simplicity of little gadgetry.  As the filmmakers told Treyarch from the get go, “Bond’s greatest weapon is his mind.”

There will be a technical face lift as well.  The game uses the same engine that Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare rocked the gaming-sphere with in 2007.  It’s been modified to allow for third person cover.

Executive Producer of the Bond Team at Treyarch, Garrett Young, states “When we looked at how we wanted to re-launch this franchise, we asked gamers what they wanted in a Bond game.  When asked about a first- vs. third-person in-game camera, most of them said they wanted to ‘Be Bond’ (first-person camera) – but there was still quite a few people who said they wanted to see Bond on-screen (third-person camera).  So after some long conversations with our Engineers, we decided to do both!”

Of course, no amount of technology can compensate for a lack of enthusiasm for the actors.  It would seem as if sometimes on-screen actors don’t translate well into their licensed game counterparts.  Young assures us that the actors “bent over backwards to help make the game great”.  “We found out Daniel Craig is actually a gamer too!  The first time I showed him the game, I think he may have been a little bit nervous about how we made him look and sound.  Once he saw himself in motion though, he was very happy with the results – he even borrowed the development kit to show his buddies the next day,” he said.

If Daniel Craig is truly a gamer, it’s cause to be optimistic that he poured time and effort into the proper representation of his on-screen character in-game.

It’s in the Game (or Isn’t)

The Quantum of Solace game is recreating scenes from both 2006′s Casino Royale and the fast-approaching film of its namesake.  It will expand on some scenes that hit the cutting room floor; for instance, a train combat scene (perhaps reminiscent of Goldeneye‘s famed train mission) that was cut in favor of a dialogue between Bond and Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale.

There is a construction site mission that involves chasing down a bomber, inspired by the first action sequence of Casino Royale, but there is no playable parkour (free running).

The most notable absence: gone are the signature driving missions.  Driving is a staple of the James Bond experience, like butter on toast, and a driving scene done right would have undoubtedly added to the experience.  But Young stands by the decision, boiling it down to quality over quantity.  “With Quantum of Solace, our first priority was to get the core gameplay right, and we wanted to ensure that everything we put into our game is high quality and extremely well polished.  I’ve played games where it felt as if one or two driving levels were bolted on to add “variety” and a longer checklist on the back of the box.  That’s not the experience we want in our game, and we didn’t feel we had the time to really build the type of driving experience gamers would expect in a James Bond game,” he asserts.  “We did discuss it – and we do have Bond’s Aston Martin DBS in the game – but at the end of the day, we decided not to do any driving levels in our game.”

Also, no classic characters will be returning (Jaws, Mayday, etc.), as Treyarch places their focus on the new Bond, Daniel Craig, and the new direction he etched in Casino Royale.  Young reassures us that the new doesn’t necessarily mean leaving the old behind — “if you look closely you may see a few fun references to Bond’s past.”

Screen-Looking

The game supports 12-player online play across many different game modes.  One of those new modes is called “Bond Versus”, where one player playing as Bond must defuse bombs or take out all members of the Organization, as played by everyone else in the session. “Golden Gun” will also return to form, starring the one-hit-kill gun first wielded by antagonist Francisco Scaramanga in the 1974 film, The Man With the Golden Gun.

There are upgradeable weapons to maximize playing variety, presumably similar to Call of Duty 4‘s persistent character system.

Young claims “The guys over at headquarters even told us that the biggest problem they found during their multiplayer testing is keeping the testers from playing it all the time!”

Inspired From the Past, For the Future

It’s hard to ignore the elephant in the room: the inevitable Rare or EA comparisons.  Young tells us that one member of the development team chose his career based on Goldeneye.  So, how will Treyarch compete with the high standards that have augmented uncontrollably as nostalgia grows stronger over time?

“Our goal was to create a great core gameplay experience first, then immerse that gameplay in the world of James Bond,” Young said. “The core difference gamers will see in this game is in our James Bond.  The filmmakers ‘re-booted’ James Bond in Casino Royale, and this new Bond formed the vision for the experience we wanted to deliver in Quantum of Solace: Daniel Craig is a much more physical, more cunning, and more dangerous Bond than ever before.  We think gamers will notice the difference right away.”

Just when we were about to storm out and topple a couple of free magazine stands, we spied a curiously crowded booth in the back of the hall bathed in red lights. And lo and behold, in all its arterial-spraying glory, there it was: Gears of War 2.

“Horde” was the only mode on display, but it was a new one. Up to five players work together to fend off wave after wave of Locust Drone, Boomer, and dog-like creature whose name I didn’t catch. Once a wave is completed, points are tallied (to what effect we’ll find out November 7^th) and then you are thrust into the next more difficult round of carnage. It’s a pretty simple concept, and one which we have a hard time calling “new,” but there you have it.

The most striking thing about Gears of War 2 is how much it plays like the original. Granted this new mode is just the smallest taste of the game and many neat surprises undoubtedly await us all, but some severe déjà vu crept in during these short firefights. Cover works the same, shooting works the same, the weapons are the same, even the bad guys absorb bullets the same. There are some interesting little twists to be found, such as the ability to use an enemy body as a shield or to crawl toward your buddies when you are on death’s door, but the nuts and bolts of the experience are unchanged.

Graphically, this Gears is a step above the first one. More richly colored and detailed, the game moves beyond the limited rust-and-gray color palette fans know so well. One of the maps we played in recalled Crackdown more than Gears of War, featuring a dilapidated city street complete with glowing neon lights. One of the other maps featured a Fable-esque village with snow covering the rickety buildings’ rooftops. We’re a long way from the scorched earth vistas of the first game and couldn’t be happier about it.

There is admittedly little we can gather from our short multiplayer taste of Gears of War 2. Aside from its color transfusion, it plays and feels very much like the original Gears. There was nothing earth shattering on display, but the tried and true stop-and-pop gameplay was as fun as ever. The foundation for another solid multiplayer experience seems to be in place. Now let’s just hope for a little more depth in the campaign mode.

It might sound like a lot to take in, but the intuitive control scheme gives plenty of opportunity for fast acting in the heat of the moment. The mouse cursor is always centered and as you surf your ranging-sized playing field, you’ll simply use the left and right click to build, upgrade and sell your units. It’s not a far-cry from its roots, but Defense Grid‘s depth is in its mechanics, not its conotrols.

It’s a solid looking game with grandiose special effects that only become more glamorous as you spend the cash you earn from killin’ to upgrade. While I’m still floored by how easy it was to get in to, and how much challenge there is for a seasoned player, I’m still curious as to how Hidden Path will curve the difficulty. The difference between the first stage and the seventh stage I played was immense, particularly structurally. It’s infinitely more easy to defend against a horde that wanders a winding path than one with that can freely move about a solid 20×20 grid, but if they manage to maintain a consistent curve, then that beginner they’re shooting for could potentially become a deity of defending. If not, where is the beginners-crowd going to just stop playing because it’s simply too tough?

I’m excited to play more and build strategies of my own but I’m curious if the Stargate-esque art style and surprising amount of strategical depth will attract or deter newcomers to the genre. Defense Grid: The Awakening is apparently taking it in to their own hands and evolving the tower-defense genre. Be sure to check out this bound-to-be-addictive sci-fi strategy game this fall on PC, and then later on Xbox Live Arcade.