Logitech Wireless Xbox Controller

[Bond]

http://xbox.ign.com/articles/357/357302p1.html


There are some titles that are hard to figure out until you play them. The concept of Whacked! leaves a lot of questions. It's a crazy game show where players take the role of freaked out characters and beat the tar out of each other. What exactly are you supposed to expect? Microsoft was kind enough to bring Whacked! by so we could get a first-hand look at this online party title.

Features

Eight characters, each with their own storyline
Nine different games
Thirteen environments and over thirty levels
Crazy action filled with hilarity
Combine weapons for more powerful attacks
Online play!
Aaron's Take

If cartoon characters, both G and R-rated, ever escape from their Saturday morning shows and head for the nearest game show, I suspect it will look a lot like Whacked!. But the most interesting part about Microsoft's upcoming four player party game bonanza is that the whole world is invited. Whacked is going to be online, which should change the very definition of party game. Exact details on just how Whacked is going to work online are unclear at this point, but we do have confirmation that you will be playing against people far away over your broadband connection.
The game itself is the nuttiest game show you've ever heard of starring a cast of equally zany, all original characters. Van Tastic is the show's host and he's literally nothing but teeth and hair. Bob Barker, Wink Martindale and the pantheon of suckers who've hosted MTV game shows just can't compete with this guy. The contestants include aliens with eating disorders, an unlucky rabbit with no hands or feet and an extremely well drawn sex pot that wears black censorship bars in just the right places, or not, depending on your tastes. She's my personal favorite. The characters are all interesting but they don't have the built-in name recognition a character based game like this needs. Whereas the franchises represented in Super Smash Brothers are legendary, I think it will take time to get to know the crackpots in Whacked and it will be worth it. Their personalities are all distinct and well vocalized.

Since they're cartoon characters they're all tiny and running around in giant versions of real world locations like under a Christmas tree or on the kitchen counter of some guy named Jeff.

Whether you're playing solo or with a couch full of a buddies, Whacked puts you in a living arena full of weapon pickups, environmental weapons and all kinds of silliness. Game types are standard fare like Combat (collect stars at all costs), King of the Hill (occupy randomly generated areas for 2 cumulative minutes) and Grab 'N Run (possess a trophy for two cumulative minutes), but you can adjust the available weapons, winning conditions etc. The weapons you pick up include staplers to flatten people, rocket launchers and bats. The controls are extremely simple move with left analog stick, strafe with the triggers (why hadn't anybody thought of this sooner), jump with A and attack with X. That's it.

The fun occurs because most of the levels are relatively cramped so you're never more than a few steps away from an enemy who either has to be avoided or whacked. On each level there's always some sort of super weapon that has to be activated by some pick up item somewhere on the level. To activate the blowtorch in the bed of the pickup truck, you have to hop across the gap between the truck and the cop car that's chasing it, grab the book of matches, hop back over and light that sucker. Once it's lit you can torch pretty much all of the other contestants on the playing field below. The toy tank on the Christmas tree level needs a battery to be activated in the same way.

Whacked! looks like it will serve the same purpose that Fuzion Frenzy served at the Xbox launch except it will have the all important online application. It may sound strange, but a title like Whacked could end up being a surprise hit among casual gamers who need a nice easy transition into online console gaming.

Hil's Take
I loved being sick as a kid, because that meant I got to stay home and watch game shows all morning. The Price is Right, Let's Make a Deal, and Press Your Luck fascinated me. Here were ordinary people winning tons of money. Then came game shows like Double Dare where folks humiliated themselves for dinky prizes. But nothing, and I mean nothing, compares to a Japanese game show. Whacked! comes close to matching the bizarre nature of Japanese game shows, but doesn't quite. Still, it should be quite a trip for Americans who think the backstabbing on Survivor is bad.

Hosted by big-grilled Van Tastic, Whacked! is the type of game show you wish would come on the TV at ten in the morning. With tons of environments, different games, and weapons to use, Whacked! seems to have a lot of longevity. The game itself is a frantic battle to achieve different goals. One of the games you can play is King of Hill. Here, a certain area of the level is green. Stand on the green to gain time as king of the hill. Meanwhile, your competitive counterparts are trying to knock you off with mallets, axes, pitchforks, rockets, and scores more weapons.

Whacked! is one of those games where you will find yourself swearing, cheering, laughing, and jeering all in the span of five minutes. Levels include a car chase, pirate ship, car wreck, and futuristic space port. Each level has interactive elements that allow you to turn the game on its head or do some major damage to your enemies. It's lots of fun!

The game has a single player mode, but I can't image playing it much. This game is all about the multiplayer. It's so nice to know it will be online. That came as a pleasant surprise. Finally, you can use a giant staple gun to staple that annoying dude 8000 miles away.

Despite all the fun and frantic gameplay, I found myself wishing it was even crazier. It will take many more hours of involved play to see how quickly the humor wears off. So far, it looks like Whacked! is shaping up to be a great party game.


Some bad quality screen shots:

http://xboxmedia.ign.com/xbox/image/whacked_052002b_15.jpg


http://xboxmedia.ign.com/xbox/image/whacked_052002b_16.jpg


http://xboxmedia.ign.com/xbox/image/whacked_052002b_17.jpg

Minus the screen shots, the game looks great.

[Bond]

http://gear.ign.com/articles/360/360497p1.html


Of all the things I thought Logitech might announce at E3 -- atop the list was a 5.1 Z-series, but, alas, no such luck -- a cordless Xbox controller hadn't occurred to me. The company only had one on hand, and unfortunately it was looked in a glass case, safely set far from the greasy fingers of the videogame crowd. Logitech did, however, share some important details about the upcoming controller.

The controller, which hasn't yet been named, though some variation of "freedom" is likely, communicates at 2.4 GHz, has a range of "more than 20 feet," which you can take to mean "slightly less than 20 feet," and pulls juice from four AA batteries. Fifty hours might sound a bit thin when compared to Nintendo's 100+ claim for the WaveBird, but it's a solid chunk of time. (Five hours per day for ten days straight ain't too shabby.)

I didn't take note, but I really hope Logitech had the foresight to put a vibration switch on the controller. It does have dual rumble motors, just like the original, but you'd definitely want to be able to disable this function. You're sharing the battery life between normal operation and the vibration motors. Not really a difficult choice, is it?

Of course, the RF operation enables the controller to be used in environments clogged with household items - tables, desks, etc. IR operation requires a line-of-sight connection, while RF passes through solids with little problem, especially at such short distances.

The design of the pad is a strange mix between the US Xbox controller and the Japanese/S version. Size-wise, it's still wide but it's thin. The button layout, however, is straight off the Japanese/S pad. The D-pad features the cross design, which is much more effective than the goofy wave pad of the official controller. The main action buttons are set in a standard diamond pattern, with the black and white buttons right in line with them. I look forward to seeing how useful the black and white buttons are, but they've got to be more comfortable than the silly Japanese/S placement. The two analog sticks are identical and have slick, green bases. You can't see the bases in the pic I have because a computer crash killed my original pic. Tune in tomorrow for more images.

Original reports declared that the memory card slots would be in the receiver. This struck me as odd, and after the Xbox Live announcement it seemed downright silly. As it turns out, the slots are not on the receiver but rather on the controller, where they should be.

Logitech has not announced a release date, but fall 2002 sure would be nice. When it hits the streets it will carry a $69.95 MSRP. Hardly a budget controller, but that's not what it's supposed to be.

Keep your eyes out for a review, which we will absolutely, positively post before anyone else.


http://gearmedia.ign.com/gear/image/logitech_e3_xbox_wireless_small.jpg

$70 is pretty high for a controller, and the Xbox controller is already around 9 feet long I believe, so there is no real need for a wireless one.

[Perfect Stu]

I agree. This is definately a 'no-buy'.

[Bond]

http://xbox.ign.com/articles/360/360770p1.html


Brute Force was one of the bigger Microsoft published games we knew about coming into E3, even though there were still plenty of questions about how it would actually play. We'd been introduced to the four characters, their special abilities and weapons, and we even knew who and where they'd be fighting. Now we know just how that fighting is going to work.
All four members of your squad are grouped together and the three that you're not controlling (if you're playing by yourself) are always hanging out nearby. Think of it like a third person action-adventure title but with four playable characters who are always right there waiting for you to control, and who will do what you tell them to do. Playing the game solo is going to require considerably more skill and strategy since you have to worry about every member of your squad and coordinate the movements of those four controllable characters.

You move and look with the dual analog sticks, but the movement is tuned very nicely for a third person perspective. Brute Force doesn't feel like a first person shooter control scheme adapted for the third person perspective. You have a targeting reticule on screen that changes color to indicate targeting and can show you information about the weapon you're using.

The camera system either requires some tweaking or just takes a little getting used to because sometimes it floats things to one side or the other and zooms in a tad so that the character you're controlling is on the side of your screen rather than in the middle. Ostensibly this is done to better show the action around the reticule in the middle of the screen when a firefight breaks out. But once the threat is dealt with the camera is slow to correct itself and return to its regular position. Again, this is something that seems easy enough to tighten up and could be one of those things that the team at Digital Anvil is putting out there to get public feedback.

Every button on the Xbox controller is going to be used in Brute Force. The right trigger fires your weapon, the left trigger uses whatever item you have selected in your inventory like health kits, grenades etc. Every commando carries two weapons, so you switch between them with Y. Black rotates through your commandos and white activates the special ability of the character you're controlling. The special ability can be toggled on and it drains your "special" energy until you either toggle it off or it runs out. The special meter refills automatically.

Flint is your sniper so her special ability is zooming in with her high powered rifle and the cursor is super still. Hawk can turn invisible which drains energy very quickly. Tex busts out his twin rapid fire hand cannons that come with enough ammo to cut down an entire forest. Brutus's special attack activates his galloping charge attack which can level enemies like so many bowling pins.

And then there's the D-Pad. Tapping any direction on the D-Pad pulls up the command menu where you'll get a picture of each commando at each direction. You tap the D-Pad in the direction of the character(s) you wan to issue commands to and then you have a choice of four commands on the colored face buttons. You can tell your teammates to Engage, Follow, Move and Defend. Engage puts them in an aggressive mode and they go looking for trouble. Follow and Defend tells them to trail and protect you, respectively.

Once commands are issued, you'll get an audio confirmation from each character, and they'll run off and do their thing. If you don't issue any commands to your soldiers, they'll automatically follow you and engage any enemies that fire on them or who stumble within range. But this is where the strategic elements of Brute Force are obvious. You have to take into account all of your team's strengths and weaknesses when issuing orders so that you don't get your sniper leading a charge into a hostile area.

Obviously Brute Force is going to feature co-op play for up to four characters which will eliminate the need for issuing commands. You can just yell at your buddy next to you to get him to co-operate. But you can also play two players head to head in Brute Force where you take your four commandos against your buddies four soldiers.

Outlook: We're not sure if Brute Force is indeed the next Halo, but it's definitely a genre busting experience that's going to force us to come up with new descriptions and expectations for tactical squad based games. Conflict: Desert Storm is extremely similar to Brute Force in concept, but BF's sci-fi theme and Digital Anvil's expertise will more than likely make Microsoft's game the new standard for tactical combat.


OXM had a great 12 or so page article on Brute Force about a month back, it's really going to be a great game. Probably not a Halo killer, but still great.

[Bond]

http://xbox.ign.com/articles/360/360838p1.html


Phantagram Interactive. Does that name ring a bell? Probably not, however this Korean based company should be making a name for itself soon. Phantagram's most intriguing title here at E3 was quite possibly Shining Lore Online, yet another entry into an already crowded MMORPG marketplace. What will differentiate SLO from already established, and highly regarded titles, such as Anarchy Online or Everquest? Well, I'm sure one of the 500,000 people who have already signed up for the beta test in Korea would be more than willing to tell you. Yes, I said 500,000, approximately 100,000 more subscribers than Everquest. Yikes, indeed.

So is all this hype justified? From what I can tell after seeing the game in action and talking to Phantagram CEO Sangyoun Lee (who is actually the game's primary designer) on a live Korean server: absolutely. Shining Lore combines the most appealing elements of already established MMORPGs, such as full character customization (from body parts to 'zenie' items), a fully functional social system (each character is animated with over 300 motions, including facial expressions and gestures) and a huge game world (5 enormous continents, each with over 100 unique quests), with a few new, inventive gameplay elements that should broaden the game's base of appeal.

For instance, Phantagram hopes to create a deep, serious storyline (ala Anarchy Online), but wishes to portray the game and its action in a bright and colorful manner. The cartoonish, anime-based graphics coupled with the light-hearted color scheme give SLO a totally unique look and should help the game appeal to audiences of all ages and genders. According to Lee, a staggering 40% of the game's current beta subscriber base is female - definitely a change of pace from other MMOGs.

Furthermore, Phantagram has taken a beloved element of MMORPG's from the past, that has unfortunately been somewhat abandoned in the genres current status, and has implemented it significantly in Shining Lore Online. Player occupations and housing will be a major part of the SLO experience, as gamers will be able to pursue everything from working in a local armory to starting up their own shop. Lee ensured that Phantagram is making this facet a key component of the gameplay, not merely a side thought. They also plans to cater to the casual, less combat oriented gamer through the inclusion of fun, easy going activities such as mini games. But if you are a hack n' slash meathead, don't worry, there will be plenty of Diablo style action to satisfy your yearning for blood.

There is already a tremendous buzz going around the office here over this title and we can't wait to get our hands on it. Hopefully Phantagram won't be keeping us waiting too long, as the game is scheduled for a late 2002 release, with a beta test taking place in the upcoming months.


It really seems like the Xbox's online line-up is picking up. Seems like good competition for the Playstation 2.