Category: Xbox One

So late last week I got a bit of a surprise, I was invited to play the Halo 5 Beta early.  I wasn’t sure I was going to play this beta at all since I don’t have the Halo Master Chief Collection yet, but it looks like 343 wants this Beta to go off without a hitch and sent out keys to Dashboard Preview members.  It was very nice of them, so of course I played a few rounds.

It has been a long time since I have played Halo online, and I have to say I am terrible.  The guys playing this game are on another level than I am, but despite that I still had a lot of fun.  What was great about this little early bit of content is that they managed to re-embrace what multiplayer Halo is about, but still move forward.  They took away all the customizable armor abilities and weapon load-outs, and went back to the need to run and control weapon spawns.  Even with this return to form they were able to add some good features to the games.

Ever since Titanfall came out people now need to be able to double jump, and with Halo 5 you now have jump jets.  Instead of a normal double jump, you can use the jets to move in any direction fast with a quick press of the B button.  Having problems getting up that ledge?  Tap A and you will climb up.  Which is nice because I don’t feel like a moron jumping up against a wall over and over again until someone comes up and puts me out of my misery.  You also now have iron sights on all guns, unlike other games there is no penalty for not using them, but it does help to line up that shot from time to time.  Also if you jump and use your iron sights you hover.  That is pretty sweet.  Lastly you can now sprint.  The only downfall to sprinting is that your health and shields don’t recharge.  With all of these extra movement options the game is much faster (or I have just gotten slower).  Don’t stand around because you will be killed instantly.  I am not sure people who like to snipe are going to happy about that, but it is fine with me.

I hope my Halo 5 Preview Beta key allows me to play in the upcoming full Halo 5 Beta on the 29th, because the little taste they gave me has me super excited for Halo’s future.  Which is a nice change considering the broken multiplayer of the Master Chief Collection had people wondering if 343 was up to the task of keeping Halo going.  It looks like the Chief’s fifth outing may be his best yet.  We will have to wait until next Christmas to find out, but at least I am looking forward to it now!

I don’t remember signing up for the beta for Ivory Tower’s The Crew, an open-world racing game, being published by Ubisoft. I don’t do a lot of racing games, not since Mario Cart on the SNES, so I wasn’t sure what I was going to get out of the game. The Crew’s claims to fame are a world map that truncates the United States so you can drive across the highways and byways from one coast to the other in an hour instead of several days; additionally you are playing at the same time as other players who you can join up with to complete the missions.

The game is very pretty, driving through the digital United States is a lot of fun, but you’re doing 130mph everywhere so you’re not able to really take in the view. You start in Detroit, but you can drive anywhere you’d like. There are some small towns and sights that dot the landscape between the big cities, as well as hidden items you can collect to build a secret car or improve your current car. You’re guided wherever you want to go by a floating blue line that gives you enough information without being intrusive. I took the long trip to Seattle from Detroit, traveling across the Midwest and then into the hills, even unofficially racing another player as we both struggled to navigate the high speeds, logging trucks, and tight curves of the mountain passes. He eventually turned off for Salt Lake City, while I made the final push to the Emerald City. Sigh, I miss him. Along the route you pass through challenges that you can engage in to earn improvements for your car (although the challenges are locked to certain levels so the ones on the way to Seattle were closed off to me). These challenges range from Speed, Slalom, or Jump skill challenges that reward you at different levels (Bronze, Silver, and Gold… FYI, Gold is bestest).

The story missions I played offered some variety, most involving NPC racers for me to crash into and bounce off of to victory. These races happen in their own instance so you’re not in the world, tying up the streets with your illegal street racing. The story is a mix of revenge and Fast and Furious and could be interesting, although hard to say when I only played a handful of missions. Joining with other players, I think, improves your bonuses and rewards when you win. I of course wouldn’t know because I’m a lone wolf who rides alone.

Overall I enjoyed The Crew even though it’s not my preferred style of game. I’m sure someone has some actual critique driving mechanics (I chose the Nissan Z which let me drift around corners effortlessly, unlike the Dodge Charger that drifted like a bar of wet soap), but I never felt I was overly punished for not being a racer. The only other critique I might have is the depiction of the United States. The map has Seattle, with some changes like I-5 North loops back to the Alaska Way Viaduct southbound instead of traveling further northward; but it doesn’t have Spokane or Portland. Auburn is on the map for some reason, which was odd. Eastern Washington, also was also far too tree covered.

I could of course spend a long time picking the world map decisions apart, but the reality is we don’t have to power available (not to mention the privacy concerns) to truly create a map where I can park in front of my house (however awesome that would be). So, you have to cut Ivory Tower some slack there. The Crew, for me as a non-racer, was actually a lot of fun and I was bummed when the Beta ended. The racing games for me that have been the most fun are those where you do more than race, preferably crashing into my friends or shooting red turtle shells at them; The Crew looks like it hits those notes as well as the racer notes well enough to make all the gamers feel comfortable behind the wheel of their virtual car. The Crew is scheduled to release this December and you might want to see it under your Christmas Tree this year.

Sunset Overdrive is the Xbox One’s latest exclusive, and it is made by the people that brought you Ratchet and Clank, Insomniac Games.  Full disclosure, I was totally going to skip this game because of its crazy art style and over the top “humor”, but I am glad The Paladin convinced me otherwise because this is the most fun game to hit the Xbox One thus far.

The game’s setup is simple, an energy drink named Overdrive was contaminated and turned everyone that drank it in to crazy zombie-mutants, so it is up to you find out what really happened while trying to escape Sunset city.

It is easy to look at gameplay trailers and images and think that this is just a bright and cheerful third person shooter, but it is not.  It is a game about movement, and grinding and jumping your way around a large city.  Sure you shoot lots of stuff, but that is there to add to the movement, not the other way around.  To play the game it is deceptively simple: You hit ‘X’ to perform tricks like grind or wall run, ‘A’ to jump, ‘B’ to use your melee attack, and the right trigger to shoot.  You learn more stuff later, but those are the basics.  Doing all those things in combination with each other while timing your tricks is where the complexity and the fun comes in.

This is also a very customizable game.  You can make your character look however you want, and if you don’t like it, you can change it later with a push of a button.  Even change the gender if you wish.  You can level up and customize the weapons you want, so if you like bigger guns that do more damage you can get better at those, or if you like fully automatic weapons that you never stop firing you can do that as well.  Your skills also get better as you do them.  If you like to grind as your primary mode of transportation you get Badges for that, same with wall running, jumping, or running.  The more you do stuff, the more badges you get.  Get enough badges and you can turn them in for perks, so your character your gets better at those abilities.

If you don’t want to work at things you can buy Amps.  They are modifiers that add things like fire damage to melee attacks, or make every other bullet explosive, but you can’t use your Amps all the time.  You need to fill up your style meter.  To do that, you need to perform combos of grinding, shooting, jumping, wall running, and just about anything else.  The more your meter fills up the more your Amps become active. To get Amps you need to collect things.  Things like toilet paper and stinky shoes.  Yes no joke.  Still it is a good excuse to get you to try and reach new heights in the city, or make that perfect jump grind to get on the wire with the shoes.

If I have any issue with this game is that it starts slow.  It is a rough first hour or so.  You need to train yourself on how this game works.  You treat it like a shooter and you die quickly, or you don’t have your timing down well and you keep spamming the ‘X’ button to try and grind and whatnot you fall off of things and get hammered by bad guys.  However, once you get the rhythm of the mechanics, this game really starts to sing.

The humor in this game is not for everyone as well.  It is juvenile on purpose.  It revels in trying to make a thirteen year old laugh while winking and understanding that you are probably much older than that.  If that isn’t for you, you may like this game a little less, but the awesome gameplay still makes it worth a shot, and to try and soften the blow for you they do include language and gore filters.

I love my time with this game, and it is game that makes me love to play video games again.  It is just so joyful in what it is doing, and that is a refreshing take, since it seems like all games are so serious and down in the dumps these days.  If you have an Xbox One you should get this game or put it on your Christmas list because it would be a shame to miss it.