1P Start

Last week saw Undertow given away free on Xbox Live Arcade to placate all those unfortunate souls affected by the service outages over the whole of the holiday season. Not a great game, but not bad for a free download.

However, this week sees a classic piece of video gaming goodness making it’s début on the Xbox Live Arcade, in the form of Chessmaster… no, just kidding, Rez is the big one, and Chessmaster is also being thrown in there to please the nerds.

Those of you who have never played Rez are in for a treat, and a bit of a mind fuck in to the bargain. Those of you who have never played Chessmaster have got lives, and good on you.

Rez, for the initiated, is a rhythm action and shooter game unlike any you may have previously experienced. You play a hacker who enters a computer network to try an reboot the AI at the centre of it. Think of a cross between Tron, and being a rave, and you’ll be maybe halfway there.

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When the Devil May Cry 4 news rains, it pours. While doing my usual gaming news surfing, I found this great news off Digg.com which got me searching to find the official post over on the Capcom blogs. There, they make up multiple reasons why the demo really just doesn’t do the game justice, but I am sure they are just trying to make sure you don’t get your hopes up, thus it becoming a positive because you went in thinking it would suck (I see through their reverse psychology). Either way, can’t wait till tomorrow for Undertow and now Thursday for some DMC4 action.
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Devil May Cry 4, DMC4, Xbox 360, PS3, Playstation 3, Demo, Capcom

In a kind of neat move on Microsoft’s part, they have made a set of Awards to recognize the great Xbox Live Arcade titles that have come out in the past year, and there really has been a lot of good ones after looking over the list. One game however, I notice got looked over. Luckily, when you vote, you can write in a game if it isn’t listed. Amazingly, “Tetris Splash” works in every single category, really, try it! See after the break for the categories, then click the vote now link to vote!

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Major Nelson has posted up the new list of the top played Xbox games (that are connected to Live of course). My favorite game of the moment, Call of Duty 4, holding the throne down over the game that disappointed me a bit, Halo 3. Amazing to see Gears of War still having that many people playing. Omega Five has quickly made it on the list, a new game of course, expect a review of that here on 1PStart very soon. I can’t believe it, UNO, staying in the top ten. Enough of my thoughts, here is the full list:

(NOTE: Don’t forget to download Undertow for free on Wednesday! Okay, now on to the list)

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Xbox Live users were pissed off in droves over the holiday season by the random, and inexplicable outages which hit the service for over a week.

Microsoft realised the levels of anger were going to hit them badly, so announced the give away of a free game to compensate everyone affected by the downtime.

Today, they revealed the game which all Xbox Live users will be able to download for free as a sweetener. The game is Undertow, an aquatic based shooter, which normally costs 800 Microsoft points.

It will be available to download completely free from Wednesday 23rd January 2008 until Sunday 28th January 2008. I can see that 5 day period crashing the servers yet again, but fingers crossed.

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Ladies and Gents it pains me to say my farewells to 1PStart. I’ve been here only a short time, though I’ve been at Xbox 360 Rally (another 451 site) for just under a year. I will miss you guys, though you’re probably throwing a party, chanting “he’s leaving! Huzzah! Huzzah!”. If you do miss me, though, you can find me at my new home BingeGamer.net.

It’s been fun, and I hope to see y’all around.

P.S.: Qbix — E-mail me, dude. I’m still gonna get your GTA IV to ya.

Well it appears that all of you who bitched and moaned about Xbox LIVE being up and down for a week are getting compensation from Microsoft. But, like I said earlier this week, you’re not getting a refund – rather, you’ll be getting a free Xbox LIVE Arcade game.

The game that will be given for free has yet to be announced, but you can be sure that it will be a throw-away title that nobody cares about. Probably Hexic 2… have fun with your Hexic.

So what was the cause of the outage to begin with? Xbox LIVE General Manager Marc Whitten wrote in a letter that Xbox LIVE experienced the largest sign-up of new members in its five-plus year history during this past holiday season, and this sudden surge may have been what KOed XBL.

Microsoft, Xbox 360, Xbox LIVE

A staple in any gaming site, is a end of the year type list and/or holiday wish list. JW and yours truly have each picked the top three games for the main three consoles and some other categories for PSP, DS, Xbox Live Arcade, Virtual Console, and even finish our picks with the best console of 2007. To help with the ‘holiday list’ portion of this, I checked CheapAssGamer and Google for any good deals that will make sure you can save some cash in getting the… Top Ten Best Games Awards Holiday Picks of 2007! So lets get this going:

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It certainly appears two new consoles are coming to the Wii Virtual Console. Go Nintendo, who originally posted the image above showing the consoles available on the WVC, was writing about how Nintendo was redesigning the Japanese Virtual Console page. However, when you look at the list you can see two spots reserved for new consoles.

So what consoles could they be? Kotaku theorizes (or rather “wishes”) that the Sega Master System is one of them. Not a bad choice, but I would personally love to see the Sega Dreamcast and the… wait for it… the TurboGrafx-16.

We’ll find out soon enough, in any case.

Nintendo, Wii, Virtual Console

Not long ago Sony launched the PSP store on the PC. Through your USB cords and a program you had to download, you could download games straight to your PSP. While this feature was certainly cool, and a big ol’ boost for PSP owners, one question would constantly arise:

When the hell will we get this on our actual PSPs?!

Well, if you ask Eric Lempel, Playstation Network Operations Director, the PSP store is “definitely something we’re thinking about.” Gee, I would hope so considering it’s the freaking PSP store.

The reasons for the delay in the PSP launch and the launching of the service via PC first was so they could work out any security kinks and whatnot.

[PSPSPS]

Sony, PSP, PSP Store

Jeff Minter, creator of huge classics that I have no doubts no one has heard of, such as Attack of the Mutant Camels, Revenge of the Mutant Camels, and Metagalactic Llamas Battle at the Edge of Time (no, I made none of those titles up). His most recent endeavor, one that I had somewhat looked forward to, was the Xbox Live Arcade’s “Space Giraffe.”

It was a somewhat remake of Tempest which goes along with the beats. Now the game did not get raved reviews and it seems it didn’t sell well, at least not well enough for Minter, who recently posted on his Live Journal (I can’t believe people still use LJ):

jesus fucking christ

not seeing a lot of reason to continue even trying to make games, at this point, when a remake of Frogger, one of the worst games in the history of old arcade games, can outsell Space Giraffe that we put so much love and effort into, by more than ten to one, in one week.

OK, we get the message. All you want on that channel is remakes of old, shite arcade games and crap you vaguely remember playing on your Amiga.

We’ll shut up trying to do anything new then.

Sorry for even trying.

Wow, cry me a river. His game imo wasn’t terrible, not worthy of a purchase, but not complete crap, I have no doubts it has its audience (get the demo and try it for yourself). Either way, this is no way to go about dealing with bad/unexpected sales. If you have a game that has no advertisement and is confusing as all hell when you first try it competing with an already established classic title that anyone can easily pick up and play, do not compare your game.
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Jeff Minter, Space Giraffe, Frogger, XBLA, Xbox Live Arcade

If you haven’t heard, Ninjas and Pirates don’t much care for each other. This bitter blood fued has been raging since the beginning of recorded man. No one is sure as to why these two honor-bound social sects fight, but we do know where their next great battle will take place: On the fields of dodgeball. As part of Ninjafest over on G4 (a network that started as cool, declined to utter poo, and is rebuilding back up to cool once more), G4’s The Feed has an exclusive first look at some of the soon-to-be-familiar faces in the upcoming Pirates vs. Ninjas Dodgeball.

My personal favorite is Hideki Miyamoto. An 80-year-old cyberninja with invisibility and a lightsaber? It’s like someone cross-bred Obi-Wan Kenobi (Alec Guinness, not McGregor), Predator and the Ocripus guy from Ninja Warrior. That’s epic on so many levels.

Pirates vs. Ninjas Dodgeball is being developed by the ultra cool cats at Blazing Lizard (will pharaoh cats be a team?), and will be available for download on Xbox LIVE Arcade in early 2008.

…but again, where are the lumberjacks?

[G4]

G4, Blazing Lizard, Pirates vs. Ninjas Dodgeball

Blazing Lizard has revealed the third team that will be featured in their debut title, Pirates vs. Ninjas Dodgeball, will in fact be zombies. Spooky. If you aren’t aware of what PvND is, I’ll summarize for you: Take the evernal struggle between the noble ninja and the scurvy-ridden pirate, and settle the long-standing fued on the fields of battle.

With dodgeballs.

And now, zombies. (I still want my lumberjack team, Stockman! You hear me?!)

Pictures and the press release after the break.

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Dortios has announced their five finalists for the “Unlock Xbox” contest. If you don’t know what that is, it’s basically a competition where you, the gamer, got to design your own Doritos-themed Xbox LIVE Arcade title, with the winning selection to be put on Xbox LIVE Arcade for everyone to not download. Kind of like Backgammon — I don’t know anyone who owns it. The finalists are…

“Doritos Presents UDS: Ultimate Dodgeball Champions”
“Rythum Racing” (someone should tell them that ‘rhythm’ is spelled wrong)
“PB’s Quest for Flavor”
“Doritos Dash of Destruction”
“Monkey’s From Mt. Doritos”

Visit the Unlock Xbox website to play the demos… you would think they have these demos on, say, Xbox LIVE… but whatever.

Doritos, Xbox 360, Xbox LIVE Arcade

Guitar Hero III and The Simpsons Game, if you aren’t getting one, you should get the other, hitting all three big systems this week. Though I am going to wait on Rock Band myself (I want those drums), Guitar Hero III is here now, and has a great line up of songs itself. The Simpsons Game might possibly be *the* Simpsons game to own, looking like a perfect mixture of comedy and gameplay, however, with the track record of past Simpson games, it may be best to keep an eye on Metacritic before making a full on dive into buying it.

Some other notable things this week, Manhunt 2 makes its way onto Wii, I might give this a rent, though never into the series, the fuss it has caused makes me curious as to the content. Virtual Fighter 5, the first good fighting game on the 360, I am still waiting on Soul Calibur, but for now, VF5 looks like a “definite rent.” PC games seem to reach into every single genre, even fashion designing. PS3 gets a hold of Stranglehold finally, and… well, time to just check the full list after the break:

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