Games You Might Overlook This Xmas
Added 10/13/2008 by Matti D'Aramitz
With the slow trickle of grade A++ holiday releases turning into a proverbial land slide over the coming weeks of October and November, developers and publishers alike are pushing the big guns out the door for the all important, lucrative fourth quarter Christmas season. It’s an inevitable side effect that with more dominant studios’ marketing budgets outrageously larger than other less fortunate companies, solid franchises both new and old alike are going to end up falling by the way side. In this article I explore just some of the games that seem destined to be remembered as “also-rans,” yet at any other time of the year they could have well garnered some considerable excitement and attention amongst the Xbox 360 consumers. I wonder which of the following titles have slipped under your radar in your pre-festive planning.
Tomb Raider: Underworld
Representing Ms. Croft’s latest adventure, this is a theoretical last chance saloon for Eidos and SCi to get their finances back on track. Earlier in the year, due to a string of poor performing releases, they lost nearly 50% of their share value. Considering that Tomb Raider is one of the strongest IPs on their portfolio, this latest outing has so far been a surprisingly low key affair in the specialist press.
Despite the public outings of new Lara Croft girl, Alison Caroll, gyrating with her ‘pistols’ for both cameras and fans alike at various game conferences, excitement for the game seems to be lukewarm at best. With the disappointing 2007 released Tomb Raider: Anniversary and a modern take on the action-adventure game now established by well received titles such as Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune on the PS3, Tomb Raider can fail to feel relevant as a franchise going into 2009. Other lackluster releases published by Eidos in recent memory, namely IO’s critically ridiculed Kane & Lynch: Dead Men, also fail to inspire confidence in the company’s ability to deliver quality products to compete with its contemporaries.
Technically, judging by various gameplay previews, the series seems to have advanced on leaps and bounds (excuse the pun) since Lara’s first high definition outing back in Tomb Raider: Legend in spring 2006. The graphical engine now being used is certainly a vast improvement on the original configuration running previous installments.
You can view a side by side comparison here.
Environments within the game contain a much greater level of detail and the newly designed character model for Lara is quite exquisite in both its appearance and fluidity of movement. The question remains, can this new coat of paint breathe the life needed into an otherwise antiquated game?
Tomb Raider: Underworld is due for release on November 18th, competing with the following titles: Left 4 Dead and Need For Speed: Undercover.
James Bond 007- Quantum of Solace
While most gamers fondly remember the Nintendo 64 title GoldenEye as being one of the great first person shooters of all time, it’s unfortunate the rest of 007’s gaming outings haven’t quite measured up to the same standard of quality that Rare’s title possessed.
Quantum of Solace being developed by Treyarch could well be the gaming rejuvenation equivalent of Columbia pictures introducing Daniel Craig into the movies, with its groundwork solidly rooted in the Activision owned Call of Duty 4 engine used by its other highly anticipated new release this quarter - Call of Duty: World at War. Considering how near perfect COD4 played out last year, it’s difficult to see how any similar shooter using the exact same game engine can possibly fail to be an enjoyable experience.
Comparisons of the recently released Bourne Conspiracy spring to mind when you see Quantum of Solace’s viewpoint switch from first-person to third-person during play, much alike Sierra’s similarly veined secret agent spy romp. Yet with both Daniel Craig and Judy Dench having licensed their voices for use in proceedings, the noticeably conspicuous absence of Matt Damon from Bourne Conspiracy seems to have been thankfully avoided.
Providing that the shooting mechanics remain faithful to what we expect from the COD4 engine and the single player campaign is given the full attention it deserves in terms of story length, there seems to be no reason as to why this game would not have faired well outside of its scheduled release date. Unfortunately, against its bigger brother Call Of Duty: World At War and the juggernaut same week release, Epic’s Gears Of War 2, its destiny seems to remain confined on the store shelves as gamers can only find time for a finite number of FPS’s in one holiday season.
007: Quantum of Solace is released on November 4th, competing with the following titles: Tom Clancy’s EndWar and Gears of War 2.
Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts
Another fondly remembered franchise from Rare Studios development on the Nintendo 64, Banjo Kazooie was truly an outstanding and groundbreaking game for its time. With platforming video games on the Xbox 360 being relatively sparse outside of the XBL service, it seems a bizarre move from Rare to focus this iteration of the classic series on vehicular transport rather than its original strengths.
While the graphical presentation looks as sublime as you would expect from the developers in question, Peter Moore’s words continue to ring home true about how “relevant” and desirable a cutesy game is to the vast majority of Xbox 360 owners. Child friendly titles always perform erratically at retail, especially on the next generation platforms with some stores refusing to stock the titles altogether. Banjo Kazooie’s visual appearance on the untrained eye would be hard pressed to appear as anything different for the many stock buyers and customers. Despite the temptations of a budget price point and a free XBL download of the original N64 game, it remains to be seen if the entire package is enough to tempt the FPS and racing game crowd away from their own respective comfort zones.
In its own right, Banjo Kazooie’s vehicle construction options look like a fun and dynamic enough concept to rival the creativity offered in Sony’s Little Big Planet. Compared to the other child friendly titles being released this Christmas, namely Spyro: Dawn of The Dragon and Crash: Mind Over Mutant, it quite frankly pisses all over them from a great height. With a quadruple punch of some of 2008’s most anticipated releases being let loose the same week as Banjo, along with the fan base that the latest WWE Smackdown! VS RAW iteration also brings, it seems the odds are stacked against the plucky bear and bird duo being able to clock up any reasonable amount of attention this holiday season.
Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts is released on November 11th, competing with following titles: Mirror’s Edge, COD: World at War, C&C 3: Red Alert, Mortal Kombat vs. DC universe and WWE Smackdown! VS RAW ’09.
Sonic Unleashed
Despite the legions of Sonic the Hedgehog fans informing SEGA studio’s Sonic TEAM exactly what they want from a Sonic game -- quite simply (and understandably) a return to form of what was last seen in Sonic CD for the SEGA Mega-CD system -- the developers seem to be forever stuck in a misguided mantra dictating to this hardcore group that they instead “know best.” The ill-thought reasoning of Sonic TEAM is that by adding such folly as weaponry, gimmicks and a forever increasing cast list of soulless characters, the classic franchise will magically reinvent itself into something exciting and relevant for a new generation of younger consumers.
The immediate impression you derive from seeing Sonic Unleashed is that it is certainly as visually stunning as you would expect from a grade A++ release at this point in a console’s life-cycle. The sensation of speed produced, a de-facto measure of importance in the Sonic series seems solidly in place with depth of field tricks applied to great effect all over the show.
Interestingly, not given quite so much focus or attention during the various trailers and previews is the title’s ‘make or break’ control and camera system. Those of us truly burnt by the 2006 Sonic the Hedgehog can attribute both its control scheme and in-game camera functionality as being the two main reasons why it was one of the worst rated Xbox 360 releases of all time. By all accounts, it was such a complete disaster if anybody other than the most die-hard fans ever give the franchise another shot it will be nothing short of a modern day miracle.
Most worrying, at least going by the series’ past record, is that Sonic TEAM has also announced a brand new gimmick for this particular outing. Now the infamous blue hedgehog is capable of transforming himself into a melee attack branding werewolf-style creature, which seemingly achieves nothing other than further distancing the game away from the breakneck pace that everybody unanimously agrees has always been the best thing about classic 16-bit Sonic games.
So, while it seems Sega’s latest hope of rising from the ashes looks doomed to failure, Unleashed’s positioning at the far end of the Christmas release spectrum could provide advantageous to its overall sales. Desperate parents in need of a last minute Christmas gift seeing the brand name recognition a Sonic game brings could well pick this up in virtue of not knowing any better. Primarily a title for the Wii crowd, if anyone else will purchase the game on their own accord especially on a 360 or PS3, remains still to be seen.
Sonic Unleashed is scheduled for release on November 18th, competing against: Left 4 Dead, Need For Speed: Undercover & Lost Remnant.
So, while you spend the festive season enjoying games such as Fallout 3 and Fable 2, be sure to give a moment of your consideration to what other releases are available to spend the excess cash we all find ourselves burdened with post family celebrations.
Which titles omitted here do you think will also under perform at retail? Make your opinions known in the forums.
Finally, keep checking back to talkxbox.com, your premium source of Xbox related information, to discover which of the holiday line-up are worth your investment and which are better left for Santa’s elves to take out for garbage!
Sovereign, what kind of crazy economics are you dreaming up to say that Sonic TEAM could be happy with the numbers they shifted with their shit game? According to MGC the 2006 game has 109634 unique users online (360-wise), that's barely even a dent on the kind of numbers top titles usually produce. MGC isn't the most reliable source granted, but take another 2006 title - Gears. 1535055 nearly 15x as many /online/ users alone. No company dealing with the development costs involved with a 360 game is going to go in with an intention of making a shit game which won't recoup its investment and achieve maximum sale potential.
On a separate note, far from making these supposed "millions" off Sonic, Sega-Sammy's share price has dropped by nearly 75% since 2006. It's common knowledge the only thing keeping Sega afloat at the moment is it's domination in Pachinko machines in Japan. You could argue again that the 360/PS3 sales are irrelevent and the majority of Sonic games sell on the Wii to 12 year olds, but as the Wii console has the lowest game attachment ratio of all three brands (source:MVC) it's also quite unlikely to be any number of real significance.
Sonic the Hedgehog: 2006, got a combined Metacritic "user" score of 6. Sonic Rush (based on the old retro style) got 8.1. So as the editorial says, Sonic fans do want the old 'retro' style of game according by the numbers. So apologies if I "know nothing" as you say but the opinion derived in the article is from sourced, credited facts.