Toronto Thumbs

EVENT
Toronto Xbox LIVE Arcade Preview

Last night, I found myself in the upscale Yorkville district of Toronto. To those not familiar with the area, it’s really quite something. It’s a prissy, shi-shi land of boutique shops, bottle blondes who shop all day, and other deluded individuals willing to pay millions for tiny condos the size of a Prius.

So why was I there? Well, apart from my doing a bit of people watching beforehand, which fueled my general disdain for the conspicuous consumption of those wealthier than I will ever be, I was there to play video games. There’s a small ’50s diner in the heart of Yorkville called Flo’s Diner, and this was the location of the Xbox LIVE Arcade Preview Event.

Flat-panel monitors were set up along one side of the restaurant’s tiny bar and at the end of booth tables. On each, different games were being displayed. As media personalities began filing into the tiny diner, the bleeps and digitized gunshots got louder and louder. A good variety of games were shown, and some were obviously more popular than others (I’m looking at you, 1942: Joint Strike).

Here are the titles that were featured at the event:

Roogoo

The first game I played was the deceptively simple Roogoo. It’s somewhat of an action/puzzle game where blocks (called meteors in the game) of different shapes and colours fall down the screen. Players need to use the bumpers of the controller to rotate a series of parallel discs so that the blocks fall through the corresponding coloured and shaped hole in the discs. When the block hits the bottom disc, it is absorbed and the camera pans back up to the top disc where another block falls through.

The game starts off very simple but as the levels go by, more blocks fall simultaneously, aliens show up on some of the discs (bopping them on the head with a fast block gets rid of them – you speed up the blocks by holding the A button), and butterflies come in and start flying the blocks back up to the top of the pile of discs. As you might have guessed, failure to align the discs so that the blocks can pass through wastes your precious time.

Schizoid

From only looking at it, the game seems like it might be some sort of sequel to Geometry Wars. The background is stark black, the players and enemies are neon, as are the stage boundaries, and the music is your standard techno fare.

In reality, it’s only a bit like Geometry Wars, and that’s still a good thing. I only played the two-player mode for this game, so I can’t attest as to how the solo missions play out. In short, the two players are scorpion-type characters. One is yellow while the other is blue. There are two types of enemies on the playing field: yellow and blue. The yellow player can eat the yellow enemies while the blue player – you guessed it – can eat the blue enemies.

Where things get interesting is that the enemies know what you’re up to, and will try their hardest to avoid the player who can eat them while gravitating towards the player they can defeat. The whole point is to lure the enemies your partner can eat towards you, then make a mad dash while your partner devours them. Sounds simple, but those little buggers take corners fast (whereas you’ve got the advantage on straightaways).

After a few levels, enemies that neither player can devour starting spinning around the playing field and bloody hell breaks loose. It’s a fun little game and it’s definitely one that people will be trying to top each other’s scores in. I’m looking forward to it.

1942: Joint Strike

Ah, the vertical shooter. Some might say it’s a dying genre, but with games like Ikaruga and this being on the LIVE Arcade, I really must object. Who needs quantity when you’ve got quality? This game is a re-envisioning of the classic arcade shoot-em-up, 1942. I was somewhat sad that they didn’t decide to name this one 1943, but I can forgive the developers for that oversight considering the amount of work they put into making this game so great.

To start, players choose the type of plane they want to fly (there are three in total) and are then thrown into the heat of the battle. All the enemies and environments have been given the 3D treatment, though the game still takes place on a 2D plane, no pun intended. The action is intense – so intense that when I failed to finish off the third-level boss in time, I chose to not continue just to give my firing thumb a rest.

I’m a sucker for shooters (I recently played through R-Type and have a blast inching further into Do Don Pachi on a weekly basis) so 1942: Joint Strike will be a launch day download for me.

Tee It Up

This is one game that I didn’t have the chance to play, and it’s just as well. I stink at golf games (Wii Sports Golf included). However, I did watch a few rounds of other people playing and was pleasantly surprised at how great everything seemed to work out. The game features cutesy golfers – some with bunny slippers, even – and a variety of courses.

Oh, and it also features a weird bullet-time mode that you can enter once you’ve hit the ball in an attempt to influence the trajectory of your shot and make minor corrections to its path. Everyone who played this seemed to be having a good time, and it was certainly interesting to watch, but I don’t think I’d ever play it.

Wolf of the Battlefield: Commando 3

Between this and 1942, the tiny diner was full of the noises of gunshots and explosions. While I didn’t actually get any hands-on time with this (I was going hands-on with mini burgers and beer instead), it seemed like a solid, frenetic action title. The game’s got a cartoony visual style sorta reminiscent of Team Fortress 2 – except everything is seen from a 3/4 top-down view.

Oh, and it’s available this week on LIVE Arcade. As an added bonus, Xbox LIVE Gold subscribers who download this title will get the chance to Beta test the upcoming Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, which is something like the five billionth incarnation of Street Fighter II.

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