Okay, let’s delve into the games provided.

Kameo

Kameo could be considered one of the children in the family, what with its pretty design and use of bright colours. That’s not to say it doesn’t look good – far from it. In hi-def, it looks superb, especially when you see the level of detail on offer in the opening cut scene, after climbing the castle wall. The Dragon looks wonderful. Equally as detailed are the areas you pass through on your quest – forests, bog lands, caves, and more. Rare has really put quite a lot of effort into making the visual impact of this game strike a chord.

Kameo, an Elvin Princess whose quest is to defeat the Troll king, Thorn, having been bestowed with magical transformation powers, allowing her to change into any of the ten Elemental Warriors to defeat various enemies or get to certain areas of the map, finds herself without her Warriors, and must free them, in order to release her royal family (The Ancestors) from their captive confines. Battling Trolls, Dragons, obstacles, and various other creatures along the way, with the aid of Ortho offering advice through the Whatnot Book, Kameo is a thoroughly entertaining and enjoyable game and will have you hooked for more than a quick five minute blast.

Don’t play this with the kids around – they’ll want a go, and will only put up with “another 5 minutes” for so long before the tantrums start. You’ve been warned!

Perfect Dark Zero

It’s 2020, and Joanna Dark, on a mission for vengeance after the death of her family, finds herself immersed in an unseen, but on-going, battle of corruption and conspiracy by ruthless corporations, vying for global domination. Using her skills and a plethora of technologically advanced weapons and devices, she is charged with saving mankind from the impending implosion of the outwardly invisible war.

Another Rare title, and one which has elements reminiscent of Halo and GoldenEye (a previous Rare title for the N64), Perfect Dark Zero is a captivating and engaging prequel to the original Perfect Dark on the N64, and with graphics that the Xbox 360 can throw out in hi-def, you’ll find yourself immersed in playing it non-stop for hours on end.

Halo is isn’t, but it’s a stunning looking and playing game in its own right – definitely one to have and to hold, for better or worse, richer or poorer, ‘til thumb-blisters do you part. The marriage of Rare’s talents and the raw power of the Xbox 360 can easily be seen in PDZ – it’s all there on show, you don’t have to go looking for it.

The only one minor criticism is with all the power the 360 has, Rare didn’t make more of an effort to make Joanna’s hair look a tad more realistic. It’s just a bit more stuck on than what would be preferred.

Aside from that, the AI (artificial intelligence) is spot on, the details of the surroundings and weapons is sumptuous, and the cut-scenes beautiful and not too cheesy. From the first moment you pick up the joypad and start PDZ, you’re drawn in immediately and captivated by its offerings.

With excellent gameplay providing more than enough to maintain interest long past when the 360 novelty factor wears off, and multiplayer online via Live!®, Perfect Dark Zero should keep you engrossed and have you returning time after time to receive or dish out your punishment from/to others – wherever they be around the globe.

Project Gotham Racing 3

The third in the PGR series, which initially started out as Metropolis Street Racer on the distance memory that is Sega’s Dreamcast – a console that was technically better than the PS2, having VGA (640x480) graphics, not 320x240. This game alone was justification enough for owning a Dreamcast, such was its ability to hook you and reel you in to the immersive world of driving numerous cars – some exotic, some mundane – through spectacular-looking streets based upon, or truly mirrored, cities found on this planet.

Also new to the this type of game, was the earning of Kudos, which would allow you to trade up to better and faster cars. Kudos was earned through driving styles – hanging the tail of the car out, handbraking round a tight bend, drafting a car in front, and more. As the challenges were met and dispensed with, you gradually revealed the better, more desirable cars, from which you could then choose, Kudos permitting of course.

Another novel element to this innovative game was the use of time zones. In setting up your console, with the correct time of day, if you were racing in San Francisco, which is 8 hours behind the GMT, then you raced with the sky displaying the actual time of day or night. So, playing at midnight GMT, meant San Francisco’s sky would show a late afternoon sun, low in the sky. All this created a stunning realism rarely found in other games of its time, and provided the opportunity of suspending belief that you really were in San Francisco at 4pm.

So, moving on a number of years, and what’s changed – well, nothing really. It’s much the same as previously, except now with the additional processing power of the 360 console, everything is just that much more. More polygons to make up the cars, more highly detailed surroundings, more accurate car behaviour, more high fidelity sounds of the cars’ engine, tyre squeal, and music tracks.

Of course, it’s when playing on Live! ® that the major changes have occurred – there’s the addition of Gotham TV, which allows you to watch races as they happen.

So, is PGR 3 a must have game, even if you’ve played the original MSR and PGR series on the Xbox? Absolutely – the graphics alone are justification (déjà vu anyone?), but with the world of Live!® to explore, and the superb realism afforded by the graphics (did I mention the graphics are fantastic?), you’ll waste months of your life living in the alternate reality that is Project Gotham Racing.

With more depths to explore than previous versions, PGR3 deservedly belongs to your list of must-haves and is not just another tried and trusted formulaic output, designed to earn the developer money for little effort. You can easily appreciate the amount of sweat, blood, and tears that Bizarre Creations’ teams have given up to make this ready at launch time.

Condemned

From Sega, comes a new direction in game style – one that you wouldn’t normally expect them to get involved in, never mind pull off in spectacular fashion. This is precisely what they have managed to achieve, and if this is not in your stocking on Xmas morning, someone needs a good talking too – open hand style!

Seriously though, for Sega’s first foray into the psychological thriller/horror genre famed by the Resident Evil series and mirrored by the Silent Hill series, Condemned: Criminal Origins will have you sitting with the lights on and talking to yourself.

In the role of an FBI agent from the SCU (Serial Crimes Unit), you are on a course of relentless pursuit for the urban serial killers using your forensic tools and whatever weapons you can find, as ammo is scarce.

Cleverly interspersed with black and white cut-scene flashbacks at certain parts of the levels you’re on, coupled with unexpected happenings just as you’re beginning to relax and become absorbed by the gameplay, the game is extremely well put together, with plot twists aplenty and major attention given to the high-level physics and intelligence of enemies. Condemned brings a whole new meaning to realism – so much so, there could well be a raft of lawsuits landing on Sega’s lawyers’ desks seeking compensation for sleepless nights and induced nervousness.

Even with the composite input used on ordinary TVs, this will happen, but once you utilise the power of the 360 in hi-def mode, jumping at the least sound heard around you is practically guaranteed. With 5.1 thrown into the fray – there’ll be some who’ll play this game only in broad daylight, with the curtains wide open. Eerie isn’t the word for it.

Monolith via Sega have really knocked out an absolute barnstormer of a game in Condemned: Criminal Origins, and if it sets a precedence from them, then you can be assured of many an hour of  spine-tingling, hair-on-end, wide-eyed enjoyment. It’s sufficiently different from the RE and SH titles, but follows in their primary aim – to scare the bejesus out of you when you least expect it to. It works, it’s brilliantly planned and executed, and here’s hoping it’s only the first of many to come from them in this mould.

Only one slight downside is judging the distance from foes – it can be a bit deceiving with the camera angle, and sometimes you miss from a distance that previously was fine, with the same weapon. Maybe it was just me being jumpy, trying to get the first hit in, and I pulled the trigger button prematurely. Whatever, Condemned scared the life out of me at times, but strangely I still came back for more of the same – dull and boring is isn’t, highly addictive, it most certainly is!

Need For Speed

Need For Speed: Most Wanted, from Electronic Arts is the sixth such offering from them. Like PGR3, the graphics are just stunning, even appreciably so with just the composite output in use. Go hi-def, and it’s another 2 steps up – absolutely glorious. The cars are not the only benefactors of the 360’s graphical power – the streets, buildings, sky, everything is exquisitely detailed. At this point in time, developers such as EA are busy harnessing the power of the new hardware and learning what it takes to extract the maximum from it. They’ve got this far with results that are astonishingly good, so it’s exciting and frightening to think this could only be a fraction of what they can extract from the Xbox 360 as time goes on. If so, and when they do pull more out of the console, prepare to have your jaw wired shut, otherwise it’ll hit the floor with an almighty wallop, again!

Nit picking, some of the cut-scenes appear to show the cars skirting across the road surface – not really feeling as though they are connected to it. There are a couple of other minor oddities, and whilst marring the illusion of reality, they don’t ruin things beyond being aware it’s not absolutely perfect.

That said and done, the appeal of the game is far reaching, and with the accompanying soundtracks, you’ll be in your element for quite some time. As the game opens more areas of the map for you to explore and challenge harder and faster drivers, some of the challenges to earn money and allow progress to meeting the next Blacklist member, are long and enthralling, encompassing more of the total area now available to roam in. With each Blacklist member dismissed, you can choose 2 rewards from him or her – anything from get out of jail free markers, unique performance upgrades, unique parts / vinyls, to the pink slip for their ride.

Sounds haven’t been scrimped on for the sake of graphics – everything being of high quality and capable of permitting you to suspend belief that you’re merely playing a game.

Of course, driving violations will have the police looking out for your car, and pursuing you, as you attempt to evade the long arm of the law. Out-run them or face being busted and having to cough up some hard-earned or one of your markers, as well as facing the prospect of having your machine impounded, meaning more money spent on releasing it. More money spent in the cop-shop, means less to spend on pimping your ride to beyond the max – yes, you can go too far and make it look bad, and in this case, bad equals bad, not good. Still, they say beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

So, whilst NFS is a continuation on a theme, it is more than just another version turned out cheaply and quickly for maximum profit. There’s more to Most Wanted than it initially may be given credit for, especially with Live!®  to provide countless hours of thrills and spills racing friends or strangers online.

Review by - PJ Skelton

Published - 25/12/2005

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