Free Advertising!

If you've been on Xbox LIVE in the past week, you've probably seen an ad banner for a free title called Doritos Dash of Destruction. Well, the game is pretty straightforward LIVE arcade game with a remarkably simple concept: you play as either a T-Rex who is trying to catch and eat a Doritos delivery truck or you play as said truck trying to make deliveries while a T-Rex is trying to eat you.

Now, I know this game is supposed to be pure product placement for Doritos, but to imply that they wouldn't give their drivers the day off if a T-Rex was trying to eat their truck doesn't reflect well on the company.

Corporate ethic issues aside, the game itself is surprisingly not bad. It can be blown through in about 45 minutes and you can easily pick up the 200 gamer points it offers with fairly little effort. Each level is made up of various numbers of trucks, T-Rexs and fully destructable buildings. Also, the upgraded components that you recieve after each mission are well balanced and simply entertaining.

Even after the final level you're given a vestigial upgrade that you can't even use. The in-game avatar of the game's lead designer Mike Borland even points out how useless they are.

I haven't gotten a chance to play multiplayer yet since it doesn't support online play over LIVE for whatever reason but I'm sure they play very much like the single player modes since each level is a self-contained arcade-style experience.

Now here's the good news: It's free! I can safely say that I wouldn't be happy with this game at all if I had to spend money on it, not for lack of polish or enjoyment, but for how short it is and the lack of depth. For a freebie Xbox LIVE download though, it's not bad as long as you can stomach all the shameless Doritos advertising.

Also, the game was a result of a contest held by Doritos to give young game developers a chance to build a title for LIVE Arcade. Full video coverage of Mike Borland's rise through the ranks of humble contest participant to amateur game designer is available at http://www.unlockxbox.com/documentaries/ViewDocumentaries.aspx.

-That Guy

The Fantasy Draft

Here we are in the aftermath of the holiday gaming glut with countless great releases bristled storefronts and online markets at every turn. Not to mention all the great titles that released just prior to the holiday rush, many of which I missed out on, that are now all dropping in price.

So why the hell do I keep coming back to Madden '08?

Okay, we have the Superbowl coming up so football is in the air, and I never bothered to actually buy Madden '09 so it's not as crazy as it could be, but still.

I have a copy of Fallout 3 sitting right next to my Xbox, I've only seen maybe a third of the game's content and I bypass it in favor of an outdated, repetitive sports game I've played constantly for the past two years.

Well, the key to Madden '08's replay value is in a game mode I just recently invested in: the fantasy draft franchise mode. Basically, when you start a franchise, you click "enable fantasy draft" and then all the players in the league are put into free agency and you build your team from scratch. This works so well because the entire league has rosters that you have never seen before so the dynamic of the game is drastically changed.

Also, since draft years and scouting agencies are worthless in the fantasy draft, teams are much more balanced which keeps things interesting.

The fantasy draft should be a standard in all professional sports games. It gives the game an extra element of customization that is otherwise lacking. Sure, you can create a team, stadium and jersey, but the fantasy draft allows you to drastically alter the entire league.

Perhaps I'm terrible at being a gamer nerd, or perhaps I have a Madden addiction and should seek help, or maybe I just really want to pretend that the Minnesota Vikings made it to the Superbowl. Either way, sometimes those outdated games are just as fun as the new sexier titles.

-That Guy

The New Skate 2 Demo

Okay, I'm a big fan of the first skate. It gave players the kinetic feel of skateboarding without giving them the massive concussions that come with wiping out. So naturally, I jumped all over the Skate 2 demo that was recently released on Xbox LIVE Arcade. Well, it wasn't disappointing and you shouldn't be either.

It would appear that EA, along with basically every other developer these days, has adopted the notion that "if it's not broken, don't fix it" and decided that the sequel should be an improvement on the first rather than a whole new game. The 'flick it' controls come back and are as sexy as always and the artistic direction is nearly identical with locations and characters aspiring to look real rather than the cartoonish aesthetic of the Tony Hawk franchise.

The biggest change that got me genuinely excited was the ability to step off of your board. Never before in the illustrious single-installment history of the Skate franchise has a playable character been able to walk; a fact that the in-game tutorials blatantly point out.

"While you were gone, we learned how to walk!"

Between the ability to walk and tighter grind/lip trick controls this looks like a title that any former Skate fan should probably have on their new-release radar. The only issues were that the running controls were pretty awkward and the wheel-level camera is still there. I don't know what camera angle would have been better to compliment the feel of the controls, but I can't help but think there's an alternative that would let us see a little more of our surroundings.

If you haven't already checked out the demo, give it a run. It contains the full character editor and even some multiplayer games, which makes it one of the most comprehensive demos I've played in a long time; or maybe ever.

Skate 2 launches on January 21st, and I'm going to rent the hell out of that game :-P

-That Guy

Getting Back into PC Gaming?

I've all but sworn off PC gaming forever. Well, not really. I always liked the notion of gaming on my PC, but since I haven't had any money in the past four years I figured the notion of having a PC powerful enough to play anything more demanding than Solitaire was out of the question.

I have a history of PC gaming, most notably a two year Everquest addiction that left me in a pasty vampiric state and I had been so isolated that my friends had actually forgot who I was. I spent a similar stint on WoW, but since it was so recent my sponsor says I shouldn't talk about it.

A few years ago I invested in an Xbox 360 with the little expendable income I had. After all, most of the games I felt like I was missing on the PC (The Orange Box) were cross-platform and I'd have to sell a kidney to get a PS3, and if I was going that far I would have just upgraded my tower.

As the years went on and I spent more and more time on Xbox LIVE, I found my social skills waning. My brow extended, I started growing hair in odd places and I found myself calling random objects "fags" right before teabagging them. I had willingly degenerated into a console fanboy, which I still am to this day, but last night I saw a revelation.

For Christmas this year I received a new laptop. My folks basically took pity on me since my old one was so bad its frame rate actually dropped when using Microsoft Word. So I decided to put this new, sexy machine to the test and I logged on to EA's Crysis homepage to see if my machine could handle what is easily the benchmark in punishing system requirements.

After running a quick diagnostic, the laptop actually passed! I took the hour and a half to download and install the demo and was quickly whisked away to a tropical island in a really bad ass suit of power armor. Okay, I know this game is old news at this point, but from the perspective of a console-tard, I was blown away.

Well, not at first. I was impressed by the visuals but I hated the controls. What PC gamers boast as "precision" felt (to me) like a clumsy system. Well, it turns out that those were just my growing pains. After all, when you've been crawling for so many years you have to relearn to walk.

After about an hour of getting shot up and failing miserably, I finally found my stride and realized that Crysis was best played if you ignored the Halo-style Rambo instinct and actually thought out situations before barrelling in balls first. I had completely forgotten that tactics actually existed in first person shooters special thanks to my limited outings in shooters comprised entirely of Left 4 Dead and Halo 3.

I'm probably going to go out and pick up the full version of this game at some point. And I'll probably grab a few real time strategy titles while I'm at it, just to see how much of my young PC gaming self still lies dormant within me.

In the mean time, I need to go spread the word to all my gaming friends that I have a computer that can run Crysis. After all, I am "that guy."