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Tag: Xbox

Weekly Gaming: It’s Quiz Time (Xbox One)

It’s been a while since I last played a quiz game, especially one that I can play with family and friends. In fact, it’s thanks to my friends that It’s Quiz Time even come on my radar at all. After a great catch up around their house they proceeded to ask me if I enjoy quiz games and whether I’d be interested in playing one on the xbox, with my iPhone as the controller. Intrigued I jumped at the idea, and proceeded to have a great time answering questions and losing terribly, all in the name of catching up with old friends and having a good time.

Fast forward a few weeks and another set of friends were wondering what we could do at a meet up. Thinking back, I recalled it’s quiz time, and how it’d be really useful at this encounter due to it’s control scheme of using each players mobile phone as the personal controller. So, £15 later we had bought the game and within another half an hour we were all playing it whilst drinking the night away.

So what is It’s quiz time? As can probably be told by my introduction and the game’s title, it’s a quiz game for the Xbox One, with the main premise of the game being to download a standalone app on your respective phone, and then answer the question accordingly without no one else knowing. It’s Quiz Time comprises of over 25,000 questions, so it’s rare you’ll see the same question twice. An advantage the constant internet connection employs.

As should now be obvious, I love the fact that each player uses their mobile phone as the controller. It makes It’s Quiz time feel all the more personal, especially since other players can’t see what answers you’re giving until it’s already on the TV. The fact as well that you each have your own usernames and the AI host recognises you from previous games just adds the cherry on the cake on personalising your experience. For example, in games where we had someone older than the rest, the AI would consistently comment on their age, saying they were a little older.

But, a quiz game is only as good as it’s questions, and thankfully, It’s Quiz Time has done a fantastic job of customising the questions to your age group. For example, if you were to put your age as 60, your choice of questions could be anything from the last 60 years, but should you say you’re younger then you’ll only get more recent questions from pop culture. This differentiator makes the game so much more enjoyable, especially since you get to always feel like you’re participating in the game, regardless of your age or knowledge.

The rounds of questions are pretty cool, and have enough variety that the game is a joy to play everytime. Some rounds require you deciding whether one player will be able to answer a question correctly, whilst others are general intelligence for everyone. It’s quite a nice variety, and is definitely enough to keep the game entertaining after quite a few replays.

The mobile app is nice and responsive, and whilst it sucks that the app has to be connected to the internet rather than directly to the xbox itself, it does the job well. I could complain that it’s not like “That’s you”, which took advantage of the unique features mobile phones bring to consoles. I suppose that’s what you get for a cheap game, and one dedicated to quizzes and quizzes alone.

So overall, if you need a party game to entertain guests, you can’t go wrong with It’s Quiz Time. It has to be said that this new trend of playing party games using mobile phones on a common console is something of an amazing invention. Almost everyone these days has a games console, and being able to sit around it with your phone and have a laugh is fantastic. So all in all, I enjoyed It’s Quiz Time, and would recommend it to anyone, especially due it’s low cost.

4/5

26/01/2018
Weekly Gaming: Q.U.B.E Directors Cut (Xbox One)

It’s been a while since I last played a puzzle game for the hell of it. I ended up playing 1010! just for the competition of beating my friends, but otherwise, I haven’t exactly gone out of my way to challenge my mind. After having a productive week in regards to games development and work relating things, I decided to dedicate my entire Saturday night to playing and completing a game. So, sitting in front of my Xbox One, I decided to look back through the many games I’ve purchased and never played, and happened across Q.U.B.E, by Toxic games.

I’ve seen the game multiple times in the last few years, but always dismissed it as “just another portal ripoff” before going about my day. It wasn’t until the Develop conference in Brighton that I finally started paying attention to the game when I met Dan Da Rocha. Having spoken to him and then going off and watching some trailers, I decided I would buy the game, and one day (time pertaining) would give it a play. Suffice to say, I’m glad I did.

The game starts out like a typical indie game: you’ve lost your memory, and are in a strange simplistic (aetsthically speaking) place. You walk along and start getting voices radioed to you: apparently you’re in a space station which is close to earth and have been tasked with destroying this alien station for the benefit of all mankind. Walking on, you find a room which makes you go into sectors, with the first sector teaching you the basics of the game; namely cube manipulation.

You see, QUBE (which stands for Quick Understanding of Block Extrusion) does what it says on the tin. You must make your way from point A to point B (the exit) using blocks that extrude from the walls and floor. Each colour of blocks behave in a different way: red blocks are regular and extrude one press at a time, yellow extrudes as a group, blue as a spring, and purple as a room rotation. Using different combinations of these blocks will allow you to traverse the environment, and in turn, get to another sector.

When I write it down like that it makes the game sound a lot easier than it actually is, but with each new sector comes a new way to use and present this basic building blocks. Sector 4 for example turns out all of the lights, meaning you can only see the colours of a set of blocks when you turn those specific blocks on. I thoroughly enjoyed a sector where you played with exposed electrical wires; multiple grayed out coloured blocks would be laid out before you, and it was up to you to use your block extruding techniques into guided these wires into powering the grayed out blocks. It was thoroughly enjoyable, and made for a new way of looking at the world.

I didn’t feel the graphics was anything great throughout my playthrough; yes, the cubes look polished and the presentation is slick throughout, but at the end of the day, you’re still only looking at a bunch of basic cubes, something modern game engines can do with relative ease. I did enjoy the music though (whenever it made an appearance), as it’s mellow tones and sometimes dramatic bass made the experience feel more alive and serious, something I would never thought I’d say about a puzzle platformer.

The story, to, is actually fairly complex and some great icing on an otherwise tasty cake. The back and forth between two characters saying things completely at odds against at each other leaves you as a player constantly guessing as to what the true intentions of the facility really is. Even in the games final moments, I genuinely didn’t know what was going to happen. It was exicting, and another reason to keep me motivated throughout the games 2 hour play time.

I suppose what I enjoyed most about Q.U.B.E was the fact that no one thing ever felt out of place or every overstayed its welcome. Puzzles and new mechanics would be shown to the player fairly frequently, pushing them to learn a new method of getting past a section in a short amount of time. Each new mechanic would be iterated time and time again, meaning nothing ever felt repetitive, despite the core building blocks of the game (protruding red, blue, yellow and purple blocks) being exactly the same. It’s extremely clever, and I have to had it to the guys at Toxic Games; they done a fantastic job.

So, is Q.U.B.E a game I should have played when it first come out? Doing a little digging around on Google tells me I made the right choice by playing the game now; the original game (not the directors cut) had no story, and no voice acting, meaning the game was 100% about the puzzles. Whilst these puzzles are good in their own right, I can’t help but feel the game would have felt a little more boring if they were the only thing to experience. Should you not have played the game by now, by all means give it a go; I know I’ll certainly be getting my other half to play the game since she loved portal so much, and I hope if you do play the game, you feel the same way.

4/5

06/05/2016
Weekly Gaming: Gears of War: Ultimate Edition (Xbox One) Review

Hi all!

So this week I managed to get a review copy of Gears of War: Ultimate Edition, and proceeded to play the hell out of it! As you can see from my review, it was OK, but was fairly dated and with no context with the graphics, I just couldn’t help but feel I was playing the same game again.

http://www.vgchartz.com/article/260682/gears-of-war-ultimate-edition-xbox-one/

As always, thank you for your support!

-Dan

28/08/2015
Media Week 2: Halo Book: The fall of Reach

This week I decided to read the prequel to the Halo series: Halo The Fall of Reach.

Being a massive Halo fan, I’ve always been interested in the extended halo universe, and I wanted to start from scratch with the books. There’s something about the immense detail and realism that goes into making all the fiction of Halo seem so real, like it really is our future as a species.

Anyway, enough of my Geekery, I feel this book is a fantastic way for anyone to expand their knowledge of the Halo Universe, teaching you about how the Spartan II project was conceived and acted out, as well as going into graphic detail as to how space battles played out.

A must read for any fan of halo, but maybe not too great for others.

3/5

16/01/2013
Torchlight XBLA Review

Torchlight fills a void that I’ve wanted to close lately: an urge to play Diablo 3 without having to pay the £44.99 my store is asking for. I bought it a while back when it was 400 MSP (Now retailing at 1200MSP or £9.99 without being in sale), and I must say it’s worth every penny. I’m 14 hours in and one of the last achievements I need to get is to get my fame at the highest I can (from what I’m aware, level 33 is the highest), and yet I feel I still could play this game plenty more, which is saying a lot for such a cheap title. I’ve played games a lot less and paid up to 4 times as much, which makes me truly value how much of a step in the right direction Torchlight was for XBLA games.

The game starts off with a lone wonderer (a character of your choosing) coming across the town of Torchlight, where supposedly there has been many monster attacks recently. You are given control of your character and can then explore the town. At this point in the game there really is no need; you have next to no money and there’s nothing to fight until you reach the other side. Upon helping a man being attacked near a cave, you proceed inside, going down floor by floor until the story is finished (the cave is technically endless, the game finishes around 33). I say story, but what I technically mean is a narrative to justify trekking through the cave. It doesn’t work, but is at least something to work towards.

Here are the three characters you should get used to looking at

Torchlight comes with the traditional three classes: Destroyer (Melee expert), Alchemist (Magic expert) and Vanquisher (Ranged expert). Each class is best suited to certain weapons, magic and armour. Within each class there are different abilities to unlock, allowing for a player to still chose a magic route even if they’ve chosen the Melee class (albeit the magic would be more catered to attack magic rather than defensive). This gives a lot more freedom than most games allow, showing that the gameplay really can be taken advantage of by any player style.

Combat is simple: you press the X button to use what weapon you currently have equipped, you then assign different spells/abilities to the buttons Y,B,RT,LT. At the start of the game you’ll find yourself only using the X button until you start levelling up and making use of the better abilities in the game. I found myself using only the abilities towards of the end of the game: having so many mana potions made this possible. Mana potions and Health potions are administered using the LB and RB buttons, making the process of healing extremely easy, no need to pause the game every few seconds. Weapons can be assigned in the menu, as well as all of the players spells.

Fighting up close in Torchlight: The camera can be zoomed in, but I wouldn’t recommend it

Loot comes in all different shapes and sizes as you’d expect. Majority of it is junk, but you’ll occasionally come across a valuable piece that will last you a good portion of the game. Some pieces of loot will need to be identified before you can equip or use it, meaning that in theory a player will have to choose wisely what they identify, and what they don’t. This wasn’t a problem for me during my playthrough, as I had enough identify scrolls to identify most objects I came across. One thing I’d like to point out is the unique way Torchlight deals with junk items you find around the place. Once in the menu you can swap items you don’t want with your pet, enabling you to carry a lot more. If you really don’t want all this loot, and instead want to get the money, you can send your pet back to the town, which will gain you a profit whilst still going through the dungeons. This is a fantastic feature that allows you all the benefits of loot, with little of the drawbacks. A slight drawback of all this cash is what to spend it on: There’s nothing. I found that the only thing I spent my money on was the enchanting service, which in itself has drawbacks. (Every time you enchant an item there’s a greater chance the item will become disenchanted, which happens all too often.)

Pet’s become a great addition to the gameplay, taking loot and transforming is just the start of it

Your pet is not only a bag for loot, it also becomes an invaluable ally in fighting; using spells just like the player and even transforming into a whole new creature when fed a fish. This makes for some very interesting gameplay situations, for example towards the end of the game my pet was just the normal wolf, and was completely underpowered, yet at the start I transformed him into a troll and he was completely overpowered. Players should heed my warning: use your pet to your advantage, doing so will make the game a lot more enjoyable, and a lot easier.

Overall Torchlight is a fantastic game which could become a torch bearer for all XBLA games; it shows a standard of gameplay rarely seen on a downloadable game. Bear in mind that this game was made in 11 months, and you see how much of an accomplishment Torchlight is for Runic Games. There is a lot more I could say about Torchlight, but the main question is: Should you buy it? I think the answer for most gamers is a reassuring “yes”.

25/05/2012