Yesterday, Eva told you that Star Trek D-A-C was headed to XBox Live Arcade. As a self-admitted Star Trek junkie, I got so excited that I spent a few hours last night playing through it. So, now I ask myself the question: Would I recommend it to you, gentle readers?

At its core, Star Trek D-A-C is a top-down, space combat game set in the timeline of the new Star Trek movie. It’s a game that is primarily focused on multiplayer, so if you don’t have a Live Gold account, you may not get your money’s worth out of this title.

As a Trek fan, it’s kind of neat to be able to fly around in a Constitution-class flagship and attempt to take on the evil Romulan Empire. D-A-C fulfills this need with three game modes: Assault, Conquest, and Team Deathmatch.

Assault is basically attack & defend. Each team attempts to capture four points within a time limit, while the other teams defends. The winner is the team that captures the most points and has the best time. Conquest is a Battlefield-style, take-and-hold game where teams must capture two points to unlock their opponent’s base for capture. Team Deathmatch is, well, if you don’t know what TDM is by now, you probably aren’t actually reading this.

So far, so good, right? Now for the big questions: is there cooperative play, and just which starships do I get my grubby paws on?

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So Thursday has come and gone and the next part of the Star Wars video game saga arrived on home consoles yesterday – even though its but a teaser Demo for the game due next month.

It may be clear from some of my earlier coverage that I’m a bit of a Star Wars fanboy. I admit that not everything Star Wars = Good but the premise of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, a story where the secret apprentice of Darth Vader is aiding him during the dark times to hunt down and destroy the remaining Jedi, actually made a lot of sense to me.

Did we actually expect that Vader had been doing nothing for 30 years but flying about the universe hunting down errant Jedi? Of course he had help! The Apprentice is the focus of the game and its rather short demo.

The demo is fairly short and linear. You’ll hop into character after a quick chat with your master and then it’s all slice and fling until you reach the end. There was a slight hint at puzzle based gameplay using the force with the hanger doors but not a lot more than run, slice up or throw enemy, pick up liberally scattered explosive barrels and destroy enemies. What will help this game stand out will be its story and from a lot of the previews is that I expect there to be a much deeper Star Wars tale in the making here that can’t easily be gleaned in a 20 minute demonstration.

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N+
Developer: Silverbirch Studios
Publisher: Atari
Price: $19.99
Platform: PSP, DS
Category: Puzzle/Platformer
ESRB: “E” for Everyone
Release Date: August 26, 2008

I had never really played N+ before in either its Xbox Live Arcade or PC iterations (it was simply known as N on PCs), save for a very brief session on PC where I had to close my browser almost immediately because I have a very obsessive personality — and this is the type of game that absolutely thrives on that type of person.

The premise is simple enough: get through a stage as quickly as possible using controls that are nothing more than left, right, and jump. There are little gold along the way to collect that add to your score (which is constantly decreasing as time passes), but your only real goal is to get to a certain spot, which usually won’t be open until you hit a switch. While initially it seems simple and fun enough, you get the impression that the ensuing levels (of which there are hundreds) will become nothing more than a cavalcade of mediocrity. With such basic gameplay, it’s not an unreasonable assumption, but play the game for a solid 20 minutes and you’ll begin to see what’s possible by introducing even a single new enemy.

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I’ll be honest: the name “Red Faction” brings up more memories of “meh” gameplay to me than most other series that have survived past one sequel. So nothing could have been a bigger surprise for me than when I was given a chance to play the new Red Faction Guerrilla at E3 and found myself completely blown away by it. Granted, my impression of it was probably helped along by the fact that the developers put me in a giant mech suit to trash the fully destructible environments with, but I was still left wanting more. Thankfully, now I’ve been given that chance with the multiplayer beta that launched on Monday. So does the multiplayer make as much of an impression as the single-player? In a word…er, “sweetjebusyesyesyes.”

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XBLA Hors D’oeurvres are a weekly feature where I play the latest Xbox Live Arcade game – in trial form – for no more than 10 minutes, and then summarize my impressions of the game based upon only that.

I cheated with this week’s new Xbox Live Arcade game. Typically for these pieces, I download the trial and play that for about ten minutes. But this morning, I bought Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2 without a moment’s hesitation. In order to still write about this game XBLA Hors D’oeuvres-style, I’ve restrained myself to playing for only about 15-20 minutes — just enough time to unlock and try all six of the game’s modes.

As I made pretty clear earlier, I’m absolutely digging the game and every single one of its game modes. This is truly the sequel Geometry Wars fans have been wanting.

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XBLA Hors D’oeurvres are a weekly feature where I play the latest Xbox Live Arcade game – in trial form – for no more than 10 minutes, and then summarize my impressions of the game based upon only that.

I stand by my earlier assessment that Go! Go! Break Steady’s description is irrevocably stupid. But after playing the game for just a few minutes, I can see that there was no better way to describe the game and that — more importantly — it’s a hell of a lot of fun to play.

Part DDR and part Zuma, Break Steady consists of two completely different game mechanics which don’t make a lot of sense to pair together. They do, however (or is that somehow?), go along with each other quite nicely.

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XBLA Hors D’oeurvres are a weekly feature where I play the latest Xbox Live Arcade game – in trial form – for no more than 10 minutes, and then summarize my impressions of the game based upon only that.

The 194X games hold a special place in my heart, as they were among the first shooters I ever played — certainly the first vertically scrolling shooter. Naturally, an updated version of 1942 seemed like it was right up my alley, particularly considering the number of games similar to this that I play, I’d be glad to get the nostlagia factor in there.

Capcom wasn’t promising the world with Joint Strike, but basically just what you think when you hear “updated version.” I thought that’s all I wanted, but as it turns out, I was very wrong.

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I’m a Fallout fan. I’ve been following this game since it was a GURPS title. I was saddened when Interplay lost their way and the franchise seemed doomed to obscurity but when Bethesda scooped up the game three years ago I found renewed hope.

Last year Todd Howard, and the team fresh off of The Elder Scrolls Oblivion showed a very tight, controlled demonstration of the game in action, and this year I actually got 30 minutes of hands on time with the title. While the areas shown in the live demo area covered much the same content as last years presentation I didn’t care. This wasn’t my shot to gauge the story or the acting; this was about finding out if Fallout could translate to the 1st person RPG space and not lose its charm.

Well I have good and bad news for Fallout fans. Fallout 3 makes the transition well but only if you’re a fan of the Oblivion style of gaming (which I most definitely am). Controlling the character, implementing stat points and choosing perks using the Pip boy interface were all simple and intuitive.

Unlike Oblivion, Fallout 3 does not rely on a clunky interface. There is inventory management but its reminiscent of the older Fallout’s turn based grid with a few modern updates. The change of setting – from a medieval combat system to a modern gun-slinging wasteland works well also. I demo’d the game on the 360 and the title showed the same visual finesse of Bethesda’s earlier game. Those who found fault with the dialog interface or camera system of that title will find it virtually unchanged.

I spent a good deal of time navigating and interacting with NPCs. Dialog choices that could be influenced by skills were set apart – including the percentage chance of success, though the actual “roll” was hidden it was obvious when you succeeded or failed. This little tweak felt like a good reflection of the classic games and the content of the dialog also followed a more adult, humorous bent in the area of Megaton.

Wading into combat with some rabid scavengers in an old elementary school, I used every chance possible once engaged to test out the V.A.T.S. targeting system. This turn-based mode freezes combat momentarily and displays a digital overlay of a foe. The various target spots of the baddie glows and players can choose trick shots with likely success indicated by percentages based on skills and perks your character has.

All in all I’m just as excited about this game as I was last year. The hands on experience felt familiar in many good ways and with the game coming soon on the 360, PC and PS3 at least I won’t have to wait long to wander around at the end of the world nuking super mutants.

Like many older gamers I was a fan of the golden age of Sonic the Hedgehog. I still have fond memories of a certain New Years Eve party when I was younger and the challenge was issued amongst the rather inebriated guests to partake in a competition of skill.. namely to see who could get the furthest in Sonic the Hedgehog on the Genesis. I’d never been particularly good at the game, though I’d spent a lot of hours playing it but as the host I was obligated to try the best. Long story short, I got further in Sonic that night than any other time since and I credit that to my loose reflexes compensating for the game’s innate sense of speed.

Years have passed and Sonic’s seen better days. The last two games – Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic and the Secret of the Rings were mediocre titles that lacked the certain charm and style of the earliest games, or event the excellent early 3D games.

Sega wants another shot at changing the impression that Sonic is old hat. Last year’s Mario & Sonic titles sold well but they were not true Sonic games. The announcement of Sonic Unleashed however caught the attention of Sonic fans and the limited screens and footage hinted that maybe Sega had finally found the right mix to recreate the Blue Hedgehog for the new consoles.

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Since I wasn’t the one who wrote any of the three previous stories about Schizoid, I had absolutely no idea what I was getting into when I started up the game. I decided to forgo looking at any of the game’s instructions and jumped right into the game, which turned out to be a good decision.

In Schizoid, you control one (or two) ship that is either red or blue. Enemies will appear throughout the stage which you have to destroy, but with an Ikaruga-like twist: the blue ship can only destroy blue enemies by running into them, and likewise for red. Enemies of the other color can destroy you, so the two ships need to work together to take out enemies and keep them off your partner’s back (whether that’s another player, the CPU, or even you, if you think you’re good enough to control both ships). The game starts off fairly slow, but after a few levels, one of the challenges presented to me completely won me over with the game’s unique co-op play.

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