• Domestic

Xbox 360 2009 Games

• By GamePro Staff
• January 07, 2009 16:35 PM PST
• Print
• Email this!
• Share
  • Digg
  • Yahoo Buzz!
  • FaceBook
  • StumbleUpon
  • del.icio.us

Tekken 6: Bloodline Rebellion

It's coming, and it's about time. Soul Calibur IV was fun to fiddle with for a while, but customizing armor can only distract you from dull arenas and wonky balance for so long. Taking its cue from Dead or Alive 4's battlegrounds, Tekken 6 sports several tiered arenas. Landing bone-crushing hits will splinter the ground beneath you, sending both players plummeting to another section of the stage. Likewise, Soul Calibur's character customization will make an appearance, but with a twist: Each of the game's 41 characters will sport signature items that can be used in combat to brilliant-or hilarious-effect.

But the real change to Tekken 6 is in its gameplay. A new bounce mechanic will let you juggle your friends until they want to break their controllers, and the Rage system will increase your damage if your vitality drops too far. The end result is a heck of a lot more damage getting spread around the stage, so everyone will be given a significant boost to their health bars to compensate.

The biggest shocker is that Tekken 6: Bloodline Rebellion will debut on both the PS3 and Xbox 360. Whichever system you own, the fight begins this fall.

Wolfenstein

Every first-person shooter can trace its lineage back to Wolfenstein 3D, the great-granddaddy of FPS games. Before Doom conquered the PC and paved the way for Quake, Unreal, and Halo, Wolf 3D was there. It didn't pioneer the genre, but it sure helped make it what we know and love today. In 2001, Return to Castle Wolfenstein did for multiplayer what Wolf 3D did for shooters, blending objective- and class-based gameplay into a single experience, well before Battlefield 1942 came along.

Now, nearly seven years later, Raven Software's new Wolfenstein is looking just as sweet as its forebears. The sequel to RTCW, Wolf is built on the id Tech 4 engine. These days, those visuals aren't really anything to write home about, but the gameplay is exactly why FPS games win: Nazis, demons, inter-dimensional travel, and an arsenal of weaponry that can only be described as ?ber.

Wolf's story goes something like this: "BJ" Blazkowicz, OSS field agent and star of the first two games, has once again stumbled upon a Nazi plot. Hitler's occult-chasers have discovered an extra-dimensional energy source called Black Sun. Predictably, they think such power could make for some awesome weapons, so they've devised a way to bridge the gap between our dimension and Black Sun's. They've built devices that can shift you in and out of the Veil-a limbo world that shimmers between the two dimensions. And though actions in the Veil can affect our world, they rarely work as expected.

The result? You'll basically be fighting off hordes of demons with superpowers. Some enemies will have shields that can only be penetrated through the Veil; others will succumb to your "mire" ability, which slows them down and gives you the chance to pick them off one by one. There will even be puzzles that involve hopping in and out of the Veil, getting around obstacles that only exist in one of the two dimensions.

It wouldn't be Wolfenstein without the quintessential Enemy Territory gameplay, and Raven Software's Wolf shouldn't disappoint. This time around, though, you won't just be reaching for objectives as part of a team; you'll be tearing through the Veil with paranormal weapons along the way. Should Wolf be on your radar? You bet your shiny behind.

UFC 2009 Undisputed

UFC 2009 looks spectacular for a game that's still in training. In particular, we're wowed by the photo-realistic character models. In the game's demo, UFC favorites Quinton "Rampage" Jackson and Forrest Griffin look uncannily similar to their real-life counterparts. Everything from facial stubble to the ever-present sweat hints at a deep level of finely-tuned textures. With over 30,000 polygons being used for the game's roster of 80-plus fighters, THQ and Yuke's seem to be pushing the graphics as far as they can go. Aside from the huge cast, UFC 2009 will also support a full-fledged character creation system.

An interesting style choice in UFC 2009 is the lack of superfluous material in the heads-up display. Nixing health bars and battle text, THQ wants to maintain an air of authenticity in UFC 2009 so that playing the game feels exactly like watching a match. A fighter's level of damage or fatigue is apparent from the way the character models change during a match. Bruises, cuts, and other injuries not only hint at damage, and alter fighting styles, but also provide a focal point for attacks. In the demo we saw ribs turned purple after a barrage of punches, while a flurry of knee strikes transformed faces into a meat pizza.

UFC 2009 also pushes the idea of "contextual strikes," a feature where your fighter's position in relation to an opponent will affect your attacks. For example, a long-distance left hook will animate and land differently from a close-range attack with the same button. Also, when simultaneous punches occur, limbs collide realistically instead of clattering together like sticks of wood. This means that when you kick someone in the leg, you will actually see your foot sink into the muscle of the other fighter. UFC 2009's grappling system is impressive too-there's equally as much detail in ground grappling as there is in standing combat, which is important for the in-game fighting styles that will be used, like Brazilian jujitsu and wrestling. Forget the forgettable PS2-era UFC games...this game looks like a champion.

WWE: Legends of Wrestlemania

Of all of life's guilty pleasures, pro wrestling probably takes the cake. It's rife with painfully bad acting, blatantly stupid story lines, and crazy crosses between the real world and the wrestling world. It's an industry of heels and faces, of pouting breasts and gigantic thighs, where punches never actually land and men in tights dive through gimmicked tables. Yet despite it all, every monthly WWE event is sold out. Pay-per-view orders cost three times as much as movie tickets, and wrestlers are rightly identified as superstars. You might tell your friends or you might not, but watching a wrestling match can be shamefully entertaining.

Wrestling Soap Opera

It's been like that for years. The history of the WWE is deep and scandalous, and much of it wraps around a set of iconic figures recognized openly as industry legends. From Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant to The Rock and Stone Cold Steve Austin, many pro wrestlers have become household names. Some have even made the transition from the ring to the film screen, but never have the earliest and most influential been brought together like this.

WWE: Legends of Wrestlemania has been a long time coming. Unlike the WWE SmackDown! game series, Legends will focus solely on those early contenders in the company's history, the ones that made it what it is today. Historic matches comprise the game's core, supplemented with a host of authentic video and audio. It all adds up to a simple premise: introduce the matches with real intros, score them with classic commentary, and then step back and let the players rewrite wrestling history.

Out with the Old...

Every animation in the game was built from the ground up, and the controls have been radically simplified. Instead of relying on luck and a stamina bar, moves in Legends are built on a combo system. When you start a grapple with your opponent, you can begin chaining moves together, with each move a link in the chain that connects to new and different options. Go far enough down the chain, and you'll temporarily unlock your wrestler's finisher, but it all relies on following on-screen cues that anyone can see. You'll have to be careful to not let your buddy smash a cue button before you do, lest he breaks the combo and steals the initiative in a match.

Anticipated as Legends may be, it's already received a lot of backlash from fans for not including certain wrestlers. Mick Foley, for instance, has long been a fixture in the WWE, but his place in the game was stripped after he left the company for industry competitor TNA. In a game that relies so heavily on its fan base, such moves could spell disaster. Legends will just have to make up for it by blowing everyone away.

Wheelman

We can sense your disappointment. After a year with stellar sequels in the GTA and Saint's Row franchises, how could 2009 even begin to compare in the sandbox genre? Well, Vin Diesel is hoping the relative lack of open-world crime sims will provide an opportunity for Wheelman to pull ahead of the competition.

Developed by the Hollywood celeb's own Tigon Studios, Vin Diesel will also have the starring role in Wheelman as Milo Burik, an undercover agent seeking to infiltrate an underground crime syndicate in Barcelona. While we've been told that the game will indeed feature on-foot action, the emphasis of the early footage has been the insane driving action. True to the game's title, Burik is an expert driver, deftly dodging bullets and potential pile-ups.

The game seems to be channeling the Driver series of old before it went down the tubes. For example, the chases we saw seemed to encourage inventive route finding, like plowing through a middle floor of an office building during a chase. That's not to say you'll always be on the run, as the game offers up many opportunities to fire back at the other car-bound baddies. We've heard that the game will allow through-windshield gunfire, which makes sense. After all, if your character is willing to bash other cars to oblivion, why does he have to shoot out through the side window? It's a cool little addition of realism, and hopefully it'll have some gameplay ramifications, too.

The Wheelman was originally set to release alongside a movie adaptation, but it seems like Diesel's moved onto other movie projects, including the fourth chapter of The Fast and the Furious (4 Fast 4 Furious?). Hopefully, Midway will give the game a head start on the movie.

• Previous Page Prev
• Next Page Next
• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4

• Print
• Email this!
• Share
  • Digg
  • Yahoo Buzz!
  • FaceBook
  • StumbleUpon
  • del.icio.us