Thursday, July 19, 2007

Moore's new tattoo, reved up new demos, and Rockstar bullying the 360!

Well it seems as E3 2007 was the last we'll see of Peter Moore speaking for Microsoft he stepped down Tuesday to become President of EA Sports. No clue if that Halo 2, and Grand Theft Auto IV tattoos will do him any good in his new position.


Two new demos screeched onto the marketplace today, the first Juiced 2 Hot Import Nights a honker weighing in a just over 1 GB. I don't know what to think on one hand the graphics were alright, wet neon soaked streets that had neat glow to them although all of spectators felt 2D (a problem in the first Juiced I seem to recall). On the other controlling the car felt lame, it wasn't hard to drive it just didn't feel like you were doing anything. There is no sense of speed what-so-ever even when nitro boosting it never felt like my car was moving.

On the European LIVE marketplace they got a FlatOut Ultimate Carnage demo, and since you can create a Euro account, just like a Japanese one I downloaded it to give it a spin. It has three available levels including 2 race modes, and a 'destruction derby' mode each with one available vehicle. The graphics were easily a step ahead of Juiced:HIN although I don't know if I would rate them above Burnout Revenge on the 360. I guess the game has already been available in Europe since the end of June (with really decent reviews I might add), and is kin to FlatOut 2 which explains why I remembered playing the first race level, because it was on the Xbox version of 2. The first FlatOut game, while it included racing, seemed to be more of a physics demonstration with the human darts , bowling, and distance throwing. This version really seems to melded more with the 'Burnout' type game play in the racing which by no means is a bad thing, but I'm so jazzed for Burnout Paradise it felt like a weak imitation. It seemed to be a lot tougher than 'Burnout' where I can easily finish races (not always in first, but finish at least) here I couldn't keep up with the checkpoints to even finish the race. The shining part of the demo though was the 'destruction derby' mode which was a cramped supermarket parking lot, I enjoyed it a lot and judging from the amount of people that ask for demolition derby games I think it will be a big hit. when it ships in the U.S. in September.

According to IGN Stranglehold blog they have finished a demo and sent it off to Microsoft for approval. Hopefully that means we will get to try it out real soon.


Take 2 and Rockstar announced today that they were releasing Bully: Scholarship Edition on the Xbox 360 and Wii. It will contain everything from the PS2 version of Bully and have new additional content, unfortunately no release date was given.

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