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What You'll Find in Xbox
by Steven Kent for Gamers Today
Microsoft will release its new Xbox game console on November 8, 2001. Technologically speaking, Microsoft has quite a box on its hands. This is the game console with the fastest graphics engine, the only console with a built-in hard drive and Ethernet card. Based on technology alone, Microsoft seems to have the best machine.
The question, of course, is whether Microsoft will be able to arrange for good games. So far, the answer is a mixed but hopeful yes.
As things stand now, Halo and Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee standout as Microsoft's lead games. Both games are brilliant in concept, but they may not be good titles to put at the top.
Halo is a gorgeous first-person perspective shooter ala Half-Life -- i.e., it has dynamic worlds and scripted events that create the illusion of the world going on without you. Halo supports multi-player matches with split screens or through networked Xboxs plugged into multiple televisions. Great game, but maybe not the kind of game you use as your lead title.
The same can be said about Munch's Oddysee. This is the third installment in the Abe's Oddworld series -- a breakthrough series that has sold in the multiple millions.
Tapping into Xbox's processing power and graphics-rendering speed, this game brings Abe out of his 2D heritage and into a damp and cloudy 3D universe.
Like past Oddworld games, Munch's Oddysee is a strategy game with great puzzles, ugly heroes, and even uglier enemies. These are good games, but in promoting them to the head of the pack, Microsoft seems to have turned its back on a few more marketable selections.
The top of my list is Cel Damage -- a Twisted Metal-type game in which players battle each other in cars. Cel Damage is cartoon car battles, a game with a sense of humor and a lot of dangerous weapons such as homing missiles, freezing rays, shrinking rays, and a giant axe that slices enemy cars in half.
Granted, you would have to be a visual diabetic to appreciate the sparse eye-candy Cel Damage has to offer; but the gameplay is terrific. People who watch Cel Damage generally dismiss the game as lightweight, while people who play it say the name with a smile.
Another virtually ignored Xbox contender is Blood Wake, a hydrofoil combat game with great physics, dramatic seascapes, and exceptionally fast action.
In a recent interview, Sony Computer Entertainment president and PlayStation creator Ken Kutaragi told reporters, "the game is over" for Microsoft. I would beg to differ. Anybody taking score is going to note that Microsoft has some real catching up to do; but never count a heavy hitter out after only two strikes, his next swing may yield a homerun.
