[XBOX 360] Geen piepjes en vrolijkheid

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Op woensdag 28 september 2005 20:35 schreef PandorasBox het volgende:
Eerste screengrab:

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PDZ kom dust toch nog voor de N64 uit?

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Op woensdag 28 september 2005 20:48 schreef Chocobo het volgende:
Call of Duty 2 !


En 64 spelers op Live,... een droom

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Op woensdag 28 september 2005 22:28 schreef Gamedemon het volgende:

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kan niet anders dan dat de voice eruit gehaald word dan

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Op woensdag 28 september 2005 20:48 schreef Chocobo het volgende:


En 64 spelers op Live,... een droom

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Op woensdag 28 september 2005 20:38 schreef H.Flick het volgende:
Ja natuurlijk, alsof die screenshot er niet prachtig uit ziet

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Publisher: Microsoft

Developer: Bizarre Creations

Release Date: November 2005

The basics: The latest installment in Microsoft's snazzy street-racing franchise rolls onto the factory showroom as an audiovisual showcase for the Xbox 360.

Why it made the list: "Do you want a game that really shows off how cool your new Xbox 360 is?" asks PGR3 Project Manager Chris Lee. "Just look at the game--from both a high-end audio and high-definition video standpoint, it really pushes the boundaries." Must be hard to be humble when your game looks like this. PGR3 aims to be the prettiest, fastest, and most accessible racer in the already competitive 360 lineup. "We believe that life begins at 170 mph," states PGR3 Product Manager Kathie Flood. "We don't give new players a mediocre car to start out with--nearly every single car is available from the outset, and they're all fast." It's all about freedom: Take any car and race it on any track at any time. PGR3 will still offer unlockables, but Microsoft wanted to make sure that mainstream gamers could have a blast with minimal effort. "It's still deep enough for hardcore racing fans," says Flood. "But at the same time, it's broadly accessible, with the perfect blend of realistic physics and thrilling arcadey fun."

Microsoft also hopes that PGR3 will be a landmark title in terms of building a constantly evolving Xbox Live community. Eight-player online races and leaderboards are expected, along with an innovative spectator mode, in which thousands of onlookers watch the world's top players compete in championship races.

What could possibly go wrong? Although Microsoft seems adamant that PGR3 will make it to store shelves within that mythical "launch window," the version we viewed still had some slowdown issues to overcome.

Earning Cred

Microsoft plans to offer specific achievement awards for completing single-player challenges and races in PGR3 but couldn't offer us any concrete examples. We're hoping to get one for best donut.

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Publisher: Microsoft

Developer: Rare

Release Date: November 2005

The basics: Bullets smack the wall behind Ken Lobb, manager of the Microsoft studio overseeing some of the Xbox 360's biggest launch games, but he's too busy watching paint dry to notice. Lobb is giving us an in-game tour of a tundra-packed multiplayer level in Perfect Dark Zero, developer Rare's forever-in-the-works Xbox 360 prequel to its hit 2000 Nintendo 64 first-person shooter. Our opponents: game testers in nearby cubicles, who stalk us mercilessly despite Lobb's current pacifistic purpose. "Just look at that paint texture," Lobb says, pointing with the tip of his gun at a glistening red dab smeared on the wall of a rustic temple. "This game looks so good, sometimes I get distra--oh dammit."

Man down. A tester just bull's-eyed Lobb from 30 yards. Suddenly feeling vulnerable without our tour guide, we dive into a combat roll--one of the game's new tricks--round a corner, and flatten ourselves against a wall, ready to pop out and return fire (another new feature). Say, look at the subtle 3D texturing on this wall. Pop! We go down. Dammit.

With three months to go until launch, Perfect Dark Zero is up and gunning and looking lethal. Which is a good thing, because it was precisely looks that killed early buzz for the game. When EGM debuted the first screenshots of Zero back in our July issue, readers, message-board posters, and even our own editors founds the game's visuals underwhelming--especially for Microsoft's premiere Xbox 360 launch game. The developers bristled, claiming Zero was a work-in-progress that looked better in motion. After taking Lobb's bullet-riddled tour, we agree that the visuals have improved. Zero is looking more and more like a proper next-generation title, although it's really the game's features that made it No. 1 on our best-bet five.

Why it made the list: If you read our A to Z Guide to Perfect Dark Zero in our July issue, you already know why Zero is No. 1. It's the most ambitious online first-person shooter ever made for consoles. Let's recap: Aside from novel features such as the already mentioned evasion move, you get gadgets that let you hot-wire enemy vehicles, maps you can scale in size depending on how many players you have, a noise-sensing radar spoofed by silenced weapons, 28 guns with secondary functions (and sometimes tertiary ones), and an innovative health system that levels the field for newbies and elites.

Playing multiplayer (which, unfortunately, has been limited to 32 players online rather than the original 50 Rare was gunning for) reveals a dozen nifty details. We tried one gun whose secondary function projected a hologram of our character a few feet ahead--a perfect way to distract opponents while teammates race to flank any enemies taking shots at your doppelgA[currency]nger. Savvy players will find a weapon to diffuse any situation. The good ol' RCP90 submachine gun diplays a threat detector that'll expose holograms for what they are, as well as reveal players who use the plasma rifle's secondary invisibility function. And remember Perfect Dark's laptop gun? It returns, once again turning into a stationary turret. But beware: Enemies wielding the RCP90 can reprogram your turrets and turn them against you.

You'll even find strategy in going bare-handed. Players who put away their guns run slightly faster than weapon-wielding opponents--and they can swipe enemy weapons with their fists' secondary attack. "I saw one tester," says Executive Producer James Veevaert, "he'd run up to people without a weapon, steal theirs, kill them, then throw it down and run to the next person, steal their weapon, kill them, and so on. It was so cool and such a hardcore way to play."

What could possibly go wrong? A lot of stuff, actually. Zero's multiplayer modes, which include special dark-ops missions that have players taking on roles, are ambitious and will require heavy play balancing. We also hope the number of supported players doesn't drop once again. The latest version we tried got a bit choppy at times, but Rare is promising that the final game will run at 30 frames per second (about as smoothly as Halo 2, but not the blazing speed we'd expect of a next-generation title).

And we've barely gotten our guns dirty in the single-player game, which tells how Joanna Dark landed her secret-agent gig and involves her pop and a huge cast of characters. These characters become more important in the intriguing two-player cooperative mode. In the co-op level we tried, set in a skyscraper-crammed futuristic city, one player controlled Joanna Dark while another guided one of the secondary characters and got to see a vast section of the level that was unavailable in the single-player game. For instance, the Dark player protected the second character from afar with a sniper rifle--an objective in the single-player mode--but the second player actually entered a building and completed tasks that Dark never got to do while solo. "You will have separate objectives and link up and split up throughout the level," Veevaert says of the cooperative mode. "It's just adds a whole different experience." And, yes, those drying-paint textures look nice in single-player, too.

Earning Cred

As we mentioned in the hardware discussion, every Xbox 360 game will offer special "Achievement Awards," a virtual trophy case of your game accomplishments that other Xbox Live users can view. For example, in PDZ, you'll score an award for trying out all of the myriad multiplayer modes.

Perfect Dark Zero on Day 1? Hell If Microsoft Knows...

Officially, Perfect Dark isn't a launch-day game for the Xbox 360. Rather, it's in the "launch window," that slice of holiday madness between the system's launch and Christmas. So whether you come home with Zero or zilch on launch day is up in the air. "We're not going to ship games before they're ready," says Xbox Corporate Vice President J Allard. "The Perfect Dark franchise is too important to us to compromise it." He adds that Rare knows what's at stake. "If you have that killer launch game, you will be heroes," he says. "What we ship with Perfect Dark is going to be very special, and everything now is pointing to it being a very special day one."

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Op donderdag 29 september 2005 02:37 schreef PandorasBox het volgende:

Volgens mij is de game nog LANG niet af....

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Op donderdag 29 september 2005 02:37 schreef PandorasBox het volgende:
Nieuwe EGM over PGR3:
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Ik hoop dat MS deze game voor een tijdje uitstelt om het volledig te perfectioneren. Slowdowns willen we natuurlijk niet hebben...

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Op donderdag 29 september 2005 07:24 schreef Bastard het volgende:

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Volgens mij ben jij een echte zuurpruim.....

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Op donderdag 29 september 2005 08:38 schreef Notorious_Roy het volgende:


Wat is de deal met die afstandsbedieningen?

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Op donderdag 29 september 2005 09:11 schreef Bastard het volgende:

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Kheb geen idee, als ze er maar niet te zot mee gaan doen, ik heb al afstandsbedieningen genoeg

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Op donderdag 29 september 2005 08:38 schreef Notorious_Roy het volgende:
Kleine update over de gewone 360 bundel:

Xbox 360 System
- console
- wireless controller
- harddisk
- koptelefoon
- HD AV Cable met SCART adapter
- Ethernet kabel
- mini afstandsbediening (tijdelijk!)
adviesprijs: ¤ 399,99

De HD AV kabel is aan te sluiten op zowel HD als normale tv's.

Hoezo mini? ZIjn er foto's van? Die reserveringskit belooft een media AB?

Wat is de deal met die afstandsbedieningen?

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Volgens mij is de game nog LANG niet af....

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Op donderdag 29 september 2005 10:45 schreef Strolie75 het volgende:
Ik heb trouwens definitief mijn besluit genomen. Ik ga wachten met het aanschaffen van een Xbox360 tot het eerste kwartaal van 2006. Belangrijkste reden is dat ik nog even de kat uit de boom wil kijken, zowel wat de kwaliteit van de eerste builds betreft als van de launchgames. Er zit momenteel geen echte must-have tussen voor mij. Die verschijnen echter de komende maanden wel op de huidige generatie! Ninja Gaiden Black, Shadow of the Colossus, Dragon Quest VIII, Battlefield: Modern Combat, Advance Wars DS. Allemaal titels waar ik erg naar uitkijk. Verder ben ik me momenteel lekker door mijn backlog aan het werken en dat bevalt erg goed. Juweeltjes als Eternal Darkness, Luigi’s Mansion en Sid Meier’s Pirates! wachten nog op me.

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Op donderdag 29 september 2005 11:26 schreef Baris het volgende:
Halo 3:

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Op donderdag 29 september 2005 11:26 schreef Baris het volgende:
Halo 3:

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Op donderdag 29 september 2005 11:29 schreef Notorious_Roy het volgende:

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Bron? Met zo'n url geloof ik er geen tiet van natuurlijk

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Op donderdag 29 september 2005 11:29 schreef Notorious_Roy het volgende:

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Bron? Met zo'n url geloof ik er geen tiet van natuurlijk