GF! Weekly Wrap-Up #16

Introduction

Rumbling up from the Interwebs to your personal audio device, it’s another edition of the GamesFirst! Weekly Wrap-Up for the week ending January 13, 2006. I’m Val Townsend, the Atomic Goddess, and this week I’ve got reviews of Kameo: Elements of Power for Xbox 360, Cuban Missle Crisis: The Aftermath for PC, and GelTabz, a funky new enhancement for your controller’s analog stick. After that, we’ll take a look at a cool new franchise called Code Age, coming to PS2, mobile phones, and a comic book store near you in 2006. But first, as usual, let’s take a look at what’s happening in your gaming world.

News

In a move that blends two massive fan communities, Namco Hometek and Bandai Games have integrated their North American businesses. The new business, Namco Bandai Games America, combines several of the most popular franchises in several media forms. Namco brings their rich gaming history, and such popular franchises as Pac-Man, Soul Calibur, and Katamari Damacy. Bandai offers significant gaming, as well as comic and animated, franchises including Gundam, Cowboy Bebop, dot Hack, and many more. The resulting company should have no problem finding great franchises to utilize, and fans will undoubtedly flock to Namco Bandai.

Some fans are more readily served by game companies than others. Microsoft has always been against Xbox hacking and modding, and even boasted about how difficult it would be to modify the Xbox 360. But that hasn’t stopped the underground tech-geeks from making headway. First, a group of European hackers has managed to rip a playable copy of the Xbox 360 Kiosk demo disc. Because of the specialty nature of the Kiosk demo disc, the ripped image is playable on a standard Xbox 360. Hackers are hoping that this unsecured peek into Xbox 360 discs will lead to the ability to execute unsigned code on Xbox 360 systems.

In a related story, Team I.C.E. has announced that they have a working Xbox 360 mod chip, and they will begin taking preorders for the mod chip on January 31. However, there are several things that make us question the “truthiness” of this claim: The post ings on several websites and information GamesFirst! Has gathered about the modchip makers suggest that Team I.C.E. may be very new to the mod scene, and the act of taking preorders without demonstrating the chip’s effectiveness, as well as the fact that n o other teams are claiming these breakthroughs, is very suspicious. A mod chip for Xbox 360 would open the door to both homebrew applications and games as well as pirated media to run on Microsoft’s next-gen system. Keep up with this story as it develops o n GamesFirst.com.

Finally, if you’re an early-adopter of massively multiplayer online role-playing games, then we have news of a few new public beta tests open now and coming up soon that you should check out. Next week the Seed beta tests open. Seed is a sci-fi game set o n an alien planet and uses a comic book style of graphics and presentation that set it apart from the typical MMO style. Another public beta gearing up for this Winter is the Chronicles of Spellborn beta, which is a fantasy game developed by a small Dutch team that utilizes the Unreal 2.5 engine to generate some beautiful graphics. Finally, NC Soft’s long-awaited Auto Assault public beta begins in the coming weeks. Auto Assault is a vehicle-based MMORPG that puts you in a Mad Max styled world of fast drivin g and big explosions.

You can get more about how to sign up for each of these beta tests at GamesFirst.com.

Reviews

Kameo: Elements of Power has a spotted past: In development for almost a decade, it was first seen on the N64, then the Gamecube. After developer Rare was acquired by Microsoft Game Studios, the project was shown at E3 on the Xbox and, finally, it has rel eased on the Xbox 360. And it’s even one of the triple-A launch titles from Microsoft. This lengthy development span would destroy any average title, but as Aaron tells us in his review, Kameo is still pretty enjoyable.

In Kameo you play the titular faerie who possesses the ability to transform into various beings. At the outset, you have only a few forms, but as you progress through the game, you will unlock a wide variety of forms, each with different abilities. The Pu mmel Weed is a boxing plant that can pound opponents rapidly. There is a roly-poly form, a big snow gorilla form, a squid… You get the idea. Using each form’s special abilities, Kameo can access new areas and proceed throughout the game.

Kameo keeps things relatively fast-paced, except when you hit a super-difficult sequence. The pacing of your progression through the game could be better, but that’s OK– the graphics are good enough to keep us distracted for the most part. And once you’v e opened an area, you can re-play it with a friend in the cooperative mode. However, this cooperative mode could have been a lot better: Why can’t we play through with a friend from the beginning" And why no Xbox Live cooperative play" Split screen multipl ayer is so old-fashioned, we just can’t take it.

Kameo is definitely not for everyone: It’s a bit too edgy and tough to work for the young ones, and too cutsie to work for a lot of older gamers. But for some gamers, Kameo is exactly the right game. This is one you should definitely try before you buy. Y ou’ll probably hate it or love it. Overall, we mostly like it, and we’re happy to give Kameo: Elements of Power a four out of five stars.

Moving from the pretty fantasy world of Kameo to a decidedly grittier hypothetical situation, George took charge in Cuban Missile Crisis: The Aftermath, out now from Strategy First for your PC. Cuban Missile Crisis: The Aftermath posits that the whole sit uation turned into a worst-case scenario and led to a massive nuclear war, destroying all of the world’s major cities. As a player, you must complete three different campaigns: The French and German Alliance, China, and the American and British Alliance. C uban Missile Crisis combines mostly real-time strategy action with a little bit of turn-based gaming, but those gameplay tweaks are not enough to keep it as gripping as one might think.

The opening tutorial mode is mind-numbingly boring, but once you get into the meat of the game, it is decent strategy gaming. No real boundaries are pushed here. Battles are played out in real-time, and environmental hazards such as giant pools of radioac tive waste factor into your plans. Before each battle, you plan out your commitment and fronts in the War Room, which is where the turn-based portions of the game happen. This allows you to play the big war, moving groups on a large map and managing resour ces such as ammo, troops, etc., but also gives the pleasure of playing the individual battle, which is much smaller in scale.

The campaigns also branch in satisfying ways. Along your road to victory there are optional battles which you may or may not complete. This at least provides more robust replayability, but also makes the campaign mode more varied and enjoyable. The option al battles offer you additional abilities and resources, such as capturing a radar base in order to gain more visible battlefield area, or raiding a supply warehouse to increase your available ammo.

Altogether, Cuban Missile Crisis is a decent game, and coming from a small developer and indy publisher, it has that “street cred” that all the grognards look for. However, it is pretty much the same game the grognards, and all the rest of us, have been p laying for years. With fairly unspectacular graphics, and not much at all done with a great narrative premise, we have to come down in the middle and give Cuban Missile Crisis: The Aftermath a three out of five stars. You might dig it. Or not.

OK, you’re going to think we’re crazy here, but once you’ve tried GelTabz you will not want to game without them. Seriously. Shawn checked out the PS2 and Xbox versions of the GelTabz, and we didn’t even believe him until we all tried them out. And then t he verdict was unanimous: They work. GelTabz are little gel toppers for your analog control sticks. They are made for Xbox, Xbox 360 and PS2, and a GameCube version is in the works. Each version comes in a different color, but they all work the same: They increase the grippiness of your analog control stick. While this might sound like a small improvement at first, the difference is almost immediately noticeable, and the GelTabz greatly increase accuracy and fine control. They make enough of a difference in playing games that we feel like most gamers are going to appreciate them. Don’t think of them like funny little joystick condoms: Think of them like a batting glove or a golf glove. Sure, you can do the job without them, but why would you want to" At a su ggested price of $6 per set, GelTabz are cheap enough to try them out without a lot of regret if you don’t like them. We’re happy to recommend trying out the GelTabz. We like them so much we give them a four out of five stars.

Preview

Moving on to our previews, this week Amanda Bateman took a look at the Code Age Project, a new franchise coming from Square-Enix that bridges several types of media. The Code Age Project takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where humans, warheads, and self-propelled mobile phones co-exist. Two games and a comic book are coming from the Project, which should build a cool experience for fans of the sci-fi anime gaming.

The first game is Code Age Brawls, which is out now in Japan for mobile phones. The second game is Code Age Commanders, which is an action-RPG coming to PS2. And the third element of the project is a comic series called Code Age Archives. Together, these games and comics will tell the whole story of the Code Age Project, which centers around a world in which human beings are transformed into weapons called Warheads. Warheads can change out their arms and hands for different weapons used to fight off enemie s. Players will experience Code Age through several characters including Gene, who is featured in Code Age Commanders.

Gene is a Warhead who is created after the fall of the Ark. The Ark was built to protect humans from apocalyptic happenings, but it is destroyed by the Central Code, a force that governs the world of Code Age. Gene helps the humans rebuild the Ark at the same time as he searches for his sister, Aliz. But this isn’t the only story fans will experience in the world of Code Age. Expect loads of characters and some longtime fan-favorites to develop from this epic Project.

Code Age Commanders is currently out in Japan, so anxious gamers can find a copy at their local import games shop. No release date is set for the US, but we’re hoping the whole Project gets the American treatment. Keep an eye out for all three of the Code Age Project components in the next year.

Conclusion

And that does it for this edition of the GamesFirst! Weekly Wrap-Up. Remember, more news, reviews and previews are posted every day on GamesFirst.com. I’m Val Townsend, the Atomic Goddess, and I’ll be back next week with another podcast for your listening pleasure. Until then, game on!