[X360] X05: Thread ufficiale! [UPDATE da pag. 2]

[Turrican3]

X05: Too Human First Look
Microsoft unveils Silicon Knights' first Xbox 360 offering.

AMSTERDAM- Microsoft gave attendees of its X05 press event in Amsterdam a glimpse of the Xbox 360's future with new game announcements. One that is sure to excite longtime fans of developer Silicon Knights is the unveiling of Too Human, the Canadian developer's first title for the Xbox 360. In a brief trailer shown for the game, which flashed provocative phrases referencing a conflict between mortals and deities, we glimpsed humans in futuristic suits fighting insect-like critters in ruins. The teaser showed a mix of standard hack and slash action, albeit with a wicked laser sword, and some good old fashioned Matrix-style gunplay, used to do away with a swarm of enemy mobs. One of the centerpieces of the action was a battle between a mech and one of the humans which left the mech getting a messy lobotomy by a human wielding one of the aforementioned laser swords. The final element of the nicely produced teaser was the intimation that the game was part of an epic trilogy.

As cool as the trailer was we were obviously anxious to find out more about the game since, not to sound too jaded, we've seen more than our fair share of kick-ass trailers over the years that have amounted to less than kick-ass games. Our digging yielded some interesting info. For starters, the game is being developed using the Unreal Engine 3. The game's story casts you as the Cybernetic God, Baldur, who is in the midst of an ongoing battle which threatens the existence of mankind. Your godly hand is forced when an ancient machine sets out to eradicate human life. Too Human, the first in a trilogy of games that will take place during Baldur's saga, will catch up to Baldur as he is defending mankind from hordes of war machines eager to wipe out mankind.

We're intrigued by the sound of how Baldur's clash with the war machines is going to play out as, god or not, he's going to have to work to do his job. Though we would personally use our godly powers to smite our foes, it sounds as though Baldur will be taking a more "hands-on" approach and engaging in melee and weapons based combat with massive mobs of foes. The game is aiming to offer a seamless blend of melee and firearms combat to let you engage foes up close are at range. It is also ambitiously attempting to offer an accessible combo system that will be flexible enough for novices to pick up but challenging for veterans to master. Silicon Knights aspires to compliment its combat system with a cinematic presentation and powerful soundtrack. The goal of the Too Human team is to offer a dynamic, cinematic experience that makes savvy use of hi def visuals and rich music.

Too Human is slated for a 2006 release, exclusively for the Xbox 360. Look for more on the game shortly.

[Turrican3]

X05: Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter Hands-On
Ubisoft takes the wraps off its futuristic squad shooter; we lay our hands on the controller.

AMSTERDAM--After touting Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter pretty much since the announcement of the Xbox 360 back in May, Ubisoft finally offered us a playable version of the upcoming futuristic shooter at Microsoft's X05 event. Previous iterations of the franchise have placed you among the Ghosts, an elite squad of military specialists who are dispatched to deal with anything the regular troops can't handle. The third Ghost Recon follows the same basic model but takes place sometime in the future, so as to give fans access to the latest developments in military hardware.

Based on the demo mission we got to play, it looks like Advanced Warfighter will do exactly that. Anyone looking for the dry, ultra-tactical shooting "action" of the first Ghost Recon, don't get your hopes up. At its core, this third game plays very similarly to Ghost Recon 2, which moved the camera to a third-person perspective and emphasized run-and-gun shooting much more so than the original game. You've still got the same basic moves. You can go to crouching or prone positions, roll over when prone to get out of the way of enemy fire. You can also back up against a wall, Splinter Cell-style, to avoid enemy fire and set up a quick return shot. If you've played Ghost Recon 2, you'll instantly feel at home with the controls here.

The most noticeable changes to Ghost Recon's gameplay with Advanced Warfighter are the result of your new equipment. The best example of this is your highly advanced visualization abilities, which make it a lot easier to pick out and keep track of important targets and threats. When you go to a zoom view with your multipurpose assault rifle and make visual contact with an enemy--even partial contact, if he's mostly hidden behind cover--your gear will be able to identify the soldier as a threat and will create a red overlay showing you the outline of his entire body, even if he's obscured by a wall or object. Obviously, this makes it a no-brainer to pick him off right when he comes around the corner.

But how about those squad tactics? Advanced Warfighter will put you in command of a team of troops just as in past games, and this time you'll have some hardware to make your allies even more useful. The game will sometimes pop up a picture-in-picture window that shows you what one of your squadmates is seeing, complete with a static sort of overlay to make it look all video-like. This came in especially handy in the mission we were playing, which initially tasked us with reaching an industrial sector but quickly changed the objective when a soldier named Ramirez became pinned down by enemy fire. We had to immediately redirect to his location along with our squad and help him out. Previous Ghost Recon games have featured a lot of missions in rural areas, but this mission centered on firefights around corners and from behind cars and cargo crates, since it was situated in a dense urban setting. Since the whole of the game is set in Mexico City, we imagine the other missions in the game will play similarly.

Advanced Warfighter doesn't look quite as good as that superb trailer released back when the game was announced, but it doesn't look too far from that footage, either. Imagine the same style of gameplay and the same effects, but in lower res and with a less consistent frame rate. More importantly, it seems the gameplay featured in the trailer is intact, and that should please fans of the series as much as any graphical upgrade. We'll bring you more on Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter in the weeks leading up to its release.

[Turrican3]

X05: Perfect Dark Zero Hands-On
We get our hands on Rare's Xbox 360 shooter for the first time in Amsterdam.

AMSTERDAM--The most hyped game at Microsoft's X05 event in Amsterdam this week is undoubtedly Perfect Dark Zero. Rare's much-anticipated first-person shooter has recently been confirmed as a launch title for the Xbox 360, and having spent some with both its single-player and deathmatch modes we can report that it's come a long, long way since we last saw it at E3.

The appropriately-named "Rooftops" single-player level that we played through this evening was set high above the streets of Hong Kong, and tasked Joanna Dark with (among other things) protecting her father Jack as he battled against an overwhelming number of enemies. Like all of the levels in Perfect Dark Zero, Rooftops will support cooperative play during which you'll have the option to keep an eye on what your partner is doing via a picture-in-picture system, but on this occasion we were playing solo.

At the beginning of the level, we found ourselves on a rooftop high above Jack's location, and noticed that he was taking fire not only from a group of enemies in his vicinity from also from a number of snipers located in surrounding buildings. Our first job, then, was to provide cover fire for him so that he could progress through the level, which actually wasn't that difficult given that we were armed with a powerful sniper rifle. It also helped matters that many of our enemies in the demo weren't terribly quick to react to (or even realize that they were) being shot at, and although this was a little disappointing we should point out that the game was being played on one of the easier settings.

Why did we choose to play the game on an easy setting? We didn't actually, but the game was defaulting to that difficulty level so that we could check out its hint feature, which kicked in automatically whenever we failed to make any progress for a period of time. The hints took the form of translucent blue arrows showing us the best route to take, as well as icons that let us know when we should stop--either to put a vantage point to good use or to hop onto one of the level's many ziplines. The hint system was definitely helpful, but we're not sure that that's a good thing since it suggests that the route through the expansive level perhaps isn't as obvious as it should be.

There were three or four vantage points from which we got to provide cover fire for Jack as we progressed through the level, including one particularly memorable one that tasked us with seeing him safely up through three floors of a building by shooting enemies through its windows. Exploding barrels inexplicably located inside said building made our job a lot easier than it might otherwise have been, and we're hoping that these, like the enemies' sluggish responses to our attacks, will be a feature of the easy difficulty level rather than of the game as a whole.

Things got even more interesting toward the end of the level, when we came up against an enemy piloting a futuristic dropship of some kind, which was firing missiles at close range. Using Perfect Dark Zero's stealth-game-style cover system, we were able to take refuge behind boxes, crates, chimneys, and such (some of which were destructible) and then pop out form behind them to take shots at the enemy. The ship's engines were its only vulnerable spots during our first encounter, but we'll skip the details of how we eventually defeated it for fear of spoilers.

Shortly after checking out the Rooftops level we had an opportunity to jump into a 12-player deathmatch on a decent-sized map that resembled a modern-day (as opposed to futuristic) city. The map boasted subterranean areas and a multi-story parking garage, as well as plenty of weapon pick-ups and pillars to take cover behind. The action was fast-paced for the most part, although we enjoyed far more success when using the aforementioned cover feature than we did when we attempted to move around the level in search of enemies. It's fortunate that all of the weapons we picked up during the deathmatch had quite limited ammo supplies, because if it weren't for the fact that we (and the 11 other players) frequently had to replenish them, it's conceivable that the majority of us would've ended up just taking positions in cover.

The strange thing about taking cover in Perfect Dark Zero is that, although you're hidden behind a wall or object, you're still able to use your crosshair to target enemies that will be in sight once you lean out to shoot at them. These are targets that you should have no way of seeing, of course, and although the kills from cover are extremely satisfying, we can't help but wonder if any kind of line-of-sight feature was ever considered whereby you wouldn't know which enemies were around the corner until you actually poked your head out to take a look.

Another feature of Perfect Dark Zero that, while innovative, we're not entirely sure about, is the way that pieces of body armor drop off enemies to indicate how much health they have left. On paper, it sounds like a great system, and sometimes it is, but there's something undeniably strange about seeing an entire suit of armor (at least half a dozen pieces) fall off an enemy as you shoot at them. The system might be more impressive, for example, if only the armor pieces that you actually hit would fall off, leaving the exposed parts of the enemy's body more vulnerable to attack. This isn't a complaint, but since we noticed it on several occasions it seemed worthy of a mention.

Although Perfect Dark Zero will boast an arsenal of over 25 different weapons, most of those that we got to play with during our time with the game were pretty standard pistol, rifle, and machinegun variants. We're pretty sure that we came under fire from enemies who had located more interesting toys, but never actually managed to get our hands on any of them for ourselves on this occasion.

There was also a second deathmatch map that we didn't get to play on during our time with the game, although we did spend a couple of minutes watching it in action. The large ice-covered map (the ice looks incredible, by the way) boasted caves, tunnels, a large wooden tower structure, and ledges cut into cliff faces that made great vantage points for anyone armed with a sniper rifle. The tower in the middle of the map looked to be where most of the weapon pick-ups were located and, as a result, was where most of the action took place. The tower could either be accessed via a stairway at ground level, or via ziplines from the cliffs above.

Perfect Dark Zero really has come a long way since we saw it at E3 and looks great. We look forward to bringing you more information on the game just as soon as we get our hands on a more finished version.

[Turrican3]

Xbox 360 launch lineup finalized "in the next few weeks"
Microsoft ID's eight of final 15-20 day-and-date launch games, says rest are in the "final stages of certification."

In the run-up to today's X05 event in Amsterdam, the industry consensus was that Microsoft would use the event to announce the Xbox 360 launch line-up for North America, Europe, or both.

In fact, neither happened.

Speaking to the assembled press, Peter Moore, corporate vice president of worldwide Xbox marketing and publishing, boasted that there were 200 Xbox 360 games in development, including "many launch titles." Chief Xbox Officer Robbie Bach promised the console would have the "best games and launch lineup" of any console yet--but didn't divulge all the games that will go on sale alongside the 360 November 22 in the US.

Adding to the confusion was a press release Microsoft issued titled "Xbox 360 Launch line-up announced." It only listed three first-party titles--Project Gotham Racing 3, Perfect Dark Zero, and Kameo: Elements of Power--under the heading "titles that will form part of the impressive Christmas holiday portfolio." The second category of games was called "other great games announced or shown at X05," and included Gears of War, FIFA 06: Road to FIFA World Cup, Full Auto, Saint's Row, and Condemned: Criminal Origins, as well as the just-announced Too Human, Mass Effect, and Crackdown.

The release then listed a third category, "Franchise titles that will make their debut on Xbox 360," which included Superman Returns: The Videogame, Call of Duty 2, Castle Wolfenstein, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, MotoGP 2006: Ultimate Racing Technology, Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell 4, and Quake 4. Given that at least half the games listed have 2006 release dates--and some were just announced--it would be impossible for the release to contained the "Xbox 360 Launch lineup" as the title indicates. announced.

In an effort to clear up the confusion, GameSpot asked David Reid, director of platform marketing for Xbox, what the exact 360 launch lineup is. He said that "there will be 15 to 20 Xbox 360 titles available on launch day" with around another half-dozen making it to market by the end of the year. For the moment, though, he would only confirm eight titles as being available the same day and date as the 360: Project Gotham Racing 3, Kameo, Perfect Dark Zero, Madden NFL 06, NBA Live 06, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 06, Need for Speed Most Wanted, and FIFA 06: Road to FIFA World Cup.

As for the other seven to 12 Xbox 360 games that will be available on November 22, Reid said they would be announced "in the next few weeks." "They are currently in the final stages of certification," he told GameSpot, referring to the quality-assurance process all third-party games must go through from their respective console-maker. So it is likely that if any of the submitted games--which Reid declined to mention--do not pass the process sometime in the next fortnight, they will not make it to market by the end of the year.

[mat_sox]

spero che la next gen non sia tutta qui... quelle immagini si ottengono con un PC di fascia alta già oggi. (guardare le deno di N-Vidia e ATI per averne una riprova).