We've battled our way through the forest of shitting animals, mounted the diarrhea-deer and defeated the mighty catfish and I may have decapitated my significant other and her sister with a chainsaw, because in the end only one of us can have the princess. Castle Crashers also features the coolest resurrection system I've ever seen in any cooperative game. When the last breath escapes one of your dear team mates, you may provide first aid. Now, if you're really into it and you use proper timing during the CPR-minigame, you'll bring your fallen comrade back to full life House MD style. Of course that's not always an option in the middle of a heated boss battle, so more often than not you'll end up providing what we're referring to as a "shitty rez", which puts a downed knight back on their feet, buuuuut they'll usually topple over after getting nudged ever so gently.
I have also booted up my Xbox One for the very first time. I got it for free many moons ago, because I've agreed to review games on it, but so far I haven't received any, so the ol' box had been more of a luxury doorstopper. And what can I say - it pays off to be a natural pessimist. Most of what I've read about the Xbone was largely negative. The thing is more expensive than a PS4, yet seems to offer the weaker hardware, many games either run at only 720p and/or 30 FPS and none of the launch titles really look all that "next-gen". That said, it almost seems like we have reached a point where games no longer improve all that much in the graphics department, unless you want to scale everything up to 4k resolution. I really don't think that's even remotely possible on this new generation of consoles, so it's probably not going to become a new standard anytime soon.
My first pleasant surprise was Killer Instinct. Sure, KI isn't exactly Street Fighter and the ridiculous combo-system isn't everyone's cup of tea, but I find it a lot of fun to play. What's so great about the Xbone version is how the game is basically free. You get all the game modes, all the characters, all the content for free, BUT you may only play one of the characters yourself. If you want to unlock any of the other characters, you'll have to pay a small amount of money. Alternatively, you can pay 20something monies and unlock everything. I think that's a fantastic system, especially if you're a veteran to the series and you already have one or two favourite characters and you know you're only gonna play those, anyway. Just pay for the character you want, beat the whole game, go online, compete in the leaderboards, do all the things. You can't make monetization any fairer than that.
Visually, it's really not any more impressive than games like Soul Calibur V on the Xbox360, but it's a Free2Play launch title, so maybe I shouldn't expect too much here in the first place.
What really surprised me about the Xbone is how user-friendly and fun to use it is. I had no idea, because frankly, everything I ever read was about hardware and resolution and exclusive titles and there's a shitty tv ad with Jesse Pinkman, which provides a vague idea about how the whole thing works, but they're not really explaining any of the features too well. So I was pleasantly surprised when I fired up the games browser.
You see this library of games with their box art, a description, a price tag and an option to buy and download them all straight away. What's more important, each and every game comes with trailers, screenshots and live streams of people, who are currently playing the game you're looking at. For instance, I was checking out Crimson Dragon and when the screenshots weren't totally convincing, the menu highlighted the stream of some guy, who was playing the game at the time, so I could just watch him for a while and get a good impression of what the game was all about. There was also a whole library of recorded footage, which had been uploaded by other players.
What impressed me the most was the overall quality of it all. Select a stream or some pre-recorded video footage and it all plays instantly, in super high quality, no load times, no buffering, no hassle. Compared to how long it takes to get my shit up on youtube or find decent quality settings for a Twitch stream on PC, this almost feels like magic. Checking out new games has never been so fun. Also, I think I'm gonna go grab Crimson Dragon. I know it scored some pretty shitty review scores, but as a day one Panzer Dragoon fan, this title is pretty much a must-have for my collection.
Had another dream about my zombie grandparents and they still seem happy. I want to ask them what it's like being dead and all, but somehow I never do, because it seems rude. The loss of my father is starting to settle in a little more, as well. Usually during the weirdest moments. Sometimes I look at some new game or I try an upcoming new MMO and I think to myself, 'Yeah, I should tell him about this one, I think he's gonna like it'. And then I realize... well, you know. My son is also crazy about gaming, so in a way, the whole thing just started over, but this time I'm playing the role of the father. It feels weird.
Oh well. There are videos to convert, news to post and emails to send. I should go. We'll bang, okay?
-Cat
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