Xbox 360 Walk Throughs

A sad fact of gaming is that the average release has a lifespan that'd make even a mayfly sympathetic. The average game hits the shelves on Monday, the bargain bin on Wednesday, and by Friday, it likely lives on as nothing more than a fond memory and a few references on the geekier online forums.

Publishers rarely do more with their back catalogues than try to prevent anyone distributing them, stores don't have the space to stock games that aren't selling great guns, and gamers, well, gamers are fickle.

Just a couple of years can be the difference between the Best Game Ever and outright torture on a neatly pressed CD. The absence of basic features like high-resolution, mouse-look, or the ability to jump can turn even an acknowledged classic like Doom into nothing more than a rose-tinted amble for old-school players, while newer players try to work out just what all the fuss was about.

And then there are the remake projects. There are two basic types of remake; what you might call reconstruction and re-mastering. A reconstruction takes a basic game concept, such as Frogger or Space Invaders, and tries to modernize it. A re-mastered game focuses on keeping the core gameplay more or less as it was, but bringing the technology (and typically interface design) to modern levels. An example of the former might be a 3D version of Frogger, where the camera is in the frog's mouth instead of hanging over the level, or where the frog has to navigate a multi-level 3D world to get to its destination. A re-mastered version would simply swap out the old sprites for polished 3D models and leave the rest alone.

Commercial Remakes

Very few companies have bothered with either, for a number of reasons. Most notably, there's not much money in it, unless you're porting a game to a completely new platform and a new audience. Even if the game has been radically overhauled, the perception that it's old can work against you, and the number of people desperately hankering for a second crack at one particular title is rarely going to match up to the potential audience of something shiny and brand new.

Services like Xbox Live have shaken this up a bit, as happened when Prince of Persia got both a shiny new game in the form of the Sands of time trilogy, and a full remake of the original plat-former, but this rarely happens. That said, there have been some high profile commercial remakes. Most recently, the heavy hitter was Tomb Raider: Anniversary, which took the original game's plot and basic locations and rebuilt them. As well as having more polygons and graphical effects to splash on Lara and her environment, each area was designed with the idea of creating the game Core would have made, had they had modern technology and ten years of sequels behind them back at launch. This included far more intricate puzzles and scenery, a Lara capable of moving freely around the world (the original used fixed block units, and access to triangles didn't occur until Tomb Raider III) and QuickTime events during cut-scenes and big boss fights.

Most remakes aren't lucky enough to have such major licenses behind them, and the games that companies choose to grace with a new version can be... unusual. RealMyst - a 3D recreation of the original Myst game - is fair enough.

The Journeyman Project? Not so much. Westwood called in outside assistance for Dune 2000 - easily it's most forgettable RTS. Sid Meier's Pirates travelled from 1987 to 2004 and picked up nothing but new fans. And of course, some games should just have remained buried. Any good feelings people had towards Defender of the Crown went right down the privy after actually playing it in the cold light of good gaming. Goodness only knows who was clamoring for an update of Bad Mojo, the cockroach simulator/adventure in gross-out graphics, where dead rat and chopped up catfish backgrounds were lovingly reintroduced to our stomachs.

Arguably the most impressive commercial remake of all time was Tex Murphy: Overseer, released in 1998. This was based on the 1989 adventure, Mean Streets, although about all they had in common was the basic plot framework. Mean Streets was an odd mix of side-on adventure, flight simulator bits, and very primitive attempts to get actors (or to be more accurate, employees of Access Software) into a game.

Overseer's story was completely re-written, setting it in a full 3D world that could be explored at will, with all the characters and cut-scenes handled by some surprisingly good full motion videos. It was one of the last interactive movies. It, didn't so much bomb as nuke itself - the UK release going straight to budget.

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The very technically minded amongst us will know exactly what an API is. For the rest, a short explanation is in order. API stands for Application Programming Interface and without this little software creation that powerful graphics card sucking up everything it can from both your PSU and bank balance would be so much circuitry and scrap. APIs allow the treasured hardware inside one's machine to function correctly. It uses function calls to direct the resources available and allow, in the case of a graphics card, rendering and other more advanced functions to take place.

The major point is that there are only really two graphics APIs worthy of notice. Much like the NVIDIA/ATI divisions that are the subject of almost every tech-forum, API usage is spilt into proponents of DirectX, the current market leader and the brainchild of your friendly neighborhood Microsoft, and OpenGL, the resident underdog that could still turn DirectX on its ear.

What's the point?

Both OpenGL and DirectX have gone through many incarnations since their inception and cataloguing absolutely everything is a job for Wikipedia. There have been some major differences over the years that have set each apart from the other and it is these which are of interest. OpenGL and DirectX have used completely different methods from the very beginning; with the line between the two blurring in later versions. We'll find out why this is the case, though some can spot why right off the bat.

According to Microsoft

DirectX is Microsoft's favorite little creation, allowing them to wield the banhammer on a lot of folks by virtue of its proliferation. Direct3D is the major component in DirectX, supporting only Windows systems and pretty much anything else Bill Gates has touched. It is even the base software for the Xbox and the 360. Created to deal with 3D applications and graphical rendering, Direct3D handles all of those nifty features that show up while setting up options in your latest game. It controls hardware acceleration, should the hardware be capable of using it. Functions such as anti-aliasing and texture mapping are also handled, as is everything else to do with the GPUs 3D functions. Software emulation of certain bits of a GPU are also picked up by DirectX. Direct3D can emulate vertex software but it cannot do as well with pixel shaders. It'll allow an image to hit screens but it will be of shocking quality.

Open source opinion

OpenGL is Microsoft's open source competitor but the major battles are now confined to the past. Some folks still code games to take advantage of the API but it is often sitting side by side with the Microsoft equivalent. Being open source, there is no real limit to the number of versions out there but a stringent qualifying process is needed to qualify for the OpenGL standard. OpenGL is the default API for almost everything that is not Windows-based, running the iPhone, most of Sony's consoles, some of Nintendo's hardware and Mac and Linux-based systems. It also runs on Windows but has none of the exclusivity that Direct3D enjoys. With this wide base of operations it should seem remarkable that DirectX holds so much sway in the API arena.

Head to head

Each API has positive and negative points. Some are valid or can be corrected or lived with. Others are nigh unbearable, forming the bane of programmer's and end-user's existence. Let's start with a few of those.

Microsoft's DirectX is a completely proprietary system, functioning only on selected hardware. In case it was not clear, this translates to Microsoft only systems. Other problems have included the standard Windows bloat for programs which appears to crop up in some of their software. Even the almighty XP has been guilty of this failing. Other cons for DirectX only appear on direct comparison with the competing API.

The fundamental differences in how DirectX and OpenGL go about their business are miles apart. DirectX has tended to focus on the capabilities of the hardware itself without giving much thought to additional features that may lie outside the realm of the GPU in question. The software allows whichever features a card may hold to be utilized by a system and beyond that does not concern itself much with anything else.

OpenGL has been about creating a system whereby all possible features are made use of, either by driving a card's inherent capabilities or by using software to render as much as possible. In the case of OpenGL software is the de facto method of driving a 3D application, with hardware acceleration being used if it is available.

Seeing the difference in approach between the two APIs, OpenGL appears to have a much more robust and potentially more powerful application. With software rendering being the first line and acceleration being secondary, OpenGL's capabilities at running a 3D application would be higher than DirectX's, should the system they are running on have identical hardware.

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It is that time of year again, when EA hits us with the customary yearly update of their FIFA series of games. It is generally a time of a little moaning and groaning when we decide who will play it this year, but there is always that strange part of us that really wants to play it. We know what FIFA is about and often the only thing that changes the graphical quality and the player line-ups.

It can be argued that it is more of the same this year but EA have also whipped something new out of the bag for us. This something new is the control method. FIFA is generally best played using a gamepad which is why we loved hauling out that Xbox controller. Keyboard skills are a sheer nightmare, particularly for the left-handed fraternity but to our great surprise, FIFA is now playable using the mouse.

The mouse can be a solo affair or used in conjunction with the trusty keyboard. It takes a fair bit of getting used to but once the basics are learned and players have had a few goes, passing shooting and scoring become a pleasure. Right clicks pass on offence and tackle on defence while a left will shoot or slide respectively. The worst bit is getting used to clicking in the right place at the right time; players will give away the ball quite often until that is learnt.

What was also great to see was the differences between teams, regardless of difficulty settings. A lower ranked team will play noticeably worse than a top-ranked one at any setting. Thus, Spain will mop the floor with the South African team unless one happens to be exploiting the holes in defenses that only the very easy setting gives.

With as much of the world's soccer events crammed into the game as EA possibly could, the prospect of playing online (which requires the creation and activation of an account) and the multiplayer options, there is very little to detract from the content available.

There are a list of achievements which can be used to buy new stadium packs and other goodies once enough points are earned. For all that, FIFA 09 on the PC falls a little short of its console brethren. The graphics settings cannot be scaled up enough to satisfy the rabid gamer and we really were hoping for a little more eye-candy. The cut-scene replays look great and the commentators don't repeat themselves as much as we remember but we were hoping that more of the ingame models were better detailed. It's a case of something old and something new from EA.

At the end of it all, it is still FIFA and you will play it.

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What if you only want to stream to a laptop or another PC? All you need is some software. A dedicated media streamer is all well and good, but most of them cost in the region of $200 to $400, which certainly doesn't make them the cheapest solution. If you want to view pictures or listen to audio on your laptop, or another PC in the house, then all you need to do is set up a shared folder, then browse to it on the network and open the files in the same way that you would do on the local machine.

As long as your network has the range, taking your laptop into the garden and plugging in some external speakers, is possibly the simplest way of getting music to your garden party. However, Windows networking is notoriously fickle, especially if you are mixing operating systems, so a dedicated software solution may be better.

Windows Media Player 11 is built into Windows Vista and can be downloaded for XP and once set up for sharing, WMP11 turns your PC with the media library into a media server. A Vista laptop will usually automatically detect a shared library and ask whether you want to connect to it. You can also share your iTunes library, and then access it from another PC or laptop running iTunes.

However, one of our favorite solutions for sharing media is Orb (www.orb.com), which enables you to share music, video, pictures and documents, not just across your local network, but across the internet as well. It's a great way to listen to your music collection when you're at work, a friend's house or anywhere else that you can get a respectable internet connection. Not only is Orb free, but you can use it to stream your files to the Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Nintendo Wii and even some handhelds, like the iPod touch and mobile phones. An alternative is TVersity, which will also work with any internet connected device that has a web browser that supports Flash.

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We have nothing against console games in general. Some of us actually use them to unwind after a day of hitting the PC hard in the office. However, we do expect certain standards from a PC title, one of which is that the PC version of a multi-platform release has to be better than its console brethren. This is really not negotiable.

There will be more problems with a PC title, we know we can usually expect that, but it should look and play better as well as contain some extra content if we're lucky. PC hardware allows that to happen. However, in this case, the PC release of Rise of the Argonauts has fallen flat on its face. Down an open sewer.

The Horror

Perhaps we should start at the beginning on this one. The very first indication that something had gone awry was after the unnecessarily lengthy installation, when the very first screen after the obligatory intro credits said 'Press Start'. There is obviously no start button on our keyboard that we can find but moreover this just screamed CONSOLE PORT.

Next, we hit the menu section to tweak some settings. The graphics options were much less complex than we are used to, barely anything outside resolution could be altered. The control configuration took a similar route and to our dismay, keys could not be remapped. There are three pre-set control layouts, it is that or nothing. More console copy paste.

Our initial foray into the game itself created a very bad impression. The graphics are supposed to be powered by the Unreal Engine, but the bland textures and barren scenery of the first level had us scratching our heads about where the Unreal tech was used. The camera is a bit of a mission on its own, not affording us the range of angles and movement we are used to; simply looking up and down is not possible.

The second time around, we'd hooked up an Xbox gamepad to try and overcome a few of the control hassles we experienced. Activation of God Powers is a nightmare on the keyboard, especially for a left-handed person like yours truly. Adding a gamepad suddenly makes the game playable, revealing how little was done to port RotA to the PC. The control menu switches to the default Xbox 360 layout, converts directly to the Xbox version of the game and control became much easier with a gamepad in hand. The camera still sucked though.

Once past the initial (bad) impression, the play through of RotA is not too terrible. There are some novel systems, with deeds (read: achievements) that can be dedicated to the gods in exchange for skill points. Dialogue choices can fill these god-meters too. These unlock upgrades and abilities that can be used in battle and the skill tree is pretty extensive.

The game is also not as bare and bland as it seems on first viewing. There are some very nice textures and effects later in the game and the FMV sequences also seem to get better as time passes.

Combat improves upon progression, though even from early stages it is mostly a repetitive affair. The only notable differences are the boss battles, which change things up a mite. There is a full RPG system in place, with party members that stay aboard the Argo unless you take them along for the trip. These would be the Argonauts of mythology. The game's storyline doesn't really bear mention.

It follows the myth pretty closely (for a given definition of close) and has the player taking the role of King Jason, trying to resurrect his love by obtaining the Golden Fleece. This leads to the next tragedy within the game: the never ending conversations. The dialogue scenes are too static to be really effective and the overall impression of the game is that there are short periods of combat followed by forty minutes of exposition and some bad acting. To add insult to injury there are tons of RPG-style side quests that involve running from point to point on the map.

Speaking of the map, there isn't one. Not one that can be accessed outside the menu anyway, which requires pausing the game, loading the map and then setting off. There is also no HUD to speak of, meaning that one has to be careful around foes that deal massive damage or risk sudden and unplanned death.

The console version of Rise of the Argonauts has garnered poor reviews all over and the PC version has not fared much better. The biggest problem is that it has all of the faults of the console version as well as a few crashes. The really sad thing is that God of War II did this better, it looked better, played better and did it all with a PS2's hardware.

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For all your Discount Computer Parts, Notebook and Games requirements visit us at http://sacomputers.rr.nu and http://usacomputers.rr.nu.