Live Ware: Banjo-Kazooie, Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix and more
12/15/2008 6:52 PM | 0 Comments | Page 1 of 3
A Kingdom for Keflings
Developer: NinjaBee
Publisher: Microsoft
Release Date: Nov. 19, 2008
Price: 800 Microsoft Points ($10)
Originally Appeared On: N/A
Recommendation: Fry It
Take a normal real-time strategy game as your starting point. Now remove the opposing forces, the weapons and any sense of conflict or even purpose. The result would likely look a lot like
A Kingdom for Keflings, a somewhat pointless city-building simulation that's light on the pressure and heavy on the boredom.
Just because I called it a simulation, don't go thinking that this game is another
SimCity. Though you and your tiny-sized Kefling companions do gather resources to build component parts and turn them into buildings, there's none of the careful positioning or management tasks that actually make a game like
SimCity interesting. Instead, your city just continues to grow and grow until, eventually, you reach the utmost in building design, a beautiful Kefling castle.
Or, more likely, you'll turn off the game for good before you get to that point. While growing your town efficiently takes skillful management of your Keflings and your resources, there's no penalty for building inefficiently, except the requirement to waste even
more hours of your life overseeing this meaningless toil. Without any threat or challenge, the game becomes a dull march of progress.
Granted, all this casual building can be a relaxing diversion, and the cute, seasonally changing environs and super-soothing music make the whole thing a nice getaway. But a classical CD and a fish tank provide just as much interactive stimulation as this "game."
Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix
Developer: Backbone Entertainment
Publisher: Capcom
Release Date: Nov. 26, 2008
Price: 1200 Microsoft Points ($15)
Originally Appeared On: N/A
Recommendation: Buy It
At one point I thought it was sad that a true classic like
Super Street Fighter II Turbo needed revamped high-definition graphics to keep today's gamers interested. Then I actually got an HDTV and realized that this is just the type of game that demands such an update to take advantage of this beautiful new screen. The carefully redrawn characters look absolutely amazing in this remake, though the smooth lines and crisp edges remove some of the old-school charm of the original character designs (luckily, you can choose to play with those blocky sprites as well). The artfully remixed music has no such downside, adding a delightful twist to those familiar, nostalgic arcade beats.
As for the underlying gameplay, it hasn't changed at all since the early '90s, which is to say it's still the pitch-perfect head-to-head battle of positioning and timing that it's always been.
Super Street Fighter II Turbo was the zenith of Capcom's simpler 2-D fighting game design, just before their games became overly complicated by two-screen-high double jumps, air-blocks, super-moves and the like. The addition of largely lag-free online play through Xbox Live ensures you won't be stuck playing the brain-dead computer when your friends aren't around, too.
The only real problem with
SSF2THDR is the Xbox controller itself, which is ill-suited for the precision input needed for many special moves. Pros may want to invest in a fighting stick before diving into hours and hours of fighting game bliss.
