I attended Xbox 360’s 2nd anniversary (in Singapore) party last night (April 3rd). It’s basically a small invite-only event for developers to showcase some of the upcoming titles to local bloggers and an excuse to have cake. I’m not exactly sure why I was invited, but apparently someone from GameAxis recommended me to the Microsoft PR people.

The party itself was basically just a series of presentations by employees from various companies like EA and LucasArts. The entire thing consisted of only about 40 odd people. Everyone kind of knew each other, so I was kind of out of place since I have just about zero involvement in the local gaming scene. I was actually approached by someone who reads my blog which, considering its quality in recent months, was somewhat surprising.

Anyway, I’ll just take a quick run through what was covered during the event:

Ninja Gaiden II

No, no one from Team Ninja was there, but the Microsoft people did have a playable build of this animated bloodfest on-hand. The graphics and animation are all top-notch. It looks like it’s going to be a hit as expected, but it’s not my type of game.

Will be out in midyear. (I think.)

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

You play a previously unmentioned Sith apprentice of Darth Vadar who is charged to eliminating the remnants of the Jedis after the coup. During the game, you will eventually be presented with moral options that will determine whether you break free of the dark side.

The people from LucasArts Singapore were there with a playable build of the game. I have to say that it looks very, very awesome. Everything is super fluid and your force powers can affect just about anything that’s not part of the ground. You can use force push to bend metal doors with the physics engine doing real-time calculation of the metal warping. And you can even bend a door back to seal off the enemies behind you after you pass through.

Of course as with past games you can throw your enemies around like rag dolls with your force powers, but now you can choose to fix your cameras on the options you throw around to get a rocket view of the projectile’s path of destruction. Not to mention that you can actually throw TIE fighters around…

After watching the LucasArts people demo a fight scene with a giant Rancor, I think this may just be the best Star Wars game ever. (Or maybe I’m just easily impressed.)

The Force Unleashed will be released on 16th of September in USA, 17th in Asia and 19th in Europe. (I hope I remembered that right…) Apparently this is some sort of exclusive revelation, but I guess the rest of the bloggers present at the event should’ve blogged about it by now. Heh.

Grand Theft Auto IV

Nothing much. They showed the demo video which is already available online publicly. Interestingly though, the Microsoft people assured us that GTA will finally be available in Singapore, due to a new video game rating system which they managed to convince the MDA to adopt. I guess they don’t want a repeat of Mass Effect.

Dragonball Z: Burst Limit

A playable Japanese demo was shown and the fighting effects are surprisingly good. The camera moves in and reorientates around the 3D plane when you have some combo or power attack going.

It really has to be in motion to work…

Alone in the Dark: Central Park

Frankly, I don’t like horror games. I can’t stand them. Call me a wimp or whatever, but I just don’t find them fun. The environmental interaction looks like it has some potential, but the short gameplay demo didn’t really showcase much of it. I guess some people are probably looking forward to this. Midyear release… I think.

Dead Space

EA’s first foyer into the sci-fi horror genre (or something like that). EA didn’t have any playable demos for this, so I can’t really form any opinions about this in terms of content and gameplay…

… But at the risk of reaching a hasty conclusion, I’d say that this looks uninspired. The game from EA basically admitted it himself when he said that it’s like Doom.

EA also talked about some other games, like UEFA 2008 and Mirror’s Edge, but it’s quite clear that the guy didn’t really have much to show off. The EA guy was also the only one who used Powerpoints… (I mean, seriously…)

I’m actually quite interested in Mirror’s Edge from DICE, the studio responsible for the Battlefield franchise. The game is basically parkour inspired urban running set in an Orwellian future.

Free Stuff

There was a lucky draw at the end of the event and someone walked home with a Halo Xbox 360. The rest of us less-fortunate bloggers got a swag bag instead.

Man, what am I going to do with a wireless controller when I sold off my 360 ages ago?

P.S. The cake is a lie.

Looks like this blog has hit a new low. Oh well. Anyway, I’m selling my Xbox 360 Premium Bundle! Everything is included except the one free month of Xbox Live Gold membership. Region code is NTSC-J (i.e. Asia). I think Microsoft recently extended their warranty coverage for 360s, but whatever the case is this is only a little more than a month old so it’s all good. A free game Kameo is included.

Selling for 480 SGD, which is about 320 USD. That said, I probably won’t go through the trouble of shipping it overseas so Singaporean buyers only.

Leave a comment if you are interested. Alternatively, email me your contact number: nadesico@gmail.com

And yes, I am desperate for money.

EDIT: The Xbox is sold in case you are wondering.

Actually, I won it at an IT competition for schools along with a copy of Windows Vista Home Premium and Adobe Creative Suite 2. Ergo, It’s free! And it’s a Premium bundle!

Now I was actually intending on selling it away to add to my DRNANC (DM Really Needs A New Camera) fund but after since I already own a Dell 24″ LCD monitor that accepts component video input, I thought what the heck and gave this a try. As you may or may not know, I am not entirely fond of Microsoft’s console, but there’s no harm in free stuff.

Behold the Power Brick!

The first thing I noticed after plugging in the power was the sound…or rather the lack of. I’ve been hearing everywhere about how the 360 sounds like the spawn of a vacuum machine and a jackhammer, so it’s pretty surprising how little sound it makes even when the disc is spinning. Or maybe I’m just used to being aurally raped by the 4 hard disks and 2 graphics cards running at full speed less than half a metre to my left. Either way, I have nothing to complain about the 360 with regards to noise.

Back of my LCD monitor

Sadly, another reason why it was so soothingly silent was because there was no audio output. At all. Since the console is meant to be used with a TV and not a LCD monitor, there isn’t a regular audio jack that can be used with PC speakers. It would suck a ton to play without sound but luckily I dug out a previously-useless purchase I made off Ebay some time ago: the Adaptec GameBridge AVC-1440. Impulse buying is a useful skill to have sometimes.

Basically GameBridge is a little USB device that has composite video and audio connectors which allow you to play console games on your PC using the included software. Since the Xbox AV cable contains both composite and component jacks, I plugged the component ones into the LCD and the composite ones into the GameBridge.

Thus, the video signal is sent via the higher quality component cables, while the audio signal is sent through the composite cables into the GameBridge which then passes it to a program running on my desktop which finally outputs the audio through the PC speakers… Overly complicated, but it works. Better than having to buy a new stereo system. LOL.

Dashboard

And now everything works! Although the LCD monitor appears to support component input up to 1080i, the refresh timing is a little off and it can be a huge distraction for your eyes. I guess the LCD monitor wasn’t designed to handle interlaced signals. 720p gives uniform picture quality and is much more suitable. Don’t even try 1080p.

And of course with the Dell 2407WFP monitor, you get to play around with the Picture-By-Picture and Picture-In-Picture options. They look pretty cool.

Picture-In-Picture

Picture-By-Picture

But I have to admit that they are generally useless. Picture-By-Picture mode is useless for web-surfing so the only use would be if I wanted to play a 360 game while watching anime. Then again, I have my secondary LCD screen for that… Picture-In-Picture mode is even more useless since the box is too small to play games with. It would probably work better with CNN or something.

Kameo

All in all I’m pretty happy with the Xbox. Sadly, the only included game was a budget copy of Kameo (one of the original launch titles for the 360). Well, it’s not a bad game, but I’m getting a little tired of 3rd person platformers. I need to get my hands on Gears of War and IDOLM@STER. It’s a good thing that Singapore shares the same Xbox region code as Japan. That said, I think I’ll still be selling away the 360 because I really need money for my DRNANC fund. Well, maybe after I’m done with GoW. :P

On another note, I will probably be returning to the world of Azeroth to fight the Burning Crusade this weekend…

Goodbye school grades? LOL. Possibly. ＿|ï¿£|O But at least I’ll have fun.

P.S. Since implementing the image verification script almost a week ago, only about 300 spam comments have been caught by Akismet. Much more manageable than 1000 a day, but I’ll continue to keep an eye out to see if any further changes are necessary.

I watched Nana the movie finally. In fact I was writing quite a lengthy review on it but I stopped halfway due to my laziness and now it’s saved as an invisible private entry on this page until the time comes when I feel like finishing it. Mika Nakashima <3<3<3<3<3 The story is quite good although the ending is somewhat… short. I’m somewhat tempted to start collecting the manga but I’ll decide after I watch the upcoming anime series.

I also rewatched Dual! Parallel Trouble Adventure and the first few episodes of Kimagure Orange Road… Nostalgia overflow~ Madoka Ayukawa <3<3<3<3<3

I think I’ll be preordering Da Capo II…

Anyway, I was in Funan DigitalLife Mall today and I noticed this peculiar sight…

Someone tell me what the hell is happening here.

Yes, you see that right. There’s a fricking Xbox 360 booth located inside an official Apple store. And the HD monitor isn’t even made by Apple. (It’s LG) I know that almost every store in Funan is promoting Xbox 360 but this is just too weird. Maybe the Apple staff thought that the white colour case matches the iPod display? And before you know it Microsoft will be bundling iPods with 360 premium packs…

Oh well, more blogging tomorrow… possibly. (At least I hope to finish that Nana review.)

Clash of the titans. *roar*

In one corner, we have To Heart 2 XRATED, a PC port of a popular PS2 visual novel from the fine folks at Leaf who brought us Comic Party and the original To Heart. This release adds adult content, new characters and two minigames to the overall experience, but it is otherwise identical to the PS2 version. The stories have their highs and lows and the characters range from “feh” to “ZOMG! <3”. To its advantage, an anime adaption came out earlier this season, bringing more recognition to the franchise. Also, me love Tamaki for long time. To its disadvantage, the anime sucked donkey ass. Also, visual novels aren’t the most exciting/popular games in the world, even Japan.

In the other corner, we have the Xbox 360, a next-gen console evolved from the original Xbox, Microsoft’s first step towards regaining US dominance over the console market, 20 years since Atari lost it to Japan and shamed the 50 great states of America. This release adds better HDTV support, wireless controllers, improved Xbox Live, Halo 3 and customizable face plates (ZOMG!) to the overall experience, but it is otherwise identical to the original Xbox. Xbox 360 chose to abandon black in favour of iPod white and slimmed itself down slightly at the cost of a huge ugly ass external power adaptor. To its advantage, the original Xbox sold more poorly than PSOnes in Japan, so there’s nowhere to go but up. Also, Dead or Alive 4 might be released soon. To its disadvantage, the original Xbox sold more poorly than PSOnes in Japan. Also, PS3 (the mere mention of which can make a grown Japanese man jump for joy) is just on the horizon.

And the winner is…

To Heart 2 XRATED!

To Heart queue to the left of the yellow divider and 360 queue to the right.

Only in Japan, folks. The otaku have spoken.

Before people start flaming, I do realize that two samples don’t give the most accurate scientific results in the world. But hey, it’s supposed to be funny. ;)

Original source image.

Kotaku has a very entertaining live coverage of the Japan launch, which I believe can be summed up by this article. And this one too. And my personal favourite.

Okay, let’s stop making fun of Xbox 360 now. It’s a great console. Really. It’s just that a console needs more flagship titles than PC ports and Halo. And isn’t it just a little stupid how Microsoft crippled its multimedia functions so that it won’t eat into Media Center sales? They need to get their priorities right. Still, I bet someone will find a way to stream videos from a regular PC and playback MP3 files not ripped by the 360. Maybe I’ll consider getting one when someone gets XBMC running on it and the price drops to S$200.

At least the Japanese launch will make Xbox 360 more affordable. I forsee game importers bringing the underpriced and easily-obtainable Japanese Premium system to other countries… Ebay prices are probably going to drop soon.

What new console system are you planning to buy?

* 1. PSP – 33%
* 2. Nintendo DS – 22.5%
* 3. PlayStation 2 – 20.2%
* 4. GameBoy Micro – 11.6%
* 5. Xbox 360 – 10.1%

How many games are you planning to buy:

* None – 60%
* 1 to 2 – 32.2%
* 3 to 4 – 5.6%
* 5 to 6 – 1.5%
* 7 to 9 – 0.3%
* Over 10 – 0.4%

Considering NDS has been thrashing PSP in Japan since forever, could this sudden boast for PSP be due to the Location Free TV function of the 2.50 firmware? Or is it because of the upcoming Boku to Watashi no Katamari Damacy game?

And not to mention that Xbox 360 actually managed to reach a double-digit percentage! Could it be that Microsoft’s promotional gimmicks in Japan are actually working? I find this hard to believe, considering how even the redesigned PSOne outsold Xbox in Japan. *eyes the Gameboy Micro above*

Perhaps Nikkei’s sample size was just way too small…