Well as I was walking through the
mall, I noticed a huge X-Box demo running. Now, I had seen the controller demo a few weeks
before, but this was the first time that the store had ever had an X-Box development kit
running. Inside of it, they had some kind of X-Box demo disk running in it. The only
playable demo was a little game called Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee (perhaps you've heard of
it?) An interesting fact about this game is that it is an X-Box exclusive, but was
orinally scheduled to be a PS2 exclusive.
To begin with, the graphics in this game are freaking
phenomenal. Seriously, there really isn't any other way to say it. The character motions,
the water effects, the lighting... everything about this game screams "BUY
ME!!!" Personally, I'm not even looking foward to the X-Box (I seriously don't like
the controller nor the company that makes it). But all of that aside, for those of you
that ARE planning to purchase an X-Box, you may want to put this high on your list.
The gameplay is a good deal differen from the other
Oddworld games. This time around, (at least in the demo) you were required to pick up some
weird, green mushroomy thingies. Also, Abe is not the only character that you can play as!
There's a new character (I did not catch his name unfortunately that you must switch
between with Abe to beat a level.
Now, I obviously did not play a final edition of the
game, so I can't really comment too much on the controls. However, the characters moved
quite smoothly, using the analog stick on the left. The D-Pad rotates the camera, and the
right stick did nothing. The white button on the face centered the camera, and the black
button on the face switched between characters. The trigger buttons on the back did
SOMETHING, but I wasn't able to find out what in the demo.
As far as sound, like story, I'm not able to comment a
whole lot on. However, the sound seems to be fairly good. Explosions and voices are all
nicely intact and come on cue very accurately. I wasn't able to get any drift of the story
at all (it's a demo, remember?)
However, there were a few problems with this demo. One
was that when you fell onto mines or something like that, there was a split-second lag
before Abe blew about 25 feet into the air. Also, whoever has said that the X-Box's load
times wouldn't be noticeable is dead wrong. This demo took about a minute and a half to
start loading. Although, there wasn't much time loading in-game, mind you. Overall, this
demo played quite smoothly and it's shaping up to possibly be a must-own title for all of
you X-Box worshippers out there.
.:. bizzarro - October 30, 2001 |
