Hey Gang

I just caught X-Play's Summer Preview and all I can say is; start saving $$$ right away. It's bad enough to start thinking of the Fall and Winter releases but Summer won't be no slouch with what they previewed.

They covered allot of games for all but no doubt the 360 ones were mentioned the most. They covered Shadowrun, Strangelhold, Conan, Mass Effect, Bioshock, The Darkness, and Timeshift. They also sat down with Gears Cliffy B on his thoughts about Gears, the future and upcoming games. Guess which two he mentioned; Mass Effect and Bioshock.

All the games footage had outstanding visuals with the excetion of Conan but it's huge landscape and volume of characters at once made up for it. Stangelhold, The Darkness and Shadowrun all looked great with all sorts of special effects geared to that game. No doubt that Mass Effect and Bioshock stole the show. The in game footage never seen before was nothing short of amazing. But the sleeper of the Summer (late) might be no other than than Tmeshift. This has made one heck of a leap from past Timshift games in terms of visuals. My first reation was, this looks like Gears and 10 seconds later Adam Sessler said it has a Gears look and feel to it.

All-in-all it looks like a great year for 360 owners with these Summer previews. The icing on the cake will be come Fall with no other than Halo, Unreal 3, Assassin's Creed, Brother's in Arms, COD4, and Medal of Honor. Start saving lots and lots $$$$.

Kenny J - Buzz Starhopper

Out of all those games you mentioned, Only Mass Effect and maybe COD4 interest me. A few of them (Bioshock, The Darkness and Timeshift) I have never even heard of.

I don't even have a 360 and I've heard of Bioshock.

I'm already set to purchase Mass Effect, Bioshock, and The Darkness. In fact, doesn't The Darkness come out this month?

I think the Darkness is June 25th according to Amazon. That's on my list along with Bioshock. Timeshift looks cool and Stranglehold definitely looks interesting. Probably pricedrop buys on the second two.

I'll get Stranglehold on PS3 for the HD version of Hard Boiled alone.

I'm definitely lookng forward to Bioshock and Mass Effect. Both of those games look like they will help define this generation of gaming.

Timeshift looks interesting -- the time stopping powers could separate this from the host of other FPS out there.

On the other hand, The Darkness seems like just another FPS to me. Maybe if I were a fan of the comic I'd feel differently.

Stranglehold depends on whether the John Woo aesthetic translates well. If it does, this could be a spectacular game.

Conan could have potential. XBox is really missing an action RPG; done right, this could be XBox's answer to God of War. Sadly, what little I've seen of it makes it look like this game is about 3 years out of date.

Some interesting stuff coming to XBLA, too. Carcassone, which should go over big with anyone who's enjoying Catan. Wing Commander Arena should be fun. Speedball 2 looks good, as does Rocketman. EXIT seems like a great puzzle game. Plus it wouldn't surprise me to see Puzzle Quest drop on XBLA over the summer.

And like you said, as we move into fall, there will be more must-have stuff.

Never heard of Bioshock?!?! Have you been living in a cave?


You didn't realize that until after watching the preview?


Technically, there are no past Timeshift games. The developers released the demo early last year, and reaction to it was not good at all. Put simply, it sucked. The developers decided to completely scrap the game, and rebuild it from the ground up. The Timeshift we are getting now is practically an entirely different game.

Too Human is coming... sometime... before I die of old age hopefully. In case you haven't seen it before, Too Human is an action/rpg, and the action part looks very similar to God of War/NinjaGaiden/Devil May Cry.

I've never heard of Bioshock either.

I don't know why The Darkness is getting a rap as "just another FPS." It's from the exact same dev team as Chronicles of Riddick, which was easily one of the best last gen games.

The already strong 360 line up is definitely getting stronger over the next few months.

Here's hoping for a price drop (and the cooler chips) by this fall.

FWIW, From what I've heard it isn't a new HD transfer, just an upscaled version of the existing DVD. That's what a friend told me. I haven't looked into it myself. So definitely take it with a grain of salt.

Are you that confident the 'HD version' of Hard Boiled will be good? What if the framerate on the PS3 version goes the way of (that movie game I cant remember) and sucks.

There's a thread about Hard Boiled being on Stranglehold in the HD forum, and we debated it there endlessly. It is an HD transfer, not an uprez. Whether it's a good HD transfer is a whole other question.

COD 4 is gonna kick some serious ass. I've been reading and checking out info on it and I'm excited.

I'm wondering if the COD series will be like the Trek Movies? Even numbers are good, odd numbers kinda hit or miss.

Except COD1 on PC was great.

You guys that never heard of Bioshock, have you ever read the main 360 sticky thread? Even if you never visit any gaming sites, I really don't see how you could not have heard about Bioshock, as it has been talked about plenty on these forums.

Just doing a quick forum search for "Bioshock" gives me 33 threads...

http://forum.dvdtalk.com/search.php?searchid=2039108

Glad someone mentioned that, I thought I was the only one who remembered that piece of crap demo. It was originally an Atari title that got pushed back, then sold off to Vivendi. A couple of news sites have reported that the new one is nothing like the old version, but scars are lasting there would have to be a *stellar* demo before I would reconsider it.

I'm looking forward to BioShock (yes I've heard of it, I think I've had it pre-ordered since early 07), and Darkness if the demo is cool. I think I'm in the minority but Mass Effect hasn't done anything for me yet.

1up's most recent podcast covered the summer games and whether it would technically be a drought this year.

Not for me. I'm interested in all of the following(in order of release):

Planet Puzzle League (ds)
Resident Evil 4 (wii)
Mercury Meltdown (wii)
The Darkness (360)
Overlord (360)*
Manhunt 2 (wii)
Stanglehold (360)
Too Human (360)**
Bioshock (360)
Metroid Prime Corruption (wii)

DS = 1
Wii = 4
360 = 5

Actually looks like a pretty good balance.

*Overlord - I hadn't heard of this game before the podcast. It sounds very interesting. Sounded a lot like an evil Pikmin with a Hell bent to it.

** Too Human - Assuming it ever gets released.

Overlord looks great. It looks more like Fable with minions than anything related to Pikmin, though.

Cant wait for Call of Duty 4. Good bye WWII! I've probably killed a Nazi any way imaginable.

Ahh. They were saying it played like Pikmin.

Here is a video preview of Overlord. They too mention Pikmin. IMO, if Fable and Pikmin had sex, Overlord would be the bastard child. The art and graphics and such look like Fable while the multitude of goblins looks like Pikmin. There are different colored goblins with different powers (just like the different colored Pikmin). The end of the video shows some huge object that requires a certain number of goblins to pick up (just like in Pikmin).

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Looks good. Thanks for the vid.

Although it will probably suck, the new Transformers game looks really good.