Achievement Unlocked 05.09.09: Free isn't worthless
Posted by Rod Oracheski on 05.09.2009
411mania's Rod Oracheski checks out the opening night of the 1 vs 100 beta. Will a free game show prove to be worthless or worthwhile? Plus a look at X-Men Origins: Wolverine from a 'game over' perspective.
Whenever something comes for free, it's natural to assume it's also worthless. Those 'signal booster' stickers that are packed into random electronics, the tiny 'do a half load of laundry' samplers of detergent attached to various products in the grocery store, or really just about anything from a carny.
That was the expectation level that I carried with me into Friday night's 1 vs 100 beta. For those who don't have a clue what that is, it's a free game - ad-sponsored - that will be appearing on Xbox Live soon, giving people the chance to play and take home some decent prizes, including Microsoft Points and free Xbox Live Arcade games.
Going into it, I figured that, free or not, a game show probably wasn't going to be too exciting, but at least it might kill some time.
I'm prepared to admit I was wrong.
Earlier today I'd set a schedule (first time I've ever done that, is that new?) to remind me of the game's start, and was tooling around the recent video releases and contemplating firing up Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars when the pop-up jogged my memory.
Clean-cut American Canadian host.
Getting into the game was super easy. A tap of the Guide button took me right to the option to play the game. I hit a lobby that looked... well, I guess it looked just like the lobby of a movie theatre or, aptly enough, a game show. A large (and worryingly vague looking) group mingled around the outside of a rough circle I was standing in. For a second I was confused, as trying to move with the sticks did nothing. Then, one by one, three others walked out of the crowd to join me - and that's when I realized this would be the party I was matched with.
You see each game of 1 vs 100 has three groups - The One, the sole person who's in charge of whether to take the money or go for more; The Mob, who compete against The One for his prizes - if he/she fails, the remaining Mob members split the loot; and The Crowd, who compete against one another for highest score, with the three highest receiving prizes. Within The Mob and The Crowd, however, are four-person parties you can chat with and compete against for bragging rights.
Once our four-person party was complete, we were shuffled into the game - an altogether painless process that went quickly. None of us made it into The Mob, and only Neo can be The One, so we were stuck with the rest of the unwashed masses in The Crowd.
Not that I want to denigrate The Crowd, of course. With 100 people in The Mob and 1 as The One, that left 10,542 people watching from the stands. Big potential for a rampaging horde, right there.
The announcer, whose name I forget at the moment, got us into the game with some light banter and then we were off to the questions.
Any fear I had of people being able to cheat by looking up answers via the Internet were squashed immediately. The question pops up and you've barely enough time to have read it before the answers start to appear. It's the typical 'elapsed time = less points' formula, so answering quickly is a must - however there is a slight twist on things.
The TERROR of anticipation!
Getting answers right adds to your streak, which gives you bonus points above and beyond what you earn from answering the question. Stack up a fat streak and you can answer a little later, but still get a good number of points.
I don't think it would get to the point where a superfast typer would be able to get the answer and win via their streak bonus, but I'd imagine there'll be some who try.
After three or four questions, the game tosses to an ad break where a video ad (over the course of the game I saw five or six, including some UFC on Xbox Live ones as well as the expected Windows and 'I'm a PC' ones) plays in a small window while the announcer updates gamers on the status of the competition, including making fun of The One the odd time or two.
The audio quality for the announcer is amazing, to the point where I initially thought it was all canned audio - but then he made fun of the Gamertag of one player and I realized it was live, or at least appeared to be. It's possible it's streamed in during the round and played when necessary, I suppose.
Answers are mapped to the X, A, and B buttons, making it easy to remember for even the casual gamers, while the Y button makes your character do a variety of actions (the d-pad switches what you do) including dances...which I think puts 1 vs 100 on feature parity with PlayStation Home. Let's see, stupid dances - check. Videos to watch - check. Weird looking Avatars - check. Voice chat - check oh...snap.
Wrong answers have different punishments for each group, with The One having the most severe - failing out entirely and ending the game, with his built-up winnings distributed to the remaining Mob members. Mob members who miss a question are removed from The Mob, reducing it from 1 vs 100 to 1 vs [remaining] - and some questions can take a heavy toll.
One question reduced The Mob by over 30 people, jetting The One into the realm of the 5,000 Microsoft Points win. The Crowd has it the easiest, just losing their streak, though this virtually eliminates them from placing among the top three to earn a prize.
You are the weakest...oh, wrong show
At some point in the game, and having never seen the game show I'm unclear whether or not that's based on number of rounds or number of The Mob eliminated, The One is called on to make a choice - Money or Mob, or 'take the cash and run' or 'be a greedy bastard' as the party started to call it. This being a beta, where wins and losses don't really count, people were generally choosing to continue to gamble and keep the game going. I doubt it'll be that easy to choose to gamble when it's really five or six thousand Microsoft Points on the line.
The questions were great, with only one repeated question in the two hours of play - and that due to a disconnected The One, I believe. They dropped as the first question finished, which seemed to queue it up as the start of the next game.
Nobody got it wrong that time.
There was a real variety there, with a definite Canadian flavour to them at times. There were no questions about hockey, strangely enough, though Tim Horton's and the RCMP made an appearance. Of course there were also questions that included Justin Timberlake, Susan Boyle, Billy Bob Thornton's disdain of Canadian audiences, and the Lohan/Ronson breakup.
Easily the funniest question (or answer, I suppose) was the 'What is the name of the Gears of War sequel?' one, which featured God of War, Gears of Peace, and Gears of War 2 as choices. Nobody got it wrong, but everyone in the party laughed at Gears of Peace - setting off a short comedy interlude about pillow guns and Marcus Fenix, overrun by Locust, shouting 'WE NEED MORE HUGS OVER HERE!'
I think that's what really made the game work, in the end - having that live chat going and having fun without being super competitive about it. Don't get me wrong, the game is entertaining enough on its own - reminds me a great deal of the NTN trivia thing found in bars - but with a good party this went from a good time to a great time. I'm definitely looking forward to Tuesday night's "show" and already have the schedule reminder set.
Word has it each 'season' of the show, slated to run 13 weeks per season I think, will have its own set of Achievements - 200 Gamerscore in all - in addition to the prizes. It's funny, but I'm pretty sure there are some people out there who are just as excited about the notion of 'free' Gamerscore as they are about the potential for winning some Microsoft Points.
I burned through X-Men Origins: Wolverine in no time, but went back for more instead of starting up Velvet Assassin. For one, I've heard the SouthPeak-published (and Replay Studios developed) stealth game is hard as hell - to the point of being frustrating. The second strike against it was that I had a blast playing Wolverine's adventure.
After a full play through of Wolverine, I was still tempted to hit it again on Hard difficulty - something that doesn't generally happen with action games. There's no real incentive for replay, aside from the old school notion of having had fun and wanting to have more fun - the three costumes you can unlock will all be available (if you choose to exit and clear the 'beat Wolverine wearing that costume' challenge, that is) on your first play.
It's hard to recommend a game that doesn't have multiplayer of some kind as a $60 purchase, but Wolverine fans will probably get their money's worth on this one. As a bonus, if you choose to replay earlier missions once powered up, you'll find it incredibly easy to tear through the relatively low-powered minions. Even the boss encounters become a lot easier to deal with.
Bottom line, the game is a lot better than the movie it's (loosely) based on, which is a real rarity.
I took only two negatives away from the game, in fact. The first was a strangely disconnected boat ride that saw Wolverine manning a mounted machine gun to blow up pursuers. This came after he'd jumped from boat to boat decimating their passengers, a far more 'Wolverine-like' way of dealing with the issue. Why does every Wolverine game have to stick him on a mounted gun at some point?
The second was the insistence on repeating a boss fight against a giant rock elemental of some kind - not a character I'm familiar with from the comics, I'll admit. Fighting the W.E.N.D.I.G.O. prototypes a few times, including a four-on-one fight that was sheer INSANITY, at least fit into the flow of the game - the rock monster though...what was that all about?
I'll get into Velvet Assassin this week, so look for news on that one next time around. I've heard some good things, some bad - but I'm hoping the reportedly strong stealth elements will outweigh the negatives enough to win me over.
I also got the inFamous demo, so look for some video of that on the YouTube channel. I haven't been really won over by it yet - the much-vaunted 'Parkour' turned out to be more 'mash the jump button' than 'find the path' like it was in Assassin's Creed, and the powers you get (maxed out in the demo) aren't all that impressive. There are a few locked ones, however, and one taste of a big bolt in the final mission, so maybe the full game will offer more.
Hopefully it offers antialiasing, because the jagged edges and shimmering are a real distraction. At least the framerate is mostly good, and there's no screen tearing at all.
Until then, I'm out. Here's some Wolverine to tide you over:
