Upcoming Xbox Originals

[Rock8man]

Currently the Xbox Originals available are all games I already have, or have already played.

360FanBoy mentions three new Originals coming to Live on February 11th:

Ninja Gaiden Black
Sid Meier's Pirates
Black

So I had a question for those who have played Ninja Gaiden Black: Is it worth getting for someone who already played through Ninja Gaiden on Hard? Does it add all that much? It has been a while since I played through Ninja Gaiden though, so I wouldn't mind playing through it again.

I remember Tom Chick gave Sid Meier's Pirates for Xbox a bad review in CGM, saying it lost something in the translation to consoles. I loved the original game that I played in the early 90s, but I still haven't played the remake. I take it the best way to play that is still on the PC? On Gametap?

Black: I saw one of my roommates (a crazy guy that we eventually kicked out of the apartment) play through most of this game when it came out. It makes an awesome first impression, but I didn't like what I saw in later levels. Still, it might be worth picking up at a bargain price.

[Jab]

Regarding NGB , oh yes it is. First did you download the hurricane paks for NG? If not it comes with all that as well as a bunch of new enemies, new mission mode. Also the game has been tweaked to be harder and faster then NG. I don't know if it was in the paks but the lunar staff is one of my favorite weapons in NGB.

The new difficulty modes have been changed as well, new item positions, enemy positions, and different enemies will appear on different difficulties. Some of the new enemies are just evil to fight, I just don't know their names. The only bad thing about NGB is that they removed the original Ninja Gaiden Roms as unlockables, you get Ninja Gaiden the arcade game.

[BDGE]

If you really dug NG and would like to replay it, NG: Black is a good way to go about it(outside of Sigma on PS3). All the new stuff described above is aces, plus having actual camera panning control via the right stick is a huge bonus not offered in vanilla NG.

I'm curious about Pirates Xbox myself. I never did play the remake either, and have always wavered over which version to try, this is the frontrunner unless someone tells me otherwise.

Also Black thoughts would be nice. I only ever played the demo years ago on PS2. If it's stupid fun for a few hours, I'll consider blowing 15 buckaroos.

[Bahimiron]

NGB is a good purchase, even if you played the original NG. Unless you've got a PS3 with Sigma, anyway.

I just can't see paying $15 for Black, though. The 360 is a seriously shooter-heavy console. I really can't imagine shelling out to play a shooter from a previous generation on it.

Unless that shooter is Psi-Ops.

[Funkula]

An excellent qualification of your point. I just really hope that Force Unleashed will make Psi-Ops obsolete.

[Jab]

If you really dug NG and would like to replay it, NG: Black is a good way to go about it(outside of Sigma on PS3). All the new stuff described above is aces, plus having actual camera panning control via the right stick is a huge bonus not offered in vanilla NG.

.

I've been replaying the original NG to get the original NG roms again. I forgot how much I miss that full camera control compared to the original. Also coming from playing alot of NGB, the original feels very slow .

Did Sigma add anything new besides improved graphics and the new levels for the girl?

[Lizard_King]

I third NG Black. If you beat it on hard, you know the appeal, and Black is better in every way. You might die a bit more, but they will tend to be deaths that are more fair and tactics related than some bullshit camera angle.

EDIT: and NGB is much more expensive used from what I've seen, usually around 25-30$.

At the time it came out, Black was imo one of the most enjoyable single player FPSes. The destruction model, the hyperviolence, and the relentless Burnout-like approach to combat made made it feel like playing the first half of saving private ryan over and over again. The AI is no great shakes, and the plot almost appears to be an intentional Tom Clancy satire, but the overall package was great. I expect the improvements in graphics since then are really going to hurt it.

Overall, I'd say at fifteen bucks it's a bit overpriced. I've seen it used for 5$ to 10$, and at similar ranges new at big box store sales, and I think that's about what it's worth. If it at least had coop or something I could maybe see it having enough legs for fifteen...

[Podunk]

Black is mostly pretty cool. The visuals have aged pretty well for a last-gen shooter and the destructible environments are always good for a cheap thrill. Production values are top notch all across the board.

The main negative is the terrible checkpoint system. There will maybe be one or two checkpoints in a map, and the maps are large. If you die, expect to cover a lot of familiar ground. Also, there is no way to save your progress mid-map, so you must clear each map in a single sitting in order to save your progress.

I actually randomly dusted the game off a few nights ago. Here's how it went:

"Hey, this is cooler than I remembered! Man, this still looks pretty good. Wait, surely they're going to give me another checkpoint somewhere here. Oh, I guess not. Well at least I beat this map that I gave up on a year ago. This next map with the big bridge is pretty neat! Those explosions are awesome. I'm almost to the end and I haven't died! I'm getting tired but I think I can finish this map before bed time. I'm right at the end! Oh, fuck, a land mine! And the checkpoint is...what? I was there like 20 minutes ago! Fuck this, I'm going to bed."

edit: also, I basically agree with LK's assessment.

[malkav11]

Black is really, really shallow. It looks very pretty, explosions especially, but that's it. There's no plot to speak of, very little variety in situations or combat, and of course there's the terrible lack of checkpoints. It's also pretty short, I believe. Like 8 levels or so short. (Though most of those levels *are* fairly long...which makes the lack of checkpoints really annoying.) It was an okay rental. I am glad I didn't buy it.

[Rock8man]

From watching my roommate play, I'd agree with people's description of Black already mentioned here. It's definitely very shallow. It makes an excellent first impression with its huge explosions and its destructible environments, but the lack of checkpoints and the repetition of levels takes away some of the appeal over time. I'd love to buy a short, shallow shooter for $15 if it had more checkpoints. But having to deal with an archaic save system designed to artificially extend replayability lowers the value of the game for me.

Thanks for all the descriptions of the new features in Ninja Gaiden Black guys. That sounds like it will be totally worth playing through again. Maybe this time I'll play it on Normal, not on Hard, though. Hard was fun the first time through, but I don't know if it'll be as fun without a friend to play it through with me. When you're trading controllers back and forth, its a lot more fun to tackle hard games like Ninja Gaiden and God of War. But when you're by yourself, its more fun to not get stuck on certain parts and be able to play through more of the game in a single sitting.

I've heard that NG is pretty hard even on Normal difficulty, so it sounds like it'll still be a nice challenge.

[Skipper]

Pirates played very much the same for me as the PC version (which had the awkward keyboard controls.) The only differences were that you used the console joystick to steer, fight and dance, which was a bonus overall.

You don't hunt for treasure in the xbox version, you just hop off your ship near the marked spot and you kind of "auto-find" the treasure, or you just stand there. There is no exploration like they had on the PC. To be honest this is something of a bonus since on the PC version it was all kinds of view twisting to see if you could spot landmarks on the map. There was no minigame to it really, just wandering on a map that didn't have any playability to it until you found "X." The in-game menu is slightly different as well, but you get most all of the same features.

If interested, check around online, the game is on the BC list and plays fine, and you can probably find it used for under $10 if you don't want to download it.

[tromik]

I really liked Black. The cinematics sucked and there was no way to skip them, and the game was really shallow, but I still had a great time.

It's a really linear game, but it feels like it's giving you options. The "crossing the border" level was great. There was really only one path, but there was the illusion of choices. Also, the graphics were really great for both the PS2 and Xbox versions.

Other stuff that sucked: bad guys take a lot of bullets to go down, unless it's a headshot. Certain areas of the game were just fucking ridiculously hard as well.

[Jab]

One thing I notice after going onto NGB, if you don't have a completed save of NG on your hard drive you have to play black on normal. Normal on NGB is basically NG with the hurricane paks, you won't see the new bosses and enemies unless you play on Hard and up.

[Nengjanggo]

The stuff that made Black good -- explosions, destructible environments, feeling like an awesome badass killing machine -- disappears pretty quickly from the game. Quite of few of the levels are mostly non-destructible, and the later levels are really slow, and kind of grindy. At the same time, if you like slow tactical shooters you won't like it either because there aren't any interesting tactical choices to make.

[BDGE]

One thing I notice after going onto NGB, if you don't have a completed save of NG on your hard drive you have to play black on normal. Normal on NGB is basically NG with the hurricane paks, you won't see the new bosses and enemies unless you play on Hard and up.

Didn't think about that since I jumped into Black initially on Hard having beaten NG already previously). That does stink. RE4 on Wii forced players to trudge through normal as well to unlock Hard mode despite it being the third dip for a lot of fans(whom like myself wanted Hard off the bat)

[Lizard_King]

Didn't think about that since I jumped into Black initially on Hard having beaten NG already previously). That does stink. RE4 on Wii forced players to trudge through normal as well to unlock Hard mode despite it being the third dip for a lot of fans(whom like myself wanted Hard off the bat)

It just occurred to me that all of my NG/NG Black saves are currently in another country on the xbox that I gave away. I bet that ends up biting me in the ass with NG2.

[Rock8man]

It just occurred to me that all of my NG/NG Black saves are currently in another country on the xbox that I gave away. I bet that ends up biting me in the ass with NG2.

That wouldn't have mattered anyway. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, NG saves were non-transferable. This bit us in the ass with NG when a year after finishing the game we were thinking, hey we should replay NG but on the unlocked difficulty (I think it was called Very Hard? I forget). But anyway, we borrowed a memory card from a friend so we could transfer the game from the Xbox we used to use (which he had sold to a different friend) to the Xbox he currently used. Unfortunately, NG saves refused to be transfered. The option to copy or move them just wasn't presented in the dashboard interface. So if you switched Xboxes like we did, you'd need a new save anyway. And since NG2 won't be released on Xbox, there's no way to transfer between the two, unless you start a new game on a 360.

[Jab]

I hate to sidetrack the thread but I'm having a problem with Ninja Gaiden that I can't find the anwser to. I found all 50 scrabs and picked up Ninja Gaiden 1 and Ninja Gaiden 2. So I went over to the aquaducts where the third game is, but when I get there all I see is a disc floating in place and I can't pick it up. Is there a condition I have to meet to pick up Ninja Gaiden 3, or is this a glitch?

[Rock8man]

I never bothered getting the Ninja Gaiden games, since I suck at 2D games. To me they are infinitely harder than 3D games for some reason. I can't even reliably get through the first level of Super Mario World without dying. No joke.

Pfreak, here's what gamefaq's cheats and codes page says about the third game:

"Go to the peristyle passage in the Aquaducts, triangle jump back up to where you got the golden scarab on the top of the broken pillar."

In a walkthrough over there I found this section:

If you want, you can do both steps. After you've unlocked the door, there's 
one more task you have to do. Go right near the entrance to this large pillar 
room, but wedge yourself between two pillars around the right corner. It 
should look something like this:

 P - Pillar
 R - Place Ryu here
 _________________
|                 |      - Put Ryu between the first two pillars sharply around
|                 |        the right corner. Now, bird wall jump about 4 times
|                 |        until you reach the top. You'll notice that the one
|                 |        pillar has a section missing. You should land on top
|                 |        of the broken pillar, and Golden Scarab #7 is there.
|P P     PRP      |        This location is important as it is where you
|___|   |_________|        receive Ninja Gaiden 3 as well (check out the
                           secrets section).
  Entrance

But if you already knew how to get to it, and just wanted to know why you couldn't pick it up, it mentions that you have to have Ninja Gaiden 2 already, but you said you already had that.

[Jab]

Yeah I have them both, and when I get up to the pillar the disc is just floating above the pillar. I tried clearing the room out which spawned a life of the thousand gods, but that's it.

[Jab]

I think I found the problem. The 360 doesn't seem to be able to run the original Ninja gaiden titles. Which is probably why it won't let me pick it up.

[Rock8man]

Black, Pirates and Ninja Gaiden Black are now available. With these issues:

* BLACK: There are some minor lighting issues with non-player characters.
* Ninja Gaiden Black: No audio is heard during the display of the publisher logo. There is a minor performance drop during the Alma cutscene. Original Ninja Gaiden Arcade game does not run and is not supported.
* Sid Meier's Pirates!: There is minor stuttering during the introductory video, and there is some texture tearing and instances of textures disappearing in the game.

I think I'll definitely pick up Ninja Gaiden Black.

[Bahimiron]

I'm definitely somewhat more keen on Originals now that I see it's possible to delete a game without deleting saves. I was worried about that.

[André Costa]

I want to buy NGB but i'm worried it won't work for me. I have an european SKU but my XBLive account is from the US. I have read that these Xbox Originals are region locked :|

[Wendelius]

I want to buy NGB but i'm worried it won't work for me. I have an european SKU but my XBLive account is from the US. I have read that these Xbox Originals are region locked :|

Can't you simply create a silver European account to purchase the game? It might be a bit annoying to have to log in that account to play. But if the game is single player only (never played it. So don't be too harsh if it isn't), it won't make a difference.

EDIT: That assumes that you have a European SKU because you have a European billing address too. :/

Wendelius

[Jab]

Does anyone know if those issues for NGB will be fixed in the future? Or is that how it's going to be?

[Rock8man]

So I was all set to purchase NGB when I got home early from work today. I navigated to the game store, Xbox originals, Ninja Gaiden Black....... 5.9 GB?!?! What the hell? Now I'm having second thoughts.

I had to delete all the demos on my hard drive, which I was fine with, but that only left about 6.9GB free on my hard drive. The downloads of map packs for games like Rainbow Six Vegas (whose map packs add up to almost 2GB) were next to go, but there's no way I'm deleting songs from Rock Band, which are also starting to collectively take up a lot of room. In the end I managed to free up 9.6GB, so now 5.9GB seems a little more palatable.

For the first time, I'm actually wishing I had a 120GB hard drive for my 360.

[Bahimiron]

For the first time, I'm actually wishing I had a 120GB hard drive for my 360.

I've had this problem for a while, but it's mostly because weekly family movie night consists of something pulled from the XBL marketplace at least once a month.

Assassination of Jesse James is nearly eight gigs!

[Rock8man]

I made the purchase yesterday. And I was really pleasantly surprised.

1) Wow this game still looks good. Doesn't feel like a last-gen game at all.

2) The controls. Oh man, the controls are awesome. The fighting and moving feels even better than I remember. Maybe its because I'd forgotten how good it was, or it could be because this is Ninja Gaiden Black, not Ninja Gaiden.

3) The leaderboard works! Not that this will be especially relevant to me, but I've played a lot of Backwards Compatible games in which the Xbox Live functionality doesn't work, so this was a nice surprise.

[Rock8man]

Another Xbox Original coming up: Dreamfall: The Longest Journey. Coming March 24th.

I was a big fan of the original Longest Journey, but never got around to playing Dreamfall. I did purchase it when Steam had a sale a while ago, where it was only $10. It has a pretty slow start, so I only got about 30 minutes into the game. I'm sure I'll go back to it and finish it one of these days though. I owe it that as a fan of the original game.

One part I liked in the joystiq post about this upcoming release is statement:

With Psychonauts and Indigo Prophecy already on Microsoft's Xbox Originals service, we're alarmed to think that we might have something in common with a gigantic corporation: A soft spot for overlooked games rich in narrative. Compounding this realization is next week's addition to the downloadable back-compat lineup, Dreamfall: The Longest Journey.

It does seem like the line-up for Xbox Originals seems to want to promote these overlooked, well-written games.