Game Night

I rented Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts this week after having played the demo. It’s described as a vehicle-based game, which in most cases means: racing; but in this instance it means: building. You go through a platform adventure filled with racing-style mini-games, but the catch is you have to build and complete vehicles to win challenges. The building process takes up about 3/4 of the game, as each challenge likely requires a brand-new modded vehicle. So before you enter into the challenge, you have to construct a new car, or boat, or place, or whatever it may be that’ll help you win. Then you have to test it out. Half the time, what you build is either too hard to control and you literally have to go back to the drawing board. Other times, you’ll lose an entire challenge by missing a checkpoint by a fraction of an inch, or you’ll drive off the edge of a bridge and have to start over. The challenges are repetitive in a Warcraft-style, save for the vehicle you’re using. There’s also thousands of “coins” to collect, which must be traded in for new parts, blueprints, etc., which is time-consuming. The main stage is a town where there’s little-else to do but hunt for parts. I spent most of my time trying to access new areas and rooftops by stacking crates and climbing, only to discover that later in the game you get a spring that jumps you up over obstacles.
It’s not particularly hard, providing that you’re not a completionist. My three-year-old girlfriend’s kid was able to control most of the vehicles when I let him play. The trick is completing each challenge with a perfect score,
I also played the first round of Canadian Beta-Testing for 1 vs. 100, which is free for any Canadian on XBox Live with a Gold Membership. It’s a MMO trivia game-show, where one person faces off against 100 other players. 10,000+ other players are in the audience in teams of 4, and can chat freely using their headsets. You play to win Microsoft Points, and other prizes. There’s multiple ways to win, either by winning as “The One,” winning as one of “The Hundred,” or winning as one of the top three players in the audience. There’s even sweepstakes entries you win for just playing, and Achievement points are supposedly tossed around freely.
The most innovative things about the game is the inclusion of a live host, who offers commentary, commercial-breaks, and the fact that 10,000 people are watching one guy play. That’s never happened in an MMO before. Think  about it: 10,000 people are watching you win or lose.
There was a few technical slip-ups while I was playing, like the host’s audio cutting out, players disconnecting, etc, but it’s still a Beta. There wasn’t anything that affected my game personally, which would have enraged me.
Thing is: you have to play live during a two-hour schedule, so if you miss a game, you have to wait a week, or however many days for it to come back on, just like a real TV show.