Be Excellent To Each Other

Whilst picking up Jade Empire* for the bargainous price of £3.00 at CEX, I realised that there must be loads of other (original) Xbox stuff that's completely passed me by, having only owned a PS2 and Gamecube in the olden days of 2002-2006. I'm sure this kind of thing happened all the time over at WoS under the guise of a recommend-me-do, but to get the fun started, below is a list of games I'm considering getting, along with the price quoted at CEX, to which maybe some of you people might say things like "YES YOU MUST PLAY IT" or "THAT'S OVER-RATED TRIPE" or "STOP ANNOYING US AND GO USE METACRITIC". Or anything else you might feel is appropriate to say (it doesn't have to be in capital letters). Eliminating candidates is probably as useful as recommending them, as I'm pretty scared that this weekend after I get paid I'm going to splurge on the whole lot and have no hope in hell of finishing a single one of them.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer (£2)
Call of Cthulu (£7)
Capcom Classics Collection (£5)
Chronicles of Riddick (£3)
Deus Ex - Invisible War (£0.50)
Full Spectrum Warrior (£1)
Galleon (£2)
Guilty Gear X2 (£2.50)
Headhunter: Redemption (£1)
Obscure (£3)
Red Dead Revolver (£2.50)
Sid Meier's Pirates! (£3.50)
KOTOR 2 (£8)

I already have Psychonauts and Dreamfall via the 'Xbox Originals' on the 360 (which of course I now realise is a horribly over-priced service). What else is out there? I guess I'm slightly more interested in discovering the weirder unusual stuff than yer Halo 3s and Project Gothams and the like.



* I'm really liking Jade Empire so far. I'm only a couple of hours in, but it seem to be a cross between Knights of the Old Republic and Beyond Good & Evil. The setting is great, the real-time combat makes a refreshing change (although I wonder how it will hold up over the long-haul), and the story is at least mildly intriguing. Certainly worth 300 pennies.

Oh yeah, I bought Call of Cthulhu from Steam a month or so back. I'll play it some day.

Pirates! Is frickin awesome.

KOTOR 2 wasn't a patch on the original, but still good. I don't know much about the rest, I too didn't have an Xbox. I was all about the PC/PS2/Cube last gen.

Burnout 2 and 3 were EXCELLENT

2 definitely yes - 3, not so much. There was too much crashing into stuff you didn't have a hope in seeing. Plus the music was much better in 2.

I enjoyed 3 more than 2, if I'm honest. I think it's because I played that first and played it with mates. Pretty much completing the whole game over a weekend. Good memories.

As soon as I saw it in the list, I knew you'd post about it It is indeed awesome.

I also enjoyed 3 more than 2 as well also.

I remember DrG played 2 to death... he was utterly ridiculously good at it.

Pirates! is indeed good - you even look a bit like Threepbrush Guywood.

I did the same with 2 - it was the first Burnout I'd enjoyed (I'd played 3 and Revenge first and thought they were both piles of poo).

It was annoying as I lived with someone who worked for Criterion at the time. By the time we'd gone our separate ways, they started making decent games again.

You must MUST buy Metal Arms: Glitch In The System

From that list, Obscure is pretty good too. Basically a Resident Evil clone (pre 4) but with better controls, two-player co-op, rubbish voice acting and characters you don't care about. Still fun though.

I went to uni with a guy who worked on the physics for Burny Pee. The git.

Xbox must haves (that are not in your list)

Ninja Gaiden - Tough but rewarding slash-em-up
Panzer Dragoon Orta - BEAUTIFUL on rails shooter
Otogi - Myth of Demons - Japospookyslashysmashem-up
Black - FPS done very very well.

To my mind, Burnout 2 is the highpoint of the series. I liked the first one, but it had numerous smallish flaws, which the second one addressed nicely. Perfect sequel.

Jade Empire.... harumph. I lost my still-unplayed copy of that last time I moved house. I've come close to buying it again a few times.

£2 pre owned or 1200 ms-points?

Hmm...

I've got Black but haven't played it yet.

Really good shooter. I hope whoever made it that they're working on a sequel for the 360.

It's hard to start when there's no cheevo incentive, isn't it?

I lent my brother my copy of Fable 1. His missus loved Fable 2, but she can't be arsed playing the original, cos of the lack of POINTS!

btw, by whole family call them cheevos now. Thanks guys

It's by Criterion. They have no announced FPS games on their wikipedia page.

Interestingly, Criterion used to be owned by Canon, of all people.

That's why I have a promo copy.

It's not just the lack of achievements - I just find playing any Xbox original game with no live awareness makes me feel all lonely. Very odd as I've been playing games offline for years - now I couldn't go back. I just love seeing what you're all up to.

If you like scary games, I highly recommend the original Project Zero (aka Fatal Frame). It's a fiver on Play, and it's terrifying.

Seconded. It's not just achievements indeed... playing just about anything now, be it PC, Mac or DS feels really isolated.

Yes, very much seconded.

Ooh, there's a forth one coming on the Wii.
Which means there's a third one that I didn't know about.

Except for the save system, which kills the game stone dead unless you happen to have three hours spare every time you decide to play it.

I think 3 was NTSC-only.

I hope 4 is shit so I don't have to get a Wii.

I seem to have not read your first post Tsusy.

I never finished this because of the auto save function and the whopping intervals between checkpoints. However, I booted it up a few months back and played it for a couple of hours and it didn't feel so difficult to reach the checkpoints or as long. Make of that what you will - personally I think that it was innovative in it's time and that it still is a very good shooter and like all these things, it's best ideas get borrowed by other devco's making it feel easier than it did as there are have been a plethora of games that have concentrated on more realism in their gameplay mechanics; so I've got used to being careful and using cover to progress.

Has anyone mentioned Metal Arms: Glitch in the System yet?

One of the only games that I've actually completed twice and loved every second!!

The Conflict: games on the original Xbox are brilliant. Much better than the shitty 360 one they released. I'd go so far as to say that they are better co-op shooters than R6V2.

Pirates! is one of my favourite games ever and many a work lunch break is still taken up with playing the PSP version.

Zardoz's recommendations are good too - Panzer Dragoon Orta and the two Otogi games were amongst my very favourite Xbox releases.

Also, don't know if anyone else has mentioned it, but I personally really liked Deus Ex Invisible War. The fact that it's not quite as good as the original Deus Ex overshadowed it horribly, because I still think it's a very good game in it's own right and definitely not deserving of all the slating it gets. I was quite dissappointed when I found that my current PC won't run it (though that was on Vista, might have to try again now I've got Windows 7 RC installed).

Thank you all for the recommendations so far. Think Pirates! will be first on the "to get" list (I'm yet to play a bad Sid Meier game, or even one which doesn't consume my life for a good 30 hours)- followed maybe by Project Zero. BUT, must make sure I give Jade Empire a decent shot before splurging. I must. (I didn't mention it previously, but I also bought PoP:Sands of Time for the PS2 -£2.50- at the same time, which as many of you probably already know, certainly pisses all over Assassin's Creed in just its first couple of hours.)

Anyway, who's played Galleon? I remember it getting a lot of hype before its release, but I don't think I ever caught the reviews. Intriguingly, its scores on MetaCritic range from 92 from CVG to 40 from GamesTM. Who was right?

Seems like I've decided what I'll be doing with my week off work at the start of August...

Guilty Gear XX # Reload is very good, 2D fighter with a good sense of humour. worth a coupla quids of anyones money. Good if you like rock music, to see how many references you get.

Oh yes it does. Streamlined to the point of, er, pointlessness. When I decided to go back after finishing it 'properly' and just play through killing everything I saw, I still managed to get bored.