Diamonds in the Rough : Original Xbox Games

When I was younger, the person allowed to choose what new gaming console we received was not myself. All the way up until 6th grade this was the case and for some reason my brother was given this huge responsibility. It is obvious now that I am the bigger gamer between the two of us, seeing as for some reason he was a fanboy of Sega. Yes, SEGA, I experienced Genesis, Saturn, and of course the Dreamcast. While I was playing Sonic Adventure my friends were playing Goldeneye, Mario Kart, Siphon Filter, et cetera. I used to go into euphoria being able to go to a friend’s house and play a console that had games.

At one point our family had a PS2 that we won or something and instead of keeping it for ourselves my brother told my dad we didn’t want it and I believe I died a little inside when he gave it to his friend’s children. Luckily after 10 years of my life I put my foot down a.k.a. broke down into tears until I finally got a legitimate game console. The Xbox was my choice because…it had the Buffy the Vampire Slayer game on it. Although Buffy was the f’n bomb and I enjoyed that game and its sequel, games weren’t exactly flying towards my Xbox and I felt like the curse has been passed onto me. Luckily I found some gems in the small collection of Xbox games that arrived pre-Xbox Live (before Halo ruled my 14 year old self) and I pass these on to you.

These three games sort of had a cult following in a way and one of them had a very notable studio behind it that I couldn’t believe. More importantly though, one of them was so great its story was pegged for a sequel but it got cancelled although the game had stellar reviews and I have had a grudge against them ever since. Without further ado though, here are my Diamonds in the Rough.

DEATHROW by Southend Interactive

You either know exactly what this game is or you have never heard of it before. Deathrow was a futuristic sports game filled with violence and angry swearing. It was rough around the edges but if you looked deeper you could see a really great sports game.

The game played like Hockey/Soccer there was a medal floating disc that spawned in the center of the arena and both teams (4v4) charged for the disc and whoever had the disc had to fire it into a stationary portal of the enemy team. Essentially you would wait for this dotted line path to lock onto the ring and you then fired the disc. You could even hold it down until the disc turned green and if it hit anyone it would blow them up (called a Death-Throw). This made it terrifying to defend a shot coming at the net, but it was also worth it in instances where taking a bullet for the team gave you a win.

I left out the violence that comes in Deathrow though, defense wasn’t your typical try to knock the disc away type approach. You delivered kicks, punches, and grapples to make them lose control of the disc and if you did enough damage you could injure them. If they got injured too much in a match you could take them out permanently. I remember instances where I would hit the taunt button against a computer team and they would react by smashing my head into the floor until I would die, just because I uttered a few f-bombs directed towards them.

All of this gameplay was presented in a season mode that was sort of like a Tower of Power which left you vsing extremely good teams in the upper divisions and allowing you to do things like risk money in business ventures, recruit new players, and boost player stats.

It had a slightly crude humor and gruesome gameplay at times but in essence it would have been a huge Xbox Live hit. 4v4 with players creating and leveling up their own players and a little tweaking of the ass kicking that people would deliver to each other with their hands/feet it could have been a real blast.

Every friend I had over were hooked to the game after not knowing anything about it. IGN even gave it over a 9 out of 10 which is amazing. To top it the Southend Interactive people used to reply to fan e-mails about the game and they even replied to one from 13 year old me. They thanked me for my fanship and told me that they are still making games (which is true) and would love to revisit Deathrow but they couldn’t quite yet.

It is also backwards compatible with the Xbox 360 so if anyone wants to borrow my copy let me know, I expect it back with a thank you note for letting you experience the best new sport since the WNBA.

PIRATES OF THE CARRIBEAN by Bethesda Softworks

 

If you took the time to read the title of this game and who is responsible for it I assure you it is not a typo. I got this game in 2003 as a gift and was blown away by the depth and the things I came across in this title.

Being in 8th grade at the time I was still very unfamiliar with Bethesda but I liked Pirates and RPGs. I didn’t even know a movie was coming out which barely has any relations to this game. The game puts you in the shoes of a man called Nathaniel Hawke and you participate in adventures of a wide variety. One of the ones I remember was when I got a bunch of English or French soldiers drunk in a pub and stole their uniforms, allowing my men and I to ambush them because they invaded and took control of our city.

The game allowed you to recruit officers that could accompany you on quests, but more importantly can captain ships under your fleet. Yes, it wasn’t a pirate game without sailing and I recall being able to really customize my ships with better guns and the works making me really fearsome on the waters. So I would take my ships on the waters and if I earned the opportunity I would board the other ships, killing men and taking cargo to sell. If the ship survived I could put one of my men as the captain of it and basically earn a free ship.

The sailing was great in itself because beginning to sail it was slightly harder than just driving a car in GTA or something, I actually sank my ship trying to leave port several times. After I figured it out though it was magical, maneuvering and switching speed to get in cannon range, it was simply magical sinking an enemy ship.

As I said there were basically no ties to the actual movie so it wasn’t really a movie game and was one of the most fun RPGs I played on the Xbox. I would gladly play a sequel of that or even better a fresh Pirate RPG is probably long overdue so someone should get on that. Make sure it is co-op though so me and my fellow pirate friends can pillage and pirate together. I held myself back from saying that like a pirate for the sake of my dignity arrrrr.

GLADIUS by Lucas Arts

My favorite Xbox game and it was critically acclaimed to boot, Game Informer even gave it a 93. Gladius put you in the shoes of Valens a kid who with the help of his friend Ludo try to rebuild his father’s gladiator school.

You traveled to cities to fight in a wide variety of tournaments and recruited new players that you could slightly customize by changing colors and buying them new weapons and armor. The combat was strategic and straight forward, you used positioning to your advantage it played like a real time strategy game. With chessboard style gameplay you would have to get into position to attack and had a variety of attacks you could buy when leveling up. The actual attacking forced you to do things like hit A when the indicator hit the red part of the meter for a critical hit, perform 4 button combos before the timer ran out, and things of that nature. It gave players more control and allowed players to earn victories over better opponents if they had better timing/precision.

The game had a variety of character classes so diversity was key and along with that the story underneath it all had combat outside of coliseums. A cool feature of that made it where if someone died in your party they were lost forever. I thought this was incredibly disappointing when I lost one of my men but I was taken back that they offered a cool feature like that.

So you would progress through the story playing in tournaments, leveling up characters, buying new gears, and earning prestige for your school and you were even allowed to bring 3 friends into battle with you. With a simple “Press Start” at match start your friends took control of party members and allowed you to work as a team to win tournaments.

Now the game had great reviews and decent sales but Lucas Arts canceled its sequel which was needed because the story was left on a cliffhanger, the reason though? Lucas Arts was dedicating themselves to Star Wars and nothing but Star Wars.

Can’t blame them because Star Wars popularity topples all, but I *cough* think a sequel for the Xbox 360 would be unreal with Xbox Live *cough* With very little strain for connections being as it is turn based, it could be visually stunning with gorey kills and amazing skill animations. Allowing players to experience that with creating their own school and recruiting other players and friends, leveling up and customizing themselves. With online games dominately shooting titles it would be praised for being different and critics obviously already loved the formula I feel that it would work.

If any of the above developers actually read this I am more than willing to hop on board and help with creating the sequels to these games. I know I would be throwing away this lavish life of a video game writer, but I feel in the long run I might learn to love it.

Also anyone who reads this feel free to comment and tell me that I am not the only one to experience these games and tell me that you loved them too.