Wednesdaily Update

Firstly I'd like to apologise for for not getting the review for Deep Black: Episode 1 up in time yesterday. It seemed like I turned away for a minute and all of a sudden it was midnight. If you're interested in knowing more about Deep Black: Episode 1 you can check it out here. Since Monday not too much has been going on with my Xbox, I'm not exactly sure what happens with my time but it all seems to vanish without anything productive to show for it.

New missions, enemies and weapons. All you could want but it's damn hard!

Monday I filled you guys in on my progress in Iron Brigade, since then little has happened. I managed to finish the main game in pretty much one sitting, but have been banging my head at this DLC for days. The difficulty has definitely been ramped up, enemies take a bunch more damage and come at you from more varied entry points. Guns I had been dominating with in the normal game feel super weak now and it took me hours to get past the first level.

Vlad is back, this time in bear form!

I've managed to work my way to the third Rise of the Martian Bear battle now, but have been stuck here for days. I managed to get most of the way through the last wave once, so I'm hoping I'll finish it soon, but if there are more, harder levels on the way I'm not sure what to do. That's all I can talk about right now, as I said earlier this week hasn't been too productive. I'll have another review up tomorrow (I promise this time) and hopefully come Friday I'll have a bunch more exciting things to talk about. Leave a comment and see you later.

Deep Black: Episode 1 XBLA Review

Deep Black: Episode 1 is a third person shooter that seems to have borrowed it's feel and mechanics from a wide array of other good third person shooters. When playing the game and looking at your character from the back I couldn't help but see a striking resemblance to Isaac Clarke of the original Dead Space in his original space engineer suit with the helmet of an ODST trooper from Halo. The underwater sequences also harked to Dead Space series, reminding me of the low gravity sections. The action taking place on terra firma is unmistakably Gears of War with all the cover-based shooting you could wish for.

Deep Black manages to pull all these ideas together into a mostly cohesive and polished title. It's a shame the public seems to have decided to all but forget of it's existence, as the game itself is surprisingly good. I'm reminded of Amy, another supposed-to-be episodic gaming series that will never see a second episode. Amy had interesting ideas and showed some glimmer of promise but lacked execution, this has some interesting ideas and executed them pretty well seemed to have been more overlooked than Amy. It seems the curse of the dreaded water level trumps the dreaded escort mission in this case, as by my metric four times as many people played Amy than Deep Black.

Drones and other enemies can come from anywhere when you're swimming around

Overview
As stated above this is a pretty standard third person shooter, not bad, not good. It does offer a unique experience, with the underwater action being new and fun. Your character works for some sort of military, maybe private, and has been sent in under the guise of protection and or prevention of some disaster about to befall his people. It ends up being a sham and you've been unwillingly swept up in a conspiracy to steal new technologies from a rival company/country for the "good" of the people.

While your character is none to pleased about the situation he finds himself in he completes his mission like a good little soldier and kills hundreds of potential innocents along the way. Let's not sink to deep into the moral or ethical quandaries to be found here and talk more about the gameplay.

These guys come out of nowhere!

Rational
Deep Black distinguishes itself from the horde of other third person shooters by it taking place in a world where everyone thinks it's a good idea to have an underwater lair, or lab or some sort of dominion from whens to do their business. This affords some interesting new gameplay opportunities not seen in any other game of it's type. Having a fully three dimensional space for the character to not only move about in but also be attacked from can lead to some interesting situations later in the game. It also affords you some cool advantages, allowing you to sneak under patrolling land based enemies and also scout out a location from the relative safety of being seen by staying under water.

There's plenty of above sea level shenanigans too!

You are also armed with a grappling hook/spear that can be used to drag unsuspecting enemies from their patrols into the water for a grizzly execution and left to drown. This same grappling spear can be used to hack into consoles and the many drones that patrol Deep Blacks world. If you manage to hack a drone you will have an ally in your gunfights for as long as it stays alive or until you hack another. They can provide excellent distraction and allow you to flank or escape the other enemies in an area.

Deep Black: Episode 1 suffers the same end as Amy does however, with the story being completely unresolved. This time it's worse however with the action just ending abruptly, not even in a decent spot in the story with absolutely nothing learned about the situation you find yourself in. Even Amy's ending gave you a little more than that.

Summary
It's very discouraging to know that this game will never be resolved as I believe it is more deserving of a second part than Amy. Deep Black: Episode 1 did everything with more then enough quality and quantity than one could ask for from an episodic game and still didn't catch on. I think the mere fact a lot of it takes place underwater scared everyone away, which is a shame. It's not the most original game in the world, but it does have some new ideas and is executed well. The fact the story is cut of without any conclusion what so ever is the real downer here. If you have a chance to pick it up cheap maybe give it a look.

Mondaily Update

Sometimes walking away from a huge firefight with
7 health is a win!

Monday is here, hope everyone made a bunch of progress in whatever they were playing. I had a fairly busy weekend, which included a couple of outings, some training, a little bit of boosting for the first time in ages and a lot of dying. Dying can be the most infuriating thing in the world, but also serves as incentive to get it right the next time. Maybe there's something wrong with me but I can't seem to walk away from a game when it's all going bad, I need to push through and show my Xbox who's boss.

Since last update I've been slowly working my way forward in Serious Sam TFE. The save system is a godsend in this game, with every encounter on Serious difficulty running the very real risk of being your last. I've been following a secrets walkthrough this run to make sure I grab that achievement when I finish and to make sure I get every health and armour pickup I can to make it just that bit easier. Except that it doesn't seem to be making much of a difference. I've made it to the back half of the game and things are only going to get harder but I'll do it, oh yes! It'll happen Xbox, you'll see.

Part 1 of 1 it seems...

Apart from Serious Sam, I took some time on Sunday to bust through Deep Black Episode 1. One of my regular boosting buddies grabbed the game and seeing as it had four online achievements that can be attained real quick, so we got them while the getting was good. After wrapping the multiplayer achievements up in 30 minutes I decided a break from Serious Sam could be good so I continued playing through Deep Black's campaign. It's surprisingly decent for a game everyone seemed to overlook completely and it's made me a bit sad because I doubt Deep Black Episode 2 will ever be developed. Just like Amy, Deep Black cuts off without wrapping up it's story and let's you know to keep an eye out for Deep Black Episode 2. If/when that happens I'll gladly go back in for another look, Deep Black isn't good, but it's interesting and has some new ideas.

I shouldn't get too reviewy here, look for a Deep Black review Thursday. Tomorrow the review for Joy Ride Turbo should go live so check that out too. Leave a comment below and I'll be back Wednesday, hopefully you will to?