Xbox 360 Previews

Reynold (or twin sister Wren, should you choose to play her) has a problem. His/her sibling has been kidnapped by real monsters during their Hallowe’en trick or treat trip. They’ll eat him/her if s/he doesn’t get him/her back, and even worse, s/he’ll get grounded.

So begins Costume Quest, the latest slice of wonderful comedic madness from Double Fine, the Tim Schafer-headed studio responsible for Psychonauts and Brutal Legend. It’s a western-developed JRPG set on Hallowe’en night, and it’s coming this Autumn via XBLA and PSN. That’s how it begins, but how does it continue? Click on and I’ll tell you, because yesterday I played through quite a chunk of it.

Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit might just have the best online integration ever. It takes the 'always on' idea of Project Gotham Racing 3, fuses it to Burnout Paradise's Road Rules mechanic and connects it all to a social network not dissimilar to the mighty Facebook. In many ways, this is how online gaming should have been done since the very beginning - and anything less in the future will look backward in comparison.

We got excited about Enslaved: Odyssey to the West when we finally got our hands on it recently. We're worried that this possible sleeper may just get ignored by the public since it's not obvious what the game's really about, and it's hard to tell why it's different from anything we've played in quite some time. So here are the ten things that make Enslaved so much more than just another fall action game in a fall choked with action games...

Don't think for a minute that Harmonix has been resting on its substantial laurels while it gave us Green Day and Beatles Rock Band games. The team has been quietly working on Rock Band 3 for over two and a half years now, with the aim of pushing the music game genre into new territory. Way more ambitious than any Guitar Hero game, RB3 is attempting to bridge the gap between gaming and genuine musicianship. However, this may just be a step too far...

Downloadable action adventure Blade Kitten puts you in control of the oh-so cute Kit, a female bounty hunter (hmm…sounds familiar) who’s half cat, half hot chick. She also happens to be the last of the Darques, an ancient race of feline folk lost to mass genocide. But rather than getting all wasted on rum-spiked milk and wallowing in misery at her lonely existence, Kit instead makes a living rounding up bounties and discovering all the secrets held within the planet of Hollow Wish, a locale with no need for law and order.

You already know that Medal of Honor’s campaign involves dashing to cover, clearing AK-wielding bad guys out of dusty rooms, and operating airborne cannons. It doesn’t reinvent single-player war shooters, and nor should it. Medal of Honor is Medal of Honor, so it’s EALA's craftsmanship of this campaign that matters. Standard shooter conventions don’t inescapably prevent a game from being fresh and original - it’s all in the details...

The original Dead Space was a harrowing solitary experience, as the silent Isaac Clarke searched a derelict spaceship for his fiancé while fighting off hideous creatures. In early 2011 the sequel will be out, with improvements players had been asking for, but the rumored multiplayer wasn’t on the minds of some. Many, including me, thought that any possible multiplayer would ruin the haunting, lonely feel of the Dead Space universe, so when I was invited to the unveiling of the online multiplayer I was a little skeptical. Three hours later and I’d be singing a different tune...

While it looks awfully similar to 2007's Pac-Man Championship Edition, DX's gameplay is actually quite different, and it's aimed at a broader audience than the first CE's hardcore-only traditional Pac-Man fare. That's not to say the difficulty isn't there for those who can handle it, but there's definitely a range of options this time for all skill levels.

The main difference in gameplay in DX compared to traditional Pac-Man revolves around a new kind of ghost...

We're frankly reeling in astonishment from our recent hands-on with Enslaved: Odyssey to the West. We saw the game a while back in a hands-off preview and we weren't sure what to think of this unusual game. It struck us as somewhat original in its portrayal of a post-apocalyptic New York as a lush, overgrown ghost town rather than the standard brown, dusty wasteland seen in almost all after-the-end-of-the-world games. Yet its gameplay and storytelling left us mostly with a question mark – the combat seemed standard fare, and all the claims of professional writing by 28 Days Later scribe Alex Garland were only talk with no real walk, thanks to unfinished voice-overs unable to convey anything other than weird, buggy computer-delivered dialogue.

The Front Mission series is known for its tactical, turn-based SRPG gameplay, but as the title suggests, Front Mission Evolved is changing things up with a new genre – Evolved is the series' debut third-person shooter. Of course since FME is still a mech game, it's all about creating and customizing your mech to your heart's content...