Interpol Is Xbox Live Arcade’s First Title of 2009
Those looking for a more action-oriented game after Merv Griffin’s Crosswords finished off 2008 won’t be too pleased with this week’s title. Interpol: The Trail of Dr. Chaos is a puzzle game that’ll have you scouring for clues as an Interpol agent chasing down a terribly evil fellow by the name of Dr. Chaos. You can see that the game’s title didn’t require a tremendous leap to come up with.
You may have heard of the game before; both Interpol and its sequel have been available on the PC for a while now from developer TikGames — better known to the Xbox 360 crowd as the developer of both Domino Master and Texas Hold ‘em on Xbox Live Arcade. Anyone that’s too eager to wait can check out the a trial on PC right here.
Four player co-op (both locally and over Xbox Live) are among the features the game is bringing with it to the console world. 800 Microsoft points ($10) will be the price when Interpol is released this Wednesday.
($10) cost with the other agents.
In response to 
Tommy Tallarico looks to freshen up the Video Games Live experience a bit in 2009, with plans to add several new games to the concert’s line up, including Mega Man, Shenmue, and Chrono Trigger.
This year we decided to try something different with our Game of the Year awards: The GOTYS. We came up with categories that exemplify the areas of gaming that we think should be highlighted.
Say, what you want about Metal Gear Solid 4 — that it’s more movie, less game, whatever. Those gripes don’t matter: MGS4 is pure eye candy, it oozes sexy style and sparkles with pure panache. Watching it is a wonder. Character designer Yoji Shinkawa has been given a large canvas, and he’s painted a masterpiece.
Using technology to replicate sound is easy, but what about using it to imitate a complete lack of sound? The developers of Dead Space managed to convey airless, soundless space by replicating the vibrations one would feel from magnetized footsteps on a metal hull, or the recoil felt when unloading your weapon into an enemy clawing its way relentlessly towards you. They did an amazing job that realy heightened the atmosphere of the game - or lack thereof.
You’ll see the “category” name up there, you’ll see we picked Grand Theft Auto IV, and your eyes probably won’t stop rolling. After all, isn’t this the game with a “story” that, after the first third, completely falls apart? Interesting, original characters replaced for tired mob stereotypes while a convoluted narrative about the American Dream collapses in on itself around them? Yes. But we’re also rewarding games for their dialogue. And no game from 2008 can match the wit, delivery and sheer volume of irresistible chit-chat that Grand Theft Auto IV populates its cutscenes, missions and idle moments with.
Where several games delivered innovative stories or gameplay mechanics this year, none were as comprehensively groundbreaking as LittleBigPlanet. The game’s premise, physics, and art direction constitute a near-reinvention of the platform genre. But most importantly, LittleBigPlanet’s extraordinarily deep capacity for user-generated content represents a significant evolution in console gaming, bringing a creative experience that is ordinarily the domain of PC gaming into the PlayStation 3.
In a world where games tack-on multiplayer modes to single-player campaigns as an afterthought, Left 4 Dead is a breath of fresh zombie flesh. Modeled entirely on a four player system that encourages teamwork and cooperation over every-man-for-himself, this multiplayer mode challenges FPS gamers and survival horror fans to resist both run-and-gun tactics and fleeing blindly from the oncoming brain-craving horde. And by giving gamers the chance to play as Infected themselves – spitting vomit, tongue-choking Survivors, or just generally raining on their survival parade – Left 4 Dead goes the extra mile in creating a diverse and always-entertaining multiplayer experience.
Braid is brilliant. The mechanics are ingenious, forcing the player to learn, adapt and ruminate on how space and time — and even story — can be manipulated in a video game. Even the resolution, the ending as it were, requires that the player see it play out according to the rules of Braid. It’s also refreshingly independent. We know, directly from the creator, the ins and outs of Braid’s pricing, its development history and the post-ship bugs. It’s all “important” stuff, an exciting entry in a new generation of developers and thinking.
At their heart, games are meant to be a sort of absorbing escape from the every day. Unfortunately, what we as gamers escape to is too often an incomplete vision.
