I thought this might be worth a look for a lot of people on this forum that didn't like the impressions given. I'm in that boat too so I'll have to take a look at it and post back, I'm cautiously optimistic. We'll see...
I'll be downloading this and the new Tomb Raider demo.
Okay, I played around a bit in it. The first challenge I had to do was a straight forward race over land and water and although it was a bit frustrating when I would get hooked on things because of the oddly shaped ride I was using, it worked pretty well. The second challenge I tried, I was supposed to keep these little creatures away from two eyeballs and it was absolutely horrible. They put these eyes on a hump so it was harder than hell to stay near them and the creatures went straight for the eyes. I tried a "tank" vehicle with it to no avail because I couldn't seem to aim worth a shit. I then tried a "pusher" vehicle and got poor results because I couldn't control the vehicle enough on this round surface to push the creatures away with any real regularity.
Granted, this wasn't even an hour of gameplay but I went from a "meh" challenge to a frustrating challenge and those were two of the first ones. If it's indicative of the game, I don't think I'll like it. I definitely miss platforming and this is not the direction I prefer for the series but I was hoping for something new and fresh that worked well. It might be something new and fresh for the series but from my very limited play time with it, it doesn't work well. Since I've payed the game off in full (and want the OG Banjo game for free and early) I'll keep with my pre-order and see how it works once I get used to the wonky controls. I shouldn't have to be worrying about wonky racing controls in a Banjo game, though.
I remember reading an interview where Rare said that the vehices were impelemented due to the fact that with the 360 they were able to create much larger levels than the ones in Banjo-Tooie. I remember thinking to myself: "Banjo-Tooie's biggest flaw was the oversized levels. Doesn't Rare understand this?"
I think my big problem with this isn't that the levels are huge but that you know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that a lot of it will be either wasted space or an excuse to put 1,000 musical notes for you to have to collect in order to beat the game. Keep it simple Rare: Make 20 levels that are Banjo-Kazooie sized instead of making 10 levels that are ridiculously oversized.
I'd download the demo but I don't have enough room on my hard drive. I even deleted just about every video keeping only a handful of really small ones. At this point I'll have to delete downloaded content or yet more Live Arcade games. I already deleted like twenty of them but I'm sure I could decide on a dozen more (out of my current 44 on my drive) that I could deal with dropping.
I have all 172 arcade games plus 3 demoes on mine. Time to upgrade Wibble.
I want the 120gb but don't want to spend the money. So I continue to move shit around
I could likely get rid of some of the stuff my roommate grabbed, like Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4 map packs. He hasn't touched either game in forever and those alone are what 800mb total?
You could also get the 60GB pack for $99.