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Sliced Gaming Feature: Xbox Insider Tour Brisbane

Writer: Gordon Craick
Posted: 5th November 2009, 10:15am

On Monday Sliced Gaming attended the Xbox Live Insider Tour, a tour of the latest offerings from Microsoft around Australia. Nearly all of the gaming events are Sydney-centric, so was good to have something local (in Brisbane) for once! The event was held at The Met in Brisbane's Fortitude Valley, which gave everybody plenty of room. We estimated some 200 gamers at the event, a pretty good turnout, and giving the event quite a good club vibe. Here is a rundown of what we experienced on the night...

Beers were flowing freely from the bar, and there was also plenty of free pizza, and doughnuts. The bar, not surprisingly, was one of the most popular 'exhibits' of the night. Healthy food and gaming doesn't usually go together, so hey, they knew how to capture the target audience pretty well. To add some extra interest, there was a live DJ, as well as a couple of male and female fashion shows featuring the latest surf brands. Channel 7 celebrities also showed off some Karaoke action with Lips 2 and MC Hammer's You Can't Touch This (.. the singing could have been worse!). So there was plenty of stimulatory eye-candy there to match the games, and things weren't too uber nerdy.

Playable demos for several of the most recently released titles, as well as upcoming ones were playable from many of the terminals setup around the venue. They weren't too crowded, so we got to play most of the titles for a good few minutes.

One of the most popular and interactive titles was DJ Hero. The game as it suggests, is a morph of the popular Guitar Hero format into DJ'ing and electronic music. The game of course wouldn't be complete with a plastic accessory, and we saw the included turn-tables in action. They basically involve sliding the deck back and forward (or scratching) to accurately trace the tracks flowing along the screen, and the buttons and sliders on the side are used to lock in various special moves. It seemed to work pretty well. DJ Hero looks like it will be a bit of a new party favourite, especially for those more into dance and electronic music. No doubt it'll be a popular one leading up to Christmas. 

While talk of another Tony Hawk game would otherwise be pretty yawn, we got to play a pre-release version of the next game Tony Hawk RIDE, which totally mixes things up with the new board accessory. The board was close to a final prototype, and seemed to work pretty well; it didn't seem too flimsy or tacky. It comes across as the just the deck of a skateboard, with sensor trickery on the bottom to detect movement and have that transferred to the game world. Players can now pull off their very own tricks in the loungeroom, much to their partner's or family's disgust no doubt! The board was surprisingly good, and pulling off grinds, kickflips, and ollies ...

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