A young child has been accused of punching his mother in the face as she forced him to cut his game short on Sunday night and then fought with the police as they tried to restrain him. The parents told deputies that their son was playing Halo 3 late at night and they said he needed to turn it off, but the child refused to switch off the machine so his parents took action and the child went nuts and gave his mother a good thump.
Nintendo Australia is giving Poké-maniacs a treat down under, with the company partnering with national electronics retailer JB Hi-Fi to give away a free rare Pokémon for use in the Nintendo DS’s Pokémon Diamond or Pearl.
From November 7-13, gamers can go into any JB Hi-Fi store to download Manaphy, a rare Pokémon being featured in the latest Pokémon movie, Pokémon Ranger and the Temple of the Sea. Manaphy features an exclusive move called Heart Swap, which switches healing effects with other Pokémon.
Gamers will need to bring their Nintendo DS and an English version of Pokémon Diamond or Pearl to a JB Hi-Fi store to grab Manaphy. Nintendo has posted full instructions on its Australian Web site.
Teenage Zombies: Invasion of the Alien Brain Thingys is a side-scrolling adventure game for the Nintendo DS that was announced with very little information to back it up earlier this month. The game’s premise positively oozes B movie goodness from its every undead pore. Three teenage zombies, awoken from their underground slumber by a particularly noisy alien invasion, climb out of their graves with a bad case of the munchies and are thrilled to find that the aforementioned extra terrestrials bear more than a passing resemblance to (and are presumably every bit as tasty as) brains. Ignition Entertainment and developer InLight Entertainment showed off a work-in-progress version of the game recently. We’re pleased to report that its amusing storyline isn’t the only thing it has going for it.
For starters, Teenage Zombies: Invasion of the Alien Brain Thingys boasts some really great comic book-style presentation and even goes so far as to have you hold the DS on its side like a comic book while the story is told on both “pages.” The in-game visuals are similarly pleasing to the eye, and the three playable brain eaters each have some amusing animations. The titular heroes also have some unique skills at their disposal, and at least two of them appear to have suffered quite grisly deaths.
Lori throws a mean punch. Just one.
For example, Lori “Lefty” Lopez is a basketball player who only has one arm. Her skills include jumping high, throwing punches at long range–courtesy of a partially severed wrist–and augmenting what’s left of her missing arm with various gadgets, such as a vacuum cleaner. Zack “Half Pipe” Boyd, on the other hand, is a skateboarder with no legs who can move faster than the other zombies, jump off ramps, and assume something resembling the coffin position to roll through small gaps. Last up is Finnigan “Fins” Magee who appears to have done most of his suffering after death. He was buried a little too close to the sea, and after various aquatic creatures found their way into his coffin, he ended up with tentacles fused onto his back. Said additional limbs grant Fins some neat abilities, though, such as scaling vertical walls and hanging from ropes.
While playing on the top screen, instantly switching among characters will be easy as tapping their coffin on the touch screen or, if you prefer, pressing a button. The coffins are also used to store any character-specific power-ups that you find until you want to use them. We only got to see one such power-up during our time with the game: some kind of spicy food that gives Fins the ability to puke fire for about 20 seconds. We’ve no idea what the other power-ups might be at this point, but after seeing that one devastate a significant number of alien enemies, we’re eager to find out. Eating the “alien brain thingys” will replenish your health, incidentally, but because you’re a zombie, we’re apparently supposed to refer to it as “unhealth.”
In addition to lots of jumping between platforms and killing aliens, Teenage Zombies: Invasion of the Alien Brain Thingys will feature a number of minigames that figure into the story at various points during your adventure. We were afforded a brief look at one titled Power Line, which put the touch screen and stylus to good use by letting you pull back then release a power line between two buildings as if it were a rubber band. Using Lefty as a one-handed projectile, the goal was simply to crash her into alien brains and smash the jars that they fly around. Then, with subsequent flicks of the power line, you launch the tasty head muscles toward Fins who is standing on the left side of the screen.
The comic book-style presentation works well with the subject matter .
In a nod to Nintendo’s Brain Age (Brain Training if you’re in the UK) series, Teenage Zombies: Invasion of the Alien Brain Thingys will also feature a number of brain-teasing challenges. The alien boss, Big Brain, forces you to complete these challenges as he tries to comprehend how it is that you’re able to resist his mind-control techniques and raygun blasts. We didn’t get to see any of the Big Brain challenges in action on this occasion, but our understanding is that they’ll be quite similar to those found in the aforementioned Nintendo series, though presumably lacking the floating polygonal head of Dr Kawashima. Big Brain challenges will come in five difficulties or “brain ages,” including baby, toddler, teen, adult, and royal.
Teenage Zombies: Invasion of the Alien Brain Thingys is currently scheduled for release during the second quarter of 2008. We look forward to bringing you more information as soon as it becomes available.
-If Its Games
In the spirit of the season, Renegade Kid’s horror-themed shooter Dementium: The Ward is being released today on Nintendo’s family-friendly handheld, the DS. Although the jury is still out on whether Dementium will make a killing, the upstart developer is already gearing up for its second project, operating under the working title Project M.
Interestingly, Renegade Kid won’t be returning to extravagant fringe publishers Gamecock Media Group for Project M. Instead, the Austin-based developer has signed with Mastiff to publish its newest DS offering. Most recently, Mastiff released Falcom’s action role-playing game Gurumin: A Monstrous Adventure for the PlayStation Portable. The publisher is also signed on to publish RED Entertainment’s No One Can Stop Mr. Domino! sequel, Mr. D Goes to Town (working title) for the Wii.
Project M has not yet been rated, dated, or priced.
The Nintendo Entertainment System was home to many mean-spirited games, and Ninja Gaiden was a prime example. It beat you down, chewed you up, and spit you out. But it also dragged you back with its fast action, sweet ninja powers, and excellent controls. Now, Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos is available for the Wii’s Virtual Console and like its predecessor, you’ll cry foul at the game’s sadistic nature yet still find yourself clawing through the pain to conquer its insane challenge.
What’s a ninja’s worst enemy? A snowstorm that pushes him into bottomless pits…
Ninja Gaiden II thrusts returning protagonist Ryu Hayabusa into a plot by the sinister Ashtar to unleash demons unto the world, using the titular dark sword of chaos. The talking-head cutscenes of the series return to tell the story, opening and closing each of the game’s seven acts. The art is sharp and does a great job of providing visual flair to the storytelling, offsetting the frequently tedious dialogue.
Ninja Gaiden II improves upon the excellent visuals found in the original Ninja Gaiden. Some stages are draped in dynamic environments, such as one that takes place atop a speeding train, adding more life to the visuals. Granted, the NES-era technology gives way to flickering character sprites when the screen gets busy. Though by today’s standards the visuals aren’t anything special, the game is still nice to look at overall. The soundtrack is more consistent, with fast-paced music that keeps you energized as the game’s torturous nature begins.
You’ll quickly get the hang of Ninja Gaiden II’s action platforming basics because control is tight and the game starts you off against slow-footed goons. Ryu runs fast, jumps across wide chasms, wields his blade with exceptional speed, uses such special weapons as throwing stars or flame attacks, and clings to walls. This last skill makes it easier to control Ryu in his second adventure because he can now directly scale the walls without the aid of ladders and attack with special weapons from his perch. A new power-up creates clones of Ryu that mimic his every action, making him even deadlier.
However, you’ll have to show exceptional proficiency with Ryu’s new tricks because the difficulty spikes after the first act. You’ll struggle against a snowstorm that blows you into chasms, navigate areas where lightning is your only means of visibility, and attempt to maintain your grip on icy floors or walls. You’ll often jump over pits into thugs that knock you right back, and some enemies leap through walls to get you. Despite this, Ninja Gaiden II is slightly easier than its predecessor. Your foes don’t respawn out of thin air as much and deal less damage overall. Most boss battles can be relatively simple if you go in with the right weapons. But don’t mistake this for pity: These concessions are like a carrot on a stick taunting you with the prospect of victory.
…or is it the troupe of evil sentient fireballs homing in on his location?
Indeed, what keeps you coming back is the catharsis that comes with surviving the game. The cutthroat challenge will drive your competitive spirit and, along with the responsive controls, lure you back in for one more try. You might learn the levels so well that you can flow through them without stopping and this sense of accomplishment alone is worth the asking price of 500 Wii points. If you’re looking for a satisfying challenge and aren’t afraid of a little emasculation, you’ll have a grand old time with Ninja Gaiden II.
It’s been a bumpy ride with its share of disappointment, but the quest to bring fighting games kicking and screaming into homes with smooth online play seems to be nearing its end. And it’s just in time because the ability to find competition anytime, anywhere is just the sort of thing this style of game needs to be successful. Sega’s Virtua Fighter 5 is the next fighting game to take the plunge into online play, and it does so quite well.
Heeeeyyyyyyy!
The online mode lets you take on another competitor in ranked or unranked matches. How well it works is solely dependant on the quality of your Internet connection and the quality of your opponent’s connection. Because the game will match you up with other players, some games will run nearly perfectly, while others will be almost completely unplayable…unless the problem’s on your end, of course. On a regular, consumer-grade DSL connection, we had a good experience, with many more smooth matches than rough-looking latent ones. The game keeps track of your wins and losses in ranked mode, as well as clumsily ties it into the game’s existing profile system in the process. While the online play works, the menus leading up to it certainly could have been handled better. It starts by asking you if you want a ranked or unranked match, then moves on to character select, where you can opt to use one of your customized characters from another mode, but only their appearance carries over online. Your personal comment and ring name don’t show outside of quest mode.
At that point, you can choose to create a match, which puts you on the left side, or join one, which places you on the right. If you create an unranked match, you can invite a player from your friends list. But regardless of how you find an opponent, you’re dropped back to the create/join menu after every match. The inability to stay in an unranked match with a friend is annoying, as are the hoops you have to jump through to select a different character. Also, the game would have benefitted from tournament options or at least the ability to have more than two people in one game who could swap in and out as players win or lose fights.
Virtua Fighter 5 on the Xbox 360 is based on the Version C revision of the arcade game. The arcade versions of VF games typically undergo some slight changes and rebalancing over their lifetime. For reference, the PlayStation 3 version is built off of Version B. The differences feel negligible to the average player and an in-depth discussion of the changes is outside the scope of this review. Beyond the version change, the rest of Virtua Fighter 5 is on par with what the PlayStation 3 release offered from a features standpoint. You can play the game in arcade mode, which faithfully duplicates the computerized opponents you’d face if you were to drop 100 yen in an arcade machine, visit the dojo for the game’s passable practice mode, or go to VF.TV mode to set up computer-controlled fights between any two characters or view replays. This mode could have been awesome if some of the online hooks were applied because watching expert-level VF players face off is a real sight to see. Instead, it’s a little flat.
But the more interesting single-player component is quest mode, which gives you a map filled with different arcades, each with a reputation for attracting players of different skill levels. You can visit any arcade and start fighting. As you go, you’ll earn money that can be used to customize characters, unlock items, and get invited to tournaments. All that stuff is great, but it’s really more interesting because the artificial intelligence of your opponents is more varied and interesting to fight. In arcade mode, the game has a very robotic response to your actions. In quest mode, the fighters you face are all given ring names, as well as comments–just like a human player would have–and they tend to fight differently. The higher ranking quest mode AI can be challenging and the quest mode can keep you busy for a good, long time. But it’s no substitute for actual competition, which, thankfully, is only a few menus away.
The only other thing that gets in the way of the fun is the Xbox 360’s D pad, which works well enough, but just isn’t quite up to the challenge of the game’s fast-moving action. Sega and Hori have teamed up to release a joystick called the EX2. This joystick duplicates the ball-style joystick and convex buttons typically found in Japanese arcades. It’s also a solid piece of hardware that works nicely while still having most of the standard 360 accoutrements, such as a guide button and a jack for your headset. It’s a good piece of equipment that serious players should consider, but also be warned that this is a $60 joystick. At least it has six buttons on the face, so if you have any other 360 fighting games with buttons you can remap, this will work there too.
If you aren’t already good at Virtua Fighter, expect to rack up losses online.
Visually, the game looks about the same as the arcade version, which is to say that it has great-looking characters, picturesque backgrounds, and quality animation. About the only thing that looks a little funky is the mouth animation, which pops up when characters speak after a match. The character voices are a little hit or miss too, occasionally sounding a little tinny and low-fidelity. The music is the same sort of electronic-tinged rock that you’d expect to hear from a modern fighting game.
Virtua Fighter 5 is a great fighting game and the addition of a good multiplayer mode only makes it better. But keep in mind that the game is geared toward players who have experience with the series and isn’t always friendly to new players. If you’ve been playing Virtua Fighter for any length of time, this game is worth adding to your library. However, even if you’re a fan of other fighting games but aren’t already familiar with the series, it’s likely that you’re just going to keep on wondering why there is such a fuss about Virtua Fighter.
Though “Black Friday” isn’t until the day after Thanksgiving, November 20 was shaping up to be doomsday for gamers’ wallets. That Tuesday will see Rock Band, Mass Effect, and Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune all hit store shelves the day after the PC Unreal Tournament III goes on sale.
However, the November 20 herd was thinned by one today. British publisher Eidos Interactive has announced that its anticipated crime-action game Kane & Lynch: Dead Men has gone gold and will ship six days earlier on November 14 in North America. The M-for-Mature-rated game will ship simultaneously for the PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3.
Developed by Io Interactive, the Danish studio behind Freedom Fighters and the Hitman series, Kane & Lynch begins with the titular pair of criminals embroiled in a prison breakout. Soon, the duo–a burnt-out mercenary and a medicated psychopath–are staging bank heists reminiscent of the film Heat, with bloody massacres straight out of Reservoir Dogs. The third-person shooter will have a heavy focus on co-op gameplay, although it will be offline only; the game does sport several online modes, however.
Kane & Lynch’s release-date revision will be music to gamers’ ears. However, if executives at Eidos parent SCi Entertainment think November 14 is any less competitive, they are sorely mistaken. Super Mario Galaxy, Assassin’s Creed, Crysis, BlackSite: Area 51, Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles, WWE SmackDown! vs. RAW 2008, and Need for Speed: ProStreet all arrive during that week, which falls just after Call of Duty 4: Modern Combat hits stores.
Last month, Dutch publisher/developer Playlogic announced it had reached an agreement with Sony to publish PlayStation 3 games worldwide. While it had gained the rights to distribute others’ titles, Playlogic at that time did not reveal any of its own titles for Sony’s next-gen platform.
That changed today, as Playlogic has announced it is self-developing a mystery project for the PS3. Playlogic is developing the title at its Game Factory studio in the Netherlands in cooperation with Sony Europe’s London shop. While Playlogic did not indicate any specifics on the title, it appears to be a downloadable offering, as the game is on a seven-month development timeline.
Aside from its as-yet-unnamed PS3 game, Playlogic has a number of other projects in its stable, including Officers and Age of Pirates: Captain Blood, which are slated to be released this year.
One thing that’s notable about today’s announcement is what it doesn’t mention. Namely, the company makes no reference to Project Delta, the game it unveiled with much fanfare at the 2005 E3 Media & Business Summit. The sci-fi shooter was slated to be released on the PS3 and Xbox 360 and was reportedly in development at PlayLogic’s Danish studio. However, the past two years have seen no new information about the game, and PlayLogic reps had not responded to inquiries about its status as of press time.
With Lair, Heavenly Sword, and Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction on store shelves, only a few PlayStation 3 exclusives remain on the 2007 release calendar. Today, the release dates for two of the highest-profile titles being developed solely for Sony’s console were in flux.
First, the good news. On the official PlayStation Blog, Sony announced that second-party developer Naughty Dog will release its anticipated action adventure game Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune early–one day early, to be precise. The move slightly sidesteps the game’s previous November 20 release date, when Rock Band and Mass Effect will go on sale. However, Uncharted will now vie against the PC edition of Unreal Tournament III for gamers’ dollars. (The PS3 version of UTIII is now officially scheduled as arriving next year.)
Now, the not-so-good news. According to GameStop’s online store, Haze is now shipping on December 4. Previously, the retailer had listed developer Free Radical’s now-PS3-exclusive sci-fi shooter as coming on November 27. Though reps for Ubisoft had not commented on the date change–which is not official–as of press time, the publisher still lists Haze as arriving in November on its Web site.
MTV Games didn’t pay $175 million for Harmonix Music Systems just for Rock Band. The studio also has at least one other project in development, as revealed by the programming guide for the 2008 Game Developers Conference.
Harmonix senior designer Chris Foster will be delivering a 60-minute lecture at the conference titled “Your Music is the Game: Designing the OTHER Project at Harmonix.” (Emphasis in the original.) The session description explains that Harmonix has a history of creating “beatmatch” games in which users tap buttons or strum guitar controllers to match onscreen beats, but the studio’s next project would be a bit different.
“Beats would not be authored by tech-savvy musicians,” the description said of the next project, “but would instead be algorithmically generated, and the game would lack the dedicated peripherals that were critical to the success of the Guitar Hero series.”
The purpose of the lecture is to share how the developers had to change or scrap parts of their established gameplay design in order to meet the needs of the new project. “Special attention is devoted to: the development of procedural gameplay algorithms; unique input mechanics; and triaging unexpected changes in scope and schedule.”
Foster’s bio on the site says that he’s been handling the port of Rock Band to the PlayStation 2, and “on [TITLE DELETED], Chris has split his time between design and programming to bring Harmonix’s patented music gaming to a new and uniquely cool platform.” Over the course of 15 years in the industry, Foster has worked on massively multiplayer games such as Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar and Asheron’s Call, as well as the Lord of the Realms and Caesar strategy series.
The exact date and time of Foster’s presentation haven’t been finalized, but the 2008 GDC is scheduled for February 18-22 in San Francisco.
It’s been a rough month for Atari, starting with the dismissal of five members of its board of directors, courtesy of parent company Infogrames. While the outgoing directors had been replaced within a week, a group of frustrated Atari shareholders accused Infogrames of intentionally undermining the company’s stock price in preparation to buy out the remaining shareholders.
The month is ending with even more corporate drama for the company, as an Atari Securities and Exchange Commission filing last week revealed that it is currently embroiled in a dispute over its Dragon Ball Z license.
According to Atari, the company has the rights to release games based on the series thanks to a pair of agreements with US anime firm FUNimation Productions. However, the publisher received a notice from FUNimation earlier this month accusing it of breaching those agreements.
As a result, FUNimation now claims that Atari’s license to make Dragon Ball Z games has been terminated. Atari doesn’t agree and has been distributing the games as usual. The two companies are now in talks to reach a temporary agreement that would buy them time to resolve their issues regarding the original license.
Dragon Ball Z has been Atari’s most prolific licensed property in recent years, bringing in $85 million in the company’s fiscal 2005, according to its latest annual report. The remainder of Atari’s current catalog is headlined by properties like Dungeons & Dragons, Backyard Sports, and Godzilla. Should Atari lose the Dragon Ball Z license, it would join Driver, Stuntman, Transformers, and a handful of Hasbro games like Monopoly as high-profile losses to the publisher’s stable of properties.
Godzilla and major metropolitan cities have metaphorically gone toe-to-toe many times, but the result is always a mayor’s worst nightmare. While cities have essentially gone 0-for-a-million in the long-standing rivalry, that might change this holiday season as the two familiar foes take their struggle into the retail arena.
;)
In this corner, the King of Monsters!
The rumble in the concrete jungle is nearly here once again. Atari today announced that Godzilla Unleashed for the PlayStation 2 and Wii has gone gold, while Electronic Arts revealed that SimCity Societies for the PC has achieved the same status.
Looking at the tale of the tape, Godzilla Unleashed was developed by Pipeworks Software, the studio with considerable experience bringing the gargantuan metaphor of the dangers of scientific progress to the world of games. They also handled the last two games starring the movie monster, 2002’s Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee and 2004’s Godzilla: Save the Earth.
;)
And in this corner, an efficient and eminently crushable metropolis!
Meanwhile, SimCity Societies development was handled by Tilted Mill Entertainment. The team at Tilted Mill has never worked with the venerable SimCity franchise before, but it does have experience with both the city-building genre and picking up an established franchise. Its debut title was Immortal Cities: Children of the Nile, which it followed up with another historic city-building sim (and the latest iteration of an Impressions Games PC series), Casesar IV.
EA set a specific launch date of November 13 for its city-building spin-off in North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia. However, it seems nobody wants to tell the jade giant where to be or when; Atari is saying only that Godzilla Unleashed will be out this holiday season.
Get the news from Tabula Rasa’s intergalactic front.
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One of the earliest genres of computer games was role-playing games, and one of the trailblazers of RPGs back in the day was Richard Garriott, aka Lord British, creator of the famed Ultima fantasy RPG franchise. Since then, RPGs have evolved to become massively multiplayer online RPGs, allowing thousands of players to inhabit the same virtual world at the same time. MMOs let players socialize, fight together, fight against one another, and more. Garriott was one of the pioneers of this genre as well, with 1997’s Ultima Online.
Now Garriott, his studio Destination Games, and NCsoft are launching Tabula Rasa, a science fiction-themed MMO that will let you play as a human soldier caught up in a large, intergalactic war. You’ll be able to join thousands of other players online as you explore strange new worlds and battle enemy races. The emphasis in Tabula Rasa is as much on action as it is on role playing. With Tabula Rasa launching this week, we caught up with producer Starr Long, a longtime Garriott collaborator and one of the driving forces behind Ultima Online, to find out what Destination Games has planned for the game.
If Its Games: Now that development on Tabula Rasa’s launch content is winding down, what would you say was the most challenging part of the game’s development?
Tabula Rasa features laser weapons and robots–not swords and sorcery.
Starr Long: The most difficult part now is balancing three core needs: fixing stuff, improving the game experience, and adding new features. We’re improving the game experience by adding to existing features, like loadout trays for weapons. We have them for abilities now and want to add them for weapons. And we’re adding new game features, like new classes, personal armor units, and a bunch of stuff we’ve not really talked about yet!
The thing is they all have equal priority in our minds, but we still have to prioritize them. Keeping the pace of adding new content while fixing stuff–that’s difficult!
GS: Tabula Rasa is known for being a game with a lot of unique features and quite a bit of depth. How will the game make sure new players don’t get confused while they experiment with all this brand new stuff?
SL: We spent a lot of time trying to make it so you won’t be confused from the beginning of the game. For instance, take character creation. We make that easy by starting everyone off as a recruit. You don’t have to tweak any stats or anything like that without the knowledge of how you like to play or how the classes work. You focus on what you want to look like and jump in the game.
You don’t make your first character class selection until level five–after you have more exposure to the game. I think we do a really good job of not assaulting players with too many choices in the beginning when they can’t make informed decisions. Later in the game, though, there are tons of choices and decisions the players will make.
GS: What aspects of the game do you think will resonate most with beginners or more casual players? What aspects will appeal most to hardcore players?
SL: For casual players, I think the ease of use of the game will have some appeal. You can get in the game, start shooting stuff, and feel like a hero quickly.
For the hardcore players, the clan warfare and crafting system, plus the decisions you need to make in the game–in ethical parables, strategies for fighting enemies (like cover), weapons (weapon and damage types), and moment-to-moment gameplay decisions–will provide them with what they need to keep enjoying the game even after a significant time investment. Later in the game, things like cover become more important, so there will be a lot of decisions to make and strategies to try out.
I actually think there will be a crossover in control points. Casual players may walk by and say, “Oh, look, there’s a group taking a control point. I’m going to go help,” and have a blast doing that. Hardcore players will enjoy doing that as well, but will probably be more involved in the planning of taking control points and collecting defense tokens.
You can be part of an intergalactic army.
GS: We understand that Tabula Rasa was intended to fly in the face of what a conventional MMO game is supposed to be like–the typical kind of game that forces players to invest countless hours and always group with other players. How will the game allow players to enjoy themselves even if they can’t play for long periods of time or don’t have groups of friends also playing?
SL: We try to engineer most of the missions to last 30 minutes to an hour. The rewarding part of our game is that you can get in during your lunch hour and have a good play session. It is a fast-paced game where most of the barriers to meaningful gameplay have been drastically reduced or eliminated.
That said, you can solo or group up in Tabula Rasa. Shared battlefields are solo-able. Really, the key areas you probably want to group are in instances and control point battles.
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Already available in Europe but not scheduled for release in North America until next year, Obscure: The Aftermath is a survival horror game set in and around a fictional American university. The game promises its fair share of scares and purportedly touches on the subjects of rape and abuse, but it also has a lighter side filled with sexual innuendo, college humor, and just about every post-Happy Days clich
;)