According to Japanese hardware sales for the month of October 2007, the PS3 is still struggling in Japan. The DS sold 318k units, with the PSP closing in with 279k units sold. Elsewhere, the Wii was third with 110,415 units and the PS3 sold just 45,447 units and the Xbox 360 18,717 which isn\’t bad at all for Microsoft.
Ratcher & Clank Future was released in Japan last week and received a very poor reception. Many herladed it is the best PS3 title to date, but the people of Japan thing otherwise. It only managed to move 11,814 copies in its first week, but this was the week that the 40GB PS3 swang by but Dynasty Warriors came out at the same time.
In its first year, more than 200 software titles have been released for PS3 and more than 60 million pieces of content have been downloaded from PLAYSTATION Network worldwide. Also, through the continued support of and dialogue with PS3 users, remarkable hardware advancements and features have been added to the system through firmware updates making it the most advanced computer entertainment system on the market today. More from the official press release inside…
Over at the Capcom blog, they have confirmed that Resident Evil: Extinction does not have RE5 and DMC4 demos on the Blu-ray disc. The disc has high-def trailers for both games and not actual playable code as several confused sites thought.
Eric Lempel, Director, PlayStation Network Operations has posted up that PS3 firmware v2.01 will be released soon and will act as a minor update which will have the effect of improving the stability of Sony\’s Playstation 3 console.
Numerous PS3 owners are reporting a variety of technical problems with their copies of Assassin\’s Creed, problems reported range from frame rate problems, game halting lock ups and screen tearing. Most users reporting glitches are using PS3 firmware v2.0.
The title pretty much says it all, here is a PSP TV tuner advert intended for Japan.
European Xbox boss Chris Lewis has revealed that Scene it is just the first step in Microsoft\’s family push for the Xbox 360. He also commented that Microsoft has looked very closely at a Wii type controller for the Xbox 360 and that a karaoke title could well be introduced, albeit at the right time.
Reports suggest that Microsoft is stepping up its campaign to compete much closer to the Wii by creating more family focused games. MS are planning to cater for different ages, with cartoon based titles and word puzzle titles among the recipes on the menu from Microsoft. Rare are also in on this new push as they are already creating titles for the respective demographics.
Singapore\’s Media Development Authority has confirmed that it hs reversed its decision to ban Mass Effect in Singapoe, now it will be released as an M18 rated game. A statement read that it will selectively use game ratings to enable highly anyticipated games to be launched in Singapore until a proper system is put into place in January.
MS is running a new offer in which new purchases of the Xbox 360 in the US will result in a free copy of Halo 3. All you have to do is buy an Xbox 360 by December 21st, connect to LIVE, enter a special promotional code and then you can look forward to receiving your copy of Halo 3 in the mail soon.
Over at the official Infinity Ward boards, a heads up has been given on an update in the works for the Xbox 360 version. No ETA has been given on when the update will be released, but it will include new features, some tweaking and optimizations, all of which are detailed inside.
A tech website has conducted some very thorough testing on the new Falcon Xbox 360\’s. They have found that playing Halo 3 on the Falcon actually consumes less power than the original Xbox 360 sitting idle at the dashboard. However, the console is still noisy due to a loud DVD drive but overall the Falcon results in power savings and ultimately cost benefits for MS.
Neves is “seven” spelled backward. It’s also an appropriate title for a puzzle game that involves creating specific designs by rotating, flipping, and placing seven unique shapes in such a way that they form the requested object without overlapping. Basically, this is the Nintendo DS equivalent of the traditional tangram puzzles that have existed for hundreds of years.
Of course, carrying around more than 500 puzzles in your DS is much more convenient than toting around a 500-page book and a set of wooden pieces. Manipulating those pieces with the stylus is pretty comfortable, too. You can tap and drag to move pieces around, tug on their corners to rotate them, and double tap them to flip them over. The seven discrete shapes look a little different than the shapes that come with a traditional Chinese tangram set, but the total surface area and overall number of possible permutations bear out roughly the same.
When you manage to fit all seven pieces into the silhouette, you’ve solved the puzzle.
There isn’t much to the presentation. You can see the different shapes clearly on the game board, which is a solid background imprinted with a silhouette of the final design. The various designs span the gamut of faces, animals, plants, machines, vehicles, and so on. Jazzy but repetitive music and chime-like sound effects accompany “the action.” When you lock a piece into the silhouette, you’ll hear a satisfying click.
Initially, you have four sets of puzzles to pick from, each of which contains approximately 45 individual puzzles. When you finish one of those sets, another set becomes available. In all, there are more than 500 unique puzzles. Three different play modes let you tackle those puzzles with or without a timer, or with a special restriction that challenges you to finish the puzzle in only seven moves. There’s also a no-nonsense multiplayer mode, which lets you beam puzzles to a friend’s DS and then compete to see who can solve them first.
Tangram-style puzzles are brain teasers that challenge your spatial-reasoning skills. Some people enjoy the intellectual stimulation brought about by the act of turning and placing the shapes. Some people don’t. Neves doesn’t really do anything to inject energy into the process, apart from the added timed and competitive modes, so it’s not going to change your mind about tangrams one way or the other. It simply offers a convenient way to carry around and solve more than 500 unique tangram puzzles. If that’s your idea of a good time, you won’t regret the purchase.
The last time we saw a Dragon Quest Monsters game in North America was six years ago on the Game Boy Color, when the franchise still went by the moniker “Dragon Warrior.” Importers aside, then, Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker for the Nintendo DS is a triumphant return to the Western world. Boasting gorgeous 3D visuals, a plethora of monsters to capture, and a compulsive monster-breeding system, this entry in the series should keep monster collection fans playing for hours on end. The emphasis on grinding, however, will make newcomers want to approach with caution.
Let the mating…I mean synthesis dance…begin!
Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker casts you in the role of a young monster-scout-to-be. You wake up in a prison cell, put there for trying to enter a monster-scouting tournament. Your father–who is the head of the supersecret CELL organization and threw you in there in the first place–sends for you and lets you join the tournament to fulfill an undercover mission for him. You are then given your choice of starting monster and head off to the tournament island via Jet Ski, where your adventure will begin in earnest. Along the way, you’ll go on a scavenger hunt, encounter other scouts who challenge you, and befriend a mythical beast who has its own agenda. Kind of a weird set-up, but it fits the game’s vibe.
Your quest is confined to seven islands, each of which requires Jet Ski travel to access. Exploration is limited to the mountains, caves, and palaces on these islands. There’s no wandering around large continents or visiting various towns, so everything seems a little small in scope. However, there’s still plenty of gameplay on each island, so while the lack of an epic feel may perturb those who were expecting a full-blown Dragon Quest role-playing experience, it doesn’t take away from the depth of the core game.
With these sorts of games, after all, the emphasis is on collecting and synthesizing the massive roster of more than 200 monsters that populate the islands. Split across eight different known families and eight letter grades, many of these monsters–such as the lovable slimes–are recognizable if you’ve played through a Dragon Quest game. Within your first few encounters on each island, you can expect to come across several new monsters to battle, with many more as you venture deeper in. There’s even a day-night cycle, so when you’re outdoors, a whole different set of monsters comes out to play during nighttime.
There are no random battles here–each monster is visible on the world map, and you can ambush or avoid them as you please. You stay completely out of actual combat and are limited to using items, leaving the bloodletting to your monsters. You can have up to three monsters on hand at any time, with another three to switch in when outside of battle. The rest of your critters hibernate in a monster-storage vault. The turn-based battles are almost identical to those in other Dragon Quest games, with the option to fight, defend, or use any of your monsters’ myriad special abilities. You can choose to take a hands-off approach by setting up such tactics for each monster as ordering them to mix up their abilities or avoid using magic. This system may seem a bit simple and antiquated, but “scouting” monsters–that is, recruiting them to your side–makes battles more appealing.
When you choose the scout command, each of your monsters takes a turn thwacking your target over the head without causing damage. Each hit increases the probability, measured in an onscreen percentage bar, that the target will join you. Even a weak party has a tiny chance of recruiting powerful monsters as long as it hits 1 percent. Since scouting power is linked to attack power, you can improve your chances by spending turns to boost up with support spells–at the risk that the monster will flee or defeat your party in the meantime. This makes you think about setting up “recruitment parties” and keeping secondary monsters up to snuff, since some magic users lack physical strength. This light strategy keeps things interesting and isn’t overly complex.
When you scout monsters it brings them in at a high experience level, making them ideal for “synthesis,” which is the merging of two beasts to create a new one. There are a few restrictions, one being that they must each be at least level 10. Each monster comes with a set of traits that determine what skills it can learn after leveling up, and when you synthesize, you’ll have to choose three of the parents’ traits for the new monster to inherit. You’ll be thinking long and hard about which monsters and traits to keep or toss. Interestingly, you can create the same species with totally different abilities, and the possibilities are almost endless.
The caveat is that a newly synthesized beast starts off at a low level. Since you’ll want to see what the next synthesis will yield, you’ll feel compelled to level up your new baby. This will take a very long time if you want to keep everything synthesis-ready, but even without considering that, each new area is already tough to fight through if you don’t grind. With only a smattering of nooks to explore and side quests to take, Dragon Quest Monsters doesn’t do a very good job of masking the grinding process. Be prepared to run around in circles fighting the same enemies if you want to get a lot out of this game.
At least the game is a joy to look at as you grind. Akira Toriyama’s trademark art style is represented very faithfully via cel-shaded character models roaming about an entirely 3D world. The coloring is vibrant, and most textures, while expectedly blocky due to the limitations of the DS hardware, are very detailed. The frame rate is smooth, and pop-in and broken seams are rare. The audio holds up its end of the bargain, with sound effects that are crisp rather than muddy and music that uses high-quality samples. The melodies could use a bit more variety, however, and while catchy and mostly cheery, they aren’t entirely moving. Nevertheless, the presentation is still strong overall, both aesthetically and technically.
This one, she’s a looker.
The game takes advantage of the DS’s Wi-Fi technology too, though not to its fullest. You can battle and trade monsters over local wireless play, which is fine, but multiplayer battling over the Internet is noticeably absent. Square Enix has tried to make up for it by letting you battle against downloadable team data. By sending your team data online, the game will match it to five other teams on the network and download their data for you. You can win new monsters and items through these battles, or even just by signing into the network. It works well enough, and the items and monsters provide incentive, but the more competitive scouts out there will still miss pummeling their friends head-to-head.
Even with the lack of competitive online play, there’s plenty to do in Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker. With such a variety of monsters to collect and ways to mold them to your liking, you’ll spend hours upon hours past the main 25-hour story scouting and experimenting. Although the grinding can be a turn off, it’s well worth the trouble if you desire the sense of satisfaction that comes with a massive, customized collection of beasts.